Time For Obama Voters To Pull The Plug

A Rahm Too Far : Time For Obama Voters To Pull The Plug

A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece called Badfellas about how Rahm Emanuel and President Obama had killed health care reform. At that time, I thought we’d end up with a trigger. Oh, I recall those optimistic days fondly.

As cynical and realistic as I was, I never thought it would get down to this…

The White House wants Reid to hand Joe Lieberman the farm.An aide briefed on discussions with the White House says that there would be no story if Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel hadn’t interceded. The aide confirmed an account, reported by Huffington Post, that Emanuel visited Reid personally, telling him to cut a deal with Lieberman.

Then the aide provided more detail.

Emanuel didn’t just leave it to Reid to find a solution. Emanuel specifically suggested Reid give Lieberman the concessions he seeks on issues like the Medicare buy-in and triggers

To use a trendy Tiger Woods analogy, this is the 101th mistress — the time to stop defending and start packing.

Whatever happens with this bill, one thing is now crystal clear – the White House is calling the shots and they want a bill that’s a giveaway to the insurance industry with no real protections, public option, or Medicare rollback. There is NO standard here except passing a bill.

Oh. And the White House is willing to lie about it, too.

Enough. It is now time for anyone who supported Barack Obama in 2008 to let the President know loud and clear that this is not what we voted for it. This isn’t a question of liberals whining. This isn’t about piling on the President.

We didn’t elect Barack Obama to pass a health reform bill that Joe Lieberman and his insurance cronies approve of.

It’s time for Obama voters to be outraged. Many of us voted for Obama because we felt he was different — after all, he told us he was different. He said he wasn’t about politics as usual. Okay, now we know that’s not true. Let’s be adults and act like it.

Barack Obama is just another politician; willing to lie on the campaign trail to get elected. Then treat him like any other politician. He understands votes so let him know he won’t be getting yours, especially in the primary. That’s the language that people like Rahm Emanuel understand.

And don’t let anyone scare you with Sarah Palin or a GOP White House in 2012. Dropping support for a series of horrible decisions from Larry Summers to Afghanistan to this health reform bailout means you want a better Democratic candidate to emerge. The White House wants you scared; cowed into thinking that not going along with their bad decisions means eight years of some Republican you hate.

It’s a scare tactic. Don’t fall for it.

Instead, if you voted for Barack Obama realize that you voted for an idea, not just a man. Just because this man hasn’t delivered on those ideas doesn’t mean it’s time to give up on principles like changing Washington to get rid of the power of the lobbyists who run things. Or real health care reform for that matter.

It’s time to do what Barack Obama asked us to do – hold him accountable. This is totally unacceptable, Mr. President. Start acting like the man we elected or you have three years left in the job.

Secret Conflict Between London Zionists and Israel?

James Hider in Jerusalem
Tzipi Livni

(Ariel Schalit/AP)

The warrant was rescinded when it became clear that Ms Livni was not on British soil

Israel’s Government issued an angry warning today that its ties with Britain were in jeopardy over a UK arrest warrant briefly issued against the Jewish state’s Opposition leader and former Foreign Minister.

It has emerged that a London court issued a warrant at the weekend, for alleged war crimes committed in last winter’s Gaza offensive, and then rescinded it when it became clear that Tzipi Livni was not on British soil.

On the orders of the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahi, the Israeli foreign ministry today summoned the British ambassador to receive a formal dressing down over the affront.

“We reject the court’s cynical legal move against Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni, which was initiated by radical elements,” the Ministry said in a statement.

“Israel calls on the British government to fulfill, once and for all, its promises and prevent an abuse of the British legal system against Israel and its citizens by anti-Israel elements.”

The statement warned that relations between Israel and Britain would be damaged unless the UK took quick action to put things right.

“If Israeli leaders cannot visit Britain in a proper and honorable manner, this will naturally serve as a real obstacle to Britain’s desire to take an active part in the peace process in the Middle East,” it said.

The Israeli Ambassador to London, Ron Prossor, also criticised the arrest warrant. “The current situation has become intolerable, it is time that it change,” he said. “I am convinced that the British government will understand that it is time to react and not content itself with declarations.”

Ms Livni’s office had insisted that the reason she cancelled a scheduled visit to a Jewish group in the United Kingdom was because of a scheduling clash. Speaking at a security conference today she avoided mentioning the warrant, but said that she was proud of her role in Operation Cast Lead, a devastating Israeli offensive against Gaza militants firing rockets into Israel. Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died during the three-week war.

An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council have accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and called for both sides to investigate the allegations or be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Israel vehemently rejected the inquiry and accused the UN committee of bias.

The Foreign Office said today that it was urgently assessing the implications of the warrant. “The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East, and to be a strategic partner of Israel,” a spokeswoman said. “To do this, Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government. We are looking urgently at the implications of this case.”

The warrant was just the latest attempt by pro-Palestinian groups to use British courts to seek the arrest of Israeli leaders whom they accuse of war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In October, Moshe Yaalon, the deputy Prime Minister, was forced to cancel a fundraising trip to London after lawyers warned he could be arrested in connection with a deadly attack he authorised as chief of staff. It killed a wanted Hamas militant chief, his wife and nine children in the Gaza Strip in 2002.

That incident came shortly after activists tried and failed to obtain a British warrant against Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister during the Gaza war who has retained his post under new the right-wing government.

And in 2005, retired general Doron Almog had to stay on a plane at Heathrow to avoid arrest after he learned a warrant had been issued against him for the demolition of scores of Palestinian homes by his Israeli forces on the Gaza border.

British Government Dispensing Trojan Viruses With Info

[For all you brave souls who dare to look into the British Govt’s

“Preventing Violent Extremism” Program might receive the same

nasty surprise that was bestowed upon me.  If you go to the

following website run by the UK govt and click on a PDF

explaining program you will find a nasty little Trojan Virus called

TSPY_KATES.SMOD. So far, I have been unable to remove the

damned thing. Anybody out there got any suggestions?

Communities and Local Government’s Site

The deadly URL is below.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/430934.pdf

<!–

//–>

<!–

//–>

Technical Details

<!–

–>

QUICK LINKS    

Initial samples received on:  Nov 19, 2009

File type: DLL

File size: 26,624 Bytes


Details:

Arrival Details

This spyware may be dropped by other malware.

It may arrive bundled with malware packages as a malware component.

It may be downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web site(s).

It may also arrive as a file that exports functions used by other malware.

Autostart Techniques

This spyware modifies the following registry entry to enable its automatic execution at every system startup:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
AppInit_DLLs = “winmm.dll”

(Note: The default value data for the said registry entry is blank.)

Other System Modifications

This spyware creates the following registry key(s)/entry(ies):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Windows NT\CurrentVersion\drivers32
midi9 = “{malware path and file name} 0yAAAAAAAA”

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
LoadAppInit_DLLs = “1”

Other Details

This spyware may be used by other malware in performing their malicious routines.

It requires other components in order to run properly.
Analysis by: Marfel Tiamzon

For additional information about this threat, see:
Overview
Solution
<!–<a href="ve_graywareDetails.asp?GNAME=TSPY%5FKATES%2ESMODStatistics//–>

Israel confirms U.K. arrest warrant against Livni

Israel confirms U.K. arrest warrant against Livni

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service

Senior officials in Israel confirmed reports on Monday that a British court issued an arrest warrant against opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni for her role in orchestrating Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago.

The request for the warrant was submitted by a pro-Palestinian organization.

Livni served as foreign minister alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak during the Israel Defense Forces offensive in Gaza. The three figures comprised the “troika” of top decision-makers who charted the course of the war.

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Earlier Monday, Arab-language media reported that Livni canceled her participation in a Jewish function in London after a warrant for her arrest was issued over part in last winter’s Israel’s Gaza offensive.

Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, conferred with officials in the British Ministry of Justice who told him that they were unaware of any criminal complaint or arrest warrant against the former foreign minister.

Yet, further inquiries by Israeli officials revealed that a warrant had indeed been issued.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi claimed on Monday that Scotland Yard advised the organizers of the Jewish National Fund conference in northwest London that the former foreign minister had canceled her scheduled address to the assembly over threats of a possible lawsuit by pro-Palestinian groups.

The Al-Quds Al-Arabi report also said that a group of about 100 anti-Israel protesters rallied outside the Hendon Hall Hotel on Sunday, just as delegates arrived at the JNF meet.

Livni’s office said in a statement following the report that her appearance at the London event was canceled two weeks ago due to a scheduling conflict.

Livni’s office also said that the opposition leader was proud of all the decisions she made as foreign minister during the Gaza war, an operation which she said achieved its goal of bring security to Israel.

A United Kingdom court two months ago deferred until further notice an appeal by local pro-Palestinian groups to issue an arrest warrant against Barak, who was visiting the country at the time.

A similar appeal was issued in 2004 against Israel’s then defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. At the time, Mofaz was granted immunity from international arrest and trial – a precedent set by the British court, which until then had given such protection only to foreign ministers or premiers

AMERICA: TARNISHED GLORY: THE MYTH OF “SPECIAL OPERATIONS”

Gordon Duff

WHEN DID “SPECIAL OPS” BECOME KIDNAPPING, DRUG DEALING, TORTURE POLITICAL DIRTY TRICKS

What does  “Special Ops’ mean?  Why would a special operations command, JSOC, be answerable to our Vice President, a mentally unstable draft dodging hack from the oil industry?  Why would the CIA outsource its most secret projects to Blackwater, a GOP mercenary group with the worst reputation of any firm the US has ever done business with?
Years of kidnapping and torturing people based on mistaken identity, intelligence that is ALWAYS WRONG, chasing dead men, invading wrong countries and picking out allies that are gangsters, con men and drug dealers isn’t an accident, its policy.  Now we are told Blackwater, the CIA, MI-6, the Mossad and RAW work together, not only against Iran but in friendly nations also, and the stories we are told is that some of what is done is contracting for commercial clients and foreign governments and not anything involving fighting terrorism or protecting anyone, in fact, much the opposite.
Blackwater has become the punching bag for the press of late.  With accusations of close ties to the CIA and charges of murder and gangsterism floating around after years of more than empty accusations of massive incompetence, their name is abused most.
Are they the only ones?  When “private contractors” are involved in terrorism against US allies, the real scandal few are talking about in the US, and Blackwater’s name is brought up, is it really them or someone else?  There are dozens of companies involved, not just “Blackwater.”
We now know that Blackwater alone has an endless web of secret fronts making it impossible to trace what is done and for whom.  Other companies are doing the same, all unaccountable to the United States or her allies.
Many of these companies exist as offshore entities and are, thus, free to work for the highest bidder, be it Iran, Libya, Georgia, the Sudan or even Israel or India.
The charges against private contractors and “special ops” and intelligence organizations are these:
  • Planning and executing terrorist acts inside Pakistan killing hundreds of civilians and targeting military and intelligence facilities
  • Organizing revolutionary groups inside Baluchistan which are now fighting along side the Taliban along with organizing attacks inside Iran.
  • Transporting narcotics and arranging international banking for warlords involved in opium Using rendition and torture to create falsified intelligence used to justify unnecessary military operations
  • Manipulating and creating terrorist threats to influence American elections Private contractors are said to provide security and training for Iran and other countries unfriendly to the United States Creating a trade in phony terrorist suspects, innocent people who are bought and sold into years of torture, imprisonment and even murdered for profit.
  • Facilitating terrorist acts in Western Europe and elsewhere through withholding vital intelligence or worse, much worse, in order to maintain an international climate of fear.
  • Facilitating a world market in selling American secrets around the world which involved well known “think tanks” working for the US government, members of Congress and key Whitehouse and State Department officials.
  • Maintaining high level contacts with terrorist leaders for reasons we can only guess.
The last charge and the most serious charge is also the most substantiated.  Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who was held under gag order by the Bush administration for 6 years has testified to the fact that the CIA under Bush was regularly communicating with Osama bin Laden until immediately before 9/11.  Her sworn testimony is available and a recap of her charges is available thru the American Conservative.
Evidence, to some degree, exists to support all of these charges but, although some investigations are going forward, any attempt to begin a comprehensive investigation of this massive national security threat is being blocked at every level.
What are the rationales for this pattern of abuse of power?  How could this be accomplished?  Let’s look at a few of the factors involved:
  • Israel is the key to many issues, but not in the sense of Israeli security.  For instance, Israel is the largest arms supplier to India and many other countries, often reselling extremely sensitive US missile technology.  Israeli is also involved financially in oil and gas projects in many of the destabilized areas.
  • Global security experts have long suspected that the “War on Terror” was little more than an excuse to keep the arms business going after the fall of Communism.  Revelations that most threats, from Iraq to “worldwide terror networks” have been overblown are now commonly accepted.
  • Wide mistrust of America’s democratic system of government and legal protections by powerful groups, some of whom profited massively from rigged gasoline prices, financial deregulation and “no bid” war contracts, led to a marriage of special interest and politics in America that undermined Constitutional liberties and controls on corruption to create a much less free but seemingly “more efficient” corporate state.
  • The world economy entered a period when the US could be realigned from its position of “economic powerhouse” to “milk cow.”  American could be “looted”, financial institutions made insolvent, real estate markets collapsed while America’s military forces could be used to secure global markets for multinational corporations under the guise of “spreading Christian values” or “ending tyranny.”
  • The “information revolution” would make this, not only possible but expedient thru centralized control of media, TV and Radio and the ability to use the internet to systematically flood millions of households with continual irrational scares about poisoned vaccines, socialist conspiracies, gun seizures and mysterious plots.  Where media manipulation failed, hacking electronic voting machines would leave a semblence of democratic freedoms while eliminating all real public participation in government.
  • One fact regarding 9/11 has always been known, one fact only:  Osama bin Laden, now known to have been working for the CIA on 9/11,  was not involved.  Since the debunking of the 9/11 Commission Report, much done by those who wrote it themselves, we are left with no proven facts involving this tragedy.
Some glimpses into these patterns of misconduct and conspiracy came up during the Edmonds interview with former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi, published in the American Conservative:
“GIRALDI: You also have information on al-Qaeda, specifically al-Qaeda in Central Asia and Bosnia. You were privy to conversations that suggested the CIA was supporting al-Qaeda in central Asia and the Balkans, training people to get money, get weapons, and this contact continued until 9/11…
EDMONDS: I don’t know if it was CIA. There were certain forces in the U.S. government who worked with the Turkish paramilitary groups, including Abdullah Çatli’s group, Fethullah Gülen.
GIRALDI: Well, that could be either Joint Special Operations Command or CIA.
EDMONDS: Maybe in a lot of cases when they said State Department, they meant CIA?
GIRALDI: When they said State Department, they probably meant CIA.
EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.
There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.
GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?
EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.
GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated.”
The last sentence is the most telling.  “None of this has been investigated.”  When discussing the Joint Special Operations Command, they are referring to General McChrystal and Vice President Cheney.  Drugs on NATO planes?  Flying terrorist leaders around the world?
Is this what we mean by “special operations.”  How does flying terrorists around and delivering narcotics protect us?  How many whistleblowers have been silenced?  These are the charges made against Blackwater, as printed in The Nation:
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia.
The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
Since these charges were made public, we have learned that this same company had been involved, on a massive scale, in US operations around the world.  We learned this week, from Brigadier General Asif Haroon Raja in Opinion Maker that Blackwater is accused of terrorist attacks against Pakistan:
“Having fully committed the army in fighting a futile US war on terror, RAW sponsored terrorists duly aided by Blackwater elements are playing havoc into major cities of Pakistan through almost daily bomb blasts and suicide attacks.”
Can America afford to continue with our current special operations command, be it CIA or JSOC or whatever the flavor of the day, if even a single of the seemingly endless charges made are true?
Is blocking investigations meant to protect America or to facilitate our own “evil doers?”

Growing bureaucracy may squelch liberty

Growing bureaucracy may squelch liberty

By: Clyde Nelson, Duluth News Tribune

A new aristocracy is emerging with a privileged class of elected officials and a government bureaucracy that firmly seems to believe it can repeal the natural laws of economics. Since Emperor Nero debased the coin until it was worthless and the Roman Empire fell, political leaders have attempted such repeals. Germany tried in 1919, and the country collapsed.

We could be next.

Why have this elite brigade of elected officials and their army of bureaucrats continued to amass more and more control of our society — printing and spending money we don’t have while we the electorate sit on our hands hoping some of the crumbs will fall into our laps?

The elite classes of bureaucrats are all practicing Parkinson’s Law, which says, “Work expands to fill

available time.” We now have agency piled upon agency with time on their hands looking for new programs or problems to be fixed. The result is a government we can no longer afford to support.

I heard Paul Harvey say more than 30 years ago: “Soon there will be more people riding in the wagon than there are pulling the wagon.” The rising debt tells me we have now reached that tipping point and yet there is a long line of people waiting to climb into the wagon of prosperity delivered by our government.

The princes and princesses of government service have long lost the notion of the civil servant who serves the American citizen. They now seem to believe they are the ones to be served. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, the average wages and benefits for public employees now exceed the private sector. Do they regard the private-citizen class as the peasant class, ignorant and needing to be told what is best for them?

Are we now entering a new era of servitude, serving the privileged class as in the days of old?

And just who are the modern-day peasants who now must serve the ruling class? They are anybody who works in the private sector, including the lowest-paid employee in the factory or mine and the president or owner of that factory or mine. They are the ones who pay all the taxes that keep the privileged class in power. We must understand that in the end there is only one taxpayer — the private-sector worker who produces the wealth from the mines and fields of our nation; all others depend on that taxpayer.

As the bureaucracy continues to grow, it must continually be fed by a growing need for tax money extracted from the tax-paying, private-sector class. Sooner or later this monster will totally consume our liberty, and we will be back where we started about 233 years ago under the boot of a king, emperor or dictator. The government has become the beast that continues to grow and needs to be fed as the man-eating plant in the “Little House of Horrors,” who kept saying, “Feed me, feed me,” until the servant was devoured.

If we continue to ask more and more from our government, the government will demand from us more than what we have. The circle of bondage to liberty to abundance to complaisance back to bondage will be complete. We can hope to break this chain of bureaucracy bondage and the career politicians who have been in office forever — or we will truly become the peasants in this new kingdom.

No matter how you look at it, or what your political loyalties are, this madness must come to an end — or we, too, will be devoured.

Clyde Nelson of Duluth is president of the grass-roots Citizens Research Council.

Non-Invasive Lobotomy?

A radical treatment for Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients

Could Gamma Knife, a non-invasive brain surgery using radiation help OCD sufferers who can’t be helped by more established treatments?

A patient prepares for Gamma Knife surgery

A patient prepares for Gamma Knife surgery Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

One of our first patients, just 17 years old, was brought to us in a wheelchair,” says Professor Christer Lindquist, a pioneer in the use of a brain surgery technique for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), known as Gamma Knife. “This boy would set himself maths problems, which he had to solve before he could eat. His OCD had become so severe, and the maths problems he set himself so complex, that he couldn’t solve them any more, so he couldn’t eat.”

At Butler hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, Lindquist and colleagues put the boy in an MRI-like machine and passed beams of gamma radiation through his brain. These beams converged on a pinpoint-accurate spot where they created a lesion that damaged a tiny area of tissue, blocking the pathway that caused the OCD symptoms.

This is modern psychosurgery, a hi-tech, experimental, descendant of the now infamous frontal lobotomy. It could offer hope to millions suffering from OCD, and other disorders such as severe depression.

Over the past 10 years, Gamma Knife has become a highly effective treatment for brain tumours and there are now several Gamma Knife centres in the UK. Nick Plowman, consultant clinical oncologist at St Bartholomew’s hospital, London, says that before Gamma Knife, an acoustic neuroma– a benign brain tumour – would require a major operation. “Now you can do it in a fraction of the time, without opening the head, whilst the patient listens to music.” Successful for nine out of 10 patients with this type of brain tumour, the radiation stops the tumour cells from reproducing, and in time they’ll die.

The surgery is also now widely used to treat certain brain conditions, such as a rare form of epilepsy and a condition called trigeminal neuralgia, where the patient experiences shooting pains in the face. Still, it could be a while before OCD sufferers will be offered Gamma Knife surgery in the UK. For this and other psychological problems, such as depression, Gamma Knife is still considered by many to be highly controversial.

OCD affects around 2-3% of the UK population, and the usual treatments are medication or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). But these don’t work for everyone. Joel Rose, director of the UK charity OCD Action, is not surprised that some are prepared to try experimental brain surgery. “People become paralysed,” he says. “They’re in a despairing state and they’ll try anything to get out of it.”

However, many surgeons believe that we don’t know enough about the brain circuits to tamper with them. “When it comes to treating OCD and other psychological disorders, Gamma Knife is totally unproven,” says Plowman. It is certainly in its infancy. Lindquist carried out the first Gamma Knife treatments for OCD at Butler/Rhode Island in 1992. Since then, 56 people have had the procedure.

About 60% of the patients at Rhode Island were much improved, but many were left with residual symptoms. “This might all sound lame,” says Lindquist, “But you have to bear in mind that these people are suffering severely. They’ve been treated for years with the most advanced drugs and CBT.”

It can take up to a year to see any improvement, and “even if neurosurgical intervention is successful,” says Richard Marsland, a psychologist at Butler who helps screen the patients, “they have to be included in an aftercare programme. Most patients acquired their OCD at an early age, and missed at least part of their normal development . . . they have to catch up.”

Gerry Radano, a former flight attendant from New York State, is one of the most vocal supporters of Gamma Knife for OCD. She was in three psychiatric hospitals and tried every medication available before having the surgery. “Gamma Knife is the best thing that ever happened to my OCD life,” she writes on her website.

But there are scare stories. One Ohio hospital stopped performing the procedure after a law suit in 2002, when a patient was left partially paralysed. “This should never happen,” says Lindquist. In fact, he says “the main risks for the surgery are temporary lethargy or loss of initiative if too high a dose is given, which happens in around 10% of cases”.

The technique certainly could not be further from the brutal lobotomies made famous by Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. While the frontal lobotomy essentially destroys part of the brain, Gamma Knife is highly accurate and non-invasive. It is usually done as an out-patient procedure. Some might experience a mild headache afterwards, but most report no physical problems at all.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did psychosurgery no favours,” says Lindquist. “The treatment of psychiatric disorders is still surrounded by an aura of mysticism. We think about the psyche as something magical, and aren’t willing to accept that a psychological disease could be a transmitter problem, just like Parkinson’s disease.” However, for OCD he admits, “it’s still controversial. We have to be extremely careful that patients have exhausted all other avenues.” As for the 17-year-old boy Lindquist operated on years ago? He is now a doctor himself.

GHQ, CIA threat to democracy, SC told

[Government lawyer claims that altering NRO will bring-down the wrath of foreign powers, namely–you-know-who (CIA). Having a government lawyer state in court that Army GHQ would join the CIA as it shut-down Pakistan’s democracy is a scary admission from someone who should know.   I guess the thing for Chief Justice Chaudhry to do would be to persevere and in his efforts to free Pakistan from the corruption that is eating it alive, and just see who tries to get in his way.  Long live Pakistan!]

GHQ, CIA threat to democracy, SC told

By Masood Rehman

ISLAMABAD: An attorney for the federal government – Barrister Kamal Azfar – on Monday claimed before a 17-member larger bench of the Supreme Court that the US CIA and General Headquarters pose a threat to the government.

The bench – headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry – directed the federal government to file a written statement on the concern expressed by the lawyer.

When the hearing into petitions against the legality of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) resumed on Monday, the court summoned the government’s attorney for a briefing on his statement filed on Thursday – which said the democratic set up in the country was in danger because of the impending decision on challenges to the NRO.

Derail system: Asked who had instructed him to file the statement suggesting that the court should not derail the democratic system while deciding the NRO cases, Azfar said he had filed the statement on behalf of the Law Ministry. He then claimed that the CIA and General Headquarters also posed a threat to the democratic system. Azfar said there were “extra-constitutional forces within and outside the country” that could derail the democratic set up.

Asked who had instructed him to express such a concern, he said, “I am making these statements in my personal capacity.”

The court then asked him to file the statement in writing on the Law Ministry’s affidavit.

The chief justice said the law secretary would be summoned for failing to brief the court on necessary details of the case. He said if the court’s decision was feared to trigger a November 3, 2007-like situation, the federation should inform the SC in advance to allow a stay order to be issued.

The chief justice questioned what made Azfar feel democracy would be threatened by the court decision, and said “such allegations will not be tolerated”. He said the court’s decision would not lead to destabilisation.

The court also accepted a petition by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif seeking the restoration of his petition against the NRO, which was earlier dismissed on account of non-prosecution.

The court later adjourned the hearing for today (Tuesday)