A list of the guests on this weekend’s This is Hell follows the articles.

Charity Issues Urgent Warning to All Travelers to UAE after Briton Is Imprisoned for 4 Years for 0.003g cannabis caught in the tread of his shoe “The legal charity which assists those facing trial abroad has issued an urgent warning to all travelers to or through Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) generally to ensure they are completely free of any substances prohibited by that country. The warning comes after Fair Trials International learnt this week that one of its clients, 43-year-old Middlesex man Keith Andrew Brown, has been sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment after 0.003g of cannabis was found in the tread of his shoe by customs officials in Dubai during transit from Ethiopia to London last September. This amount would not be visible to the naked eye, and weighs less than a single grain of sugar. … Moreover, the list of banned substances in UAE includes many medications available over-the-counter in other countries, such as codeine – a common ingredient in pain relief and cold-and-flu medication, as well as poppy seeds – a common baking ingredient. ’What many travelers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person. We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for possession’ of 3 poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow.” Fair Trials International (2/9/08)

Latest Anti-Pot Quack Science: ‘Marijuana Makes Your Teeth Fall Out’ “Recent weeks have seen a rash of new studies of marijuana hitting the mass media, generating scary headlines like ‘Smoking Pot Rots Your Gums,’ ‘Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigarettes’ and ‘Pot Withdrawal Similar to Quitting Cigarettes’. Most of this coverage can be boiled down to a fairly simple equation. Flawed science + uncritical reporting = misinformation.” AlterNet (2/9/08)

2008’s Ten Worst Places to Be Black Past This is Hell guest Bruce Dixon writes “... if you want to know where black families fare the worst, where the lowest wages and life expectancy are, where to find the highest unemployment and the greatest number of single-parent households among African-Americans, you don’t need an online survey. You certainly don’t count the black businesses or the black elected officials. You count the black prisoners and the former prisoners, and the ruined communities they come from and are discharged into.” Black Agenda Report (2/13/08)

Is Ombudsman Already in Jeopardy? “Buried on page A17 of Wednesday’s Washington Post is a bit of a non-surprise: President George W. Bush has effectively killed a position monitoring compliance with government efforts to release documents. Late last year, Washington watchdogs won over a reluctant President Bush, who agreed to sign a law enforcing better compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. ‘But in his budget request this week,’ the Post’s Elizabeth Williamson writes, ‘Bush proposed shifting a newly created ombudsman’s position from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice. Because the ombudsman would be the chief monitor of compliance with the new law, that move is akin to killing the critical function, some members of Congress and watchdog groups say.’ ‘Justice represents the agencies when they’re sued over FOIA . . . It doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to be the mediator.’” Washington Post (2/5/08)

Great Lakes Danger Zones? “For more than seven months, the nations top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially alarming information as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen areas of concern including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants. In many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.” The Center for Public Integrity (2/7/08)

Private RU-486 Confounds Anti-Abortionists: Who Can We Harass Now? “Don’t look now, but the front lines of the abortion battle are shifting. Thanks to advances in medical technology and the introduction of the drug mifepristone (aka RU 486), which gives women the option of having safe, early abortions in private locations instead of public clinics, the raving crazies who tape pictures of bloody fetuses to their bodies, stalk Planned Parenthood and howl ‘murder’ at anyone who walks through its doors, may suddenly find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go – and no one to terrorize. Or, at the very least, if this mob of screeching would-be fetus rescuers wants to continue its brand of guerrilla warfare – a decades-long face-down with abortion providers who have accepted the possibility that they’d be blown up at their desks or taken out by a sniper while sitting at their dinner tables as just another part of the job – its self-righteous, lunatic members will have to work a lot harder.” AlterNet (2/14/08)

The War Against Tolerance “Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges—a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy—to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their rant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called ‘Why We Want to Kill You,’ promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how ‘Muslim terrorists’ invaded America 30 years ago and how ‘perseverance, recruitment and hate’ have fueled attacks by Muslims. These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears.” Truthdig (2/11/08)

Gitmo’s Pop-Culture Moment Audio and transcript. “Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg observes that Guantánamo has become a recurrent pop-cultural trope throughout the world – in memoirs and novels, visual arts and theater, and even song. Rosenberg, who has visited the prison dozens of times, believes that Gitmo has long since left the island of Cuba and taken on a symbolic life of its own.” On the Media (2/8/08)

US Accused of Using ‘Kangaroo Court’ to Try Men Accused of Role in September 11 Attacks “The United States military announced yesterday that it was bringing death penalty charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other men suspected of orchestrating the September 11 attacks, and intended to try them under the Bush administration’s much-criticised military tribunal system, which is subject only to partial oversight by the civilian appeals system. The decision to use Mohammed and the others as guinea-pigs in a constitutionally dubious legal proceeding is likely to trigger a firestorm of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and spark a fractious domestic debate in an already highly charged presidential election year.” The Independent (2/12/08)

Britain kowtows to China as athletes are forced to sign no criticism contracts “British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from traveling to Beijing. The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.” Daily Mail (2/10/08)

Thailand: Police In The Dock For Resort To Torture “Thailand’s scandal-ridden police force, which has not even spared a four-year-old boy from torture, is taking flak from the country’s premier lawyer’s body. It follows revelations of brutal excesses by an elite police unit. The angry reaction from the Law Society of Thailand (LST) came in the wake of almost daily media reports since Feb. 26 about the ‘’inhuman and brutal’’ measures used by policemen attached to a Border Patrol Police (BPP) unit on innocent civilians arrested on alleged drug-trafficking offences. … The leading role played by (Captain) Nat (Chonnithiwanit) makes it increasingly difficult for the Thai police, which has launched its own inquiry, to dismiss the reports of kidnapping, extortion and torture as the work of a rogue unit. Till his arrest two weeks ago, the clean-shaven, open-faced officer was hailed as a star performer in enforcing the law, given his record of making over 200 narcotics-related arrests across the country over the past three years. Nat, in fact, had benefited from the impressive rewards the police give its officers in cracking down on drugs. Besides promotions within the force, police officers who make successful arrests can get over 35 percent of the value of the drugs impounded as cash reward.” Inter Press Service (2/11/08)

Asia’s Hidden Arms Race This week’s guest on This is Hell, John Feffer writes “Despite all this peace-talk, something else, quite momentous and hardly noticed, is underway in the region. The real money in Northeast Asia is going elsewhere. While in the news sunshine prevails, in the shadows an already massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six Party Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace. Every country in the region is now eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in new weapons systems and new offensive capabilities. The arms race in Northeast Asia undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing global military-industrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the world’s largest militaries — those of the United States, China, Russia, and Japan — confront each other. Together, the countries participating in the Six Party Talks account for approximately 65% of world military expenditures, with the United States responsible for roughly half the global total. Here is the real news that should hit the front pages of papers today: Wars grip Iraq, Afghanistan, and large swathes of Africa, but the heart of the global military-industrial complex lies in Northeast Asia.” TomDispatch (2/12/08)

Notes
This week on This is Hell, live on WNUR 89.5 FM, Saturday February 16, 9 am CMT. If you miss the show it will be available in the This is Hell Archives, Saturday afternoon.

• John Miller, Wheaton College professor of economics. He writes for Dollar and Sense. His latest article is Stormier Weather: The economic recovery that’s been officially underway since late 2001 is probably over—too bad many Americans never got to experience it.
• Alex de Waal, writer and researcher, a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, program director at Social Science Research Council in New York City, and co-director of Justice Africa in London. He was recently part of a debate on Darfur in Newsweek. His most recent writing includes, Making Sense of Chad.
• John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is author of the 2003 book “North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis” (Seven Stories). John will discuss his TomDisptach article, Asia’s Hidden Arms Race: Six Countries Talk Peace While Preparing for War.

This is Hell’s irregular correspondents will be:

• LaddieO, web and tech guru, reports from the hermetically sealed clean room at URL Labs
• Jeff Dorchen delivers a Moment of Truth
• Drew Youngren, New York high school teacher

Check out these excellent roundups; for the recent news from all points east, check out Isaac Oommen’s East is East, Nathan Coe’s brand new Labor News Roundup and for the latest in rebel uprisings, read Alfonzo Torrez’s The Rebel Communiqué.

If you knew… is posted as an article on Fridays. There is an archive of over 400 blogs that were posted over the last two years. Any comments, suggestions, critiques or leads to articles, are welcomed. ‘If You Knew…’ will soon be announcing some changes, in coordination with the This is Hell website. It does look like this is actually going to happen. Along with articles, Headlines from Hell now includes commentary from contributors to This is Hell, including yours truly.

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