What Nobody Wants To Know About Somalia And Why; And What That Means

Friday, October 03, 2008

A huge war crime -- a massive crime against humanity -- is going on right now in Somalia, courtesy of (but only indirectly traceable to) the Bush administration and Washington's bipartisan power elite. But, aside from Chris Floyd and a few other internet madmen, nobody knows -- or even wants to know -- much about it.

What's happening? And why doesn't anybody want to know? These are troubling questions for anyone who cares about the soul of America, and even more troubling for anyone who's beginning to suspect that America has no soul at all.

Chris Floyd:

Somalia is the invisible third front of the Terror War, an American-backed "regime change" operation launched by the invading army of Ethiopia and local warlords in December 2006. In addition to helping arm, fund and train the army of the Ethiopian dictatorship, the United States has intervened directly into the conflict, carrying out bombing raids on fleeing refugees and nomads, firing missiles into villages, sending in death squads to clean up after covert operations, and [...] assisting in the "rendition" of refugees, including American citizens, into the hands of Ethiopia's notorious torturers.

Bombing raids on fleeing refugees? Oh, yes. And much more, too. These people look hungry. We'd better kill them!

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The New York Times

September 25, 2008
Bush Aides Linked to Talks on Interrogations
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Senior White House officials played a central role in deliberations in the spring of 2002 about whether the Central Intelligence Agency could legally use harsh interrogation techniques while questioning an operative of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, according to newly released documents.

In meetings during that period, the officials debated specific interrogation methods that the C.I.A. had proposed to use on Qaeda operatives held at secret C.I.A. prisons overseas, the documents show. The meetings were led by Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, and attended by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top administration officials.

The documents provide new details about the still-murky early months of the C.I.A.’s detention program, when the agency began using a set of harsh interrogation techniques weeks before the Justice Department issued a written legal opinion in August 2002 authorizing their use. Congressional investigators have long tried to determine exactly who authorized these techniques before the legal opinion was completed.

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This video will likely be censored soon. Make a copy if you can and pass it on.

Added: September 20, 2008

House gives go-ahead to sue Iraq over torture

By JIM ABRAMS – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former POWs and civilians who were tortured or held hostage during the 1991 Gulf War could pursue lawsuits against Iraq under legislation the House has approved.

The White House, saying the bill would threaten economic and political progress in Iraq, threatened to veto the measure if it reaches the president's desk. It still has to clear the Senate.

The legislation, passed by voice vote late Monday, could affect some 17 prisoners of war — all but one pilots of aircraft downed over Iraq or Kuwait — and more than 200 American civilians working in Iraq and Kuwait and held as "human shields" after then-President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

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Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-09-12 14:46.

* Criminal Prosecution

By David Swanson

Here's an interesting self-defense with a gloss of principle and detatchment.

Indictments Are Not The Best Revenge
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ, Wall Street Journal
September 12, 2008

Dershowitz or whoever wrote the headline begins with the pretense that wanting to deter future crimes is not the motivation of those of us pushing for the prosecution of Bush and Cheney, that we simply must be as primitive and barbaric as the author and be seeking revenge -- partisan revenge to be precise, even though those pushing for indictment of Bush were not fans of Clinton either and in some cases pushed for his indictment as well.

I don't agree with a lot of the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror,

You agree that there is such a thing, and that's enough.

and I plan to vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden in November.

What is the relevance of that? Bush and Cheney are not candidates in this election.

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	The Strange and Terrible Case of Aafia Siddiqui
	By JOANNE MARINER
	Monday, Sept. 08, 2008

Everyone agrees that she's a 36-year-old mother of three young children. But while the New York Post calls her the "Al Qaeda mom," and federal prosecutors claim that when she was arrested in July she was carrying a bag packed with chemicals and handwritten notes about a "mass casualty attack," Aafia Siddiqui's lawyers say she's a victim.

"This woman has been tortured and she needs help," explained Elizabeth Fink, one of her defense counsel, at an August 11 court hearing.

Siddiqui disappeared in Pakistan in March 2003. Together with her three children - then aged 6 years, 5 years, and 6 months - she reportedly left her parents' home in Karachi to visit her uncle in Islamabad, but never arrived. Last July, more than five years later, she mysteriously reappeared in US custody in Afghanistan. Based on their interviews with her, and a pattern of similar cases, her lawyers claim that she has spent the last five years as a secret captive of Pakistani or American authorities.

Siddiqui's oldest child, Ahmed, was found with her in Afghanistan. The whereabouts of her two younger children are unknown.

Disappearance from Karachi, Reappearance in Ghazni

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Only Human
By Kathleen Peratis
Thu. Sep 04, 2008

Georgia has been America’s darling in the Caucasus since its charismatic and telegenic young president, Mikheil Saakashvili, took over from the nasty old Russian-style despot Eduard Shevardnadze in the fall of 2003, in what came to be called the Rose Revolution (because Saakashvili carried a rose, and not an AK-47, as he and the throngs breached the doors of the country’s parliament building). All the world (well, most of it) had high hopes for Saakashvili’s reformist, democratic, anticorruption platform.

Throughout last month’s hostilities with Russia and in the weeks since, little Georgia’s stock has only risen with the Bush administration, as well as with the mainstream press and both presidential candidates. “We are all Georgians,” John McCain said. No one in the Obama campaign demurred.

Despite — or even because of — this coalescing consensus, now may be a good time to knock a few chunks out of Saakashvili’s pedestal. While Saakashvili rightly gets credit for putting the fight against corruption at the top of his agenda (in 2004, Transparency International declared Georgia one of the most corrupt governments in the world) and for combating religious and ethnic discrimination, he and his government have also committed serious human rights abuses.

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Volume 55, Number 14 · September 25, 2008

Official American Sadism

By Anthony Lewis

Guantanamo: Beyond the Law

a series of five articles by Tom Lasseter

in the McClatchy Newspapers, June 15–19, 2008, available at www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees

The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power

by Jonathan Mahler

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 334 pp., $26.00

Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact

a report by Physicians for Human Rights, with a preface by Major General Antonio M. Taguba

Physicians for Human Rights, 130 pp., available at brokenlives.info

1.

Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan accused of throwing a grenade at a convoy of American soldiers in Kabul in late 2002, wounding two, was brought to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in February 2003. He was then seventeen years old. In December 2003 he attempted suicide. The following May he was subjected to what Guantánamo officials called the "frequent flyer program." Every three hours, day and night, he was shackled and moved to another cell—112 times over fourteen days.

We know about what was done to Mr. Jawad because the military lawyer assigned as his defense counsel, Major David J.R. Frakt (Air Force Reserve), sought and won from a military judge an order for his jailers to produce the records of his captivity. Major Frakt brought out the realities of Jawad's treatment in his closing argument at a pre-trial hearing on June 19, 2008—an argument that was a remarkable display of legal and moral courage.

"Why was Mohammed Jawad tortured?" Major Frakt asked. "Why did military officials choose a teenage boy who had attempted suicide in his cell less than five months earlier to be the subject of this sadistic sleep deprivation experiment?" Officers at Guantánamo said they did not believe he had any valuable intelligence information, and he was not even questioned during the "frequent flyer program." "The most likely scenario," Major Frakt said, "is that they simply decided to torture Mr. Jawad for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others."

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Added: September 04, 2008

Elliot Hughes recounts allegations of torture while being detained in Ramsey County Jail. Hughes was detained during an RNC08 protest after reportedly colliding with a police bicycle on accident. He was sent to Regions Hospital for treatment and later released without charges. We are actively investigating these claims. Stay tuned for more.

21 hours ago

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament.

The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects."

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First Published 2008-09-05

Still in the dark

Polish prosecutors obtain document showing east European country hosted secret US centre.

MEXICO CITY - A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament.

The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects."

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Related

• The U.S. 'threw away the rule book'
• He now wants RCMP to quit Tasers

Video: 'Stunning allegations' by ex-RCMP chief

Former RCMP commissioner blames U.S. for handling of Maher Arar case

Tue Sep 2, 9:47 PM

By The Canadian Press

TORONTO - Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said the United States effectively "threw away the rule book" in dealing with Canadian authorities on the Maher Arar affair.

In an interview with the CBC broadcast Tuesday night, Zaccardelli blamed a post 9-11 hardline attitude in the United States for the Ottawa software engineer's detention and subsequent deportation to his native Syria.

After Arar was detained in New York in the fall of 2002, Zaccardelli told the CBC that American authorities indicated to Canadian officials that they didn't have enough evidence to lay charges and asked whether he would be detained upon returning to Canada.

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Federal Judge Orders Justice Department To Turn Over Memos Authorizing Torture Or Justify Withholding Them (9/2/2008)

ACLU Also Obtains Documentation Of Prisoner Abuse And Death In Iraq

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to turn over three memos that authorized the extremely harsh treatment of prisoners in CIA custody or explain by October 3 why these memos can lawfully be withheld. The American Civil Liberties Union called for the immediate release of the May 2005 OLC memos as part of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit requesting information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody overseas.

"These memos provide further evidence that senior Justice Department officials gave the CIA a green light to torture prisoners," said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "It is essential that these memos immediately be released to the public so that high level officials can be held accountable for authorizing torture as policy in violation of U.S. and international law."

The New York Times disclosed the existence of two of the three OLC memos in a front-page article on October 4, 2007. The Times reported that the first memo explicitly authorized interrogators to use combinations of harsh interrogation methods including waterboarding, head slapping and exposure to freezing temperatures. The second memo, issued by OLC as Congress prepared to enact legislation prohibiting "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," declared that none of the CIA's interrogation methods violated that standard.

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August 30, 2008

U.S. court finds TNI links to ExxonMobil

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Legal experts and civil society groups welcomed a U.S. Federal court ruling Thursday to proceed with a trial against U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil, which stands accused of supporting the Indonesian military's alleged killings and torture in Aceh.

According to the groups, the decision was a milestone in the country's efforts to protect human rights, serving to expose the number of multinationals regularly paying the Indonesian Military for protection.

Supporters said the decision had created an opportunity for victims in Papua and Kalimantan to seek justice for violence inflicted by the military on behalf of foreign companies.

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Thursday, August 28, 2008

by Stephen Lendman

The UN Convention against Torture defines the practice as:

"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity...."

The US and Israel are the only two modern states that legally sanction torture. An earlier article covered America. This one deals with the Jewish state, but let there be no doubt:

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Does it get any sicker than this? Do they also offer private, glass viewing booths, complete with tissues, so the die-hard Zionist can blow his load at the same time some MOSSAD goon is blowing the head off some Palestinian?

ISRAELI EXTREMIST GROUP NOW OFFER TOURIST PACKAGE DEALS SHOWCASING ISRAELI TERRORISM FOR WANNABE ZIONISTS

The Israeli extremist organisation, Shurat Hadin, a front organisation for Israeli extremist Zionists and neoconservatives, have now taken to advertising in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ their package deal which they call ‘The Ultimate Mission to Israel’. The deal includes the following:

Briefings by Mossad officials and commanders of the Shin Bet.

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Investigation conducted by Israeli Bar finds prison wardens regularly subject inmates to inhumane conditions including unleashing of dogs, debasement. Prisoners also complain of delay in medical treatment to point of death

Aviad Glickman

Published: 08.24.08, 20:26 / Israel News

Wardens who set dogs on inmates, an inmate being held under administrative detention for 10 years, and serious flaws in prison medical care are only some of the conclusions of an investigation conducted by the Israel Bar at Hadarim Detention Center and Hasharon Prison.
The investigation, summed up in a report by attorneys Amnon Zikhroni and Michael Atiya, probed the conditions afforded by the felony and security wards at Hadarim, where most of the Palestinian organization's leaders are held in Israel, as well as the conditions in the juvenile and women's wards in Hasharon Prison

The report stipulates that in many cases inmates are subjected to unprovoked and whimsical chastisement by the prison guards, and presents charges of assault made by several inmates against the wardens. Some of them claim the guards responsible for moving them to different venues unleash dogs upon them, humiliate and debase them, and later file unfounded charges against them in order to justify their actions.

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Published: Aug. 23, 2008 at 1:36 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- A U.S. military study blames guard lapses and lenient policies for prisoner suicides at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Documents from a Naval Criminal Investigative Service probe suggest that three simultaneous suicides June 10, 2006, were the result of "lapses in guard protocol and of lenient policies toward compliant detainees," The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) reported Saturday after obtaining results from a Freedom of Information Act request.

Ali Abdullah Ahmed Naser al-Sullami, 26, of South Yemen, along with Saudi Arabians Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mana Shaman Allabard al-Tabi, 32, planned their hangings carefully say the documents. Investigators found that guards became lax on some rules, rewarding more compliant detainees with extra T-shirts, blankets and towels. Detainees were then allowed to hang the items to dry. Eventually they were sometimes used to obscure their cells while sleeping.

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From the Los Angeles Times

A Canadian mistakenly caught up in the U.S. war on terror deserves his day in court, and an apology.

August 19, 2008

Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was mistakenly expelled by the United States and imprisoned in Syria, may yet have his day in court. A federal appeals court in New York has scheduled a new hearing on whether Arar can sue U.S. officials who participated in one of the worst injustices of the so-called war on terror.

In 2002, Arar was seized by U.S. agents at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on the basis of inaccurate information provided by Canadian police linking him to terrorists. He was flown to Jordan and then sent to his native Syria, where he was imprisoned and, Arar says, tortured for a year before being released. The Canadian government apologized to Arar and paid him almost $10 million in compensation for his ordeal. The U.S. response, however, has been shamefully grudging.

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has said that the Justice Department is investigating Arar's deportation to Syria, and members of Congress have offered their apologies. But the closest the Bush administration has come to an apology was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's concession last year that Arar's case wasn't "handled particularly well." Even after his exoneration by Canada, the administration kept Arar on a terrorist watch list on the basis of unspecified information that, according to Canada's prime minister, contained "nothing new." Finally, the administration has contested Arar's suit against the U.S. government and several current and former officials -- litigation that would be unnecessary if the administration had owned up to the injustice perpetrated against an innocent man.

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