How Not To Fly (about)

Abuse At Iraqi Prison Predictable, Decades-Old Study Shows

In 1971 a group of 24 college men volunteered to act as either guards or prisoners in an experimental prison. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, esteemed professor of psychology and former president of the American Psychological Foundation, volunteers went through several rounds of testing to ensure psychological and physical health and "normalcy." They were then designated either guards or prisoners by the simple flip of a coin.

Two days into the good doctor's experiment, the normal, adjusted students were playing their prison roles with frightening reality. The "prisoners," fed up with having roll calls in the middle of the night, rebelled by pushing their beds against their cell bars and refusing to come out. The "guards" called in reinforcements, pulled the prisoners from their cells, [stripped] them naked, and proceeded to humiliate and abuse them for hours. To further reinforce their power, the guards took away bathroom privileges and forced prisoners to urinate and defecate in buckets inside their cells, and to later clean the mess out with their bare hands. It got worse -- so bad that Zimbardo halted the planned two-week study after only six days.

Fast forward to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and Zimbardo sees a connection. While American officials have been blaming the situation on "a few bad apples," Zimbardo told MTV News it's more like "a bad barrel converting good apples into bad apples."

Not many people realize "Abu Ghraib" is Iraqi for "Overlook Hotel."

Trucks Made To Drive Without Cargo In Dangerous Areas Of Iraq

Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more....

KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the company to pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to 3 percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able to provide cost estimates for the empty trucks....

"There was one time we ran 28 trucks, one trailer had one pallet (a trailer can hold as many as 26 four-foot square pallets) and the rest of them were empty," said David Wilson, who was the convoy commander on more than 100 runs. Four other drivers who were with Wilson confirmed his account....

The KBR driver who shot the videotape of the 15 empty trailers on the road in January described it this way: "This is just a sample of the empty trailers we're hauling called 'sustainer.' And there's more behind me. There's another one right there.... This is fraud and abuse right here."

Obama Admits He Dislikes His Most Loyal Follower

[Springfield, IL] In what has to be a first in Illinois politics, Republican Jack Ryan has assigned one of his campaign workers to record every movement and every word of the state senator while he is in public.

That means Justin Warfel, armed with a handheld Panasonic digital camcorder, follows [Senator] Obama to the bathroom door and waits outside. It means Warfel follows Obama as he moves from meeting to meeting in the Capitol. And it means Warfel tails Obama when he drives to his campaign office.

"It's standard procedure to record public speeches and things like that," Obama told reporters as the bald, 20-something operative filmed away. "But to have someone who's literally following you a foot and a half away, everywhere you go, going into the restrooms, standing outside my office, sitting outside of my office asking my secretary where I am, seems to be getting a little carried away."

Warfel interrupted Obama several times with heckling questions, but wouldn't respond when reporters asked him about who he was and why he was filming Obama's every move.

"You'll have to speak to the campaign office," Warfel said tartly to practically every inquiry.

Ex-Editor Sues Playboy, Says He Was Fired For Being Old

John Rezek, 54, of Chicago, a former associate managing editor with the magazine, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging Playboy Enterprises International fired him as part of a larger move to "change the demographics of the magazine by changing the demographics of the people putting it out."

Rezek said he was terminated Nov. 21, 2003, after working with the magazine for 31 years and receiving "superlative" reviews.

Army Does About-Face On Call-Up Readiness

Thousands of recent U.S. Army veterans nationwide were told to choose by Monday a new assignment in the Army Reserve or National Guard -- meaning a potential return to active duty -- or the military would decide for them. The Army now says the order was a mistake.

• "I started crying and said, 'I'm not doing this,'" said Carissa Jenkins, 22, of Keizer, who was discharged from active Army duty in January 2003. "I have a baby, a husband. All my values have changed."

  Jenkins said she joined the Oregon National Guard last week to keep from going back to the regular Army.... "It was something I did not want to do..."

• [Joseph] Talik, 26, of Portland said the recruiter urged that his mother contact her son. Talik served in the Army until his discharge last year. When Talik returned the recruiter's call, he was told to join the Guard rather than risk being sent overseas.

  "I was blown away," said Talik, who is in college and working at a Portland restaurant. "The thought of having to go back on active duty was discouraging."

  Last Sunday Talik joined a Guard unit in Portland.

Whether soldiers who had signed up under the mistaken deadline would be released from their commitment was unclear Tuesday....

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, commander of the Army Reserve, declined comment on how the mistake was made, a spokesman said. How the mistaken order was issued is a mystery...

Was Berg In U.S. Custody?

• Iraqi authorities said Thursday they held the American civilian only briefly before handing him over to U.S. troops...
• [Nick] Berg's father Michael Berg said Thursday that State Department officials told him his son was being held by the U.S. military.
• "Nick told me, 'Iraqi police caught me one night, they saw my passport and my Jewish last name and my Israeli stamp. This guy thought I was a spy, so they put me with American soldiers and American soldiers put me in a jail for two weeks,'" said Hugo Infante, a Chilean freelance journalist... Infante said Berg described being held in a coalition facility where Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Iranians suspected of entering Iraq illegally were also detained.
• Berg's brother David told reporters that the family received e-mails from Berg after his release in April that made clear he had been held by U.S. forces.

Berg had been scheduled to return to his home in suburban Philadelphia on March 30, but missed that flight while in custody....

An assessment of the video showing Berg's death concludes it is a "high probability" al-Zarqawi is the hooded speaker who is shown decapitating Berg, [a] CIA official said.

Passion Tops Most-Pirated Films

Tracking firm BayTSP, which monitors web traffic, said 36,693 copies of the film had been found on the internet during April via file-sharing services.

Gibson's film, released in the US in February, will not be available on DVD in the US until August.

Sex And The Asian Man

Ultimately, [UC Davis professor Darrell] Hamamoto said he wants to show the world that Asians are sexually complex and that assumptions about nerdiness are unjust. He plans to launch a porn company that he believes would empower Asian Americans. Criticism that he has cheapened his cause by using pornography does not bother him, he said.

Parasitic Invasion Credited With Evolution Of Sex

When Drosophila sperm form, for example, mitochondria move into position using a bundle of actin fibres resembling a comet's tail. Strangely, while these mitochondria do not make it into the final cells, that shuffle is integral to sperm development -- if it is disabled, the fly is sterile.

The movement looks very like the technique a parasitic bacterium called Rickettsia uses to push itself into neighbouring cells. And Rickettsia are thought to be close relatives of the bacteria that became mitochondria.

U.S. Troops Said To Mistreat Elder Iraqi

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true....

Clwyd said the Iraqi woman was arrested in Iraq in July and accused of having links to a former member of Saddam Hussein's regime -- a charge she denied....

"She was held for about six weeks without charge," the envoy told Wednesday's Evening Standard newspaper.

'We Won': Fallujah Rejoices In Withdrawal

...militiamen loyal to a former Iraqi army general jubilantly took to the streets of this battle-scarred city Saturday to celebrate what they called a triumph over withdrawing U.S. Marines....

Although the militiamen were scheduled to take over checkpoints and patrol duties from Marine units Friday, many of those tasks appeared to go unfulfilled Saturday. Several of the militiamen, clad in street clothes and toting battered AK-47 rifles, said they were still waiting for orders from their commanders....

[Marine Lt Gen] Conway acknowledged that some of the participants would be people who fought against his Marines over the past month....

Meanwhile, attacks against U.S. soldiers and foreign contractors working for the occupation authority continued unabated following the bloodiest month for U.S. forces since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq a year ago.