Saturday, February 15, 2003 :::
 

washingtonpost.com:

Anti-War Protesters Hold Global Rallies Saturday, February 15, 2003; 11:51 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - More than two million protesters joined forces around the globe on Saturday to deliver a blunt message to President Bush -- "Give peace a chance and do not rush into war against Iraq."

From Canberra to Sofia, from Cape Town to Karachi, they took to the streets to pillory Bush as a bloodthirsty warmonger.

In the biggest demonstrations of 'people power' since the Vietnam War, they poured scorn on Bush's hawkish stance.

"This war is solely about oil. George Bush has never given a damn about human rights," London mayor Ken Livingstone told reporters at a giant rally in London.

At least half a million people marched through the British capital in the biggest peace demonstration in British political history. Thousands protested in other British cities.

Europe's biggest rally appeared to be in Rome where, under a sea of rainbow peace banners, one million people marched through the streets of Rome. Graying pensioners to dreadlocked teenagers marched side-by-side in a carnival-like atmosphere.

In France, one of the staunchest opponents of war, one woman protesting in Paris said: "The Americans were stressed by September 11 and now they are going completely overboard."

At least 50,000 people crammed into the center of Paris where organizers believed the crowd would swell beyond 100,000.

France's opposition for now to war against Iraq to rid it of alleged weapons of mass destruction is supported in Europe by Berlin, where some 500,000 people attended a rally in the biggest protest in Germany since the end of World War II.

They waved banners reading "No Blood for Oil," "Make Love Not War," and "War? No Thanks!"

In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, one banner read: "I look at Bush but see Hitler."

The day began with a slew of demonstrations in Asia. In Japan, the only nation to have been attacked with nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, around 300 gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Tokyo chanting anti-war slogans.

"What the United States is doing now is wrong. We are on the brink of World War Three," said Japanese housewife Mariko Ayama.

Australians turned out in their thousands for the biggest protest since the anti-Vietnam War marches of 30 years ago.

South Koreans shouted: "Bush Terrorist," while Malaysian protesters depicted Bush with yellowing missiles for teeth.

CONTINENTS UNITE AGAINST WAR

"The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it," said Muslim teenager Bilqees Gamieldien in Cape Town.

Protesters were cheered on Friday when U.N chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council that he held out hope arms inspections in Iraq would work.

In the Arab world, tens of thousands of Syrians and Palestinian residents of Damascus took to the streets to voice their opposition to a U.S. war against fellow Arab Iraqis.

The crowds burned the U.S. and Israeli flags near the country's parliament and chanted slogans calling a U.S. military campaign against Baghdad a war for oil.

About 10,000 people waving Iraqi, French and German flags and Saddam Hussein pictures marched peacefully but noisily through the Lebanese capital, Beirut, toward the U.N. offices where security forces with riot gear and soldiers gathered.

In Turkey, demonstrators pleaded: "No to more blood and chaos in our region" and "No more American imperialism."

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz held his own one-man protest in the Italian city of Assissi, praying silently before the tomb of St. Francis, the patron of peace.

"The people of Iraq want peace and millions of people around the world are demonstrating for peace, so let us all work for peace and resist the war," he said in front of one of the world's most famous religious shrines.

The global rallies gave heart to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz who held his own one-man peace vigil in the Italian city of Assisi, praying silently before the tomb of St. Francis, the patron of peace.

"The people of Iraq want peace and millions of people around the world are demonstrating for peace, so let us all work for peace and resist the war," said Aziz, a Christian, in front of one of the world's most famous religious shrines.

The same wave of anti-Americanism swept over Europe, already deeply divided over the need to attack Iraq. Most of the language used in the protests was directed at the United States.

"We have to discipline the United States. The biggest threat to peace is the United States, not Iraq," said one pensioner in Finland.

"The war would be useless," said Belgian social worker Roselyne Laforge. "It would only make the Iraq people weaker and would keep Saddam Hussein in power."

One Russian protester's banner showed a photograph of Bush with the words: "Butcher: Get out of other people's lands."

"Bush needs to make Daddy proud," said one Dutch banner, in reference to George Bush senior who led a war against Iraq in 1991 to oust its troops from Kuwait.

"No blood for oil" and "U.S. stop bullying the world into war" proclaimed the placards in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

In Croatia, several hundred masked protesters burned the American flag in front of the U.S. embassy in Zagreb.

The only major trouble flared in the Greek capital, Athens, where demonstrators burned a car and smashed several shop and bank windows in center of the city at the start of a protest march to the U.S. embassy by up to 30,000 people.


© 2003 Reuters

::: posted by Stewart at 9:14 AM



Wednesday, February 12, 2003 :::
 

Text:

Excerpt From U.S. Guide to Preparedness

What to Do After a Chemical Attack


What to Do After a Biological Attack

Text: Excerpt From U.S. Guide to Preparedness
ollowing is an excerpt from the National Security Emergencies section of "Are You Ready? A Guide to Citizen Preparedness," a book by the Federal Emergency Management Agency:

What to Do After a Chemical Attack

If medical help is not immediately available, decontaminate yourself and assist in decontaminating others. Decontamination is needed within minutes of exposure to minimize health consequences. (However, you should not leave the safety of a shelter to go outdoors to help others until authorities announce it is safe to do so.)

1. Use extreme caution when helping others who have been exposed to chemical agents:

Remove all clothing and other items in contact with the body. Contaminated clothing normally removed over the head should be cut off to avoid contact with the eyes, nose and mouth. Put into a plastic bag if possible. Decontaminate hands using soap and water. Remove eyeglasses or contact lenses. Put glasses in a pan of household bleach to decontaminate.
2. Remove all items in contact with the body.
3. Flush eyes with lots of water.
4. Gently wash face and hair with soap and water; then thoroughly rinse with water.

5. Decontaminate other body areas likely to have been contaminated. Blot (do not swab or scrape) with a cloth soaked in soapy water and rinse with clear water.

6. Change into uncontaminated clothes. Clothing stored in drawers or closets is likely to be uncontaminated.
7. If possible, proceed to a medical facility for screening.

What to Do After a Biological Attack

In many biological attacks, people will not know they have been exposed to an agent. In such situations, the first evidence of an attack may be when you notice symptoms of the disease caused by an agent exposure, and you should seek immediate medical attention for treatment. In some situations, like the anthrax letters sent in 2001, people may be alerted to a potential exposure. If this is the case, pay close attention to all official warnings and instructions on how to proceed. The delivery of medical services for a biological event may be handled differently to respond to increased demand. Again, it will be important for you to pay attention to official instructions via radio, television and emergency alert systems. If your skin or clothing comes in contact with a visible, potentially infectious substance, you should remove and bag your clothes and personal items and wash yourself with warm soapy water immediately. Put on clean clothes and seek medical assistance. For more information,

visit the Web site for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.bt.cdc.gov.

::: posted by Stewart at 10:53 AM


 

State Can Make Inmate Sane Enough to Execute

The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute.

"...Justice Marshall:`the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.' ""

The American Medical Association's ethical guidelines prohibit giving medical treatment that would make people competent to be executed, said Dr. Howard Zonana, who teaches psychiatry and law at Yale.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 11, 2003
New York Times
State Can Make Inmate Sane Enough to Execute
By ADAM LIPTAK


The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute. Without the drugs, the prisoner, Charles Laverne Singleton, could not be put to death under a United States Supreme Court decision that prohibits the execution of the insane.

Yesterday's 6-to-5 decision is the first by a federal appeals court to allow such an execution.

"Singleton presents the court with a choice between involuntary medication followed by an execution and no medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment," Judge Roger L. Wollman wrote for the majority in ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Judge Wollman said the first choice was the better one, at least when the drugs were generally beneficial to the prisoner. He said courts did not need to consider the ultimate result of medicating the prisoner.

"Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication," he wrote.

Judge Gerald W. Heaney, in dissent, said there was a third choice. He would have allowed Mr. Singleton to be medicated without fear of execution.

"I believe," he wrote, "that to execute a man who is severely deranged without treatment, and arguably incompetent when treated, is the pinnacle of what Justice Marshall called `the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.' " Judge Heaney added that the majority's holding presented doctors with an impossible ethical choice.

Mr. Singleton killed a grocery store clerk in Arkansas in 1979 and was sentenced to death that year. His conviction was affirmed in 1981 by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

In 1986, the United States Supreme Court held in an opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall, that the execution of the insane was barred by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Mr. Singleton's mental health began to deteriorate in 1987. He said he believed his prison cell was possessed by demons and that a prison doctor had implanted a device in his ear.

In December 2001, he wrote to the appeals court to inform it that he did not believe his victim was dead and that she was "somewhere on earth waiting for me — her groom."

Based on extensive medical evaluations describing Mr. Singleton as psychotic, his lawyers have argued that he is mentally incompetent and thus cannot be executed. Drugs alleviate his symptoms, however, and Judges Wollman and Heaney differed yesterday on whether they rendered Mr. Singleton sane or merely masked his psychosis.

The Supreme Court has held that prisoners may be forced to take antipsychotic medications in some situations. Prisoners who are forced to take medications to ensure that they are competent to stand trial are entitled to a hearing to consider the medical appropriateness of the treatment, the risk the defendant poses to himself and others, and the drug's effect on the defendant's appearance, testimony and communications with his lawyer.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether prisoners may be medicated in order to make them competent to be executed.

Over the years, Mr. Singleton has sometimes taken antipsychotic medication voluntarily and has sometimes been forced to take it. Arkansas officials argued that Mr. Singleton must be medicated because he posed a danger to himself and to others.

Mr. Singleton's lawyers responded by saying, in Judge Wollman's characterization, that forcible medication "becomes illegal once an execution date is set because it is no longer in his best medical interests."

The majority decision yesterday said Mr. Singleton's interest in being free of unwanted medication must be balanced against society's interest in punishing criminal offenders. It overturned a ruling by a three-judge panel of the court, which had commuted Mr. Singleton's death sentence because he could not understand his punishment without being medicated.

Judge Heaney, in dissent, noted that the majority's decision gave doctors hard choices.

"Needless to say," he wrote of the majority's holding, "this leaves those doctors who are treating psychotic, condemned prisoners in an untenable position: treating the prisoner may provide short-term relief but ultimately result in his execution, whereas leaving him untreated will condemn him to a world such as Singleton's, filled with disturbing delusions and hallucinations."

Judge Heaney's opinion was joined by three other judges. Judge Diana Murphy dissented on a different ground. She said the record was not clear on whether Singleton was psychotic and that it was premature to take up the case.

The American Medical Association's ethical guidelines prohibit giving medical treatment that would make people competent to be executed, said Dr. Howard Zonana, who teaches psychiatry and law at Yale.

"You can't treat someone for the purpose of executing them," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/national/11DEAT.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

::: posted by Stewart at 10:49 AM

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