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Using Cash Sign Of Terrorist, According To FBI
Saturday, 31 October 2009 5:08 P GMT-05
In Philadelphia, the FBI has instructed tattoo shops to rat out their customers if they demand privacy, insist on paying with cash, engage in “suspicious behavior,” make “anti-US” comments, or request tattoos that are “extremist symbols.”
Testimony of Spc. Brandon Neely
Saturday, 12 September 2009 2:53 A GMT-05
On December 4, 2008, Specialist Brandon Neely approached CSHRA with testimony he wished to contribute to the Guantánamo Testimonials Project. He believed that insufficient attention had been paid to "the hell that went on at Camp X-Ray." He would be in a position to know, as he arrived in Guantánamo while the cages of Camp X-Ray were still being welded, and escorted the second detainee to hit the prison grounds. In this interview, Specialist Neely provides testimony of the arrival of the detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, possible isolation regime of the first six children in GTMO, utter lack of preparation for guarding individuals detained during the War on Terror, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed.
What Happened to Mohamed al-Hanashi?
Wednesday, 9 September 2009 2:37 A GMT-05
Because my commercial flight was canceled, I got a ride back to the United States on a military transport. I happened to be seated next to a military physician who had been flown in to do the autopsy on al-Hanashi. When would there be an investigation of the death, I asked him? “That was the investigation,” he replied. The military had investigated the military. This “apparent suicide” seemed immediately suspicious to me. I had just toured those cells: it is literally impossible to kill yourself in them. Their interiors resemble the inside of a smooth plastic jar; there are no hard edges; hooks fold down; there is no bedding that one can use to strangle oneself. Can you bang your head against the wall until you die, theoretically, I asked the doctor? “They check on prisoners every three minutes,” he said. You’d have to be fast. The story smelled even worse after a bit of digging. Al-Hanashi, it turned out, had been elected by the detainees to serve as their representative. (The Geneva Conventions call for this process but the US did not give it any formal recognition). As their designated representative, al-Hanashi knew which prisoners had claimed to have been tortured or abused, and by whom. On January 17, al-Hanashi, according to his fellow prisoner Binyam Mohamed (who has since been released), was summoned to a meeting with the Admiral of Guantánamo and the head of the Guard Force there. He never returned to his cell. He was taken to the psychiatric ward, where, according to another prisoner who had been there, he was kept until he died.
Meet the Press's Idea of a 'Debate'
Wednesday, 9 September 2009 2:24 A GMT-05
On Sunday, Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion to debate two primary issues: (1) foreign policy -- specifically, the war in Afghanistan, and (2) health care. The panel: Rudy Giuliani, Tom Friedman, Harold Ford, Jr., and Tom Brokaw (as Jay Rosen often notes, Meet the Press is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its pledge to present "fresh voices" in its discussions). With regard to Afghanistan, there is a major debate currently taking place about whether we should stay in that country. A majority of Americans now opposes the war. But there was not a single participant there who shares that view. All of them believe that it is imperative we remain, and put on their little General hats to exchange deeply Serious analyses of how we need to adjust our strategy and tactics for greater mission success. Of course, all of three of those whose views were known about Iraq -- Friedman, Ford and Giuliani -- were vehement supporters of the invasion. As always, not only does support for that war not produce shame or even impair one's credibility and Seriousness, but the opposite is true: having supported it is a prerequisite for being considered credible and Serious, which is why those are the only people -- still -- from whom we hear when it's time to convene Serious discussions of foreign policy. What an odd filtering standard for The Liberal Media to use.
AP Photo of Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard
Sunday, 6 September 2009 3:10 P GMT-05
The picture created by AP photographer Julie Jacobson, showed Lance Cpl. Joshua “Bernie” Bernard, 21, lying on the ground with severe leg injuries after being struck by a grenade in an ambush on Aug. 14, his fellow Marines tending to him. Bernard later died of his wounds. To AP President and CEO Tom Curley, Gates wrote a strongly worded letter on Thursday, saying it was a matter of “judgment and common decency” not to use the photo. A Pentagon spokesman said Gates followed up with a phone call “begging” Curley not to use it.
Bush's Third Term: You're Living It
Thursday, 3 September 2009 12:58 A GMT-05
If Bush were in his third term, some of his first and second term secrets might, by now, have been forced out into the open by lawsuits, but what Americans actually read wouldn't be significantly worse than what we'd already known. What documents saw the light of day would surely have had large portions of their pages redacted, and the vast bulk of documentation that might prove threatening would remain hidden from the public eye. Bush's lawyers would be fighting in court, with ever grander claims of executive power, to keep his wrongdoing out of sight.
Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.
Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions
Saturday, 22 August 2009 2:11 P GMT-05
According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."
I Shouldn't Read the News. I Really Shouldn't.
Saturday, 15 August 2009 12:35 P GMT-05
I love it. The following is an account of Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talking to Albert Jazeera:
“When asked why the United States was not in FATA despite having the knowledge that Al Qaeda was present there, he [Admiral Mullen] said, ‘Because FATA is in Pakistan and Pakistan is a sovereign country and we don’t go into sovereign countries.’”
Hahn? The hell we don’t. What was this buoyant cannibal thinking? The US loves to go into sovereign countries. It hardly does anything else. I suppose Iraq wasn’t sovereign. It isn’t now, but it was. How about Panama, Laos, Cambodia? We gave Pakistan, until recently sovereign, the choice of inviting us to kill its people with drones, or else be bombed into the Stone Age. Recently we have bombed Somalia, technically sovereign.
War on Terror: Foreign Policy
Saturday, 8 August 2009 9:50 P GMT-05
Wife of accused N.C. terrorist leader tells harrowing tale, denies plot
Friday, 31 July 2009 2:31 A GMT-05
Sabrina Boyd, a 41-year-old mother of five and U.S.-born convert to Islam, said she was outraged that the agents pretended that her husband and three sons had been in a serious car crash, and that a North Carolina Highway Patrol would take her to the hospital where they were being treated. But when they arrived at Duke Hospital, 30 agents surrounded her and handcuffs were slapped on her wrists, Sabrina Boyd said. On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the subterfuge as unconstitutional and an unjust trick," and called on the Justice Department to investigate the incident.
Cheney pressed Bush to test Constitutional limits by using military force on US soil
Sunday, 26 July 2009 3:42 P GMT-05
This would have violated both Fourth Amendment guarantees against search and seizure without probable cause and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it illegal to use the military for law enforcement. Despite those prohibitions, Cheney argued that the president did have the power to use the military on US soil, citing an October 23, 2001 Justice Department memorandum co-authored by John Yoo which claimed that presidential power extended to the domestic use of the military as long as it served a national security purpose. The Lackawanna Six were a group of young Yememi-Americans who had attended an al Qaeda training camp in 2001. They were arrested in September 2002, and President Bush bragged of having broken their “cell” in his January 2003 State of the Union address. However, an investigation by Salon failed to turn up any evidence that they were actually a “sleeper cell” or that they had been planning any kind of violent attack. Most of them were convicted merely of providing material aid to terrorists.
Padilla vs. Yoo: An Update
Monday, 20 July 2009 2:30 A GMT-05
Why is Padilla’s lawsuit important? Because the ultimate ruling in the case will apply not just to him but also to all Americans. The suit alleges that the U.S. government took Padilla into custody and held him for several years without charge, until finally indicting him and convicting him in federal district court of the federal crime of terrorism. For years prior to the indictment, Padilla was held in the custody of the U.S. military, where he was denied right to counsel, the right to due process of law, the right to bail, the right to a speedy trial, the right to a jury trial, and other procedural protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. He was also subjected to torture, sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and many other cruel and unusual pre-trial measures. The government takes the position that it had the legitimate authority to do these things to Padilla and that it, in fact, has the legitimate authority to do them to every other American, as part of its ”war on terrorism.“ Yoo is saying that as a government lawyer who was just delivering legal opinions, he is immune from Padilla’s suit. The district judge disagreed. He held that the U.S. government lacks constitutional authority to subject the American people to such treatment and that any lawyer who knowingly participates in a scheme to subject Americans to such mistreatment is not immune from suit. Given the predilection of the courts against interlocutory appeals, in my opinion the Court of Appeals will quickly rule against Yoo’s appeal, enabling Padilla to continue with his case and begin taking sworn depositions. That will be when things start to get interesting.
How the spooks took over the news
Sunday, 14 June 2009 11:48 P GMT-05
The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis." Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about The New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously... It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world. There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake – and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.
"Terrorist" Threat to Keep Toxic Coal Ash Sites Secret?
Saturday, 13 June 2009 2:52 P GMT-05
Dozens of communities nationwide are at risk from a coal ash spill like the one that blanketed a Tennessee neighborhood last year, but the Obama administration has decided not to tell the public about it because of the danger of a terrorist attack.
In Pakistan, an exodus that is beyond biblical
Monday, 1 June 2009 7:01 P GMT-05
The language was already biblical; now the scale of what is happening matches it. The exodus of people forced from their homes in Pakistan's Swat Valley and elsewhere in the country's north-west may be as high as 2.4 million, aid officials say. Around the world, only a handful of war-spoiled countries – Sudan, Iraq, Colombia – have larger numbers of internal refugees. The speed of the displacement at its height – up to 85,000 people a day – was matched only during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This is now one of the biggest sudden refugee crises the world has ever seen.
Again, May God Forgive Us
Monday, 1 June 2009 6:40 P GMT-05
An observation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib abuses, seems to underscore my point. "I am not sure what purpose [releasing the 2,000 additional photos of prisoner abuse] would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy – " Hold it right there: Taguba said "protectors of our foreign policy," not "defenders of our independence" or "guardians of our liberties." The foreign policy referred to entails open-ended entanglements in the affairs of nearly every nation on earth, as well as plundering huge sums from taxpayers to sustain a grotesquely huge military establishment and bribe political elites abroad. That foreign policy cultivates misery and harvests war and terrorism. Why in God's Name would any decent human being defend that foreign policy in the abstract, much less spill blood to implement it?
FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus
Saturday, 23 May 2009 9:54 P GMT-05
By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur. I've seen this movie before. In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself.
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
Friday, 22 May 2009 12:52 A GMT-05
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
Arbitrary 'no-fly' list may soon become a 'no-guns' list
Wednesday, 20 May 2009 5:02 A GMT-05
The federal government's "no-fly" list of people forbidden to board commercial airliners has been the target of much-deserved criticism. Court documents reveal that the grounds for placing people on the list are "not hard and fast rules" but "necessarily subjective" judgments exercised by squabbling agencies. Getting off the list requires navigating an opaque and reluctantly implemented appeals process or a lawsuit. Even the size of the no-fly list is uncertain, with the Transportation Security Administration insisting that high estimates result from people being denied boarding because they've been confused with names on the list (a distinction without a difference). And now enrollment on that bureaucratic nightmare is poised to become grounds for denying Americans the ability to purchase firearms. What could possibly go wrong with that scheme? Would-be gun-owners may be introduced to the arbitrary justice of the no-fly list courtesy of H.R. 2401, the "No Fly, No Buy Act of 2009." Introduced last week by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, the announced intention of the legislation is "[t]o increase public safety and reduce the threat to domestic security by including persons who may be prevented from boarding an aircraft in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and for other purposes."
Arms Given by U.S. to Afghan Forces May Be Going to Taliban
Wednesday, 20 May 2009 4:50 A GMT-05
The presence of this ammunition among the dead in the Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops. The scope of that diversion remains unknown, and the 30 magazines represented a single sampling of fewer than 1,000 cartridges. But military officials, arms analysts and dealers say it points to a worrisome possibility: With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.
The Emerging Gitmo Model?
Saturday, 16 May 2009 2:50 P GMT-05
What gives, I think, is that Gitmo is but a prototype, with a view of every police station and every county jail in the US of A being eventually gitmoized. And while they ain't there yet, not by a long shot, I can't help but say that some progress is apparantly being made in that direction.
Ashton Lundeby is being held under the USA Patriot Act
Tuesday, 5 May 2009 11:40 P GMT-05
Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.
Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.
"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. "It wasn't intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can't even defend."
Bush should have executed Gitmo detainees, says former CIA officer
Saturday, 28 February 2009 6:04 P GMT-05
A former CIA officer has said its ridiculous that the Bush administration didn't execute numerous prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, regardless of whether they have had a trial, when it had the chance.
How a Man Was Thrown into Gitmo and Tortured for Clicking on My Article
Saturday, 28 February 2009 2:33 P GMT-05
Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the 'instructions' after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail. While I am not, and have never been, a "food writer," other details about the "joke" rang true, such as the names of my co-authors, Peter Biskind and physicist Michio Kaku. Rewind to 1979, when Peter and I were working for a now-defunct left-wing magazine named Seven Days. The government had just suppressed the publication of another magazine, The Progressive, for attempting to print an article called "The H-Bomb Secret." I don't remember that article, and the current editor of The Progressive recalls only that it contained a lot of physics and was "Greek to me." Both in solidarity with The Progressive and in defense of free speech, we at Seven Days decided to do a satirical article entitled "How to Make Your Own H-Bomb," offering step-by-step instructions for assembling a bomb using equipment available in one's own home. The satire was not subtle. After discussing the toxicity of plutonium, we advised that to avoid ingesting it orally, "Never make an A-bomb on an empty stomach." My favorite section dealt with the challenge of enriching uranium hexafluoride:
Pentagon's terror 'recidivism' claims blasted as 'propaganda'
Saturday, 24 January 2009 6:24 P GMT-05
A study published by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux on Jan. 15 finds the Pentagon wrongly altered its figures on terrorist 'recidivism' 43 times, with the latest figure being "the most egregiously so."
Entrapment? Five convicted in Ft. Dix plot
Tuesday, 23 December 2008 12:36 P GMT-05
Five men whom attorneys said paid FBI informants prodded into exploring their deepest fantasies about waging jihad on America were convicted in federal court Monday of conspiring to kill US soldiers but acquitted on attempted murder charges.
Senate report links Bush to detainee homicides; media yawns
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 2:41 P GMT-05
The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" and "that Rumsfeld's actions were 'a direct cause of detainee abuse' at Guantanamo and 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq'" -- raises an obvious and glaring question: how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution?
Racial Extremists Are Infiltrating the Military for the Chance to 'Kill a Brown'
Tuesday, 16 December 2008 10:28 A GMT-05
Sobibor's SS included enough biographical details in his various posts to Forum 14 over the years, including that he's a single father from the small town in southern Alabama, that a military investigator with access to enlistment records for recent months should have little trouble determining whether the Army may actually be teaching a skinhead with genocide on his mind about tactical bomb-making. But there's little reason to expect that will happen.
In Stunning Ruling, D.C. Judge Orders Release of Five Gitmo Prisoners
Tuesday, 25 November 2008 6:28 P GMT-05
Following Judge Richard J. Leon’s decision today in U.S. District Court ordering the release of five of the six Boumediene habeas defendants, Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren released the following statement:
Defense: Money motivated informant in Fort Dix case
Tuesday, 11 November 2008 1:27 A GMT-05
Mahmoud Omar, 39, who recorded over 200 conversations with the five men accused of plotting to kill U.S. military personnel at the South Jersey Army base, has been paid $240,000 for helping build the government's case. Today, the second day of Omar's cross-examination, Rocco Cipparone Jr., lawyer for defendant Mohamad Shnewer, endeavored to highlight Omar has benefitted from the FBI's support.
16 Words: New Court Filing Suggests Manufactured Terror Threat in Bush's 2002 State of the Union
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 11:04 A GMT-05
A new court filing by the lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Guantanamo detainees suggests that the Bush administration ordered the Bosnian government to arrest and hold the men after an exhaustive Bosnian investigation had found them innocent of any terrorism related activity and had ordered their release, in order to use them as props in Bush's January 2002 State of the Union speech. The filing--"Lakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners, v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., Respondents, Petitioners' Public Traverse to the Government's Return to the Petition for Habeas Corpus"--lays out the case that the Bush administration threatened at the highest levels to withdraw diplomatic and military aid to the Balkan nation if Bosnia released the men, which its own three-month investigation had found innocent of any terrorism charges in the days leading up to Bush's January 2002 State of the Union.
Former CIA Operative: “Of Course Bin Laden is Dead”
Wednesday, 8 October 2008 9:49 A GMT-05
The hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert told Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio show Fresh Air, “Of course he is dead, where are the DVDs? Bin Laden wouldn’t dye his hair, all these things can be manipulated.” Baer, who has has previously publicly questioned the official story of the 9/11 attacks, continued “He hasn’t shown up, I’ve taken in the last month a poll of CIA officers who have been on his trail, and what astounded me was not a single one was sure he was alive or dead. They have no idea, I mean this man disappeared off the side of the earth.”
Bush Had No Plan To Catch Bin Laden After 9/11
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 10:14 A GMT-05
New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11. That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Six years in Guantanamo
Saturday, 27 September 2008 8:33 P GMT-05
The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected "terrorist" but because he refused to become an American spy. From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence "asset".
Rice admits officials approved 'harsh interrogation techniques'
Saturday, 27 September 2008 8:17 P GMT-05
According to a written statement provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month and released on Wednesday by committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), officials were told that waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation measures" routinely used in a survival training program for US soldiers would not cause "significant" harm if used on prisoners. Rice's statement is the first acknowledgment of those meetings by any of the officials involved. Rice did not name the other officials who were present, but reports last spring based on anonymous sources mentioned Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.
In video, Al Qaeda vows more U.S. attacks
Saturday, 20 September 2008 11:34 P GMT-05
CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the video posted on jihadi Web sites, purportedly by al Qaeda's video production arm, As Sahab.
9/11 Truth Norway: Why We Fight
Saturday, 20 September 2008 9:13 P GMT-05
At 22, Omar Khadr Has Spent a Third of His Life in Guantanamo
Saturday, 20 September 2008 4:26 P GMT-05
On Friday, Omar Khadr, the sole Canadian citizen in Guantanamo, marked his 22nd birthday in isolation. Seized in Afghanistan when he was just 15 years old, Omar has now spent nearly a third of his life in U.S. custody, in conditions that ought to be shameful to the U.S. administration responsible for holding him and to the Canadian government that has abdicated its responsibilities toward him.
Have Our Leaders Made Us Safer?
Sunday, 7 September 2008 1:58 P GMT-05
Given that the White House and their republican and democratic co-conspirators in Congress have made America significantly less safe in their handling of 9/11 (oh yeah, that was a false flag attack also) , it is good that they are making 9/11 the centerpiece of the campaign. It gives us the opportunity to point out how unsafe the government has really made us.
Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war
Tuesday, 2 September 2008 6:29 P GMT-05
Part of a proposal for Guantanamo Bay legal detainees, the provision before Congress seeks to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.” The New York Times' page 8 placement of the article in its Saturday edition seems to downplay its importance. Such a re-affirmation of war carries broad legal implications that could imperil Americans' civil liberties and the rights of foreign nationals for decades to come. It was under the guise of war that President Bush claimed a legal mandate for his warrantless wiretapping program, giving the National Security Agency power to intercept calls Americans made abroad. More of this program has emerged in recent years, and it includes the surveillance of Americans' information and exchanges online. "War powers" have also given President Bush cover to hold Americans without habeas corpus -- detainment without explanation or charge. Jose Padilla, a Chicago resident arrested in 2002, was held without trial for five years before being convicted of conspiring to kill individuals abroad and provide support for terrorism.
Taliban turns lethal: 101 US deaths in Afghanistan
Sunday, 24 August 2008 7:45 P GMT-05
The U.S. military suffered its 101st death of the year in Afghanistan last week when Sgt. 1st Class David J. Todd Jr., a 36-year-old from Marrero, La., died of gunfire wounds while helping train Afghan police in the northwest. The total number of U.S. dead last year -- 111 -- was a record itself and is likely to be surpassed.
U.S.-led forces kill 76 Afghan civilians
Saturday, 23 August 2008 9:07 P GMT-05
U.S.-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan on Friday, most of them children, the Interior Ministry said. The coalition denied killing civilians. Civilian deaths in military operations have become an emotive issue among Afghans, many of whom feel international forces take too little care when launching air strikes, undermining support for their presence.
British Papers Paid Hundreds Of Thousands To Families Of Alleged Liquid Bombers: Why?
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 9:33 A GMT-05
Why have the British press paid their families hundreds of thousands of pounds? We're told it's because they printed some erroneous information; but is this true? If it is, where did the erroneous information come from? Nobody's saying; so I'm asking: Where do you think it came from? Let's put it this way: If you were a reporter and the police told you they had arrested Jim Bim, would you believe them? If anyone else told you Jim Bim had been arrested, would you believe them? Or would you check it out first? And with whom would you check it out? You see what I mean? Or to come at it another way: A few days ago in Pakistan, a police superintendent told a press conference that police had raided a residence where Rashid Rauf supposedly lives, but the suspect had fled before they arrived. He says they'll try again. But meanwhile a Pakistani journalist has reported that Rashid Rauf's name doesn't even appear on the government's list of terrorists they're looking for. So it might be a while before the police pay another visit to Rashid Rauf's place. On the other hand, his father can probably afford to visit him -- wherever he is.
The Anthrax Attack Was a Classic False Flag Operation Targeting Arabs
Tuesday, 5 August 2008 2:04 A GMT-05
Therefore, whether Ivins or another scientist working for the U.S. government carried out the anthrax attacks is actually not the primary question. The main question is who within the U.S. government framed Arabs for the attacks, and whether the attacks were motivated primarily as a justification for war against Middle Eastern oil countries or to intimidate the U.S. Congress and the American people into accepting fascism.
Bruce Ivins' Mental Health and his link to "BioPort"
Sunday, 3 August 2008 1:48 P GMT-05
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson. Things sure are weird right now.
Clarity At Last: Border Guards Don't Need A Reason To Seize Your Laptops, Cell Phones, Cameras, iPods, Tapes, Books, Handwritten Notes ...
Sunday, 3 August 2008 12:55 P GMT-05
And there you have it. Border guards can seize data storage devices of any kind, from laptops to handwritten notes, without any grounds. They are required to give seized items back to their owners in a reasonable time, but they get to decide what's reasonable. They can make copies of your data and share it with other government agencies, but if it turns out that you're not a terrorist they are supposed to destroy their copies of your data. How would you ever know whether or not they had done so? And what would prevent them from secretly adding your data to the Main Core database? Even more disturbingly, perhaps, this is the result of policies promulgated in secrecy, implemented without any publicity, and only now coming to light. Michael Chertoff says doing it any other way would be chilling and dangerous. And not a voice is raised in opposition -- at least not in the mainstream press.
Secret 'War on Terror' Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed
Sunday, 3 August 2008 12:00 P GMT-05
These new revelations, of course, leave the U.S. administration looking like bald-faced liars and the British government looking like myopic dupes. Whether Michael Hayden was also duped is not known, but his strenuous denial, just five months ago, that a secret prison existed, which was manned by his own employees, will do nothing for the credibility of the U.S. administration, which likes to pretend that it does not torture and has nothing to conceal, but is persistently discovered not only being economical with the truth, but also behaving exactly as though it has guilty secrets to hide.
"Al Qaeda's Mad Scientist" Rises From The Grave... And Is Killed Again
Friday, 1 August 2008 1:04 A GMT-05
Not only are we supposed to believe that Al Qaeda terrorists are everywhere, hiding behind every corner waiting to blow you away in the name of global jihad, we are also expected to believe that they have the power to rise from the dead to commit more atrocities after they have already been killed. Of course, the powers that be have so little respect for you or I that they do not imagine we have the brain power to remember something from two and a half years ago. Either that or they do not even bother to keep tabs on which Al-CIA-da operative they announced killed at what time anymore, safe in the knowledge that the brainwashed and fatigued public will swallow anything if it is dressed up in an eye catching headline.
Acts of War
Thursday, 31 July 2008 12:54 A GMT-05
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva Conventions. The MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases. The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
The Real Reason that the U.S. Tortures People
Saturday, 26 July 2008 2:37 P GMT-05
The U.S. government is carrying out acts of terrorism on innocent victims - including children - in order to scare people into being compliant, into being too scared to demand their rights to liberty and justice guaranteed by the rule of law, into not challenging the powers-that-be. Those who created, implemented or covered up the U.S. torture policy are not only war criminals, they are also terrorists.
ACLU: Memos authorized CIA torture
Thursday, 24 July 2008 11:24 P GMT-05
The documents were heavily redacted. For example, the government blacked out 10 full pages of the 18-page August 2002 memo, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, before releasing it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Most of the text on the remaining pages was similarly blacked out, but the released version of the Bybee memo does provide some insight. Bybee outlined the definition of torture in Section 2340A of the United States code, focusing in part on its caveat that an act be "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Elaborating on his definition of the "specific intent" provision, Bybee narrows the definition to the point where it become functionally meaningless. All that is required to avoid prosecution is a CIA agent's "good faith belief" that his actions will not cause torturous pain and suffering. Such a belief "need not be reasonable," Bybee writes.
Md. Police Infiltrated Groups Opposed to War and the Death Penalty
Sunday, 20 July 2008 9:11 P GMT-05
Max Obuszewski is a seasoned, nonviolent peace activist in Maryland. But to the Maryland State Police, he is suspected of committing the "primary crime" of "terrorism -- anti-war protestors" and the "secondary crime" of "terrorism -- anti-govern." That is how the Maryland State Police designated him in internal documents that the ACLU of Maryland obtained through a lawsuit and released on July 17. The documents also show that the Maryland State Police entered his name into a database dealing with "high intensity drug activity." These documents reveal an elaborate undercover operation against peace groups and anti-capital-punishment groups.
'Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies
Sunday, 20 July 2008 8:42 P GMT-05
The sense of pressing urgency conjured up by Bush administration folks to justify torture does not square with Coleen Rowley’s direct personal experience in the FBI. As some will remember, the FBI's joint terrorism task force in Minneapolis had detained Zacarias Moussaoui on Aug. 16, 2001. Flight school pilots acting as whistleblowers had notified the FBI, against the wishes of their airline employer, of detailed information making Moussaoui the most suspicious student they had ever encountered. French intelligence soon supplied further background confirming Moussaoui's fighting for a “foreign power” — Chechnyan rebels, whose leader was connected to al-Qaeda. By Aug. 23, the case was deemed so suspicious, it went all the way to the top of the intelligence community, to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, in a PowerPoint presentation entitled: "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” As Rowley revealed in her letter of May 21, 2002, to FBI Director Robert Mueller, there was considerable frustration in her FBI unit in Minneapolis over the inability of FBI headquarters to get its act together and present these facts pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to obtain the secret FISA Court’s permission to search Moussaoui’s personal effects and laptop computer in the days before 9-11.
Justice Or A Joke?
Sunday, 20 July 2008 8:00 P GMT-05
Given that these military tribunals are so "secretive," how on Earth do they expect us to believe that they have proven those being held at Guantanamo are "indeed the guilty parties?" Is this Justice or a joke? If it is the latter, it is not funny.
I Was a Victim of the TSA
Sunday, 20 July 2008 5:25 P GMT-05
Which brings me to the real question: Why do we have all this pointless and easily breached security, not to mention a list that contains an astonishing one million names of suspected “terrorists”? Clearly, the security program is not about protecting the flying public, or the nation’s tall buildings. That could be done much more cheaply by putting air marshals on all flights, the way they do at El Al, the Israeli airline that has never had a successful hijacking. No, this is all about heightening the fear level of the American people, to routinize us to living in a police state.
7/7 Mastermind Allegedly Worked for British Intelligence, Deena Burnett -- Additions to the 9/11 Timeline as of July 20, 2008
Sunday, 20 July 2008 5:05 P GMT-05
Most of the new entries in the 9/11 Timeline this week are about the 7/7 London bombings, and in particular the alleged mastermind, Haroon Rashid Aswat. Aswat recruited militant fighters in London in the late 1990s, when his activities were known to British intelligence. He also attempted to set up terrorist training camps in the US, but the Justice Department blocked his indictment on these charges in 2002. He was falsely thought to have been killed in Afghanistan in 2003, monitored meeting the leaders of another British plot in 2004, and the British prevented the US from capturing him in South Africa in 2005. He called the bombers shortly before the attacks, and the US may have monitored these calls. Some reports, apparently incorrect, said he had been arrested in Pakistan following the bombings, although he was actually captured in Zambia shortly after, at which point the British authorities showed a surprising lack of interest in him. A counterterrorism expert then said he had been a long-term British intelligence asset, and the British failed to charge him upon his return to Britain, although a British court approved his extradition to the US in 2006. Other entries about the London bombings cover Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead bomber, who worked with al-Qaeda leaders and received explosives training in Southeast Asia in 2001, when another of the bombers was reportedly monitored by the FBI on a visit to the US. Khan was allegedly stopped from entering the US in 2003, but there is some dispute over this, and he talked to a key alleged al-Qaeda operative shortly after. British intelligence monitored Khan and another of the bombers meeting with another al-Qaeda operative, and Khan again attended a militant training camp in Pakistan in the winter of 2004-5.
Airport Gestapo
Thursday, 17 July 2008 11:57 P GMT-05
The Bush Regime’s “terrorist” protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on the “terrorist” watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr.Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent “terrorist” protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.
Conyers Asks John Yoo If a President Could Order a Suspect Buried Alive
Sunday, 6 July 2008 3:28 P GMT-05
Yoo Refuses to Answer the Question...
Judge critical of Guantanamo war crimes case is dismissed
Sunday, 1 June 2008 3:30 P GMT-05
A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday. Army Col. Peter Brownback III was presiding over the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, in his role as chief judge at Guantanamo, ordered the dismissal without explanation and announced Brownback's replacement in an e-mail this week to lawyers in Khadr's case.
CIA Protects Al-Qaeda Group From Extradition
Saturday, 24 May 2008 6:33 P GMT-05
The fact that the highest echelons of the U.S. intelligence apparatus are meeting, advising and funding Sunni Al-Qaeda groups as a means of facilitating terrorist bombings and regime change in Iran completely invalidates the "war on terror" as a fabled fraud and renders ludicrous Bush administration rhetoric about fighting Al-Qaeda cells in Iraq. Neo-Cons drooling at the prospect of an invasion of Iran have hardly been shy about their support of terror attacks aimed against Iran by means of Jundullah, MEK and other groups listed as terror organizations by the State Department.
Is the U.S. the World's Largest State Sponsor of Terrorism?
Saturday, 17 May 2008 3:48 P GMT-05
No wonder the former director of the National Security Agency said "By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation"(the audio is here). So next time the warmongers accuse a foreign country of sponsoring terrorism, remind them that - even if that is true - the U.S. is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Who Are the Gitmo Defendants?
Wednesday, 14 May 2008 11:36 A GMT-05
The six that the United States are bringing to "trial" include two child soldiers for the Taliban and a car pool driver who allegedly drove Osama bin Laden. The Taliban did not attack the United States. The child soldiers were fighting in an Afghan civil war. The United States attacked the Taliban. How does that make Taliban soldiers terrorists who should be locked up and abused in Gitmo and brought before a kangaroo military tribunal? If a terrorist hires a driver or a taxi, does that make the driver a terrorist? What about the pilots of the airliners who brought the alleged 9-11 terrorists to the United States? Are they guilty, too?
Addington, Gonzales Witnessed Gitmo Interrogations In 2002; Approved Of 'Whatever Needs To Be Done'
Monday, 5 May 2008 12:30 A GMT-05
There was an extraordinary meeting held in September 2002, just before the techniques were to go up the chain of command, so to speak. [Gonzales, Addington, and Haynes] descended on Guantanamo, met with the combatant commander there Mike Dunlavey, watched some interrogations, and as I was told by Dunlavey and by his lawyer Diane Beaver, basically sent out the signal ‘do whatever needs to be done.’
Probe of USS Cole Bombing Unravels
Sunday, 4 May 2008 6:54 P GMT-05
To this day, al-Qaeda trumpets the attack on the Cole as one of its greatest military victories. It remains an improbable story: how two suicide bombers smiled and waved to unsuspecting U.S. sailors in Aden's harbor as they pulled their tiny fishing boat alongside the $1 billion destroyer and blew a gaping hole in its side. Despite the initial promises of accountability, only limited public inquiries took place in Washington, unlike the extensive investigations that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Basic questions remain about which individuals and countries played a role in the assault on the Cole.
Fabricated 'Bioterrorism' Case Collapses
Sunday, 4 May 2008 3:53 P GMT-05
Forced to drop its charges of weapons manufacture, the government instead accused Kurtz and Ferrell of mail and wire fraud. The government claimed that when Dr. Ferrell gave the cultures to Dr. Kurtz, this violated a contract between the University of Pittsburgh and the supplier, American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). Neither the university nor ATCC had brought any complaint, and observers pointed out that scientists routinely share non-hazardous cultures. The Department of Justice further claimed that this alleged contract discrepancy constituted federal mail and wire fraud. Because the charges against the two academics were brought under the PATRIOT Act, the maximum penalty was increased from five years to 20. Earlier, Dr. Ferrell pled guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge rather than facing a prolonged trial for the mail and wire fraud felonies. During the legal wrangling, he had two minor strokes and a major stroke that required months of rehabilitation. He was indicted as he was preparing to undergo a stem cell transplant, his second in seven years. But Kurtz rejected any plea deal, instead demanding a public trial. Most of the art world has rallied behind him. His colleagues in the Critical Art Ensemble set up a website and a legal defense fund, and Kurtz continued to teach at the University of Buffalo. When the case finally arrived in a courtroom this month, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment. It is unclear whether the government will appeal the dismissal.
Peroxide Plotters
Saturday, 3 May 2008 9:12 P GMT-05
A good summary on the so-called "liquid terror" plot. -BE
Freed Gitmo prisoner : "rats are treated with more humanity"
Saturday, 3 May 2008 2:59 A GMT-05
Freed today: Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj ,beaten and interrogated 130 times, hit out at US treatment of detainees at Guantanamo military prison. He was held for six and a half years without trial.
"It's Not About Revenge, This Is About Justice"
Friday, 2 May 2008 12:10 A GMT-05
Lorie van Auken, one of the September 11 Advocates, speaks in this video about why it's important that true justice is served to the detainees at Guantánamo.
Amnesty unveils shock 'waterboarding' film
Sunday, 27 April 2008 12:05 A GMT-05
An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing "waterboarding" to be practised against terror suspects, just as a graphic advertisement showing the brutal reality of the technique is unveiled to British cinema-goers. Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US servicemen and women to resist interrogation by putting them through "waterboarding" exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice by all US personnel. He said: "They seem to think it is worth throwing the honour of 220 years of American decency in war out of the window. Waterboarding is out-and-out torture, and I'm deeply ashamed President Bush has authorised its use and dragged the US's reputation into the mud."
The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke
Saturday, 26 April 2008 6:13 P GMT-05
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination. As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
The High Crimes of John Yoo
Saturday, 26 April 2008 4:41 P GMT-05
Among other criteria, it stated that “[p]hysical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
THE MYTH OF 'AL QAEDA' NOW BEGINNING TO BE RECOGNISED BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
Sunday, 20 April 2008 6:42 P GMT-05
It’s interesting to note that, at long last, the mainstream media is hinting that the words ‘al Qaeda’ has simplistically become a metaphor for those that are fighting the US in Iraq and elsewhere and that ‘al Qaeda’ is not, as they have pushed for years, a specific organisation that is led and organised by the equally metaphoric and very dead ‘Osama bin Laden’.
An Open Letter To An RCMP Terrorist Mole
Sunday, 20 April 2008 6:26 P GMT-05
As for the Toronto 18 case that you worked on, the RCMP and CSIS watched these guys for TWO YEARS and without a single chargeable offence occurring - until you two 'moles,' informants, whatever - came along. All of a sudden it's a fast track to fertilizer.
Binmen in Muslim areas ordered by terror police to snoop in residents' rubbish bins
Sunday, 20 April 2008 4:40 P GMT-05
The Mail on Sunday understands that the instruction was issued at a secretive summit hosted by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), attended by Ministers and Andy Hayman, who at the time was Britain's top anti-terror policeman and an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand -NYT April 20, 2008
Sunday, 20 April 2008 4:26 P GMT-05
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess
on air.
Ex-marshal: Air marshal training 'a national disgrace'
Thursday, 17 April 2008 9:14 P GMT-05
In July 2006, the Federal Air Marshal Service sent out a memo saying that new hires would no longer face mandatory psychological testing, unless the recruit admits that he or she has been treated for a mental condition.
The Toronto 18 Become The Toronto 11
Thursday, 17 April 2008 7:37 P GMT-05
What they didn't tell us at first was that RCMP surveillance of some of the suspects had begun three years earlier - with absolutely no leads developing: these kids were normal Canadian youth - some of them politically active and outspoken against out invasion of Afghanistan, but the RCMP could find no illegal activity.
What turned things around for the RCMP was the introduction of two Muslim moles: one, Mubin Shaikh, a cocaine-addicted, lifelong Air Cadet with a troubled past - he was also a CSIS agent (Canada's CIA); the other a man was also a well-paid (he asked for $40 million dollars) CSIS agent with a degree in horticulture who was on the skids. Each was paid millions of dollars by CSIS and RCMP for their services. These two then ingratiated themselves to the suspects and immediately started the process of entrapment. Shaikh has since stated publicly that many of the suspects are innocent. He has also admitted to snorting all the money he was paid up his nose and has been recently charged with assaulting two 12-year old girls!!!
It turns out that the fertilizer was ordered and paid for by the RCMP!In fact, it was the horticulturist mole who was the only one able to place the order, as a regular citizen ordering hundreds of pounds of fertilizer at once will be immediately reported to the RCMP! And it was delivered to a location that the RCMP rented and paid for- one block away from their regional headquarters! Now, you tell me what sophisticated terror network is going to devise a plot where they are based one block away from the national police force's HQ?!?
Terrorism case ends in second mistrial in Miami
Thursday, 17 April 2008 7:02 P GMT-05
"The entire situation was concocted by the government. The warehouse was paid for by the FBI, and the defendants moved their operations there at the suggestion of an undercover informant who was also paid by the FBI. The swearing-in ceremony was led by the informant — who at another point also suggested a plan to bomb FBI offices in Miami. "The case was written, produced and directed by the FBI," defense attorney Albert Levin said in his closing arguments."
Military Personnel Account for 20% of U.S. Suicides
Saturday, 12 April 2008 4:18 P GMT-05
Current and former military personnel accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. suicides in 2005, according to a government study.
About 1,821 current or former soldiers committed suicide in 16 states in 2005, the most recent year of available data, according to the report published today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost half were diagnosed with depression and a third left suicide notes.
Lawyers Move To Get Torture Memo Author Yoo Tried As War Criminal
Saturday, 12 April 2008 2:25 P GMT-05
The National Lawyers Guild has called for the firing from Berkeley Law School of former assistant to the Attorney General John Yoo for what it describes as "complicity in establishing a policy" that has led to war crimes. During his time in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo authored various controversial memos in which he advocated the possible legality of torture and decreed that enemy combatants could be denied protection under the Geneva Conventions. Yoo, a co author of the PATRIOT ACT, also suggested that it was legal to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
Liquid Bombers On Trial: Jury Sees Martyrdom Videos, Crown Identifies Targets
Monday, 7 April 2008 12:18 P GMT-05
Of the twenty-five who were arrested, fourteen were released without charges; the remaining eleven are now on trial. Eight of them are charged with conspiracy to murder, three with lesser offenses. The trial is expected to last six to eight months.
Six of the eight charged with conspiracy to murder made martyrdom videos, excerpts of which were shown to the jury last week. Everyone says these martyrdom videos are "chilling", but nobody says why. And the actual contents are reported almost nowhere.
Civil Liberties Destroyed Well Before Previously Thought
Saturday, 5 April 2008 2:25 P GMT-05
Three rather unsettling news pieces from today, the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination . . . wow. 1) "Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear" . . . (Remember when the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was still in force?) 2) "The October 2001 memo arguing for unregulated military searches on U.S. soil has not been formally withdrawn and remains a secret but unclassified document." 3) 2003 Justice Department memo justifies torture, presidential dictatorship Thanks to Lori Price of Citizens for Legitimate Government for bringing these items to our attention. Almost seems important enough the corporate media would cover it, too, eh?!
Somalia: The Open Secret Horror Show Continues
Friday, 4 April 2008 10:54 A GMT-05
Our "news" media have been trained to produce fiction revolving around the notion that whatever America does overseas is "right"; and in this case there's no possible argument to be made in favor of our intervention in Somalia; therefore they have no choice but to avert their eyes and pretend it isn't happening. Thus the war in Somalia -- just like many of America's clandestine operations over the years -- is a "secret" to most Americans. But it's not clandestine. It's just a secret. In former days, when the CIA old-timers were staging a regime-change operation, they took pains to make sure nobody found out. They were afraid of the media. Now their successors don't have to be so careful, because they control the media, and they know nobody's gonna make a peep.
The Declassified Torture Memo Says Laws Are Worthless
Friday, 4 April 2008 10:40 A GMT-05
You got that? Laws that Congress has passed are not applicable to the President during wartime. In other words, fuck you, Constitution; fuck you, criminal statutes. The President can run the armed forces like the desperate Don of a dying mob family trying to cling to some turf, and neither he nor anyone under his direction is culpable in any way, shape, or form.
9/11 Truth is Not "Old News"
Thursday, 3 April 2008 11:07 P GMT-05
Every time an important fact undermining the official story about 9/11 is raised, defenders of the government's version try to label it as an "old story" which is "not news". Are they right?
Lawyer: Gitmo Trials Pegged To '08 Campaign
Saturday, 29 March 2008 2:38 P GMT-05
Using the murder of 2,973+ people for everything it's worth... I don't think anyone (honest) can deny that the 9/11 attacks have been used by those in Government for MULTIPLE reasons (pre-emptive war, loss of civil liberties, reason to continue wars, and on and on and on...). Almost as if the attacks were designed specifically for that purpose. Hmmm... - Jon
Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War'
Thursday, 27 March 2008 8:37 A GMT-05
Sgt. Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith was one of the many soldiers and Marines, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who gave testimony at last weekend's Winter Soldier investigation. They spoke from personal experience about what the American military is doing in those countries. They gave examples of what they had done, what they had been ordered to do, what they had witnessed, how their experiences had wounded them, both physically and psychically, and what kind of care and support they have, or most often have not gotten since coming home. The panel Goldsmith was on was called "The Breakdown of the U.S. Military," so he surprised the audience when he said that he was going to talk about prisoners of war. He was not, however, going to talk about the three soldiers listed as missing in action on the Department of Defense website. He was referring to those who have been the victims of stop-loss, the device by which the president can, "in the event of war," choose to extend an enlistee's contract "until six months after the war ends." The "War on Terror" is this president's excuse for invoking that clause. Because that war will, by definition, continue as long as we insist that there is a difference between the terror inflicted on our innocents and the terror inflicted on theirs, American soldiers are effectively signing away their freedom indefinitely when they join the military. They are prisoners of an ill-defined and undeclared war on a tactic -- terrorism -- that dates back to Biblical times and will be with us indefinitely.
THE 'INVISIBLE' WOUNDS OF THE IRAQ WAR
Sunday, 16 March 2008 10:42 P GMT-05
“Rates of mental health problems among new veterans are high and rising,” Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) said in its January 2008 issue paper, “Mental Health Injuries: The Invisible Wounds of War.” With 1.5 million service personnel having served in Iraq or Afghanistan and one in three vets expected to suffer serious psychological problems including depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), IAVA says about 500,000 men and women are coming home with combat-related psychological injuries. In addition, up to 300,000 Iraq vets have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) which may not have outward signs and may be hard to distinguish from psychological injury. The toll on troops and their families is severe. The Army recently released figures showing that about five soldiers attempt suicide each day, up from one per day before the Iraq war started. According to IAVA, one fifth of married soldiers in Iraq say they are planning a divorce, and at least 40,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets have been treated for substance abuse.
Live Blogging From Winter Soldier
Sunday, 16 March 2008 9:31 P GMT-05
All he had to look forward to was to get out of the military and go to college. That hope ended when Bush announced the "surge." His division was the fifth planned to go, and everyone was put on lockdown by "stop-loss." He was set to deploy the day his contract was supposed to end. He attempted suicide that day. He woke up handcuffed to a gurney in the mental health ward. He had previously been diagnosed with depression and PTSD, but was still set to deploy. After his suicide attempt, he was discharged, but the military tried to prosecute him from malingering. He was refused help to challenge it by the military attorneys, because the said fighting it would bring down the military. Because of his general discharge, he was denied money for college, which he now can't afford to attend. He now delivers pizzas once a week, because that's the only job where he can call in and say that he's still stuck at the VA and can't get there.
Winter Soldier: Iraq And Afghanistan
Saturday, 15 March 2008 3:52 P GMT-05
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.
The Root of the Economic Crisis: Dishonesty
Thursday, 13 March 2008 10:53 A GMT-05
As one writer put it: "It’s all smoke and mirrors. The financial system has decoupled from the productive elements of the economy and is now beginning to show disturbing signs of instability."
Why Torture Made Me Leave the APA
Wednesday, 12 March 2008 2:21 A GMT-05
After two years of working to reform the position of the American Psychological Association, which supports psychologist participation in the interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo, CIA "black site" prisons, and elsewhere, I realized that I had been pursuing a utopian objective. On January 27th, I penned my resignation to APA. The rationale for my choice is outlined in the resignation letter, which is reproduced here.
C.I.A. no al-qaeda ever existed - BBC documentary "the power of nightmares"
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 4:08 P GMT-05
BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al Fadl, hundreds of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Government’s story of Al-qaeda, a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after. This video documentary is off the hook…
Neocon Bloggers Blame Antiwar Movement for New York Bombing
Sunday, 9 March 2008 4:19 P GMT-05
It was inevitable. Neocon bloggers, hardly satisfied at the ineffectiveness and lethargy of the antiwar movement, are insinuating a reemergence of the Weather Underground and the SLA after a hooded somebody on a bicycle placed a flash-boom device at a recruitment center located in Times Square.
ACLU: 900,000 Names on U.S. Terror Watch Lists
Saturday, 8 March 2008 7:42 P GMT-05
The FBI now keeps a list of over 900,000 names belonging to known or suspected terrorists, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. If that number is accurate, it would be an all-time high, exponentially more than the 100,000 names on the list several years ago. But the number needs to be taken with a grain of salt: after all, the ACLU doesn't keep the list, the FBI does, and the bureau doesn't generally like to talk about it. (Indeed, the FBI has not yet responded to a request for comment for this post.) But if the ACLU's figure isn't accurate, it's also unlikely to be off by that much. Last September, the ACLU notes, the Department of Justice's Inspector General reported the FBI watch list was at 700,000 names, and growing at 20,000 names per month. The ACLU says they "extrapolated" from those figures to determine the list's current size. ACLU's Barry Steinhardt added that the group had spoken privately with people familiar with the watch list, who told them the 900,000 figure was not outlandish.
Bush explains veto of waterboarding bill
Saturday, 8 March 2008 6:02 P GMT-05
President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks. "The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and includes the interrogation requirement. It passed the House in December and the Senate last month. "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.
AP: Moussaoui appeals, calling plea invalid
Friday, 29 February 2008 1:00 A GMT-05
Lawyers urged Zacarias Moussaoui not to plead guilty to terrorism charges. They just couldn't tell him why. In newly filed court documents, Moussaoui argues that court-imposed secrecy undermined his ability to present an adequate defense. His new lawyers say Moussaoui's guilty plea should be thrown out and a new trial should be convened for the man who once claimed to have been a part of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist plot. Moussaoui was not allowed to see the classified evidence against him and was shut out from closed-door hearings in which that evidence was laid out. Defense lawyers say they were barred from even discussing with Moussaoui evidence that could help prove his innocence. They say Moussaoui faced an unconstitutional choice: plead guilty or go to trial without knowing the evidence. "Moussaoui appeals because his plea was unknowing, uncounselled and invalid," attorneys Justin Antonipillai and Barbara Hartung wrote.
BAE: Secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 5:23 A GMT-05
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday. Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
Monday, 25 February 2008 2:48 A GMT-05
Beginning in late 1975, Operation Condor -- named after Chile's national bird -- was a joint operation of right-wing South American military dictatorships, working closely with U.S.-based Cuban and other anticommunist extremists on cross-border assassinations of political dissidents as far away as Europe. This meant that during George H.W. Bush’s year at the CIA’s helm, the United States both harbored domestic terrorist cells and served as a base for international terrorism. Yet no U.S. official was ever held accountable -- and in many cases, just the opposite.
"We Can't Have Acquittals": 9/11 Trials Set To Produce Only Convictions
Monday, 25 February 2008 12:17 A GMT-05
Col. Davis recounted a 2005 meeting with the Bush administration-appointed Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the prosecutions and the defense for the tribunal process. Haynes said “We can't have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.”
British Judges Slam Police & Prosecutors for Lying & Framing Algerian as "Lead Instructor" for 9/11 Hijackers
Saturday, 16 February 2008 11:48 P GMT-05
Six years of fighting for justice left Lotfi Raissi an emotional and physical wreck and his marriage close to ruin. But yesterday, the Algerian pilot falsely accused of training the September 11 terrorists heard, finally, that he was “completely exonerated” of any part in the attacks on the twin towers... Three of Britain’s most senior judges condemned the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service for abusing the court process, presenting false allegations and not disclosing evidence...
DHS: Reduced Background Checks For New U.S. Immigrants Even As DHS Head Alleges Heightened Terror Threat
Thursday, 14 February 2008 9:25 A GMT-05
Comment: Didn't the accused 9/11 terrorists allegedly exploit a broken immigration system? Is the war on terror simply a hoax?
The Fear Factory
Sunday, 10 February 2008 11:09 P GMT-05
There are signs, however, that judges and jurors are getting fed up with such concocted "threats." In December, the prosecution of the "Liberty City Seven" ended in one acquittal and a hung jury for the rest of the accused. The supposed cell was accused of preparing a "full ground war" against America by bringing down the Sears Tower and other buildings. At trial, however, it emerged that the men had no operational abilities, that the plots were dreamed up at the exhortation of two paid FBI informants while smoking dope and that the group had been provided its camera, military boots and warehouse by the JTTF. Despite 15,000 surveillance recordings of the men, including one in which they swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the jury refused to convict. "This was all written, produced, directed, choreographed and stage-designed by the United States government," Albert Levin, an attorney for one of the accused, said in his closing argument.
Discovery Channel Drops Plans To Air "Taxi To The Dark Side" Because It Is Too "Controversial"
Sunday, 10 February 2008 10:59 P GMT-05
Now, I am told that ‘it doesn’t fit into Discovery’s plans,’ and that the film’s controversial content might damage Discovery’s public offering. Having directed ‘Enron,’ very little about this kind of corporate behavior shocks me, but I am surprised that a network that touts itself as a supporter of documentaries would be so shamelessly craven. This is a film that, in an election year, is of critical interest to the viewing public. What Discovery is doing is tantamount to political censorship.
Sibel Edmonds, Narco-Terror, 9/11
Sunday, 10 February 2008 5:38 P GMT-05
...Al Qaeda, she's (Sibel's) been saying to congress, according to these interviews, is financed 95% by drug money - drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours - such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan - all the 'Stans - in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe's heroin, by Albanians, either in Albania or Kosovo - Albanian Muslims in Kosovo - basically the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which we backed heavily in that episode at the end of the century.
Bush administration pushes for control of promotions of military lawyers
Saturday, 9 February 2008 4:41 P GMT-05
The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism. The administration has proposed a regulation requiring "coordination" with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.
Terror Informant for FBI Allegedly Targeted Agents
Monday, 21 January 2008 3:14 A GMT-05
When U.S. authorities got their hands on terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah in May 2002, he agreed to inform on some of the most influential al-Qaeda leaders. So instead of being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or a high-security CIA detention facility, Jabarah was housed with relatively lax security at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was allowed to watch television and movies, speak to his family in Canada by telephone, go for walks and even make his own meals, all under 24-hour FBI watch.
Runnin' Scared: NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers
Sunday, 20 January 2008 6:31 P GMT-05
Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic. OK, none of that has actually happened. But Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, knows that it's just a matter of time. That's why he and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it's not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you "will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety," the first draft of the law states. Last week, Falkenrath made his case for the new law before the City Council's Public Safety Committee, where Councilman Peter Vallone introduced the bill and chaired the hearing. Dozens of university researchers, public-health professionals, and environmental lawyers sat in the crowd, horrified by the prospect that if this law passes, their work detecting and warning the public about airborne pollutants will become next to impossible. But Falkenrath pressed on, saying that unless the police can determine who gets to look for nasty stuff floating in the air, the city would be paralyzed by fear.
A Brief Summary Of Sibel Edmonds' Connection To 9/11
Sunday, 20 January 2008 4:57 P GMT-05
Recently, I have seen a lot of people asking about Sibel Edmonds' connection to 9/11. I sent an email to Luke Ryland, the individual that knows that most about Sibel, and asked him to please give me a brief summary of Sibel's relationship to 9/11. Here is what he wrote.
Will a Drug Warrior Be Hanged?
Wednesday, 16 January 2008 1:38 A GMT-05
Thailand’s war on drugs — vigorously approved by the Bush administration — has received far less attention in the United States than it deserves. When Thaksin launched his anti-drug campaign in 2003, he declared that “in this war, drug dealers must die.” Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha promised that drug dealers “will be put behind bars or even vanish without a trace. Who cares? They are destroying our country.” The Thai government was concerned about the rising number of Thais taking amphetamine-type pills — popularly known as Yaa-Baa. The crackdown began in early February 2003. Within weeks, government officials were bragging about the number of bad guys killed. A New York Times article noted that “the killings started right on cue. Many victims were on secret, but official, ‘black lists.’” Throughout Thailand, local officials set up black boxes or mailboxes and encouraged people to accuse anyone suspected of involvement with narcotics — no evidence required. Many people used the anonymous system to accuse business competitors or personal enemies. According to a 2004 U.S. State Department human-rights report, the interior minister warned “governors and provincial police that those who failed to eliminate a prescribed percentage of the names from their blacklists would be fired.”
Real ID: From "No Fly" to "No Drive" Lists?
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 11:47 A GMT-05
As we know, thousands of Americans are on the Federal Aviation Administration’s No-Fly List and the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center has compiled a terrorist watch list of over 700,000 people. Moreover, as Dave Lindorff writes, the government is in the business of passing this information out to private companies. “The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI made its list of people with even remote links to terrorism — having associated, perhaps inadvertently, with a terror suspect, for example — available to a wide range of private companies, from banks and rental-car companies to casinos.” And who exactly are these primary terrorists, the ones you don’t want to associate with, that is if you ever want to fly again? They are “law-abiding Americans” who were detained and questioned — we used to call this harassment — “based on their political viewpoints,” according to Nancy Chang, a senior litigation attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “I think what they are doing is harassing people who are opposing the war and publicly speaking out against administration policy,” John Dear, a Jesuit priest and member of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi, told Lindorff. Back in 2003, we learned that the FBI “collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and … advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads,” the New York Times reported. Of course, this is simply a continuation of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, initiated in the 1960s to “neutralize” the opposition — i.e., render activists not only politically impotent, but often wreck their lives as well.
The New Al-Qaeda: Blonde Haired, Blue Eyed Westerners
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 2:37 A GMT-05
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the agenda is here. Just as we were told that there were reds under the bed during the cold war era, without the specter of potential terrorists running around our backyards, the war on terror itself and all the fearmongering attached to it is rendered impotent. So the new potential terrorists are our friends, our neighbors and even us - mandating that the whole police state apparatus that has been constructed since 9/11 be swung around to target the American and British people.
David Hicks
Tuesday, 1 January 2008 7:41 P GMT-05
Just a good story to read. Think of it in the context of this "war on terror" we are supposedly fighting.
CIA man 'can take White House down'
Sunday, 30 December 2007 10:42 P GMT-05
Former head of the CIA's clandestine service Jose Rodriguez claims he can take the White House down over a torture cover-up scandal. Rodriguez said he may testify before the House Intelligence Committee if he is granted immunity from prosecution, The Sunday Times reported. Intelligence sources believe Rodriguez is now quite determined not to become the fall guy in the controversy over the destruction of CIA videotapes showing the torture of terrorist suspects.
Overpowered: How Rashid Rauf Got Away
Wednesday, 19 December 2007 12:59 A GMT-05
Miami Fake "al-Qaeda" trial ends in Mistrial
Saturday, 15 December 2007 2:56 A GMT-05
In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted yesterday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury... The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda. Instead, a paid FBI informant known as Brother Mohammed posed as an Al Qaeda emissary.
The CIA may use waterboarding on Al-Qaeda, but the simple truth is torture does not work
Friday, 14 December 2007 5:53 A GMT-05
According to top U.S. military interrogators who routinely deal with terrorist prisoners in Iraq or Afghanistan, the abandonment of "coercive practices" led to a 50 per cent increase in the high-value information such men yielded. In addition to establishing human rapport with a suspect, interrogators can exploit non-verbal communication - or body-language - and sophisticated psychology in order to make people yield up the truth.
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Thursday, 13 December 2007 12:22 P GMT-05
The information from John Kiriakou confirms what has long been a no-brainer but not definitively established before; namely, that President George W. Bush's "alternative set of procedures" for interrogation by C.I.A. includes waterboarding. Zubayda was given pride of place in George W. Bush's remarkable speech of Sept. 6, 2006, in which he bragged about the effectiveness of such procedures and appealed successfully for passage of the Military Commissions Act. That law allows a president to define what set of interrogation procedures can be used by the C.I.A.
AE911Truth Response to Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Tuesday, 11 December 2007 12:31 A GMT-05
Simon Wiesenthal was a paragon for seeking the truth, however hard and difficult it might be. The SWC should be honoring our right to publish technical information and encourage fact-based forensic inquiry into the three largest structural failures in U.S. history – not branding us inciters of terrorism. Tolerance arises from understanding, and understanding from direct experience. In this light we would like to meet with you and your board and staff to present to you the specific concerns documented on AE911Truth.org regarding the basic science of these "collapses". We would like to learn from you what you perceive as so threatening so as to deem it necessary to "warn" Congress about us. By understanding each other's concerns, we will strengthen our mutual resolve to work toward the creation of a more truthful and tolerant society.
"Fool Me Twice" - Powerful New Documentary Exposes 2002 Bali Bombings as False Flag Terror
Monday, 10 December 2007 1:59 A GMT-05
This well-crafted, well-documented film from Australia exposes the 2002 Bali Bombings as yet another case of False Flag Terror. Using a formula that has worked so well for the Loose Change crew, the filmmaker has crafted a very watchable piece that flows well, with interesting visuals, a soundtrack that moves from hip to emotionally engaging, and most importantly, and most damaging of all to the powers that be... the Truth.
Which lie should we believe? CIA admits it destroyed evidence it said didn't exist.
Sunday, 9 December 2007 11:15 P GMT-05
We learned this week that CIA videotapes of at least some of these supposed interrogations -- the tapes which were previously said not to have existed -- are now said to have been destroyed in 2005. The CIA has copped to destroying the Abu Zubaydah tapes, but has yet to name the prisoner(s) in the other destroyed tapes. (That one of them was Mohamed is a good bet.) The CIA claims -- bizarrely -- that this was done to protect the identities of the interrogators (as though blurring them out would be beyond the agency's 19th-century video technology). The corporate media have promptly floated the idea that the motive was to cover up the use of torture, possibly waterboarding. But as the "evidence" from which the official 9/11 fable lives disappears further into a black box, naturally any breathing skeptic must wonder to what extent the tapes, or even the prisoners, existed in the first place. And if the tapes existed, was the motive behind their destruction to hide torture, or to hide evidence? Even a defender of the official story like former CIA agent Robert Baer knows this latest story only adds to the stink.
UK to take Guantanamo inmates
Sunday, 9 December 2007 8:47 P GMT-05
Three Guantanamo inmates who are British residents will be released under an agreement between Britain and the United States, their lawyer said on Friday. Jamil El Banna of Jordan, Omar Deghayes of Libya and Abdenour Sameur of Algeria are expected to be returned to Britain shortly and are not expected remain in custody there, said Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer with the British organisation Reprieve that represents the three men.
Secretly briefed, Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002
Sunday, 9 December 2007 7:01 P GMT-05
Two senior Republicans and Democrats in Congress -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- were briefing on the CIA's program to use waterboarding on terror suspects in September 2002 and did not object, according to Sunday's Washington Post. In the long-ranging article, which seemingly takes the lawmakers and the Bush Administration to task by discussing the practice's emergence in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states, a Pelosi aide said the Speaker remembered discussion of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and "acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."
C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations
Sunday, 9 December 2007 6:09 P GMT-05
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials. The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said. The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.
Burned! Meet William Chrisman, FBI Entrapment Specialist
Sunday, 9 December 2007 12:04 A GMT-05
A federal court in New Haven, Connecticut, heard startling testimony from an FBI entrapment specialist late last month in the case of an alleged terrorist supporter from Phoenix. William Chrisman [photo] testified on November 28 and 29 in a hearing in the case against former US Navy signalman Hassan Abujihaad, taking the stand just hours after Derrick Shareef, whom Chrisman entrapped, pleaded guilty in Chicago.
Amnesty's Unsubscribe Me video reenacts CIA stress-position torture
Sunday, 25 November 2007 6:07 P GMT-05
Amnesty International's "Unsubscribe Me" campaign invites us to unsubscribe from the use of torture in fighting the "war on terror;" to tell the world's governments that torture cannot be done in our name. As part of the campaign, they've released an incredibly moving and disturbing video reenacting a CIA-approved "stress position" torture taken straight out of a CIA interrogation manual. In order to make the film, the directors put the actor into a stress position for six hours -- the whimpers and trembling we see are real, the anguish you feel even when you choose to do this, let alone when you are kidnapped and subjected it for weeks, months or years. Amnesty is making two more videos and then doing a theatrical release for all three. We will never be made free by adopting the tactics of dictatorships.
Trial Date Set For 'Father Of The Holy War' And His $5 Terrorist Tip
Thursday, 22 November 2007 9:44 P GMT-05
Shareef was recorded by his FBI informant (read: agent provocateur) saying he wanted to detonate the grenades in garbage cans at the Cherry Vale Mall in Rockford Illinois on the weekend before Christmas, 2006. According to investigators, Abujihaad (whose chosen name means "father of the holy war") and Shareef used to live together, and Shareef was with Abujihaad when the latter learned of the arrest of his former terrorist contact, Babar Ahmad. "I think this is about me," Abujihaad allegedly told Shareef, when he read that Babar Ahmad was in trouble. Abujihaad had bought a couple of videos from Azzam Productions, once accidentally overpaying by $5 and then telling Babar Ahmad to keep the extra money as a tip.
SPECIAL REPORT: Turning The Police State Apparatus Against Dissenters
Sunday, 18 November 2007 6:26 P GMT-05
We have further exposed how the infrastructure for a martial law police state is already in place, and in many cases is in use. We have a whole archive on the revelations that FEMA has concentration camps set up and ready to go in the event of any emergency that is deemed suitable for their use. As we have also seen recently, these camps need not have barbed wire and observation towers, they can simply be well guarded sports stadiums. Detention centers are common features of any public protest event now, as we saw at the 2004 Republican National Convention and G8 protests. In May 2006, we also exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.
Case Dismissed! Charges Against Rashid Rauf Have Been Dropped
Sunday, 18 November 2007 5:47 P GMT-05
The prosecution has dropped all its charges against Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of the alleged "Liquid Bombers" plot.
FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here
Tuesday, 6 November 2007 11:55 A GMT-05
Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal. A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.
De Menezes was shot at Stockwell for 'acting like a terrorist'
Sunday, 28 October 2007 7:21 P GMT-05
Jean Charles de Menezes was killed because he acted like a suicide bomber, a lawyer for the police said yesterday. The innocent Brazilian was shot seven times in the head by firearms officers because he acted in an "aggressive and threatening manner". The 27-year-old died at Stockwell underground station after being mistakenly identified as Hussain Osman, one of the terrorists who tried to bomb the London transport system 24 hours earlier. Ronald Thwaites QC, representing the Metropolitan Police, told the Old Bailey: "He was shot because when he was challenged by police he did not comply with them but reacted precisely as they had been briefed a suicide bomber might react at the point of detonating his bomb."
Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention
Sunday, 28 October 2007 7:19 P GMT-05
An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants". The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".
A tale of two decisions (or, how the FBI gets you to confess)
Saturday, 27 October 2007 4:35 P GMT-05
The long and the short of it was that an Egpytian national, Abdallah Higazy, was staying in a hotel in New York City on September 11 and the hotel emptied out when the planes hit the towers. The hotel later found in the closet of his room a device that allows you to communicate with airline pilots. Investigators thought this guy had something to do with 9/11 so they questioned him. According to Higazi, the investigators coerced him into confessing to a role in 9/11. Higazi first adamantly denied any involvement with 9/11 and could not believe what was happening to him. Then, he says, the investigator said his family would go through hell in Egypt, where they torture people like Saddam Hussein. Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy's life is worth garbage at that point, but ... well, that's why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States. So Higazy "confesses" and he's processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession. The bottom line in the Court of Appeals: Higazy has a case and may recover damages for this injustice. As I read the opinion I realized it was a 44 page epic, too long for me to print out. I blogged about the opinion while I read it online and then posted the blog as I ate lunch. Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! I had never seen this before, and what made all the more strange was that it involved a coerced confession over 9/11. What the hell was going on? I let some other legal bloggers know about this, particulary the How Appealing blog and Appellate Law and Practice. They both ran a commentary on the missing opinion. Then someone sent How Appealing a PDF of the decision (probably very few of them were floating around since the opinion was posted for a brief period of time) and How Appealing posted the decison. Then things got even stranger. The Court of Appeals actually phoned How Appealing to request that he remove the opinion from his website since it contained classified information. The Court said that a revised opinion would come out the next day without the classified information. How Appealing actually refused to remove the opinion. Through it all, hundreds of people came to my legal blog to see my summary of the opinion. It was either my blog or printing out and reading a 44 page epic. The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."
Dead or Alive: Bin Laden's Just a Prop in the War on Terror
Saturday, 27 October 2007 3:33 P GMT-05
So if Bin Laden is dead, and yet the U.S. intelligence services are claiming that he's alive and are authenticating his videos, then -- again -- they are using him as a boogeyman to scare people into following the great leader's war vision. Dead or alive, it is clear that the U.S. is using Osama as a prop.
House Passes Thought Crime Prevention Bill
Friday, 26 October 2007 1:20 A GMT-05
The definition of violent radicalization uses vague language to define this term of promoting any belief system that the government considers to be an extremist agenda. Since the bill doesn’t specifically define what an extremist belief system is, it is entirely up to the interpretation of the government. Considering how much the government has done to destroy the Constitution they could even define Ron Paul supporters as promoting an extremist belief system. Literally, the government according to this definition can define whatever they want as an extremist belief system. Essentially they have defined violent radicalization as thought crime. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below. `(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change. The definition of homegrown terrorism uses equally vague language to further define thought crime. The bill includes the planned use of force or violence as homegrown terrorism which could be interpreted as thinking about using force or violence. Not only that but the definition is so vaguely defined, that petty crimes could even fall into the category of homegrown terrorism. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.
Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000
Friday, 26 October 2007 12:28 A GMT-05
The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people. "It undermines the authority of the list," says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. "There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists."
Maher Arar: A Victim Of The Immoral Practice Of Rendition
Saturday, 20 October 2007 2:26 P GMT-05
Republicans joined with Democrats yesterday to offer Maher Arar something he has never received from the Bush administration – an apology for the U.S. role in wrongly detaining him, then sending him to Syria where he was tortured. More than five years after his nightmare began, Arar received the apologies from congressmen as far apart on the ideological spectrum as possible in Washington, even if they differed widely on the value and legality of the Bush administration's practice of "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects.
No Bail For Rashid Rauf, Alleged Liquid Bomber Mastermind, And No Court Date Either
Tuesday, 16 October 2007 1:35 A GMT-05
Some sources said Rashid Rauf (or a friend to whom he sent some sort of a signal, or who had seen him being arrested) sent a text message to the UK Liquid Bombers, saying to go ahead with the plot. This message might have made sense if they all had airline tickets; or if they all had passports; or if they had all applied for passports -- which they hadn't. But all such details are conveniently left out of this version of the tale, in which the heroic British authorities promptly arrested all those who had received the text messages. Other sources say Rashid Rauf was arrested several days before the others and was tortured into revealing their names, after which they were summarily arrested. British newspapers reported on a search of the woods near where the suspects lived, which cost about 30M pounds or roughly $60M before it was called off after four months. Ironically, at the same time as the search was stopped, all terror-related charges against Rashid Rauf were dropped!
Feds Won't Let Go of Case Accusing Artist of Bioterrorism
Saturday, 13 October 2007 6:49 P GMT-05
In May 2004 Steve Kurtz's life was turned upside down. Kurtz, a founding member of the award-winning collective Critical Art Ensemble, was a tenured art professor at SUNY, Buffalo. His work and that of the collective was of a kinetic conceptual sort, much of it aimed at informing audiences about the lack of regulation and potential risks of genetically modified (GM) food. Shortly before his show was to open at MASS MoCA, a museum in North Adams, Massachusetts, Kurtz's wife of twenty years died in her sleep. When police responded to his 911 call, they saw petri dishes in his home -- part of the scheduled installation -- filled with bacteria cultures. They called the FBI. At that point, the nation was still reeling from the 2001 anthrax scares. Kurtz was detained (not arrested, not charged but held beyond the range of due process, under the USA Patriot Act) on suspicion of bioterrorism. Within days, FBI tests showed that there were no harmful biological agents in his house and that his wife had died of natural causes. But the case against Kurtz has not gone away. Forced to drop charges of weapons manufacture, a federal prosecutor charged mail fraud against both Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, a professor of genetics at the University of Pittsburgh who sent Kurtz the uncontestedly harmless, legal, unregulated bacterial cultures used in his artwork. The "fraud" alleged is that they did not reveal, in a requisition form, the purpose of the mailing. Neither the University of Pittsburgh nor Buffalo has asserted fraud, and neither Ferrell nor Kurtz believed that there was anything fraudulent in their dealings. The allegation of fraud is made exclusively by the federal prosecutor -- a first as far as anyone knows.
"Possessing" Information Can Now Brand You A Terrorist
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 10:12 A GMT-05
The boy wasn't charged with attempting to carry out an act of terrorism, or even plotting an act of terrorism. He was charged because he had a book. Obviously the wrong book. But a book, all the same. Philip K Dick's concept of pre-crime - arresting someone before they even attempt to break the law - is now a rock solid reality in the UK, the US and Australia, thanks to the vaguely defined sprawl of anti-terror laws.
America's Police Brutality Pandemic
Thursday, 27 September 2007 8:51 A GMT-05
There are many disturbing aspects to police brutality cases. One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify the unprovoked police violence against citizens.
Government Moles in 'Terror' Bomb Plot Provided Bomb, Set up Training Camp
Wednesday, 26 September 2007 12:09 A GMT-05
Everything about the case of the so-called Toronto 18 is shrouded in mystery. Evidence raised in court, either at bail hearings or the preliminary hearing, is covered by a publication ban. But this hasn't prevented the public from knowing allegations against 14 adults and four juveniles that are so bizarre as to be almost unbelievable. The Crown claims that at one point the alleged Islamic terrorists were plotting to cut off Prime Minister Stephen Harper's head – but changed their minds because they weren't sure where Parliament Hill was. It also claims some of the 18 attended a Keystone Kops-style military training camp at Washago north of Toronto where, it seems, they spent most of their time complaining about the cold.
New Bin Laden Video: 100% Forgery
Tuesday, 11 September 2007 1:47 A GMT-05
The continued perpetuation of this myth has reached the point of farce now. There can be no doubt anymore that these crudely edited and forged propaganda tapes that are being foisted upon the American people represent nothing more than a contrived Neo-Con hoax to reinforce the flagging official version of 9/11 and the legitimacy of the so-called war on terror.
American Psychological Association Rejects Blanket Ban on Participation in Interrogation of U.S. Detainees
Wednesday, 22 August 2007 10:59 A GMT-05
The American Psychological Association (APA) has voted to overwhelmingly reject a measure that would have banned its members from participating in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other US detention centers. While not banning psychologists from participating in interrogations, the council approved a resolution prohibiting involvement in interrogations that use at least 14 specified methods, including sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and mock executions.
Sherwood Ross: Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo
Wednesday, 22 August 2007 2:50 A GMT-05
Military interrogators posing as "lawyers" are attempting to trick Guantanamo prisoners into providing them with information, The Catholic Worker (TCW) reports. This incredible and illegal practice contributes "to the prisoners' suspicions that the (real) lawyers are not to be trusted and could be aiding the government," TCW says in its July issue.
Padilla Case a Source of Deep Shame for America
Sunday, 19 August 2007 2:53 P GMT-05
New Bush prosecutorial theory in Padilla allows preventive detention on vague evidence
Saturday, 18 August 2007 6:15 P GMT-05
Obviously, that result was the desired outcome all along, and Taco Bell employee Padilla was just a poor sap they used as a tool. (Remember all the “dirty bomb” fear-mongering that went away because they couldn’t gin up the vaguest of evidence? Of course you do.)
Goading Xerxes: A New Tactical Twist in the Coming War on Iran
Saturday, 18 August 2007 6:05 P GMT-05
I think we can expect to see the "capture" of a truckload of people identified as fighters, carrying weapons – perhaps some of those 190,000 weapons conveniently misplaced by the Pentagon in Iraq –coming over from Iran very soon. (Can you say "Gleiwitz radio station"?) Or some similar incident to "confirm" direct Quds involvement in killing American soldiers.
Ian Welsh: Jose Padilla, nee Winston Smith, Found Guilty
Saturday, 18 August 2007 5:41 P GMT-05
But hey, if torturing someone till they love the person who threw them in jail; if taking years to bring someone to trial; if making someone so paranoid that they won't cooperate in their own defense counts as "the system working", then the American justice system is sure a model system. I'm sure next time some American is tortured overseas; is denied a timely trial; is so delusional after years in prison that he can't cooperate properly with his defense attorneys, that those who are declaring victory now will nod and smile and talk about how wonderful the justice system is operating overseas - about how American ideas of justice, civil and human rights are spreading. Sorry, I'm stepping off the spin machine. It's making me so nauseous that if I stay on one more second I'm going to puke.
Right-Wing Media Give Favorable Platform To 'Another 9/11' Columnist
Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:54 A GMT-05
The Bush administration used the events of 9/11 to launch an unnecessary war, curtail the rights of Americans, torture, illegally spy, and violate the Constitution. The right-wing can’t wait for “another 9/11? so they can take it to the next level.
Fox News Defends Columnist Who Yearns For New 9/11
Saturday, 11 August 2007 5:48 P GMT-05
Two Neo-Cons on the Fox & Friends show repugnantly try to defend columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote of his desire for a new 9/11. One of them even appears to outright agree with the sick premise.
To save America, we need another 9/11
Saturday, 11 August 2007 5:44 P GMT-05
America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater. What would sew us back together? Another 9/11 attack. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.
Terrorists Win: Americans Living In Perpetual Fear
Thursday, 9 August 2007 11:06 A GMT-05
The poll commissioned by Hart/Newhouse and released by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News finds that 37 per cent of respondents feel the U.S. is more vulnerable to an attack today than it was six years ago, that is a significant rise of 14 points since last September.
Was the pin-up boy of Bush's War on Terror assassinated?
Sunday, 5 August 2007 1:30 A GMT-05
Preposterous though it may seem, there is a growing view that Pat Tillman was targeted by American special forces because he was about to become an embarrassment. New evidence shows that he was turning out to be a very troubled "hero", a poster boy for the Army and the War on Terror who may have been about to speak out against the war he had come to symbolise. Letters home and memories of those who knew him in Iraq suggest that after his initial enthusiasm, he had decided that Iraq was not just a quagmire but an "illegal" war. Tillman had been heard arguing bitterly against the Iraq war and urging his fellow soldiers to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
He had also been using his celebrity to contact the best-selling anti-war intellectual Noam Chomsky, and they were due to meet as soon as Tillman returned from Afghanistan.
Wesley Clark On MSNBC: “Possible” Tillman Death Was Murder, Cover Up Came From The Very Top
Saturday, 4 August 2007 4:05 P GMT-05
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely, and it should be. The, the evidence of some problems is very, very clear. Mary Tillman and the Tillman family have been incredibly courageous in pursuing the truth in this, and the truth is not yet out. If there’s even a hint that there was something like a homicide or a murder in this case, it should’ve been fully investigated and proved or disproved, and we don’t really know how far up- Was it the Secretary of Defense’s office? Was it the White House? Where did the idea that you shouldn’t give any indication of what happened to Tillman. ‘Just go ahead and go through with the burial ceremony. Give him the Silver Star.’ Where did that- where was that idea blessed? You can be sure that that idea did not originate or stop at the Two- or Three-Star level. That was- someone approved that all the way to the top, because Pat Tillman was a political symbol used by the administration when it suited their purposes.
Do Open U.S. Borders Prove That Post-9/11 Terror Threat Is Not Real?
Saturday, 21 July 2007 11:43 P GMT-05
The U.S. government warns Americans daily that they live in danger of foreign terrorists capable of utilizing weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, this same U.S. government is apparently leaving this nation’s borders purposely undefended against the invasion of at least 3 million unidentified illegal aliens each year (any of whom could be a foreign terrorist transporting a weapon of mass destruction), likely as a service to a proposed merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in a North American Union. Conclusion? The terror threat to this nation is being exaggerated - if not outright being lied about - by the U.S. government. Common sense demands that a territory’s borders be defended when threatened by outside attack.
Congressman Denied Access To Federal Post-Terror Attack Plans
Saturday, 21 July 2007 2:16 A GMT-05
"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio says. Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn't know who did it or why. "We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee."
U.S. Drug czar calls marijuana growers terrorists
Tuesday, 17 July 2007 1:41 A GMT-05
The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment. John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort. "Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.
Bin Laden Uncovers Secret Formula to Halt Ageing Process
Tuesday, 17 July 2007 12:14 A GMT-05
Don't let tinfoil hate wearing conspiracy theorists fool you into thinking that the new Bin Laden tape was just cobbled together old footage released by the Neo-Cons to justify "staying the course" in Iraq 6 months after the failed surge! In reality, Osama has achieved an amazing scientific breakthrough and must be captured immediately so that the entire world can enjoy the benefits of eternal youth!
Ron Paul: U.S. In "Great Danger" Of Staged Terror
Saturday, 14 July 2007 9:41 A GMT-05
The Congressman concluded by surmising that record lows in approval ratings for Bush, Cheney and Congress showed that, "The American people are alive and well and disgusted yet they haven't had good alternatives....it's justifiable, they are looking for true answers and options and quite frankly I think that's probably one of the reasons why our campaign is growing by leaps and bounds right now."
Olbermann: Michael Chertoff's Gut
Friday, 13 July 2007 11:54 P GMT-05
Olbermann basically sees Chertoff as a propaganda minister, throwing up a diversion for Bush. I hope you're right Olbermann.
Homeland security chair responds to Chertoff's 'gut'
Thursday, 12 July 2007 4:58 A GMT-05
The letter states, "Over the past five years, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been dedicated to standing up and building capacity at the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security is charged with deterring, preventing and responding to the threat of terrorism. To that end, systems have been erected to identify risks and communicate them to the American public. With all the resources you have at your disposal and all the progress that you assure us that you are making, I cannot understand why you are quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying you have a 'gut feeling' that we are entering a period of heightened risk this summer." Thompson continues by asking Chertoff to further explain what measures the country should take based on his instincts, "What cities should be asking their law enforcement to work double shifts because of your “gut feeling?” Are the American people supposed to purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting because of your 'gut feeling?'"
Chertoff should be fired
Thursday, 12 July 2007 12:37 A GMT-05
This is a calculated move to ratchet up the terror in this country to help Republican candidates—PERIOD. They are far behind in raising money and in all the polls. He should be fired, but of course since he’s being instructed to say these things (sounds like a Cheney/Rove play) he won’t be.
Day After Corporal Wave said "Educate yourself," Ret. Lieut. Col. Ralph Peters claims "Conspiracy theories are for Arabs"- Pt. 1
Thursday, 12 July 2007 12:12 A GMT-05
Peters started by giving me advice: “Never, never blame anything on a conspiracy that can be explained by incompetence.” I don’t. The full spectrum of facts surrounding the attacks of 9-11 and 7-7 cannot be explained by incompetence. If you were to ask a real Colonel, such as Bob Bowman, someone who has wrestled with the profundity of the oath he took, you would know that normal procedures were disrupted and, in some cases, paralyzed on 9-11. If this administration and its mole controllers had purely done nothing on 9-11, thousands of dead people would still be alive. As Mr. Bowman says, “the very kindest thing that we can say about George W. Bush and all the people in the U.S. Government that have been involved in this massive cover-up, the very kindest thing we can say, is that they were aware of impending attacks and let them happen. Now some people will say that’s much too kind, however even that is high treason and conspiracy to commit murder.”
Military Analyst: West Needs More Terror To Save Doomed Foreign Policy
Wednesday, 11 July 2007 12:32 A GMT-05
The West needs more terror attacks on the scale of 9/11 and 7/7 in order to save a failing foreign policy, according to Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. This alarming admission can be found right at the end of a long and academic Toronto Star article about the history of conflict and why the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are doomed. "The Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), is the military academy of the Canadian Forces and is a full degree-granting university," according to Wikipedia.
War Costs Soar by a Third; Total Could Top $1.4 Trillion
Saturday, 7 July 2007 6:19 P GMT-05
It's not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan* -- way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006," says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
Nafeez Ahmed: "Whose Bombs?"
Saturday, 7 July 2007 5:45 P GMT-05
For those tracking the recent round of terror plots against the US and Britain, the dire lack of expertise is a familiar pattern. On the August 2006 “liquid bomb plot”, similarly discredited as simply unworkable, former British Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. (ret.) Nigel Wylde pointed out: “Not al-Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure.”
Open Letter to Purdue President France Cordova
Saturday, 7 July 2007 7:46 A GMT-05
In any case, it is disturbing that a respected academic institution like Purdue would offer what is essentially a half-baked video game as another explanation for the most important events of the 21st century. It is just as disturbing, although less surprising, that major media sources would uncritically repeat ridiculous assertions by the animation's creators as if they were statements of fact. For example the Associated Press and the New York Times quoted Purdue Computer Science professor Christoph Hoffman when he said "One thing it does point out…is the absolute essential nature of fireproofing steel structures" and "This is something that wasn't originally in the World Trade Center when it was built. It wasn't code at that time." In these articles the reader can't tell if it is the reporters, or just the professors, who are hopelessly confused.[6] Not only were the WTC buildings fully fireproofed, that fireproofing had been dramatically upgraded in the two years prior to 9/11. President Córdova, I ask you to consider Purdue's part in the propagation of false stories behind 9/11 and the devastating damage they are doing to our country and the victims of the 9/11 Wars. As a physicist you must understand that the near free-fall "collapse" of three tall buildings, of which only two were struck by airliners, is the most improbable, and yet politically convenient, series of events that the world has ever seen. Now that we have witnessed multiple false official explanations for these events, many scientists are waking to, and are willing to stand against, this fraud in order to save our country and end these wars of aggression.[7] As the leader of a university that has been thrust into the center of this critical national discussion, you should lead this effort.
Bush Directive for a 'Catastrophic Emergency' in America: Building a Justification for Waging War on Iran?
Wednesday, 4 July 2007 8:21 P GMT-05
While NSPD 51 has the appearances of a domestic national security decision, it is, nonetheless, an integral part of US foreign policy. It belongs to a longstanding military national security agenda. Were NSPD 51 to be invoked, Vice President Dick Cheney, who constitutes the real power behind the Executive, would essentially assume de facto dictatorial powers, circumventing both the US Congress and the Judiciary, while continuing to use President George W. Bush as a proxy figurehead.
The Jose Padilla Case: Screenplay by Mel Brooks
Sunday, 24 June 2007 7:32 P GMT-05
No proof. No proof. No proof. Same old story for 5 years while an innocent man is locked away in a 5’ by 7’ windowless cell and driven mad with torture.
Ronald Swerlein Charged: Ten Counts Of Illegal Explosives, One Count Of Drug Possession
Sunday, 24 June 2007 3:36 P GMT-05
What if -- instead of Ronald Swerlein -- this man's name was Abdul Muhammed? How long do you suppose it would take before he was living on a tropical island, enjoying some lemon chicken sweetened by a choice of two desserts?
Cheney Announced Bush Detainee Policy Before Bush Made Decision
Sunday, 24 June 2007 2:29 P GMT-05
"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part. The episode was a defining moment in Cheney's tenure as the 46th vice president of the United States, a post the Constitution left all but devoid of formal authority. "Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.
The Prison is the War Crime
Thursday, 14 June 2007 12:29 A GMT-05
The Military Commissions Act, which denies basic due process protections, including the right to habeas corpus, is a disgrace. But an even bigger disgrace is the concentration camp the United States maintains at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Act should be repealed and the Guantánamo prison should be shut down immediately.
A Hypocritical Oath: Psychologists and Torture
Thursday, 7 June 2007 3:44 A GMT-05
First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military detention facilities like Guantanamo. While the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association both have passed resolutions prohibiting members from participating in interrogations, the American Psychological Association refuses to, despite the outrage of many of its members. Now, with the declassification of a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general detailing psychologists’ role in military interrogations, the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services announced it will investigate.
JFK Airport Plot Has All The Hallmarks Of Staged Terror
Tuesday, 5 June 2007 6:48 A GMT-05
In every single major terror sting we have researched in the west since 9/11, not one single plot has been absent the ingredient of a government provocateur, save the cases that were outright manufactured by imaginative government propagandists in alliance with the corporate media. In this case, the provocateur was "An informant with a criminal history including drug trafficking and racketeering agreed to work with investigators on the case, in exchange for payments and a reduced sentence," according to the New York Times. Officials have refused to say how they became aware of the plot in the first place, but in every previous case of this nature we have found that it is the government agent provocateur who radicalizes the group and formulates the plot. The cover story is that the group is infiltrated by the informant having already planned the attack but as more details emerge, inevitably the plot always reveals itself as an artificial creation on behalf of the intelligence services.
Yearning For Terror Is a GOP Strategy
Tuesday, 5 June 2007 6:37 A GMT-05
As is now well-known, shortly before 9/11 the Project For A New American Century, a Neo-Con lobby group which counts Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in its ranks, lamented that its rapacious military agenda would not be realized "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Milligan's comments are notably prescient in that they were made on the same weekend that U.S. authorities had announced they had disrupted a plot to attack JFK International Airport.
Less Than 0.01% Of Homeland Security Cases Are Terrorism Related
Monday, 28 May 2007 7:17 P GMT-05
A report issued Sunday by independent research group The Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that in the last three years there have only been 12 charges of terrorism out of 814,073 cases. This once again highlights that the terrorist threat to America is vastly over hyped and is being used by a criminally controlled government as an excuse to police the world and foment a domestic police state to crush any dissent amongst the American people. "The DHS claims it is focused on terrorism. Well that's just not true," David Burnham, a TRAC spokesman told CNN. "Either there's no terrorism, or they're terrible at catching them. Either way it's bad for all of us."
'Father Of The Holy War' To Be Held Without Bail As Bogus Alleged Plots Grow And Intertwine
Monday, 28 May 2007 7:03 P GMT-05
A few months ago, when setting up the arrest and the indictment, the feds made it seem like a slam-dunk. Now they tell us there's no forensic footprint linking the suspect to the documents in question? Not that any of this will matter; as we have seen over and over, the courts are reluctant to buck the anti-terrorists -- ever, anywhere. Some of the weakest, strangest cases have led to convictions and long prison sentences. We're even seeing cases based on no evidence of anything -- except entrapment by undercover FBI agents -- leading to convictions and long sentences.
Dahr Jamail on The New American Way: Torturing Detainees To Death
Monday, 28 May 2007 6:38 P GMT-05
But breaking international and domestic law has not been a concern of an administration led by a “president” who has claimed “authority” to disobey over 750 laws passed by Congress. In fact, when this same individual does things like signing a secret order in 2002 which authorized the National Security Agency to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by wiretapping the phones of U.S. citizens, and then goes on to allow the secret collection of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans, torture is but one portion of this corrupted picture. This is a critical ongoing story, not just because it violates international and domestic law, but this state-sanctioned brutality, bankrupt of any morality and decency, is already coming back home to haunt Americans. When U.S. soldiers are captured in Iraq or another foreign country, what basis does the U.S. have now to ask for their fair and humane treatment? And with police brutality and draconian “security” measures becoming more real within the U.S. with each passing day, why wouldn’t these policies be visited upon U.S. citizens?
Much Ado About the Fort Dix Pizza Plot
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 10:35 A GMT-05
The media's reports on the arrests immediately deemed the six as "Muslim fanatics" and "Jersey jihadists." But some of the men were known to be not particularly religious. In fact, according to the New York Times, investigators have quietly admitted that "there is little indication that they were devout--or even practicing--Muslims." Perhaps most troubling, however, is the FBI's use of two paid "informants" in the case. One of the informants, according to the Times, "railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades." That begs the question: how far would the supposed "plot" have gone had the FBI not been there to push it forward? In fact, in November, Tatar himself contacted police in Philadelphia, telling a sergeant he had been approached by a man who "pressured him to acquire maps of Fort Dix." He even told the sergeant he was worried that that "the incident was terrorist-related." The Feds claim that Tatar was simply trying to throw off suspicion and determine if the first informer was a plant. But the fact that one of the defendants in a supposed terrorist cell actually called police to report possible terrorist activity raises serious questions about the truth of the government's claims.
Alleged Liquid Bombers Plead 'Not Guilty'; Extradition For Alleged Mastermind 'Conditionally Stalled'
Saturday, 19 May 2007 3:39 P GMT-05
It's tough not to speculate that the British media may be growing tired of huge libel suits and wondering how they could have been led so badly astray. And it's also tough not to speculate that the longer Rashid Rauf stays in Pakistan, the better it might be for UK authorities, who could be severely embarrassed by whatever he might say in a British courtroom. At this point it appears that the most incriminating thing he could say would be "Yes, I know the bombing plot was impossible, but I convinced all these aspirational jihadis to pretend they were planning to do it, so that you would have somebody to arrest when you needed to claim you'd made a major achievement and inject another jolt of fear into the bogus War on bogus Terror."
America's Coming Dictatorship
Sunday, 6 May 2007 5:10 P GMT-05
One can easily see how the concept of the "noble lie" fits neatly into the neoconservative scheme of things, and the run-up to the Iraq war is surely a textbook example of the Straussian method in action: an enlightened elite deceives the public into an action that must be taken, after all, for their own good. In this case, we were lied into invading and occupying Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with "weapons of mass destruction" and Saddam's alleged links to al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, both of which the promulgators knew to be lies, and yet reiterated ceaselessly.
Potential terror jurors cite 9/11 doubts
Sunday, 6 May 2007 4:51 P GMT-05
First, isn't it interesting that a person's views about the 9/11 attacks are now the basis for peremptory challenges during jury selection? It's certainly an effective way of weeding out opinions that don't conform to the official line - just as those who don't support the death penalty are automatically dismissed from juries. This is an unjust and pernicious practice. By denying those who don't agree with death sentencing a place on juries, the true breadth of public opinion on the subject cannot be represented on juries. It creates an ideologically lopsided jury pool heavy with conformists. Seems the same thing is in danger of happening with 9/11.
Another Guantanamo outrage
Friday, 4 May 2007 5:26 P GMT-05
Under the Justice Department plan, lawyers could meet just three times with their Guantanamo clients after an initial meeting in which the prisoner decides whether or not to use the lawyer's services. Prisoners who have been through several interrogations at the hands of the military are often so distrustful of Americans, including lawyers, that it takes extended visits just to establish a normal attorney-client relationship.
The new rules would also allow US intelligence officers to read lawyers' letters to their clients, and they would permit US officials to deny a lawyer access to secret evidence used by the military to determine that a client is an enemy combatant -- all flagrant departures from American justice. As it stands now, the lawyers -- all of whom have security clearances -- can see the material but are forbidden to share it with their clients.
FBI agent testifies he posed as al-Qaida recruiter in terror case
Friday, 4 May 2007 4:12 P GMT-05
An FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter in a terrorism investigation testified Thursday at a doctor's trial, recalling that a key conspirator in the case showed him how he could strangle somebody with his prayer beads. The agent, Ali Soufan, is a key witness in the terrorism trail against the doctor, Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, who was charged two years ago with pledging to provide material support to al-Qaida by offering to treat the group's injured fighters. Most of Soufan's testimony in nearly a day on the witness stand revolved around conversations he had with Tarik Shah, a martial arts expert and jazz musician who said he wanted to introduce him to Sabir. Several taped conversations from a meeting between the agent and Shah in Plattsburgh, N.Y. were played for the jury.
War and the Police State: Complicity of the American People
Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:16 A GMT-05
On September 11, 2001, corporate media and the government elite launched an aggressive political and media campaign upon and against the American people. With Madison-Avenue expertise, purveyors of fear heightened our perception of imminent threat by inundating the airwaves with continual, repetitive, easily-learned sound-bytes, words brimming with emotionally-charged meaning, "…Bin Laden, Taliban, Axis of Evil, Saddam Hussein, Terror-Threat, Terrorist…" with just enough intensity to successfully persuade the American people to procure security at any cost.
The Sham of the Padilla Trial
Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:46 A GMT-05
If Padilla is convicted by the jury, the judge will likely sentence him to serve much of the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary for having conspired to violate federal criminal laws against terrorism. On the other hand, if Padilla is acquitted, the U.S. military is likely to exercise its post-9/11-acquired power to declare Americans (and foreigners) “enemy combatants” in the war on terror and throw Padilla back into a military dungeon. That is where he was before the government, as part of a clever legal maneuver that was obviously designed to avoid Supreme Court review of Padilla’s request for habeas-corpus relief, converted him from an “enemy combatant” in the war on terror to a federal-court criminal defendant charged with violating federal terrorism laws. While the military, of course, could decline to exercise its power to retake Padilla into custody after an acquittal by the jury, that course of action is unlikely given the government’s repeated assertion that Padilla is one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture
Wednesday, 2 May 2007 6:16 P GMT-05
When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted, as he did frequently, of his unrelenting focus on the war on terror, his audience would have been startled, maybe even shocked, to discover the activities that Rumsfeld found it necessary to supervise in minute detail. Close command and control of far away events from the Pentagon were not limited to the targeting of bombs and missiles. Thanks to breakthroughs in communications, the interrogation and torture of prisoners could be monitored on a real time basis also.
NY Police Report Bomb to Frame Activist as Terrorist
Saturday, 28 April 2007 6:14 P GMT-05
Abby Newman was arrested for not showing ID in August 2000 and fell victim to an illegal vehicle search in which police found items of subversive literature, including a "pocket Constitution."
One officer asked the other "Is this legal?" (Case in point, where the very society of freedom is violated by the system that regulates that society.) But that has become all too common in the new American police state. A Christian group in Philadelphia was arrested in 2004 and charged with counts of criminal conspiracy, ethnic intimidation and riot for "praying, singing and reading scripture during an annual 'gay pride' event. Of course, the question here is not one of Christianity vs. homosexuality, but the criminal prosecution of free speech. The eroding inherent right threatens the freedom of Christians, homosexuals, pink-and-polka dotted people, and other groups who were previously guaranteed protection of their voices - whether right or wrong, embarrassing, hateful or supportive, blasphemous, sinful or true. An attorney in Portland, Oregon was falsely arrested under anti-terrorism laws shortly after the 2004 Madrid bombings.
My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat
Friday, 27 April 2007 12:23 A GMT-05
Because the government based its case on my father's expressed political views, our lawyers rested without presenting a single witness. Our defense was the First Amendment. On Dec. 6, 2005, my father was acquitted of 8 of the 17 charges against him, though the jury voted 10 to 2 for full acquittal. Those holding out for conviction were the only two who listed themselves as readers of the Tampa Tribune, a paper which had slandered him for over a decade. Two of my father's three co-defendants were fully acquitted; the jury did not return a single guilty verdict in over 100 charges. The verdict was a testament to the hollow nature of government's case--an especially strong statement in the midst of post 9/11 hysteria.
Court Asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantánamo
Friday, 27 April 2007 12:10 A GMT-05
The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the request has become a central issue in a new legal battle over the administration’s detention policies. Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.
US to Make History Trying Alleged Child War Criminal
Thursday, 26 April 2007 4:17 A GMT-05
During his capture he was shot three times and is nearly blind in one eye as a result of his injuries. The US military says Mr Khadr threw a grenade that killed a US Green Beret sergeant, Christopher Speer, and wounded another sergeant, Layne Morris. Mr Khadr's Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Marine lieutenant colonel Colby Vokey, said the US would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations if a trial went ahead. Mr Khadr has been charged with murder, attempted murder, providing support to terrorism, conspiracy and spying under rules for military trials adopted last year. The conspiracy charge is based on acts allegedly committed before Mr Khadr was 10, according to his defence team.
U.S. Frees International Terrorist
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 7:51 P GMT-05
A terrorist lives in Miami. He is not in hiding, or part of some sleeper cell. He’s an escaped convict, wanted internationally for blowing up a jetliner. His name is Luis Posada Carriles. As the nation was focused on the Virginia Tech shooting, the Bush administration quietly allowed Posada’s release from a federal immigration detention center. It was Oct. 6, 1976, a clear day in the Caribbean. Cubana Airlines Flight 455 departed from Barbados, bound for Cuba, with a stop in Trinidad. Posada then ran a private investigative firm in Venezuela. Two of his employees were on the flight, deplaned in Trinidad and left C-4 plastic explosive on board, disguised as a tube of toothpaste. Shortly after takeoff, the bomb exploded and the plane went down. All 73 people on board were killed.
Phony War On Terror Demands Casualties -- And Gets Them
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 7:33 P GMT-05
The so-called War on Terror is a fraud, a massive crime against all humanity "justified" by a web of carefully crafted and expensively disseminated lies. And like any web of lies, it cannot sustain itself without ever-increasing fiction. Thus we have phony terror plots leading to spectacularly hyped arrests (which may not even lead to charges, let alone a trial) and entrapment going on all over the place. But that still doesn't generate enough publicity to keep the illusion going under its own power. Early in the phony war, the phony warriors needed suspects so urgently that they were buying them. But they can't keep doing that, so now they're using any other available pretext to try to meet their quotas. And we have clearly reached a point where it doesn't even matter anymore whether somebody is a terrorist or not. If his name -- or some similar name -- is on the government's watch-list, that's good enough to justify ruining his trip -- or his life. And meanwhile -- as if the utter phoniness of the bogus war needed any further emphasis -- an actual terrorist has been set free.
Padilla in jail peril, experts say
Friday, 20 April 2007 8:48 P GMT-05
Accused al-Qaida agent Jose Padilla could be thrown back in a military brig even if he's acquitted or gets a light sentence in his civilian criminal trial beginning this week, experts say. All President Bush would have to do is sign papers again branding him an "enemy combatant," and Padilla would be back behind bars. Bush did that in 2002, when the Brooklyn-born terror suspect was stripped of his constitutional rights and held in a Navy jail for three years without charges. "There is nothing stopping the president from doing it," said Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor who teaches law at Georgetown University. "If he were acquitted, he's not necessarily going anywhere." And if Padilla is returned to military custody, he could be held indefinitely until the end of the war on terror, Solis said.
The War On Terror Looks Like A Fraud Because It Is One!
Wednesday, 18 April 2007 8:47 P GMT-05
I've been saying ever since I started blogging that the war on terror is bogus, and that this conclusion can be reached in all manner of ways. John Gleeson mentions 9/11, the oil law in Iraq and the pipeline through Afghanistan. But here's another way to see the same thing: The Pentagon has sent out memos saying their main priority is now to win the war on terror by October of 2008 -- just in time for the next presidential election. Not just the war in Iraq, mind you. The word has gone out: wrap up the entire Global War on Terror. This was a war that was supposed to last for generations. And it's not as if we've shown any signs of "winning". To be blunt about it, we haven't even shown any sign of understanding what "winning" means, let alone what it takes to "win". If this is a war that can be started and stopped at the pleasure of the President, or the Pentagon, just in time for an election -- or even if the people running it see it that way -- then it's clearly a cynical ploy, not worthy of financial sacrifice, let alone the sacrifice of young men and women. Not to speak of the destruction of foreign countries and innocent victims numbering in the millions.
Neo-Cons To Spin VA Massacre As Terrorist Attack
Wednesday, 18 April 2007 6:45 P GMT-05
By connecting the massacre to militant Islam, the fraudulent war on terror can be perpetuated as the Bush administration lines up its aircraft carriers in the Gulf for an imminent strike on Iran. The base level propaganda that "the enemy" is attacking our college kids would give the Neo-Cons all the pretext they need for selling another pre-emptive war to a dumbed down public. This may not be the false flag we were all fearing, but it certainly puts the population in a semi-comatose state and makes the horrors perpetrated in the name of Empire look insignificant when up against the terror on our doorstep.
War on Terror looks like a fraud
Monday, 16 April 2007 9:06 P GMT-05
Four years after the invasion, it's becoming pretty clear that Iraq has been "pacified" solely for the purpose of economic aggression. Humanitarian considerations are moot. The awful plight of Iraq's one million Christians, who have no place in the new Iraq, underscores this ugly truth. Afghanistan, meanwhile, has given the U.S. a strategic military beachhead in Central Asia (which "American primacy" advocates called for in the '90s) and it was quietly reported in November that plans are being accelerated for a $3.3-billion natural gas pipeline "to help Afghanistan become an energy bridge in the region." With many Americans (including academics and former top U.S. government officials) now questioning even the physical facts of 9/11 and seriously disputing the "militant Islam" spin, with the media more brain-dead than it's been in our lifetimes, now is not the time for jingoism and blind faith in the likes of Cheney, George W. Bush and Robert Gates.
Kangaroo Tribunals Give a Kafkaesque Edge to Guantanamo
Monday, 16 April 2007 6:34 P GMT-05
The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay — or Azkaban, as one of my clients, a Harry Potter fan, calls it — have had no access to a hearing in a court of law. Instead, Guantanamo’s inmates are subjected to two kangaroo procedures: Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards. The tribunals determine whether an individual is an enemy combatant. Needless to say, the cards are stacked against the prisoner from the get-go. The tribunals are allowed to rely on hearsay evidence and information acquired though coercion. Any evidence deemed “secret” is withheld from the prisoner. Can you imagine trying to defend yourself against evidence kept secret from you? Amazingly, my client Abdul Al-Ghizzawi (a Libyan who ran a bakery in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, before being handed to Americans for a bounty in late 2001), was found to have no ties to terrorism and not to be an enemy combatant. Unfortunately, the higher-ups intervened and the tribunal’s judgment was overturned six weeks later upon the miraculous discovery of “new evidence.” I saw the classified proceedings of my client’s tribunals, and I can assure you that no new material was considered. Mark and Joshua Denbeaux, authors of the study “No-Hearing Hearings,” have discovered that some prisoners went through as many as three hearings before the tribunals made the “correct” determination that a prisoner had ties to terrorism.
‘War on terror’ has ‘spawned more terror’, study finds
Thursday, 12 April 2007 8:07 P GMT-05
The US-led “war on terror” is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a prominent British think tank has warned. The Oxford Research Group’s latest report said the US and its allies have used military might to try to "keep the lid on'' problems rather than uproot the causes of terrorism. It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001.
Professor who criticized Bush told added to terrorist 'no-fly' list
Thursday, 12 April 2007 7:19 A GMT-05
When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any peace marches. "We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," a clerk said. Murphy then explained that he had not marched, but had "in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution." The clerk responded, "That'll do it."
Cuba slams US over release of convicted bombing mastermind
Monday, 9 April 2007 1:45 P GMT-05
The US judge ordered the Cuban-born Venezuelan national released on $US350,000 bail on condition that he remain confined to his Miami home and submit to "electronic monitoring," according to the text of the order by the Federal Court in El Paso, Texas.
Posada Carriles, a fierce opponent of communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was accused of masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados in 1976 in which 73 people were killed.
"Wait, I Didn't Sign-up for the 'International' Guard..."
Friday, 6 April 2007 3:28 P GMT-05
Has Iraq become the 51st state without anyone telling me? No. Well, why are 12,ooo ‘national’ guard being sent there? They’re not the ‘international’ guard…
'Harsher Conditions of Extreme Isolation'
Friday, 6 April 2007 2:35 P GMT-05
Earlier moves to relax the conditions and to increase opportunities for socialization among detainees seem to have been reversed, Amnesty said. The isolated prisoners are now spending 22 hours alone in a windowless cell with no natural light or fresh air. They exercise alone, often at night and can go for days without seeing daylight. Inmates have their meals alone in their cells, which are constantly lit, and they are observed 24 hours a day. Amnesty is particularly critical of the fact that the inmates have no opportunity to improve their conditions through good behavior. Even the 80 inmates that the Pentagon says it intends to release soon are being subjected to the same harsh treatment.
The War on Consciousness
Friday, 6 April 2007 2:45 A GMT-05
If you are an atheist, then fight for 9/11 truth because it is right and necessary and logical, because you want to protect your country and your loved ones from further insanity, because you hate disinformation, and for all of the other excellent reasons that motivate you. If you are religious, then fight for 9/11 truth because the deepest precepts of your religion compel you to seek justice.
Leave Your Morals at the Border
Thursday, 5 April 2007 2:45 P GMT-05
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the habeas corpus plea of a Canadian national, captured in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old, because the possible deprivation of his human rights was not conducted on “U.S. soil.” The court, with three judges dissenting, cited a law passed by the Republican-controlled Congress last year that the fate of Guantanamo prisoners will be determined by secret military tribunals outside the purview of U.S. courts.
On The David Hicks Case And The Mainstreaming Of Modern American Insanity
Wednesday, 4 April 2007 7:41 P GMT-05
The worst of the worst? The first "detainee" to be tried? Held for sixty-four months before he could even get a sham hearing, and then sentenced to nine months more? Doesn't he get credit for time served? He's done the nine months already, plus fifty-five more. For what? For being tortured?
Crushing Children's Testicles: Welcome to the New Freedom
Wednesday, 4 April 2007 1:25 A GMT-05
In the below, I provide massive amounts of documentation wherein the U.S. government itself admits it is holding innocent people indefinitely without charges (including children and U.S. citizens), torturing them, raping them--including homosexually anally raping them--and murdering them, and that the orders to do so came from the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Orwell at Guantanamo
Wednesday, 4 April 2007 1:11 A GMT-05
Here's what the Bush administration has done to the values, traditions and honor of the United States of America: An accused terrorist claims he confessed to heinous crimes so that agents of the U.S. government would stop torturing him, and no one is shocked or even surprised. There's reason to believe, in fact, that what the suspect says about torture is probably true.
The Pentagon's Crooked "Judicial" Process
Monday, 2 April 2007 6:38 P GMT-05
Why would Crawford secretly circumvent the prosecutors and the judge and negotiate a deal with Hicks’ attorneys behind their backs? After all, isn’t negotiating a plea bargain the job of the prosecutors? Isn’t it the judge’s job to determine whether a plea bargain should be accepted as fair and just? Not in the Hicks case. The deal that Crawford struck with Hicks’ attorneys was final and binding on the prosecutors, the judge, and the military tribunal. Even more unusual were the actual terms of the deal. After the Pentagon had repeatedly said that Hicks was one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, Crawford agreed to a 7-year sentence, all but 9 months of which will be suspended. That means that after all the hullabaloo about how dangerous and evil Hicks is, he only has to serve 9 months in jail, and he gets to serve them all in his home country of Australia.
Freedom for British resident after five years in Guantanamo
Sunday, 1 April 2007 8:21 P GMT-05
Mr al-Rawi had travelled with his friend and business partner, Jamil el-Banna, to meet his older brother Wahab and help him to set up a mobile peanut-oil processing plant. After his arrest, he was handed over to US agents, then flown to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo. He has never been put on trial or faced any specific charges.
The Terror Entrepreneurs
Saturday, 31 March 2007 7:12 P GMT-05
Together, the government, media and entertainment industries have turned "the terror threat" into a nationwide entrepreneurial venture. Brzezinski writes that "(T)error entrepreneurs," whose never-ending task is to "convince the public that it faces new threats" have found a home on network television. Since "horror scenarios attract audiences," the corporate media give a respectable veneer to fear-mongering through the presentation of these terror "experts" and "consultants" to the public. All of this is happening in a cultural environment in which Islam and Arabs are being vilified for sport and profit.
What's Happening at Guantanamo?
Saturday, 31 March 2007 5:02 P GMT-05
Why Should We Care? Talk by Attorneys Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell Newton lawyers Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell are pro bono representing a Guantanamo detainee who has been held for five years without charges. They have just returned from their first visit there.
Hicks' sentence to be limited to 7 years
Friday, 30 March 2007 2:56 P GMT-05
Hicks accepted responsibility for a list of activities that were revised slightly from the government's original charge sheet during negotiations over the plea agreement. The list dropped a reference to meeting "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid during his al-Qaida training in early 2001 as well as a description of his training as "advanced." Hicks confirmed that he traveled to Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to attend terrorist training camps. After the attacks, under the alias "Abu Muslim Australia," he acknowledged arming himself to join al-Qaida and the Taliban in the fight against U.S. forces.
A tale of two cases in US "war on terror": Jose Padilla and Chiquita Brands
Friday, 30 March 2007 3:07 A GMT-05
The defendants in this second case are part of a major multinational operation and admit to funneling millions of dollars abroad to finance a murderous terrorist organization. Yet they were allowed to reach a pre-trial plea bargain that included as the penalty a fine amounting to 0.55 percent of their annual revenue. The organization that financed the foreign terrorists has boasted publicly that its global operations have not been affected in the slightest. What is to account for this apparently gross disparity? The answer is simple. In the first case, the defendant was Jose Padilla, born in Brooklyn and raised in a Chicago ghetto before converting to Islam in prison. In the second, the defendants are multimillionaire executives of a multibillion-dollar US-based transnational corporation with a long history of political influence and a prominent role in US foreign policy—Chiquita Brands International, Inc.
Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars
Thursday, 29 March 2007 1:50 P GMT-05
But of course the lives lost and ruined by Bush’s wars were lost and ruined in vain. For those who fight, a nondefensive war is the epitome of waste. Without the Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction and revenge for 9/11, who would have volunteered to go to Iraq or Afghanistan? Who would have chosen to finance those wars?
American Kangaroo Court Claims Its First Victim
Thursday, 29 March 2007 2:54 A GMT-05
It is appropriate that a person from Australia, home of the kangaroo, should be the first one dragged before the kangaroo court at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. David Hicks, imprisoned there for more than five years, pleaded guilty Monday to providing material support for terrorism. The case of Hicks offers us a glimpse into the Kafkaesque netherworld of detentions, kidnappings, torture and show trials that is now, internationally, the shameful signature of the Bush administration. Hicks’ passage through this sham process affords us all an opportunity to demand the closure of Guantanamo and an end to these heinous policies. Conditions may soon exist to shutter the prison, with George Bush’s lame-duck status, the Democratic takeover of Congress, the possible departure of Guantanamo’s arch-defender and architect, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and, if recent reports are true, a desire to close the prison on the part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. These bogus military commission trials amplify global contempt for the Guantanamo prison.
Australian captive Hicks pleads guilty to ‘escape’ Gitmo
Wednesday, 28 March 2007 5:16 P GMT-05
Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty to helping terrorists because he was desperate to escape 5 years of "hell" in Guantánamo Bay and return to Australia, his father says. After years of insisting on his innocence, Hicks is likely to be sent home soon, and may serve any remaining sentence at a high-security prison in Adelaide.
U.S. judge rules Rumsfeld, others immune to torture lawsuit
Wednesday, 28 March 2007 5:12 P GMT-05
A district court has detailed the torture of 9 US prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan but ruled former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 3 high-ranking officers immune from prosecution. The 5 Iraqis and 4 Afghans – none ever charged with a crime – were found to lack US constitutional rights. The abuse authorized by Rumsfeld and sometimes taking place in the presence of the 3 officers included being hung upside-down and slapped unconscious, stabbed, electrically shocked, deprived of sleep, grabbed by dogs and sexually humiliated.
Welcome to the Least Worst Place
Wednesday, 28 March 2007 4:42 P GMT-05
Yet on Monday, in a surprise move, the Pentagon announced that it had transferred a detainee named Abdul Malik to Guantanamo over the weekend. It gave little information about the new arrival, saying only that he was a "dangerous terror suspect," that he had confessed to terrorist acts, and that he had been arrested "as a result of our ongoing conflict against Al Qaida." While the Pentagon disclosed neither the detainee's nationality nor where he had been arrested, knowledgeable observers knew that he was a Kenyan picked up in Kenya a few weeks ago. He was reportedly arrested at a foreign exchange bureau in the city of Mombasa, held for a time in Kenyan police custody, and then handed over to the United States.
The Pentagon’s Power to Jail Americans Indefinitely
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 5:08 P GMT-05
Our 18th-century American ancestors would have found Judge Cooke’s ruling to be ludicrous. If a military department of government is exempt from the restrictions of the Bill of Rights, then the entire executive branch is exempt for the obvious reason: Whenever the government wants to exempt itself from the Bill of Rights, all it has to do is employ the military to do the dirty deed. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the American people from the federal government, not a particular department of the federal government.
The crushing fear that stalks America
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 1:15 A GMT-05
Dr Michael Noll's students at Valdosta are as smart and bright-eyed as Dr El-Baradei's in Cairo. They packed into the same lecture I had given in Egypt and seemed to share a lot of the same fears about Iraq. But a sullen seminar that same morning was a miserable affair in which a young woman seemed to break down in anger. If "we" left Iraq, she said in a quavering voice, the jihadists, the "terrorists", could come here to America. They would attack us right here.
I sighed with frustration. I was listening to her voice but it was also the voice of the woman on Fox TV, the repeated, hopeless fantasy of Bush and Blair: that if we fail in Iraq, "they", the monstrous enemy, will arrive on our shores. Every day in the American papers now, I read the same "fear" transformed into irrationality. Luke Boggs - God, how I'd love that byline - announces in his local paper: "I say let the terrorists rot in Guantanamo. And let the Europeans ... howl. We are a serious nation, engaged in the serious business of trying to kill or capture the bad guys before they can do us more harm." He calls Guantanamo's inmates "hardcore jihadists".
Is the American Empire on the Brink of Collapse?
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 12:24 A GMT-05
I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology.
Terrorized by 'War on Terror'
Monday, 26 March 2007 10:58 P GMT-05
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.
U.S. ‘terror database’ has quadrupled in 4 years
Monday, 26 March 2007 10:05 P GMT-05
The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, the TIDE project manager admitted. In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September.
Gates wanted to close Guantanamo in first weeks: report
Friday, 23 March 2007 5:58 P GMT-05
Soon after becoming defense secretary, Robert Gates argued the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed because the international community would view any trials there as tainted, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Instead, Gates, who became Pentagon chief in December, argued that terrorism suspects should be tried in the United States to make the proceedings more credible, the Times said. Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others argued against bringing detainees into the United States, and the discussion ended when
President George W. Bush agreed with them, the newspaper quoted administration officials as saying.
Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How We Treat “Enemy Combatants”
Wednesday, 21 March 2007 3:40 P GMT-05
The government is doing everything it can to prevent the American people from learning what the U.S. military did to Padilla during his three years of pre-trial confinement. In fact, U.S. officials are doing the same thing with respect to “enemy combatants” that the CIA has been holding for years in its secret overseas prisons. They say the prisoners should not be permitted to reveal what the CIA has done to them because to do so would threaten “national security.” Meanwhile, the American people are walking through all this with an ambivalent numbness. Frightened after 9/11 over the prospect that “the terrorists” were coming to get them, many Americans were either silent or supportive when U.S. officials assumed the most powerful dictatorial tool possible — the power to arbitrarily take people into custody, torture them, and even execute them after a kangaroo proceeding. What never occurred to many Americans was that the military would have the authority to exercise this dictatorial power on them.
Rep. John Murtha: Four Costly Years at War
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 10:32 P GMT-05
Over 3,200 of our sons and daughters have lost their lives in Iraq and close to 25,000 have been wounded, to include thousands of traumatic brain injuries and hundreds of limb amputations. The cost of disability benefits as a result of this protracted and intense war will be staggering. A recent report by the Harvard University School of Government put the total cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at $350 to $700 billion. While the U.S. continues to deplete its resources in Iraq, our ground forces in the United States are short on training, equipment and personnel. At the beginning of the Iraq war, 80% of all Army units and almost 100% of active combat units were rated at the highest levels of readiness. Just the opposite exists today. General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, said last week during a hearing on the Hill, "We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it." General Cody, the Vice Chief, said that the Army's readiness level is "stark."
Blackwater: Bush's Shadow Army
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 1:45 A GMT-05
The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld’s tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq–an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.
Confession of 9/11 architect backfires on US
Monday, 19 March 2007 6:44 P GMT-05
The CIA denies that Mohammed was tortured, but evidence to the contrary has been building for years. Two years ago, a CIA official told ABC News that he had been water-boarded, and had won the admiration of his interrogators because it took him two to two-and-half minutes to start confessing - well beyond the average of 14 seconds observed in others.
Egypt opposition MPs walkout over 'police state' amendments
Monday, 19 March 2007 6:15 P GMT-05
About 100 opposition legislators – almost 1/4 of Egypt's parliament – have walked out in protest over Pres. Hosni Mubarak's proposed constitutional amendments. Mubarak says the “anti-terror” measures are to stress citizenship over religion or ethnicity. But rights groups call the proposals, giving security forces power to detain suspects and restrict public meetings, the "greatest erosion of the people's rights in 26 years" for allowing surveillance of private communications and the presidential bypass of ordinary courts for accused terrorists.
U.S. holds infants, Americans in East African secret prisons
Monday, 19 March 2007 5:33 P GMT-05
At least 150 prisoners, who included men and women of 17 nationalities and children as young as 7 months, were held in Kenya for several weeks before most of them were transferred covertly to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they're being held incommunicado, the groups charge. The transfers, which authorities reportedly carried out in the middle of the night and made public only after a recent court order in Kenya, violated international law, according to the rights groups. They charge that the program is being driven by the United States, which has built a close relationship with Kenya and Ethiopia in the war on terrorism.
KSM Deconstructed
Saturday, 17 March 2007 7:53 P GMT-05
KSM is simply too much of a good thing for the Muslim-hating neocons, and that’s why he embodies cartoonish villain qualities, thus revealing the essential simplicity of the Straussian neocon philosophy with its Manichean perspective of good versus evil, light versus dark, and its exploitation of stark moral dualism. As the Straussians believe they are, like Plato, guiding the polis, who are childlike, it is probably natural the requisite myths spun, in the form of “noble lies,” are basically puerile and thus easily deconstructed. Moreover, as “philosopher kings,” the neocons firmly believe the American public, the benighted masses, really do not require more sophistication.
Gonzales Must Go, and So, Too, the Ideology of the Imperial Presidency
Saturday, 17 March 2007 7:17 P GMT-05
But Gonzales is not just a self-serving political hack. He’s also an ideological hack. Like Cheney, he’s done everything within his power, and a lot of things outside it, to further the agenda of the imperial Presidency, whether that included Bush’s right to violate the “quaint” Geneva Conventions, or to engage in “extraordinary renditions,” or to illegally wiretap U.S. citizens.
The Confession Backfired
Saturday, 17 March 2007 4:17 P GMT-05
The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals – that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s. That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.
The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty
Friday, 16 March 2007 8:15 P GMT-05
Let’s examine this “Islamo-fascism” rationale for a conservative foreign policy and determine whether it is worth abandoning liberty for, whether it misdiagnoses the root causes of anger and hatred toward the United States, and whether it actually is just an excuse to continue the big-government policy in foreign affairs long favored by conservatives.
‘We Must Resist!'
Friday, 16 March 2007 7:38 P GMT-05
I have also said that the prescription for the black body politic is radical surgery. So, too, now, I believe, is the case with the American body politic.
The extreme corruption of our political system by the greedy, unseen hand that comfortably operates in the backrooms of power is turning our heroes into caricatures of themselves. Why can't we know the truth about 9/11 and this war on terror? Why can't we immediately repeal the Secret Evidence Law, the Patriot Act, and the Military Tribunals Act? Why can't we get back that 2.3 trillion dollars Rumsfeld admits is missing and use it to fully fund education and health care and infrastructure?
KSM "Confessed" To Targeting Bank Founded After His Arrest
Friday, 16 March 2007 6:48 P GMT-05
In his confession, KSM claims, "I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New (or Second) Wave of attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11: ...Plaza Bank, Washington state." KSM was arrested in March 2003. According to the Plaza Bank's website, the organization was founded in early 2006, making it impossible for KSM to have even known of the bank's existence before 2003, never mind plotted against it.
The Liberal War on Democracy
Friday, 16 March 2007 5:32 P GMT-05
In Washington, I asked Ray McGovern, formerly a senior CIA officer, what he made of Norman Mailer's remark that America had entered a pre-fascist state. "I hope he's right," he replied, "because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode. When you see who is controlling the means of production here, when you see who is controlling the newspapers and periodicals, and the TV stations, from which most Americans take their news, and when you see how the so-called war on terror is being conducted, you begin to understand where we are headed. It's quite something that the nuclear threat today should be seen first and foremost as coming from the United States of America and Great Britain."
What impeccable timing, KSM!
Friday, 16 March 2007 3:46 P GMT-05
But if the administration hopes to regain lost political capital by shifting the conversation back to terrorism and KSM, the strategy may backfire. If anything, KSM's recent performance highlights the downside of the Bush administration's post-9/11 decision to declare "war" against Al Qaeda. It goes without saying that military action may at times be required to combat well-defended terrorist organizations based in foreign states. But as a policy matter, the "war on terror" framework has been a predictable disaster for the United States. It led to a counterproductive overreliance on military force, an under-appreciation of the role of politics and community identity in sustaining terrorist organizations and a dangerous, "anything goes" approach to intelligence gathering that encompassed secret detentions and torture. Most ironically, the "war on terror" framework has lent legitimacy to terrorist leaders such as KSM, enabling them to present themselves as warriors standing up against a powerful — and hypocritical — U.S. military machine.
9-11 -- The Truth Matters
Wednesday, 14 March 2007 9:20 P GMT-05
Video: War hero to Cheney: Where the hell were you in Vietnam?
Tuesday, 13 March 2007 9:42 P GMT-05
To Dick Cheney's recent comments at an AIPAC conference (a shameful affair) that calls for withdrawal from Iraq only embolden our enemies, war hero Max Cleland had this to say: Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War? If you had gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you woulda learned something about war. You can't keep troops on the ground forever. They gotta have a mission. They gotta have a purpose.
Padilla's ordeal
Monday, 12 March 2007 4:53 P GMT-05
I don't know whether Padilla is guilty. What I do know is that as a U.S. citizen he was entitled to be charged at the time of his arrest, see the evidence against him, have an attorney, and be tried expeditiously — not by the president and his advisers, but by a jury of his peers. We shouldn't allow government to disregard the Constitution in the name of national security. Padilla isn't some inconsequential loner. As an American, he is one of us.
Legal expert: President Bush may have ordered torture of terror suspects
Sunday, 11 March 2007 6:31 P GMT-05
War Veterans, Treatment and Care
Sunday, 11 March 2007 3:30 P GMT-05
Marine Pvt. Jonathan Schulze served in Iraq and earned two Purple Hearts, but was turned away for mental health treatment at the VA. Four days later he took his own life.
U.S. Slams Foreign Rights Abuses, Fails to Note Own Complicity
Thursday, 8 March 2007 7:35 P GMT-05
The State Department report continued: "AI reported that as the practice of enforced disappearance spread, people were arrested and held incommunicado in secret locations with their detention officially denied. They were at risk of torture and unlawful transfer to third countries. The [Amnesty] report noted that the ‘practice of offering rewards running to thousands of dollars for unidentified terror suspects facilitated illegal detention and enforced disappearance.’" But the State Department left out that the United States was behind those rewards and at least some of the detentions. The very next sentence in the cited Amnesty International report reads: "Many individuals were arrested by Pakistani [authorities] or captured by local people and handed over to US law enforcement or intelligence personnel in exchange for a reward."
N.Y. imam sentenced in terror sting
Thursday, 8 March 2007 5:26 P GMT-05
The former imam of an Albany mosque was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for his role in a money laundering scheme involving a fictional terror plot set up as an
FBI sting.
Neocon Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq
Thursday, 8 March 2007 5:24 P GMT-05
One way to understand the effect of 9/11, in most general terms, is to see that it allowed the agenda developed in the 1990s by neoconservatives—-often called simply “neocons”---to be implemented. There is agreement on this point across the political spectrum. From the right, for example, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke say that 9/11 allowed the “preexisting ideological agenda” of the neoconservatives to be “taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.”1 Stephen Sniegoski, writing from the left, says that “it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy of the United States of America.”2
I am not a state secret
Sunday, 4 March 2007 7:11 P GMT-05
The U.S. government does not deny that I was wrongfully kidnapped. Instead, it has argued in court that my case must be dismissed because any litigation of my claims will expose state secrets and jeopardize American security, even though President Bush has told the world about the CIA's detention program, and even though my allegations have been corroborated by eyewitnesses and other evidence. To my amazement and dismay, last May, a federal district court judge agreed with the government and threw out my case. And then Friday, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. It seems that the only place in the world where my case cannot be discussed is in a U.S. courtroom.
Terror Suspect's Brig Life Detailed
Friday, 2 March 2007 3:46 P GMT-05
The exterior window in Jose Padilla's 80-square-foot cell in a Navy brig was painted over. At times, he had to sleep on a steel bunk with no mattress. He went months without a clock and was sometimes seen weeping in his cell.
But officials at the brig in Charleston, S.C., testified Tuesday that the alleged al-Qaida operative was not physically abused during his 3 years in military custody, nor did he display serious symptoms of mental problems.
The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans
Friday, 2 March 2007 3:35 P GMT-05
Let me emphasize something important here, especially for libertarians, who have long committed their lives to the achievement of a free society: There is no way — none — to reconcile the assumption of this power with a free society. In fact, it is the most powerful government power of all — the ultimate power that can ever be wielded by a tyrannical government. No infringement on economic liberty — hyperinflation, confiscatory taxation, oppressive regulation, or the like — can compare in significance with the omnipotent power of a government official to arbitrarily pick up anyone he wants for any reason he wants and incarcerate him, torture him, and execute him.
Group Demands Information on ‘Disappeared’ Detainees
Friday, 2 March 2007 3:08 P GMT-05
Through interviews with former detainees and their family members, as well as information gleaned from news reports, Human Rights Watch recently compiled a list of sixteen people thought to be once detained by the CIA whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The group has identified another 22 people who it says were "possibly" held in CIA prisons and who are also missing.
The Padilla case proves the futility of mistreating prisoners
Wednesday, 28 February 2007 4:44 P GMT-05
That's why it's worth keeping an eye on the proceedings this week in Miami as federal Judge Marcia Cooke tries to determine whether the alleged "dirty bomber"—scratch that—alleged "apartment bomber"—um, scratch that—alleged terror conspirator Jose Padilla is mentally fit to stand trial. What the prosecution now claims almost defies credulity. They contend that Padilla is wholly unharmed—after spending 1,307 days in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell in a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he says he was, among other things, deprived of sleep, light, sight, sound, shackled in stress positions, injected with "truth serum," and isolated for extended stretches of time. It's better than that. According to the government, Padilla is faking his craziness.
THE REDIRECTION
Monday, 26 February 2007 2:20 P GMT-05
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
The Iraq Effect
Thursday, 22 February 2007 8:28 A GMT-05
"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration’s argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world. The president’s argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.
Audit: Anti-terror case data flawed
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 3:51 P GMT-05
Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.
U.S. court rules Guantanamo prisoners cannot challenge their detention
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 3:49 P GMT-05
A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the hundreds of foreign prisoners held at the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said civilian courts in the United States no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding the prisoners, as a law passed by Congress last year took away the rights of the prisoners to bring such cases and that hundreds of their lawsuits must be dismissed.
Ionesco as Political Consultant
Sunday, 18 February 2007 6:41 P GMT-05
On examination, most of the measures purportedly taken to stifle Terror don’t. Opening mail without a warrant? It’s pointless once the terrorists know you are doing it, but effective in intimidating honest citizens. The same is true of warrantless wiretaps and searches. Does the gutting of habeas corpus make us safer against terrorists? Or merely suppress dissent by citizens? The whole business looks remarkably like malign vaudeville, like mummery intended to accomplish two things. The first is to persuade the foolish that the nation is At War. Actually only the president is at war. The second, and I would like to be wrong about this, is to train the public to obedience. The formula is simple: Keep’em scared and you can do anything. It works. Americans are rapidly becoming accustomed to Soviet-style surveillance, to the state’s power to search and spy without restraint, to being barked at and ordered about by low-level federal employees. People deserve what they tolerate.
US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign
Saturday, 17 February 2007 7:11 P GMT-05
THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.
Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities. In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.
CIA agents to stand trial for Italy kidnapping
Friday, 16 February 2007 4:06 P GMT-05
A Milan judge on Friday ordered 26 Americans, most of them thought to be CIA agents, to stand trial with Italian spies for the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric, who says he was flown to Egypt and tortured there. Among those indicted are the former heads of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Rome and Milan, and the former head of Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, defense lawyers said. The trial, set to begin on June 8, will be the first criminal case over "renditions" -- one of the most controversial aspects of U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. Beyond embarrassing Washington, the case also threatens to pit the Italian government against the independent judiciary in a battle to protect state secrets.
The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians
Thursday, 15 February 2007 4:00 P GMT-05
Today, pro-war libertarians are faced with what is possibly the greatest moral and philosophical dilemma of their lives. No one can deny that we now live in a country in which the president, on his own initiative, has the omnipotent power to send the nation into war against any country on earth, especially given that the war on terror extends all over the globe. The president, the CIA, and the military have the power to take any suspected terrorist — foreigner or American — into custody and torture, abuse, and execute him without due process of law and trial by jury. The president and the NSA have the power to wiretap telephones and monitor emails without a judicially issued warrant. The president, the CIA, and the military have the power to send missiles into cars and drop bombs into buildings anywhere in the world, including right here in the United States, in their attempt to win the war on terror. Indeed, the president wields the power to ignore any constitutional or legislative restraints on his power as a “wartime” commander in chief.
Another rebuke
Thursday, 15 February 2007 6:14 A GMT-05
The Omar case teaches a different lesson. It teaches that the rule of law -- even in times of war -- strengthens national security without handicapping the military. It teaches James Madison's understanding in Federalist 48: "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."
Why Is Britain Protecting 'Jihadists'?
Thursday, 15 February 2007 5:20 A GMT-05
In the majority of cases the government is turning a blind eye to the real extremists while flaunting the ridiculous and telling us we all need to give up some of our liberties in order that they may keep us safe.
Squandering billions in Iraq while U.S. suffers
Monday, 12 February 2007 5:52 P GMT-05
Our minds boggled last week at U.S. government estimates that President George W. Bush’s so-called “war on terror” (including Afghanistan and Iraq) will cost at least $690 billion US by next year. That’s more than the total cost of World War I, Korea, or Vietnam, and second only to World War II’s $2 trillion. This means that by 2008, Bush’s wars in the Muslim world will have cost each American man, woman and child $2,300.
The US Invasion of Afghanistan was Announced Months Before the 9/11 Attacks
Sunday, 11 February 2007 5:58 A GMT-05
"To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11."
Tony Blair. July 17, 2002
Armed US police could be on London streets
Tuesday, 6 February 2007 5:09 P GMT-05
Armed foreign police could patrol the streets of London during the 2012 Olympics under an unprecedented scenario outlined by one of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers.
Terra Propaganda in London
Monday, 5 February 2007 6:56 P GMT-05
If there is such a plot and the UK authorities really were so concerned, why the hell would they supply this level of detail and possibly risk exposing a mole? Either the British authorities are in need of counter-terrorism schooling or this piece, once again, is total propaganda. I choose the latter for obvious reasons.
From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
Monday, 5 February 2007 6:36 P GMT-05
The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.
Twenty Things We Now Know Five Years After 9/11
Sunday, 4 February 2007 4:46 A GMT-05
Whatever you may think of 9/11, and the extent of involvement of Bush&Co., it's crystal-clear that the events of that tragic day were and continue to be used as an excuse for a wide variety of immoral and illegal actions by the CheneyBush Administration. The radical agenda that was barely on the public's horizon five years ago has since become all too evident, both domestically and in terms of foreign/military policy, which is why so many traditional conservatives are abandoning the extremism of the Republican Party.
Reid accused of using raids to push through longer detention limits
Friday, 2 February 2007 6:41 P GMT-05
Tony Blair suffered his first Commons defeat as Prime Minister 15 months ago when a move to bring in a 90-day limit was thrown out by MPs and the Government was forced to settle for 28 days. Although the Home Secretary said yesterday he wanted to achieve consensus over a new limit, he faced immediate protests from MPs of all parties and from civil liberties groups.
24-style torture
Tuesday, 30 January 2007 5:18 P GMT-05
In most cases, the process of 'breaking' a defenceless prisoner is an expression of power and domination. As critics of the French army in Algeria once recognised, torture degrades both the torturer and the victim, and short-term counter-terrorist benefits are negated by political defeat.
Fake Terror: Jose Padilla, not so dirty after all - Updated
Sunday, 28 January 2007 8:03 P GMT-05
The question is: a conspiracy to do what? Who is the conspiracy theorist here? The government that jails people for the crime of intending to do something there's no evidence they intended to do? Or those who point out that maybe there's another reason for the arrest, solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, and abuse of Jose Padilla as an 'enemy combatant' who happens to not have engaged in any combat?
Mother and Sister of Entrapment Victim Released; Father Still Detained Without Charge or Hearing
Saturday, 27 January 2007 10:17 P GMT-05
Their son and brother, entrapment victim Shahawar Matin Siraj, now also known as a "convicted terrorist", was sentenced to 30 years in prison on January 8th, following his arrest in August of 2004. In an astonishing coincidence, the other three members of his family were arrested the morning after the sentence was handed down.
The Forgotten American Dead: Rural America Pays the President's Price in Iraq
Saturday, 27 January 2007 3:45 P GMT-05
What does this mean? Just over 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq. If the U.S. population is 300 million, then that's just 0.001% of it. Add into this the fact that the American dead come disproportionately from the most forgotten, least attended to parts of our country, from places that often have lost their job bases; consider that many of them were under or unemployed as well as undereducated, that they generally come from struggling, low-income, low-skills areas. Given that we have an all-volunteer military (so that not even the threat of a draft touches other young Americans), you could certainly say that the President's war in Iraq -- and its harm -- has been disproportionately felt. If you live in a rural area, you are simply far more likely to know a casualty of the war than in most major metropolitan areas of the country.
Canada to apologize to Arar, pay compensation
Saturday, 27 January 2007 4:17 A GMT-05
Arar, who says he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails, had initially sued Ottawa for C$400 million, a figure he later cut to C$37 million. Separately CTV said Ottawa would also pay Arar's C$2 million legal bills.
Our view on security and civil liberties: No court order needed
Friday, 26 January 2007 4:58 P GMT-05
National Security Letters have their origin in the 1970s as exceptions to laws that bar companies from divulging their customers' data. After 9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act, their use greatly expanded. These letters — which government agencies can use to demand or request information about people's phone, credit and banking records — have a number of troubling features. Chief among them are that they can be issued without judicial review and that their recipients are subject to a gag order.
Tarpley - Peace Movement Must Embrace 9/11 Truth
Friday, 26 January 2007 2:36 P GMT-05
The only way to attrit and erode Bush’s hard-core base of support is to bring home the leading facts of 9/11 truth: the 9/11 attacks did not emerge from the world of Bin Laden, Atta, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the laptop, and the cave in Pushtunistan; they were a deliberate war provocation and coup d’etat launched by the invisible government or rogue network which infests the highest levels of the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, DIA, and other military and security agencies, all for the purpose of starting the War of Civilizations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria and Iran. These are revelations of the greatest explosive power, capable of tearing apart Bush’s political base and opening the way for impeachment and removal from office. They are also capable of defeating the Hillary Clinton-Lieberman-Rahm Emmanuel-Lantos-Stenny Hoyer warmonger wing of the Democratic Party, removing the sabotage of impeachment from that quarter.
The "Chilling Plot" To Scare New York Senseless
Thursday, 25 January 2007 6:46 P GMT-05
Elsewhere in the world, real news agencies reported that the so-called plot was "more aspirational than operational" and that the group was "years away from pulling it off".
Paramilitary Assault Teams Terrorizing America
Thursday, 25 January 2007 5:23 P GMT-05
The ultimate goal of the paramilitary assault teams, many of whose numbers across the country will be boosted when troops arrive back from Iraq, is mass gun confiscation on the scale that we saw during Hurricane Katrina, where everyone from 80-year-old grandmothers to rich mansion owners in the dry areas had their weapons seized. Soldiers in Iraq have been trained to carry out door to door raids and have been utilized for this function thousands of times. Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the U.S. where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens, confiscating their weapons, and taking them to internment camps. Actors scream out that they have constitutional rights as they are handcuffed and hauled off to the detainment facility.
Huge majority say civil liberty curbs a 'price worth paying' to fight terror
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 8:47 P GMT-05
An overwhelming majority of people in Britain are willing to surrender civil liberties to help tackle the threat of terrorism, the nation's leading social research institute will disclose today. The survey found seven in every 10 people think compulsory identity cards for all adults would be "a price worth paying" to reduce the threat of terrorism. Eight in 10 say the authorities should be able to tap the phones of people suspected of involvement in terrorism, open their mail and impose electronic tagging or home curfews.
Travel to U.S. off 17 pct since 9/11
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 12:28 A GMT-05
Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has tightened security measures and toughened its visa and entry requirements. As a result, the country was ranked as the world's most unfriendly to visitors in a survey conducted last year of travelers from 16 nations. "Our economic security is suffering from a drastic decline in overseas travelers and we are missing an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen America's image around the globe," said Stevan Porter, president of Intercontinental Hotels Group and chairman of the association's Discover America Partnership. "We are in the midst of a travel crisis."
Elite Troops Under Investigation: German Soldiers Admit They Guarded US Prison in Afghanistan
Monday, 22 January 2007 11:51 P GMT-05
The investigators are actually following up the accusations made by a Turkish citizen from the northern German city of Bremen, Murat Kurnaz, who claims to have been mistreated by two German KSK soldiers when he was a prisoner in Kandahar in 2002. But the statements taken from members of the special forces before Christmas are now raising more questions than just the possible behavior of individual soldiers: They prove just how early German troops knew about the inhumane methods used by the Americans when dealing with suspected terrorists. And what is worse is they show that German soldiers even helped their American colleagues. After all, Kandahar was a base camp from where suspects were flown to CIA secret prisons and to Guantánamo.
Terror watch on Mecca pilgrims
Monday, 22 January 2007 11:41 P GMT-05
THE intelligence agencies are monitoring every Muslim who travels from Britain to Mecca on pilgrimage in a wider effort to piece together intelligence on suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist activity.
Carolyn Baker interviewed by Jason Miller
Saturday, 20 January 2007 7:07 P GMT-05
One point I made in the book is that 9/11 is not necessarily the most significant event of the twenty-first century because I believe that the 2000 presidential election was. I believe that it was unambiguously a coup d’etat, and that that coup was completed with the orchestration by the U.S. government of the 9/11 attacks. Thus, the two events are inextricably connected.
Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney
Saturday, 20 January 2007 6:56 P GMT-05
I fell into the world of Guantánamo in October 2005. The Chicago Council of Lawyers had organized a luncheon discussion on the legal issues surrounding the infamous detention facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. I received an e-mail thanking me for my attendance (I should have gone but didn’t) and asking for volunteers to represent the nearly 200 known unrepresented prisoners at the base. I had assumed that I was well-informed about our criminal president and his assault on the rule of law; it never occurred to me that four years after being captured (and more than one year after the Supreme Court affirmed their right to hearing and counsel) individuals were still being held without legal representation. I replied to the e-mail, offering my services.
Pentagon, Banks ‘Collaborating’ in Records-Sharing Program
Friday, 19 January 2007 6:06 P GMT-05
Especially after passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 – which loosened what privacy watchdogs say were already weak financial privacy laws – banks likely cannot be held liable for disclosing records to Defense Department or intelligence officials, even when those officials do not have a warrant.
U.S. 'knew damn well' Arar would be tortured: senator
Friday, 19 January 2007 5:53 P GMT-05
Leahy noted that U.S. officials claimed to have had assurances that people sent to Syria would not be tortured. "Assurances," he snorted, "from a country that we also say now that we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything."
MSNBC: New Pentagon detainee manual could lead to executions based on 'hearsay evidence'
Friday, 19 January 2007 3:20 A GMT-05
As required by law, the manual prohibits statements obtained by torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" as prohibited by the Constitution. However, the law does allow statements obtained through coercive interrogation techniques if obtained before Dec. 30, 2005, and deemed reliable by a judge.
Pentagon Drafts Rules for Detainee Trials
Friday, 19 January 2007 2:23 A GMT-05
The Pentagon has drafted a manual for upcoming detainee trials that would allow suspected terrorists to be imprisoned or put to death using hearsay evidence and coerced testimony.
Sam Harris: Believing in Almost Anything
Thursday, 18 January 2007 5:15 P GMT-05
Could the answer be in some significant yet remarkable way that Harris is “politically correct” and “ready-for-prime-time” simply because his "anti-religious" (especially anti-Muslim) views sufficiently comport with those of others supporting the "war on terror," including U.S. interventionism in the Mideast? We already know that the war is supported by an alliance of Wilsonian liberals, neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, Randians, and other militarists of all stripes. Why not someone who considers himself to be an atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age "scientist" of the paranormal?
Another Pentagon smear
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 4:27 P GMT-05
Congress's new Democratic majorities should repeal the law passed last year that denies detainees their habeas corpus right to challenge their continued detention. That, like the right to counsel, is another mainstay of the American legal system that must not be a victim of the war on terror.
Terror suspect was terrorized in a Navy brig
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 4:07 P GMT-05
``It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation.'' On Friday, the federal judge postponed Padilla's trial from Jan. 22 to April 16 to allow the prosecution time to arrange its own examination of Padilla's mental state.
Reject torture - and redeem America's soul
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 3:59 P GMT-05
What could push the debate about torture into the public square is the 2008 presidential campaign. Imagine the transformation that would occur if White House hopefuls went on record stating their strong objection to American torture:
Brazil and Bush’s War on Terror
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 10:12 A GMT-05
The ministers of state in Brazil have succeeded in creating a society organized around a continuous response to the threat of terrorism. Random bombings occur regularly. The protagonist Sam and his mother must go through a security check in order to enter a restaurant. And then during their meal a large explosion blows out the back of the dining room; they continue eating while bodies are dragged away.
What's wrong with this picture?
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 6:27 A GMT-05
Again, to the uninformed, websites reside somewhere in the clouds in "internetland" and thus quite elusive, and the corporate media always attempt to reinforce this illusion; have you ever noticed they hardly ever provide their readers with the URL (which is the address) of the website?
U.S. Smart Bombs Pave Way For Somali Dictatorship
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 4:11 P GMT-05
The Islamist coalition government had brought stability to Somalia for the first time in fifteen years. Peace and prosperity abounded and women were able to walk the streets without fear for the first time. Schools, clinics and hospitals began to re-open. This being wholly unacceptable to imperial neo-fascist international crime syndicate, air strikes were immediately ordered and the path was blown clear for Ethiopian troops and a menagerie of brutal thugs to re-occupy the country and declare martial law.
CHENEY: WAR CRITICS DON'T HAVE "STOMACH" FOR THE FIGHT
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 2:06 A GMT-05
Cheney also brushed off a post-election poll showing that only 17 percent of the public supported sending more troops to Iraq. "And if we have a president who looks at the polls and sees the polls going south and concludes, 'Oh, my goodness, we have to quit,' all it will do is validate the al Qaeda view of the world. It's exactly the wrong thing to do."
Only Impeachment Can Stop Him
Monday, 15 January 2007 9:55 P GMT-05
Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s “surge” speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.
How many lies and misrepresentations can one presidential speech hold?
Monday, 15 January 2007 8:50 P GMT-05
A critique of Bush's address to the nation
'Enemy Combatant' Languishes in a South Carolina Brig
Monday, 15 January 2007 8:47 P GMT-05
Absolute Power
Monday, 15 January 2007 8:19 P GMT-05
But it has finally become clear that the goal of these foolish efforts isn't really to win the war against terrorism; indeed, nothing about Padilla, Guantanamo, or signing statements moves the country an inch closer to eradicating terror. The object is a larger one, and the original overarching goal of this administration: expanding executive power, for its own sake.
U.S. can't tell a combatant from a cook
Monday, 15 January 2007 7:37 P GMT-05
Sometime before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, a man named Abdul Aliza was taken from his home and his family in Afghanistan and was forced at gunpoint to work for the Taliban as a cook's assistant.
Interrogated years later by U.S. officers at the military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, Aliza insisted that he had never joined with the fighting against America or its allies.
Why the US Is Not Leaving Iraq: The Booming Business of War Profiteers
Monday, 15 January 2007 6:48 P GMT-05
The Pentagon contractors are both as a major driving force to the war on Iraq and a major obstacle to the withdrawal of US led forces. The rise of the fortunes of the major Pentagon contractors can be measured, in part, by the growth of the Pentagon budget since President George W. Bush arrived in the White House: it has grown by more than 50 percent, from nearly $300 billion in 2001 to almost $455 billion in 2007. (These figures do not include the Homeland Security budget, which is $33 billion for the 2007 fiscal year alone, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast approaching $400 billion.) Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by The Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998–2003 period, one percent of the biggest contractors won 80 percent of all defense contracting dollars. The top ten got 38 percent of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each.
U.S. Moves To Bring Accused 9/11 Plotters To Trial
Monday, 15 January 2007 6:15 P GMT-05
The Bush administration has set up a secret war room where it is assembling evidence to prosecute high-ranking Qaeda suspects, including the accused mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, government officials said this week. The effort to sift the classified files of the Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies amounts to the first concrete steps that the government has taken to press ahead with war crimes trials of high-level terror suspects under a plan announced by President George W. Bush in a speech last September.
Instead of “al-Qaeda,” U.S. Kills Nomads in Somalia
Monday, 15 January 2007 3:57 A GMT-05
Bush and crew believe the non-declaration of war against Iraq—that is to say, a “war” not declared by Congress, as required by Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution—gives them the right to attack anybody, anywhere, without regard to Article 51 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, stating that parties “shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
This is a US Torture Camp
Saturday, 13 January 2007 7:12 P GMT-05
Tony Blair calls it an "anomaly", but the evidence is overwhelming. Camp Delta, which still houses 470 men never convicted of any crime, is a torture camp. That should be the starting point of any debate about what is acceptable in the west's fight with Islamist extremists. More than 750 men have passed through the camp, with nearly half being released. Many prisoners, past and present, have given consistent and repeated testimony of serious abuses and ill treatment. There is also significant evidence from US officials and government documents of widespread abuse at the camp.
They Never Learn
Friday, 12 January 2007 12:27 A GMT-05
The absurdity and criminality of our policy in the Horn of Africa is underscored by the ascension of Hussein Mohamed Aideed, the son of the hated warlord – and America's nemesis – Mohamed Farah Aideed, the villain of the "Black Hawk Down" narrative. When daddy died, sonny boy inherited the old warlord's mantle, which was suddenly transmuted into the white robes of a heroic pro-American ally. The only difference between father and son being that Aideed the Younger emigrated to America, grew up in southern California, and joined the Marines before he returned to become Interior Minister in the "transitional government" now being installed into semi-permanence by the U.S. and Ethiopia. He's our warlord, a reality that recalls Roosevelt's infamous remark about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.
Innocents at Gitmo
Wednesday, 10 January 2007 5:34 P GMT-05
And there is this revealing information: "This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time when the U.S. offered large bounties for capture of suspected terrorists." The captives in these mass roundups were hardly screened carefully for their terrorist connections by the bounty hunters -- nor were they carefully screened, according to international law criteria, by our armed forces.
The United States Of Hysteria
Tuesday, 9 January 2007 6:37 P GMT-05
Were yesterday's events merely a dry run for the horror set to be unleashed by means of a false flag bio-attack on a number of major American cities? Or did they merely represent another sad indictment of how America has gone from being land of the free, home of the brave to land of the coward, home of the slave?
Neocons Attack “al-Qaeda” in Somalia
Tuesday, 9 January 2007 5:46 P GMT-05
Thus the attack against “al-Qaeda” may be considered yet another in a series of attacks against “Islamofascists” in Africa, as effete and bilious chicken hawks, hiding out in their comfy academic and think-tank lairs, are keen to chase Muslims hither and thither—or have National Guard kids from Nebraska chase them—as the neocon “clash of civilizations” plan dictates. Oh, coincidentally, the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” that is to say after a suitable number of Muslims are killed and a requisite dictatorship takes hold, as the rule of Mohammed Siad Barre didn’t exactly work out as planned back in the 90s.
Five years of Camp X-Ray: Why are two British residents still in Guantanamo Bay?
Monday, 8 January 2007 10:48 P GMT-05
Bisher al-Rawi, who is locked in solitary confinement in a 6ft by 8ft cell, is gradually "losing his mind" and is in danger of irreparable damage to his mental state after five years of incarceration and torture. On the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay this week, lawyers acting for two UK residents are to warn the Foreign Secretary that the psychological deterioration of Mr al-Rawi is so serious that he may be unrecognisable as the "same person" unless he is swiftly released. His friend Jamil el Banna, who was seized with him five years ago by the CIA, is diabetic and, because he does not receive an appropriate diet, is beginning to lose his sight.
Ex-Guantanamo inmate to join protest outside prison camp
Monday, 8 January 2007 7:40 P GMT-05
A former Guantanamo inmate and relatives of other detainees plan to demonstrate next week outside the US "war on terror" prison in Cuba to call on Washington to shut down the facility. Asif Iqbal, who for "years" was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay and finally released without being charged, will be the first ex-prisoner to protest at the site, organizers of the demonstration told AFP.
'Here we are prisoners'
Monday, 8 January 2007 6:51 P GMT-05
"Those who control Nuevo Laredo control the U.S. highways and the flow of narcotics into the United States," said Sheriff Rick Flores, whose Webb County territory runs along the Texas-Mexico border. "This city is an open gateway for narcotics and terrorists," Flores said. "If the price is right, anyone - and I mean anyone - can move weapons of mass destruction, people and drugs into the United States." Not one local Mexican or U.S. newspaper reported the April street violence. Reporters don't go into Nuevo Laredo's streets often, and when they do, they don't report on the cartels. Not one Nuevo Laredo municipal police officer ever appeared at the scene, either. It was as if the bloodbath never happened.
US Activists Arrive in Cuba to Protest Guantanamo Prison
Sunday, 7 January 2007 7:05 P GMT-05
Prominent US anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan and four other American human rights activists have arrived in Havana to take part in a demonstration demanding that Washington close down its "war on terror" prison in Guantanamo Bay.
For the Sake of My Son, Close Guantanamo
Sunday, 7 January 2007 4:46 P GMT-05
If we do not trust the rule of law, if we do not uphold the process for insuring that all individuals accused of crime have access to the means of defending themselves, we have no claim to the moral high ground. Due Process of Law is the lynchpin of our way of life. If we do not trust that process, if we must bypass it in time of peril, then who is the enemy that will destroy our freedom? In the words of that precocious possum, Pogo, “We have seen the enemy and they are us”.
Confronting the Empire
Saturday, 6 January 2007 5:22 P GMT-05
I am usually opposed to civil disobedience, and have in the past inveighed – I believe that's the proper word – against it. Yet we no longer have much choice. The U.S. cannot pursue the course it's on much longer without some pretty awful consequences, the least of which would be a complete meltdown in Iraq and the regionalization of the war. The domestic consequences of this war – and of the so-called war on terrorism – are bearing down with such weight on the already fragile structure of our constitutional form of government, that we are in danger of being crushed, along with the hopeful vision of the Founders. We must act, just as Cindy Sheehan and her brave cohorts did recently when they interrupted the Democratic self-love-fest and refocused attention on the most important issue of them all: the war. And, no, hearings conducted by John Murtha don't fit the bill: if they won't cut off the funding for the war, then it's time they were cut off from their pleasant lives and illusions of impregnable insularity. Radical measures are called for. The time for talk is over: you can't reason with these people, and I've given up trying. The time for action is now. Not inchoate rage, or violence, but focused anger, aimed with laser-like intensity at the root and source of all our problems – the seat of the Empire.
Iraq Vets Left in Physical and Mental Agony
Saturday, 6 January 2007 5:05 P GMT-05
According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration. One is a Jul. 20, 2006, document titled "Compensation and Pension Benefit Activity Among Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism," which shows that 152,669 veterans filed disability claims after fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled.
The Best Friend of Instability and Islamism: George W. Bush
Saturday, 6 January 2007 1:12 P GMT-05
According to the President, a unified democratic Iraq would be a model for the Middle East, thereby causing democratic reforms in other Arab countries that would result in more stability and less terrorism. Even if Iraq miraculously ends up as a democracy, it hardly would be a model. Other Arabic societies would probably conclude that they don’t want to go through that much pain to have a more open political system. More likely, Arab peoples would make the negative association of democracy with the military occupation of an “infidel” superpower, thereby reducing the chances that democracy would spread in the Middle East. More likely still, Iraq will not be a unified democracy and thus won’t provide a model, except for chaos and mayhem. Most Arabs quite perceptively believe that “democracy” is a smoke screen for the Bush administration’s hypocrisy and ulterior motives in the region.
New Guantanamo charges seen by February
Saturday, 6 January 2007 12:00 P GMT-05
Hundreds of foreign captives have been held as suspected terrorists without trial and mostly without charges since the prison at a U.S. Naval base on Cuba opened nearly five years ago in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Air Force Col. Moe Davis, the chief prosecutor, said in a telephone interview that pretrial hearings could resume in March, but he added: "I don't see us getting to trial on the merits until some time this summer."
700 Pakistanis missing since start of war on terror
Monday, 1 January 2007 7:36 P GMT-05
These detainees include poets, writers, political activists and even common citizens. Dr Safdar Sarki, a Pakistani-American, who is also the secretary-general of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), has been missing since February 2006. Family members of Gohram Saleh from Makran, who was allegedly picked up by security forces in August 2006, have threatened to commit suicide if he is not released immediately.
For Guantanamo Review Boards, Limits Abound
Monday, 1 January 2007 7:24 P GMT-05
As the hearing concluded, the detainee, who cannot be identified publicly under military rules, had a question. He is a citizen of Pakistan, he noted. He was arrested on a business trip to Thailand. On what authority or charges was he even being held? “That question,” a Marine colonel presiding over the panel answered, “is outside the limits of what this board is permitted to consider.”
Localities Operate Intelligence Centers To Pool Terror Data
Monday, 1 January 2007 7:13 P GMT-05
The fusion centers range from small conference facilities to high-tech nerve centers with expensive communications networks. Some do investigations, while others focus on information-sharing -- passing tips to the FBI and scanning federal intelligence for developments of interest to local departments. Some have explored the use of controversial data-mining software in keeping with their respective state laws.
An All-Consuming 'War on Terror'
Monday, 1 January 2007 7:01 P GMT-05
The dimensions of the war on terror are still expanding rapidly in the face of a small - if not entirely absent - domestic terrorist threat. But politicians, forced into playing Chicken Little to avoid seeming to suffer from a "pre-9/11 mentality," can offer no break on spending or war-on-terror rhetoric. Neither have universities and the press. While universities rush to the counter-terror trough, it's as good as it gets for the press. "Hurricane Osama," the real storm of the century, is always just about to hit - and never goes away. Every false alarm of another 9/11 attack on the way sends the news media into paroxysms of sensationally foreboding, emergency-mode coverage, helping enliven the credibility of hundreds of TV episodes, films and potboiler novels with the same plot: maniacal, brilliant Middle Eastern terrorists poised to strike but for the heroics of a few bold souls operating within a generally incompetent government. Americans have learned that the Iraq war was a disastrous mistake. But they have yet to be able even to imagine the truth about the war on terror more generally. As long as politicians and pundits justify alternatives to the present course in Iraq by invoking the need to fight the war on terror more effectively, the United States will remain, as Osama bin Laden observed in his November 2004 videotape, trapped in a maelstrom of waste, worry, and witch hunt that "bleeds America to the point of bankruptcy."
Man speaks out after Sept. 11 acquittal
Sunday, 24 December 2006 6:05 P GMT-05
The 21-year-old community college student, one of hundreds of Muslim men picked up in the frenzied dragnet following the attacks, was whisked to New York to testify as a material witness before a grand jury. That set off a five-year legal ordeal that ended last month with Awadallah's acquittal on perjury charges. He was never accused of involvement in terrorism but was charged with lying about how well he knew one of the hijackers.
U.S.: Top bin Laden associate killed
Sunday, 24 December 2006 3:23 A GMT-05
A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said.
Newt's free-speech ideas fail the laugh test
Sunday, 24 December 2006 2:55 A GMT-05
Logic aside, he has offered at least one example of how he would apply his new set of speech standards. He believes that the six Muslim scholars who were removed from a plane in Minneapolis last month for such suspicious behavior as praying in the airport "should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists." That ridiculous assertion could only have thrilled the leadership of Al Qaeda. Nothing they can ever put on a Web site or videotape will be nearly as effective in encouraging young Muslims to hate America and reject freedom as Mr. Gingrich's cloddish demagogy.
Innocents Abroad: US Cracks Down on Guantanamo Detainees
Wednesday, 20 December 2006 12:04 P GMT-05
Whatever the government's motives for this ongoing horror, Americans need to wake up and recognize that Guantanamo and the so-called "War on Terror" have made America--and every one of us Americans--guilty of the most obscene of war crimes. There will inevitably come a day of reckoning--a day when we will all be called to account for our collective crime. Let us at least be able to say then that we spoke out against what is being done in our name.
Cops Caught Stealing Protestors' Cameras
Tuesday, 19 December 2006 7:16 P GMT-05
Flux was not arrested, nor did he receive a receipt for seized property. Without any warning, he was jumped by two police officers, one of whom is an NYPD captain, and knocked down onto the asphalt of 39th Street. A police officer then snatched the camera out of Flux's hands. As Flux attempted to protect himself and his equipment from being trampled and beaten, the cop with the camera conferred with another officer and scurried back into the building to hide the camera.
Tortured Canadian Still on U.S. 'Watch List'
Monday, 18 December 2006 5:41 P GMT-05
The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned last week after a two-year judicial inquiry found his officers gave U.S. agents false information to cast suspicion on Arar. The Canadian Parliament has apologized to Arar, now 36, and the Canadian government is preparing compensation for the engineer. But the United States has never acknowledged any mistake in the matter, and Wilkins's disclosure Friday indicates Arar might again be detained by the United States if he were to enter the country.
No release for Guantanamo detainees
Friday, 15 December 2006 7:01 P GMT-05
Of the 435 detainees currently being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offences. A further 14 detainees – the so-called high value detainees such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks – are also expected to face trial now that the US Congress has passed the Military Commission Act, which will finally enable America to commence trials of Guantanamo detainees next year. But of the remainder an estimated 200 detainees face being held indefinitely at Guantanamo because they are deemed a threat to international security even though there is insufficient evidence to bring them before a military commission.
Pinochet is gone, but his methods are still with us
Thursday, 14 December 2006 7:17 P GMT-05
Innocent men such as Mahar Arar, from Canada, and Khaled el-Masri, from Germany, were lucky to be released from this archipelago of secret prisons, but have had no apology or compensation, nor seen any hint of charges being brought against those responsible for their kidnapping and torture. But, like Pinochet's victims, they will not give up the fight for justice. Few tears were shed at news of Pinochet's death, which came, aptly enough, on International Human Rights Day. But the near unanimous condemnation of his US-sponsored crimes loses its moral weight if not accompanied by an equally vociferous denunciation of the similar abuses being perpetrated today.
Alleged Liquid Bomb Plot Credibility Crumbles
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 6:52 P GMT-05
The alleged ringleader of a much vaunted plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives has been cleared of terrorism charges and of being a member of any terrorist group, rendering August's terror scare another hyped creation of government scare mongering.
WHY DID THEY TORTURE JOSE PADILLA?
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 5:00 P GMT-05
For whatever reason the U.S. government did this to one of its own citizens, and whether or not he is guilty of anything, what was done to Padilla should give us all pause. We are now learning that post-9/11 fear resulted in a number of horrendously wrong-headed actions such as the invasion of Iraq that led to that nation's civil breakdown. The Padilla case is about the psychological breakdown of a single man, but it should send a shudder down the spine of every freedom-loving American.
At Guantanamo, America's own show trials
Monday, 11 December 2006 5:50 P GMT-05
The rules state that the detainees will have the right to cross-examine witnesses, but that can be hard when the government doesn't bother to call any witnesses. Not a single government witness was brought forth in any of the hearings the researchers reviewed. Instead, in over half the cases, the U.S. government relied solely on classified evidence that was presumed to be valid. It was evidence that the detainee never got to see or rebut. And even when the government relied on unclassified evidence, the detainees were largely barred from seeing it. In 96 percent of cases, the detainee, who had no lawyer, had to present a defense without hearing any facts upon which his enemy combatant designation was based, beyond a conclusory summary. These men must have thought they were in Stalin's Russia or Mao's re-education camps rather than an American judicial proceeding. Defending yourself without being allowed to see the evidence against you is a neat trick.
Impact of police being sent to Iraq felt on street
Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:47 P GMT-05
The deployment of thousands of police officers to Iraq, Afghanistan and other military reserve posts is costing local law enforcement agencies up to $1.2 billion per year, according to a new analysis of Justice Department data.
Ranger alleges war crimes
Saturday, 9 December 2006 6:27 P GMT-05
Asked if he was going public with the allegations to curry favor in advance of his criminal trial, Sommer said: "This isn't going save my ass. If I committed a bank robbery, I deserve to go jail. That's acceptable. "Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. This is not a crafty method of gaining public support," he said. "I have seen people issue orders to cover up the deaths of as many as 16 innocent people," Sommer said. He spoke of one incident in which he alleges a commanding general in Afghanistan ordered the cover-up of such an execution.
Whose War on Whose Terror? Reclaiming Our Rights
Saturday, 9 December 2006 5:25 P GMT-05
What we are therefore seeing today, then, is not the enactment of law to protect us. On the contrary, at face value, the state is manipulating and abusing the process of law in order to systematically erode, deface and ultimately eliminate the rule of law entirely. And in its place, what is being established is the ability of the state to consolidate policies of social control, to control and intervene in the life of the public at will, with impunity, and without accountability. For now, we can call this process, a process of totalization.
Feds: Man planned to blow up Ill. mall
Friday, 8 December 2006 10:59 P GMT-05
A Muslim convert who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians was charged Friday in a plot to set off hand grenades at a shopping mall at the height of the Christmas rush, authorities said. Investigators said Derrick Shareef, 22, an American citizen from Rockford, was acting alone and never actually obtained any grenades. He was arrested Wednesday when he met with an undercover agent in a parking lot to trade a set of stereo speakers for four hand grenades and a gun, authorities said.
Legislators May Reconsider Suspending Habeas Corpus For Detainees
Friday, 8 December 2006 4:29 P GMT-05
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which Bush signed into law in October, prevents detainees who aren't U.S. citizens from challenging their detentions in civilian courts. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who voted for the legislation despite his opposition to stripping such rights from detainees, on Tuesday reintroduced legislation to restore those rights. A similar measure sponsored by Specter failed by three votes in October.
Fight Terrorism: Legalize Heroin
Friday, 8 December 2006 4:04 P GMT-05
If opium production were legalized, pharmaceutical companies rather than al Qaeda terrorists would be running the opium show in the Helmand Province, creating booming local economies and raising the living standards of Afghan peasants. Then Bayer or Dowpharma or Sandoz rather than Osama bin Laden would be profiting from the $11 billion Americans spend on heroin each year. Note that none of those companies currently sells heroin, and terrorists don’t manufacture headache tablets, despite the enormous profit potential in both businesses.
Guantanamo detainees going to new prison
Friday, 8 December 2006 3:04 P GMT-05
More than 40 detainees were brought to the $37 million prison perched on a plateau overlooking the Caribbean Sea from another maximum-security facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand. The 178-cell prison, constructed beside another maximum-security prison built in 2004, will allow the base to phase out an older facility, Durand said.
DAVID HICKS : UNCONVICTED, TORTURED, BROKEN
Wednesday, 6 December 2006 7:58 P GMT-05
This weekend, Australian citizen David Hicks will have spent five years in the torture hellhole that is Guantanamo Bay. Five years, and he still hasn't faced a court to answer the charges levelled against him. Nor is he likely to in the next twelve months.
Robert Scheer: Becoming What We Despise
Wednesday, 6 December 2006 5:57 P GMT-05
The excuse for this heinous treatment of a U.S. citizen is the same as that given for an entire orgy of despicable treatment of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a gulag archipelago of secret military facilities around the world: Our enemies, all linked through sophistry to the 9/11 terror attacks, are so vile and dangerous that the limitations on government power enshrined in our guiding documents and political culture no longer apply. Once the Twin Towers were knocked down, supposedly, we could no longer afford to be “nice guys”—as if the rule of law is an indulgence of only the most secure nations. By that standard, any tyrant can justify the cruelest of actions by citing enemies, real or imagined, be it King George III blockading Boston Harbor to teach the rebellious colonists a lesson or Saddam Hussein killing Kurdish villagers after an assassination attempt on his life. The very uniqueness of our national experiment was the checks and balances put upon the government to prevent such convenient rationalizations for abuse of the individual. The Founding Fathers won a war, but their true contribution to human history was to tackle head-on the reality that humans and their institutions can so easily become that which they despise.
Is the FBI doing its best to combat terrorism?
Wednesday, 6 December 2006 2:22 A GMT-05
Though he's one of only six FBI agents with advanced Arabic skills, Youssef believes that, since 9/11, the FBI has blocked him from playing a significant role in the war on terror. He claims discrimination, and sued the FBI in 2003. "To be totally set aside, blackballed since 9/11, makes absolutely no sense," he says.
Judge: No 'Guilt by Association' for Aiding 'Terrorists'
Tuesday, 5 December 2006 6:25 P GMT-05
The ruling does not radically change the administration’s policy. But it does curb the president’s ability to designate supposed terrorists, and protects the plaintiffs from being labeled terrorists for providing basic humanitarian aid. It upholds, however, the US Treasury Department’s general authority to administer a list of global terrorists and block humanitarian services to them.
Newsweek: Gov't. motion to silence Padilla defense
Monday, 4 December 2006 10:59 P GMT-05
But, as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report, the government wants to silence Padilla's attorneys, not allowing them to bring up Padilla's treatment by the government, and not allowing public testimony of any kind, in the name of "national security" (of course). This blatant attempt to turn the U.S. courts into a Star Chamber must be opposed by the new Democratic majority.
On Tape: An 'Enemy' Interrogation
Monday, 4 December 2006 10:33 P GMT-05
Lawyers for "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla claim he is so disoriented from three years of isolation and aggressive interrogations that he is now mentally ill. In new court filings, Padilla's lawyers also assert for the first time that Padilla's interrogations were taped, thereby providing a potentially extensive video record of how the government treated a man once considered a dangerous Qaeda operative.
Boeing Accused of Running Torture Travel Agency
Sunday, 3 December 2006 1:51 P GMT-05
Spain's largest newspaper, El Pais, last year reported that Jeppesen was named the CIA's flight arranger in investigative documents compiled by Spanish police. More recently, The New Yorker magazine noted the connection, reporting "it is not widely known that the [CIA] has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these [rendition] trips."
U.S. rates travelers for terror risk
Friday, 1 December 2006 4:06 P GMT-05
Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals. The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
Terror Watch: Showdown Over Padilla
Friday, 1 December 2006 1:28 A GMT-05
But defense lawyers are convinced that given the seriousness and the specificity of Padilla’s claims of mistreatment—many of which involve the use of aggressive interrogation techniques virtually identical to those the Pentagon has confirmed using at Guantánamo—the judge in his case, Marcia Cooke, may have little choice but to order a pretrial hearing on his allegations. Padilla’s lawyers say they will soon file “additional material” to back up their torture claims. And if Cook grants them a hearing, it could open the door for the first time to questioning in a U.S. courtroom about controversial interrogation methods that were used against one of the most sensitive detainees in U.S. government custody. Padilla's fate is all the more important because his incarceration by the U.S. military was directly ordered from the White House by President Bush.
U.S. Settles Suit Filed by Ore. Lawyer
Thursday, 30 November 2006 11:52 P GMT-05
The payment is a clear embarrassment for the FBI, which arrested Mayfield as a material witness in May 2004. FBI examiners had erroneously linked him to a partial fingerprint on a bag of detonators found after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March, killing 191 people. The bureau compounded its error by stridently resisting the conclusions of the Spanish National Police, which notified the FBI three weeks before Mayfield was arrested that the fingerprint did not belong to him.
Gingrich: Free Speech Should Be Curtailed To Fight Terrorism
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 10:50 P GMT-05
Speaking at an award dinner billed as a tribute to crusaders for the First Amendment, Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008, painted an ominous picture of the dangers facing America.
"This is a serious, long-term war," the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. "Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people."
Rendition Survivor Appeals Case Against CIA Officials
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 6:00 P GMT-05
El-Masri, in the United States for the first time, said all he wants is an acknowledgement that the US is responsible for his kidnapping, an explanation and an apology. The lawsuit also seeks $75,000 in damages, though El-Masri’s attorneys emphasized that the case is not about a monetary award. The US government has refused to confirm or deny the allegations, saying that by doing so, clandestine CIA activities would be divulged. Last May, US District Judge T.S. Ellis granted the government’s request to use the "state secrets" privilege to dismiss the lawsuit. Ellis concurred with the defendants’ argument that proceeding with the lawsuit "would reveal considerable detail about the CIA’s highly classified overseas programs and operations.”
Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism
Monday, 27 November 2006 4:27 P GMT-05
It’s very important to know this, because the culture tries very hard to persuade us that we all have a common interest. If they use the language “national interest” -- there’s no national interest. There’s their interest and our interest. National security -- now, whose security? National defense, whose defense? All these words and phrases are used to try to encircle us all into a nice big bond, so that we will assume that the people who are the leaders of our country have our interests at heart. Very important to understand: no, they do not have our interests at heart.
We Reported 13 Months Ago Torture Came From Top
Sunday, 26 November 2006 5:26 P GMT-05
The fact that this information is only coming out now proves that the corporate controlled mainstream media was too cowardly to report, or under specific orders not to report the claims a year ago, when Rumsfeld was still in office. Once again this proves that the alternative media is light years ahead of the mainstream and highlights how controlled and restricted the mainstream is now.
Rumsfeld Okayed Abuses At Abu Ghraib Says Former U.S. General
Sunday, 26 November 2006 3:43 P GMT-05
Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation. Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.
Owning The Torture Society
Saturday, 25 November 2006 7:03 P GMT-05
Newly leaked audiotapes of military tribunals held at Guantánamo Bay concentration camp shared the eerie quality of the Soviet show trials of the 1930s. Once again the men are accused of membership in a shadowy terrorist conspiracy. The evidence against them consists of hearsay--the testimony of other misérables giving them up in order to save themselves. They have been beaten, abused and probably tortured.
Missing presumed tortured
Saturday, 25 November 2006 9:57 A GMT-05
Let's examine the arithmetic of this systematic disappearance. In the first years after the attacks of 11 September, thousands of Taliban or suspected terrorist suspects were captured. Just in Afghanistan, the US admitted processing more than 6,000 prisoners. Pakistan has said it handed over around 500 captives to the US; Iran said it sent 1,000 across the border to Afghanistan. Of all these, some were released and just over 700 ended up in Guantanamo, Cuba. But the simple act of subtraction shows that thousands are missing. More than five years after 9/11, where are they all? We know that many were rendered to foreign jails, both by the CIA and directly by the US military. But how many precisely? The answer is still classified. No audit of the fate of all these souls has ever been published.
U.S.: Reinstate Key Charge Against Padilla, Government Wants Toughest Terrorism Charge Against Al Qaeda Operative Reinstated
Thursday, 23 November 2006 7:56 P GMT-05
Padilla, 36, a U.S. citizen held in military custody for three-and-half years without charge as an "enemy combatant,” was originally accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city.
Review of Elsevier's "The Hidden History of 9-11-2001"
Thursday, 23 November 2006 4:47 P GMT-05
Those who insist that we all embrace the conclusion that 9-11 was an Inside Job are doing so on the grounds that it suits their politics. For me, it is not essential to agree on whether Bush and Cheney were involved in the conspiracy. Regardless of the conclusion we draw on that issue, surely progressives can agree on the need to condemn the manner in which the U.S. government and its allies have exploited 9-11 to launch their open-ended war on terror and to organize against it. Diana Ralph’s superb chapter, “Islamophobia and the ‘War on Terror’: The Continuing Pretext for U.S. Imperial Conquest,” makes this point eloquently by tying the strategies pursued by Bush and Cheney since 9-11 to longstanding neocon and Likud designs.
Mariner: Four Good Reasons Why Guantanamo Should Be Closed
Wednesday, 22 November 2006 10:26 P GMT-05
The good news is that the detainee population at Guantanamo has been steadily shrinking since late 2004. There are currently 430 detainees at Guantanamo, and over 100 more are slated for release. The bad news, however, is that Guantanamo shows little sign of readying for closure. Right now, in fact, it's expanding. The U.S. military announced last week that it plans to spend $125 million to build a new compound at Guantanamo, including a new high-security detention facility.
The end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 12:52 P GMT-05
On a November 9, 2006, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army, (FARC-EP) sent an “Open Letter to the People of the United States”. It was specifically addressed to several Hollywood producers and actors (Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver Stone) as well as three leftist academics (James Petras, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis) and a progressive politician (Jessie Jackson). The purpose of the open letter was to solicit our support in facilitating an agreement between the US and Colombian governments and the FARC-EP on exchanging 600 imprisoned guerrillas (including 2 on trial in the US) for 60 rebel-held prisoners including 3 US counter-insurgency experts.
Pentagon wants to build mini-city for terror trials
Friday, 17 November 2006 5:57 P GMT-05
The Pentagon wants to build a compound costing up to $125 million for upcoming war crimes trials at Guantánamo. The proposal has yet to be presented to Congress, which must OK funding.
Cracked it!
Friday, 17 November 2006 5:54 P GMT-05
"The Home Office has adopted a very high encryption technology called 3DES - that is, to a military-level data-encryption standard times three. So they are using strong cryptography to prevent conversations between the passport and the reader being eavesdropped, but they are then breaking one of the fundamental principles of encryption by using non-secret information actually published in the passport to create a 'secret key'. That is the equivalent of installing a solid steel front door to your house and then putting the key under the mat."
Al-Qaida 'planted information to encourage US invasion'
Friday, 17 November 2006 5:43 P GMT-05
Nasiri said Libi "needed the conflict in Iraq because months before I heard him telling us when a question was asked in the mosque after the prayer in the evening, where is the best country to fight the jihad?" Libi said Iraq was chosen because it was the "weakest" Muslim country.
CIA Acknowledges 2 Interrogation Memos
Thursday, 16 November 2006 4:28 A GMT-05
After years of denials, the CIA has formally acknowledged the existence of two classified documents governing aggressive interrogation and detention policies for terrorism suspects, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. But CIA lawyers say the documents -- memos from President Bush and the Justice Department -- are still so sensitive that no portion can be released to the public.
Why the FBI Is Coming After Me
Thursday, 16 November 2006 3:58 A GMT-05
On Oct. 6, the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Cuban plane (you have to give them credit for timing), I received a new subpoena. This one, issued by a federal grand jury in Newark, was requested by Gonzales. They may be ambivalent about the war on terrorism over at the Justice Department, but you can't question their dedication to their war against the Fourth Estate. For my part, it raised a peculiar pickle: contemplating how far one should go to protect the civil liberties of an accused terrorist.
President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says
Thursday, 16 November 2006 3:35 A GMT-05
The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.
An Executive Order is a presidential edict -- sometimes public, sometimes secretive -- instituting special laws or instructions that override or complement existing legislation. The White House has officially neither admitted nor denied that the president has issued an Executive Order pertaining to interrogation techniques.
Conspiracy: The cases of Asher Karni and Ryan G. Anderson
Tuesday, 14 November 2006 8:00 P GMT-05
Once again we have to consider that a man accused of selling nuclear weapon detonators to an unstable Islamic Republic during a time when the United States considers itself at war with world terrorism, a good part of which is centered in Pakistan itself, was about to be released on bail because a few rabbi’s came forward on his behalf, one even stating that he knew Karni to be a “very religious and honest man.” If selling nuclear weapon detonators to Muslim’s bent on the destruction of world Jewry, the Israeli state and the United States of America is an indication of a Jew’s religious fervor, then we need to carefully consider what that might imply.
The CIA, the MCA, and Detainee Abuse
Sunday, 12 November 2006 7:58 P GMT-05
The Hamdan decision reportedly scared CIA and high-level Administration officials, who feared possible criminal prosecution. It was one of the main factors leading to the Administration's recent decision to announce the suspension of the CIA detention program and the transfer of 14 CIA detainees to Guantanamo. And it was the existence of the CIA program, not the need to prosecute terrorists (who, after all, have been successfully prosecuted in the federal courts for decades) that lies behind the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA).
Sweden Violated Torture Ban in CIA Rendition
Sunday, 12 November 2006 7:54 P GMT-05
In a decision made public today, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that diplomatic assurances against torture did not provide an effective safeguard against ill-treatment in the case of an asylum seeker transferred from Sweden to Egypt by CIA operatives in December 2001. The committee decided that Sweden’s involvement in the US transfer of Mohammed al-Zari to Egypt breached the absolute ban on torture, despite assurances of humane treatment provided by Egyptian authorities prior to the rendition.
Outrage at London sting by US spies
Sunday, 12 November 2006 7:14 P GMT-05
In a recent operation, agents from America's Department of Homeland Security set up a suspect by posing as dealers wanting to illegally sell night-vision goggles for export to Iran. The spies arranged a series of clandestine meetings in London hotels, which they secretly filmed as evidence. It is thought to be the first time American agents have been caught using such sting tactics in Britain.
U.S.: 'American Taliban' soldier deserves records 'privacy'
Friday, 10 November 2006 6:29 P GMT-05
At a Manhattan hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ross Eric Morrison urged the judge to reject arguments by the Associated Press that Lindh's reasoning for a shorter sentence should be public because there is high public interest in his case and the government's handling of it.
CIA Torture Down the Memory Hole
Sunday, 5 November 2006 5:59 P GMT-05
“Government lawyers also argue in court papers that detainees such as Khan previously held in CIA sites have no automatic right to speak to lawyers because the new Military Commissions Act, signed by President Bush last month, stripped them of access to U.S. courts. That law established separate military trials for terrorism suspects,” the Post continues. It will, soon enough, strip the rest of us from court access, that is after the unitary decider or one of his minions designates those of us in opposition to the neocons and their emerging police state as “unlawful combatants,” thus posing the question: how long until the spanking new Ministry of Homeland Security camps, constructed by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root, are transformed into “black sites,” containing “black rooms” complete with the latest in torture techniques, including, for the male members of the resistance, lacerating the penis with scalpels and razorblades?
Bush Administration Trying To Bar Detainees From Speaking To Lawyers About Interrogation Practices
Sunday, 5 November 2006 5:27 P GMT-05
The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.
Bush Admin Posted Nuclear Bomb Building Guide On The Internet...
Friday, 3 November 2006 9:37 P GMT-05
In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied the nuclear documents on the Web site and judged their public release as potentially dangerous. “It’s a cookbook,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.” The New York Times had examined dozens of the documents and asked a half dozen nuclear experts to evaluate some of them. Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.” Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret.
Terror, Torture Fine for Some
Friday, 3 November 2006 3:48 A GMT-05
Even though the Justice Department filed papers in mid-October 2006 at the El Paso federal court, acknowledging that Posada is "an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites," they refuse to charge him. That casts doubt on Bush's supposed tough standards on terrorism. Double standards? In fact, Bush has shown he has no standards.
Former 'enemy combatant' claims torture
Thursday, 2 November 2006 6:57 P GMT-05
Padilla's lawyers say that he was kept from sleeping, kept in shackles for hours and housed in a small cell at a Navy brig in South Carolina. They also allege that interrogators threatened to cut him and pour alcohol on the cuts and gave him drugs, possibly LSD or PCP. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke told federal prosecutors to respond to the torture claims by Nov. 13.
Planes known to carry CIA terror suspects landed in Tel Aviv
Thursday, 2 November 2006 6:40 P GMT-05
The Israel Airports Authority has confirmed that planes known to have been used by the CIA to transport suspects to detention and interrogation facilities stopped at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.
Critical congresswoman lands on no-fly list
Tuesday, 31 October 2006 6:57 P GMT-05
Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Jennifer Peppin said that for security reasons she couldn't confirm that the name was on the list. But she said that name mix-ups do occur. "Generally what happens is people have a name that is very similar to someone who is on the no-fly list. It's the airlines' responsibility to do further checking," Peppin said.
Over 300 may never leave Guantanamo
Monday, 30 October 2006 5:48 P GMT-05
But more than 300 others, including 14 transferred in September to Guantanamo from secret overseas prisons, could remain in US military detention until they die. “Yes, they could be held for the duration of their lives,” said Cully Stimson, the Defense Department’s assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, on one of his regular trips to the base last week.
Now Europe Targets Bloggers As Terrorists
Friday, 27 October 2006 5:49 A GMT-05
Home Secretary John Reid met with ministers from the six largest European Union countries and, according to a BBC report, "agreed to work together to make the internet a "more hostile" place for terrorists." How will they accomplish this? By initiating a crackdown on people who use the Internet to "spread propaganda." The very website you are now reading would be considered propaganda by these neo-fascists- no matter the fact that the criminal syndicates Bush and Blair front for are the most deceitful progenitors of lurid propaganda since the third reich.
The Empire's Foot Soldiers Ape Its Master
Thursday, 26 October 2006 6:33 P GMT-05
Is it any surprise that we see reports of Iraq war vets returning home and butchering their wives and families before turning the gun on themselves on a monthly basis? The extreme anguish of being forced to enslave and butcher populations of people who would rather die than live under imperial occupation, while getting shot at and seeing their friends go home in flag-draped coffins hidden from public view - combine to inflict the most imposing dose of post-traumatic stress imaginable.
Why Bush's NSA Wire tapping is defeated by VoIP Networks
Monday, 23 October 2006 7:25 P GMT-05
Demonstrates how phone tapping just like so many other extensive measures the Bush Administration implements, ostensibly in the "war on terror", seem to be far better suited to controlling and manipulating law-abiding citizenry than to aprehending potential terrorists - especially if those terrorists are at all technically and intellectually savvy.
Group Sues FBI to Disclose Personal-Data 'Warehouse'
Monday, 23 October 2006 7:09 P GMT-05
The privacy-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice on Tuesday, demanding the government disclose information on the handling of personal data in the FBI’s "Investigative Data Warehouse." The lawsuit seeks details on the nature of the information collected and what privacy protections the agency has applied.
Desperate GOP Stoops to Lowest Fear Politics Imaginable
Monday, 23 October 2006 3:56 P GMT-05
So, by extending the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- rather than looking for an early exit -- Bush has played into al-Qaeda's hands. Indeed, looking back over Bush's almost six years in office, his actions -- or some might say his blunders -- have repeatedly benefited bin Laden's strategies.
Coming Soon: The Bajaur Accord
Monday, 23 October 2006 3:30 P GMT-05
Pakistan is negotiating the surrender of Bajaur agency to the Taliban and al-Qaeda
Military Commissions Act Does Affect US Citizens
Monday, 23 October 2006 1:42 P GMT-05
A coordinated effort to downplay the implications of the fact that the bill affects American citizens, in the face of extensive coverage on the part of Keith Olbermann, is underway in an attempt to offset the possible repeal of this draconian legislation.
'Dynasty of Death'
Monday, 23 October 2006 12:35 P GMT-05
They are not alone and solely responsible for creating the present day military industrial complex, however since 1915 the Bush family has been directly involved in World War One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, numerous CIA secret wars, the Gulf War, and now a “Never Ending War”. The past four generations of this one family have had a hand in promoting and profiting from most of major wars that America has waged since the beginning of the industrialized age.
After Pat’s Birthday
Friday, 20 October 2006 8:44 P GMT-05
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Jose Padilla and the Military Commissions Act
Friday, 20 October 2006 1:02 A GMT-05
How does an American who is labeled an enemy combatant ultimately get tried? Answer: he doesn’t. Under the Military Commissions Act, trial by military tribunal is limited to foreigners. So, even though Americans still have the use of habeas corpus (so far) to test whether their detention is lawful, if the Supreme Court ultimately upholds the “unlawful enemy combatant” designation for people accused of terrorism, Americans will be returned to indefinite military custody as “unlawful enemy combatants” if the government has provided some evidence of terrorism at the habeas corpus hearing.
Judge tells jurors to trust FBI without evidence
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 6:20 P GMT-05
In instructing the jurors to take on faith one side's position over another's, Judge McAvoy, whether intentionally or not, used his office to urge a particular result in a trial over which he presided. Even now, this is not what it means to be a "judge."
Sibel Edmonds' Corrupt Boss is STILL the key to National Security
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 5:52 P GMT-05
Abandon Hope, All Who Enter Here
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 5:47 P GMT-05
I read through the pages in utter disbelief. My first reaction was, ‘This is terrible. The English used here is terrible. Nobody could ever believe that I would write such a document.’ Then I thought, ‘This could actually be good—anybody who knows my style of writing would know that I am not the author, I don’t write like this.’ It sounded uninformed and adventurous, more like the ramblings of a hysterical sixteen-year-old college dropout than what one would expect from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I recalled that during one of the interrogations Marti had said to me, ‘Stop, already! Stop using big words.’ Besides the pathetic English, I read the ‘facts’ with complete amazement. It was full of exaggerations, lies, and presumptions. There were names in there that I hadn’t even heard of, which they knew only too well.
Chertoff: “Radical Ideologies” Threaten Internet
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 5:12 P GMT-05
“Given the power granted to the office of the presidency and the unaccountability of the intelligence agencies, widespread illegal domestic operations are certain. We as a people should remember history and not repeat it,” writes Verne Lyon, a former CIA undercover operative.
Journalists from Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly met with Bush to create post-9/11 talking points
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 4:07 P GMT-05
What was more unusual, Mr. Woodward reveals, was the presence of journalists at the meeting. Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and a Newsweek columnist, and Robert D. Kaplan, now a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, attended the meeting and, according to Mr. Kaplan, signed confidentiality agreements not to discuss what happened. While members of policy research groups often dispense advice to administration officials, journalists do not typically attend secret meetings or help compile government reports. Indeed, many Washington journalists complain that the current administration keeps them at an unhealthy distance.
Unseen toll / The cost of the Iraq war is out of control
Monday, 16 October 2006 7:00 P GMT-05
According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress already has appropriated $437 billion for war, not including $70 billion approved by the Senate as part of next year's record-breaking Pentagon budget. That's half a trillion dollars -- about three-quarters of it for Iraq, 20 percent for Afghanistan and 5 percent for increased security against terrorism at other foreign bases.
Bush keeps revising war justification
Monday, 16 October 2006 7:11 A GMT-05
Bush's changing rhetoric reflects increasing administration efforts to tie the war, increasingly unpopular at home, with the global fight against terrorism, still the president's strongest suit politically.
The Assassins of Truth
Sunday, 15 October 2006 4:18 P GMT-05
I contend that the government routinely breaches the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that it was sworn to uphold; and that it circumvents domestic law through the frequent use of presidential signing statements that effectively render civil law null and void. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Acts that resulted in the suspension of habeas corpus, passed into law with the aide of fourteen Democrats, is beyond onerous—it is morally vacuous and criminal.
17 Falsely Accused Guantanamo Detainees Returned to Afghanistan
Saturday, 14 October 2006 3:54 P GMT-05
Sixteen Afghans and one Iranian released from years in captivity at Guantanamo Bay prison arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, an Afghan official said, maintaining that "most" of the detainees had been falsely accused.
A terrorist's immunity
Friday, 13 October 2006 6:35 P GMT-05
Former attorney general Janet Reno eventually decided to leave the decision on prosecution to the incoming Bush administration. And that's where the matter has languished ever since. Because the US investigation is being prolonged indefinitely, crucial documents are not declassified and not made available to the justice system in today's democratic Chile. This impasse is a thwarting of justice. Not only are family members of the murder victims deprived of a complete legal accounting for the crime; the people of Chile and America are denied the legally verified truth about a shameful chapter of history.
The Bush administration's torture of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 7:58 P GMT-05
The atrocity known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is a huge leap forward to elevating the Padilla treatment from the lawless shadows into full-fledged, officially sanctioned and legally authorized policy of the U.S. Government. The case of Jose Padilla is no longer a sick aberration, but is instead a symbol of the kind of Government we have chosen to have.
FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 5:54 P GMT-05
Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words -- including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test -- just 1 percent of the FBI's 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.
Habeas Corpus: The Lynchpin of Freedom
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 5:46 P GMT-05
Americans might feel comforted by the fact that the president and the Congress limited the removal of habeas corpus to foreign citizens and did not apply it to Americans. If so, they know little about the history of government oppression. Once people accede to the cancellation of judicial protections for “other people” — a grave wrong in and of itself — it is just a matter of time before the cancellation is extended to include them. After all, American officials would argue at the height of a new crisis, what is the difference between a foreign terrorist and an American terrorist? Shouldn’t they be treated the same? Aren’t they equally dangerous? Of course the suspension of habeas corpus should be extended to American terrorists, the argument would go. After all, aren’t American terrorists also traitors?
The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 5:03 P GMT-05
With torture now a key weapon in the war on terror, the time has come to interrogate the logic of the ticking time bomb with a six-point critique. For this scenario embodies our deepest fears and makes most of us quietly—unwittingly—complicit in the Bush Administration’s recourse to torture.
The Cost of Doing Your Duty
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 4:49 P GMT-05
In 2003, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned to represent Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen accused of being a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda — for the sole purpose of getting him to plead guilty before one of the military commissions that President Bush created for Guantánamo Bay. Instead of carrying out this morally repugnant task, Commander Swift concluded that the commissions were unconstitutional. He did his duty and defended his client. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in June that the tribunals violated American law as well as the Geneva Conventions. The Navy responded by killing his military career. About two weeks after the historic high court victory in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Commander Swift was told he was being denied a promotion. Under the Navy’s up-or-out system, that spelled the end of his 20-year career, and Commander Swift said last week that he will be retiring in March or April.
Ashcroft Responds To 9/11 Foreknowledge Charges
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 5:57 A GMT-05
If Ashcroft had been flying commercial before 9/11 as he claims then they FBI could have simply stated this - why would they lie and tell CBS News that Ashcroft was "acting under guidelines," that came strictly from his FBI security detail?
German tells of Kabul jail torture
Tuesday, 10 October 2006 8:35 P GMT-05
The case of Khaled el Masri has fuelled debate in Europe about secret CIA terrorism suspect flights, and led Spain to set up an inquiry into whether US secret services used an airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca as part of its operations.
Today's special: Post turtle and boiled Rice
Monday, 9 October 2006 5:26 P GMT-05
Well, we have Condoleezza Rice running all over the place like a one-armed paperhanger in a hurricane, trying to command the tide not to come in. She talks to the Iraqis, the Egyptians, the Saudis, and they all listen politely, and then it's business as usual. The casualties mount, the equipment is worn out, and the civil war that can't be happening is happening. We're spending two-billion dollars a month on this loser, and the "fund raiser-in-chief" still babbles about victory. Afghanistan is a lost cause, and we're rattling sabers at Iran. In sum, it US against THEM.
The Cost of War: Hidden from Purview
Sunday, 8 October 2006 6:55 P GMT-05
Emergency supplementals and bridge funds do not go through the normal process in either branch of the government. They are drawn up in the Defense Department outside the usual Programming, Planning, and Budgeting system, are not offset by any other budgetary reductions inside the uniformed services, and generally move quickly from the Pentagon to the White House with minimal scrutiny. As a result, as Comptroller General David Walker testified in July, “neither DOD nor Congress knows how much the war on terror is costing or how appropriated funds are being used.” The Defense Department has ignored two successive pieces of legislation seeking detailed reporting on how the emergency funds have actually been spent. In effect, there is only a minimal effort to scrutinize budget request in advance, or spending, after the fact, for a quarter of the Pentagon’s resources.
Guantanamo defense lawyer forced to retire by Navy
Sunday, 8 October 2006 5:43 P GMT-05
The Navy lawyer who took the Guantanamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court - and won - has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word that he had been denied a promotion to full-blown Navy commander this summer - "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Under the military's "up or out" promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing out a 20-year career of military service.
When Is a Terrorist "Mastermind" Not a Terrorist?
Saturday, 7 October 2006 4:21 P GMT-05
In a brief submitted to the judge Thursday evening, the administration of President George W. Bush said it opposed the release of Luis Posada Carriles and argued that granting him freedom on bail may have "serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States". But, while referring to Posada as "the admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks", the administration declined to officially declare him a terrorist under the USA Patriot Act which, unlike the immigration law, gives the government authority to detain him indefinitely. "If Luis Posada Carriles does not meet the definition of a terrorist, it is hard to think of who would," observed Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the independent National Security Archive (NSA).
Unlikely Terror Suspects on the TSA No-Fly List
Saturday, 7 October 2006 4:13 P GMT-05
The Transportation Security Administration's secret no-fly list includes some very unlikely terror suspects -- Bolivian president Evo Morales, 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers, and every single person named "Robert Johnson." Journalists Susan and Joseph Tentro recently obtained a copy of the 44,000-name no-fly list and collaborated with CBS's 60 Minutes to investigate the names on it. They found thousands of inaccuracies and ambiguities on the list, not to mention some shocking omissions.
The Fake 2004 Bin Laden Video Tape
Saturday, 7 October 2006 2:30 P GMT-05
Consider this: if this was the real Osama, didn't his appearance prove that Bush has wasted two hundred billion dollars and a thousand American lives (plus 100,000 Iraqi lives) without making us any safer from Osama? If the 2004 tape were genuine, wouldn't it prove that Bush is a total failure in his own "war on terror"?
Existence of "Al-Qaeda" Is Crap; Quite Literally
Saturday, 7 October 2006 2:17 P GMT-05
You have heard before that "Al-Qaeda" roughly translates into "the base," but were you aware that "Ana raicha Al Qaeda" is arabic colloquial for "I'm going to the toilet"? Would hardened terrorists hell bent on the destruction of the west name their organization after a euphemism for taking a shit?
Now That You Could be Labeled an Enemy Combatant...
Saturday, 7 October 2006 1:49 P GMT-05
The disgraceful Military Commissions Act and the building of domestic internment camps are yet more examples of blowback from the administration's so-called war on terror, and we ignore these increasing assaults on our civil liberties at our own peril.
After Torture, What's Next?
Saturday, 7 October 2006 1:28 P GMT-05
President Bush continually says that, "they" hate us because of our freedoms. That may explain why, in this legislation and in the Patriot Act, he is, piece by piece, trying to remove our freedoms. If this is his idea of protecting Americans, we really can't stand much more protection.
Through the door to tyranny
Friday, 6 October 2006 7:38 P GMT-05
Bush now claims continuing authority to kidnap, seize, arrest, imprison and torture anyone he wishes anywhere in the world. The MCA gives him the authority to torture anyone he desires under the statutory privilege to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. The MCA makes his action "authoritative," as final and binding on the courts. In addition, the MCA bars the application of foreign or international law "as a rule of decision" in court. As a result, many international human rights are dead for accused defendants. Perhaps the most invidious part of the MCA is broadened definition of "enemy combatant" beyond someone captured on the battlefield. Under the MCA, without limitation Bush can designate as "enemy combatants" U.S. citizens who "purposely and materially" support hostilities against the United States. For example, this can include anyone who actively opposes the president or the government, including attorneys for detainees, lawful resident aliens who oppose Bush administration policies, innocent contributors to Afghan or Iraqi charities that may have some connection, however slight, to al-Qaida or the Taliban, perrhaps even a writer of a letter to the editor critical of the Iraq war and occupation.
Politics 101: Why third parties don't work well in American politics
Friday, 6 October 2006 5:09 P GMT-05
Liquid Bombing Ruse Does Not Make the Papers
Thursday, 5 October 2006 6:29 P GMT-05
Yet again... a "terrorist plot" falls apart in the weeks that follow the SHOCK and AWE of media coverage. Footage of jammed and panicked airports, bins full of bottled water, hair gel and lipstick gets 24/7 coverage up front... then the mainstream media strangely disappears when it turns out the plot was a complete and total fraud.
Court temporarily OKs domestic spying
Thursday, 5 October 2006 2:45 P GMT-05
The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
A Constitutional Shredding: Rounding Up U.S. Citizens
Tuesday, 3 October 2006 7:09 P GMT-05
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
Is your daughter a future detainee?
Monday, 2 October 2006 5:33 P GMT-05
The Senate just passed by a vote of 65-34 a bill that, among other things, allows the president to imprison forever, without trial, your neighbor's son -- a lawful permanent resident in the United States -- for emailing his Muslim roommate who went home to visit his family. Your daughter who organizes a protest at the Pentagon that gets a little more attention than the president thinks it should could become a detainee, held indefinitely. The bill says generally what activities qualify one as an "unlawful enemy combatant" subject to detention, but if the government can postpone that review indefinitely, who's going to tell the president that detention is illegal?
Are You an 'Unlawful Combatant'?
Monday, 2 October 2006 4:47 P GMT-05
Congress has now granted the president the powers of a dictator. The rest of the story of our slide into absolutism is merely a matter of filling in the details.
We're There Now. The Nightmare Came True
Saturday, 30 September 2006 5:33 P GMT-05
So, let's say the nightmare came true, and out of fear, we all shut up--all us Democrats, all us dissenters, all us Bush-haters, all us upholders of the Constitution, all us liberals and secular humanists? What if all journalists and all bloggers and even Keith Olberman and the generals at the Pentagon, starting right now, gave Bush a free pass? Here is what would happen. His policies in Iraq would still fail. His attack on Iran would still be a disaster. His War on Terror would still be a bust. And everyone knows it.
Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children
Friday, 29 September 2006 2:53 P GMT-05
We have established that the bill allows the President to define American citizens as enemy combatants. Now let's take it one step further.
Before this article is dismissed as another extremist hyperbolic rant, please take a few minutes out of your day to check for yourself the claim that Bush now has not only the legal authority but the active blessings of his own advisors to torture American children.
Decimating the Constitution with Military Tribunals
Thursday, 28 September 2006 4:22 P GMT-05
The truth is that the “war on terrorism” rhetoric has been a sham from the beginning — a sham to enable federal officials to do what they’ve been trying to do for decades, especially in another sham war — the “war on drugs” — emasculate the Bill of Rights to enable federal officials to run roughshod over people — and not just foreigners. The military-tribunal legislation is just the culmination of decades of federal officials’ mocking and ridiculing the “constitutional technicalities” whose only real purpose, U.S. officials have long claimed, is to let “guilty” people go free.
House approves bill on terror detainees
Thursday, 28 September 2006 4:19 P GMT-05
The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling in June that Congress' blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration's old system, it nevertheless would eliminate rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.
Gitmo From the Inside
Thursday, 28 September 2006 3:04 A GMT-05
When Moazzam Begg was abducted from his home in the middle of the night on Jan. 31, 2002, he thought he was being kidnapped by thugs. Those thugs turned out to be the U.S. military and CIA. Begg was shuffled from Kandahar to Bagram to Guantanamo and held for three years before he was finally released in January 2005. As with the majority of the other detainees, Begg was never charged with any crime.
Regarding Evil and American Identity, Part 1
Thursday, 28 September 2006 1:00 A GMT-05
Just because al-Qaeda members commit evil deeds doesn't mean that Donald Rumsfeld does not. A man who murdered someone in a drive-by shooting is not excused because he is put into a jail cell next to a serial killer.
Are You an Enemy Combatant?
Thursday, 28 September 2006 12:38 A GMT-05
Of course, many would argue that the key word here is “foreigners” and this legislation poses no threat to Americans. However, considering previous comments of “key negotiator” Lindsey Graham, we can likely expect this legislation to be used against “fifth columnists,” as the good senator from South Carolina deems all who oppose the neocon doctrine of forever war.
Losing a War, Winning a Police State
Thursday, 28 September 2006 12:31 A GMT-05
Although the Iraq War has cost about 2,700 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury, the war has created great business opportunities for well-connected corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, which have registered substantial profits from the occupation and “rebuilding” of Iraq. Also, although U.S. intelligence agencies now agree that the terrorist threat has ballooned due to the Iraq War, the Bush administration has found the conflict useful in simultaneously expanding its powers, abrogating constitutional rights and justifying more government secrecy. Those trends seem likely to continue – and even accelerate – as the “war on terror” remains a powerful excuse for transforming the United States from a historically free and open society to a frightened nation where citizens eagerly trade their constitutional rights for government promises of more security.
Two terror cases expose Bush's double standard
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 6:59 P GMT-05
In fact, the Bush administration has contradictory standards — one for people who are thought to be enemies of this country, such as Arar, and another for Posada, an accused terrorist, who is the enemy of its enemies.
The innocent man at Guantanamo
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 6:46 P GMT-05
``THE INTERROGATOR shut her file and said, `Congratulations! Your interrogation is complete. You're innocent! You'll be leaving soon.' "`When did this happen?" I asked. Abdulnasir searched his memory. His foot moved back and forth the short length of the chain clipped to the floor. Then the young man spoke softly, ``The year after we got here -- 2003. In the spring, I think -- a long time ago." Abdulnasir is in Guantanamo today, more than three years later.
How much torture?
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 6:39 P GMT-05
If we have to become as evil as they are to defeat them, then what joy will there be in victory? If we become them, to defeat them, why do we not just already open up the gates and welcome them as victors now?
CIA Mole Killed in Basra
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 6:04 P GMT-05
Dead men don’t talk and Omar al-Farouk is dead, so he won’t be telling us about his exploits as a CIA recruit.
Do Unto Your Enemy...
Monday, 25 September 2006 4:21 P GMT-05
A year later on the streets of Baghdad, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes and air-conditioning. America’s moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives, encouraged cooperation with our allies and deterred Iraqis from joining the growing insurgency. But those days are over. America’s moral standing has eroded, thanks to its flawed rationale for war and scandals like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and Haditha. The last thing we can afford now is to leave Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions open to reinterpretation, as President Bush proposed to do and can still do under the compromise bill that emerged last week. Blurring the lines on the letter of Article 3 — it governs the treatment of prisoners of war, prohibiting “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment” — will only make our troops’ tough fight even tougher. It will undermine the power of all the Geneva Conventions, immediately endanger American troops captured by the enemy and create a powerful recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
Fate of some CIA detainees still unknown
Monday, 25 September 2006 3:26 P GMT-05
President Bush's announcement this month that the CIA has emptied out its secret prisons has raised new questions about what has happened to dozens of Al Qaeda suspects who were believed to have been in US custody. One of them is Aafia Siddiqui , an MIT-educated Pakistani scientist and Roxbury mother of three who disappeared with her children in 2003. A newly declassified government document says Siddiqui married a top Al Qaeda operative who is among the 14 suspects moved by President Bush from a secret prison to Guantánamo Bay for trials.
Killing the Fourth: Bush Blames Your Cellphone
Sunday, 24 September 2006 4:05 P GMT-05
Once upon a time, before everything changed, it was the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” a right that shall “not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” If we are to believe the Bushcons, all of this changed when mobile phones, email, packet switching, SMS for text messaging, and the internet collided with September 11, 2001, the inside job par excellence.
More War Veterans Suffering From Stress
Saturday, 23 September 2006 2:45 P GMT-05
Nearly 64,000 of the more than 184,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have sought VA health care were diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders as of the end of June, according to the latest report by the Veterans Health Administration. Of those, close to 30,000 had possible post-traumatic stress disorder, said the report.
Justice Dept. Amends Remark on Torture Case
Thursday, 21 September 2006 5:47 P GMT-05
Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission’s finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.” The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.
Judge, jury, and torturer
Wednesday, 20 September 2006 3:55 P GMT-05
In the novels and stories of Kafka, the guilt or innocence of the accused is not the issue. When hauled before the unknown accuser, without explanation of charges or evidence, Kafka's characters assume that they must have done something wrong. The surreal dislocation of the one imprisoned in the penal colony or the castle consists in solitude, vulnerability, ignorance. The anonymously oppressing power structure is Kafka's true subject, and it is characterized only by its radical unaccountability. ``Trust us. You're guilty. We're going to execute you, but we can't tell you why." The absolute power of the oppressor depends on the absolute ignorance of the oppressed.
See Dick and Jane go into Gulags: upcoming Patriot Act Bills
Tuesday, 19 September 2006 5:27 P GMT-05
Anyone wonder who would incarcerate citizens under Patriot Act legislation? I have read of bills coming before both the House and Senate which would allow the National Guard to serve as a domestic police force. Here they are.
Creeping fascism is a threat to national security
Tuesday, 19 September 2006 5:11 P GMT-05
The question isn't just Ben Franklin's safety versus liberty -- it comes down to whether we should prefer a small potential gain in security over the short term to possibly a large security threat in the future.
Bush Desperate To Legislate Mengele Style Torture
Tuesday, 19 September 2006 3:26 P GMT-05
The elite needs to maintain the facade that terrorist cells are everywhere and that only their smothering 'protection' will keep us safe. And yet time and time again the real terrorists are protected and given safe passage by the military-industrial complex handlers. Though the torture program is being sold to the American people as a necessity in the "war of civilizations," it is in actual fact a trial balloon for the incarceration of political dissidents during a time of manufactured national emergency such as a biological terror attack or race riots.
Interview with Dr. Steven Miles
Tuesday, 19 September 2006 4:43 A GMT-05
Dr. Steven Miles is the author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror, a scathing examination of the failings of members of the medical profession serving in the military with respect to treatment of prisoners held by American forces in the war on terror, demonstrating such abuses as medical personnel participating in coervice interrogations if not outright torture (including using prisoners' own medical records against them), preparing misleading, if not outright falsifying, medical records including death certificates, and failing to advocate for prisoners being placed in dangerous situations (e.g., such as under weapons fire, or in dangerously unsanitary conditions). Dr. Miles expanded on an article on this subject he published in the Lancet in 2004, relying on an examination of declassified, publicly available documents from our government and military.
The View From Guantánamo
Tuesday, 19 September 2006 4:37 A GMT-05
I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.
Pentagon Guantanamo ‘Fact’ Sheet Highlights High-Tops And Harry Potter, Distorts Real Issues
Sunday, 17 September 2006 5:11 P GMT-05
This week, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a document entitled “Ten Facts About Guantanamo.” The document contains relatively insignificant facts — all detainees receive a pair of “high-top sneakers” — and ignores the facility’s real problems.
Where's the Terror?
Saturday, 16 September 2006 4:47 P GMT-05
Post-9/11 prosecutions end with a whimper
9/11 an Inside Job
Saturday, 16 September 2006 3:58 P GMT-05
In the wake of revelations of murderous deception in the Iraq War carried out by the Bush Administration, more and more Americans are asking questions regarding the basis for the US “War on Terror”.
Guantanamo's Catch-22: defining the rules of the road - The Boston Globe
Friday, 15 September 2006 5:03 P GMT-05
In his defense, Corsetti's lawyer is reported to have said: ``The president of the United States doesn't know what the rules are. The secretary of defense doesn't know what the rules are. But the government expects this Pfc. [private first class] to know what the rules are?" Corsetti cannot escape culpability by this argument. But it does suggest that responsibility stretches higher up the chain of command. Meanwhile, we continue to pay the price because nobody knows what the rules are.
Fear Mongering on the Anniversary of 9/11
Friday, 15 September 2006 4:31 P GMT-05
President Bush and other Republican politicians like to have it both ways. They crow about their anti-terrorism efforts by bragging that the United States has not had another attack since 9/11, while keeping the fear of another attack alive to win elections. In short, the president tells us that we are “safer but not safe." Such fear mongering is exactly what the terrorists want. Terrorists can save resources by conducting major attacks only at rare intervals and relying on irrational fears of people and governments to do the rest.
DARK MILESTONE: More Americans Have Now Died In Iraq Than Died On 9/11
Friday, 15 September 2006 12:02 P GMT-05
Here are the numbers: 3,015 Americans have died in Iraq as of September 9. 2,666 of these were military deaths and 349 were civilians.
A Visit with a Man Wrongly Detained at Guantanamo
Friday, 15 September 2006 6:22 A GMT-05
Murat Kurnaz was detained in the United States detention camp at Guantánamo, Cuba, for almost five years and released three weeks ago. Cem Özdemir, a member of the European Parliament, visited Kurnaz at his home in Bremen and reports back about a German man of Turkish origin who appears to be anything but a fanatic.
Are there any real peace officers in America?
Wednesday, 13 September 2006 3:56 P GMT-05
When is America's true defenders of the constitution going to call not
just for articles of Impeachment but make arrests for the obvious acts
of treason? I'm not talking about 9-11-01. I'm talking about
everything that has been done in the name of those who died.
Lawyers and G.O.P. Chiefs Resist Tribunal Plan
Friday, 8 September 2006 6:15 P GMT-05
The Bush administration’s proposal to bring leading terrorism suspects before military tribunals met stiff resistance Thursday from key Republicans and top military lawyers who said some provisions would not withstand legal scrutiny or do enough to repair the nation’s tarnished reputation internationally.
NATO seeks more Afghanistan troops
Friday, 8 September 2006 6:00 P GMT-05
NATO members were to discuss on Friday how to raise an additional 2,000 troops to bolster its force in Afghanistan amid increased insurgent violence, a spokesman said in Warsaw, where alliance defense chiefs were meeting.
Bush To America: Our Justice System Sucks Balls
Thursday, 7 September 2006 4:11 P GMT-05
Yeah, laws suck, man. Especially when you wanna break them. And between the praise of torture (no matter what Bush calls it), the dismissing of the American justice system, and the vow to continue all of it, the Rude Pundit is left with this question: exactly what country are we fighting for? Because it's become appallingly clear that it sure as hell ain't the United States in any recognizable form anymore.
Dissecting the war on terror
Thursday, 7 September 2006 3:55 P GMT-05
The best way to get to the heart of the ‘war on terror’ is by exploring its historical foundation; the development of such political charades has a long and squalid past. If history has taught us anything, it’s that barefaced democracy, under capitalism, is an unstable and fleeting occurrence. One needs only to reflect upon the great democratic revolutions throughout history to make the desired point.
Red Cross plans to visit alleged top terror leaders at Guantanamo
Thursday, 7 September 2006 2:32 P GMT-05
The international Red Cross said Thursday that it planned visits "very soon" with some of the world's most notorious terror detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison, where President Bush said they had been transferred from secret CIA facilities.
Bush admits to CIA secret prisons
Wednesday, 6 September 2006 8:14 P GMT-05
President Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and said 14 key terrorist suspects have now been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The suspects, who include the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have now been moved out of CIA custody and will face trial.
Dear Rummy
Wednesday, 6 September 2006 6:10 P GMT-05
By refusing to withdraw from the lost wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, what you are doing is sacrificing soldier’s lives, and $6.5–7 billion a month, to save the skins of your political masters who lack the courage and patriotism to admit the failure of their foolish imperial dreams.
Don't believe Rumsfeld's fantasy
Wednesday, 6 September 2006 5:33 P GMT-05
The war on terror has, after all, been this gang's get-out-of-jail-free card for years. High gas prices, a hurricane fiasco, red ink, an overall patina of ineptness overtopped by arrogance, and it's all forgotten the moment they say 9/11. Small wonder they say it loudly now with midterm elections looming and polls suggesting more Americans are seeing through the president like Saran Wrap.
Afghanistan: High on Opium, Not Democracy
Wednesday, 6 September 2006 5:29 P GMT-05
Remember them, the guys who harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists, who gifted us with the 9/11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush promised to eliminate? Well, it turns out that while he was distracted with Iraq, the patrons of terrorism were very much in business back where the 9/11 attack was hatched, turning Afghanistan into a narco-state that provides a lucrative source of cash for the “evildoers” Bush forgot about.
CNN.com - U.S. deaths in Iraq,�war on terror surpass 9/11 toll - Sep 3, 2006
Monday, 4 September 2006 5:04 P GMT-05
As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed. The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.
Our Fascism, and Theirs
Monday, 4 September 2006 5:03 P GMT-05
Roosevelt was a lot smarter than the current crop of warmongers, however, in that he pursued his goal – involving the U.S. in a world war – by indirection and stealth. In 1939, the strategy of the War Party was to gradually but persistently push the U.S. into war via a series of provocations, both overt and covert: this crowd is opposed in principle to such subtlety.
Put My Son on Trial -- or Free Him
Monday, 4 September 2006 3:17 P GMT-05
My son is not a terrorist. He was, in fact, a great admirer of American political values and legal principles before he was kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo. Our family is nonetheless willing to undergo the ordeal of trial and judgment, if only the U.S. government would allow it to happen.
Special Ops and the "War" on Terror
Sunday, 3 September 2006 8:53 P GMT-05
Of all the things about the president’s war on terrorism that can be criticized, the biggest is the notion that it deserves to be called a "war."
Going to War with the Leaders you have
Sunday, 3 September 2006 3:18 P GMT-05
Tom Friedman summarized Rumsfeld’s strategy as the “Rumsfeld Doctrine” that is, deploying “just enough troops to lose.” And, as we have already shown, Rumsfeld has failed in every phase of the occupation without exception. It is pointless to dispute Rumsfeld’s allegations that his critics are “appeasers” or “fascist” sympathizers. It’s just a silly attempt to set up a straw man and then knock him down. Rumsfeld is a master at shifting attention from his own wretched performance and dumping the blame on someone else. In this case, he attacks not only those who have lost faith in the war but, also, takes a few swipes at his old nemesis “the media”.
The Forgotten Detainee
Friday, 1 September 2006 3:51 P GMT-05
Picked up by FBI agents from his home in Peoria, Illinois, al-Marri might be a criminal, but he hardly seems like a combatant. He carried no weapon, was thousands of miles away from any conceivable battlefield, and was charged with credit card fraud, making false statements, and similar offenses, until the government decided to drop his prosecution and transfer him into military custody.
The Man Who Has Been to America
Friday, 1 September 2006 1:50 P GMT-05
Why should Geneva Convention protections be applied to Guantanamo detainees? One innocent man's journey through the legal black hole of the War on Terror—four prisons, three countries, two years—may be the best argument yet.
War on Iraq: Blatantly Boasting War Profiteers
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 5:36 P GMT-05
Upbeat reports such as these have helped make Wall Street bullish on defense. The IPS/UFE study found that the top 34 military contractors had a 48 percent increase in their share prices between the end of 2000 and the end of 2005. By contrast, the S&P 500 dropped 5 percent during that period.
Karl Rove's Blood Libel
Friday, 25 August 2006 3:53 P GMT-05
What Rove is giving voice to here is nothing less than the new blood libel of our age: that those who oppose the Bush Administration's unconstitutional actions are opening the door to a new 9/11. The implication is clear: anyone who speaks up for the Constitution is working for the death of innocent Americans. They are, by definition, traitors. Thus they deserve what traitors get: death.
Padilla case said to lack evidence
Saturday, 12 August 2006 10:11 P GMT-05
A federal judge has expressed doubts about the strength of the government's terror conspiracy case against Jose Padilla and others, ordering prosecutors to provide more evidence of alleged violent activities overseas.
Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche
Saturday, 12 August 2006 8:09 P GMT-05
Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.
President Bush Is At The Helm Of An Administration That Won't Stop Lying
Tuesday, 8 August 2006 4:01 P GMT-05
Due process end-run
Wednesday, 2 August 2006 3:27 P GMT-05
It is dispiriting to see the administration so willing to make the nation's due-process traditions an early victim of friendly fire in the conflict with terrorism. Congress must not join the assault.
New maximum-security jail to open at Guantanamo Bay
Sunday, 30 July 2006 10:16 P GMT-05
Far from winding down, the controversial US detention centre is expanding
Sins of Statecraft: The War on Terror Exposed, Theories on Militarism, and Prospects for Transformation
Sunday, 30 July 2006 2:48 P GMT-05
This paper includes an examination of the US-USSR Cold War and the so-called “war on terror” as covers for expansion of imperialism, and 9-11 in the context of provoked and internally engineered first strikes throughout American history, devoting much of its contents to theories on militarism and post-World War II influence on policymaking - how and why those in power do what they do.
"November surprise": Terrorism the big winner
Sunday, 30 July 2006 2:28 P GMT-05
Americans, steeped in deep ignorance and prejudice about the Mideast, are now being misled by the administration and its media allies that Lebanon is a new front in the so-called war on terrorism. As I recently learned doing radio shows across the U.S., a great many Americans cannot distinguish between Hezbollah, al-Qaida, Taliban, the PLO, Hamas, etc. All are terrorists. Listeners even called in to ask if the fighting in Lebanon was the prelude to Armageddon.
Bush submits new terror detainee bill
Sunday, 30 July 2006 2:24 P GMT-05
U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.
The Prisoner - Moazzam Begg
Saturday, 29 July 2006 8:42 P GMT-05
In his first primetime interview on American television, a former detainee in U.S. prisons abroad tells NOW a disturbing story alleging kidnap, torture and murder.
Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Friday, 28 July 2006 9:56 P GMT-05
An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
Fox News Says Hezbollah 'Certain' To Nuke Major City
Thursday, 27 July 2006 9:39 P GMT-05
Following the ceaseless bombing of Lebanon, Fox News has gone thermonuclear in its mission to drive fear into the hearts of Americans by insisting that Hezbollah's use of a nuclear device in a major US or Israeli city is inevitable and that only increased surveillance of Americans can stop it.
This 'war on terror' disgraces America
Thursday, 27 July 2006 3:45 P GMT-05
The federal government has inflated the "No Fly List" to 200,000 names. But the list has nabbed more members of Congress than it has terrorists.
Bringing on "World War III"
Thursday, 20 July 2006 11:40 P GMT-05
Back in May, even President George W. Bush made mention of World War III. Bush told the CNBC cable television network that the action taken by the passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on Sep. 11, 2001 was the "first counter-attack to World War III."
FindLaw's Writ - Mariner: It All Depends on What You Mean by Battlefield . . .
Wednesday, 19 July 2006 3:25 P GMT-05
Roughly one in three of the Guantanamo detainees for whom information is available was arrested outside of Afghanistan, the border region of Pakistan, or any other zone of combat. Some were picked up in Pakistan's cities - Karachi, Lahore, etc. - while others were arrested in a wide range of far-flung locations: Bosnia, Egypt, Thailand, Zambia, Gambia, Mauritania, Indonesia and elsewhere.
Why your bank thinks you're a terrorist
Thursday, 13 July 2006 2:06 P GMT-05
A government program designed to track down terrorists and money launderers is frightening bank customers, frustrating financial institutions and inundating federal agencies with secret reports of dubious value.
Almost five years after 9/11, Homeland Security list of nat'l critical assets includes 'ice cream parlor,' Sears Auto Center
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 10:48 P GMT-05
Other potential terror targets on the list include an "Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified 'Beach at End of a Street.'"
Give. Me. A. Break. (and then - DO YOUR JOB!)
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 8:14 P GMT-05
No, all of those pillars of The American Way of Life that Americans had taken for granted during all of the decades of the Cold War and the first decade since - all of them had to be sacrificed for the Global War on Terror.
Afghanistan Is No One's War
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 6:37 P GMT-05
To this day, the public has not been given one genuine piece of evidence that ties bin Laden to 9/11. I’m not saying he’s innocent, only that there was no proof at the time Bush used him as an excuse to invade Afghanistan.
Debra Miller: Bush detention, torture policy makes us the bad guys
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 6:03 P GMT-05
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a June 2004 judgment, stated, "For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny."
Ending CIA rendition of terror suspects
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 3:03 P GMT-05
It's time for the Bush administration, and those European governments that have aided its "renditions" of suspected terrorists, to come clean about the process and return to international, legal procedures that govern the treatment of detainees.
Bush Administration Bows To Pressure, Grants Geneva Rights To Gitmo Detainees
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 12:31 P GMT-05
The Bush administration, bowing to court edict and political pressure, guaranteed the basic protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives in the war on terrorism and asked lawmakers Tuesday to restore the military tribunals now in limbo.
FBI To Muslims: "Become Informant Or Face Deportation"
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 11:59 A GMT-05
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been detaining Muslim immigrants, holding their green cards hostage, and threatening deportation unless the detainee agrees to become a government informant, today's WALL STREET JOURNAL is reporting.
Plan to attack New York tunnels: Yet another dubious "terror plot"
Tuesday, 11 July 2006 6:02 P GMT-05
The pattern could not be more clear, and it extends all the way back to 9/11 itself. The government, with the full support of the “opposition” Democrats and the complicity of the media, announces at regular intervals terror plots—either nonexistent or contrived by agents of the government itself—in order to keep the American people in a constant state of fear and confusion, the better to wage war abroad and lay siege to democratic rights at home.
Chill of Govt. Surveillance Grips Activists, Muslims
Tuesday, 11 July 2006 6:01 P GMT-05
Bardwell is among a growing number of critics charging that the government’s targeting of religious institutions and nonviolent activist organizations for spying is not just unnecessary and unconstitutional but may be ushering in a new era of timidity among potential dissidents.
The Phony Fight Over Presidential Power
Tuesday, 11 July 2006 3:07 P GMT-05
Anyone who has been following this knows that the JAG corps is not of one mind on this issue, and to what extent the UCMJ ought to cover the detainees has been the subject of considerable debate. There is certainly a lot of discussion within military justice experts about whether the UCMJ can be modified (it can) for the limited purpose of the few special detainees.
Sources Say No Serious Plot For NYC Tunnels, Just Hate Chatter
Saturday, 8 July 2006 9:33 P GMT-05
“They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed," Giraldi added. "Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.”
That's Their Big Gun?
Saturday, 8 July 2006 3:32 P GMT-05
Why would the Republicans want to make their record on fighting terrorism a campaign centerpiece? It's been almost five years since the 9/11 attacks, yet a recent bipartisan study found that 84% of the foreign policy experts surveyed disagreed with the president's often-repeated assertion that we're winning the war on terror. Iraq has become a magnet for the world's aspiring terrorists; in Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent and security is worsening; Osama bin Laden remains on the lam.
White House/U.S. Gov't Presiding Over 'Narcotics State'
Saturday, 8 July 2006 1:59 P GMT-05
More than three years after a pro-U.S. government was installed, Afghanistan has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is “on the verge of becoming a narcotics state,” according to a presidential report.
Aiding the Enemy
Thursday, 6 July 2006 11:55 P GMT-05
Even as its talk radio auxiliaries accuse the New York Times and other media outlets of “treason,” “sedition,” and offering “aid and comfort to the enemy,” the Bush regime has quietly shut down the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit.
Sibel Edmonds Is Proof That The "War On Terror" Is A Lie
Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:36 P GMT-05
There are simply too many dots! I’m not kidding around here.
Bush On Iraq: "We Will Stay, We Will Fight, And We Will Prevail"
Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:20 P GMT-05
President Bush used the patriotic setting of a Fourth of July appearance before U.S. troops Tuesday to mount a feisty defense of administration strategy in the war on terrorism and to assert that America was winning the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Italian Prosecutors Seek Arrest of C.I.A. Operatives
Wednesday, 5 July 2006 10:46 P GMT-05
Italian prosecutors today sought the arrest and extradition of four Americans, three of them Central Intelligence Agency operatives, for their role in the 2003 kidnapping in Milan of a radical Egyptian cleric. Two officials of the Italian secret service were arrested in the case today.
Bush Administration admits deceiving Congress!!
Wednesday, 5 July 2006 10:17 P GMT-05
Well, not in so many words. But this statement is an undeniable, if not implicit, conclusion of the arguments brought by the Administration's Solicitor arguing before the Supreme Court in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, as well as the reaction to the verdict of certain right-wing legal "luminaries" such as John Yoo.
Aiding the Enemy
Wednesday, 5 July 2006 10:05 P GMT-05
Even as its talk radio auxiliaries accuse the New York Times and other media outlets of “treason,” “sedition,” and offering “aid and comfort to the enemy,” the Bush regime has quietly shut down the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit.
The Big Waste
Tuesday, 4 July 2006 5:56 P GMT-05
For the cost of fighting the war in Iraq one day, we could do any of the following:
More Than 80,000 Held By U.S. Since 9/11 Attacks
Tuesday, 4 July 2006 4:49 P GMT-05
The US has detained more than 80,000 people in facilities from Afghanistan to Cuba since the attacks on the World Trade Centre four years ago, the Pentagon said yesterday.