posted April 30, 2007 08:56 PM              

Many stats and pictures of protests against the war in Iraq.

For instance, In Feb. 2003, 2,000,000 people came out in Barcelona in just ONE DAY to protest the war in Iraq! Over six million in all of Spain! Remember, this was BEFORE the Madrid bombings of 2004, before troops were even committed to war, as I have seen many people mistake this.

1,750,000 in the UK
800,000 in France
200,000 in Greece

have also come out to protest since 2003.

well you get the picture, look at the site, it is pretty interesting.
(and stop the player because it can be annoying)

posted May 01, 2007 08:24 PM            

That all depends on what constitutes high level souls and who is actually destroying the world.

Too bad these same people didn't come out in force after 9-11 or in behalf of the thousands that die each day in at the hands of insurgents (didn't see any signs about picking the murdering of children on a school bus to make a point) or against slave trading against Dafur.

Nope... its much easier to go after and Blame the US...

posted May 01, 2007 08:31 PM              

The US government yes.

posted May 01, 2007 09:54 PM              

-------------------------------------

pretty presumptious...

You assume other people have done nothing..

But what have you done, may I ask?

posted May 02, 2007 01:54 AM            

It is a very weak tactic to say to someone "Umm... what have you done to change the world?" You neither back up your statements nor do you provide a question that can be successfully answered. If for example I told you I was on a committee designed to send supplies and aid to Sudan, you would then say "well, why didn't you do anything for the starving in America".

Deflection does not make a point true. Deflection is what people do when they do not have the answers, instead they only have hateful comments about a President they despise.

It has been awhile since I have been on GU. Not out of fear nor due to my husband being in Iraq, I've been busy. BUT, if it is a real debate that you want, you better come to the table with more than little quips of BS.

posted May 02, 2007 08:59 AM              

Updated:2007-05-02 06:14:58
Kent State Victim Releases Recording
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN
AP
CLEVELAND (May 2) - A static-filled recording of the 1970 Kent State University shooting that killed four students raises questions not only about whether someone called on National Guardsmen to fire, but also who might have given the order.

A Deadly Campus Confrontation
After the deadly 1970 shootings, the FBI investigated whether an order had been given to fire, and said it could only speculate.

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The tape was released Tuesday by Alan Canfora, 58, one of nine students wounded in the 1970 shootings. He played two versions of the tape - the original and an amplified version - in which he says a Guard officer issues the command, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!"

Background noise on the recording made it difficult to understand as it was played for students and reporters in a campus theater Tuesday. The word "point" is clear, followed by the sound of shots being fired. There is no indication on the tape of who said the word.

The tape was given to Yale in 1979 for its Kent State archives by an attorney who represented students in a lawsuit filed against the state over the shooting. Canfora said he found out about it six months ago while researching the shooting.

Some said they wondered what would be achieved by releasing the tape so many years after the shootings.

"I think both sides were at fault," said Brett Wilson, 18, a Kent State student. He said students were trying to provoke the Guard and Guardsmen overreacted with deadly force.

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But Canfora said he will turn over copies of the tape to federal and state officials with an appeal to reopen the investigation over how the firing began.

"We're hoping for new investigations and new truths," he said. "We need truth, we need healing."

He said voice analysis might help determine who was speaking on the tape.

"I think we'll know who gave that order," Canfora said.

After an initial investigation, the case was reopened in 1973 when a grand jury indicted eight Guardsmen. They were acquitted of federal civil rights charges the next year.

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Larry Shafer, a former Guardsman who said he fired during the shootings and was among those charged, told the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier newspaper on Tuesday that he was unaware of the tape and that "point" would not have been part of a proper command.

"I never heard any command to fire. That's all I can say on that," Shafer, a Ravenna city councilman and former fire chief, told the newspaper. "That's not to say there may not have been, but with all the racket and noise, I don't know how anyone could have heard anything that day."

The FBI, which investigated whether an order had been given to fire, said at the time it could only speculate. One theory was that a Guardsman panicked or fired intentionally at a student and that others fired when they heard the shot.

Canfora said the reel-to-reel audio recording was made by Terry Strubbe, a student who placed a microphone at a windowsill of his dormitory that overlooked the anti-war rally. Strubbe turned the tape over to the FBI, which kept a copy.

Stan Pottinger, who helped prosecute the Guardsmen in the early 1970s as an assistant attorney general with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department, said Tuesday from New York that he doubts anything was overlooked then.

He said he could not specifically recall the Strubbe tape, but said audio recordings and film were carefully studied.

Pottinger said justice was served.

"The Guardsmen were acquitted, the case was closed, the families expressed enormous gratitude for the reopening of the case and that was it," he said.

Canfora said only a small portion of the tape was reviewed during various investigations.

Scott Wilson , a spokesman with the FBI in Cleveland, said Tuesday that he was unaware of any request to look into the matter. The Ohio National Guard had no comment on the tape's release, spokesman James Sims said Tuesday.

Strubbe, who still lives near Kent, keeps the original tape in a safe deposit box, said Canfora, who heads a nonprofit organization at Kent State that leads a candlelight vigil every May 4 to mark the anniversary of the shootings. Friday will mark the 37th anniversary. http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/kent-state-victim-releases-recording/20070501064209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

posted May 09, 2007 03:24 PM              

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Sitting on Iraq's death row is a 25-year-old woman convicted in the slayings of three relatives. She says her husband carried out the killings and fled. She confessed to being an accomplice, she says, only after being tortured in police custody.

Despite lingering questions about the case, the fate of Samar Saed Abdullah remains the gallows.

"I am innocent," she told CNN from inside the al-Kadhimiya Women's Prison in Baghdad. "The judge did not hear me out. He refused to hear anything I have to say. He just sentenced me." (Watch Abdullah cry as she tells her story Video)

According to Amnesty International, such claims are not uncommon in Iraq, which has the fourth-highest execution rate in the world.

Amnesty issued a report last month that concluded sentences in Iraq increasingly follow flawed trials and coerced confessions.

"In many cases, death sentences have been issued following proceedings which failed to meet international fair trial standards," the report said. "This represents a profoundly retrograde step."

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority abolished capital punishment in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. But shortly after the government was handed over to Iraqis, the death penalty was reinstated in August 2004.

Since that time, more than 270 people have been sentenced to death, and at least 100 people -- including Hussein -- have been executed, according to Amnesty. Four women are currently on death row. Two of the women have their young children, ages 1 and 3, with them on death row, Amnesty says.
Tried and convicted in 1 day

Abdullah is among the death-row women.

She is accused of being an accessory to the murder of her uncle, aunt and cousin -- slayings that allegedly were carried out at their family home by her husband.

In the court documents from her trial, she admitted to confessing she had gone to her uncle's house with her husband with the intent to steal, but she says she made that confession as a result of being tortured.

In reaching its verdict, the court disregarded her testimony on the grounds that her confession was closer to the date of the crime.

She was tried and convicted in a single day, August 15, 2005.

"She didn't confess," her mother, Hana'a Abdul Hakim, told CNN. "It was from the beating they gave her. She was bleeding. She finally said write what you want, just stop."

Under Iraqi law, her claim to confessing under torture should have been investigated, but it wasn't. CNN's repeated queries to the Higher Judicial Council and the Ministry of Justice went unanswered.

"The judiciary is no longer involved, and nothing can be done unless new evidence comes to light, which is unlikely," her appeals lawyer, Ali Azzawi, said.
Father: I wouldn't see her if she was guilty

Inside the prison, Abdullah's voice trembles with fear, her large brown eyes fill with tears and her hands nervously clench.

"Give me life in prison, 20 years. Anything but this," she said from the prison's "sewing room."

She holds out hope for an appeal, but she doesn't know that the appeal has already been rejected. No one -- not even her own family -- has the heart to tell her the appeals court upheld her death sentence three months ago.

"I couldn't tell her," her mother said. "I was afraid that she would do something to herself."

Through her tears, the mother's agony is palpable. At this point, she says she'll take anything for her daughter: life in prison, a lesser sentence. Anything but the death sentence.

The family says their daughter met her husband, Saif Ali Nur, in the winter of 2004. They didn't approve of him at first, but eventually gave the couple their blessing.

Three months later, the mother says, the couple was driving to get gas when Nur suggested they stop at the uncle's house. They did just that.

Their daughter was in the kitchen washing dishes when, according to the mother, her husband locked the kitchen door and gunshots rang out. Nur is alleged to have killed her uncle, aunt and cousin.

Then, the mother says, he held Abdullah at gunpoint demanding to know where the uncle kept money and gold.

"He dragged her," the mother said. "Samar kept telling him she didn't know where the money was."

The husband left with less than $1,000 and some jewelry. The next day, he dumped his wife at the end of her street and threatened to kill her and the rest of her family if she told authorities, the family said.

Abdullah was arrested by Iraqi police that same day.

The court testimony from her trial mirrors the account the mother told CNN.

"If I thought she was guilty, I swear, I wouldn't go see her. She would get the punishment she deserves, but this is such a severe sentence," her father, Saed Abdul Majid, said.
Every Wednesday is gallows day

Amnesty International has appealed Iraqi authorities on behalf of Abdullah and the other three women on Iraq's death row. Another group inside Iraq, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, is also seeking to save them.

The group's head, Dalal Rubaie, says they have successfully appealed cases of two women, including one on death row who, she says, confessed after extensive torture.

"She had her fingernails pulled; she was hung from the ceiling; they took pictures of her naked while she was hanging; they cuffed her to a bed and raped her," Rubaie says.

Rubaie's organization delivered a letter from the woman that detailed her allegations to the government and made it public on the Internet. She is now awaiting a retrial while her claim is being investigated.

As for Abdullah, she dreads every Wednesday, never knowing if it will be her last day alive. Wednesday is execution day in Iraq, when inmates are led unannounced to the gallows.

"I don't sleep at all on Wednesdays," she said. "I stay scared all day."

She survived today, but there's always next Wednesday. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/08/iraq.deathpenalty/index.html

We took Saddam out and put people just like him to run the country