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Post by jonnygemini on Aug 8, 2005 23:03:28 GMT -5
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Post by jonnygemini on Aug 15, 2005 14:44:01 GMT -5
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Post by jonnygemini on Sept 29, 2005 13:08:17 GMT -5
Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer 40 minutes ago
Pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released despite government claims that they could damage America's image, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."
The American Civil Liberties Union sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes as part of an October 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture. The ACLU contends that prisoner abuse is systemic.
Brutal images of the abuse at the prison have already been widely distributed, but the lawsuit covers additional photos not yet seen by the public.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had maintained in court papers that releasing the photographs would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken the Afghan and Iraqi governments and incite riots against U.S. troops.
Hellerstein said in his 50-page opinion that he respected Myers' arguments but noted, "My task is not to defer to our worst fears, but to interpret and apply the law, in this case, the Freedom of Information Act, which advances values important to our society, transparency and accountability in government," Hellerstein said.
The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, which argued the case for the government, did not immediately comment on the ruling.
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Post by jonnygemini on Oct 24, 2005 10:20:18 GMT -5
 from Professor Pan blog: www.charm.net/~profpan/ Mr Al Dossary claims that in September 2002, he was taken to an interrogation room at close to midnight on a Saturday. 'There was a female interrogator and four MPs (military police) in the interrogation room. One of the MPs had a video camera," say the notes. "The female interrogator told Mr Al Dossary it was his last chance to confess to being a terrorist and a member of Al Qaeda and of having been involved in the 9/11 attacks. "She told Mr Al Dossary that nobody was around because it was a Saturday night and that he would see something that he had never seen before." Mr Al Dossary was allegedly handcuffed and shackled by his hands and feet to the floor, after his arms were yanked violently above his head. "The female interrogator then signalled to another guard to cut off Mr Al Dossary's clothes with scissors," say the notes. "Mr Al Dossary tried to resist, but the MPs simply pulled the shackle on his handcuffs even harder. Eventually, the MPs removed all of Mr Al Dossary's clothing." The female interrogator allegedly then stripped naked, while standing over Mr Al Dossary. She then allegedly smeared her menstrual blood over various parts of his body. And again we see the same bizarre, sexual tactics: In another incident, in mid-2003, Mr Al Dossary was allegedly taken into an interrogation room, from which he could see a naked man and woman having sex on a table in an adjoining room. Once they had finished, the man and woman got dressed and entered the interrogation room. The man showed Mr Al Dossary pictures of men in traditional Arab dress and asked him to identify them, promising him he could have sex with the woman if he co-operated. Mr Al Dossary refused and after half an hour, the man and woman left. Okay, a couple of important points. The sexual elements of prisoner torture have been widespread at both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and are very likely to be occurring at other locations where the U.S. is holding detainees. The sexual torture tactics have not emerged spontaneously -- they are elements of a coordinated, enforced policy. The policy was developed by U.S. military intelligence, as I have detailed in the reference articles listed below, with assistance from mental health professionals (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams -- BSCTs or "biscuits"). Another thing to ponder: U.S. intelligence agents and soldiers are being instructed to fuck each other in front of prisoners. Female agents or soldiers are being ordered to smear their menstrual blood on detainees. As I've detailed in my article "Sex, Drugs, Mind Control, and Gitmo," this program is not designed to get information from detainees, although in some cases it may have that side effect. The chance of a frightened, humiliated, religious Muslim man saying "yes" to the offer of sex with a U.S. soldier is nil. The "live sex show" is not designed to tempt the prisoner -- it's designed to degrade and terrify him. The sexual tactics are used to break the minds of the prisoners -- to cause irreperable psychic damage. And those damaged human beings are the future terrorists -- the violent, hate-filled enemy combatants required for the Bush Cult to continue its God-mandated "eternal" war.  Have U.S. and British intelligence agents been watching too much BDSM porn? Or is the use of sexual elements key to the methodology of torture? Since I raised this issue a few months ago, I've seen only more and more confirmation that sexual abuse is the key element of the U.S. and British torture program. Excerpts: On each stage of his journey, as he descended further and further into the gulags and torture chambers of the war on terror, Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi was shadowed by British intelligence. The British were there in Karachi when Americans interrogated him and Pakistanis tortured him; they were feeding questions to the Moroccan torturers who took a scalpel to his penis; they stood back and watched as he was dragged to an American torture chamber in Afghanistan and then to the gulag of Guantanamo, where he languishes to this day.... Al-Habashi was then confronted with the Moroccan torture team. With a macabre flourish, some even wore bondage-type masks to give the torment an added mediaeval flavour... One guard told him how the torture would happen, saying: “They’ll come in wearing masks and beat you up. They’ll beat you with sticks. They’ll rape you first, then they’ll take a glass bottle, they break the top off and they make you sit on it.” During his next torture session he was tied up again. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and he was left naked in front of his captors. His torturer-in-chief told one of the guards: “Show him who’s a man.” The interrogator then began to slice his own chest with the scalpel. The other forms of torture he was subjected to included prolonged sleep deprivation; being drugged; forced to listen to music by Meatloaf and Aerosmith non-stop; being made to watch pornographic films; having naked women paraded in front of him. He was transferred after about four months to the US prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. While the prisoners showered, GIs talked about which of them “was worth penetrating.” But the crucial element of the article is this: He once asked a guard why they were doing this to him and was told: “It’s just to degrade you, so when you leave here you’ll have these scars and you’ll never forget. So you’ll always fear doing anything but what the U.S. wants.” I suggest it's exactly the opposite. The logic is absurd -- torturing people, especially innocent people, does not make them afraid to go against their torturers. What the U.S. wants --and what they're creating -- is more terrorists. References: www.charm.net/~profpan/2005/07/sex-drugs-mind-control-and-gitmo.htmlwww.charm.net/~profpan/2005/10/one-victims-story-of-torture.html |
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 2, 2005 10:51:57 GMT -5
CIA operating secret foreign prisons
Terrorism suspects being questioned in Eastern Europe
- Dana Priest, Washington Post
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Washington -- The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the chief executive and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
The CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate terrorists suspects for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the program at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "enhanced interrogation techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.
More than 100 terrorism suspects have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 4, 2005 10:48:02 GMT -5
November 4, 2005 -- Secret Prisons Opposed by Pentagon Lawyers. The network of secret prisons established by the CIA and increasingly being run by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's parallel paramilitary and intelligence force, were opposed by top Pentagon lawyers. The entire gamut of Bush administration policies on prisoners runs afoul of U.S. and international law claim the military counsels. In Eastern Europe alone, there are 100 or more prisoners being held in dozens of facilities the Bush administration considers being within "law free zones," according to officials. Defense Department attorneys also disagreed strongly with Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief Counsel David Addington' s favorable position on torturing prisoners. The lawyers concluded that international law to which the United States is a party applies even in cases where the status of prisoners is debatable. They argue that the Geneva Conventions applies to those captured on foreign battlefields, including the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and foreign fighters in Iraq.
The Pentagon lawyers also generally oppose the "ticking bomb" scenario used to justify torture. Two high level Defense Department lawyers said the "ticking bomb" justification is being used to legitimize unlawful conduct and all interrogation actions. Some government attorneys favor the appointment of a Special Prosecutor with the same powers as Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether senior government officials knowingly violated US law when they approved the rendition (kidnapping), abuse, and torture of prisoners by US authorities or by foreign governments where prisoners were sent by the US with the foreknowledge that they would be tortured. In cases where torture led to death, the Special Prosecutor would also be able to add accessory to murder to any criminal charges against Bush administration officials.
The lawyers' comments came amid new reports about the network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch has identified two of the secret prisons: Szymany Airport in Poland (located nearby Polish Military Intelligence headquarters) and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania near the seaport of Constanta. The probable increased involvement of the Pentagon in the secret bases is highlighted by the fact that Rumsfeld visited Mihail Kogalniceanu base in October 2004. Rumsfeld made it a point of playing down the importance of the base to journalists accompanying him at the time. Before arriving in Romania, Rumsfeld visited Macedonia, another country mentioned as a possible location of secret prisons.
A CIA Boeing 737 touched down at both the Polish and Romanian airports in September 2003 after logging a flight plan from Washington, DC via Ruzyne, Czech Republic and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan and then to Szymany, Kogalniceanu, Sale, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The European Commission has requested reports on secret prisons from three of the countries identified by yesterday's WMR: Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 16, 2005 15:03:50 GMT -5
posted November 16, 2005 at 11:00 a.m.
Sources say Iraqi PM and US forces had been told about 'torture cells' months ago.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
The Iraqi government has ordered an investigation into the alleged abuse and torture of 173 prisoners, most of them Sunni Arabs, in an Interior Ministry cell in Baghdad. The Guardian reports that the men were discovered during a raid by a US patrol as it was looking for a missing teenage boy. The US troops were stunned by what they found - many of the prisoners appeared to have been brutally beaten and most had been malnourished for weeks. There are also rumors of several dead bodies in the cell that showed signs of severe torture.
Earlier a deputy interior minister put the number of prisoners at 161 and said he was stunned by their treatment. "They were being treated in an inappropriate way ... they were being abused," Hussein Kamal told Reuters.
"I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad. This is the worst," he told CNN. "I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off."
"In order to search for one terrorist, they detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally," said Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, a Sunni politician, according to The Daily Telegraph of London.
The Associated Press reports, however, that the US raid may not have been accidental, and may have been aimed at "scoring points" with Sunni Arabs, whose participation in next month's general election is necessary if the US wants to be able to exit Iraq sometime in the next two years.
Sunni Arab politicians have complained for months about arbitrary arrests, torture and assassinations of Sunnis, allegedly at the hands of special commandoes of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, who are at the forefront of the battle against the largely Sunni insurgents ... One Sunni politician, Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, said he had personally told Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari about conditions at detention centers, including the one seized by American forces Sunday night. Other Sunni leaders who meet regularly with American officials have been outspoken in complaints about Interior Ministry forces.
But The Daily Telegraph also points out that "If true, the allegations could raise questions about the Shiite-led government's commitment to human rights and may prove embarrassing to the US military, which trained many of the Iraqi security forces." Ann Clwyd, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's human rights envoy to Iraq, Tuesday night told the BBC that a Sunni delegation had made allegations about abuse to her in May. The evidence was passed to the Iraqi president and Ms. Clwyd asked for an investigation.
"There is no human rights minister in Iraq, there is no independent organization which can investigate claims of this kind," she said. "There should be both those things."
The Independent reports that the discovery of the prisoners illustrates "how paramilitary units working for the government, and death squads allegedly linked to it, are waging a savage war in the shadows."
The paramilitaries are not held responsible for all the deaths – some are the work of insurgents murdering supposed informers or government officials, or killing for purely sectarian motives.
You very seldom see American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad now. The Iraqi police are in evidence outside, but so are increasing numbers of militias running their own checkpoints – men in balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, with leather mittens and an array of weapons. An American official acknowledged: "It is getting more and more like Mogadishu every day."
The BBC also reports that the US government is backing demands for an investigation into the discovery of the prisoners, as "the US is itself facing pressure to be more transparent about the treatment of its prisoners." The Independent also points out that "according to reports, $3bn (£1.7bn) out of an $87bn Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked for the creation of paramilitary units to fight the insurgency," often working with people who were in "senior intelligence" during the Hussein regime.
Meanwhile, two Iraqi businessmen who allege they were tortured by US troops in Iraq are suing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials in a federal court in Washington. The Washington Post reported Monday that the men alleged that US troops put them in a cage of lions, and at other times pretended to be executing them, and carried out other acts of torture during their months in US custody.
"They took me behind the cage, they were screaming at me, scaring me and beating me a lot," Thahe Mohammed Sabbar said in an interview. "One of the soldiers would open the door, and two soldiers would push me in. The lions came running toward me and they pulled me out and shut the door. I completely lost consciousness."
Mr. Rumsfeld said their accounts sounded "far-fetched" and said it was common for detainees to make up allegations of torture. However, the Army said it was looking into the claims.
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 16, 2005 15:16:11 GMT -5
www.waynemadsenreport.com/November 16, 2005 -- The Bush administration's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy." U.S. intelligence sources who served in Iraq report that after photos from Abu Ghraib prison surfaced of naked male prisoners who were forced by their U.S. guards to form human pyramids and masturbate, the U.S. military went into total denial mode. "It was a 'don't ask, don't tell policy,'" according to one intelligence source who was assigned to both the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca prisons. Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the Pentagon to release to the American Civil Liberties Union 74 photos and 3 videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003. However, the Pentagon is resisting the judge's order. U.S. intelligence sources: Sexually-explicit photos at Abu Ghraib special ordered by a homosexual and pedophile ring inside the Bush White House There is good reason for the embarrassment of the Pentagon in the affair. The orders to take the sexually-oriented photos and videos, some of which involve teenage Iraqi boys and girls and sodomization by their guards, came directly from a pedophile and closeted male homosexual ring operating in the White House, according to the intelligence sources. Copies of the tapes and photos were sent directly to the White House for the entertainment of senior members of the Bush White House, including officials in the Vice President's office and the Executive Office of the President. When the photos at Abu Ghraib became public, the senior military command structure in Iraq "went nuts," according to an individual who witnessed the cover-up of the affair. "They ordered an immediate policy of denial about details of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib," said the source. The source added that senior officers were disgusted that lower ranking guards were prosecuted and jailed when the order for the mistreatment came directly from the White House.
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 16, 2005 15:21:48 GMT -5
From a Raw Story article about the 13,000-plus Iraqi prisoners the U.S. is holding: rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1459This information supports what sources close to the Defense Department have previously expressed concern about to RAW STORY, namely that detainees held and tortured and then released essentially become the enemy army. According to these sources, who declined to go on the record by name, hundreds of detainees are released each month, having been detained for periods of six to twelve months, during which they are subjected to torture or other abuse. As I noted in Sex, Drugs, Mind Control, and GITMO: But what is the aim at Guantanamo? To extract information, as the Pentagon would have us believe? Or is it to further refine methods for breaking down minds and creating dissociation in order to craft more effective assassins? When these prisoners are released -- as many of them ultimately will be -- will they be cutting edge tools of their Spook masters, unleashed to create more programmed chaos and manufactured "terrorism?" Will their names turn up as future hijackers, suicide bombers, and political assassins? Two possibilities: 1. The Bush Cult, against all evidence, believes that torture is a valuable method for gaining actionable intelligence. The administration and its allies aren't aware that U.S.-sponsored torture is turning the entire Arab and Islamic world into a terrorist breeding ground. 2. The torture is a cleverly crafted policy designed to destabilize the fledgling Iraqi government (creating more enemies to fight), prolong the war (increasing profits for the corporate/military/industrial complex), and fuel the perpetual "our god is bigger than your god" quest for hegemony in the Middle East. Take your pick |
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 16, 2005 15:57:43 GMT -5
U.S. Has Detained 83,000 in War on Terror
Nov 16 2:56 PM US/Eastern
Email this story
By KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL's largest stadium. The administration defends the practice of holding detainees in prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay as a critical tool to stop the insurgency in Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and get known and suspected terrorists off the streets.
Roughly 14,500 detainees remain in U.S. custody, primarily in Iraq.
The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the "Salt Pit," an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.
In Iraq, the number in military custody hit a peak on Nov. 1, according to military figures. Nearly 13,900 suspects were in U.S. custody there that day _ partly because U.S. offensives in western Iraq put pressure on insurgents before the October constitutional referendum and December parliamentary elections.
The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees _ often Arab and male _ are treated.
International law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment. Classified memos have given the government ways to extract intelligence from detainees "consistent with the law," administration officials often say.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is leading a campaign to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. The administration says the legislation could tie the president's hands. Vice President Dick Cheney has pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA.
"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so you bet we will aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law," President Bush said last week.
Some 82,400 people have been detained by the military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from officials in Baghdad and Washington. Many are freed shortly after initial questioning.
To put that in context, the capacity of the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field, the NFL's largest, is 91,704. The second largest, Giants Stadium, holds 80,242.
An additional 700 detainees were sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just under 500 remain there now.
In Iraq, the Defense Department says 5,569 detainees have been held for more than six months, and 3,801 have been held more than a year. Some 229 have been locked up for more than two years.
Many have been questioned by military officials trained at the main U.S. interrogation school, Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Pentagon officials say those mistreated are relatively few when the sheer numbers are considered.
Yet human rights groups say they don't know the extent of the abuse. "And there is no way anyone could, even if the military was twice as conscientious. It is unknowable, unless you assume that every act of abuse is immediately reported up the chain of command," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch.
As of March, 108 detainees were known to have died in U.S. military and CIA custody, including 22 who died when insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib and others who died of natural causes. At least 26 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides.
Last week, Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said that more than 400 criminal investigations have been conducted and 95 military personnel have been charged with misconduct. Seventy-five have been convicted.
Through the CIA, a much smaller prison population is maintained secretly by the agency and friendly governments. A network of known or suspected facilities _ some of which have been closed _ have been located in places including Thailand, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
The governments of Thailand and a number of Eastern Europe countries have denied the CIA operated prisons within their borders. The agency consistently declines to comment.
About 100 to 150 people are believed to have been grabbed by CIA officers and sent to their home countries or to other nations where they were wanted for prosecution, a procedure called "rendition." Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are known to cooperate.
The practice has taken on a negative connotation, but that wasn't always the case. In a December 2002 speech touching on intelligence successes, former CIA Director George Tenet said the agency and FBI had "rendered 70 terrorists to justice."
While officials won't confirm the number, another two to three dozen "high-value" detainees are also believed to be in CIA custody. Among them, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
As House Intelligence chairman in 2004, CIA Director Porter Goss took a strong stand on some of the gray areas of detention practices. In an AP interview, he said, "Gee, you're breaking my heart" in response to complaints that Arab men found it abusive to have women guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Before Goss took over the agency, its inspector general completed a report on the treatment of detainees, following investigations into at least four prisoner deaths that may have involved CIA personnel. To date, one agency contractor has been charged.
The inspector general's report discussed tactics used by CIA personnel _ called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques." Former intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the practices are classified, say some interrogation techniques are well-known: exposing prisoners to cold, depriving them of sleep or forcing them to stand in stressful positions.
Perhaps the most publicly controversial technique is waterboarding, when a detainee is strapped to a board and has water run over him to simulate drowning.
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Post by jonnygemini on Nov 18, 2005 11:20:10 GMT -5
LONDON, England -- Former CIA director Stansfield Turner has labeled Dick Cheney a "vice president for torture."
In an interview with Britain's ITV news Thursday, Turner said the U.S. vice president was damaging America's reputation by overseeing torture policies of possible terrorist suspects, the UK's Press Association reported.
"I'm embarrassed the United States has a vice president for torture," Turner said, according to ITV's Web site. "He condones torture, what else is he?"
Turner said he did not believe U.S. President George W. Bush's statements that the United States does not use torture.
Turner ran the Central Intelligence Agency from 1977 to 1981 under former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
"We have crossed the line into dangerous territory," PA quoted Turner as saying. "I think it is just reprehensible."
Referring to Cheney, Turner said: "I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance."
In Washington, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, is leading a campaign to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. (Full story)
The administration says the legislation could tie the president's hands, and Cheney has pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA, according to The Associated Press.
While international law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment, classified memos have given the government ways to extract intelligence from detainees "consistent with the law," administration officials say.
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Post by jonnygemini on Dec 5, 2005 14:03:41 GMT -5
rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-do-kids-know.htmlSarah Eight-year old Sarah Payne was snatched from a quiet street in West Sussex on July 1, 2000. Her body was found 16 days later, ten miles away. Paedophile Roy Whiting was convicted of her abduction and murder, and sentenced to life in prison. Open and shut. Or maybe, both open and shut. Because there's this painting Sarah left behind, displayed in her classroom, which was reproduced in the London Sun four days after her disappearance: a man standing upon a 13-square checkered floor, between columns bearing Sarah's name. He wears what appears to be an apron of 33 studs, and holds an object in his left hand. His right sleeve is missing.  Investigator Ellis Taylor asks, "Where do we find black and white checkerboard floors, the number 13 and two columns? ... Who would wear an item of clothing with the right sleeve missing...wear aprons and revere the number 33?" Maybe somewhere like this lodge, and someone like this brother:  Taylor writes: There is a strong suggestion of paedophillia in this painting and it seems exceedingly strange that little Sarah met her death under just these circumstances. I ask you "Is this (when you consider Sarah's artwork) likely to have been the first time that she has suffered abuse?" Taylor doesn't deny Whiting's guilt, but wonders whether the guilt deservedly rests wholly on his shoulders: "Is Roy Whiting carrying the can for others?" "Rhonda" In Cults that Kill, Larry Kahaner writes of eight-year old "Rhonda." Her mother contacted the juvenile division of the San Francisco Police Department because a young boy named Kevin had gone missing, and when Rhonda saw his image on television she said "My daddy and I picked up a little boy named Kevin the other day and he looks like him." (Rhonda's parents had been divorced for five years, and her father was already facing a charge of sexual abuse.) The mother asked investigators to speak with Rhonda, because she was "telling some really strange stories about devil worship and stuff." Detective Sandi Gallant: The story that stands out most in my mind was the one where she talks about being in a room and seeing a picture of a man with a moustache on the wall and seeing a swastika on the wall. She didn't call it that; she drew it for us. The people are in robes, and there are policemen present. She said they had blue uniforms, and she was sure they were policemen. On this occasion, a man came into the room and brought with him a baby. The baby was given an injection. There is a fire going in the fireplace. They put the baby's legs in the fire. We just let her tell the story, but I did stop her every once in a while to ask questions. At that point, I said, "Did the baby make any noise?" She said, "The baby screamed." Rhonda's father stood trial on a charge of incest. The jury wound up hung, six-six. "Afterward," says Detective Gallant, "some of the people on the jury said they had no problem with the sexual abuse, but they had a real difficult time with the Satanic ritual allegations." In this drawing - apologies for the quality - two children are depicted lying on an altar as Rhonda kneels before them. ("all people is a round it!!") Her father is above, holding a baby's legs to a fire.  Rhonda told investigators her father placed her hands on a dagger, and forced her to stab the baby. "I saw worms come out," she said. Detective Gallant: "My first thought was that this kid was nuts. My second thought was: how is a kid going to know that the intestines - she described them as worms - are going to come out unless she actually has seen it or has seen something that looked like it?" Below, Rhonda has drawn a dagger, flags and a swastika:  The latest from Ponchatoula reveals items inventoried from a Hosanna Church storage facility include weapons, flag pins, ministry pamphlets and a computer tower that "could be described as a copying station due to the multiple number of CD units it contains." What do kids know? Do you remember what Magnolia's child genius Stanley Spector tells himself, as the frogs begin to rain down? "This happens. This is something that happens." Kids just know. 
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Post by jonnygemini on Jan 10, 2006 12:59:41 GMT -5
via: Professor Pan www.news.wisc.edu/11995.html Author explores CIA connections to torture tactics (Jan 9, 2006) An excerpt from what sounds like an important book: And: |
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Post by jonnygemini on Feb 7, 2006 13:58:18 GMT -5
via: Jeff Wells' Rigorous Institution blog rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/ Fascists have, let's call them, boundary issues. The boundaries of states, and I mean both federations and conditions, and the boundaries on the roadmaps of the soul. They transgress. Now of course, transgression can be a good thing, providing it's your own boundaries you are crossing. In fact, in almost every religious culture, transgression is allowed to be a holy thing. Think of fools of God like Saint Simeon Salus, a sixth century hermit who would perform such antics as blowing out the candles of a church just as the service was beginning, eating sausages on Good Friday and defecating in the marketplace. Yet as George Hansen tells in The Trickster and the Paranormal Simeon was also known to perform miracles, including the multiplication of food, telepathy and predicting the future. Nityananda, who last century violated many orthodox Hindu laws and would embarass his devotees by his nakedness and such happenings as smearing excrement over his body and sitting "with large piles of it, offering some to passers-by as a sweet." (The inversion of food/excrement and mouth/anus is a recurring and powerful transgression. The Aztecs had a copraphagic deity named Tlazolteotl, "Divine Excrement," also known as Tlaelquani, the "Eater of Ordure." See also "The Eye of Horus".) But Nityananda is remembered for his "miraculous healings, prophetic powers and even weather control." Joseph of Copertino mortified his flesh with chains and metal plates that pressed into his sores, and wore broken crockery around his neck to increase his humiliation. Joseph is also arguably the best-documented levitator in history. He also displayed telepathy, clairvoyance, healing powers and more. Sri Ramakrishna, one of India's greatest saints, often dressed as a woman and would eat the food left as temple offerings for gods. So, what was that about fascism, and what am I going on about now? I'm going on about Pasolini's final film, the one he may have died for: Salo. www.opsonicindex.org/salo/salo.htmIt's a hard film to see, and not just because it's hard to sit through. Its graphic sexual sadism has prompted its banning around the world. (I first tried to catch it at a Toronto Forbidden Films festival in the mid-80s, but the Ontario Film Board forbade the screening.) Given how there are many works in the past 30 years that have out-grossed it, I suspect it's still problematic not so much for its generalized sexual sadism as for its pointed depiction of fascist sexual sadism. The film is an adaptation of the Marquis De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, which Pasolini set in Mussolini's "Republic of Salo," the Nazi puppet state of northern Italy that he nominally administered during the final years of the war. If you haven't seen it, you've seen and heard of something like it. Forced nudity on collared and leashed prisoners with covered heads, paedophilic rape, coprophilia, humiliation and torture, ritual abuse and murder. Is it fascism? Is it Salo, or someplace else? (And I should say, the death of a thousand times includes such insufferable yet mundane things as the Killing Jokes of deadpan irony. The Cheney/Bush gang are masters of timing. It's Republican prostitute Jeff Gannon getting back his press pass, this time for "Pajama Media." It's Rumsfeld comparing Chavez to Hitler. Doesn't he know what he's saying, and doesn't he know what he sounds like? Yes, and yes: of course he does. And it must give him tremendous pleasure.) It's been a topic before here how the psycho-sexual atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, and most certainly the unnamed secret prisons in the "War on Terror's" encircling gulag, did not arise in a vacuum and without the stage direction of senior officials. They also enact ritual, and are more than reminiscent, to both students and survivors, of the methods of covert mind control. Survivor Kathleen Sullivan has says that "many survivors...are experiencing an additional set of reactions....wave after wave of devastating emotions and flashbacks after each new revelation is made public. What was done to the prisoners is too similar to what was perpetrated against most of us." And last July I wrote that the "mission is brutalization. Not just of the captives, but of the captors and their codependent subjects in the Homeland. Because the transformative mission extends beyond the literal confines of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, to the imaginative boundaries of Empire." But there's more going on here than brutalization. Or rather, the brutalization has, I believe, a sacramental aspect. Because there's a liminal quality to the bulldozing of values which achieves for the fascists - and possibly also for some fragmented parts of their victims - an ecstatic state of transgression. Perhaps understanding this dynamic will help explain and anticipate the congruity of fascism with occultic crime and untangle "Satanic Ritual Abuse" from the double caricatures of fundamentalist hysteria and secular humanist disdain. Pasolini, by the way, was murdered the year of Salo's release, after having received death threats from neo-Fascists on its account. Last year, Italian police reopened the case after Giuseppe Pelosi, a then-17 year old who served nine years for the killing, recanted. Pelosi said Pasolini hadn't, after all, tried to rape him with a wooden stake, but had been killed by a politically motivated group of men, and he "had to play the game played by these people, the 'respectable' people who ordered the murder." Those are some wild games, the games respectable people play.  |
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Post by jonnygemini on Feb 9, 2006 0:00:50 GMT -5
This work was the oneiric "representation of what Marx called the commodification of man, the reduction of the body (through exploitation) to a thing. Therefore sex is still called upon in my film to play a horrible metaphorical role. Precisely the contrary of the "trilogy".
From Naomi Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy p 20
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