January 25th, 2008 by CD
Keith Olbermann does it again!
January 23rd, 2008 by CD
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney. Six of the nine are co-sponsors of H.R. 799, which contains three articles of impeachment.
Articles I and II of H.R. 799 accuse Cheney of purposely manipulating intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about a fabricated threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, respectively. Article III charges Cheney with openly threatening aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the United States. All three articles say Cheney’s actions have damaged our national security interests.
Three of the nine Judiciary Committee Democrats who advocate launching impeachment hearings against Cheney, Reps. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.; Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.; and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., co-authored an op-ed that appeared on Dec. 27 in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
They wrote, “The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. The allegations against Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.”
January 18th, 2008 by CD
Bad news for the US.
The United States has been listed as a country where prisoners are at risk of torture in a training document produced by the Canadian foreign ministry.
It also classifies some US interrogation techniques as torture.
The manual - part of a training course on torture awareness for diplomats - also includes Israel, China, Iran and Afghanistan on its watch list.
A government spokesman said the manual did not reflect the views of Canada, which is an ally of the US and Israel.
“The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government,” said a spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier.
The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under “definition of torture”.
It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa’s claims that Omar Khadr is not being mistreated.
There was no immediate response from either the US or Israel.
Exonerated
The document was provided to Amnesty International as part of a court case it is bringing against the Canadian government over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.
Canada has come under growing criticism following allegations that detainees were tortured in Afghanistan after its soldiers transferred suspects to Afghan security forces.
Amnesty is calling for stopping all transfers of prisoners to the Afghan authorities.
The torture awareness course was introduced after Ottawa was strongly criticised for its handling of the case of a Canadian who was deported from the US to Syria in 2002.
Syrian-born Maher Arar - who was accused of being an al-Qaeda member - says he was tortured during his 10 months in a Damascus jail - a claim strongly denied by Syria.
A Canadian government inquiry exonerated Mr Arar of any links with terrorist groups. It also showed that Canadian diplomats had not had any formal training on how to detect whether detainees had been abused.
January 14th, 2008 by CD
Another good reason why you should not turn your television sets on to CNN, CBS and all the rest. Democracy Now provides real journalism and investigates what really happened. Listen to the audio (real audio) of Gareth Porter explaining the situation.
Gareth Porter: this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that’s the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.
Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the 5th fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander—or rather, Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.
So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst—the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far.
Gareth Porter, Investigative historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He writes regularly on Iran for the Inter Press Service. His latest book is called “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.”
January 11th, 2008 by CD
Every country has their own problems. For the Chinese, one of their problems is the lack of control they have on the chengguan.
The dispute was began when local people attempted to stop a rubbish truck from dumping refuse at a site that they argued was too close to their village, China state media reported.
Members of the Chinese municipal inspectors, known as the Chengguan, intervened.
The victim, Wei Wenhua, the manager of a construction company in Tianmen City, was driving by and stopped to film the confrontation on his mobile phone.
When Mr Wei refused the Chengguan’s demands that he delete the footage, he was beaten to death on the spot, according to witnesses cited by the Xinhua news agency.
Communist Party chief of Tianmen City, Bie Bixiong, told Xinhua that those responsible would be punished according to the law.
The death has triggered not only protests in his home town but sparked a nationwide call for a rethink of the very establishment of the Chengguan.
Chinese internet users are posting comments with titles such as “Municipal enforcers eliminating witness” and “How could they violate the law like this?”
Excessive force
The BBC’s China editor Shirong Chen says that this is not the first time that the Chengguan have beaten someone to death.
Ever since the agency came into existence 10 years ago, there have been repeated criticism of them using excessive force.
This para-police force, equipped with steel helmets and stab-proof vests, is often used by local officials as trouble-shooters, he adds.
In 2003, the death in custody of a young man in south China resulted in the abolition of the notorious migrant detention system.
Now many Chinese hope the death of Mr Wei will bring down the municipal inspection apparatus itself, our correspondent says.
January 9th, 2008 by CD
Full text of the bill every American should be aware of is at the following link:
“Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.” http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955
This is really scary, we are moving far from democracy folks and its right in front of our eyes. The mass media is controlled and our government is corrupt and ran by corporations.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJsovPRTEM[/youtube]
Ward Churchill: “HR 1955, as I understand it, provides a basis for subjective interpretation of dissident speech that allows those in power to criminally penalize anything they considered to be particularly effective in terms of galvanizing an opposition that might conceivably in some sense disrupt or destabilized the status quo, so it’s to keep everything in that nice sanitized arena that I was just talking about where you’re actually a collateral functionary of the state by participating.”
January 7th, 2008 by CD
I was just listening to a report of a man that had been victim of former President Charles Taylor’s policies. His right hand was chopped off and his story was just heartbreaking. More below…
From BBC
Mr Taylor - who is accused of trading weapons for diamonds - showed no emotion as the first witness, an expert on “blood diamonds”, testified.
He is the first African former head of state to face an international war crimes court and faces 11 charges.
He denies responsibility for atrocities committed by rebels during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
The trial opened in June last year but proceedings were postponed after Mr Taylor fired his defence lawyer and boycotted the opening of the trial.
He now has a new defence team - a senior British lawyer, who is being paid for by the court, as Mr Taylor says he cannot afford it himself.
Mr Taylor is accused of responsibility for the actions of Revolutionary United Front rebels during the 1991-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone, which included unlawful killings, sexual slavery, use of child soldiers and looting.
January 6th, 2008 by CD
Well this is a story you won’t find in American press since the press is owned by big corporations. But its glad that the foriengn press is following it. I might add too that “The Times U.K.” is not some one man newspaper either.
Excerpt:
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Pakistan: heart of a global crisis
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.
