Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

William Glaberson, "Former Prosecutor to Testify for Detainee"

Until four months ago, Col. Morris D. Davis was the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay and the most colorful champion of the Bush administration’s military commission system. He once said sympathy for detainees was nauseating and compared putting them on trial to dragging "Dracula out into the sunlight."

Then in October he had a dispute with his boss, a general. Ever since, he has been one of those critics who will not go away: a former top insider, with broad shoulders and a well-pressed uniform, willing to turn on the system he helped run.

Still in the military, he has irritated the administration, saying in articles and interviews that Pentagon officials interfered with prosecutors, exerted political pressure and approved the use of evidence obtained by torture.

Now, Colonel Davis has taken his most provocative step, completing his transformation from Guantánamo’s chief prosecutor to its new chief critic. He has agreed to testify at Guantánamo on behalf of one of the detainees, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden.

Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer nearing retirement at 49, said that he would never argue that Mr. Hamdan was innocent, but that he was ready to try to put the commission system itself on trial by questioning its fairness. He said that there "is a potential for rigged outcomes" and that he had "significant doubts about whether it will deliver full, fair and open hearings."

Islam: A New Revolution Rising?

Robert Pigott. "Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts"

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

• • •

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.

"There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine.

"But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons."

The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.

Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".

So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

(A nod to Making Light.)

Music Across the Divide

Daniel J. Wakin, "Philharmonic Stirs Emotions in North Korea"

As the New York Philharmonic sang out the opening notes of “Arirang,” a beloved Korean folk song, a murmur rippled through the audience. Many in the audience perched forward in their seats.

The piccolo played a long, plaintive melody. Cymbals crashed, harp runs flew up, the violins soared. And tears began forming in the eyes of the staid audience, row upon row of men in dark suits, women in colorful high-waisted hanbok dresses and all of them wearing pins of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder.

And right there, the Philharmonic had them. The full-throated performance of a piece deeply resonant for both North and South Koreans ended the orchestra’s historic concert in this isolated nation on Tuesday in triumph.

The audience applauded for more than five minutes, and orchestra members, some of them crying, waved. People in the seats cheered and waved back, reluctant to let the visiting Americans leave.

Breaking the Law

Glenn Greenwald, " McConnell/Mukasey: Eavesdropping outside of FISA is 'illegal'

In any event, the two honorable, apolitical, completely trustworthy Bush cabinet members -- DNI Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- yesterday released a letter addressed to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes which is basically a written adaptation of the scary 24 video produced this week by the House Republicans, breathlessly claiming that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because of the PAA's expiration.

The letter contains the now-standard fear-mongering claims that telecoms will stop cooperating (and even have stopped cooperating already) with government surveillance in the absence of the PAA (an absence caused single-handedly by the President) -- i.e., "we have lost intelligence information this past week," etc. But there was one passage in the letter which seems significant and worth highlighting.

In the letter from Chairman Reyes to which McConnell and Mukasey are responding, Reyes pointed out that under the still-existing FISA law, the Government is free to commence surveillance without a warrant where there is no time to obtain one. In response, McConnell and Mukasey wrote:

You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest.

Wow, what a blockbuster revelation. Apparently, as it turns out, in the United States it's "illegal" for the Government to eavesdrop on Americans without first complying with the requirements of FISA. Who would have known? It's a good thing we don't have a Government that would ever do that, or a Congress that would ever tolerate such "illegal" behavior. And it's so moving to hear the Bush administration earnestly explain that they are so hamstrung by FISA's requirements that we are all deeply vulnerable to the Terrorists, but they have no choice but to comply with its burdensome provisions -- because to do otherwise would be "illegal."

Morbid Frivolity?

Eliot Brown, "$5 B. Claim Filed Against Jay-Z, Bruce Ratner"

Brooklyn activist Clive Campbell is seeking $5 billion from rapper Jay-Z, developer Bruce Ratner and Barclays bank, filing a "claim of lien" in property records that seeks the money for slavery reparations.

Mr. Ratner, Jay-Z, and Barclays are all linked through the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, for which Mr. Ratner plans to build a Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena for the Nets and more than 6,000 apartments. Jay-Z, a partial owner of the Nets, has been a major supporter of the project, appearing at press conferences to tout its merits. Barclays owns the naming rights to the arena, and has been accused of having links with the slave trade—an accusation the bank denies.

In the claim, Mr. Campbell said that Mr. Ratner and Jay-Z worked "in concert" with Barclays, and "profited from the African Slave Trade and continue to profit from these gains, through a conspiracy dating back hundreds of years and continue to date to oppress Black people, enslave them, unlawfully deport them to all corners of the Earth."

The Spirit of '76?

Steve Kornacki, "Turning Obama Into Jimmy Carter

Late in the summer of 1976, President Gerald Ford and his inner circle huddled in Vail, Colorado, facing the grimmest general election outlook for a Republican since the L.B.J. landslide of '64.

An unelected president, Ford had barely secured the Republican nomination against a fierce challenge from Ronald Reagan, leaving the party’s conservative base dispirited and even more distrustful of Ford than they already had been. And the stench of Watergate—and Ford’s politically damaging pardon of Richard Nixon—stubbornly hung in the air. After eight years of Republican rule, an amorphous but potent yearning for change had taken hold.

At the Vail strategy session, the Ford team zeroed in on the chief vulnerabilities of their Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter: His lack of experience, his lack of accomplishments and his lack of specificity on the issues. These had to be exploited mercilessly.

And they were. Ten weeks later, Ford came within an eyelash of a political miracle. After trailing by 33 points around Labor Day, he was edged out by a handful of electoral votes—and just two points in the popular vote. If the campaign had lasted even a week longer, many believe, Ford would have won.

Thirty-two years later, the G.O.P.'s chances of retaining the White House for a third straight term may hinge on recycling that old Ford recipe.

Fighting Schizophrenia

Berenson, Alex. "Daring to Think Differently About Schizophrenia"

The trial results were a major breakthrough in neuroscience, says Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. For 50 years, all medicines for the disease had worked the same way — until Dr. Schoepp and other scientists took a different path.

"This drug really looks like it's quite a different animal," Dr. Insel says. "This is actually pretty innovative."

Dr. Schoepp and other scientists had focused their attention on the way that glutamate, a powerful neurotransmitter, tied together the brain's most complex circuits. Every other schizophrenia drug now on the market aims at a different neurotransmitter, dopamine ....

.... Glutamate is a pivotal transmitter in the brain, the crucial link in circuits involved in memory, learning and perception. Too much glutamate leads to seizures and the death of brain cells. Excessive glutamate release is also one of the main reasons that people have brain damage after strokes. Too little glutamate can cause psychosis, coma and death.

"The main thoroughfare of communication in the brain is glutamate," says Dr. John Krystal, a psychiatry professor at Yale and a research scientist with the VA Connecticut Health Care System ....

.... Schizophrenia affects about 2.5 million Americans, about 1 percent of the adult population, and it usually develops in the late teens or early to mid-20s. It is believed to result from a mix of causes, including genetic and environmental triggers that cause the brain to develop abnormally.

The first schizophrenia medicines were developed accidentally about a half-century ago, when Henri Laborit, a French military surgeon, noticed that an antinausea drug called chlorpromazine helped to control hallucinations in psychotic patients. Chlorpromazine, sold under the brand name Thorazine, blocks the brain's dopamine receptors. That led the way in the 1960s for drug companies to introduce other medicines that worked the same way.

The medicines, called antipsychotics, gave many patients relief from the worst of their hallucinations and delusions. But they also can cause shaking, stiffness and facial tics, and did not help the cognitive problems or the so-called negative symptoms like social withdrawal associated with schizophrenia.

In the 1980s, drug companies looked for new ways to treat the disease with fewer side effects. By the mid-1990s, they had introduced several new schizophrenia medicines, including Zyprexa, from Lilly, and Risperdal, from Johnson & Johnson. At the time, the new medicines were hailed as a major advance — and the companies marketed them that way to doctors and patients.

In fact, the new medicines, called second-generation antipsychotics, had much in common with the older drugs. Both worked mainly by blocking dopamine and had little effect on negative or cognitive symptoms. The newer medicines caused fewer movement disorders, but had side effects of their own, including huge weight gain for many patients. Many doctors now complain that the companies oversold the second-generation compounds and that new treatments are badly needed.

"People say that there are drugs to treat schizophrenia," says Dr. Carol A. Tamminga, professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern, in Dallas. "In fact, the treatment for schizophrenia is at best partial and inadequate. You have a cadre of cognitively impaired people who can't fit in."