WASHINGTON — Secret documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison reveal new information about some of the men that the United States believes to be terrorists, according to reports about the files released by several American and European newspapers. The U.S. government criticized the publication as “unfortunate.”

The military detainee assessments were made public Sunday night by U.S. and European newspapers after the WikiLeaks website obtained the files. The records contain details of the more than 700 detainee interrogations and evidence the U.S. had collected against these suspected terrorists, according to the media outlets.

It’s not clear if the media outlets published the documents with the consent of WikiLeaks.

The files – known as Detainee Assessment Briefs or DABs – describe the intelligence value of the detainees and whether they would be a threat to the U.S. if released. To date, 604 detainees have been transferred out of Guantanamo while 172 remain locked up.

The disclosures are likely to provide human right activists with additional ammunition that some cases against inmates appear to be based on flawed evidence. However, the DABs show certain inmates were more dangerous than previously known to the public and could complicate efforts by the U.S. to transfer detainees out of the controversial prison that President Barack Obama has failed to close.

The dossiers provide new insights into some of the prison’s most notorious detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to The New York Times, Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, commanded a Maryland resident to kill Pakistan’s former present Pervez Musharraf.

Another high-value detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, bragged that he outranked Mohammed who was then considered the terrorist group’s No.3. Al-Nashiri faces charges before a military commission for his suspected role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. According to The Times, Al-Nashiri was also consumed with jihad and believed women were a distraction.

He was so “dedicated to jihad that he reportedly received injections to promote impotence and recommended the injections to others so more time could be spent on the jihad,” according to al-Nashiri’s file.

U.S. officials said the documents “may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee” and criticized the decision by media organizations to publish the “sensitive information.”

“It is unfortunate that several news organizations have made the decision to publish numerous documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks concerning the Guantanamo detention facility,” said Ambassador Daniel Fried, the Obama administration’s special envoy on detainee issues, and Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

NEW YORK-After NPR’s Michel Martin asked Malcom X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz about alleged homosexual encounters referred to in Manning Marables’ book, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” she walked off the show, due to the focus on the alleged encounters, rather than his life.

NPR reports:

Ms. SHABAZZ: Right. I think the things that I take issue with are the fact that he said my father engaged in a bisexual relationship, a homo – you know, he had a gay lover who was an elder white businessman, I think, in his late 50s when my father was in his teens. And, you know, my father was an open book. And we actually have four of the missing chapters from the autobiography. And, you know, he is very clear in his activities, which nothing included being gay.

And certainly he didn’t have anything against gay – he was for human rights, human justice, you know. So if he had a gay encounter, he likely would’ve talked about it. And what he did talk about was someone else’s encounter.

Ms. SHABAZZ: I cannot tell you, Michel, OK? Because right now I’m a little annoyed by this discussion because this is not what I agreed to. I can tell you that if they did not find out who killed my father, then most certainly this person in New Jersey, I can’t even think of his name right now, Mustafa Shabazz, if he’s one of the persons that pulled the trigger, then absolutely. I think he should be, you know, brought to justice.

MARTIN: We actually had planned to continue our conversation and to discuss other issues of interest with Ms. Shabazz about her life and current work, but she decided to end the interview. We confess that we are puzzled by that. We think we were clear that we wanted to speak about the book as well as about her life and current work. We would still like to have that conversation and we have extended another invitation by email

An Arizona sheriff says he has been flooded with calls and emails of support from local and federal agents who back his claims that the U.S. Border Patrol has effectively ordered them to stop apprehending illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

“Upper management has advised supervisors to have agents ‘turn back South’ (TBS) the illegal aliens (aka bodies) they detect attempting to unlawfully enter the country … at times you even hear supervisors order the agents over the radio to ‘TBS’ the aliens instead of catching them,” one San Diego border agent wrote in an email to Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.

“This only causes more problems as the aliens, as you know, don’t just go back to Mexico and give up. They keep trying, sometimes without 10 minutes in-between attempts, to cross illegally,” continued the email, which was among a number of communications to Dever reviewed by FoxNews.com. “This makes the job for agents more dangerous. Not only are the aliens more defiant, they also begin to feel like they can get away with breaking our federal laws.”

The email is one of more than 100 messages Dever said he received from active and retired Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officers from across the country. Many wrote of what they said was their own experience and first-hand knowledge of Border Patrol’s efforts to reduce apprehension numbers by making fewer arrests.

FoxNews.com first reported this month that Dever said several Border Patrol officials, including at least one senior supervisor, told him they had been directed to keep the number of border apprehensions down by chasing illegal immigrants back toward Mexico. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has recently cited a reduction in border apprehensions as evidence of an increasingly secure border.

Three days after FoxNews.com’s initial report, Border Patrol chief Michael Fisher sent a letter to Dever in which he denied the accusations and invited the sheriff on a ride-along with federal agents at border.

“That assertion is completely, 100 percent false,” Fisher wrote in the letter. “That it comes from a fellow law enforcement official makes it especially offensive.”

But accounts from law enforcement officials around the country continue to pour in supporting Dever and the conversations he says he had with Border Patrol officers, including at least one supervisor, about keeping arrest numbers down.

“This is nothing new, during my career with the border patrol, this was done regularly,” said another email to Dever reviewed by FoxNews.com. “By assigning agents to different tasks, locations, etc., the apprehensions can be increased or decreased dramatically,” wrote Dan McCaskill Jr., a retired Border Patrol agent who worked in the Anti-Smuggling Unit.

McCaskill went on to describe how, he said, apprehension numbers were regularly manipulated to achieve various budget, equipment or manpower goals.

In response to request for comment on the new allegations, Homeland Security offered the same statement from Jeffery Self, commander of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Joint Field Command, that was provided to FoxNews.com earlier this month:

“As the commander for border enforcement operations in Arizona, I can confirm that the claim that Border Patrol supervisors have been instructed to underreport or manipulate our statistics is unequivocally false. I took an oath that I take very seriously and I find it insulting that anyone, especially a fellow law enforcement officer, would imply that we would put the protection of the American public and security of our nation’s borders in danger just for a numbers game. Our mission does not waiver based on political climate and it never will. To suggest that we are ambiguous in enforcing our laws belittles the work of more than 6,000 CBP employees in Arizona who dedicate their lives to protect our borders every day.”

Local 2544, the Tucson branch of the National Border Patrol Council union, has also come out in support of Dever, and posted this message on their website after the FoxNews.com report.

“Sheriff Dever is right. We have seen so many slick shenanigans pulled in regards to ‘got-aways’ and entry numbers that at times it seems David Copperfield is running the Border Patrol. Creating the illusion that all is well and you can start having family picnics in the areas where we work has been going on far too long. Has there been improvement in some areas? Absolutely. Is the border anywhere near ‘under control’? Absolutely not. Do some in management play games with numbers and cater to the wishes of politicians like Janet Napolitano and David Aguilar? Resoundingly, yes. Time for the foolish political games to stop.”

The union posted another response on their website following Fox News’ publication of Fisher’s April 6 letter to Dever:

“Just remember, for years now we have been told from the highest ranking managers in our agency that ‘every apprehension is a FAILURE’ (Johnny Williams – former INS Western Region Director), and that we ‘are NOT immigration officers’ (current CBP Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar to Border Patrol agents when he was the Chief of the Border Patrol)…. We have been told that – Apprehensions = failure, we are not ‘immigration’ officers, we should not ‘lower’ ourselves to the status of an immigration officer, and our primary job is not apprehending illegal aliens. Couple all this with Secretary Napolitano’s recent public announcement about what she expects our apprehension numbers to be this fiscal year, and it’s not hard to figure this thing out.”

A second Arizona sheriff, Paul Babeu of Pinal County, also testified at a Senate Homeland Security Committee last week in support of Dever’s charges. Dever was slated to appear at the hearing, but said he could no longer attend when the date of his appearance was changed.

Asked specifically about Dever’s assertion that agents were told to turn back illegals to reduce apprehensions, Babeu told the committee he’d specifically asked his top lieutenant, Matt Thomas, about the claims.

“He said, ‘Sheriff, I have heard that myself directly from border agents in the Tucson sector,’” Babeu testitified.

Babeu told FoxNews.com he’s been told by Border Patrol officials that for every person apprehended at the border, an average of 2.7 succeed in crossing into the U.S. With those numbers, he said he was concerned paramilitary or terror cells equipped with more sophisticated support and training could easily get through.

“This is no longer just public security threat, this is national security threat,” he told FoxNews.com.

T.J. Bonner, retired president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in an interview with FoxNews.com that he’s familiar with “TBS-ing” and shares Babeu’s concerns about criminals and terrorists crossing the border.

“TBS has been going on for a number of years. You’ll never find orders in writing, and some agents have even been disciplined for TBS-ing people. That’s a practice that dates back to quite some time, to try and discourage is part of their ‘strategy of deterrence.’”

Bonner said Border Patrol agents are receiving “TBS” orders from someone higher up, but he isn’t sure who.

“Agents don’t just do this on their own. The orders must come from on high. They don’t just wake up one day and say I’m going to risk my job, my livelihood,” said Bonner, who retired last year after 32 years with Border Patrol. “I’m not sure if it’s Napolitano or folks in Customs and Border Protection, but somebody wants to silence critics in Arizona to claim success in Arizona.”

As for Dever, he says he’s just hoping that some good will come out of this.

“Frankly, I don’t want to create a firestorm,” he said. “I only want this problem solved.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/19/arizona-sheriff-cites-flood-border-agents-confirming-feds-apprehension-policy/?test=latestnews

CNN’s Nic Robertson and Anderson Cooper discuss Robertson’s sit-down interview with Eman al-Obeidy

Here is the link from Anderson Cooper

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/07/video-this-is-a-very-very-strong-lady/

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who says forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi raped her, is grateful for support she has received, said CNN’s Nic Robertson, who met briefly with her Wednesday.

“She is a very strong lady who told me to thank all (the) people who have stopped her case from disappearing,” Robertson said.

Al-Obeidy said she had a message for humanitarian organizations: They should come to Tripoli and “see how life is here,” he said.

She said she is still recovering physically from the alleged assault and displayed faded bruises and rope burn marks on her wrists, Robertson said. But, she told him, she is unable to leave Tripoli and be reunited with her family and faces abuse whenever she leaves her house, he said.

The Libyan government is insisting on a review of the interview by a government representative before transmission. The review was scheduled Wednesday night, but an apparently imminent airstrike postponed the review until Thursday morning.

Al-Obeidy reconnects with mother

Meanwhile, al-Obeidy’s mother said Wednesday that talking to her daughter by telephone Tuesday night was an emotional experience.

“Of course, I felt worse,” Aisha Ahmad said. “Because she was crying. I couldn’t understand a word because she was crying. She even made me cry.”

The two women spoke on Tuesday. Al-Obeidy told her mother that a court employee pulled a weapon on her when she went to a courthouse.

The 29-year-old law school graduate burst into a Tripoli hotel last month to tell her story to journalists. Authorities rushed her away from the hotel, but she is no longer in custody. Still, she told CNN’s “AC360″ Tuesday she fears for her safety in Tripoli, which she called a “large prison.” She said authorities had taken her passport and were not letting her cross into Tunisia.

Al-Obeidy: Tripoli is a prison

Al-Obeidy said she spent 72 hours under interrogation after being dragged away from the Tripoli hotel where she tried to tell journalists about her alleged abuse. She has said the public statements from a state TV anchor and government officials, who initially called her mentally ill, drunk and a prostitute, have ruined her reputation.

Ahmad, who lives in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, said her daughter told her in the call “she was trapped. She said, ‘They’re taking me back and forth, interrogating me, hitting me.’ She said, ‘They want to kill me. Help me, come and get me,’ she said. ‘Where are the human rights groups?’ ”

Asked how she is coping, Ahmad said, “Our hope in God is very strong.”

She told her daughter Tuesday that the world is praying for her and not to be afraid.

All eyes on Eman al-Obeidy

On whether she has a message for those who might be listening, Ahmad said, “I want [President] Obama and all the Western world to get involved and bring me back my daughter. Just bring her back to me. I would like to tell the mothers all over the world, and the Arab world, that if something happens to someone, they need to speak out. They just need to speak out.”

Al-Obeidy burst into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli on March 26 while international journalists staying there were having breakfast. She told reporters she had been taken from a checkpoint east of Tripoli, held against her will for two days and was beaten and raped by 15 men.

When CNN saw her in March, al-Obeidy’s legs and face were bruised and she had blood on her right inner thigh. Her visible injuries appeared to support her allegations.

Human Rights Watch, in a statement Wednesday, called for Libyan authorities to immediately allow al-Obeidy to leave Tripoli and receive medical care. Nadya Khalife, the Middle East women’s rights researcher for the organization, said authorities have further victimized al-Obeidy by refusing to allow her to leave Tripoli.

When rape is a tool of war

“It’s very difficult for women in Libyan society to report that they have been raped because of the shame and fear they feel, and it has been even more difficult for al-Obeidy,” Khalife said. “But she has courageously ignored all these barriers to tell her story to the world.”

CNN’s Reza Sayah contributed to this report

The 29-year-old Libyan woman made international headlines last weekend after she burst into a hotel housing the foreign press corps. Visibly bruised, she alleged that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by 15 members of strongman Muammar Gadhafi’s armed forces. Libyan security then whisked her away from the battery of cameras and tape recorders.

After the widely publicized incident, Libyan officials kept mum about al-Obeidi’s whereabouts, and the country’s state-run media carried out an aggressive smear campaign painting her as a prostitute and madwoman. Her family, however, said that she was a post-graduate law student studying in Tripoli.

But al-Obeidi emerged from seclusion Monday to offer more public testimony about her alleged gang-rape and captivity.

“I showed to the journalists my hands and legs. I was bound and tied up. I was beaten and tortured,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper through a translator in an interview that aired in part on his Monday prime time show, according to a transcript the network provided to The Cutline. “For two days they violated my freedom … I want to convey to the journalists that the brigades who are supposed to protect people, look what they did to me.”

In addition to the Cooper interview, Obeidi recounted the story of her initial detention to NPR and a Libyan opposition satellite channel. Her ordeal began, she said, when soldiers stopped her taxi at a checkpoint in Tripoli.

Once she was detained, she said, the assaults began. “They had my hands tied behind me,” she told Cooper, “and they had my legs tied, and they would hit my while I was tied, and bite me on my body, and they would pour alcohol in my eyes so that I would not be able to see, and they would sodomize me with their rifles, and they would not let us go to the bathroom. We were not allowed to eat or drink. This is because I resisted them and tried to stop them from raping me.”

During her second imprisonment–after she burst into the hotel lobby full of journalists–al-Obeidi said that she was pressured to recant the rape claims on Libyan state television. She refused, she said, “because the TV station does not tell the truth.”

Details of al-Obeidi’s release remain sketchy. Her present location is unconfirmed, but she reportedly made a second attempt to speak with journalists at the hotel this past weekend and was again rebuffed.

“There is no safe place for me in Tripoli,” she told Cooper. “All my phones are monitored. Even this phone I am speaking on right now is monitored and I am monitored. And yesterday, I was kidnapped by a car and they beat me in the street and then brought me here after they dragged me around. They told me whenever you leave the house we will do this to you, meaning that I was not allowed to leave the house or see the journalists. I had asked to see the journalists. They beat and hit me and sent me back. Tell all the human rights organizations to return me safely to my family.”

Also on Monday, a Libyan government spokesman told the Associated Press that al-Obeidi had made a deal with the country’s attorney general that prohibited her from speaking with reporters.

“She broke her agreement with the attorney general by trying to speak to the media and was taken away,” the spokesman told the newswire, which also spoke with a woman the government claimed was an attorney representing al-Obeidi in the rape case. “She doesn’t want to speak to journalists because she said she wants to get justice through the courts,” the woman told the AP. “But she is comfortable, living with her sister in Tripoli, and is in good spirits.”

Al-Obeidi has come forward with her story at a critical juncture in the efforts of Gadhafi’s regime to clamp down on the work of the foreign media. Journalists working out of Tripoli say they are contending with tightly monitored and almost surreal working conditions. Some even fear that their hotel-prepared food is being spiked with sedatives, according to NPR.

“That was why the outburst of Iman al-Obaidi … was so revelatory,” writes Liz Sly in The Washington Post. “In an instant, she crystallized the harsh realities of the Libya the government goes to such lengths to prevent journalists from seeing.”

It’s also possible that the widespread media exposure saved al-Obeidi’s life.

The New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick, who is on the ground in Tripoli, notes: “Thanks to the publicity in her first interviews … she may have gotten off easy. Others in her situation, human rights advocates say, are typically confined for years in so-called rehabilitation facilities, subjected to unscientific virginity tests, deprived of any entertainment or education except lessons in Islam, and subjected to solitary confinement or handcuffs for any sign of resistance to authority.”

As for al-Obeidi, she told Cooper she has constant nightmares of death and wishes to leave Tripoli, but is no longer afraid.

(Jerome Delay/AP)

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Arizona’s Gateway For Illegal Immigrants

States usually bear the brunt of the burden.

Arizona state treasurer Dean Martin says his state loses between $1.3 billion and $2.5 billion each year on illegal immigrants. In addition to the fiscal costs of incarcerating and educating illegal immigrants and their families, Arizona also faces a variety of other indirect costs, says Martin, who favors Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.

Arizona has higher car insurance rates, he says, because illegal immigrants who cross the border often steal cars that they use to move further into the country. Undocumented workers are also more likely to perpetrate hit-and-run accidents, he says, because they are afraid of being deported if they are caught. Not only does this add to car insurance rates, but it also stretches police resources, he says.

“Unfortunately we are the gateway for illegal immigration, and that puts a bigger strain on our economy than other states,” he says.

Illegal Aliens’ Economic Contributions Count Too

Analysts on the other side of the debate, however, disagree with the math behind those numbers.

Wendy Sefsaf, a spokeswoman for the Immigration Policy Center which favors a lenient immigration policy, says that conservative analysts overestimate the costs because undocumented workers don’t even qualify for unemployment or medical benefits.

At the same time, those whose jobs are paid legally – at least fifty percent, by some estimates – end up paying social security and other payroll taxes without ever collecting benefits. Since illegal immigrants are believed to constitute up to 5 percent of the U.S. economy, their tax contributions will mean a revenue windfall for legal residents.

Advocates of more lenient immigration policies also disagree with the purely fiscal approach. Simply weighing tax receipts against public spending doesn’t show the full picture, they say, since illegal immigrants also create tremendous economic value.

“Illegal immigrants are good for our economy,” says IPC’s Sefsaf. “They make our labor force and our economy bigger. Sure, you could kick them all out, but then you would have to shrink the economy.”

Sefsaf also doesn’t buy the traditional argument that illegal immigrants are stealing U.S. jobs: most legal residents work in middle-rung jobs and would not want to take low-paying jobs as fruit pickers or nannies.

After weighing the financial pros against the cons, she says the U.S. economy comes out slightly ahead due to the presence of illegal aliens.

The Cost of Illegals: A Moot Point?

Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, takes the debate one step further. He points out that most attempts to find a meaningful number are usually futile, since the data are so difficult to collect. And anyway, he says, what is the point?

“We don’t generally ask these questions about anybody else,” says Passel. He points out that using the “cost” argument, one could make a case against parents who generally benefit more from public schools than the taxes they pay. “It’s not a subject that there is a definitive answer to.”

read more on the link

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/illegal-immigrants-cost-us-100-billion-year-group/story?id=10699317&page=2

 With one in three women predicted to develop cancer in her lifetime, we’ve all felt the effect of women’s cancers.. I for one have, and hopefully never again…

So I have registered to be a part of the Revlon Run Walk, Yeah… This will be my 3rd year!!!

Here is my link.. And I will update this post later on in my day… (I’m at work !)

The Facts about Women’s Cancers.

It was estimated that in 2010 in the U.S. alone:

More than 273,000 new cases of women’s cancers would be diagnosed

Approximately 40,000 women would die from breast cancer

Breast cancer would account for 27% of all cancers diagnosed in women

Approximately 22,000 new cases of ovarian cancer would occur

About 15,000 women would die of ovarian cancer

http://do.eifoundation.org/site/TR/RevlonRunWalk/General?px=1054852&pg=personal&fr_id=1040