AMY GOODMAN: Mari, your mother also was a Presidential Scholar?

MARI OYE: Yes, in 1968, when LBJ was president. And she felt at the time that she wanted to say something about the Vietnam War, but she had an English teacher back at the school she came from who she didn’t want to offend. And the English teacher had stressed that it was important, you know, to stay quiet when you were in the presence of the President. And I’ve had teachers that have stressed the opposite throughout my high school career, and so I thought of them, and I thought of my mother, and I thought of what I would be comfortable with in forty years. And I think we did the right thing while we were there.

AMY GOODMAN: What did your mother say?

MARI OYE: Well, when she found out, she had been touring Washington. Our parents weren’t with us at the time we went to the White House. And she was actually in the Holocaust Museum in the last room, when I called her to say that we had given the letter. She didn’t know there was a letter beforehand, when I called her to tell her what had happened. And she said that she walked out into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down her face, but since a lot of people walk out of the Holocaust Museum that way, you know, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary.

AMY GOODMAN: Your grandfather was a poet in the detention camps?

MARI OYE: Right. He was born in California, but he had grown up in Japan, and he spent some of his time in camp writing senryu, a type of Japanese poetry. It was sort of something to do, obviously, and it sort of brought him some solace when he was there.

Moving interview with two of the 2007 Presidential Scholars who met with Bush, gave him a letter and asked him to stop torture and criticized US detention policies.

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Richard Gywn, Toronto Star: Is the US Mirroring Rome’s Fall>

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BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been released after 114 days of captivity in Gaza. The BBC has top notch coverage, again some of the most poignant parts are the comment section.

2 hundred thousand people signed petitions for his release, he was able to listen to BBC radio and was encouraged by protests held about his captivity. The 45 year old journalist is in Jerusalem, and will be heading home to his family in Scotland.

Having worked in Gaza for the past three years, Mr Johnston said he was well aware of Palestinian traditions of hospitality and regarded his abductors as an “aberration”.

He said he was looking forward to being re-united with his family, expressing sorrow that his “actions” had brought turmoil to their lives.

He had a brief conversation with his father over the telephone after being released.

Mr Johnston said he stayed aware of efforts to free him by listening to the BBC World Service on the radio.

News of global demonstrations in his support was a source of comfort to him, he said.

“There were demonstrations from Beijing to Buenos Aires, Beirut to London to Washington and you know I could feel how much the Palestinian people were feeling that this wasn’t right and how much support there was for an end to my captivity,” he said.

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German medical researchers have published a report in the Journal of American Medicine Association that shows 6.3 grams of dark chocolate per day, lowered high blood pressure.

“Data in this relatively small sample of otherwise healthy individuals with above-optimal BP indicate that inclusion of small amounts of polyphenol-rich dark chocolate as part of a usual diet efficiently reduced BP and improved formation of vasodilative nitric oxide.”

Commenting on their findings they said that:

“Although the magnitude of the BP [blood pressure] reduction was small, the effects are clinically noteworthy. On a population basis, it has been estimated that a 3-mm Hg reduction in systolic BP would reduce the relative risk of stroke mortality by 8 percent, of coronary artery disease mortality by 5 percent, and of all-cause mortality by 4 percent.”

They added that the most interesting result was that small amounts of commercially available cocoa have a similar beneficial effect on blood pressure as comprehensive diet programmes that have been used to reduce cardiovascular risks.

But getting patients to stick to complex behaviour changes in the longer term is difficult and there is a high drop out rate with the more conventional complex dietary programmes, so perhaps the simple addition of 30 calories of dark chocolate a day, without any other changes, would be more effective at helping people with high blood pressure to reduce it.

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Swift response and investigation by police have led to the arrest of seven people, doctors and medical workers in the recent bombings in Scotland. The coverage on the BBC has been incredibly different than US coverage. Their incompetence doesn’t not equal their sincerity in caring out their attacks.
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Happy 4th of July to our US friends!