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There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream 'Oppression!'
And the oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
IDIOT JAPANESE BELIEVED GENERAL ELECTRIC WHEN TOLD REACTOR DESIGN WAS "SAFE"! MASSIVE MELTDOWN UNDERWAY AND RADIATION WILL COVER HUGE SWATHS OF JAPAN! OBAMA WANTS TO OPEN UP MONTANA AS THE NEW JAPANESE HOMELAND! IDIOT AMERICA WATCHES CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR AND DIANE SAWYER BROADCASTING FROM JAPAN AND EXCLAIMS, "OH MY!"
Darrel Vandeveld's military record -- including his widely publicized rejection of the military trial system for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base -- helped him land the job as Erie County's top advocate for Erie County's indigent defendants.
But trauma Vandeveld said he suffered amid his years of military service has cost him the post of Erie County chief public defender -- at least for a time.
Vandeveld and Erie County Executive Barry Grossman said Thursday that Vandeveld, 50, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, has been approved for a medical leave so that he can seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his military service. Post-traumatic stress is an anxiety disorder that can surface after a person is exposed to a terrifying event or situations in which they are placed in danger of physical harm, such as military combat.
Since November 2001, Vandeveld served on various task forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Bahrain and Qatar. Vandeveld said the service placed in him in situations in which he witnessed multiple episodes of violent deaths of fellow soldiers and where his own life was threatened.
He has battled intermittent, chronic insomnia since 2006 when he returned from service in Iraq. He said the symptoms were held in check while he worked as a prosecutor in the military commissions, where terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba were tried.
But he said the symptoms returned when he returned to civilian life in Erie. Vandeveld, a devout Roman Catholic, said he first tried to address the problem through prayer.
He said he then visited the Erie Veterans Affairs Medical Center for a routine medical exam, and during the intake interview about his physical and mental condition, he was told he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
He said there is no opportune time to treat the condition.
"I finally want to address that and Mr. Grossman has generously given me the opportunity to do that," he said. "I am very grateful for his compassion."
Vandeveld said he is seeking admission to a treatment facility in Arizona that is operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
County Executive Barry Grossman said both he and Vandeveld agreed, after discussing the issue recently, that Vandeveld should take a medical leave. Grossman said First Assistant Public Defender Pat Kennedy agreed to run the Public Defender's Office in Vandeveld's absence.
Kennedy assumed those duties on Wednesday, the same day Vandeveld's leave began, Grossman said.
"Darrel served in four different combat zones. He's seen some horrific things," Grossman said. "For the good of everybody, especially Darrel, he will take a leave.
"As soon as his doctors say he can come back to work, he will be back," Grossman said. "Here is a guy who served his country honorably. He is a good guy and I have all the respect in the world for him. We have to be as compassionate as we can here."
Grossman said he will talk further about Vandeveld's leave of absence at a news conference later today.
Vandeveld resigned his appointment as a military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay over ethical concerns in 2008. In a court filing that garnered worldwide media attention, Vandeveld said the prosecution's office and others were "preventing the disclosure" of all evidence that could aid the defense in the case Vandeveld was leading against an Afghan detainee, who was 16 at the time of his capture.
He returned to Erie to resume his job as a senior deputy attorney general for the state's Bureau of Consumer Protection. In 2010, he was chosen to be Erie County's new chief public defender from a pool of about 40 applicants by a merit-selection search team formed by Grossman. He started his $80,000-a-year county position on April 1.
Assistant Public Defender Nicole Sloane said Vandeveld and Kennedy are strong leaders who do not just serve as administrators but who also carry caseloads like the other attorneys in the office.
"He is truly an advocate for our clients. We certainly hope he has a speedy recovery," she said.
Vandeveld said he looks forward to the day he can resume his post.
From his research, he said, he believes PTSD is treatable.
"It is a fact of my life that I will have to deal with forever. It is a matter of developing coping skills and learning to live with the condition so that it does not hurt my quality of life and those around me," he said.
Darrel Vandeveld (Birth year 1960, Age 50) is an American lawyer with years of honorable service as both a prosecutor and a public defender. He is also an officer in the United States Army Reserve.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Vandeveld is notable for asking to resign from his appointment as a prosecutor before a Guantanamo military commission.[7]
According to the New York Times, officials confirmed on September 24, 2008, that, Lieutenant Colonel Vandeveld resigned over an ethical issue.[1] Vandeveld is the seventh prosecutor to resign from serving as a Guantanamo prosecutor.[citation needed]
Vandeveld was serving as a prosecutor in the case of Mohamed Jawad, a Pakistani youth who was charged with participating in a grenade attack in a bazaar in Afghanistan where two American GIs and their interpreter were injured.[1] Colonel Stephen R. Henley had been growing impatient with the prosecution, and had given them a deadline to share evidence they had withheld from defense attorney Major David J. R. Frakt which he suspected could prove exculpatory.[citation needed]
The BBC reports that the withheld evidence includes the confessions of two men who said they were the ones who actually made the attack.[4]
Vandeveld's resignation was filed within the Military Commission system.[1] The New York Times reported he had not commented publicly about his resignation. Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, quoted from Vandeveld's four page resignation memo[2]:
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Frakt claimed that Vandeveld had recommended a plea bargain and an early release for Jawad, who was a youth when the event took place, and who had been subjected to coercive "enhanced interrogation techniques", including prolonged sleep deprivation in Guantanamo's frequent flyer program.[1]
Frakt commented that Vandeveld: “could no longer continue to serve ethically as a prosecutor.”[1]
Chief Prosecutor Colonel Lawrence Morris asserted[1]:
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According to Josh Meyers, writing in the Los Angeles Times, Frakt planned to call Vandeveld as a witness on September 25 or 26, 2008.[3] Vandeveld was willing to testify. But his superiors planned to block his testimony. According to Meyers, Frakt planned to ask Henley, the Presiding Officer, to compel Vandeveld's testimony.
see these links;
Barak deemed the changes in the region a "movement in the right direction", and said that in the long run, Israel should not fear the "movement of Arab societies toward modernity."
But in the more immediate future, he told the WSJ, Israel would have to contend with the fact that Iran and Syria "might be the last to feel the heat" and join the trend of unrest.
In addition, Barak said, Egypt's new leaders may adhere to the country's 32-year peace treaty "for the time being," but could eventually succumb to popular pressure against it.
He also told the WSJ that a top Egyptian official recently warned him that the new government in Cairo was likely to change its attitude toward Israel unless the latter made serious efforts for peace with the Palestinians.
"He told me, 'We're going to have a really open election....Civic parties will hire advisers from the U.S. and Europe and find immediately that what can bring them voters is hostility to America and Israel," Barak said in the interview.
While Israel did not face an immediate threat to its security, Barak told the WSJ, "The issue of qualitative military aid for Israel becomes more essential for us, and I believe also more essential for you [the U.S.].
"It might be wise to invest another $20 billion to upgrade the security of Israel for the next generation or so," he said, adding: "A strong, responsible Israel can become a stabilizer in such a turbulent region."
Barak also told the WSJ that Israel was likely to offer Palestinians a state within temporary, detailing for the first time an emerging Israeli plan for breaking the deadlocked peace negotiations.
Though the Palestinians repeatedly have rejected provisional statehood, Ehud
Barak told The Wall Street Journal that Israel or the United States would have to give assurances that a full-fledged agreement on permanent statehood would follow.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to offer the Palestinians a state with temporary borders, he said. Only afterward, would the two sides would resolve key issues of the conflict, such as competing claims to Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, Barak added.
No details of the plan were given.
With the popular protests shaking up the Mideast, Netanyahu is under fierce international pressure to prove he is serious about getting peacemaking moving again, especially after the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's West Bank settlement construction last month.
In the past week, Israeli officials have said Netanyahu was considering a phased approach. Although that was widely interpreted to mean a temporary state, they would not say so explicitly. Barak was the first to publicly spell that out.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said Barak's remark can stand on its own.
The prime minister is said to be planning a speech - possibly to be delivered in Washington - in which he will outline his plans.
It is not clear that the U.S. would support the idea of an interim accord, given the Palestinians' categorical rejection of the notion."I believe justice would be served by commuting the remainder of Pollard's sentence of life imprisonment, " Kissinger wrote in the letter, in which he enunciated that he had given the matter a lot of thought and research.
"At first I did not have enough information to render a reasoned and just opinion," wrote Kissinger. "But having talked with George Shultz and [reading] the statement of former CIA Director Woolsey, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman DeConcini, former Defense Secretary Weinberger, former Attorney General Mukasey and others whose judgments and first-hand knowledge of the case I respect, I find their unanimous support for clemency compelling," Kissinger wrote.
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 on charges of spying on the U.S. for Israel. He is incarcerated at a federal jail in North Carolina.
In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an official request to the U.S. president to grant clemency to Pollard. This marked the first formal request by Israel for Pollard's release.
"Even though Israel was in no way directing its intelligence efforts against the United States, its actions were wrong and wholly unacceptable," Netanyahu wrote in the official letter he sent to Obama. "Both Mr. Pollard and the Government of Israel have repeatedly expressed remorse for these actions, and Israel will continue to abide by its commitment that such wrongful actions will never be repeated."
Netanyahu made the decision to send the letter after meeting with Pollard's wife Esther, as well as Lawrence Korb, who was the U.S. assistant secretary of defense at the time of Pollard's arrest.
