San Diego Riverside (NM Charter School) . ?.
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Summit on Adult Education. Bridging the Gap.
. UWF Writing Lab Grammar Skills Series #.
Tribal Member Guide to Obtaining Exemptions.


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Home » Celebrities » Stars flock to Nancy Pelosi at Clive Davis' pre-Grammys party
Stars flock to Nancy Pelosi at Clive Davis' pre-Grammys party
Nancy Pelosi and Barbra Streisand
The audience at Clive Davis' white-hot gala included Barbra Streisand, Joni Mitchell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but it was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who got the most requests to take a selfie.
READ NANCY PELOSI'S LETTER TO DONALD TRUMP
Pelosi received rock star treatment Saturday night from attendees at the annual pre-Grammy event, which also featured a stunning tribute to the late Aretha Franklin, an artist Davis worked closely with for decades.
Pelosi's sarcastic handclap and smirk to President Donald Trump at his State of the Union address went viral last week and launched hundreds of memes. So when Davis announced that she was in the audience — Pelosi has attended in the past — she received a standing ovation, while some people even imitated her now-famous handclap.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
At the top of the event and as she tried to exit, people asked to take selfies, almost creating a line as Pelosi smiled through them all.
A wide range of celebrities attended event at the Beverly Hilton, including Apple's Tim Cook, Netflix's Ted Sarandos, recent Super Bowl champ Julian Edelman, Wolfgang Puck, Earth, Wind & Fire, Dionne Warwick, Kathy Griffin, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Calvin Klein, Angela Bassett, Berry Gordy, Fred Armisen, George Clinton and Darren Criss.
GRAMMYS 2019: WHY GOD WILL BE CENTER STAGE AT AWARDS SHOW
The night closed with a rousing tribute to Franklin, who died in August. R&B singer-songwriter Jazmine Sullivan stunned with her renditions of "Call Me" and "I Knew You Were Waiting," then joined by Rob Thomas, who held his own onstage. Soul singer Ledisi, a powerhouse vocalist, also shined while sister duo Chloe x Halle, nominated for two Grammys, brought the house down when they performed "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves."
Yael Cohen, Nancy Pelosi, and Jessie Muscio
Rapper Travis Scott, nominated for three Grammys, kicked off the night with the hit "Goosebumps." Before performing "Sickomode," which reached No.1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart last year, he told the audience: "I only came to rage."
"Don't be scared to stand up now," Scott's DJ said.
The Time made a surprise appearance, bringing the audience to its feet with a fun performance. The group, along with Quincy Jones, honored Clarence Avant, the 87-year-old music executive known as the "godfather of black music."
H.E.R., nominated for five Grammys including album of the year, continued to prove why she's the artist to look out for, earning a standing ovation for her spectacular vocals and skilled guitar playing. Other performers included Brandi Carlile, Florida Georgia Line with Bebe Rexha, and Keala Settle, who sang "This Is Me" from "The Greatest Showman."
Davis' event was also attended by James Brolin, Beck, Joe Walsh, Alice Cooper, A$AP Rocky, Diane Warren, LL Cool J, David Foster, Miguel, Chick Corea, Maren Morris, Rae Sremmurd, Ryan Tedder, Max Martin, Courtney B. Vance, L.A. Reid, Dua Lipa, Ciara and Russell Wilson.
Alex Borstein Wanted to Go Braless at 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' Premiere
Ariana Reacts To Pete's Message, Says She'll Always Have 'Irrevocable Love' For Him
Casey Anthony Revealed To Friends Caylee's Mysterious Father Died In A Car Crash
« Ariana Grande Wins Her First Grammy After Boycotting 2019 Awards
Best Grammys Makeup & Hairstyles — Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez & More »

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home >> Dismal Swamp State Park >> History
dismal.swamp@ncparks.gov
2294 U.S. 17 N.
South Mills, NC 27976
March to October:
Trails close 30 minutes before park closing time.
Saturday to Sunday:
Early European settlers encountered a very different Great Dismal Swamp than the one we see today. In the late 1600s, the Dismal was a vast wetland, covering about 1.28 million acres. It stretched from the James River in Virginia to the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. For centuries, Native Americans used the Swamp as hunting and fishing grounds but found it too wet to make homes there.
Some early explorers, such as William Byrd II, saw no value in swampland and thought it should be drained and converted to agricultural uses. The system of ditches criss-crossing Dismal was intended to carry water out, but this endeavor was only partially successful. Although the water table dropped significantly, the Swamp remained unsuitable as farmland, and so efforts then turned to harvesting timber. Cypress and cedar both could be used to make durable products with exceptional resistance to moisture. Cedar shingles were a very common product of the Swamp in the 1800s. By the 1880s, most hardwood trees had been logged out, but commercial logging continued into the 1960s. In 1972, the Nature Conservancy purchased land from timber companies and sold over 14,000 acres of that land to the State of North Carolina in 1974. For many years, the area was managed as the Dismal Swamp State Natural Area. Landlocked on three sides and bordered by the Canal on the fourth, access for the general public was limited. Following construction of the $1 million unique hydraulic swing bridge over the Canal and the Visitor Center, the Dismal Swamp State Park opened in 2008.
The Dismal Swamp Canal itself represents an important piece of American history. While the idea of a canal originated in the early 1700s, construction did not begin until 1793. Dug almost entirely by slaves, the Canal stretches 22 miles, from Deep Creek in Chesapeake, VA, to the town of South Mills, NC. The slaves forced to dig the channel by hand faced terrible working conditions: waist-deep muck and peat, extreme summer heat, biting insects, and venomous snakes. On average, they were able to complete about 10 feet of the Canal each day, while their masters collected their wages for the work. In 1805, 12 years later, the Canal opened to boat traffic, but it was so narrow and shallow that only flat-bottomed barges called lighter boats or gondolas were able to traverse it. These lighter boats, however, were used extensively to move timber products out of the Swamp and off to market. You can see a replica lighter boat exhibit along Canal Road, about 0.7 miles from the Visitor Center.
The Dismal Swamp Canal changed private hands several times and fell into disrepair during the Civil War, while the Union and the Confederacy each fought to control this vital means of transporting supplies. Finally, in 1929, the United States government purchased the Canal for $500,000 and the Army Corps of Engineers widened and dredged it to its current width of about 50 feet and depth of about 9-12 feet.
At different times in its past, the Dismal Swamp has been viewed as a "glorious paradise," a grim and foreboding place of strange smells and sounds, and a refuge. Lawbreakers found it an ideal place to hide illegal moonshine stills during the Prohibition years. Today, you can see a replica still along Canal Road about a half mile from the Visitor Center and the remains of real stills along the Supple-jack Trail.
In the time of slavery, many runaway slaves bravely seeking a path to freedom took shelter in the Swamp. Some stayed only briefly to rest before finding passage farther north, but some formed maroon colonies on mezic islands, areas of higher ground, and lived out the rest of their lives in the Swamp. Researchers believe the Dismal may have been home to the largest maroon colony. In December 2003, the National Park Service recognized the Great Dismal Swamp as a site on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. It is the only such site to span two states (Virginia and North Carolina).
For more on the Swamp's colorful and fascinating past, visit the gift shop to find some detailed historical nonfiction books, speak with park staff, or check out the exhibit hall and trailside panels on both Canal banks.
Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 10:00am
Winter Birding Basics
Saturday, February 1, 2020 - 2:00pm
Denizens of the Dismal
Saturday, February 8, 2020 - 11:00am


Welcome home! This Fernbrook built beauty, offers 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and has been extensively updated and shows to perfection. The new entertainers kitchen (2017) boasting quality cabinetry, New Stainless Steel appliances & quartz counters is sure to please. Hardwood floors adorn both the main and bedroom levels and 9 ft ceilings can be enjoyed on the main floor. The bedroom level offers four large bedrooms with new hardwood floors and the master ensuite offering a large 4 piece bath and walk-in closet. The fully finished lower level features plenty of space, and offers a beautiful wet bar, stunning 3 piece piece bath and plenty of storage. The double car garage offers inside access and epoxy floors. Located next to Alexander's P.S. & walking distance to Corpus Christi H.S.


We extend a warm welcome to you and invite you to join us for worship at the corner of Princess and Chester Road, Claremont.
We are a family friendly church, who share a passion for God and for our family and friends. In addition to our Sunday services, we have plenty of activities and hope you can join us.
Whatever your story, you are welcome here.


With Quality Medical's Nasal Cannulas, oxygen therapy has become hassle-free and convenient peruse our nasal cannulas today to enhance your oxygen therapy. The oxygen nasal cannula sold by us are most comfortable, super soft and very economical. We also sell a pack of 4 High Quality, Soft & Cheap Nasal Cannula. Contact our team to know more about best super soft 7 foot oxygen nasal cannula for Oxygen Concentrator.
Nasal cannulae (Nasal Cannula) usually alluded to as oxygen cannulas are therapeutic gadgets used to convey supplemental oxygen. Economical, Soft, high quality, high flow and lightweight tube, oxygen cannulas (nasal cannula) easily hook around an individual's ears and gently rest inside of the nostrils; the opposite end of an oxygen cannula connects directly to an oxygen concentrator (Portable Oxygen Concentrator) or oxygen flowmeter.


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Australia's leading skate supplier is offering huge discounts of skate gear. Check out clothing, decks, trucks, wheels, bearings, hardware and scooters all on sale from at least 20% off. We have over 700 pieces of Sale Skateboard Gear, Sale Skateboard Clothing & Sale Skateboard Clothing – Our sale section is constantly being updated with the best value bargain skateboarding products.


On Stacked Bar charts and Line and stacked column charts, the axis used to split quantities or $values by a category (eg status or sales groups) requires a user-defined title text. This functionality was available in Excel.
Instead users would rather see a text title such as 'Number of Jobs' or 'Sales value' on the y axis (like you could in Excel), ie a text title that describes the generic (cumulative) value that describes the combination of the axis values.
If Title is On, and text entered in 'Title Text', the default title (described above) would be replaced by the text entered in new field 'Title Text'.
My charts are partially transparent because I use a background in my sheet. When going into focus mode this gets confusing, because all other content of my sheet (other charts and stuff) now shine through the enlarged chart. When entering focus mode, transparency should go to 0% automatically. An alternative could be that only the sheet background is reproduced in focus mode.
There should be an easy way to format the page and the placement and size of the visuals on it. For example there is no grid or ruler on the page.
Does often happen, especially when doing the finishing touches of a dashboard, of need modify the same property of all (or almost all) the contained visuals (ex. General or Border). Once i finished to edit the properties and change the focus to the next i'd like to have the same property expanded to speed up this activity.
Simple but very appreciable, imho.
Support for Custom UI in Dashboards using HTML / CSS, Scripts like SharePoint designer. Present options for formatting is not at all sufficient for different requirements we are getting from our clients. Also so many bugs are there in existing formatting options. i.e. Data Labels are not showing some time, borders getting vanished sometime.
Desperately need the capability to connect Excel to Power BI Desktop files as is now possible through the Power BI cloud service.
Please implement a stable sorting algorithm on the data view of Power BI Desktop. It would allow me to view the details of my data without creating some ugly sort key. It's a small thing, but would make my life easier. Thanks!
Add conditional formatting to words ( for example: pass will be green and fail will be red).
Allow user to Change the font size in visualzation and fields panes.
In the Options for Power BI Desktop, add controls so a user can set the font size for the text in the Visualization Pane and Fields Pane. Add a separate controls for setting the thumbnail size for the visualization icons in the visualization pane. When using a high resolution monitor, the current fonts are vey small.
list of all the mesures that we add to the report.
same like the calculated field tab in excel.
When you have 100 items in a slicer, it would be good to have Drag and select multiple. Search icon is difficult to find for users. would be good if its visible without any clicks.
Power BI have modeling and advanced query options for SQL Server datasources, but I can not use similar functionality for MS analysis services cube datasources, Do I miss something or this MDX lecel querying and modeling options are not ready for Power BI desktop yet ?
I use, custom column generation and then sort this column using another data column in Power PI modelling feature for SQL server dataset but it is not possible for analysis services cubes datasets.
Any comment or workarounds are apprecciated.
When editing a tabular model you have the option to analyze in excel and specify the user you want to be to verify roles are working correctly, or you can specify it in the connection string with EffectiveUser. There doesn't seem to be a way to do that in Power BI Desktop.
Prerequisite for this tool is missing (like: Windows 7 and higher, 64 bit OS, .NET 4.62 and higher, I7 and 64GB RAM and more). What is wrong when nothing from Power BI is being able to start after regular successful install?


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La radiazione infrarossa (IR), in fisica, è la radiazione elettromagnetica con banda di frequenza dello spettro elettromagnetico inferiore a quella della luce visibile, ma maggiore di quella delle onde radio, ovvero lunghezza d'onda compresa tra 700 nm e 1 mm (banda infrarossa). Il termine significa "sotto il rosso" (dal latino infra, "sotto"), perché il rosso è il colore visibile con la frequenza più bassa.

Viene spesso associata con i concetti di "calore" e "radiazione termica", poiché ogni oggetto con temperatura superiore allo zero assoluto (in pratica qualsiasi oggetto reale) emette spontaneamente radiazione in questa banda (per la legge di Wien aumentando la temperatura il picco di emissione si sposta sempre più verso il visibile finché l'oggetto non diviene incandescente).

Storia

Nel 1800 il fisico William Herschel pose un termometro a mercurio nello spettro prodotto da un prisma di vetro, per misurare il calore delle differenti bande di luce colorate. Scoprì che il termometro continuava a salire anche dopo essersi mosso oltre il bordo rosso dello spettro, dove non c'era più luce visibile. Fu il primo esperimento che mostrò come il calore poteva trasmettersi grazie ad una forma invisibile di luce.

Classificazioni

Data la vastità dello spettro infrarosso e molteplicità di utilizzi delle radiazioni collocate in vari punti al suo interno, sono state sviluppate diverse classificazioni in ulteriori sottoregioni. Non esiste un unico standard riconosciuto per queste bande, ma ci sono invece più convenzioni settoriali, nate in differenti campi di ricerca e dell'ingegneria per suddividere le regioni collegate a diverse classi di fenomeni nella branca di volta in volta interessata.

 <  () = luce visibile
 >  = microonde

Un ulteriore sistema pratico, sviluppato nell'ambito dell'industria delle telecomunicazioni, suddivide in bande molto strette la regione del vicino infrarosso interessante per la trasmissione a mezzo fibra ottica.

Nelle lunghezze d'onda adiacenti a quelle visibili fino ad un paio di micron, i fenomeni associati sono essenzialmente assimilabili a quelli della luce, anche se la risposta dei materiali alla luce visibile non è per nulla indicativa di quella alla luce infrarossa. Oltre i 2 µm ad esempio il normale vetro è opaco, così come molti gas, cosicché esistono finestre di assorbimento nelle quali l'aria è opaca e pertanto le frequenza che vi ricadono sono assenti dallo spettro solare osservato a terra. Una nuova finestra di trasmissione si apre fra 3 e 5 µm, corrispondente al picco di emissione di corpi molto caldi (la banda utilizzata, ad esempio, dai missili a ricerca termica).

Al contrario, molti materiali che ai nostri occhi appaiono perfettamente opachi, sono più o meno trasparenti a queste lunghezza d'onda. Ad esempio silicio e germanio a queste lunghezze d'onda presentano opacità ridottissime, tanto che vengono usati per fabbricare lenti e fibre ottiche (attenuazioni nell'ordine di 0,2 dB/km per i 1550 nm). Pure molte materie plastiche sintetiche hanno una buona trasparenza a queste radiazioni.

A lunghezze d'onda maggiori si hanno fenomeni via via più simili alle onde radio.

Il limite inferiore dell'infrarosso veniva spesso definito come 1 mm poiché a questa lunghezza d'onda termina l'ultima delle bande radio classificate (EHF, 30–300 GHz). Ciononostante, la regione da circa 100 µm a 1 mm era considerata una "terra di nessuno", difficilmente indagabile a causa della mancanza di sensori e soprattutto di sorgenti luminose adatte ad operare in questa banda. Dalla fine della prima decina degli anni 2000 queste limitazioni tecniche stanno cadendo, dando origine ad una intensa attività di ricerca su questa parte dello spettro elettromagnetico che si preferisce ormai definire regione della radiazione terahertz, detta anche dei "raggi T".

Utilizzi

La radiazione infrarossa viene usata in apparecchi di visione notturna, quando non c'è abbastanza luce visibile. I sensori infrarossi convertono la radiazione in arrivo in un'immagine: questa può essere monocromatica (ad esempio, gli oggetti più caldi risulteranno più chiari), oppure può essere usato un sistema di falsi colori per rappresentare le diverse temperature. Questi apparecchi si sono diffusi inizialmente negli eserciti di numerosi Paesi, per poter vedere i loro obiettivi anche al buio.

In commercio ci sono due classi di telecamere ad Infrarosso: le prime sono generalmente sensibili sia all'infrarosso vicino e alla luce visibile e non permettono la misurazione della temperatura vengono generalmente chiamate telecamere IR (o Day & Night), le seconde sono sensibili all'infrarosso medio (termico) e sono definite termocamere.

Tra le applicazioni della radiazione infrarossa è la cosiddetta termografia, evoluzione in campo civile della tecnologia di visione notturna nata per scopi militari.

Il fumo è più trasparente alle radiazioni nel campo dell'infrarosso rispetto a quelle appartenenti alla luce visibile, perciò i pompieri possono usare apparecchi infrarossi per orientarsi in ambienti pieni di fumo.

L'infrarosso è utilizzato anche come mezzo di trasmissione dati: nei telecomandi dei televisori (per evitare interferenze con le onde radio del segnale televisivo), tra computer portatili e fissi, palmari, telefoni cellulari, nei sensori di movimento e altri apparecchi elettronici.

Lo standard di trasmissione dati affermato è l'IrDA (Infrared Data Association). Telecomandi e apparecchi IrDA usano diodi emettitori di radiazione infrarossa (comunemente detti LED infrarossi). La radiazione infrarossa da essi emessa viene messa a fuoco da lenti di plastica e modulata, cioè accesa e spenta molto rapidamente, per trasportare dati. Il ricevitore usa un fotodiodo al silicio per convertire la radiazione infrarossa incidente in corrente elettrica. Risponde solo al segnale pulsante del trasmettitore, ed è capace di filtrare via segnali infrarossi che cambiano più lentamente come luce in arrivo dal Sole, da altri oggetti caldi, e così via.

Anche la luce usata nelle fibre ottiche è spesso infrarossa.

Inoltre la radiazione infrarossa è utilizzata nella spettroscopia infrarossa, usata nella caratterizzazione dei materiali.

Voci correlate
 Analisi dei guasti
 Onda (fisica)
 Onda elettromagnetica
 Radiazione elettromagnetica
 Spettroscopia IR
 Rivelatore ad infrarossi
 Termometro a infrarossi
 Riscaldamento ad infrarossi
 Radiazione Terahertz

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

  Come trasformare una webcam standard in una telecamera ad infrarossi - Video che mostra come convertire in pochi minuti una normale webcam in una telecamera sensibile agli infrarossi
  In questa pagina si possono vedere numerose foto che mostrano la differenza tra un oggetto osservato in luce visibile e lo stesso oggetto osservato negli infrarossi.
 In questa pagina si possono vedere numerose foto realizzate con filtri infrarosso su reflex digitali con sensore CCD oppure CMOS.
 In questa pagina si può vedere una raccolta di filmati realizzati tramite telecamere a raggi infrarossi.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


We want to be part of the art world! We want to collect art! We can do it! Wait, what? How?
If it's your good fortune to gift artwork, or just a big fat check, it's important to think of the IRS right now.
Recent art-news headlines was filled with the anxiety-inducing headlines. But there's hope.
Ancient jewellery styles are in vogue but, original pieces that can be thousands of years old are surprisingly affordable.
Let's talk about what's available to today's auction-savvy wine lovers!
Who knew, the designer, Tommy Hilfiger, was a collector?
Collect what you love. Don't buy art purely as an investment. When your collection gets serious, work with a private bank that understands the complex dynamics of your passion.
The Tate Modern's fall exhibition will feature works from Elton John's photography collection. With prints by heavyweights like Man Ray, Tina Modotti, and Alfred Stieglitz.


Understand how the use of cloud computing is making DevOps fast and affordable.
- [Instructor] Okay, let's talk about why DevOps in the cloud? This is really a shift in thinking away from a product-centric to a service-centric approach, at the end of the day. So, in the olden days, meaning 10, 15, 20 years ago, software was built and shipped. We developed the features and we're done. Product owners focused only on features. Each silo owns their own area. Dev must go through Ops to get work done. Ops monitors apps. Reactive monitoring and application operation.
The customers isolated from one another and the application services share a common platform and infrastructure. These days, things are different with DevOps. We're dealing, whether it's DevOps on premise or DevOps in the cloud, we're dealing with services that are run and managed. Services are never done until they are turned off. Product owners own operational results along with product feature sets. All groups focus on end users' satisfaction. Ops enables Dev to get work done.
Ops provides Dev with tools to operate apps. We have proactive monitoring in operations. We're typically dealing with multitenancy and shared resources, and then, finally, distributed sources and isolated incidences, and there's hardware independence. Hardware's typically virtualized in the cloud. So what does this mean? Well, traditionally, we did design, we did development, we did testing, and we did deployment. This was really the traditional waterfall mechanism.
In other words, what we did was, from design of the application to the operations of the applications, using a sequential process. In other words, the next process couldn't start until the current process was done. However, these days, we think differently. Design, development, testing, deployment, and operation, are all iterative processes. This means that we're, in essence, doing everything at the same time. In other words, we're designing at any instance in time different applications, we're developing those applications, we're testing those applications, we're deploying those applications, and we're operating those applications, and we're not necessarily waiting for the previous step to finish.
In other words, we're not running down release cycles from design all the way to operations. We're doing this in an independent and iterative way. This provides us agility, the ability to leverage the agile methodology, for example, so we can iterate as many times as we need to get the application right. We continuously improve the application, continuously design the application, continuously deploy the new software on the cloud. So, the value of cloud is fairly well-defined right now.
So, in other words we look at this plan, here. This is 2016 through 2025. This basically is the value curve, or basically value balloons that exist in a particular enterprise. So, it has business value, strategy value, and product value, use of data, and infrastructure. And as we move further into the cloud, we're able to exploit these things. We're able to exploit the way in which we deal with the application platforms. How we build products and services in the cloud. How we utilize information.
So, the idea is that DevOps plus cloud computing equals a very valuable value proposition for the enterprise. It's one plus one equals four kind of addition. So, ultimately, understand that the cloud is an easier way to enable DevOps and the cloud implicitly provides value, as we can see here.
Video: Why DevOps in the cloud?


The 'Growing Up Chrisley' star is officially tying the knot!
She has been dating the hockey player for over a year.
He popped the question at her home in Nashville on Christmas Eve.
Congratulations are in order for Savannah Chrisley!
People reports that the Chrisley Knows Best star and her longtime boyfriend, Nic Kerdiles, got engaged on December 24 in front of family and friends at her Nashville home.
The Christmas Eve proposal was a complete surprise to Savannah, who thought it was "insane" that there were camera crews following the Chrisleys around their house on a special occasion. The 21-year-old had no idea just how special the evening would be—and that she'd be grateful to have it on film.
"Nic's family was in town and my whole family was there and we were filming and I was furious," she said. "Then my mom said she forgot something at the store. So, I got in the car and went to the store with her. When we came back and we walked in the door, no one was there."
When Savannah walked outside to find everyone, she realized what was going on. The patio was "all lit up" and Nic's family and her own family and friends were standing there waiting.
"I just start freaking out because I'm like, 'This isn't really about to happen,'" she recalled. "Then, Nic looks at me and he was like, 'Hey babe, will you come here?' And you can tell he was so nervous, and I was nervous."
Congratulations to both of you @savannahchrisley @nickerdiles i wish you both a long happy and loving marriage! P.S Grayson is next!
She said it felt like a "long walk" over to her boyfriend, where she finally asked him what was going on. Then, the tension was broken with a bit of comic relief.
"It's funny. He tells me now that he forgot everything he wanted to say. He said he had this whole thing written out, and he was like, 'I just forgot it all,'" Savannah said. "And it was just so cute and everyone was crying. It was just such a cool moment. And the fact that both of our families were there made it even better."
Does it get any cuter than that?!
News of Savannah's engagement to Nic comes just one day after the premiere of her new show with sibling Chase Chrisley. Here's hoping we'll get to see that footage of the proposal on this season of Growing Up Chrisley!


text:
The charmer
By Lisa Rosen
Rosen is a freelance writer.
In director Baz Luhrmann's new rollicking epic, "Australia," Hugh Jackman is the Drover, a cowboy more comfortable on a horse than in society. The swaggering rebel with a heart of gold is first seen on screen starting a bar fight over a snub of his friend, an aboriginal man. It's as if Rhett Butler were back but fighting for the North this time. ¶ That same dashing energy is evident in the actor. There are the obvious charms, of course: the green eyes, easy smile, the chiseled muscles on a 6-foot-2 frame. But it's the combination of strength and sensitivity that makes the 40-year-old actor truly endearing. Sitting in a genteel Beverly Hills hotel suite, he tells wild, careening stories about riding with a pack of stampeding horses and then talks with emotion about a film that hopes to aid in healing an old wound in his country.
Then there's his devotion to his family. When he and his wife, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, started dating, they agreed to never spend more than two weeks apart. Twelve years and two kids later, they've honored their pact. That just ups the dreamboat quotient.
With all that, his earnest humility is a welcome trait, and a natural byproduct of his upbringing Down Under. Jackman had just landed in Los Angeles when People magazine named him its Sexiest Man Alive; he says his inbox was immediately filled with mocking notes from his friends back home. One left a message ranting, "This is worse than the Florida 2000 recount. This is rigged. Give it back!" It's hard to get a big head after that.
In fact, teasing almost stunted his career before it began. Acting had been a fun hobby as a child, but when he was 12 years old, a teacher told him he was a good dancer and that he should train seriously. One of his brothers taunted him, saying he'd be a sissy if he took dance classes. "So I didn't go," he says. Six years later, his father took the boys to see the musical "42nd Street." At intermission, his brother apologized for being such a jerk years before. "He said, 'Hugh, you should be up there doing that stuff,' " Jackman recalls. "It made me tear up at the time -- it was a beautiful thing to say -- and I actually went straightaway and did dance classes from then."
They've come in handy. Jackman has had an impressive stage career, winning acclaim for performances in musicals such as "Carousel," "Oklahoma!" and "Sunset Boulevard." Fabulous in gold lame, he won a 2004 Tony Award for his role as Peter Allen in "The Boy From Oz."
And his screen presence is undeniable, as any Wolverine fan can attest. Jackman had started working as an actor in Australia right out of drama school, but it would be as the brooding, misunderstood mutant in the three "X-Men" films that he would mark his Stateside breakthrough. (He is presently finishing up "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," shot in Sydney.) Roles in films such as "Someone Like You" and "Kate & Leopold" showed off his romantic nature. "Australia" allowed the actor to explore both his hard and soft sides.
A sprawling story set on the eve of World War II, "Australia" tells the tale of Lady Sarah (Nicole Kidman), a British aristocrat who needs the Drover to help save her ranch in the Northern Territory of Australia. Although they despise each other at first sight, they come to admire each other (and then some) in the course of their travails.
In one of the film's funniest scenes, Jackman is seen washing up after a hard day of riding. He lathers and rinses off his oiled and tanned upper body. The scene is lovingly captured in slow motion, and then the camera pans to the astonished eyes of the uptight Lady Sarah. It's a nice reversal of the ogling man, as well as a campy recognition of his sex appeal. But initially, Jackman was worried that the audience wouldn't get the wink and instead think he was a jerk.
"What Baz said in response to that was, 'Hugh, this movie has to be bold in all the styles we play,' " Jackman relates. In other words, don't hold back. So he didn't. Members of the crew extended the joke by showing up on set shirtless and oiled up as well. "Every one of them was taking the piss out of me," Jackman says, laughing. (Translation: yet more teasing.)
The film does boldly pay homage to a raft of stylish, stylized films, such as "The African Queen" and "Lawrence of Arabia." "Gone With the Wind" is also referenced, in the sweeping love story with Kidman's character.
Unlike that last film, with its glorification of the Confederacy, this story aims to be on the right side of history. "Australia's" action and romance surround the true story of the Stolen Generations of indigenous and mixed-race children, who were taken from their homes by the Australian government and placed into institutions and missions, to "civilize" them. The practice continued until the early 1970s, and only this year did the Australian government apologize to the victims. The tragedy is embodied by Nullah (Brandon Walters), a mixed-race boy whom the Drover and Lady Sarah come to care for as their own.
Jackman, who went to a prestigious boy's academy in Sydney, had learned nothing about the Stolen Generations until he reached college. "I almost didn't believe it at first; I was like, this is too radical," he says of the government's treatment of the country's Aborigines. "And then the more I read, the more outraged I was that I didn't know about it before."
Luhrmann told the actor that the most gratifying reaction has been at screenings for predominantly indigenous audiences in the Northern Territory. The film has been greeted with cheering, tears and hugs, and a sense of relief "not dissimilar to what you've gone through here with the election," Jackman points out. "The strongest part of the film for me is that line, 'Just because it is, doesn't mean it should be.' "
But, Jackman adds, "Baz said if we made a very didactic and earnest story about the Stolen Generations, we'll have about three people watching the movie." Hence the romance, the drama, the Japanese bombing of Darwin (an actual although little-known event) and a treacherous cattle drive through the desert.
"It was the most challenging role because not only were there all these genres, but how to make them mix together, and ultimately how to make people still go on for the ride in the story and feel something at the end," Jackman says.
He was aided by costars he called a dream. Kidman is a good friend of Jackman's wife, but in working with her he found "there's a kind of danger about Nicole, in the best sense of the word," he says. "No matter how much you know her, there's always something a little unpredictable that keeps you on your toes." And he was blown away by Walters, who was 11 at the time of filming and in his first acting role. "You spend a lifetime craftwise as an actor, getting used to doing your thing and learning how to ignore the camera, using it but getting beyond that. Brandon just instinctively has that. It's magical. He may be one of the most transcendent actors I've ever worked with."
Jackman threw himself into the physical aspects of the role just as he's thrown himself into his career -- facing his fear and going all out. Seeking to truly embody the character, he spent a year learning to ride like a real stockman. One of his many stunts found him surrounded by 200 wild horses that the Drover was bringing into the corral. His riding instructor, Craig Emerton, told him that once they began galloping, all Jackman could do was go along for the ride. "He said, 'This will be a point in time when you can pull with all your might and nothing will stop this horse,' " Jackman recalls. Then they were off, "faster than the Kentucky Derby. And I just sort of let go and we were flying."


It had Spartans coach Tom Izzo shaking his head a couple of days after the first home loss of the season.
"A couple of areas we have to get better at is definitely rebounding the ball and that's an effort-related thing," Izzo said. "And we've worn down a little bit on the perimeter and that has hurt us. Hopefully we'll regroup. I don't look at it as a complete overhaul, I just felt like (the loss to Indiana) was a game they played awfully well and we didn't play well enough to win.
"The reality of it is you're gonna go through some ups and downs and we went through a down game this weekend and hopefully we'll get back up and on track."
And as tough as taking down a top-10 team will be, the Illini aren't backing down.
"I think we can beat anybody," guard Trent Frazier told reporters after practice Monday. "We've just got to come out and execute for 40 minutes. I don't think we're worried if they have a number by their team, a ranking. Every team we come out and play we play the same way. We play every team hard."
It's been an Achilles' heel all year for the Spartans, who had two of their worst turnover games early in the season in a five-point loss to then-No. 1 Kansas and an overtime loss at Louisville. It's been cleaned up some in conference play, but after giving the ball away 19 times in a win last week at Iowa, the Spartans know what they'll face against the Illini.
"They are very disruptive defensively and also have done a great job utilizing people," Izzo said. "They have athletes at every position and play eight or nine guys. They play that style of crazy pressure and doing those things. If you turn it over and they score off it, you're in trouble. If you don't turn it over, I think that's how you win games."


Increased breaches and growing threats have put data protection at the top of the list of IT leaders' issues list. Governments around the world are joining the fray by mandating data security safeguards for businesses. One of the most prominent is the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which is set to take affect for the 28 E.U. member countries in May of 2018.


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Home » Context of 'Mid-March 2003: Interrogators Dispatched to Iraq'
Context of 'Mid-March 2003: Interrogators Dispatched to Iraq'
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July 2002: New, Poorly Trained Interrogators Arrive at Bagram
A new interrogation unit arrives at the Bagram Collection Point (BCP), the improvised interrogation and holding facility at Bagram Air Force Base (see October 2001). The unit is headed by Lieutenant Carolyn Wood (see January 22, 2003-May 8, 2003), who leads a 13-man unit from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, NC. Wood's unit is augmented by six Arabic-speaking reservists from the Utah National Guard. Many in the group, consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, are counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers have ever questioned actual prisoners. The training they receive is ad hoc and minimal. The noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sergeant Steven Loring, will later tell investigators, "There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation" like the one at Bagram. Nor are the rules of engagement clear. The platoon uses the standard interrogations guide, Section 34-52 of the Army Fleld Manual, and an order from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to treat prisoners "humanely" and, when possible, within the strictures of the Geneva Conventions. But when President Bush determines in February 2002 that the Conventions do not apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda captives (see February 7, 2002), the interrogators decide they "could deviate slightly from the rules," in the words of Utah reservist Sergeant James Leahy. "There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Leahy will tell Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers say, are to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise. One group of soldiers is later dubbed "the Testosterone Gang"; they decorate their tent with a Confederate flag, spend large amounts of time bodybuilding, and quickly earn a reputation as some of the most brutal of the soldiers at Bagram. [New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Carolyn A. Wood, Donald Rumsfeld, Steven Loring, George W. Bush, James Leahy
November 30-December 3, 2002: Suspected Taliban Figure Tortured to Death in US Custody
Habibullah. [Source: CBS]Mullah Habibullah, a 30-year-old Afghan from the southern province of Oruzgan, dies of complications related to "blunt force trauma" while in detention at the US base at Bagram. [Washington Post, 3/5/2003; BBC, 3/6/2003; Guardian, 3/7/2003; New York Times, 9/17/2004] Habibullah was captured by an Afghan warlord on November 28, 2002, and delivered to Bagram by the CIA on November 30. Habibullah is identified as the brother of a former Taliban commander, and later described as portly, well-groomed, and, in the words of American military police officer Major Bobby Atwell, "very confident." [New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Injured When Delivered into US Custody - When Habibullah arrived at the US air base, he was reportedly already severely hurt. Despite his condition, according to one account, he was isolated "in a 'safety' position [stress position], with his arms shackled and tied to a beam in the ceiling." He was left in that position for days, but regularly checked on. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004]
Targeted for Abuse - Though battered and ill, Habibullah's defiance makes him a target for physical abuse, with the MPs and guards repeatedly attacking his legs. (Some guards will later claim Habibullah's injuries were received when he tried to escape.) Most of the Americans will later describe Habibullah as insubordinate; one will recall being kneed in the groin by Habibullah after subjecting the prisoner to a rectal examination. Habibullah's interrogations produce little of worth, in part because the MPs who interrogate him usually have no interpreters available. Sometimes the MPs demand that another prisoner translate for them; usually the interrogation sessions contain no more than physical restraints or beatings. [New York Times, 5/20/2005] At some point, Sgt. James P. Boland, a guard from the Army Reserve's 377th MP Company from Cincinnati, allegedly watches as a subordinate beats Habibullah. [New York Times, 9/17/2004] The beating of Habibullah was likely witnessed by British detainee Moazzam Begg, who will later say he witnessed the death of "two fellow detainees at the hands of US military personnel" while at Bagram (see July 12, 2004). [Guardian, 10/1/2004; New York Times, 10/15/2004]
Complaints of Chest Pains Mocked - During his last interrogation session, on December 2, Habibullah spends the entirety of the session coughing and complaining of chest pains. His right leg is stiff and his right leg swollen. The interpreter for the session, Ebrahim Baerde, later recalls the interrogators "laughing and making fun of" Habibullah "because he was spitting up a lot of phlegm." Habibullah is still defiant; when one interrogator asks if he wants to spend the rest of his life in handcuffs, Baerde will recall the prisoner retorting, "Yes, don't they look good on me?" [New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Found Dead, Hanging from Shackles - On December 3, Habibullah is found dead, still hanging in his shackles. [Washington Post, 3/5/2003; BBC, 3/6/2003; Guardian, 3/7/2003; New York Times, 9/17/2004] Boland sees Habibullah hanging from the ceiling of his cell, suspended by two sets of handcuffs and a chain around his waist. His body is slumped forward and his tongue is protruding. Boland, along with Specialists Anthony Morden and Brian Cammack, enters the cell. Cammack puts a piece of bread in Habibullah's mouth; another soldier puts an apple in Habibullah's hand, and it falls to the floor. According to Cammack, Habibullah's spit gets on Cammack's chest. Later, Cammack will acknowledge, "I'm not sure he spit at me," but now he screams, "Don't ever spit on me again!" and knees Habibullah in the thigh "maybe a couple" of times. Habibullah makes no response; his body swings limply from the chains. Twenty minutes later, the guards unchain Habibullah and lay him on the floor. He has no pulse. Cammack, according to another guard, "appeared very distraught" and "was running about the room hysterically." An MP is sent to wake a medic, who refuses to respond, telling the MP to call an ambulance instead. By the time a second medic arrives at the cell, Habibullah is laid spreadeagled on the floor, eyes and mouth open. "It looked like he had been dead for a while, and it looked like nobody cared," the medic, Staff Sergeant Rodney Glass, will later recall. Atwell will later recall that Habibullah's death "did not cause an enormous amount of concern 'cause it appeared natural." The autopsy, completed five days later, will show bruises and abrasions on Habibullah's chest, arms, and head. The body has severe contusions on the calves, knees, and thighs, and the sole print of a boot is on his left calf. The death will be attributed to a blood clot, probably caused by the severe injuries to his legs, which traveled to his heart and blocked the blood flow to his lungs. [New York Times, 5/20/2005] His legs have been struck so forcefully, according to one death certificate, it complicated his coronary artery disease. Another certificate will say the beating led to a pulmonary embolism, which is a blockage of an artery in the lungs, often caused by a blood clot. [USA Today, 5/31/2004]
Commanding Officer Able to Hear Screams, Moans of Detainees - In charge of the military intelligence interrogators at Bagram at this time is Capt. Carolyn A. Wood. According to an anonymous intelligence officer, Wood should be aware of what is happening to prisoners at Bagram since interrogations take place close to her office. The intelligence officer will recall hearing screams and moans coming out from the interrogation and isolation rooms. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004]
Entity Tags: Carolyn A. Wood, Anthony Morden, Bobby Atwell, Brian Cammack, James P. Boland, Rodney Glass, Ebrahim Baerde, Mullah Habibullah, Moazzam Begg, Taliban
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan
December 5-9, 2002: Taxi Driver Arrested in Afghanistan and Handed to US Forces
A sketch by MP Sergeant Thomas Curtis showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell. [Source: New York Times]Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan farmer and part-time taxi driver from the small village of Yakubi in eastern Afghanistan, is picked up by local authorities and turned over to US soldiers. Dilawar is described as a shy, uneducated man with a slight frame, rarely leaving the stone farmhouse he shares with his wife and family. He is captured while driving a used Toyota sedan that his family bought him to use as a taxi. He has three fares, men headed back towards his village, and is stopped by Afghan militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander Jan Baz Khan. (Khan will later be taken into custody himself for allegedly attacking US targets and then turning over innocent villagers to US forces, accusing them of carrying out the attacks.) The militia confiscates a broken walkie-talkie from one of the passengers, and an electric stabilizer used to regulate current from a generator in the trunk of the Toyota (Dilawar's family later says the stabilizer is not theirs; they have no electricity). All four men are turned over to American soldiers at Bagram Air Force Base as suspects in a recent rocket attack on the US base at Khost. They spend the first night handcuffed to the fence to deprive them of sleep. Dilawar is then examined by the base doctor, who pronounces him healthy.
Passengers Shipped to Guantanamo, Say Bagram Treatment Far Worse - Dilawar's three passengers are eventually shipped to Guantanamo for a year, before being released without charge. The three will describe their ordeal at Bagram as far worse than their treatment at Guantanamo. All will claim to have been beaten, stripped in front of female guards, and subjected to repeated and harsh rectal exams. Abdul Rahim, a baker from Khost, will recall: "They did lots and lots of bad things to me [at Bagram]. I was shouting and crying, and no one was listening. When I was shouting, the soldiers were slamming my head against the desk." Another of Dilawar's passengers, Parkhudin, later recalls that Dilawar "could not breathe" in the black cloth hood pulled over his head.
Running Joke - Though Dilawar is shy and frail, he is quickly labeled "noncompliant." One US military policeman, Specialist Corey Jones, reports that Dilawar spat on him and tried to kick him. Jones retaliated by giving him a number of "peroneal knee strikes" (see May 20, 2005). As Jones will later recall: "He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god. Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny. It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah.' It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes." Several other guards will later admit to striking Dilawar. While most MPs deny any knowledge of Dilawar being injured by the physical assaults, Jones will remember seeing Dilawar's legs when his orange drawstring pants fell off of him while he was shackled. "I saw the bruise because his pants kept falling down while he was in standing restraints," Jones will later recall. "Over a certain time period, I noticed it was the size of a fist." Dilawar's repeated cries and pleas for his release do little besides annoy his captors.
Fourth Interrogation Marked by Beatings - Dilawar's fourth interrogation, on December 8, turns sour. Lead interrogator Specialist Glendale Walls will contend that Dilawar is hostile and evasive. Sergeant Selena Salcedo, another interrogator, will say that Dilawar smiled, refused to answer questions, and refused to stay kneeling on the ground or in his ordered "chair-sitting" posture against the wall. But the interpreter present, Ahmad Ahmadzai, has a different recollection. According to Ahmadzai, Dilawar denies launching any rockets at the Americans. He is unable to hold his cuffed hands above him while kneeling, and Salcedo slaps them back up whenever they begin to droop. "Selena berated him for being weak and questioned him about being a man, which was very insulting because of his heritage," Ahmadzai will tell investigators. Both Salcedo and Walls repeatedly slam Dilawar against the wall: "This went on for 10 or 15 minutes," Ahmadzei will say. "He was so tired he couldn't get up." Salcedo begins stamping his foot, yanking his head by grabbing his beard, and kicking him in the groin. Ahmadzai will state: "About the first 10 minutes, I think, they were actually questioning him, after that it was pushing, shoving, kicking and shouting at him. There was no interrogation going on." Salcedo orders the MPs to keep him chained to the ceiling of his cell until the next shift comes on. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004; New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Chained to the Ceiling - The next morning, Dilawar is still chained to his ceiling. He begins shouting during the morning, and is ignored until around noon, when MPs ask another interpreter, Ebrahim Baerde, to see if he can calm Dilawar. Baerde will tell investigators: "I told him, 'Look, please, if you want to be able to sit down and be released from shackles, you just need to be quiet for one more hour.' He told me that if he was in shackles another hour, he would die." A half-hour later, Baerde returns to the cell to find Dilawar slumped in his chains. "He wanted me to get a doctor, and said that he needed 'a shot,'" Baerde will recall. "He said that he didn't feel good. He said that his legs were hurting." Baerde tells a guard, who checks Dilawar's circulation by pressing down on his fingernails. According to Baerde, the guard says: "He's okay. He's just trying to get out of his restraints." [New York Times, 3/4/2003; Guardian, 3/7/2003; Independent, 3/7/2003; Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004; New York Times, 9/17/2004; New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Dead Days Later - Dilawar will be found dead in his cell days later (see December 10, 2002).
Entity Tags: Ebrahim Baerde, Glendale Walls, Jan Baz Khan, Dilawar, Abdul Rahim, Ahmad Ahmadzai, Corey Jones, Selena Salcedo, Parkhudin
December 10, 2002: Innocent Afghan Taxi Driver Killed in US Custody
Dilawar. [Source: CBS]Dilawar, an Afghan farmer turned taxi driver who was detained by US troops on December 5 (see December 5-9, 2002), is found dead in his cell at Bagram. Earlier that day, he was taken to the interrogation room for what will be his last interrogation. An interpreter will later describes him with legs uncontrollably jumping and numbed hands; Dilawar had been chained by his wrists to the top of his cell for four days and suffered repeated beatings from guards. He is agitated and confused, crying that his wife is dead and complaining of being beaten by his guards. Interpreter Ali Baryalai will later tell investigators, "We didn't pursue that."
Making Sure the Prisoner is Hydrated - Dilawar is interrogated by two MPs, Specialists Glendale Walls and Joshua Claus. Though Walls is the lead interrogator, the more aggressive Claus quickly takes control of the proceedings. "Josh had a rule that the detainee had to look at him, not me," the interpreter will tell investigators. "He gave him three chances, and then he grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him towards him, across the table, slamming his chest into the table front." Both Walls and Claus slam Dilawar against the wall when he tries and fails to kneel; he begins to either fall asleep or pass out. Baryalai will later state, "It looked to me like Dilawar was trying to cooperate, but he couldn't physically perform the tasks." As Baryalai will later tell investigators, Claus grabs Dilawar, shakes him, and tells him that if he does not cooperate, he will be shipped to a prison in the United States, where he would be "treated like a woman, by the other men" and face the wrath of criminals who "would be very angry with anyone involved in the 9/11 attacks." Dilawar asks for a drink of water, and Claus responds by taking a large plastic water bottle and, instead of giving Dilawar the water, punching a hole in the bottom of the bottle. As Dilawar fumbles with the bottle, the water pours over his orange prison garb. Claus then snatches the bottle back and begins spraying the water into Dilawar's face. As Dilawar gags on the spray, Claus shouts: "Come on, drink! Drink!" A third interrogator, Staff Sergeant Christopher Yonushonis, enters the room and, as he will recall, finds a large puddle of water, a soaking wet Dilawar, and Claus standing behind Dilawar, twisting up the back of the hood that covers the prisoner's head. "I had the impression that Josh was actually holding the detainee upright by pulling on the hood," Yonushonis will recall. "I was furious at this point because I had seen Josh tighten the hood of another detainee the week before. This behavior seemed completely gratuitous and unrelated to intelligence collection." When Yonushonis demands an explanation, Claus responds, "We had to make sure he stayed hydrated."
Dies While Chained to the Ceiling - An interrogator, presumably Yonushonis, promises Dilawar that he can see a doctor after the interrogation session concludes, but Claus tells the guards not to take him to a doctor. Instead, Claus tell the guards to chain him to the ceiling again. "Leave him up," one of the guards will later quote Claus as saying. Dilawar dies while chained up; hours later, an emergency room doctor sees Dilawar's body already dead and stiffening. Yonushonis reports the abusive interrogation to his superior officer, Staff Sergeant Steven Loring, but Dilawar is already dead.
Autopsy Report: Legs 'Pulpified' - An autopsy will find Dilawar's death caused by "blunt force injuries to the lower extremities." At a pre-trial hearing for one of the guards involved in Dilawar's abuse, a coroner will say the tissue in the prisoner's legs "had basically been pulpified." Major Elizabeth Rouse, another coroner and the one who termed Dilawar's cause of death to be "homicide," will add, "I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus." Walls and Claus will both be charged with assault and maltreatment of a prisoner. [New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Changes Implemented - After Dilawar's death, the second in a matter of days (see November 30-December 3, 2002), some changes are implemented at Bagram. A medic is assigned to work the night shift. Interrogators are prohibited from physical contact with the detainees. Chaining prisoners to fixed objects is banned, and the use of stress positions is curtailed. Yonushonis will not be interviewed until August 2004, when he contacts an agent of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command on his own initiative to discuss his knowledge of Dilawar's death. "I expected to be contacted at some point by investigators in this case," he will say. "I was living a few doors down from the interrogation room, and I had been one of the last to see this detainee alive." Of the last interrogation, Yonushonis will tell investigators, "I remember being so mad that I had trouble speaking." He also adds one extra detail: by the time Dilawar was interrogated the final time, "most of us were convinced that the detainee was innocent." [New York Times, 3/4/2003; Washington Post, 3/5/2003; BBC, 3/6/2003; Guardian, 3/7/2003; Independent, 3/7/2003; New York Times, 9/17/2004; New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Entity Tags: Joshua Claus, Dilawar, Steven Loring, Glendale Walls, Criminal Investigation Command, Elizabeth A. Rouse, Ali Baryalai, Christopher Yonushonis
December 29, 2002: US Military Denies Abusing Prisoners in Afghanistan, Says Treatment Better than before Capture
The US military responds to recent media stories about the torture and abuse of suspected al-Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan by denying that any such treatment takes place. Recent articles in the Washington Post have claimed that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base were subjected to "stress and duress" techniques (see December 26, 2002). These techniques include "stress positions," where detainees are shackled or strapped into painful positions and kept there for hours, and sleep deprivation. US military spokesman Major Steve Clutter denies the allegations. "The article was false on several points, the first being that there is no CIA detention facility on Bagram; there is a facility run by the US Army," he says (see October 2001). "However, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that persons under control of the US Army have been mistreated. The United States Army is treating enemy combatants under government control, humanely, and in conditions that are generally better than they were experiencing before we placed them under our control" (see December 2001 and After, Late 2002, January 2002, March 15, 2002, April-May 2002, April-May 2002, Late May 2002, June 4, 2002-early August 2002, June 5, 2002, July 2002, August 22, 2002, November 30-December 3, 2002, Late 2002-February 2004, Late 2002 - March 15, 2004, December 2002, December 2002, December 1, 2002, December 5-9, 2002, December 8, 2002-March 2003, and December 10, 2002). Clutter also denies that detainees have been subjected to "rendition"—being turned over to foreign governments who routinely torture prisoners. Instead, he says, most prisoners held at Bagram were released after being interrogated in a process overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. "I would like to point out that persons under US government control who come to Bagram are not automatically deemed to be terrorists or enemy combatants," Clutter says. "When they arrive, they go through an interview process to determine whether they are enemy combatants or have information that can help us prevent terrorist attacks against Americans or attacks against US forces. If they are deemed to be enemy combatants or pose a danger, they become detainees. If they are not, they are ultimately released." [Agence France-Presse, 12/29/2002]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Central Intelligence Agency, International Committee of the Red Cross, Stephen Clutter, US Department of Defense
January 22, 2003-May 8, 2003: Captain of Military Intelligence Interrogators at Scandal-Ridden Bagram Receives Bronze Star
Carolyn Wood. [Source: CBC]On January 22, 2003, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood receives a Bronze Star for "exceptional meritorious service" as the head of military intelligence interrogators at Bagram. She and her small platoon of 15 interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion returned from Afghanistan to their base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina earlier in the month. On May 8, 2003, Wood receives her second Bronze Star. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004] Wood was previously in charge of the US air base at Bagram, where detainees have alleged torture and where at least two detainees died as a result of physical abuse (see November 30-December 3, 2002) (see December 26, 2002) (see December 5-9, 2002). Wood and her battalion will be redeployed to Iraq and handle interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison while abuses go on there (see July 15, 2003). She will implement nearly the same interrogation rules used in Bagram (see July 15, 2003).
Entity Tags: Carolyn A. Wood
February 2003: US Commander in Afghanistan Announces Inquiry into Detainee Deaths, Says They Were from Natural Causes
Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan (Commander of Joint Task Force 180), announces an investigation into the deaths of Bagram prisoners Dilawar (see December 10, 2002) and Mullah Habibullah (see November 30-December 3, 2002). Nevertheless, he claims both prisoners died of natural causes. Dilawar, according to McNeill had an advanced heart condition with his coronary arteries 85 percent blocked. "We haven't found anything that requires us to take extraordinary action," McNeill says. "We are going to let this investigation run its course." But military pathologists have already determined both deaths were caused by beatings. Dilawar's death certificate, signed by Maj. Elizabeth A. Rouse, a pathologist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, stated that Dilawar's cause of death was "blunt-force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." [Guardian, 6/23/2004] When McNeill is asked whether the dead prisoners suffered injuries during detention, he denies this. "Presently, I have no indication of that," he says. Later, McNeill claims that the prisoners had already suffered injuries before arriving at Bagram. When asked about the use of chains, he replies: "We are not chaining people to the ceilings. I think you asked me that question before." [New York Times, 9/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Elizabeth A. Rouse, Dilawar, Daniel K. McNeill
March 14, 2003: Military Spokesman Denies Detainees' Accounts of Treatment
When an Associated Press reporter asks the US military to comment on the accounts of two former Afghan detainees (see December 10, 2002) (see November 30-December 3, 2002), spokesman Roger King claims their accounts are mostly untrue. "Some of the stuff they are saying sounds like partial truths, some of it's completely bogus," he says. "They were stripped naked probably to prevent them from sneaking weapons into the facility. That's why someone may be stripped…. We do force people to stand for an extended period of time…. Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people's inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning….They are not allowed to speak to one another. If they do, they can plan together or rely on the comfort of one another. If they're caught speaking out of turn, they can be forced to do things—like stand for a period of time—as payment for speaking out." [Associated Press, 3/14/2003; Amnesty International, 8/19/2003]
Entity Tags: Roger King
Mid-March 2003: Interrogators Dispatched to Iraq
The platoon of 15 interrogators led by Capt. Carolyn A. Wood is sent to Iraq together with another 15 fellow soldiers from Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. [Knight Ridder, 8/21/2004] Wood had been involved in detainee abuses in Afghanistan (see November 30-December 3, 2002) and will be involved in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal in Iraq (see (Early August 2003)).
July 15, 2003: 519th Military Intelligence Battalion Produces Memo on New Interrogation Rules
The 519th Military Intelligence Battalion produces a memo laying down new "Interrogation Rules of Engagement" (IROE), for use in its new mission in Iraq. [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004] The person apparently mostly responsible for writing the memo is Cpt. Carolyn A. Wood, formerly in charge of military intelligence interrogators at Bagram, which serves as the main screening area in Afghanistan. [Guardian, 6/23/2004] Col. Billy Buckner, the chief public affairs officer at Fort Bragg, home to the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, later says that Wood brought the interrogations rules used at Bagram with her to Iraq. [Associated Press, 5/24/2004] But the rules are also adapted and made somewhat less aggressive. "Those rules were modified," according to Buckner, "to make sure the right restraints were in place." [Guardian, 6/23/2004] The modifications nevertheless fall outside normal military doctrine. According to a classified portion of the later Fay report (see August 25, 2004), the memo allows the "use of stress positions during fear-up harsh interrogation approaches, as well as presence of military working dogs, yelling, loud music,… light control," sleep management, and isolation. [New York Review of Books, 10/7/2004] The memo is adopted from interrogation procedures known as "Battlefield Interrogation Team and Facility Policy," in use by a secretive unit called Joint Task Force (JTF) 121 , that is active in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The 519th Military Intelligence Battalion worked in close cooperation with Special Operations Forces like JTF-121 during its tour in Afghanistan, and "at some point," according to the Fay report, it "came to possess the JTF-121 interrogation policy." [New York Times, 8/27/2004] Cpt. Wood adopts the JTF-121 policy "almost verbatim." [New York Times, 8/27/2004] Like the highest US command in Iraq, the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion apparently believes the standard Army Field Manual is an insufficient guideline for interrogations. Interrogation techniques falling outside the scope of standard military doctrine have already been devised at the Pentagon, but only for use in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These "non-doctrinal approaches, techniques, and practices," according to Gen. George R. Fay, nevertheless, become "confused at Abu Ghraib." [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004] JTF-121 consists of CIA officials and Special Operations troops, including soldiers from the Army's Delta Force and Navy Seals. The unit is later alleged to have been instrumental in the capture of Saddam Hussein. [New York Times, 5/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Troy Armstrong, George R. Fay, Saddam Hussein, Carolyn A. Wood
(Early August 2003): New Interrogation Rules Created for Abu Ghraib
When Cpt. Carolyn A. Wood and the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion move to Abu Ghraib, the interrogation policy Wood used at the Baghdad airport facility (see July 15, 2003) needs to be adapted once again, and Capt. Wood is again responsible for devising the rules of engagement. In May 2004, Pentagon officials will give a description to the Senate Armed Services Committee of the instructions for interrogating prisoners used by Cpt. Wood at Abu Ghraib. They say that the rules of engagement Wood employed at Abu Ghraib included stress positions, use of dogs, sleep and sensory deprivation and dietary manipulation. Those rules of engagement would have had to have been authorized by higher levels in the military. A person of Cpt. Wood's rank, explains a former member of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade to the Guardian, would not have been free to set interrogation policy herself. [Guardian, 6/23/2004]
July 12, 2004: British Detainee Moazzam Begg Describes Guantanamo Abuse in Letter
British detainee Moazzam Begg, being held in Guantanamo, manages to send a handwritten four-page letter uncensored by US authorities. Begg's lawyers in Britain describe this as an "oddity." His solicitor Stafford Smith says the letter must have been released either "by mistake or because someone in the US has a conscience." In the letter, Begg describes having been subjected to "pernicious threats of torture, actual vindictive torture, and death threats, amongst other coercively employed interrogation techniques." This happened "particularly, though unexclusively in Afghanistan." Interviews, Begg writes, "were conducted in an environment of generated fear, resonant with terrifying screams of fellow detainees facing similar methods. In this atmosphere of severe antipathy towards detainees was the compounded use of racially and religiously prejudiced taunts. This culminated, in my opinion, with the deaths of two fellow detainees (see November 30-December 3, 2002) (see December 10, 2002) at the hands of US military personnel, to which I myself was partially witness." [Guardian, 10/1/2004]
Entity Tags: Moazzam Begg, Stafford Smith
October 2004: Investigation into Deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar Completed
Side profiles of Habibullah (left) and Dilawar (right). [Source: CBS]More than one-and-a-half years after the deaths of the Afghan detainees Mullah Habibullah (see November 30-December 3, 2002) and Dilawar (see December 10, 2002), the US Army Criminal Investigation Command completes its investigation of the two cases. It finds that 28 military personnel, including two captains, were involved in the incident. The perpetrators could be charged with involuntary manslaughter, assault, and conspiracy. A Pentagon official says five or six of the soldiers will likely be charged with the most serious offenses. The investigation concludes that "multiple soldiers" beat Dilawar and Habibullah, using mostly their knees. It is likely, according to Pentagon officials, that the beatings were concentrated on the legs of the detainees, so that wounds would be less visible. Amnesty International severely criticizes the long duration of the investigation. "The failure to promptly account for the prisoners' deaths indicates a chilling disregard for the value of human life and may have laid the groundwork for further abuses in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere," says Jumana Musa of Amnesty International USA. [New York Times, 10/15/2004]
Entity Tags: Jumana Musa, Mullah Habibullah, Dilawar, Patrick J. Brown
May 20, 2005: Army's Classified Report Finds Brutality, Murders at Bagram Air Force Base
The New York Times obtains a copy of a classified file of the Army criminal investigation into a number of detainee deaths at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. The report focuses on two Afghan detainees, Mullah Habibullah (see October 2004 and November 30-December 3, 2002) and a taxi driver known as Dilawar (see December 10, 2002), both of whom were in essence tortured to death; other detainees are also covered in the report. The Army report follows up on the official inquiry conducted in late 2004 (see October 2004).
Torture to Extract Information, Punish Detainees, and Alleviate Boredom - The Times writes: "Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths. In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both." One female interrogator has what a colleague in a sworn statement calls a taste for humiliation; that interrogator is described as having stood on the neck of one prostrate detainee, and having kicked another detainee in the genitals. Another statement tells of a shackled prisoner being forced to kiss the boots of his interrogators. A third tells of a detainee forced to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water. Overall, the Army report concludes that many of the tactics used by interrogators and guards amounts to criminal assault. Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita says: "What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment. We're finding some cases that were not close calls." Seven soldiers, all interrogators and guards of low rank, have been charged with crimes ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter; two others received reprimands, and 15 others named in the original report were cited as bearing probable criminal responsibility in the deaths. One of the interrogators charged with assaulting Dilawar, Sergeant Selena Salcedo, says: "The whole situation is unfair. It's all going to come out when everything is said and done."
Many Interrogators Redeployed to Iraq; Bagram Tactics Used at Abu Ghraib - The Army criminal investigation was conducted slowly. During the course of the investigation, many of the Bagram interrogators, including their operations officer, Captain Carolyn Wood, were redeployed to Iraq (see Mid-March 2003). Wood took charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison and, according to Army inquiries, began using tactics "remarkably similar" to those employed at Bagram (see July 15, 2003 and (Early August 2003)). She received the Bronze Star for her actions (see January 22, 2003-May 8, 2003).
Serious Disparities between Investigative Results and Personnel Statements - In the aftermaths of the deaths, military officials made a number of unsupported claims. The deaths of both Dilawar and Habibullah were originally listed as due to natural causes even as military coroners ruled the deaths homicides. The American commander in Afghanistan at the time, Lieutenant General Daniel McNeill, said that he had no indication that the deaths were caused by abuses carried out by US soldiers; the methods used in the detainees' interrogations were, McNeill said, "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."
Poorly Trained Interrogators - The report focuses on one group of poorly trained interrogators from the Army's 519th Military Intelligence Brigade (see July 2002). After Bush's decree that terror suspects have no rights under Geneva, the interrogators began pushing the envelope of acceptable interrogation techniques. They began employing "stress positions" that cause pain and suffering but not, presumably, actual injury. They began experimenting with longer and longer periods of sleep deprivation. One of the more popular methods is called in military jargon "Fear Up Harsh," or as one soldier called it, "the screaming technique." The technique is based on verbally and physically intimidating detainees, and often degenerates into screaming and throwing furniture. The noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sergeant Steven Loring, sometimes tried to curb his interrogators' excesses, but, contradictorily, often refused to countenance "soft" interrogation techniques, and gave some of the most aggressive interrogators wide latitude. Sergeant James Leahy recalled, "We sometimes developed a rapport with detainees, and Sergeant Loring would sit us down and remind us that these were evil people and talk about 9/11 and they weren't our friends and could not be trusted." One of Loring's favorites was Specialist Damien Corsetti, nicknamed "Monster," a tall, bearded interrogator Loring jokingly nicknamed "the King of Torture." One Saudi detainee told Army investigators that during one session, Corsetti pulled out his penis, shoved it in the Saudi's face, and threatened to rape him. (The earlier investigation found cause to charge Corsetti with assault, maltreatment of a prisoner, and indecent acts; no charges were filed. Corsetti was fined and demoted for brutalizing a female prisoner at Abu Ghraib.) By August 2002, the 519th interrogators, joined by a group of reservists from a military police company, were routinely beating their prisoners, and particularly favored the "common peroneal strike," a potentially disabling blow to the side of the leg just above the knee. The MPs later said that they never knew such physical brutality was not part of Army interrogation practices. "That was kind of like an accepted thing; you could knee somebody in the leg," one of the MPs, Sergeant Thomas Curtis, later told investigators.
'Timmy' - Specialist Jeremy Callaway told investigators of one Afghan prisoner with apparently severe emotional and mental problems. The detainee would eat his own feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. He quickly became a favorite target for some of the MPs, who would repeatedly knee him in the legs and, at least once, chained him with his arms straight up in the air. The MPs nicknamed him "Timmy" after an emotionally disturbed child in the "South Park" animated television show. According to Callaway, one of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character. Eventually, "Timmy" was sent home. [New York Times, 5/20/2005]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Jeremy Callaway, James Leahy, Dilawar, Daniel K. McNeill, Damien Corsetti, Carolyn A. Wood, Lawrence Di Rita, Mullah Habibullah, New York Times, Steven Loring, US Department of Defense, Selena Salcedo, Thomas Curtis
February 12, 2009: Documents Show Prisoners Tortured to Death by US Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releases previously classified documents that contain excerpts from a government report on harsh interrogation tactics used by US personnel against detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. The excerpts document repeated instances of abusive behavior, sometimes resulting in the deaths of prisoners. The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), contain a report by Vice Admiral Albert Church, who compiled a comprehensive report on the Defense Department's interrogation operations. Church terms the interrogations at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan as "clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance." Only two pages from the Church report were released without redactions.
Deaths at Bagram - A portion of the document reports on the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram (see December 5-9, 2002 and November 30-December 3, 2002), who were, the document states, "handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake." The report continues: "Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of 'compliance blows,' which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma." Both detainees died from pulmonary embolisms caused by, the ACLU writes, "standing chained in place, sleep deprivation, and dozens of beatings by guards and possibly interrogators."
Deaths at Other Facilities - The documents also report on torture conducted at Guantanamo and several US-Afghan prisons in Kabul; the death of prisoner Dilar Dababa in Iraq in 2003 at the hands of US forces; the torture and beating of an Iraqi prisoner at "The Disco," a detention facility located in the Special Operations Force Compound at Mosul Airfield in Iraq; an investigation into torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad; and the murder of prisoner Abed Mowhoush.
Process Flowed Through Undersecretary Cambone - Columnist Scott Horton writes: "A large portion of the torture, maiming, and murder of detainees occurred under authority issued under secret rules of engagement in the Pentagon. Much of this flowed through Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, a figure who has so far evaded scrutiny in the torture scandal.… Even the Senate Armed Services Committee review fails to get to the bottom of Dr. Cambone, his interrogations ROEs for special operations units he controlled, and the death, disfigurement, and torture of prisoners they handled. This is one of many reasons why a comprehensive investigation with subpoena power is urgently needed. But full airing of the internal investigations already conducted by the Department of Defense is an essential next step." [Raw Story, 2/12/2009; American Civil Liberties Union, 2/12/2009]
Entity Tags: Senate Armed Services Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, Albert T. Church III, Bush administration (43), Dilar Dababa, Stephen A. Cambone, US Department of Defense
March 5, 2009: Law Expert Calls for Reclassification of Bagram Detention Facility
Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, asks when the Obama administration intends on closing down the detention facility at Bagram Air Force Base (see October 2001). The facility has been the site of repeated torture and brutalization of prisoners (see January 2002, March 15, 2002, April-May 2002, Late May 2002, June 4, 2002-early August 2002, June 5, 2002, July 2002, August 22, 2002, Late 2002-February 2004, Late 2002 - March 15, 2004, December 2002, December 2002, December 1, 2002, December 5-9, 2002, December 8, 2002-March 2003, December 26, 2002, Beginning 2003, February 2003, Spring 2003, October 2004, and May 20, 2005). Greenberg calls it a "far grimmer and more important American detention facility" than Guantanamo.
Little Information on Prisoners - Greenberg is unable to elicit specific information about how many prisoners are currently incarcerated at Bagram, who they are, where they are from, how they are classified—prisoners of war, enemy combatants, "ghost" detainees—how they are being treated, what human rights organizations have access to them, or what, if any, legal proceedings they have been put through. "It turns out that we can say very little with precision or confidence about that prison facility or even the exact number of prisoners there," she writes. "News sources had often reported approximately 500-600 prisoners in custody at Bagram, but an accurate count is not available. A federal judge recently asked for 'the number of detainees held at Bagram Air Base; the number of Bagram detainees who were captured outside Afghanistan; and the number of Bagram detainees who are Afghan citizens,' but the information the Obama administration offered the court in response remains classified and redacted from the public record. We don't even know the exact size of the prison or much about the conditions there, although they have been described as more spartan and far cruder than Guantanamo's in its worst days. The International Committee of the Red Cross has visited the prison, but it remains unclear whether they were able to inspect all of it. A confidential Red Cross report from 2008 supposedly highlighted overcrowding, the use of extreme isolation as a punishment technique, and various violations of the Geneva Convention."
Plans to Expand Facility - Greenberg says that the government is planning a large expansion of the Bagram facility, which is envisioned as holding up to 1,100 prisoners. She recommends:
The administration stop being secretive about Bagram and release complete information on the prisoners being held there, or at the very least admit why some information cannot be released. "Otherwise, the suspicion will always arise that such withheld information might be part of a cover-up of government incompetence or illegality."
The reclassification of all detainees as "prisoners of war" who are protected under the Geneva Conventions. "Currently, they are classified as enemy combatants, as are the prisoners at Guantanamo, and so, in the perverse universe of the Bush administration, free from any of the constraints of international law. The idea that the conventions are too 'rigid' for our moment and need to be put aside for this new extra-legal category has always been false and pernicious, primarily paving the way for the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"
The rejection of the idea of "ghost prisoners" at Bagram or anywhere else. "The International Committee of the Red Cross must be granted access to all of the prisons or prison areas at Bagram, while conditions of detention there should be brought into accordance with humane treatment and standards."
The re-establishment of a presumption of innocence. "The belief that there is a categorical difference between guilt and innocence, which went by the wayside in the last seven years, must be restored. All too often, the military brass still assumes that if you were rounded up by US forces, you are, by definition, guilty. It's time to change this attitude and return to legal standards of guilt."
Greenberg concludes: "In the Bush years, we taught the world a series of harmful lessons: Americans can be as cruel as others. Americans can turn their backs on law and reciprocity among nations as efficiently as any tribally organized dictatorship. Americans, relying on fear and the human impulse toward vengeance, can dehumanize other human beings with a fervor equal to that of others on this planet. It's time for a change. It's time, in fact, to face the first and last legacy of Bush detention era, our prison at Bagram Air Base, and deal with it." [TomDispatch (.com), 3/5/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Geneva Conventions, Obama administration, Karen Greenberg


text:
Where to pick up pie for the Fourth of July
Strawberry pie made by pastry chef Roxana Jullapat shot in the Los Angeles Times test kitchen.
(Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
By Sara Cagle
After grilling burgers, watching fireworks and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," give your Fourth of July a sweet ending. If you don't have time to whip up a homemade dessert, here are 14 places to order pies — from peach and pecan to boozy and blueberry — for the Fourth of July.
Brite Spot Diner
2:00 PM, Jun. 27, 2018 This story incorrectly states that Winston Pies will have pecan, lemon meringue and dulce de leche banana cream pies. Winston Pies will have only apple, blueberry, cherry, key lime, peach and nectarine, chocolate cowgirl and Fourth of July berry pies.
The Echo Park diner makes about a dozen flavors of pie, including salted honey, peanut butter, apple and lemon meringue. Pies are $40 to $55. Place your order at least 48 hours in advance via phone. 1918 W. Sunset Blvd., (213) 484-9800, www.britespotdiner.com. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Cake Monkey
The Fairfax bakery is taking orders for its cider-roasted apple pie in a double cheddar crust ($35), brown butter pecan pie with toasted cocoa nibs ($38), chocolate cake pudding pie ($30, also available gluten free), blueberry lemon frangipane pie ($35) and cherry almond pie ($35). Orders must be placed via phone at least 48 hours in advance. 7807 Beverly Blvd., (323) 932-1142, cakemonkey.com. Holiday pickup hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cassell's Hamburgers
Pastry chef Elia Aboumrad is making her usual $35 pies at this Koreatown burger joint. Flavors include apple, chocolate marshmallow, dulce de leche banana cream, lemon icebox, blackberry vanilla, pecan, tangerine custard and vegan and gluten-free chocolate lace. To place an order, call (213) 387-5502 by July 3. 3600 W. 6th St., Los Angeles, www.cassellshamburgers.com. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Gjusta
Gjusta, the bakery from the folks behind Gjelina and Gjelina Take Away, will serve peach pies for $60. Orders must be placed at least 48 hours in advance via email to catering@gjusta.com. 320 Sunset Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 314-0320, www.gjusta.com. Holiday pickup hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Good Girl Dinette
Try the peach ($35), lemon custard creme ($30) or cherry ($40) pies from this Highland Park Vietnamese restaurant. Orders must be placed by July 1. Place your order online, or contact the restaurant by phone at (323) 257-8980 or via email at order@goodgirldinette.com. 110 North Ave. No. 56, Los Angeles, www.goodgirldinette.com/order. Holiday pickup hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Huckleberry Cafe
The Santa Monica bakery is serving double-crust stone fruit pie, double-crust strawberry rhubarb pie and vegan and gluten-free berry crumble pie. Each is $55 and includes a Pyrex dish. Place your order by July 2 by emailing catering@huckleberrycafe.com or by calling (310) 451-2311. 1014 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, www.huckleberrycafe.com/catering. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Knowrealitypie
The summer pie menu at this tiny Eagle Rock pie shop includes triple berry Cabernet, Cognac coconut cream, sea salt caramel chess, boysenberry, lemon icebox, burnt caramel peach, blackberry lime and more. Fruit pies are $42, and cream pies are $45. Order online or by emailing happytracynow1@gmail.com by June 29. 5106 Townsend Ave., Los Angeles, (916) 799-5772, www.knowrealitypie.com. Holiday pickup hours: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Larder at Burton Way and the Larder at Tavern
Two locations of Suzanne Goin's and Caroline Styne's restaurant are taking orders for peach pie with crème fraîche whip for $36. Orders must be placed via phone, via email or in person at least 48 hours in advance. The Larder at Burton Way, 8500 Burton Way, Los Angeles, (310) 278-8060. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. | The Larder at Tavern, 11648 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 806-6460. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. www.thelarder.com.
The Pie Hole
The pie chain is offering eight varieties for the Fourth, including apple crumble ($40.50), blueberry crumble ($40.50), strawberry rhubarb ($36), tart cherry ($33), Mexican chocolate ($39), chocolate brownie ($39), banana bourbon ($39) and Earl Grey ($42). You can preorder a pie online or via phone, or you can order on the Fourth through the Postmates delivery app. Multiple locations and contact information at www.thepieholela.com.
Simplethings
The chain's 3rd Street location is making peach, chocolate cream, salted caramel, key lime and s'mores pies, all $45. Orders can be placed online. 8310 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (323) 592-3390, www.simplethingsrestaurant.com/catering. Holiday pickup hours: 11 a.m. to noon.
The Mar Vista ice cream shop offers custom ice cream pies, starting at $45. Choose a graham cracker or Oreo crust, one of more than a dozen ice cream flavors and up to two toppings (or more for an additional charge). Place your order by calling (424) 289-9552 by June 30. 12222 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, www.smallbatchicecreamery.com. Holiday pickup hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sweet Lady Jane
All three locations of Jane Lockhart's dessert shop are baking apple, blueberry, cherry, mixed berry, strawberry rhubarb and pecan pies. Nine-inch pies are $32, and 11-inch deep-dish pies are $60, which includes a $10 refundable deposit for the pie tin. Orders must be placed online or via phone at least 48 hours in advance. Multiple locations and contact information at www.sweetladyjane.com. Holiday pickup hours: 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Santa Monica, 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in West Hollywood. Please call for Encino holiday pickup hours.
Valerie Confections
Chocolatier and cookbook author Valerie Gordon's namesake dessert shop will hold a pop-up pie shop called Pie & Lemonade on July 3. The shop will donate all lemonade sales and $20 for each Stars and Stripes pie (made with blueberries, strawberries and vanilla cream) sold to Baby2Baby, which is partnering with Kids in Need of Defense to provide basic supplies to immigrant children. Pies can be purchased at the pop-up in front of Valerie Confections' Echo Park location, or they can be preordered via phone at (213) 739-8149 by noon on July 2 and picked up on July 3 at any of the three locations. Multiple locations and contact information at valerieconfections.com.
Winston Pies
Brentwood's Winston Pies will serve apple, blueberry, cherry, key lime and pecan pies, as well as peach and nectarine pie, chocolate cowgirl pie (a caramel-chocolate pie with an oatmeal crust), lemon meringue pie, dulce de leche banana cream pie and a Fourth of July pie with shortbread crust, cream filling and berries. All 11-inch pies are $42. Orders must be made online by July 2. 11678 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 207-5743, www.winstonpies.com. Holiday pickup hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
10:30 a.m.: This article was updated with additional holiday hours.
2 p.m.: This article was updated with new information about pie offerings.
This article was originally published at 9 a.m. on June 26.
2:00 PM, Jun. 27, 2018: This story incorrectly states that Winston Pies will have pecan, lemon meringue and dulce de leche banana cream pies. Winston Pies will have only apple, blueberry, cherry, key lime, peach and nectarine, chocolate cowgirl and Fourth of July berry pies.