Bush and Rumsfeld 'Knew About Abu Ghraib'

David Usborne, The Independent

The two-star Army General who led the first military investigation into human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has bluntly questioned the integrity of former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, suggesting he misled the US Congress by downplaying his own prior knowledge of what had happened.

Major General Antonio Taguba also claimed in an interview with The New Yorker magazine published yesterday that President George Bush also "had to be aware" of the atrocities despite saying at the time of the scandal that he had been out of the loop until he saw images in the US media.

The White House issued a response denying the claim, however. "The President said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on the television," Scott Stanzel, a spokesman, said.

"US Air Force Looked at Spray To Turn Enemy Gay"

Dan Glaister, London Guardian

"Make love not war" may be the enduring slogan of anti-war campaigners but
in 1994 the US air force produced its own variation on the philosophy.

What if it could release a chemical that would make an opposing army's
soldiers think more about the physical attributes of their comrades in
arms than the threat posed by the enemy? And thus the "gay bomb" was
born.

Far from being the product of conspiracy theorists, documents
released to a biological weapons watchdog in Austin, Texas confirm that
the US military did investigate the idea. It was included in a CD-Rom
produced by the US military in 2000 and submitted to the National
Academy of Sciences in 2002. The documents show that $7.5m was requested
to develop the weapon.

The documents released to the Sunshine Project under a freedom of
information request titled "Harassing, Annoying and Bad Guy Identifying
Chemicals" includes several proposals for the military use of chemicals
that could be sprayed on to enemy positions. "One distasteful but
non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the
chemical also caused homosexual behaviour," says the proposal from the
Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

The Pentagon did not deny that the proposal had been made: "The
department of defence is committed to identifying, researching and
developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in
uniform."

Aaron Belkin, director of the University of California's Michael Palm
Centre, which studies the issue of gays in the military, said: "The idea
that you could submit someone to some aerosol spray and change their
sexual behaviour is ludicrous."

African Cinema Giant Ousmane Sembene, 84, Dies
Led Cinema's Advance in
Africa

Agence France-Presse

The Senegalese filmmaker and writer Ousmane Sembene, a
pioneer of African cinema, died at his home in Dakar,
Senegal, his friends and family said Sunday. He was 84.

He had been ill since December.

Born into a fisherman's family in 1923, he worked as a
mechanic, carpenter and builder in Africa and Europe
before being drafted by the French Army in World War
II. Those experiences gave Mr. Sembene, a self-educated
writer, material for films as well as books like The
Black Docker, God's Bits of Wood and The Money
Order.

He said that he decided to go to film school, in
Moscow, after realizing that "pictures are more
accessible than words." That led him to what he called
"fairground cinema."

"I can go to a village and show the film," he explained
in 2005, "because everything can be filmed and
transported to the most remote village in Africa."

His career began in the 1960s with black-and-white
shorts like "Borom Sarret," about a poor cart-driver.
His "Black Girl From ..." (1966), about a Senegalese
girl who becomes a servant in France, is considered the
first full-length feature by an African filmmaker.

One of his last films, "Moolaadé" (2004), was a
denunciation of female genital cutting and won a jury
prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

He also won two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, in
1968 and in 1988. The first was for "The Money Order,"
the second for "The Camp of Thiaroye," which recounts
the violent repression by French troops of protests by
Senegalese soldiers demanding their pay. He was among
the first African artists to warn of the danger of
excesses in the post-colonial era and to call for "a
radical change in African policies."

The former Senegalese president Abdlu Diouf said Africa
had lost one its greatest filmmakers and a "fervent
defender of liberty and social justice."

A tribute from Mali's culture minister, Cheick Oumar
Sissoko, himself a filmmaker and a friend of Mr.
Sembene, said that "African cinema has lost one of its
lighthouses."

"The man only worked fully in Africa and for Africa,"
he said. Mr. Sembene "led Africa to understand its
identity and build its cultural horizon."