From The Sunday London Times
Belle lays bare the myth that every hooker is a victim
India Knight
Two things struck me in the aftermath of my interview with Belle de Jour last week. The first is that several of my female colleagues in the media appeared to be deeply personally offended by the fact that Belle, or rather Dr Brooke Magnanti, wasn’t at any point raped or beaten up during the 14 months she spent as a call girl.
There were vague disclaimers to the effect of “of course, thankfully, nothing terrible happened to Magnanti”, but the basic thrust — as it were — of their argument was that the lack of rapes/beatings meant that her experience was not representative of prostitution and therefore fraudulent in some way. But how would they know what was or wasn’t representative unless they’d been in a lot of rooms with a lot of customers themselves?
Magnanti never suggested that her experience was anything other than subjective, but she did tell me “the vast majority” of her clients “were more polite, nicer and treated me better than many ‘normal’ men on dates. No one wants to be ‘that guy’ [the one who abuses prostitutes]. Besides the agency had their real name, their real landline number, their real credit card details”. She had, she said “never left an appointment” before time was up and only two clients had made her feel uneasy.
Now that Belle has outed herself, I wonder why it remains so difficult for people — or indeed the law — to understand that not all prostitutes conform to the stereotype of the abused, trafficked, addicted victim. Of course such women exist in vast, shaming and regrettable numbers. But to claim, as so many commentators did last week, that this is the only version of prostitution that exists seems to me extraordinarily naive.
The fact that I don’t wear a grubby mac or a trilby with a press card in it and don’t spend my evenings going through your bins doesn’t mean I’m not a journalist — only that I’m not one kind of journalist. The fact that Susan Boyle isn’t Beyoncé doesn’t mean she isn’t a singer. Nice estate agents must exist; you do (not often, admittedly) come across a human-seeming traffic warden or member of parliament. So why maintain that there categorically cannot exist a single former prostitute who a) doesn’t think she did anything morally heinous and b) never got assaulted?
What do people who don’t believe in version 2 of prostitution make of the fact that, to take just one example, many of the “girls” from the organisation run by legendary French procuress Madame Claude in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t end up broken with track marks up their arms but married to politicians, aristocrats and other public figures? We’re still told there is no difference between a trafficked 15-year-old from Ukraine who’s kept in a basement and a 28-year-old old PhD student who contacts an escort agency of her own free will. Like, doh. Of course there’s a difference.
It is a morally perplexing difference, admittedly, but claiming it doesn’t exist is a piece of pig-headedness that does no one any favours. It’s saying either that women have no free will or that they will be banished from the wimmin-loving sisterhood if they have the temerity to make a choice that said sisterhood considers “wrong”. (Remember Squealer in Animal Farm, justifying dictatorship: “But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”) And how can you help the women who need it if you insist on lumping them with the women who don’t, like some well-meaning, half-bonkers Victorian vicar?
Which leads me to my second point: I was struck by how many people still operate on the Scarlet Letter principle. I understand why, up to a point: prostitution has become so mythologised that the very word makes “ordinary” women feel insecure: we think that, like in some dark fairy-tale, prostitutes are possessed of magical sexual powers that could, in one fell swoop, destroy our domestic contentment.
Men find this either exciting or scary or, I expect, both. But the Scarlet Letter principle — all prostitutes are evil, prostitution is evil, anyone who has anything to do with it must be publicly humiliated — rather fails to take societal mores into account.
I’ll be blunt: I am sometimes quite hard-pressed to see how an expensive hooker differs wildly from an under-dressed “party girl” out on the town with someone loaded. That distinction has, surely, become blurred to the point of erosion. Except that there are two differences: only the prostitute gets her chip-and-pin machine out at the end of the evening and only the party girl has a lifestyle that is lauded in celebrity magazines: only she becomes a role model.
To be honest, I have more respect for the woman who recognises the transaction for what it is. Look at the two girls: one, self- reliant, gets the cash and walks away, job done. One is at the mercy of someone else’s wallet, not for a couple of hours but for weeks, months, maybe even years on end. Who’s the victim? Who’s being had?
Then of course we have the “ordinary”, “fun-loving” girl who drank herself into a stupor last night and serviced some bloke she met in a bar and his two leery mates. Is she lying there this morning because she really admires prostitutes or because she’s modelling herself on the girls she reads about in those magazines, the girls with the plastic tits and the permatans and the “fantasy” lifestyles, the girls with dozens of boyfriends and a self-proclaimed ravenous appetite for sex?
This isn’t a defence of prostitution, which I don’t much care for — not so much on moral grounds as on the grounds that many prostitutes have a horrible life and do themselves huge emotional and psychological harm. But not all of them. There are worse and more dishonest ways of getting cash out of men. Colleagues at the Bristol hospital where she carries out medical research into childhood cancers said: “This aspect of Dr Magnanti’s past is not relevant to her current role at the university.”
Anyone expressing amazement at the ease with which Brooke Magnanti has been rehabilitated should take a look at the real world. Of course she’s been rehabilitated: her colleagues are clever enough to know that compared to what else goes on out there, she was a class act.

The Lies of Sarah Palin

Andrew Sullivan
The lies of Sarah Palin are different from any other politicians'. They are different because they assert things that are demonstrably, empirically untrue; and they are different because once they have been deonstrated to the entire world that they are untrue, Palin keeps repeating them as if they still were true or refuses to acknowledge that she was wrong.
Ann Althouse has rightly figured out how dumb Palin is; she has not yet figured out how disturbed she is. And onece again, for Ann's sake, here are the lies I mean. Go through them. See if you think they are Clintonian type parsings of the truth or artful political hedging or anything like what we find in most pols. They really are not. They are functions of delusion and a worldview that wants things to be a certain way and cannot absorb that they are not. If you find the slightest error or come across a fact that we should add to this list of current lies, please let us know. We want this list to be as accurate as Palin is delusional. We want to create some template of easily-accessible reality as some kind of guard against the fantasies and fabulisms of our post-modern and fundamentalist age.
Palin lied when she said the dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire state trooper Mike Wooten; in fact, the Branchflower Report concluded that she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men.
Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor.
Palin lied when she denied that Wasilla's police chief and librarian had been fired; in fact, both were given letters of termination the previous day.
Palin lied when she wrote in the NYT that a comprehensive review by Alaska wildlife officials showed that polar bears were not endangered; in fact, email correspondence between those scientists showed the opposite.
Palin lied when she claimed in her convention speech that an oil gas pipeline "began" under her guidance; in fact, the pipeline was years from breaking ground, if at all.
Palin lied when she told Charlie Gibson that she does not pass judgment on gay people; in fact, she opposes all rights between gay spouses and belongs to a church that promotes conversion therapy.
Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame.
Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country's domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower.
Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script.
Palin lied when she recalled asking her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the VP offer; in fact, her story contradicts details given by her husband, the McCain campaign, and even Palin herself. (She later added another version.)
Palin lied when she claimed to have taken a voluntary pay cut as mayor; in fact, as councilmember she had voted against a raise for the mayor, but subsequent raises had taken effect by the time she was mayor.
Palin lied when she insisted that Wooten's divorce proceedings had caused his confidential records to become public; in fact, court officials confirmed they released no such records.
Palin lied when she suggested to Katie Couric that she was involved in trade missions with Russia; in fact, she has never even met with Russian officials.
Palin lied when she told Shimon Peres that the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag; in fact, she has several flags.
Palin lied when she claimed to have tried to divest government funds from Sudan; in fact, her administration openly opposed a bill that would have done just that.
Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed that troop levels in Iraq were back to pre-surge levels; in fact, even she acknowledged her "misstatements," though she refused to retract or apologize.
Palin lied when she insisted that the Branchflower Report "showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part"; in fact, that report prominently stated, "Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."
Palin lied when she claimed to have voiced concerns over Wooten fearing he would harm her family; in fact, she actually decreased her security detail during that period.
Palin lied when asked about the $150,000 worth of clothes provided by the RNC; in fact, solid reporting contradicted several parts of her statement.
Palin lied when she suggested that she had offered the media proof of her pregnancy with Trig to "correct the record"; in fact, no reports of her medical records were ever published; and the letter from her doctor testifying to her good health only emerged hours before polling ended on election day, even though there was nothing in it that couldn't have been released two months earlier.
Palin lied when she said that "reported" allegations of her banning Harry Potter as mayor was easily refutable because it had not even been written yet; in fact, the first book in that series was published in 1998 - two years into her first term - and such rumors were never reported by the media, only circulated as emails.
Palin lied when she denied having participated in a clothes audit with campaign laywers; in fact, the Washington Times later confirmed those details.
Palin lied when asked about Couric's question regarding her reading habits; in fact, Couric's words were not, "What do you read up there in Alaska?" or anything close to condescension.
Palin lied when she mischaracterized the "$1200 check" given to Alaskans as the permanent fund dividend check; in fact, that fund had yielded $2,069 per person, and she claimed otherwise to obscure the fact that Alaskans also received a $1200 rebate check from a windfall profits tax on oil companies - a tax widely criticized by Republicans.
Palin lied when she claimed to be unaware of a turkey being slaughtered behind her during a filmed interview; in fact, the cameraman said she had picked the spot herself, while the slaughter was underway.
Palin lied when she denied having rejected federal stimulus money; in fact, she continued to accept and reject the funds several times.
Palin lied when she claimed that legislative leaders had canceled a meeting with her to hold their own press conference; in fact, they only canceled it after being told she would not participate, and the purpose of the press conference was very different from the meeting's.
Palin lied when she announced on the news that she never holds closed-door meetings; in fact, she had just attended a closed-door meeting with the legislature earlier that day.
Palin lied when she said that former aide John Bitney's "amicable" departure was for "personal" reasons; in fact, Bitney said he was fired because of his relationship with the wife of Palin's friend, plus a Palin spokesperson later claimed "poor job performance" for his firing - without elaborating.
Palin lied when she said she kept her running injury a secret on the campaign trail; in fact, her bandaged hand was clearly visible in photographs and the story was widely talked about.
Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent "millions of dollars" on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry.
Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party's very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years.
Palin lied when she told Oprah that she desperately wanted to go on Saturday Night Live because it would be "fun" and could push back on the Tina Fey impression Palin says she hated but never actually listened to. Contemporaneous emails show that Palin resisted going on SNL and was therefore lying to Oprah.
Palin lied when she told Oprah Winfrey that she gaffed on the campaign trail in saying that the McCain campaign shouldn't quit Michigan. She said she had been unaware at the time that the decision to withdraw had already been taken. Contemporaneous emails show she was lying, and had already been told.
Palin lied in "Going Rogue: in accusing two journalists she recognized from a press conference as ambushing her daughter Piper on the street. One of those journalists had never attended the press conference cited by Palin, but Palin has never withdrawn the charge.

U.S. agent for Cuba gets life in prison
BY LESLEY CLARK MIAMI HERALD
Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been held without bond since pleading not guilty last June to charges of wire fraud, serving as illegal agents for Cuba and conspiring to deliver classified information.
Thirty years of spying for Cuba will send a retired State Department official to prison for life after he and his wife pleaded guilty Friday to sending secrets to the United States' longtime antagonist.
Walter Kendall Myers, 72 -- known to his Cuban handlers as ``Agent 202'' -- agreed to a life sentence without parole and to cooperate with the federal government in a deal with prosecutors that offered a much lighter sentence for his wife.
Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71 -- known as ``Agent 123'' and ``Agent E-634'' -- had faced as long as 20 years in prison. Under the plea deal, she now could serve between 6 and 7 ½ years. She, too, agreed to cooperate fully with investigators.
In court Friday, the couple charged with leading a double life for three decades asked U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton if they could be sent to prisons as close together as possible.
Prosecutors said the tough sentences, which will be imposed in April after the couple debriefs investigators, should send a warning to others who might divulge state secrets.
``Today's guilty plea and impending sentence close the book on this couple's contemptuous betrayal of our nation,'' said Acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips. ``Thanks to a well-planned and executed counterintelligence investigation that included unprecedented cooperation among multiple U.S. agencies, the Myerses' serious transgressions of compromising our nation's classified secrets will now be appropriately addressed with significant prison sentences.''
Clad in dark blue jail jumpsuits and long-sleeved white shirts, the couple appeared in good spirits. Kendall Myers smiled broadly at his brothers and a son and daughter from his first marriage, who sat in the first row of the courtroom. Gwendolyn Myers joked to Walton that she was ``only 71'' to her husband's 72 years, and Kendall Myers complimented their legal representation as ``thorough and balanced.''
Walton asked if they were pleading guilty because they were guilty. ``Yes,'' they each said.
Through their lawyer, Bradford Berenson, they said they acted ``not out of selfish motive or hope of personal gain, but out of conscience and personal commitment.''
``They always understood that they might some day be called to account for that conduct and always have been prepared to accept full responsibility for it,'' the statement said. ``They have done so today. They stand ready to accept the punishment the court will impose with grace and dignity.''
The pair also agreed to pay the government about $1.7 million -- the salary Kendall Myers made while working at the State Department. They'll forfeit their Washington apartment, a 37-foot sailboat and various bank and investment accounts.
The case presented by prosecutors was something out of a Cold War-era spy novel, complete with code names and encrypted messages sent via shortwave radio or by swapping shopping carts at the supermarket.
The couple received little of value from the Cubans, prosecutors said. Instead, they appeared motivated by ideology, enthralled by Fidel Castro, whom they met privately in 1995.
``Fidel has lifted the Cuban people out of the degrading and oppressive conditions which characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba,'' Kendall Myers reportedly wrote in a diary after a trip to Cuba in 1978.
Prosecutors say the Myerses agreed to serve as clandestine agents for Cuba a year later, after a Cuban contact urged Kendall Myers to seek a job -- and top-secret security clearance -- at the State Department or the CIA. Myers got a job and top-secret clearance at the State Department.
They traveled to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and New York to meet with Cuban agents. Kendall Myers bragged to an undercover FBI source that he was so successful he received ``lots of medals'' from the Cuban government.
Their clandestine existence began to unravel when an undercover FBI source, purporting to be a Cuban intelligence officer, approached Kendall Myers in front of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies where he was teaching a class last April. The Myerses apparently took the bait, meeting several times with the informant in various Washington hotel rooms, unwittingly telling investigators on audio and videotape of their spy exploits.
In a search of the Myers home, investigators say they found a shortwave radio, sailing charts for Cuban waters, a travel guide to Cuba and a book titled On Becoming Cuban.
Prosecutors also say that between 2006 and 2007, Kendall Myers used his State Department computer to view more than 200 intelligence documents relating to Cuba, though Myers' area of expertise at the department was Western Europe.
They were charged in June with wire fraud, serving as illegal agents for Cuba and conspiring to deliver classified information.
After the arrest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered an assessment of any national security damage the couple may have caused. A spokesman said Friday the review is ongoing.
On Friday, Kendall Myers pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud. The espionage charge could carry a death sentence, but prosecutors did not seek one.
Gwendolyn Myers pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of conspiring to gather and transmit national defense information.
The case comes as President Barack Obama has sought to improve relations with Havana and lawmakers have pushed to open up the island to U.S. tourists. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen invoked Kendall Myers' name Thursday as she criticized a congressional effort aimed at lifting the ban on travel to Cuba.
``Given the success of Cuban intelligence in recruiting'' spies like Myers, the Miami Republican said, ``why would we want to facilitate such potential espionage activities

From The Times
Man arrested over ‘Night Stalker’ sex attacks on elderly
Adam Fresco, Crime Correspondent, and Anil Dawar
Police last night arrested a man aged 52 as part of a 19-year hunt for the “Night Stalker”, one of Britain’s most prolific sexual predators.
Detectives have been pursuing a man they believe is responsible for at least 108 attacks on elderly people in their homes, including four rapes and 24 sexual assaults — but say that the figure may be closer to 200.
The man was arrested in Shirley, southeast London, early yesterday. He is thought to have been questioned some years ago and then eliminated from the inquiry. He was named locally last night as Delroy Grant, a full-time carer who lives with his wheelchair-bound wife and their two teenage sons, in Brockley.
Neighbours said that the arrested man was a caring husband and father. “He was a diamond character. He always spent his time looking after his wife,” said one. “I would chat with him at the barbecues, and he was just a very nice, normal guy.”
Residents in the cul-de-sac where the man lived described his wife, who is a Jehovah’s Witness and suffers from multiple sclerosis, as a deeply religious woman. They said he was a keen air-rifle shooter, who used glass bottles for target practice in his garden.
They recalled seeing him driving in and out of the cul-de-sac in the early hours in his silver people carrier but did not think anything of it, as his days were taken up looking after his wife.
His three-storey terraced mews house was cordoned off last night.
Police sources said that the Night Stalker, who is believed to be of Caribbean extraction, had become “blasé”, committing up to five attacks in one night. He first struck in 1990 but stopped from October 1992 to 1996 and again between August 1999 and October 2002. The attacks have taken place in South London areas including Dulwich, Orpington, Norwood, Downham, Lee, West Wickham and Bickley. His victims ranged in age from 68 to 93. Most were female, although he has also attacked ten men and sexually assaulted one of them.
The Metropolitan Police put 29 detectives on the case, codenamed Operation Minstead, and £40,000 was offered for information leading to a conviction. They speculated that the attacks might have been triggered by childhood sex abuse by an elderly relative or family friend. He is thought to be a “gerontophile” — someone who enjoys sexual activity with the elderly.
The attacker is said to have behaved in an “almost childlike manner” when spoken to firmly by his victims. When women asked what he was doing and suggested that his mother would be upset by his crimes, he would flee.
Despite this, police say that he carefully selected his victims, choosing women on their own, and entered their homes in the early hours. In each case he removed glass from a ground-floor window and cut off the telephone and electricity before beginning the attack. Wearing a balaclava, he would wake his targets by whispering to them and shining a torch in their face during his assaults. Although he is thought never to have deliberately killed anyone, several frail and distraught victims died subsequently.
Investigators drew up a list of 21,500 suspects and began asking men for DNA samples. The manhunt has cost in the region of £20 million. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “We can confirm a 52-year-old man was arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning in a pre-planned operation. He is currently in custody at a London police station.”

Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash
By LINDSEY HOSHAW NY TIMES
ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.
Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.
Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans. Abandoned fishing gear like buoys, fishing line and nets account for some of the waste, but other items come from land after washing into storm drains and out to sea.
Plastic is the most common refuse in the patch because it is lightweight, durable and an omnipresent, disposable product in both advanced and developing societies. It can float along for hundreds of miles before being caught in a gyre and then, over time, breaking down.
But once it does split into pieces, the fragments look like confetti in the water. Millions, billions, trillions and more of these particles are floating in the world’s trash-filled gyres.
PCBs, DDT and other toxic chemicals cannot dissolve in water, but the plastic absorbs them like a sponge. Fish that feed on plankton ingest the tiny plastic particles. Scientists from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation say that fish tissues contain some of the same chemicals as the plastic. The scientists speculate that toxic chemicals are leaching into fish tissue from the plastic they eat.
The researchers say that when a predator — a larger fish or a person — eats the fish that eats the plastic, that predator may be transferring toxins to its own tissues, and in greater concentrations since toxins from multiple food sources can accumulate in the body.
Charles Moore found the Pacific garbage patch by accident 12 years ago, when he came upon it on his way back from a sailing race in Hawaii. As captain, Mr. Moore ferried three researchers, his first mate and a journalist here this summer in his 10th scientific trip to the site. He is convinced that several similar garbage patches remain to be discovered.
“Anywhere you really look for it, you’re going to see it,” he said.
Many scientists believe there is a garbage patch off the coast of Japan and another in the Sargasso Sea, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Bonnie Monteleone, a University of North Carolina, Wilmington, graduate student researching a master’s thesis on plastic accumulation in the ocean, visited the Sargasso Sea in late spring and the Pacific garbage patch with Mr. Moore this summer.
“I saw much higher concentrations of trash in the Pacific garbage patch than in the Sargasso,” Ms. Monteleone said, while acknowledging that she might not have found the Atlantic gyre.
Ms. Monteleone, a volunteer crew member on Mr. Moore’s ship, kept hoping she would see at least one sample taken from the Pacific garbage patch without any trash in it. “Just one area — just one,” she said. “That’s all I wanted to see. But everywhere had plastic.”
The Pacific garbage patch gained prominence after three independent marine research organizations visited it this summer. One of them, Project Kaisei, based in San Francisco, is trying to devise ways to clean up the patch by turning plastic into diesel fuel.
Environmentalists and celebrities are using the patch to promote their own causes. The actor Ted Danson’s nonprofit group Oceana designated Mr. Moore a hero for his work on the patch. Another Hollywood figure, Edward Norton, narrated a public-service announcement about plastic bags, which make their way out to the patch.
Mr. Moore, however, is the first person to have pursued serious scientific research by sampling the garbage patch. In 1999, he dedicated the Algalita foundation to studying it. Now the foundation examines plastic debris and takes samples of polluted water off the California coast and across the Pacific Ocean. By dragging a fine mesh net behind his research vessel Alguita, a 50-foot aluminum catamaran, Mr. Moore is able to collect small plastic fragments.
Researchers measure the amount of plastic in each sample and calculate the weight of each fragment. They also test the tissues of any fish caught in the nets to measure for toxic chemicals. One rainbow runner from a previous voyage had 84 pieces of plastic in its stomach.
The research team has not tested the most recent catch for toxic chemicals, but the water samples show that the amount of plastic in the gyre and the larger Pacific is increasing. Water samples from February contained twice as much plastic as samples from a decade ago.
“This is not the garbage patch I knew in 1999,” Mr. Moore said. “This is a totally different animal.”
For the captain’s first mate, Jeffery Ernst, the patch was “just a reminder that there’s nowhere that isn’t affected by humanity.”

U2: 18 October 2009 - Norman, OK
[12 November 2009] POP Matters
By William Carl Ferleman
Loud, lavish, bright and shiny objects, self-righteous politicking, and the largest stage ever built do not necessarily add up to make for an extraordinary concert. For that to occur one would first require a band, and, more to the basic point, a band that performs well in a live context. Enter four famous musical lads from Ireland who each share a minimal penchant for playing live shows.
U2’s show in Norman, Oklahoma (the first in Norman in some 26 years, as Bono noted) - part of its well-publicized U2 360 Tour - was a near peerless affair because of the music, because of the band’s performance, and not so much because of the high ceremoniousness and hyper-spectacle of it all, however intriguing those aspects may have been. Indeed, some 60,000 U2 fans witnessed more of the band U2, ironically, in the confines of a football stadium, and while the band played upon “The Claw”, a quirky, massive, expansive in the round stage, or spaceship. This is, to be sure, U2 at their touring highpoint.
Errors were made by the band, but U2’s highly illustrious gig competed with The Rolling Stones’ exuberant, especial gigs during its A Bigger Bang Tour (2005-07). U2 displayed a similar intensity, and despite having played for years, no wear and tear was evident. The extras were nice but not required: U2’s show worked tonight because it was not necessarily the Bono show. A fair part of it was, but U2 as a functioning group proper came curiously into the fore here. Admittedly, it did not start so much in that vein; during the band’s initial song “Breathe”, from No Line on the Horizon (2009), Bono, ostensibly sans irony, raised his arms up grandly like Rio de Janeiro’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue, but as he proceeded into the lengthy two-hour set, Bono became less self-oriented (to the extent that such is accomplishable).
Bono’s inspirational and rather domineering stage presence tonight was not absolute in any sense, and this was a material change; during several extended, key moments the other band members reveled in pure, unabashed showiness too, and, to be sure, the audience noticed it. Such an “upstage” was most likely a well-planned gesture on the band’s part, and it did, in fact, work; for example, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. opened the show all by his lonesome, and with a relatively discreet, brief but efficacious drum solo (the lead-in percussiveness of No Line’s “Breathe”) that impressed and allured the welcoming, jubilant crowd; more particularly, the guitar technique and showmanship of the Edge unexpectedly took some attention away from Bono’s anthemic, emotive singing during several songs.
Actually, the Edge’s newfound star-power prowess occurred during the songs “Vertigo”, “Elevation”, “Breathe”, “Get on Your Boots”, the purposely drawn-out “Where the Streets Have No Name”, and, ironically, on the relatively soft sounds of “Unknown Caller” (the subtle guitar bit required for this song is critical indeed).
The Edge’s tricky and fastidious guitar riffs nearly became the center of attention, leaving Bono at times a bit of a caricature of himself – especially as he stood up behind Mullen’s drum kit looking for lovers in the stadium, as he did during both “Breathe” and “Where the Streets Have No Name”. During some of these songs the Edge either leaned in and out while standing still or, alternatively, paraded and danced about the stage in a Bono-like fashion. During both “Vertigo” and “Breathe” specifically the Edge’s guitar sound was incredibly and overwhelmingly emphatic, and the sheer physicality of his playing noticeably stood out: (The Edge rather aggressively moved his right arm as he strummed the principal riff to “Breathe.”)
But the major highlights were a memorable version of “City of Blinding Lights”, an overall idealistic song that has gained a considerable degree of capital specifically in America since it was prominently performed during the inaugural festivities for President Obama (it was one of his requests). Other standouts included a politically-conscious show of solidarity to Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned leader of Burma, during “Walk On” (with Bono on rhythm guitar), and a largely guitar-focused, rocking rendition of the James Bondish half-techno homage to amatory, intimate matters during “Get on Your Boots”. The Edge picked up an acoustic guitar during a version of “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and the band played emotional covers of “Stand by Me” and “Amazing Grace” while the somberness and thoughtful sobriety in Bono’s voice during the set’s final two songs, “With or Without You” and “Moment of Surrender” were a great way to close the night.
Some concerns included the techno remix of “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” which didn’t work tonight because Bono was far too nonchalant with his vocals, thus de-stressing important lyrics; instead, the song should have been performed in a semi-anthemic manner, and it could have been one of those pop anthems that U2 hoped would result from the new album, along with “Breathe”. Bono’s shameless pandering to the Oklahoma crowd was a bit much too, as was his loquacity during some songs, and he almost ruined “With or Without You” by stating “thank you” several times before the song was complete. The set featured some seven songs from No Line, and the majority of them went over incredibly well; the band could have played several other older, notable songs, but U2 can’t play everything. U2’s gig tonight really was majestic and stimulating because the band itself was out in the open and on display, with each member contributing in a recognizable, meaningful way. Bono may be the charming, stentorian lead singer, but he is not in any sense the whole of the band. U2’s show tonight will remain unforgettable indeed.
Published at: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/116016-u2-18-october-2009-norman-ok/

Basics NY Times/Science
Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain
By NATALIE ANGIER
We’ve all heard the story of the third Little Pig, who foiled the hyperventilating wolf by building his house out of bricks, rather than with straw or sticks as his brothers had done. Less commonly known is that the pig later improved his home’s safety profile by installing convex security mirrors at key points along the driveway.
Well, why not? In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, researchers present evidence that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings and find their food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.
To which I say, big squeal. Why should the pigs waste precious mirror time inspecting their teeth or straightening the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, when they could be using the mirror as a tool to find a far prettier sight, the pig heaven that comes in a bowl?
The finding is just one in a series of recent discoveries from the nascent study of pig cognition. Other researchers have found that pigs are brilliant at remembering where food stores are cached and how big each stash is relative to the rest. They’ve shown that Pig A can almost instantly learn to follow Pig B when the second pig shows signs of knowing where good food is stored, and that Pig B will try to deceive the pursuing pig and throw it off the trail so that Pig B can hog its food in peace.
They’ve found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus’s worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more. For better or worse, pigs are also slow to forget. “They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,” said Suzanne Held of the University of Bristol. “They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.”
Researchers have also found that no matter what new detail they unearth about pig acumen, the public reaction is the same. “People say, ‘Oh yes, pigs really are rather clever, aren’t they?’ ” said Richard W. Byrne, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of St. Andrews. “I would recommend that somebody study sheep or goats rather than pigs, so that people would be suitably impressed to find out your animal is clever.” His feigned frustration notwithstanding, he added, “if you want to understand the evolution of intelligence and social behaviors, it’s important to work on animals like pigs that are not at all closely related to us” but rather are cousins of whales and hippos.
So far, and yet so near. Last week, an international team of biologists released the first draft sequence of the pig genome, the complete set of genetic instructions for making the ruddy-furred Duroc breed of Sus scrofus. Even on a cursory glance, “the pig genome compares favorably with the human genome,” said Lawrence Schook of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the team leaders.
“Very large sections are maintained in complete pieces,” he said, barely changed in the 100-million-plus years since the ancestors of hogs and humans diverged.
Dr. Schook is particularly eager to see if the many physiological and behavioral parallels between humans and pigs are reflected in our respective genomes. Pig hearts are like our hearts, he said, pigs metabolize drugs as we do, their teeth resemble our teeth, and their habits can, too. “I look at the pig as a great animal model for human lifestyle diseases,” he said. “Pigs like to lie around, they like to drink if given the chance, they’ll smoke and watch TV.”
Pigs have been a barnyard staple for at least 8,000 years, when they were domesticated from the wild boar in Asia and Europe. Domestication was easy, given that they loved to root around in dump sites. “The pigs were hard to hunt, but if you put the garbage out, a lot of them would be drawn out from the woods,” Dr. Schook said. “After a while, people realized, we don’t have to hunt them. All we have to do is put a fence around our garbage.”
Pigs were tireless composting machines. “They fed on our scraps,” Dr. Byrne said. “Everything we produced, they turned into good meat.” Pork is among the world’s most popular meats; in many places, pigs are a valuable form of currency. “In parts of New Guinea, they’re so important to villages that they’re suckled by people,” he said.
Of course, pigs aren’t always handled so lovingly, and these researchers denounced factory farms. “I’m German and I love sausage, but I would never eat pork that isn’t free range,” Dr. Held said.
Even in domesticity, pigs have retained much of their foreboar’s smarts. Dr. Byrne attributes pig intelligence to the same evolutionary pressures that prompted cleverness in primates: social life and food. Wild pigs live in long-term social groups, keeping track of one another as individuals, the better to protect against predation. They also root around for difficult food sources, requiring a dexterity of the snout not unlike the handiness of a monkey.
Because monkeys had been shown to use mirrors to locate food, Donald M. Broom of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues decided to check for a similar sort of so-called assessment awareness in pigs. They began by exposing seven 4-to-8-week-old pigs to five-hour stints with a mirror and recording their reactions. The pigs were fascinated, pointing their snouts toward the mirror, hesitating, vocalizing, edging closer, walking up and nuzzling the surface, looking at their image from different angles, looking behind the mirror. When the mirror was placed in their pen a day later, the glass-savvy pigs greeted it with a big ho-hum.
Next, the researchers put the mirror in the enclosure, along with a bowl of food that could not be directly seen but whose image was reflected in the mirror. They then compared the responses of the mirror-experienced pigs with a group of mirror-naïve pigs. On spotting the virtual food in the mirror, the experienced pigs turned away and within an average of 23 seconds had found the food. But the naïve pigs took the reflection for reality and sought in vain to find the bowl by rooting around behind the mirror. No doubt the poor frustrated little pigs couldn’t wait to get home, crack open a beer and turn on the TV.

From The London Times
The liberation of Jackie O
Extraordinary images of the widowed First Lady are to be auctioned. Douglas Thompson reveals a missing chapter in the Jackie O story
Douglas Thompson
In the summer of 1971, on the private Greek island of Skorpios, Settimio Garritano took a set of photographs that changed perceptions of the most debated woman in the world. The images also provoked controversy. They were the catalyst for myth-making subterfuge – titillating, amusing stuff, but nonsense; it was legend still being parroted authoritatively this summer, 38 years on from when these pictures were taken.
Nestling his tiny boat, with its flaking yellow paint, in some vegetation on the edge of the shoreline, the accomplished Garritano set up his two Pentax cameras to photograph Jackie Onassis relaxing. The discreet vantage point had been carefully calculated over many months, and he’d photographed her here many times before.
Yet, this time, as she strolled across his viewfinder, she was naked. At 43, she looked in excellent shape. Her posture was good – shoulders back, stride straight, the refined deportment demanded at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, topped up by her early adopter’s passion for yoga.
His camera captured everything: her toned backside, limbs, breasts. Garritano was hot and bothered, but not in a schoolboy way. Had he really photographed the wife of one of the richest, most powerful men in the world and the widow of America’s assassinated 35th President in the buff? Mrs Onassis, totally naked?
He had. The evidence stared up at him from the trays of developed film in the Athens photo lab he had driven too fast to get to. He studied the dozen images as if he were seeing the end of a long rainbow. But was it a pot of fool’s gold? The ever vigilant Settimio Garritano had pursued the former First Lady since her marriage to Aristotle Onassis on October 20, 1968, on the very island on which he took this landmark set of pictures. The wedding transformed the widow of John F. Kennedy into Jackie O, the paparazzi’s holy grail.
Onassis brought incredible wealth but also infamy – a ruthless business style and a torrid, recent affair with Maria Callas – to the ceremony. His bride brought a dowry of history. Many people believed that JFK’s widow, for some years one of the most applauded and admired women in the world for her dignity and style, had renounced her halo. She had become a conundrum; the world didn’t know whether to love her or loathe her. And such emotion had raised her celebrity currency to astonishing levels.
The charismatic Onassis, a tycoon with varying shades of social and commercial complexities, bought Skorpios as his private kingdom in 1963. It is a brief, sometimes turbulent, ten-minute boat trip from Nidri, which sits on the east of Lefkas – another island, but linked to the Greek mainland by road. A heliport and the main villa are high on a hill, retreated into the landscape; on the far side of Skorpios were moorings for Onassis’s yacht, Christina, and his seaplane.
Yet the only decent beach on the island is close to where Garritano had purposely landed. Onassis had built a simple house on it to store beach furniture, cushions, towels, goggles, fins and other gear, and there was a shower room and a kitchenette to prepare snacks to accompany the apéritifs that took the edge off the day.
It was where Jackie relaxed. She’d read and snooze, do yoga and swim, eat and smoke – her heavy cigarette habit something she’d taken elaborate precautions to hide during her 1,000 days as America’s First Lady. She even asked author William Manchester to remove from his book The Death of a President that she had cigarettes in her handbag on November 22, 1963.
But that was Mrs Kennedy. As Jackie O, who arrived in the Seventies from the Sixties in a first-class cabin, she smoked openly on trips to Capri. On the romantic Italian island – “Apart from Skorpios, this is the island of seduction,” insisted Onassis – she radiated a freedom rarely witnessed in America.
On marriage to Onassis, she’d given up her Secret Service protection. It was only when her children, Caroline and John Jr, were with her that large men in suits appeared. She would inhabit the outdoor cafés and trattorias on the streets of Capri, indulging her sweet tooth with ice cream and lemon granita. She would shop – 30 pairs of Capri pants bought in one store in half an hour – and promoted the flat sandals (the spider’s web of fine leather straps called ragni, similar to this year’s popular gladiator style) made on the island.
Settimio Garritano, then 38 and a seasoned professional, photographed her everywhere she went in what he calls her “Happy Jackie” time. It kept the smile on his face, too, for newspapers and magazines worldwide published his work. So, when Jackie cheerfully asked as they wandered one of Capri’s narrow streets if he ever got bored with photographing her, the answer was honest: he would follow her anywhere.
She accepted that with grace: “I see you here, in Greece, but OK?” It was a turnaround from America, where she looked at the paparazzi as if they were snakes, judging how venomous they were. Her attitude to the twinkly-eyed Italian, with his jet-black hair, long sideburns and fashionable beige safari suit, never changed.
“She always smiled at me, acknowledged me. Jackie loved to be photographed. She would have all the newspapers and magazines bought for her so she could see whether she was featured.
“Capri was her favourite island; more so than Skorpios, which was a private residence. On Capri, she and Onassis would go to dinner at La Pigna, La Capannina and Da Gemma, with their guitarists and chansonniers. Their favourite was Peppino Scarola, who’d serenade them with Neapolitan folk songs – O Sole Mio, Torna a Surriento and Luna Rossa.
“She loved doing all the things she couldn’t do in the States and seemed most happy just walking freely around.”
Of course, it was on Skorpios that Jackie must have felt totally free. She never stayed for more than a couple of weeks at a time, but she was a regular visitor. It was the era of the Greek military junta, of the colonels, who advertised torture as part of their manifesto. Police and military guards, always in twos, patrolled even villages such as Nidri.
Jackie almost certainly knew she’d been photographed on Skorpios. Garritano’s shots of her there had been published worldwide. And several times she had said hello to him in Nidri, when she had gone with family members to Sunday mass at the small Greek Orthodox church, or had lunch at Nikos’s taverna: “I would photograph them from a respectful distance and not once did anyone ever attempt to run me off.”
Onassis, with his influence over the colonels, had the power to do much more than that. When Garritano had started going to Skorpios, he had been taken to the island by local fishermen, who didn’t mind the risk if they could earn a few drachmas. When his pictures were published, an order banning fishermen from allowing foreigners on their boats stopped that – which was why he was in his own, second-hand boat in the undergrowth as he waited that summer of 1971.
Around 80 people were employed on Skorpios, tending the Onassis paradise, and were ferried over early every morning. Garritano befriended the boss, a huge, engaging man called Achilles. With his help, the photographer got on to the island disguised as a gardener. During these trips, he fine-tuned the logistics and worked out where he could take shots without being seen. He learnt that Jackie and Onassis would drive to the beach in a Jeep on most days when they were resident. He knew when from his contact, Irene, at Onassis’s Olympic Airways office in Athens.
For a couple of years it had been a profitable enterprise, and then Garritano heard a rumour from some of the workers that the Lady liked to sunbathe nude. “It didn’t seem possible to me; she knew she’d been photographed on Skorpios, so why would she display herself? I really never thought it would happen.”
But it did. Today in Rome – where, for many years, he has run a hugely successful photographic agency – his figure fuller and the safari suits long gone but the twinkle still in his eyes, Garritano reflects on what he captured. “Suddenly, she appeared and wandered around the patio area. I concentrated on just taking the pictures, not composing them. It was a matter of moments, not even minutes,” he recalls. “I was excited to see if I had anything or if it had all been only a dream. When I saw the shots on the film, I calmed down. But just a little. I was extremely fearful of the reaction of Onassis and, in fact, the entire Kennedy family. I had to be really careful.”
The immediate problem was getting the film out of Greece. Under the dictatorship, the airports were heavily controlled – all outgoing luggage was checked by hand, especially cameras and film.
“I was terrified each time I flew from Athens,” Garritano continues, “because Onassis was respected and protected by the regime. All long-lens pictures, especially of Jackie, were declared stolen.
“I wore a 7cm-wide leather belt with a secret pocket and hid some film in that. I carried a rigid leather camera bag with a false bottom and the remaining film was in there. But I was more paranoid than ever. This had always worked before,but this time? It was only when my plane was high in the air and the fasten-your-seat-belts sign had been turned off that I relaxed.
“Yet I was still fearful of what reaction there would be when the pictures were published. I thought Onassis or the Kennedys would come after me – I didn’t think they’d kill me, but I thought they’d certainly try to ruin me. I didn’t know what to do.”
And neither did the world’s magazines and newspapers, when they heard of the Jackie O nudes. Everybody wanted to see them, but no one wanted to publish them – or they were advised not to. This, of course, was many years before the trade in paparazzi images – from long-lens shots of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed to blurry C-list celebrities – became such staple fare.
Clearly, it was still too soon after Dallas, November 22, 1963. When editors in 1971 saw the nude images, their memories were also replaying images of Jackie Kennedy in her pink suit and matching pillbox hat, JFK grinning and waving, the crowds cheering. And then the gunshots that shattered the world.
She had moved on and been described as a woman who knew how to have fun, a woman in love with life, but the concern was the public’s sensibility. They were still seeing the widow, not the woman.
Garritano was upset but pragmatic: “I was completely discouraged – so much trouble and all that initial elation and it had been for nothing. I locked away all the negatives in a bank safe. But I continued photographing Jackie on Skorpios as usual.”
He took another set of topless photographs, this time of Fiona Campbell, the former model, and Baroness von Thyssen, the companion of Onassis’s son, Alexander. Garritano and his wife were in Greece and the young Onassis helicoptered in to see them. In return for destroying the topless images of Campbell, the photographer persuaded Alexander to pose with his lover for the first and only time.
“While we were chatting over glasses of beer, I mentioned to him that I had a set of photos of Jackie nude on Skorpios and he immediately told me, ‘Get them published!’” says Garritano. “He and his sister, Christina, did not like Jackie. He reasoned that if they were made public, Aristotle would be furious and get rid of his new wife.”
But that was not Onassis’s reaction when the photographs made their first public appearance, in December 1972, in the Italian monthly, Playmen. The editor, Adelina Tattilo, ignored legal advice and decided to use them to take on the incoming competition of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, which was launching an Italian edition, splashing Jackie O over 14 pages. It was a winner. Her magazine sold out. And Onassis was nonchalant: “Sometimes I have to take my clothes off to put on a bathing suit. So does my wife.”
However, the reaction in America was less relaxed. Bootleg copies of Playmen appeared in New York and Jackie O’s public image took a battering. Her marriage to Onassis had been a shock – they were dubbed “Beauty and the Beast” – and now this. Parading around naked was thoughtlessly continental – all right for the flesh-obsessed Europeans, but not a former First Lady.
Settimio Garritano wasn’t relaxed either. He waited for trouble, but wily Adelina Tattilo concocted a tale about how the shots had been possible – and the myth grew from there.
Garritano finds it amusing now. “The most incredible things were written: that the photographs were taken from a submarine lurking in the waters of Skorpios, that a team of frogmen had stayed underwater for days waiting for Jackie to take her clothes off, that I’d been in cahoots with Onassis. And an Italian weekly, Annabella, even published a photo of Jackie and me together with the headline: ‘To him, Jackie said yes. Why?’”
The Playmen publication made it open season in Europe and South America. A Brazilian bank plastered pages of the magazine Manchete, featuring the nude photos, on its doors to attract customers. Intriguingly, the cover line read: “Jackie – victim or accomplice?”.
The United States and Britain remained wary. In America, Larry Flynt had started publication of Hustler magazine in 1974 with what he called “a slightly more explicit photo policy”. He was making $500,000 an issue by April, 1975, when, he says in his autobiography, Sex, Lies and Politics, “I made the smartest investment of my life and bought those nudes of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, which I ran in the August 1975 issue. And the rest, as they say, is history.” Having enjoyed his bestselling issue, he declared: “If the photographer had asked me for a million dollars, I’d have paid it.”
And Settimio Garritano would have taken it. “The truth is that he sent his brother to Rome to offer me a few thousand dollars and, having had no other buyers, I agreed,” he says.
The myths have persisted. In August this year, archivists working on material in Andy Warhol’s estate discovered a Jackie O nude signed by the subject: “For Andy, with enduring affection, Jackie Montauk”. The signature has been authenticated.
“Montauk” was a salute to Warhol’s New York estate, at which Jackie was a regular visitor. The leading archivist, Matt Wrbican, then re-ran some of the legends surrounding the source of the material, but pointed mainly to Onassis’s connivance. No one suggested that Jackie herself, with the naughty humour demonstrated by the Warhol gift, had colluded, making herself available to being photographed naked, that she wasn’t quite so reserved as believed, that she was revelling in rebellion after years of restriction. She certainly didn’t need 15 more minutes of fame.
The Kennedy White House was the first to indulge celebrity culture. It projected an open-door, youthful, image-conscious world that is now part of the American iconography. Settimio Garritano’s work that day in 1971 on Skorpios has become part of that, if not by intent. He has been approached over the years to sell the original film and his copyright and, now aged 76, he has decided to do just that, and to auction his entire “Happy Jackie” collection. “I don’t think they should languish in a bank vault. They should be in a living archive somewhere.
“The pictures I took of Jackie were when she was slim and elegant, a beautiful woman. Today, people have no problem with them, so they should be on display.
“She was always happy when I saw her, always in good humour. She’d endured tragedy, but, in Italy and on Skorpios, she escaped from all that. I’ve never thought of her other than as Happy Jackie.
“When she died in 1994 from cancer, I thought of the half a dozen or so years during which I had followed her. I chose to remember her at a formal party on Capri. She was dressed for the evening, for an event. But when I looked up as I was taking her picture, I saw she was stepping down the stone steps barefoot. She’d kicked off her heels. That was my Happy Jackie.”
The “Happy Jackie” original photography collection will go to auction in December. For details, e-mail jackieoinfo@googlemail.com

Ft. Hood Investigators Focus on Motive
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JACK HEALY NY TIMES
KILLEEN, Tex. — Amid a public outpouring of grief on Friday for those gunned down at the Fort Hood Army base, new details emerged about the chaotic moments of the shooting and the Army psychiatrist suspected of opening fire on dozens of his fellow soldiers.
The gunman, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was shot four times by a Fort Hood civilian police officer responding to the scene. He remained hospitalized on a ventilator on Friday in stable condition and was expected to live, Army officials said.
As military and law-enforcement investigators waited to interview Major Hasan, neighbors described him as a man who dressed alternately in a military uniform and flowing white robes and gave a copy of the Koran to his next-door neighbor a day before the shooting.
The death toll has risen to 13 people, including 12 soldiers, in what is thought to have been the most lethal shooting on an American military base in history. Another 28 people were wounded.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said Army officials were trying to determine “if there is something more than just one deranged person involved here.” She said in remarks at the base on Friday that while he was the only one who had fired at the other soldiers, it was still unclear if he had planned this completely alone.
“That is a question still to be asked,” she said. “That is not a question that has been resolved.”
Evidence has emerged that Major Hasan was both a troubled man and a religious Muslim. Reports suggested that soldiers may have heard him shout something like “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — just before he fired two automatic handguns. He was shown on a security video tape from a local convenience store wearing religious garb just hours before the shooting. And family members said that he had complained about being harassed expressly because he was a Muslim, and that he had expressed deep concerns about deploying.
Acquaintances said Major Hasan was upset about his future deployment in a war zone, and heatedly opposed United States foreign policy in discussions with fellow soldiers. Earlier this year law-enforcement officers monitoring Islamic Web sites identified Major Hasan as a blogger who posted comments on suicide bombings in which he equated such acts to those by soldiers who use their own bodies to shield fellow soldiers from exploding shrapnel.
But Major Hasan also reportedly required counseling at different times in his life, including for a time as a medical student before United States involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan were issues.
Senator Hutchison said the shooting had prompted Army officials to examine procedures in tracking people who may have problems.
“Was enough done?” she asked. “Should there have been more triggers? I think that’s what we’re trying to learn right now. And I think that it’s a legitimate question and it’s a question the Army is asking itself.”
“I don’t think that anyone would have ever expected a psychiatrist trained to help others mental health would be the one who would go off himself, unless there’s more to it, and that’s what they’re looking for,” she added.
President Obama asked people to avoid “jumping to conclusions” while the investigations continued.
A day after the shooting unfolded in a blur of contradictory reports from officials, many questions continued to burn about not only Major Hasan’s life and his motives but also how he was able to shoot so many people in a relatively short period of time.
It may take some days or more to untangle ballistics evidence to conclude whether a single gunman was able to discharge so many bullets or whether multiple casualties were caused by single bullets. Local radio reports have also raised the possibility that some people were shot in a cross fire between Major Hasan and several military and civilian police officers.
Army officials said Friday that Major Hasan had not caused any problems since transferring to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood this year. Col. John Rossi, an Army spokesman, told reporters that investigators were examining whether Major Hasan had registered the two handguns used in the shooting.
Major Hasan is the sole suspect, after three others who were immediately taken in custody were released.
“He could have just brought it onto the installation,” Colonel Rossi said.
Army officials said that about half the people injured in the shooting had undergone surgery, and all were in stable condition.
A joint civilian-military investigation by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Army criminal investigative division is under way, as government officials discuss how to prosecute Major Hasan. He could face murder charges in federal district court or a military court martial.
A law-enforcement official said high-level discussions between Justice Department and Pentagon officials over that question have been taking place since Thursday evening. The ultimate decision will be made in collaboration between the two agencies, the official said.
One factor that could shape the decision is whether investigators conclude that Major Hasan acted alone — so that it was a purely military-on-military crime — or whether they uncover evidence of any civilian co-conspirators off the base.
Under either civilian law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a murder conviction could carry a penalty of death. But there are some procedural differences between the two systems.
Army officials said they had declared a day of mourning on the base. President Obama said flags at the White House and other federal buildings would fly at half-staff until Veteran’s Day, “as a modest tribute to those who lost their lives.”
In interviews with reporters on Friday, they praised the police officer who shot Major Hasan, Kimberly Munley, saying she and her partner had arrived within three minutes of reports of gunfire and put an end to the rampage. Ms. Munley, 34, was wounded in the exchange, officials said.
In a brief telephone interview, her stepmother, Wanda Barbour, said Ms. Munley had grown up in Carolina Beach, N.C., and described her as an excellent police officer.
“She’s concerned about all the people who’ve lost their lives,” Ms. Barbour said. “We’re just real proud of her and so grateful and thankful to the Lord that she’s going to be O.K.”
By midday on Friday, family members had publicly identified three of those killed as Pvt. 1st Class Michael Pearson, 21, of Bolingbrook, Ill., who was set to be deployed to Iraq; Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Frederick, Okla. who served at Fort Hood; and Sgt. Amy Krueger, a 1998 graduate of Kiel High School in Kiel, Wis.
“Amy was a typical high school student,” said Dario Talerico, the high school’s principal. “She was kind of a tomboy type of kid. I know she was very, very proud of being able to serve in the military. She chose the military very soon after graduating.”
The victims were cut down in clusters as Major Hasan, clad in a military uniform, sprayed bullets inside a crowded medical processing center for soldiers returning from or about to be sent overseas, military officials said.
In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesman, was asked about the reports that Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar.” General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts.
Witnesses told military investigators that medics working at the center tore open the clothing of the dead and wounded to get at the wounds and administer first aid.
As the shooting unfolded, military police and civilian officers of the Department of the Army responded and returned the gunman’s fire, officials said .
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and John M. McHugh, the Army secretary, were traveling to Fort Hood as a widespread investigation began, led by the Army and involving the F.B.I. and other agencies. The Army also said it was sending chaplains and mental health professionals to the base to help with the emotional aftermath of the shooting.
On Thursday night, F.B.I. agents were interviewing residents of a townhouse complex in the Washington suburb of Kensington, Md., where Major Hasan had lived before moving to Texas, and news footage from here in Killeen showed law-enforcement officers surrounding an apartment complex where Major Hasan had lived.
Military records indicated that Major Hasan was single, had been born in Virginia, had never served abroad and listed “no religious preference” on his personnel records. The office of Representative John Carter, Republican of Texas, said these records were later released, but a Fort Hood spokesman could not confirm that. General Cone said more than 100 people had been questioned during the day.
Fort Hood, near Killeen and about a two hours’ drive south of Dallas-Fort Worth, is the largest active duty military post in the United States, 340 square miles of training and support facilities and homes, a virtual city for more than 50,000 military personnel and some 150,000 family members and civilian support personnel. It has been a major center for troops being deployed to or returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The rampage recalled other mass shootings in the United States, including 13 killed at a center for immigrants in upstate New Yorklast April, the deaths of 10 during a gunman’s rampage in Alabama in March, and 32 people killed at Virginia Tech, the deadliest shooting in modern American history.
The base was open again but under heightened security Friday morning after going into lockdown shortly after the shootings.
As the shootings ended, scores of emergency vehicles rushed to the scene, which is in the center of the fort, and dozens of ambulances carried the shooting victims to hospitals in the region.
Both of the handguns used by Major Hasan were recovered at the scene, officials said. Investigators said the major’s computers, cellphones and papers would be examined, his past investigated and his friends, relatives and military acquaintances would be interviewed in an effort to develop a profile of him and try to learn what had motivated his deadly outburst.
The weapons used in the attack were described as “civilian” handguns. Security experts said the fact that two handguns had been used suggested premeditation, as opposed to a spontaneous act.
Rifles and assault weapons are conspicuous and not ordinarily seen on the streets of a military post, and medical personnel would have no reason to carry any weapon, they said. Moreover, security experts noted, it took a lot of ammunition to shoot so many people, another indication of premeditation.
It appeared certain that the shootings would generate a new look at questions of security on military posts of all the armed forces in the United States. Expressions of dismay were voiced by public officials across the country.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking for many American Muslims, condemned the shootings as a “heinous incident” and said, “We share the sentiment of our president.”
The council added, “Our entire organization extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed as well as those wounded and their loved ones.”
General Cone said Fort Hood was “absolutely devastated.”
But already the shooting has been glorified on at least one Jihadist Web site. A nearly four-minute video displayed media clips of the aftermath of the shooting, and declared that Maj. Hasan "did Jihad in that base and killed no less than 13 Crusader foreigners" and "put terror and chaos in the ranks of the enemy."
Fort Hood, opened in September 1942 as America geared up for World War II, was named for Gen. John Bell Hood of the Confederacy. It has been used continuously for armor training and is charged with maintaining readiness for combat missions.
It is a place that feels, on ordinary days, like one of the safest in the world, surrounded by those who protect the nation with their lives. It is home to nine schools — seven elementary schools and two middle schools, for the children of personnel. But on Thursday, the streets were lined with emergency vehicles, their lights flashing and sirens piercing the air as Texas Rangers and state troopers took up posts at the gates to seal the base.
Shortly after 7 p.m., the sirens sounded again and over the loudspeakers a woman’s voice that could be heard all over the base announced in a clipped military fashion: “Declared emergency no longer exists.”
The gates reopened, and a stream of cars and trucks that had been bottled up for hours began to move out.
Michael Brick and Campbell Robinson contributed reporting from Fort Hood, Tex.; Elisabeth Bumiller, Charlie Savage and David Stout from Washington; and Carla Baranauckas, Michael Luo and Liz Robbins from New York.