<a href=www.thestar.com>Toronto Star - Apr. 26, 2003. 01:41 PM DALE BRAZAO STAFF REPORTER

A Toronto woman has launched an $8 million lawsuit against Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Kelvim Escobar, claiming she was drugged and then sexually assaulted by Escobar who videotaped the entire incident.

According to her lawyer, Eddie Greenspan, the woman, who is in her mid-20s, has the tape.

The assault allegedly took place two years ago at Escobar's Toronto waterfront condominium after the woman, who had known Escobar for about a year, accepted his invitation to go to a nightclub in Yorkville, according to the lawsuit filed yesterday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

The statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proven in court. Approached just before last night's game with the Kansas City Royals, Escobar, 27, said his lawyer had notified him of the suit, but he couldn't talk about it.

"I mean you have to deal with it, you know, but I can't really make any comment," Escobar told the Star. "I'm sorry, but I can't say anything."

The woman, described only as Jane Doe in the court documents, claims that while at the club, Escobar slipped a "noxious substance" into a glass of champagne, causing her to become dizzy and light-headed.

The lawsuit goes on to say that Escobar then escorted her to his car, where she lost consciousness.

"She did not regain consciousness until the next day when she found herself naked and disoriented in Escobar's bed in his bedroom at his condominium," the lawsuit says.

While Jane Doe was unconscious, Escobar "repeatedly assaulted and battered her," the lawsuit claims.

The statement of claim contains a graphic frame-by-frame description of the alleged sexual assault.

When Jane Doe questioned Escobar about what had transpired in the apartment the night before, he told her she had become ill and vomited and so he had taken her clothes off, the document alleges.

Escobar told her he had wanted to have sex with her, but because she had passed out he had refrained from doing so, the lawsuit claims.

"I wanted to make love to you, but you didn't wake, so I let you sleep," Escobar is quoted as telling the woman.

The woman claims she found semen in her vagina when she awoke.

On her way to the bathroom to get dressed she saw a video camera in the apartment. While dressing, the woman also noticed that there was no vomit on her clothing.

"After dressing, Jane returned to Escobar's bedroom and noticed that the video camera was no longer visible and that Escobar had dropped clothes over a bag. In Escobar's absence, she rummaged about and found the video camera under a bag below the clothing.

"She opened the camera, removed the cassette and hid it in her purse," the lawsuit says.

"Jane did not consent to the sexual assaults and battery ... She has no recollection of them because she was unconscious and could not consent and did not consent," the lawsuit states.

Escobar ended the recording session by saying: "Pobrecita," which is the Spanish word for "poor girl," the lawsuit claims.

Greenspan said he could not comment on why it took the woman two years to go public with her allegations, or whether she had complained to police.

She has also hired lawyer Harvey Strosberg as co-counsel to put her case before the courts.

The lawsuit also claims that Escobar did not use a condom, thereby exposing the woman to both the risk of pregnancy and the risk of sexually transmitted disease.

As a result of the "assaults and battery," Jane Doe has suffered loss of income, is anxious and depressed. She requires and will require medical care and counselling, is distrustful of males and will have difficulty in the future in maintaining interpersonal relationships, the suit claims.

Escobar's conduct, the lawsuit claims, was "highhanded, outrageous, reckless, wanton, entirely without care, deliberate, callous, disgraceful, wilful in disregard of Jane's rights and indifferent to the consequences."

The suit claims $5 million in general damages and $3 million in aggravated and punitive damages. Escobar's lawyer, William Burden, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The Venezuelan-born Escobar, a hard-throwing right-hander who is in his seventh season with the Blue Jays, signed a one-year $3.9 million (U.S.) contract with the Jays over the winter. Baseball observers believe he has the stuff to become one of the game's elite closers.

But Escobar, like the rest of the Jays team, is off to a miserable start with a record of one win and a loss and an ERA of 10.80. Up until last night he had registered three saves.

His official bio posted on www.BigLeaguers.com claims the 6-foot-1 210-pound Escobar is "The man with the golden arm." His 38 saves last year made him one of the top closers in the American League and his 54 saves ranks him fourth in franchise history.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Star's Geoff Baker three weeks ago, Escobar talked about what he missed about Venezuela.

"Being around my family. I'm very much a family guy." Escobar said.

"Then, the second thing I miss is the Venezuelan ladies. The girls."

<a href=www.jihadunspun.com>Jihad Unspun Apr 26, 2003 By Ted Rall, Common Dreams

Iraq is going to hell. Shiites are killing Sunnis, Kurds are killing Arabs and Islamists are killing secular Baathists. Baghdad, the cradle of human civilization, has been left to looters and rapists. As in Beirut during the '70s, neighborhood zones are separated by checkpoints manned by armed tribesmen. The war has, however, managed to unite Iraqis in one respect: everyone loathes the United States.

Some Iraqis hate us for deposing Saddam Hussein. No dictator remains in power without the tacit support of at some of his subjects. Now that we've committed the cardinal sin of conquest--getting rid of the old system without thinking up a new one--even those who chafed under Saddam blame us for their present misery.

Others resent our Pentagon-appointed pretender, 58-year-old banker/embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. The State Department points out that Iraq's new puppet autocrat has zero support among Iraqis, having lived abroad since 1958. But who knows? Maybe he was a really popular kid.

Thousands of Iraqis have been reduced to poverty, raped and murdered by rampaging goons as U.S. Marines stood around and watched. Wanna guess how long it will take them to "get over it"? We watched the plunder of museums in Mosul and Baghdad safe at home with our tisk-tisk dismay, but Iraqis will remain outraged by the wanton devastation we wrought through war, permitted through negligence and shrugged off through arrogance. ("We didn't allow it," Rumsfeld shrugged. "It happened.") Imagine foreign troops sitting idly, laughing as hooligans trashed the Smithsonian, stole the gold from Fort Knox and burned down the Department of the Interior.

That was us in Iraq.

But let's forget this penny ante stuff. Let the real looting begin! George W. Bush's bestest buddies, corporate executives at companies which donate money in exchange for a few rounds of golf and a few million-dollar favors, are being handed the keys to Iraq's oil fields.

Bush's brazen Genghis Khan act seems carefully calculated to confirm our worst suspicions. First he appoints retired general Jay Garner, president of a GOP-connected defense contractor, SYColeman Corp., as viceroy of occupied Iraq. "The idea is we are in Iraq not as occupiers but as liberators, and here comes a guy who has attachments to companies that provided the wherewithal for the military assault on that country," marvels David Armstrong, a defense analyst at the National Security News Service. A smart and/or decent president would have picked a civilian for a civil administration post.

Then Bush slips a $680 million contract to the Bechtel Group, whose Republican-oriented board includes such Reagan-era GOP luminaries as secretary of state George Schulz and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger (the late William Casey, Reagan's CIA director, was a Bechtel executive). The deal puts the company in position to receive a big part of the $100 billion estimated total cost of Iraqi reconstruction. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel gave Republican candidates, including Bush, about $765,000 in PAC, soft money and individual campaign contributions between 1999 and 2002.

Finally, refusing to accept bids from potential competitors, Bush grants a two-year, $490 million contract for Iraqi oil field repairs to Halliburton Co., the Houston-based company where Dick Cheney worked as CEO from 1995 to 2000. "It will look a lot worse if Halliburton gets the USAID [Agency for International Development] contract, too," Bathsheba Crocker, an Iraq specialist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in March. "Then it really starts looking bad." Guess what! Halliburton has since scored a piece of that $600 million USAID contract.

Are we looking bad yet?

Only Bush's most intimate friends were invited to bid for these contracts. Even businesses based in Great Britain, where Tony Blair risked his political career to support Bush, have been excluded from a rigged process where only U.S.-based, Republican-led, Bush-connected companies need apply.

Two senior Democratic Congressmen, Henry Waxman and John Dingell, are asking the General Accounting Office to look into these sleazy kickback deals. "These ties between the vice president and Halliburton have raised concerns about whether the company has received favorable treatment from the administration," their letter reads. Well, duh. But don't count on appropriate action--like impeachment proceedings--from the do-nothing Dems.

Bush's right-wing Gang of Four--Cheney, Rummy, Condi and Wolfy--saw Operation Iraqi Freedom as a chance to line their buddies' pockets, emasculate the Muslim world, place U.S. military bases in Russia's former sphere of influence and, according to the experts, lower the price of oil by busting OPEC. "There will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production [under U.S. occupation], and I wouldn't be surprised if schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC," says Jumberto Calderón, former energy minister of Venezuela. Former OPEC secretary general Fadhil Chalabi (no relation to Ahmed) estimates that increased exploration could potentially double Iraq's proven reserves, which would raise production from 2.4 to 10 million barrels a day. Such Saudi-scale production would "bring OPEC to its knees," says Chalabi. The cartel's member nations, ten of 11 of them predominantly Muslim, would suffer staggering increases in poverty as a result of falling oil revenues, plunging some into the political chaos that breeds Islamist fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq, whose self-flagellating Shias already make the evening news look like a rerun of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, would starve as foreign infidels raked in billions thanks to the oil beneath their land.

Time to dust off the duct tape.

Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

<a href=www.theglobalist.com>The Globalist Global Bite > Global Politics By David Apgar | Saturday, April 26, 2003  

U.S. President George W. Bush surprised all western intelligence agencies and major news outlets with his recent announcement that Syria harbors weapons of mass destruction. What was his message really intended to say? Was it the opening shot in a broader global campaign to rid the world of yet more of its ills? David Apgar takes a somewhat light-hearted look.

Some people believe that, in its decoded version, President Bush’s veiled threat to President Assad of Syria really reads: “Give up Saddam’s cousins and his sisters and his — or you are toast!”

A brilliant strategy

The Bush Administration has since softened its rhetorical assault on Damascus. But come to think of it, calling on other nations to clean up their act is a brilliant strategy.

Of course, President Nixon tried it as well, but he was no George Bush. His efforts were cut short because he scared Americans more than America’s foes.

President Bush is off to a much stronger start. The real question is this: How far will he go in his expansive mood and mindset? Which nation’s conflicts will not get tangled up in his web?

Real needs

In the view of many, Americans really need help with North Korean nukes — and Colombian drug traffickers.

North Korea presents a worse nuclear proliferation risk than anybody else, and Colombia festers on the edge of civil war in America’s backyard.

A tough goal

And while we’re at it, the United States could also help out its great ally, Britain. It is suffering mightily under all those farm seizures visited upon expatriates in Zimbabwe.

Resolving these prickly issues is a tough goal, but it is certainly within reach — now that the President of the mighty United States has caught the clean-up bug. Here is one correspondent’s guide to how events could unfold:

With North Korea, the United States needs help from both China and Russia. As things currently stand, it is still far too easy for both of these nations simply to sit back and say, “Let’s let America deal with the barking maniac in Pyongyang.”

Addressing complacency

To address their complacency, watch for the U.S. President to announce that the rising threat on the Korean peninsula has forced him to occupy Taiwan and Russia’s Kuril Islands.

He would claim that this move occurred purely out of self-defense, of course.

Rapid response

Normally, great nations would receive such an announcement with skeptical detachment. But the same cannot be said when the 101st Airborne is studying maps of the Syrian Desert.

With the 101st Airborne looking for suitable landing zones in the Syrian part of the Euphrates valley, a little hysteria would be in order.

Painful as it is to have to talk with Kim Jong-Il, one can imagine China’s and Russia’s leaders picking up the telephone to get the mad man of Pyongyang moving in the right direction. Either that or watch Marines roasting marshmallows on the beaches of Taiwan and the Kurils.

On to the New World

The Bush team will also want to turn its creativity to the boiling problems in the New World. Our good friends in Colombia need help in their war on drug terrorists, for example.

Venezuela would be in a great position to help the United States contain Colombian drug lords – but for one little problem.

Why not step in?

Under the stewardship of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s government actually sympathizes with all those aging revolutionaries in Columbia who let their rebel organizations besiege civilian government.

Watch for the United States to step in — threatening to seize Venezuela’s ports, say, until its difficult President Chavez comes around and lends a hand in the Columbian campaign.

As it is, Venezuela’s ports are clogged with oil tankers. We could offer to relieve the congestion while President Chavez considers his options.

What about Fidel?

And then there is Fidel Castro, the unapologetic Cuban super-dictator, whose recent moves against his domestic opposition make him look like a latter-day revolutionary on a permanent overdose of Viagra.

Using the U.S. military — as it is on its way back from the Persian Gulf — in order to send Castro packing is always an option. But it would also be a true cheap shot.

An elegant solution

A more elegant solution might involve, say, the Argentines. With Argentina’s continuing economic crisis, the country needs all the help from the United States that it can possibly offer.

So the Bush Administration would only be wise to ask for a down payment in exchange for its favors. How about sending up the Argentine navy to seize Cuba - and free it?

After all, Argentina's Navy has a lot of experience in seizing islands. Just think back to 1982 — when the country seized the Falkland Islands from Britain.

Great torment

And speaking of Britain, what about Prime Minister Tony Blair?

It surely torments him to read daily dispatches of the latest abominations that Zimbabwe's liberator-turned-tyrant Robert Mugabe has committed against white farmers and black opponents.

An urgent mission

Virtually all of those farmers originally hale from Britain. The situation is awful — and, in asserting its geopolitical mission, the United States cannot forget about Britain, its primary ally. Sending the 82nd Airborne into Zimbabwe surely looks like an urgent humanitarian relief mission.

Of course, some might argue that President Bush could finally use his expansive mood to great effect — by convincing Israel to withdraw to its approximate old borders and focus on self-defense.

One could imagine the President declaring in a weekly radio address: "No offense intended, but the rising terrorist threat to Americans justifies U.S. occupation of the West Bank — as a trust reserved for Palestinians."

A price to pay

To accomplish this ambitious homeland security goal for the United States, the President in all likelihood would not even have to commit any troops. After all, while illegal settlements come and go, smart Israelis would not want to build new ones on the prospective turf of the 3rd Infantry Division.

But we should probably stop short of predicting this last gambit. Unlike fixing the rest of the world, fixing the West Bank would cost the President real political capital at home.

Copyright © 2003 by The Globalist. Reproduction of content on this site without The Globalist's written permission is strictly prohibited.

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2003-04-26 / etaiwannews.com-Associated Press /

Venezuela's government refused yesterday to sign an agreement that would pave the way for a referendum on President Hugo Chavez's presidency.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the government objected to several points of the agreement, which was announced April 11 by the Organization of American States after five months of negotiations.

Rangel's statements cast doubt on prospects for any vote on Chavez's six-year term, which ends in 2007. In December and January, Venezuela's opposition staged a general strike that briefly shut down the world's No. 5 oil exporter to demand a vote. Chavez didn't budge.

Venezuela's opposition wants to ask citizens whether Chavez should resign. Such a vote is allowed in Venezuela's constitution.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said that if Chavez agreed to the vote, "then he will be showing a commitment to democracy of the kind we believe is the correct form of democracy for our hemisphere."

Rangel countered yesterday: "We reject all pressure coming from here and abroad."

Saying "Venezuela is not a colony," Rangel objected to a proposal that the process be monitored by the OAS, the United Nations and the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center.

An OAS-brokered proposal to disarm civilians before elections also violates Venezuelan sovereignty, Rangel said. Dozens have been killed in political violence over the past year. Chavez has been accused of arming thousands of civilians to defend his government.