Keep the Change
The New America
By Clinton Fein
January 14, 2002

Burn Your Burkas!
Words of Wisdom from a Burning Bush
By Clinton Fein
December 14, 2001

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Quibla Quibblers
Bombs Away
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The US Government has released photographs of the Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects held at its prison camp in Cuba which show them being subjected to sensory deprivation. The prisoners are shown kneeling down, wearing goggles, ear muffs, surgical masks and heavy gloves.
BBC, Prison camp pictures spark protests, Sunday, 20 January, 2002

Watching the pictures of al-Qaeda members shackled and masked reminded retired British army veteran Colonel Roy Giles of the sensory deprivation methods used by UK Commonwealth forces he served with in Malaya, Cyprus, and Aden during the 1950s and 1960s. Col Giles, a one-time military intelligence liaison officer who now lectures on counter-terrorism, remembers attending a course in sensory deprivation 40 years ago as part of his training for dealing with the enemy during the cold war. It involved using goggles and masks or hoods to deprive the prisoner of a sense of smell and sight. The subsequent feeling of disorientation would break down the prisoner's self-confidence and put the interrogator in an advantageous position for extracting information.
The Financial Times, Attack on Terrorism, Images of Guantanamo Bay evoke past conflicts, by Jimmy Burns, January 22 2002

Detainees are free to conduct religious observances. They have prayer mats and calls to prayers are broadcast over the Camp X-Ray PA system. They are given as much drinking water as they want, three meals a day and food that complies with their religious practice if they require it. During the visit, our officials received full co-operation from the camp's commander who said that the more lurid allegations about torture and sensory deprivation are false. The recent pictures of detainees featured in the media were taken on arrival where security needs are paramount. These are some of the most dangerous detainees in the world, who have variously demonstrated murderous and suicidal tendencies.
British Foreign Office Minister, Ben Bradshaw, Statement on the British nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay, January 21, 2002

The -- just for the sake of the listening world, Guantanamo Bay's climate is different than Afghanistan. To be in an eight-by-eight cell in beautiful, sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is not a -- inhumane treatment. And it has a roof. They have all of the things that I've described. And how each person is handled depends on where they go.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002

Moslems pray facing Mecca. To do this, they must know the direction of Mecca, which they call the Qibla. If they are in a mosque, this is no problem; if they are in some remote and trackless place, they need help.
Qibla Indicator, Iran, 1938-1939 -- The Bakken, A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, Minneapolis, MN

The controversy of Qibla from North America surfaces from time to time. One group of people favors the direction of South-East, and another group favors North-East. Now the question is whether South-East is correct or North-East is correct.
Qibla Direction, Moonsighting.com

Bush’s limited sense of the history goes beyond his use of the word “crusade,” which has a European connotation of chivalrous knights in shining armor driving the infidels out of the Holy Lands, but conjures up very different memories in the Islamic world, of a bloody Christian holy war against Arabs. In 1099, for instance, the Crusaders massacred many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Already, Osama bin Laden has seized on Bush’s gaffe to rally Islamic fundamentalists. A typed statement attributed to bin Laden called the coming war "the new Christian-Jewish crusade led by the big crusader Bush under the flag of the cross.
Robert Parry, Bush's 'Crusade', September 25, 2001