Bollox America

TV Interviewer : Why do you risk holidaying in Thailand at a time of unrest? Tourist : It's safer than going to America!

A Briton who has lived and worked legally in America for 35 years, married a US citizen and raised three children there, has been locked up in a New Jersey jail after falling victim to a draconian immigration crackdown.

Paul Clements, 58, a permanent US resident and former tour manager for bands such as the Rolling Stones and Dire Straits, is threatened with expulsion from his adopted homeland after his passport and green card were confiscated following a work trip abroad.

He now spends his days in a khaki prison jumpsuit as his case works its way through the US legal system and his wife and teenage daughter were reduced to tears when they saw him chained and in handcuffs in a recent court appearance.

The turmoil in their lives has its roots in a night out with friends at a local pub in 2002. On the way home, Clements, a manager at a large events production company, was arrested on suspicion of drink driving and police found a third of a joint of marijuana in his car.

He was fined, put on a year's probation and ordered to attend drug information classes as punishment for possession of 0.8 grams of marijuana, an amount so small that the authorities would not prosecute in many American cities, including neighbouring New York.

The offence did not leave him subject to the threat of deportation and he thought no more of the incident, even as he flew in and out of the country on subsequent trips overseas. But in late-May, he was held for several hours at New York's Kennedy airport as he arrived home from a work trip to Italy.

For the Department of Homeland Security has been updating its computer records to include thousands of offences committed by foreign residents (known as "aliens" in official US parlance).

And although Clements could not be deported for his offence, any conviction for controlled substance is cause for immigration authorities to refuse an arriving alien entry to the US.

He was eventually allowed into the country but ordered to return to the airport for what is known as a deferred inspection. On the second such trip, on Nov 12, he was arrested, handcuffed and taken away to an immigration jail in New Jersey.

Worse was to come on Nov 24 when Mr Clements appeared in an immigration court for a bail hearing arranged by his lawyer. The room was packed with his friends, family and colleagues who hoped he would be freed pending the immigration hearing, but the judge ruled that he was subject to mandatory detention until his case is heard – in March at the earliest.

His attorney, Michael DiRaimondo, is now attempting to arrange a deal with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for him to receive parole so that he can spend Christmas with his family.

A man who has recently suffered torture in the Homeland of America now talks about it.

Just picture what would happen if the authorities developed a forensic instrument capable of detecting illicit fantasies in the mind, rather than on the computer hard drive (does anyone, really have nothing they would prefer to sexually hide?).

Pretty well everyone would end up on the Sex Offender's Register, and, if current sentencing policies were pursued, large areas of land would have to be surrendered for a massive new building development: Her Majesty's Prisons.

It immediately occurred to me that just such an instrument capable of detecting illicit fantasies in the mind has indeed already been invented: it is the so-called, much discussed penile plethysmograph, a device with which I am intimately familiar, having myself been one of the unfortunate victims of its use . At the very least, let me say that, if the penile plethysmograph is not such an instrument, it is remarkably close - damn close, I would say.

To rehearse my own personal experience, an elastic band is handed to one, whilst seated in a small, darkened private room, with orders to slip it around the shaft of one's male member. Electrical wires have previously been attached to the elastic band now around one's manhood, and these wires are in fact connected to a device (in a separate room) which records the rate at which the elastic band expands, and the diameter of the expansion, as one's manhood expands during subsequent tumescent erections.

To induce the erections, the male subject is shown a series of slides, and simultaneously hears a recorded running commentary to the slides. These slides consist of mild adult pornography, interspersed with suggestive photos of children of all ages and both genders. Occasional non-human photos are also occasionally shown (undoubtedly as controls). These photos might consist of nature photos, such as leaves or trees, or sunny meadows.

But the thing that really gets the subject's blood pumping (literally) is not so much the suggestive photos (though that undoubtedly helps), but rather, the highly suggestive and erotic descriptive monologue of various sexual acts which accompanies the photos. This, it can definitely be said, is highly pornographic, and involves verbal descriptions of all kinds of possible human sexual interactions: adult with adult, male with female, adult with minor, male with male, and female with female.

The penile plethysmograph, if used on every male alive in our Western democracies, would very soon fill up and overflow every prison now existing, and indeed, it could be said that because hidden sexual fantasies probably exist in all human beings, surely there could not be enough prisons then built to house all the males who would be found guilty of harbouring hidden and illicit sexual fantasies, once those fantasies were revealed to the light of day by this instrument.

What prevents this from happening? Why, only selective use of this instrument, of course, by those in a position of power; the use of this instrument as an effective instrument of repression against sociosexual minorities they wish to persecute and imprison. And a most effective instrument of persecution and repression it is. You may take it from my own firsthand experience.

Nebraska Governor, David Heineman, is reviewing a state policy that requires state employees to help patients at state hospitals buy pornography.

The policy was highlighted in an alleged sexual assault at the Beatrice State Developmental Center, which houses developmentally disabled residents.

The assault suspect, a developmentally disabled man, had obtained permission from employees to possess pornography and had even been driven by state workers to two sex shops to buy it.

Heineman has plans to discuss with the state Attorney General's Office discontinuing any involvement from state workers. The governor said, however, he would not restrict residents or family members from buying such material.

Officials of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said that under its policies concerning appropriate sexual expression, a resident at the Beatrice center or other state facilities for the developmentally disabled can obtain pornography if it's approved by a treatment team.

A group of Egyptian bloggers who have been coming to the US throughout the past three months to cover the American elections were welcomed back to the US last night by getting arrested. Ironically, their trip was sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

It's a group of 8 Egyptian bloggers who have been brought to the US for a series of first-hand looks at the election campaigns as part of a project by the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo.

The first trips they visited Washington, New York and other major cities. This week, after having returned briefly to Egypt, they are on their way back to visit journalism schools. The group has done an insightful and witty job of covering the 2008 US presidential election.

In their own country these bloggers are fighting for freedom of speech and the press. Many of them have been actively harassed by their government for their efforts. Wael Abbas, for example, had his YouTube account shut down because of his anti-torture coverage.

Imagine their surprise last night when enroute back to the US, two of the bloggers were arrested and detained; one for four hours and the other for ten before being released to do what they came here to do -- observe and record.

A 15-year-old Ohio girl was arrested on felony child pornography charges for allegedly sending nude cell phone pictures of herself to classmates. Authorities are considering charging some of the students who received the photos as well.

The student from Licking Valley High School in Newark, Ohio was arrested after school officials discovered the materials and notified police. She spent the weekend in juvenile detention and entered a plea of "deny" according to The NewarkAdvocate.com.

Charges include illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material and possession of criminal tools. If convicted, the girl could be forced to register as a sexual offender for 20 years, but because of her age, the judge hearing the case has some flexibility in the matter, an official told the Advocate.

The pictures came to light after a Licking County prosecutor began visiting high schools to educate students on the consequences of transmitting nude photos by cell phone. According to one student interviewed by 10TV News, the teens were warned they could serve 20 years if convicted.

The girl remains under house arrest. She is not allowed to have access to a cell phone or the internet except for school purposes and then only with adult supervision.

Sue Nace thought election volunteers were joking when they told her she would have to remove her T-shirt to vote in the US presidential primary last spring.

But it was no laughing matter to the poll workers-turned-fashion police, who said Nace's Barack Obama shirt was inappropriate electioneering and made her cover the writing.

Now, a political fight over what voters can wear to the polls is headed to court in Pennsylvania, the Republican Party favouring a dress code, the Democrats opposed.

The political showdown was triggered by a Pennsylvania Department of State memo advising counties last month that voters' attire doesn't matter as long as the voter takes no additional action to attempt to influence other voters. Because the memo is not legally binding, some counties have kept past restrictions on clothing and political buttons.

But two Pittsburgh elections officials brought a court action to have the memo rescinded. Their lawsuit warned that if the memo stands, nothing would prevent a partisan group from synchronising a battalion of like-minded individuals... to descend on a polling place, presenting a domineering, united front, certain to dissuade the average citizen who may privately hold different beliefs.

The Denver police union is selling T-shirts that poke fun at protesters at last month's Democratic National Convention, but the main target isn't laughing.

The back of the shirts reads, We get up early to beat the crowds and 2008 DNC, and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.

The front has the number 68 with a slash through it, a reference to the Recreate 68 Coalition, which organized several demonstrations during the convention.

Recreate 68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo called the shirt appalling and tasteless.

Detective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board, said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events. Rogers said each Denver officer was given one of the shirts free and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices. He said the union expects to sell about 2,000 of them. Rogers said he hadn't received any previous complaints about the shirts.

Police arrested 154 people before and during the Democratic convention. There were few reports of violence. In once incident, an officer was videotaped pushing a protester to the ground with his baton and telling her, Back up, bitch.

The district attorney declined to prosecute the officer, saying the woman had disobeyed warnings to back away and had grabbed the officer's baton.

A kindergarten teacher, James Perry, accused of raping two young boys is a free man after prosecutors dropped the case against him citing numerous inconsistencies and other factors.

The case against Perry was shaky from the start and juries through a series of trials and retrials didn't find it sufficiently convincing. So prosecutors got a little constructive with the evidence:

At one point, Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Dean tried to argue that movies found in Perry's home, like Star Wars , the Harry Potter films and Little House on the Prairie , constituted non-erotic pornography .

The judge thankfully ruled the videos irrelevant and refused to let the jury hear that argument.

A man with a black hood pours water on the face of a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit strapped to a table: no, it's not Guantanamo Bay naval base, but New York's Coney Island amusement park.

The scene using robotic dolls is an installation built by artist Steve Powers to criticize waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique the United States has admitted using on terrorism suspects, but that rights group say is torture. The public can peek through window bars and feed a dollar into the slot to bring the robotic dolls into action.

Waterboard Thrill Ride beckons a sign along with cartoon character "SpongeBob SquarePants" who appears tied down and exclaiming: It don't Gitmo better!

Anyone can see this is painful from 50 feet away, said Powers: I wanted people to understand the psychological ramifications of this.

Alex Soto said he thought it was a good thing for people to learn about waterboarding, but he added: It is pretty twisted.

This spring, the 69-year-old physician and his wife, Alison, were trying to upgrade the Internet service in their summer place in Rehoboth Beach, Del. They had dial-up. They wanted DSL.

When it was time to enter their user name and create an e-mail address, Verizon wouldn't let them complete the job.

This is how Dr. Herman I. Libshitz remembers it:

We called their help line, and got a wonderful young man in the Philippines who told us: "We can't install it because your name has 'shit' in it."

The doctor asked to speak with a supervisor.

The Libshitzes got the same answer from the supervisor, who suggested they try misspelling their last name. That wouldn't do, either.

The couple uses Libshitz in its e-mail address with Prodigy. So there had to be some way around the rules, the two figured.

Several days later, Libshitz received a letter from Verizon's customer-relations desk in Everett, Wash., informing him that he could not have the user name because it didn't comply with company rules.

So the couple returned the Verizon DSL kit. If I can't use my own name, I'm going to stay with my AT&T dial-up, the doctor said: The hell with them.

I called Sharon B. Schaffer, a Verizon spokeswoman, who offered a refreshing answer to my question as to how this happened: I don't have a clue. Actually, I'm kind of surprised. If this is Dr. Libshitz's name, your name is your identity. He's had this his entire life. . . . I think he needs a little bit of personal attention.

A couple days later, she e-mailed me a formal response:

As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn't allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests. The one from Dr. and Mrs. Libshitz certainly is reasonable and we regret the inconvenience and frustration they've been caused.

The doctor said he was willing to try again, but grudgingly: These people have no trouble putting me in their phone book. They send me mail with that name, they send me a bill routinely, and they cash my checks with Libshitz on it. They just offended me.

The US Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.

The rumored changes have provoked protests from Muslim American and Arab-American groups. The Council on American Islamic Relations, among the more effective lobbies for Muslim Americans' civil liberties, immediately denounced the plan, as did James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute. Said Zogby, There are millions of Americans who, under the reported new parameters, could become subject to arbitrary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling. Zogby, who noted that the Bush administration's history with profiling is not reassuring, warned that all Americans would suffer from a weakening of civil liberties.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey's explained his rationale for revising the rules: It's necessary to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence-gathering organization.

When did Congress, or we as a nation, have a debate about whether we want to authorize the establishment of a domestic intelligence agency? Indeed, late last month Congress signaled its discomfort with the concept by denying the FBI's $11 million funding request for its data-mining center.

It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired.

An American teacher has been suspended without pay for introducing her class to an "inspiring" book because it contained swearing.

Connie Heermann used the Freedom Writers Diary , a celebrated non-fiction bestseller, to try to inspire under-performing students at a high-school in Indiana.

The book is a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers that were compiled by Californian teacher Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives.

Mrs Heermann asked her head teacher if she could use it in lessons last autumn and, with the backing of nearly 150 parents, was granted.

But when the matter came before the Perry Meridian high school board for final approval it was rejected, allegedly because a single member objected to swearing in the book.

Mrs Heermann, a teacher with 27 years of experience, said: If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised. I thought my students would very much relate to those kids.

Mrs Heermann and teachers' union officials said there was no explicit ban on the book when she handed it out to pupils on November 15. But later that day she received an email from the board which advised her not to teach it.

She said: That was the pivotal moment of my life, when I saw how my students were taken with the book, how they loved it, and then I am told not to let them read it? I said no.

After being threatened with dismissal, Heermann was eventually suspended for 18 months without pay. The union is now deciding whether to take the case to court.

Easton police have ticketed someone for going topless in public. Sean Cephus, 18, was cited June 4 when police say he was spotted without a shirt on South Street. He was also cited for failing to obey a lawful order to stop for police.

A town ordinance adopted in 1974 forbids anyone from going topless in public buildings or on public streets and sidewalks. Possible penalties are a fine of up to $100 and up to 10 days in jail.

The Fox channel in Washington D.C. became aware that photographers were being hassled by security in Union Station (the train station in Washington), so they dispatched a reporter and a crew to do a story on it.

So they're interviewing the head spokesman for Amtrak, who is explaining that there aren't any laws or rules against photography inside the train station...when a security guard comes up and tells the TV crew they'll have to turn the cameras off.

A Texas woman who claims she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane has called for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference in Los Angeles. My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.

Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman that she was wearing nipple piercings. The female agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the body piercings, Hamlin claimed.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her, said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred.

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

TSA officials said they were investigating Hamlin's allegations to see if its policies were followed. If an alarm does sound, until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it, said TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird in Salt Lake City.

Controversial British author Sebastian Horsley was denied entrance into the United States as he arrived to promote his memoir of drug addiction, sex and his dysfunctional family, his publisher has said.

Seale Ballenger, spokesman for HarperCollins Publishers, said Horsley was stopped by immigration officials at New York's Newark airport after flying in from London to promote his latest book Dandy in the Underworld.

He said the flamboyant writer was accused of "moral turpitude" in connection with his former drug use, pro-prostitution stance, and controversial self-crucifixion in the Philippines in 2000.

Horsley claims to have slept with more than 1,000 prostitutes, worked as a male escort, and been in and out of rehab to treat drug addiction, with video interviews of him talking about his drug use and sex life posted on the Internet.

Ballenger said after several hours of questioning by immigration officials, Horsley was put on a plane and returned to London.

The New York Times quoted a customs spokeswoman, Lucille Cirillo, saying she could not comment on individual cases. But in an e-mail to the newspaper she explained that under a waiver program that allows British citizens to enter the United States without a visa, travellers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (which includes controlled-substance violations) or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible.

Publisher Carrie Kania, from the HarperCollins' unit Harper Perennial that published the book in the United States, said she found it hard to understand why Horsley would be denied entrance into the U.S. for "his notoriety."

Horsley's memoir was published last September in Britain with reviewers calling it both amusing and revolting.

The US army has banned the publication of four cartoons drawn by Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman held in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to his lawyer.

The pieces, called Sketches of My Nightmare , include a drawing depicting al-Hajj, who has been on hunger strike for eight months, as a skeleton being force fed by US guards.

The drawings were submitted to the military censor but they would not permit their release.

However, detailed descriptions of the sketches were allowed through the censorship process and Lewis Peake, a political cartoonist, was able to recreate one entitled Scream for Freedom.

Al Hajj described the way he sees himself being force fed in the so-called "Torture Chair" - the restraint chair into which they are strapped twice a day to have a 110cm tube forcibly inserted into one nostril so that liquid food can be administered.

My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth jutting out – my bones showing in every detail, every rib, every joint. The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the drawing. On the right there is another skeleton sitting shackled to another chair. They are sitting like we do in interrogations, with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, just waiting. In between I draw the flag of Guantanamo – JTF-GTMO – but instead of the normal insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the real symbol of what is happening here, he said.

Al-Hajj was seized by the US military while he was covering the war in Afghanistan for Al Jazeera's Arabic channel and has been held as an "enemy combatant" without trial or charge since 2001.