Hidden Murder 2

Why Does the U.S. Assassinate Americans?

2010-02-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

I can answer the question of the title of this article: because of the shadow government and empire, and because America and its society is psychopathic!

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/09/why-does-the-u-s-assassinate-americans/

IraChernus at 11:04 am
February 9, 2010
Why Does the U.S. Assassinate Americans?

Should the American government be allowed to assassinate American citizens whenever and wherever it likes? That’s now a
hot topic of debate.

There’s no evidence yet that the debate has reached inside the Obama administration. Like its predecessor, it simply assumes the right to assassinate. To be fair, “military and intelligence officials” told the Washington Post that there has to be “strong evidence” that the American corpse-to-be is “involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests.” And “the evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold.”

But what is the threshold? That’s a state secret. Who gets to define it? Another state secret. Who gets to decide whether it has been met? Yet another state secret. Nobody outside the executive branch ever gets to see the “strong evidence,” much less decide how strong it really is. In effect, then, the government can order an assassination whenever it wants.

Columnist Glenn Greenwald is understandably unhappy with this policy. “The Obama administration — like the Bush administration before it — defines the ‘battlefield’ as the entire world,” he writes. “So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so.”

How do we know that the president actually orders the assassins into action? The Washington Post story claimed that Obama ordered the recent assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen. But does that mean he must, or will, personally order every hit?

When the House Intelligence Committee asked Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair about the policy, he answered only that each proposed snuff job on a U.S. citizen has to “high-level government approval.” But since “he would rather not discuss the details of this criteria in open session,” no one knows just how high the level has to be. Since it’s all done in secret, we will probably never know.

That’s hardly the most critical issue here, though. I’m more troubled by Blair’s assurance that the administration is never “careless about endangering … lives at all. We especially are not careless about endangering American lives.” Why “especially”? Is it really worse when the U.S. government endangers American lives than when it endangers other lives?

Greenwald is the only commentator I’ve seen who has addressed this question directly, and his answer is a bit logically twisted. “Killing innocent foreigners is obviously no better than killing one’s own innocent citizens,” he rightly says. But in the next breath he asserts that there is a clear difference: “There’s a much greater danger from allowing a government to target its own citizens for extra-judicial killings” because it’s “a hallmark of tyranny,” while killing innocent foreigners is “at least a fairly common act of war.”

Really? When I was a philosophy major in college, my ethics professors taught me to think up hypothetical question that would probe the logic of such arguments. So I’d ask Glenn this one: Was it worse for the Nazis to exterminate Jews who were German citizens than Jews who were Polish or Hungarians or Dutch? Did the Nazis become less tyrannical once they crossed Germany’s borders and started shipping non-Germans to the gas chambers?

I do agree with another distinction that Glenn makes. This policy is morally worse than simply killing enemies in the heat of combat, because it can easily end up killing people who have taken no action, and never intended to take any action, that would harm the United States. Glenn cites the example of a journalist’s probe two years ago, which found that nearly a quarter of the prisoners held at Guatanamo had been formally cleared by the government of any wrongdoing (though they were still held there). If the innocent can be imprisoned, they can just as easily be assassinated.

Apparently the Obama administration sees it differently. Apparently they agree with the George W. Bush administration, whose revised National Security Strategy of the United States (2006) said publicly that the government should “anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction — and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”

The Bush NSS document called this “an enduring American principle” and justified it with seemingly unassailable logic: “The first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests.” The current administration seems to agree that this is an enduring principle. Or at least it’s helping to make it an enduring principle by continuing not merely the Bush policy but the Bush rationale. As the Washington Post story that started the current debate sums it up, the government can target anyone that it claims is acting “against the United States or U.S. interests.”

That brings us to the most critical question of all in this controversy. It’s not about who gets assassinated. It’s about why. What, exactly, are “U.S. interests”? If our tax dollars are being used to kill people who threaten those interests, we ought at least to know what they are.

Yet no one on the House Intelligence Committee seems to have asked Dennis Blair that question. I imagine that you don’t make it to the Intelligence Committee unless you go in circles where it simply isn’t asked. It’s taken for granted that everyone knows what that combination of words, “U.S.” and “interests” means. It’s like knowing a secret code that qualifies you for membership in a secret society.

The two versions of the National Security Strategy published by the Bush administration offered some valuable clues for cracking that code. The first version (2002) called for “a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.” It defined our values and interests in terms of “a balance of power that favors human freedom … These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society.” It included among the universal values “respect for private property.… policies that further strengthen market incentives and market institutions … [and] international flows of investment capital.” Those, presumably, would be our “national interests” too.

The revised version — the one that openly warned of “preemptive” killing even when we don’t know where or when (or whether!) the enemy will attack — still defined our “interests” in terms of American principles of liberty and justice, which “are right and true for all people everywhere.” “The liberty … to buy, sell, and own property is fundamental to human nature,” this version affirmed, and it too treated free markets and free trade as crucial to preserving freedom and the “national interest.”

We cannot know for sure that the Obama administration views “national interests” in the same way as its predecessor. But everyone in Obama’s foreign and national security policy inner circle comes from the same secret club as Bush’s. In the policy elite, as in any secret club, members can use the same secret code to send different messages. Still, the basic terms of their coded language remain the same.

Nothing in this administration’s record gives much reason to think it defines “national interests” very differently — except, perhaps, in one respect. The revised Bush NSS went out of its way to warn, in elegant code, that the U.S. would “encourage” governments of other nations “to make wise choices.” Since “economic development, responsible governance, and individual liberty are intimately connected,” responsible governments will “limit the reach of government, [and] protect the institutions of civil society, including … a market economy.”

In this case the coded message was easy enough to read: Since states that are not “responsible” and limit the free market pose a threat to “U.S. interests,” they would be just as open to preemptive attack by the U.S. as the “terrorists” themselves.

Is the Obama administration following the Bush approach on this score? In the current prime examples of “irresponsible” nations, Iran and North Korea, leaders are not targeted for U.S. assassination — as far as we know. But of course our government assumes the right to do its killing in secret, so we might never know.

We do know that Taliban leaders, who express no intention to attack the U.S., are being targeted for assassination. Is their crime a purported alliance with Al-Qaeda? Or is that they threaten to bring “irresponsible” government to Afghanistan and Pakistan; i.e., government that might not serve “U.S. interests,” including free markets and free trade?

Proponents of the “assassinate at will” policy assume that it’s used only against “terrorists.” And they may be right. Who knows? Since we are dealing with state secrets and secret code, no one can know for sure.

All we know is that the term “U.S. interests” is a huge, undefined umbrella. The executive branch can put under it anything they want. Which means that, in principle, the executive branch can assassinate anyone, American or not, for anything, any time they want — even for interfering with free markets, free trade, and free flows of capital.

And all the administration will offer in response is Dennis Blair’s vague, evasive “trust us.” Forgive me if I don’t find that very reassuring.

Top Intel Officer: U.S. May Kill Americans Abroad

2010-02-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

By John Byrne, Raw Story
February 4, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145543/

In a striking admission from the Obama Administration's top intelligence officer, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced Wednesday that the United States may target its own citizens abroad for death if it believes they are associated with terrorist groups.

"We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee. He said US counter-terrorism officials may try to kill American citizens embroiled in extremist groups overseas with "specific permission" from higher up.

If "we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," Blair said in response to questions from the panel's top Republican, Representative Pete Hoekstra.

Blair's comments came after The Washington Post reported that US President Barack Obama had embraced predecessor George W. Bush's policy of authorizing the killing of US citizens involved in terrorist activities overseas.

If a United States citizen was determined to have joined a foreign terrorist group, that person could be legally murdered under orders given by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks.

"After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said," the Post reported. "The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose 'a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,' said one former intelligence official.

"The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, 'it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,' said a senior administration official. 'They are then part of the enemy.'"

The Post, citing anonymous US officials, said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Joint Special Operations Command have three Americans on their lists of specific people targeted for killing or capture.

Blair said weighing whether to target a US national required determining "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans."

The intelligence chief said he was offering such unusually detailed information in public because "I just don't want other Americans who are watching to think that we are careless."

"In fact, we're not careless about endangering lives at all, but we especially are not careless about endangering American lives as we try to carry out the policies to protect most of the country," he said.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican, asked what the standards were for targeting American citizens abroad. Blair didn't specifically articulate them.

"We don't target people for free speech," he said. "We target them for taking action that threatens Americans."

Hoekstra pressed him, citing a 2001 incident in which Peru's air force shot down a plane carrying US missionaries, killing a woman and her seven-month-old daughter, after the aircraft was misidentified as a drug-smuggler.

"We were careless and we were reckless," Blair replied. "I want to make sure that this committee does everything that it can and within its power that it does not allow the community to be reckless and careless again."

"While I'm in charge, we will not be careless and reckless," he pledged.

Haiti doctors fear malaria and typhoid as rainy season arrives

2010-02-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

If malaria and typhoid doesn't kill the Haitians, the vaccines will! The evil puppet masters want the Haitians dead so they can take control of the Haitian natural resources including oil! More 'efficient' this way!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/haiti-disease-epidemics-earthquake

With a million Haitians homeless and disease spreading, the earthquake-shattered island is threatened by other natural forces
Tom Phillips in Port-au-Prince
The Observer
31 January 2010

Aid agencies are warning of an imminent health crisis in Haiti, as the onset of the rainy season brings fears of outbreaks of waterborne diseases in Port-au-Prince's squalid refugee camps.

With up to a million Haitians thought to have lost their homes in the earthquake, and hundreds of thousands still living in 600 squatter settlements around the capital, aid officials warn that the arrival of rain could present them with a further medical crisis after hospitals were initially swamped with patients needing amputations or treatment for crushing injuries. Haiti's rains normally come in February and the prospect of bad weather has aid workers and homeless people scared. The hurricane season starts in July.

"If it rains, there will be a great deal of disease," said Dr Thierry Causse, a GP from the French Red Cross who is working at a field clinic near the Place St Pierre refugee camp in Pétionville, where rivers of urine flow through the square.

"We are afraid of a typhoid epidemic, of a malaria epidemic. We have a lot of doctors here, but if there is an epidemic there will be a big problem. There could be a lot of dead people if it is not treated quickly and properly."

One of the largest refugee camps is in the city's football stadium, the Stade Sylvio Cator. On the pitch, thousands of homeless people have made shelters from tarpaulin, corrugated iron and rubble scavenged from fallen buildings. One family is living inside the cramped team dugout where Brazilian football stars such as Ronaldo once sat.

"Where I lived is all gone," said Benita Saint-Cyr, 37, one of three women living in the dugout with dozens of children. "I'm not dead, so all I can do now is pray."

Thervius Luckner, a community leader in the Place St Pierre camp, is also among the city's displaced population. "It always rains in February," he said. "I think it is only because of God that it hasn't rained so far. If it rains, people will be in trouble, the tents are not safe and some people don't even have tents. I got a message from a Haitian doctor to tell the people not to piss and shit in the camp because the kids will get sick."

The UN and the Haitian government say they are planning to move many of Port-au-Prince's homeless to camps outside the city, partly to avert risks of a serious epidemic, but in Place St Pierre such promises have yet to materialise.

"We had an announcement from the mayor saying they were building houses for people whose homes were destroyed," said Luckner. "They took people's names, but we haven't heard anything yet."

Around Luckner's shelter, a tiny cubicle made out of a black tarpaulin donated by a Buddhist relief group from Taiwan, live some of the people most at risk: mothers and their children, who spend the days playing in the filthy square.

"The doctors haven't come yet," said Yolene Philemond, 22, mother of a one-year-old son, when asked if any doctors had visited offering immunisation jabs. "We hope they are coming."

She pointed to a rash on her baby's arms. "He's infected. His body is cracked. I don't know what it is," said Philemond, whose house was levelled by the quake, killing one of her cousins.

"When there is a population displacement and lack of water and sanitation facilities, there is always a risk of diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera," said Roshan Khadivi of Unicef, adding that water and sanitation diseases were major killers of children under five. On Friday Unicef announced a "major immunisation campaign" for the city's children, after reports of measles among the young. Khadivi said the campaign against measles, diphtheria and tetanus would begin on Tuesday.

But aid agencies fear that unless these refugees are properly and rapidly re-housed in government and UN camps outside the city, waterborne diseases could easily proliferate in the squatter settlements, where the stench of raw sewage hangs in the air.

Bo Viktor Nylund, Unicef's senior child protection officer, said action was needed to move Port-au-Prince's homeless to more appropriate camps. "These temporary sites cannot go on for long," he said.

"They are sleeping in the street, peeing in the street and shitting in the street. Their parents are sad because they have lost children, friends or family members," said Pierre Biales, a Paris-based psychologist from the Red Cross, who is offering counselling and trying to teach basic hygiene to children in the camps. "Taking care of the children is now an emergency."

Dying for Health Care

2010-01-28T15:10:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dying-for-Health-Care-by-Hollis-Polk-100124-344.html

January 25, 2010
Dying for Health Care
By Hollis Polk

What's the difference between the outpouring of support for the Haitians after the earthquake, and the inability of our Congress to support American citizens with a bill providing health care for all?

It's the video, stupid.

We are deluged with videos of Haitians dying on the streets of Port-Au-Prince, their screams heard around the world. We see bodies piled by the side of the road, and mass graves being dug by backhoes. In the midst of this, doctors talk about preventable deaths.

There are 46,000 preventable deaths each year in the US, too. When the US story is told, however, all we see is town hall meetings -- people talking in a hearing room, tearfully telling stories about how their mother, or brother, or daughter, died because they couldn't get health care. Yes, their emotion carries, but it does not have the gut wrenching impact that it would have if those deaths were seen.

What we need is uninsured people dying on the Capitol steps, both in Washington, DC and in every state capitol, as well as the Federal Buildings in New York City and Los Angeles, to shame our government into passing universal health care. We need brave people, who want their deaths to count for something, to volunteer to die in public. (I realize this may be thought macabre, but the idea was born more of desperation than anything else.)

We need their families there with them to tell their stories, because the dying probably can't.

We need videographers to document these deaths, and put them up on YouTube, because the corporate media won't carry these stories until they are shamed into it by the viral nature of the 'amateur' videos.

We need an attorney to write a statement for the dying to sign, that they are volunteering to die in public, of their own free will, in order to protect those supporting them from any prosecution. We will probably need other attorneys to support these families, in case they are arrested for their civil disobedience. (Though it's difficult to imagine the police arresting a dying woman.)

We need other volunteers to support these brave souls, to provide care for the dying, and to provide logistical assistance.

So, if you know someone who is dying because of their lack of health insurance, ask that person, "Do you want your death to count for something?" and get into action.

"If the people lead, the leaders will follow."
Mahatma Gandhi

Presidential Assassinations of US Citizens

2010-01-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24516.htm

Presidential Assassinations of US Citizens
By Glenn Greenwald

January 27, 2010 "Salon" - - The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That's just the essence of war. That's why it's permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they're captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we're talking about here. The people on this "hit list" are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration -- like the Bush administration before it -- defines the "battlefield" as the entire world. So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks. That's quite a power for an American President to claim for himself.

As we well know from the last eight years, the authoritarians among us in both parties will, by definition, reflexively justify this conduct by insisting that the assassination targets are Terrorists and therefore deserve death. What they actually mean, however, is that the U.S. Government has accused them of being Terrorists, which (except in the mind of an authoritarian) is not the same thing as being a Terrorist. Numerous Guantanamo detainees accused by the U.S. Government of being Terrorists have turned out to be completely innocent, and the vast majority of federal judges who provided habeas review to detainees have found an almost complete lack of evidence to justify the accusations against them, and thus ordered them released. That includes scores of detainees held while the U.S. Government insisted that only the "Worst of the Worst" remained at the camp.

No evidence should be required for rational people to avoid assuming that Government accusations are inherently true, but for those do need it, there is a mountain of evidence proving that. And in this case, Anwar Aulaqi -- who, despite his name and religion, is every bit as much of an American citizen as Scott Brown and his daughters are -- has a family who vigorously denies that he is a Terrorist and is "pleading" with the U.S. Government not to murder their American son:

His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen.

"I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. . . .

"I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said.

"If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.

Who knows what the truth is here? That's why we have what are called "trials" -- or at least some process -- before we assume that government accusations are true and then mete out punishment accordingly. As Marcy Wheeler notes, the U.S. Government has not only repeatedly made false accusations of Terrorism against foreign nationals in the past, but against U.S. citizens as well. She observes: "I guess the tenuousness of those ties don't really matter, when the President can dial up the assassination of an American citizen."

A 1981 Executive Order signed by Ronald Reagan provides: "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Before the Geneva Conventions were first enacted, Abraham Lincoln -- in the middle of the Civil War -- directed Francis Lieber to articulate rules of conduct for war, and those were then incorporated into General Order 100, signed by Lincoln in April, 1863. Here is part of what it provided, in Section IX, entitled "Assassinations":

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

Can anyone remotely reconcile that righteous proclamation what the Obama administraiton is doing? And more generally, what legal basis exists for the President to unilaterally compile hit lists of American citizens he wants to be killed?

What's most striking of all is that it was recently revealed that, in Afghanistan, the U.S. had compiled a "hit list" of Afghan citizens it suspects of being drug traffickers or somehow associated with the Taliban, in order to target them for assassination. When that hit list was revealed, Afghan officials "fiercely" objected on the ground that it violates due process and undermines the rule of law to murder people without trials:

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised U.S. and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.

"They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes," Daud said. "We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own" . . . .

Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, said that he had long urged the Pentagon and its NATO allies to crack down on drug smugglers and suppliers, and that he was glad that the military alliance had finally agreed to provide operational support for Afghan counternarcotics agents. But he said foreign troops needed to avoid the temptation to hunt down and kill traffickers on their own.

"There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," he said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?" . . .

So we're in Afghanistan to teach them about democracy, the rule of law, and basic precepts of Western justice. Meanwhile, Afghan officials vehemently object to the lawless, due-process-free assassination "hit list" of their citizens based on the unchecked say-so of the U.S. Government, and have to lecture us on the rule of law and Constitutional constraints. By stark contrast, our own Government, our media and our citizenry appear to find nothing wrong whatsoever with lawless assassinations aimed at our own citizens. And the most glaring question for those who critized Bush/Cheney detention policies but want to defend this: how could anyone possibly object to imprisoning foreign nationals without charges or due process at Guantanamo while approving of the assassination of U.S. citizens without any charges or due process?

Glenn Greenwald: I was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. I am the author of two New York Times Bestselling books: "How Would a Patriot Act?" (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, and "A Tragic Legacy" (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy. My most recent book, "Great American Hypocrites", examines the manipulative electoral tactics used by the GOP and propagated by the establishment press, and was released in April, 2008, by Random House/Crown.

US weapon test aimed at Iran caused Haiti quake

2010-01-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116834§ionid=351020104

Report: US weapon test aimed at Iran caused Haiti quake
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:34:46 GMT

An unconfirmed report by the Russian Northern Fleets says the Haiti earthquake was caused by a flawed US Navy 'earthquake weapons' test before the weapons could be utilized against Iran.

United States Navy test of one of its 'earthquake weapons' which was to be used against Iran, went 'horribly wrong' and caused the catastrophic quake in the Caribbean, the website of Venezuela's ViVe TV recently reported, citing the Russian report.

After the report was released, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also made a similar claim, saying that a US drill, carried out in preparation for a deliberate attempt to cause an earthquake in Iran, had led to the deadly incident in Haiti, claiming more than 110,000 lives.

Though Russian Northern Fleets' report was not confirmed by official sources, the comments attracted special attention in some US and Russian media outlets including Fox news and Russia Today.

Russia Today's report said that Moscow has also been accused of possessing and utilizing such weapons.

In 2002, a Georgian Green Party leader claimed that Moscow had instigated an earthquake on Georgian territory, the TV channel said.

According to ViVe, the unconfirmed Russian report says earlier this month the US carried out a similar test in the Pacific Ocean, which also caused another 6.5 magnitude earthquake in an area near the town of Eureka, California.

The California quake resulted in no deaths or serious injury, but left many buildings damaged.

The Venezuelan news website said that the report also introduced the possibility that the US Navy may have had "full knowledge" of the damage that the test could cause.

The report also speculated that knowledge of the possible outcome was why the US military had pre-positioned the deputy commander of US Southern Command, General P. K. Keen, on the island so that he could oversee relief efforts if the need arose.

Based on the alleged report, the ultimate goal of the US weapons tests was to initiate a series of deadly earthquakes in Iran to topple the current Islamic system in the country.

The tests are believed to be part of the United States' High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which has been associated with many conspiracy theories.

Other than being blamed for earthquakes, HAARP has also been associated with weather anomalies that cause floods, droughts and hurricanes.

Some sources have even linked the 7.8 magnitude quake that shook the Chinese city of Sichuan in May 12, 2008 with the program.

Allegations have been made that since the late 1970's, the US has 'greatly advanced' the state of its earthquake weapons to the point where it is now utilizing devices that employ a Tesla Electromagnetic Pulse, Plasma and Sonic technology, along with 'shockwave bombs.'

Russia has accused the US military of employing such devices in Afghanistan to trigger the devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit the country back in March, 2002.

In the mid-1990s the Russian State Duma issued a press release on HAARP, which was signed by 90 deputies. The statement said the US was "creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high-frequency radio waves."

"The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons.”

“This new type of weapons differ from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component,” the statement explained.

In 1997, US Secretary of Defense William Cohen also expressed concern about activities that "can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."

The US government, however, has chosen to stick to its position that HAARP is merely a program aimed at analyzing the Earth's ionosphere for the purpose of developing communications and surveillance technology.

We're Executing Gitmo Prisoners and Calling It Suicide

2010-01-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/

Astonishing Report: We're Executing Gitmo Prisoners and Calling It Suicide
By Andy Worthington, Andy Worthington's Blog
January 21, 2010

It’s hard to know where to begin with this profoundly important story by Scott Horton, for next month's Harper’s Magazine (available on the web here), but let's try this: The three "suicides" at Guantánamo in June 2006 were not suicides at all. The men in question were killed during interrogations in a secretive block in Guantánamo, conducted by an unknown agency, and the murders were then disguised to look like suicides. Everyone at Guantánamo knew about it. Everyone covered it up. Everyone is still covering it up.

Establishing a case for murder -- and the disclosure of a secret prison at Guantánamo

The key to the discovery of the murder of the three men -- 37-year old Salah Ahmed al-Salami, a Yemeni, 30-year old Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, a Saudi, and 22-year old Yasser Talal al-Zahrani (photo, left), a Saudi who was just 17 when he was captured -- is Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, a former Marine who reenlisted in the Army National Guard after the 9/11 attacks, and was deployed to Guantánamo in March 2006, with his friend, Specialist Tony Davila. On arrival, Davila was briefed about the existence of "an unnamed and officially unacknowledged compound," outside the perimeter fence of the main prison, and explained that one theory about it was that "it was being used by some of the non-uniformed government personnel who frequently showed up in the camps and were widely thought to be CIA agents."

Hickman and Davila became fascinated by the compound -- known to the soldiers as "Camp No" (as in, "No, it doesn't exist") -- and Hickman was on duty in a tower on the prison's perimeter on the night the three men died, when he noticed that "a white van, dubbed the 'paddy wagon,' that Navy guards used to transport heavily manacled prisoners, one at a time, into and out of Camp Delta, [which] had no rear windows and contained a dog cage large enough to hold a single prisoner,” had called three times at Camp 1, where the men were held, and had then taken them out to "Camp No." All three were in “Camp No” by 8 pm.

At 11.30, the van returned, apparently dropping something off at the clinic, and within half an hour the whole prison "lit up." As Horton explains:

Hickman headed to the clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, to learn the reason for the commotion. He asked a distraught medical corpsman what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised. Davila told me he spoke to Navy guards who said the men had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats.

As Horton also explains:

The presence of a black site at Guantánamo has long been a subject of speculation among lawyers and human-rights activists, and the experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who died on June 9 were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths resulted from the grueling techniques the Justice Department had approved for the agency’s use -- or from other tortures lacking that sanction.

Complicating these questions is the fact that Camp No might have been controlled by another authority, the Joint Special Operations Command, which Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had hoped to transform into a Pentagon version of the CIA. Under Rumsfeld's direction, JSOC began to take on many tasks traditionally handled by the CIA, including the housing and interrogation of prisoners at black sites around the world.

The construction of the "suicide" narrative, and the widespread cover-up

This is disturbing enough, of course, and should lead to robust calls for an independent inquiry, but the problem may be that almost every branch of the government appears to be implicated in the cover-up that followed the deaths.

As Horton describes it, an official "suicide" narrative was soon established, and widely accepted by the media, if not by former prisoners and the dead men’s families. With extraordinary cynicism, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander at Guantánamo, not only declared the deaths "suicides," but added, "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." What was not mentioned were the rags stuffed into the prisoners’ mouths, even though this knowledge was widespread throughout the prison. Horton adds that when Col. Mike Bumgarner, the warden at Guantánamo, held a meeting the following morning, "the news had circulated through Camp America that three prisoners had committed suicide by swallowing rags."

He also states:

According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that "you all know" three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death … But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored.

Despite being "on-message," Bumgarner let slip to two visiting reporters from a US provincial newspaper -- the only ones who were not immediately hustled off the base -- that each of the men who had died "had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices." As punishment for straying off the script, Bumgarner was soon suspended, and had his office searched by the FBI.

Just as cynical were the authorities' attempts to silence the prisoners and their attorneys. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which was assigned to investigate the deaths, confiscated every single piece of paper in the possession of the prisoners, and, a few weeks later, "sought an after-the-fact justification." As Horton explains:

The Justice Department -- bolstered by sworn statements from Admiral Harris and from Carol Kisthardt, the special agent in charge of the NCIS investigation -- claimed in court that the seizure was appropriate because there had been a conspiracy among the prisoners to commit suicide. [The] Justice [Department] further claimed that investigators had found suicide notes and argued that the attorney-client materials were being used to pass communications among the prisoners.

It is now apparent that the authorities were desperate to ensure that no word of the events of June 9 was disclosed from prisoners to their attorneys. As David Remes, the attorney for 16 Yemenis, explained, the effect of the seizure "sent an unmistakable message to the prisoners that they could not expect their communications with their lawyers to remain confidential," but as part of its mission to blame attorneys for the deaths, the authorities went so far as to claim that Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, had persuaded another prisoner, the British resident Shaker Aamer, to call for the deaths from his cell. Speaking to the BBC's Newsnight in October 2006, Zachary Katznelson, an attorney at Reprieve, explained that he was told by one of his clients in Guantánamo in August 2006 that interrogators were trying to blame Stafford Smith, saying that "it was Clive's idea, Clive's brainchild, that people had to commit suicide to bring attention to the base and to then force the government to close it."

As Horton reveals, far from being the mastermind of a triple suicide, Shaker Aamer was himself beaten severely on the night of the deaths. As I have explained in previous articles, Aamer, an eloquent, charismatic man, who stood up relentlessly for the prisoners' rights, was regarded as a leader within Guantánamo by both the prisoners and the prison authorities. Held in solitary confinement after the suppression of a short-lived Prisoners' Council, convened in the summer of 2005, for which he was the Secretary, he was, nevertheless beaten severely for two and a half hours on the evening of June 9, around the same time that the three other men were in "Camp No."

As Horton also notes:

The United Kingdom has pressed aggressively for the return of British subjects and persons of interest. Every individual requested by the British has been turned over, with one exception: Shaker Aamer. In denying this request, US authorities have cited unelaborated "security" concerns. There is no suggestion that the Americans intend to charge him before a military commission, or in a federal criminal court, and, indeed, they have no meaningful evidence linking him to any crime. American authorities may be concerned that Aamer, if released, could provide evidence against them in criminal investigations. This evidence would include what he experienced on June 9, 2006 …

In the years following the deaths in June 2006, every official response has been a whitewash. The NCIS reluctantly produced a report in August 2008, accompanied by a brief and unenlightening statement, which I discussed here, and in December 2009 the Seton Hall Law School produced a devastating analysis of the flawed report, which, as Scott Horton explains, "made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners' deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report -- a reconstruction of the events -- was simply unbelievable."

As for the accounts of Sgt. Hickman and three other men (including Specialist Davila), Horton explains that they offered their accounts willingly and were not approached to do so. The trigger was Hickman, whose tour of duty ended in March 2007. As Horton describes it, however, "he could not forget what he had seen at Guantánamo. When Barack Obama became president, Hickman decided to act. 'I thought that with a new administration and new ideas I could actually come forward,' he said. 'It was haunting me.'"

The Cover-Up Continues

Hickman approached Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall, and his son Josh (also a lawyer), and told his story, followed by the other three men. However, although the Denbeauxs approached the Justice Department, and had a meeting in February last year with Rita Glavin, the acting head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, John Morton, soon to be an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, and Steven Fagell, counselor to the head of the Criminal Division, little came of it. After hearing the whole sordid story, the officials thanked the Denbeauxs for "not speaking to reporters first and for 'doing it the right way,'" and, two days later, Mark Denbeaux was called by Teresa McHenry, the head of the Criminal Division's Domestic Security Section, who told him that she was starting an investigation and wanted to meet directly with Hickman.

Hickman met McHenry, and gave her the names and contact details of corroborating witnesses, but then the trail went cold. In April, "an FBI agent called to say she did not have the list of contacts" and "asked if this document could be provided again," and soon after, Steven Fagell and two FBI agents interviewed Davila, who had left the Army, and asked him if he would travel to Guantánamo to identify the locations of various sites. "It seemed like they were interested,” Davila told Horton. "Then I never heard from them again."

In late October, as Mark Denbeaux was preparing to unveil the Seton Hall report, there was brief communication with McHenry again, but on November 2, she called to say that the investigation was being closed:

"It was a strange conversation," Denbeaux recalled. McHenry explained that “the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed.” But when Denbeaux asked what that "gist" actually was, McHenry declined to say. She just reiterated that Hickman’s conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported. Denbeaux asked what conclusions exactly were unsupported. McHenry refused to say.

Horton notes correctly that "the Justice Department has plenty of its own secrets to protect," because it "would seem to have been involved in the cover-up from the first days, when FBI agents stormed Colonel Bumgarner’s quarters," which was "unusual." He also explains that, when the Justice Department sought court approval for the NCIS seizure of all the prisoners' letters:

US District Court Judge James Robertson gave the Justice Department a sympathetic hearing, and he ruled in its favor, but he also noted a curious aspect of the government's presentation: its "citations supporting the fact of the suicides" were all drawn from media accounts. Why had the Justice Department lawyers who argued the case gone to such lengths to avoid making any statement under oath about the suicides? Did they do so in order to deceive the court? If so, they could face disciplinary proceedings or disbarment.

In addition, Horton notes the role played by lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who, of course, "had been deeply involved in the process of approving and setting the conditions for the use of torture techniques, issuing a long series of memoranda [widely known as the 'torture memos'] that CIA agents and others could use to defend themselves against any subsequent criminal prosecution.” Pointing a finger at Teresa McHenry, he explains that, "As a former war-crimes prosecutor, McHenry knows full well that government officials who attempt to cover up crimes perpetrated against prisoners in wartime face prosecution under the doctrine of command responsibility," and quotes Rear Admiral John Hutson, the former judge advocate general of the Navy, who told him:

Filing false reports and making false statements is bad enough, but if a homicide occurs and officials up the chain of command attempt to cover it up, they face serious criminal liability. They may even be viewed as accessories after the fact in the original crime.

In conclusion, Horton suggests that everyone charged with accounting for what happened on June 9, 2006 -- the prison command, the civilian and military investigative agencies, the Justice Department, and Attorney General Eric Holder -- "face a choice between the rule of law and the expedience of political silence," and, to date, have chosen the latter.

In passing, he mentions that the death of another prisoner in June last year -- a 31-year old Yemeni named Muhammad Salih -- also raises disturbing questions (as was reported by former prisoner Binyam Mohamed in an op-ed for the Miami Herald), and to this he could have added that the death of another Saudi, Abdul Rahman al-Amri, on May 30, 2007, also remains suspicious.

I urge you to read the whole report, as this précis has been little more than a way for me to try and grasp the main points presented in the article, which contains much more detailed and disturbing information, including shocking information about the autopsy (and information about the torture to which the men were clearly subjected), a touching meeting with Yasser al-Zahrani's father, General Talal al-Zahrani, and a detailed reiteration of some other important facts -- that none of the three men killed in June 2006 had any connection to terrorism, and that two had been cleared for release, but had not been told.

Despite studying Guantánamo on a full-time basis for nearly four years, this is one of the most chilling accounts of the prison that I have ever read, and one which should not only lead to an independent inquiry, but also to calls to press ahead with the closure of Guantánamo -- and the repatriation of as many prisoners as possible -- without further delay.

Scott Horton doesn't ask another pertinent question -- whether it is feasible that the three men died as a result of "enhanced interrogations" that went too far, or whether they were deliberately murdered. The panic that greeted the arrival of the corpses at the clinic on that dreadful day suggests the former, but on reflection it seems unlikely that three accidental deaths could occur in such a short space of time. As Guantánamo takes on a new name -- the Death Camp -- these doubts need to be addressed one way or another. Neither murder nor manslaughter is acceptable, of course, but neither is it acceptable for this disgraceful cover-up to continue.

As Yasser al-Zahrani’s father explained to Horton:

The truth is what matters. They practiced every form of torture on my son and on many others as well. What was the result? What facts did they find? They found nothing. They learned nothing. They accomplished nothing.

Andy Worthington is a writer and historian, and author of The Guantánamo Files.

The Guantanamo "Suicides" and the Dishonor Upon Us All

2010-01-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Guantanamo-Suicides--by-Stephen-Soldz-100118-150.html

January 18, 2010
By Stephen Soldz

My friends who served in the military speak of the pride with they performed what they viewed as their duty. This duty included the obligation to act with honor, including, above all, following the Geneva Conventions when handling detainees and prisoners of war. My friends tell sadly of the despair they felt in seeing this obligation shredded during the Bush administration as word came down that they should do "whatever it takes." Some of them resigned in disgust. Others resisted what they viewed as moral decay from within.

A new story by attorney Scott Horton at Harpers reveals yet another very disturbing episode of dishonor. Horton reveals strong credible evidence that three alleged "suicides" at Guantanamo in June 2006 were really homicides. The official story is that during the night of June 9, 2006, three prisoners were found hanging in their cells in Alpha Block of Guantanamo's Camp 1.

The deaths were immediately proclaimed suicides, as examples of vicious "asymmetric warfare," and all service members present were informed that they were not to challenge this conclusion. Early reports made no mention of the rags reportedly found stuffed down their throats that might lead to questioning of the suicide claim. Secret autopsies by unknown physicians were conducted. When the bodies were received by families, portions of the throat, including the larynx and nearby bones, were missing, thus removing evidence of how the men died. Requests by independent pathologists for the missing organs went unanswered by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Nonetheless, the bodies showed signs of bruising, hemorrhaging, and needle marks suggesting that they had been tortured. The father of one of the men, a Saudi police brigadier general, examined his son's body and proclaimed the death a homicide:

"There was a major blow to the head on the right side," he said. "There was evidence of torture on the upper torso, and on the palms of his hand. There were needle marks on his right arm and on his left arm." None of these details are noted in the U.S. autopsy report. "I am a law enforcement professional," Al-Zahrani said. "I know what to look for when examining a body."

We already knew from work by Mark Denbeaux and students at Seton Hall Law School that the official investigation of these deaths by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service [NCIS] was not credible as many potential witnesses were not questioned and such important sources of information as the surveillance videotapes of the hallways outside the cell where the prisoners allegedly hung themselves were never examined.

Horton also reveals for the first time the existence of a hidden "black site" facility at Guantanamo, nicknamed "Camp No" because anyone who asked if it existed was told "No, it doesn't." Horton speculates that Camp No is run, either by the CIA or by the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, which was commanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, appointed by Obama to be the commanding general in Afghanistan. JSOC is well known to those concerned with US torture because some of the most brutal interrogations in Iraq were reportedly conducted by JSOC. The Washington Post and New York Times recently revealed reports of abuses at a secret JSOC-run detention facility at Bagram air base. [See also the 2008 New York Times article mentioning the existence of prisoners held by JSOC at Bagram.]

Horton reports guards' accounts of a mysterious van that transported three prisoners toward Camp No earlier in the evening of June 9. The van returned late that evening and backed up into a dock, as if unloading cargo. Shortly thereafter, the deaths were announced.

Horton speculates that the dead prisoners were tortured at Camp No on the night of their deaths. As evidence of torture he produces the account in a sworn federal court deposition of a fourth detainee,

Shaker Aamer, in which Aamer reports abuse that same night:

On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.

The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face "so he could not cry out" is an alarming fact. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners.

Despite pressure from Britain, the US has refused to release Mr. Aamer, citing "security concerns." Horton speculates that those concerns may be that Aamer could be a witness in a criminal prosecution of those responsible for the three June 9 deaths. However, the connection to the deaths is speculative, partly because there is no report in Aamer's account of his being transported to a separate facility before his abuse.

Horton does not discuss the fate of Camp No. If it was open in 2006, it may still open, as is apparently the JSOC prison at Bagram. Certainly, no press reports have announced its closing. It is to be hoped that Horton's article, by pulling pack the veil on some dark secrets, will ultimately lead to answers to this and other open questions.

No fair reader of Horton's account can end reading it without serious questions regarding what happened that June night three and a half years ago. The testimony of the guards, along with evidence of inconsistencies in the official account, make the account of a triple suicide extremely unlikely. The only other alternative is that these men were killed, possibly as a result of "enhanced interrogation" torture gone awry. But even that explanation has problems. How could three "accidental" deaths occur in the same night using the same techniques? If the deaths were unintentional, why didn't the torturers stop after one, or even two, deaths? Given this question, the possibility that the three men were deliberately murdered cannot be ruled out.

As Horton tells it, immediately after the murders, our government went into high gear, controlling the press, concocting the suicide cover story, and acting to destroy evidence and intimidate witnesses in order to destroy doubts about the official account. The FBI raided the home of a Guantanamo Colonel whose ego apparently led him to allow a press team to report on the rags stuffed down the dead men's throat. NCIS conducted its sham investigation, while intimidating the detainees and guards into silence, including by seizing every piece of paper, including confidential attorney-client communications, from the prisoners. When Justice Department lawyers defended this seizure in court, they relied upon press accounts of the "suicides," thus potentially avoiding making false statements under oath about the deaths

Horton also reveals that the Obama administration has been aware of the cover-up since February, 2010, when a Military Intelligence Staff Sergeant who witnessed suspicious events the night of the murders went to them. The Obama Justice Department "investigated" and then dismissed the report, despite confirmation from several military police ion duty that night. Only then did this Sergeant seek out the press.

Horton's revelations place our country at an important crossroads. There have certainly been a number of other deaths previously attributed to detainee abuse. However, the June 9, 2006 deaths are especially notable both in that they occurred far from the battlefield and in the extent of potential high-level cover-up involved.

This report that there is credible evidence of murder by our government, and that many government agencies may have participated in a cover-up constitutes a grave moral crisis for the nation. Will we demand an independent investigation, and accountability if justified? Or is the possibility of government murder just something we will accept? Does President Obama's vaunted desire to "look forward and not backward" includes possible homicide?

As Horton quotes retired Rear Admiral John Hutson

"Filing false reports and making false statements is bad enough, but if a homicide occurs and officials up the chain of command attempt to cover it up, they face serious criminal liability. They may even be viewed as accessories after the fact in the original crime." With command authority comes command responsibility, he said. "If the heart of the military is obeying orders down the chain of command, then its soul is accountability up the chain. You can't demand the former without the latter."

In our system of government, the President is the Commander in Chief. As the one at the top of the command structure, he bears ultimate responsibility "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."It is his duty to guarantee a truly independent investigation of these charges. Unfortunately, given the possible involvement of numerous government agencies, including the NCIS, FBI and Justice Department, no investigation through the ordinary channels can possible be credible. We need an investigation truly independent of all government agencies that may have participated in a possible cover-up.

However, the responsibility does not rest with the President alone. As citizens it is our duty to insist that he acts. Only through a thorough independent investigation of these charges, and of the entire spectrum of abuses that occurred during the "War on Terror," can my military friends' honor be restored. They, and we, need to know that the words in the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not to mention the US Constitution, are more than words cynically taught to new recruits. These new accusations will provide a test of what type of people we are.

The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust

2010-01-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=The-Right-Testicle-of-Hell-by-Greg-Palast-100117-242.html

January 17, 2010
The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust
By Greg Palast

Blackwater before drinking water

1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?

2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.

6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed -- without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.

9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.

11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?

Don't blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers' death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)

12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.

13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.

14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since.

From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves' successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.

15. Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!

16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.

***
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.

Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.

Killing Organizers in Honduras

2010-01-12T18:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.counterpunch.org/shansky01052010.html

Left to Fend for Themselves: Killing Organizers in Honduras
Joseph Shansky
Counterpunch
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:15 EST

The bodies of slain activists are piling up in Honduras. While it's being kept quiet in most Honduran and international media, the rage is building among a dedicated network of friends spreading the word quickly with the tragic announcement of each compañero/a.

Now that the world heard from mainstream news outlets such as the New York Times of a "clean and fair" election on Nov. 29 (orchestrated by the US-supported junta currently in power), the violence has increased even faster than feared.

The specific targets of these killings have been those perceived as the biggest threats to the coup establishment. The bravest, and thus the most vulnerable: Members of the Popular Resistance against the coup. Their friends and family. People who provide the Resistance with food and shelter. Teachers, students, and ordinary citizens who simply recognize the fallacy of an un-elected regime taking over their country. All associated with the Resistance have faced constant and growing repercussions for their courage in protesting the coup. With the international community given the green light by the US that democratic order has returned via elections, it's open season for violent forces in Honduras working to tear apart the political unity of the Resistance Front against the coup.

The killings are happening almost faster than they can be recorded.

On Sunday, Dec. 7, a group of six people were gunned down while walking down the street in the Villanueva neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. According to sources, a white van with no license plates stopped in front of the group. Four masked men jumped out of the van and forced the group to get on the ground, where they were shot. The five victims who were killed were:
Marcos Vinicio Matute Acosta, 39

Kennet Josué Ramírez Rosa, 23

Gabriel Antonio Parrales Zelaya, 34

Roger Andrés Reyes Aguilar, 22

Isaac Enrique Soto Coello, 24
One woman, Wendy Molina, 32, was shot several times and played dead when one of the assassins pulled her hair, checking to see if anyone in the group was still alive. She was taken to the hospital and survived.

The Honduran independent newspaper El Libertador reports that the group members were all organizers against the coup. According to a resident in the area, "The boys had organized committees so that the neighbors could get involved in the Resistance Front."

This massacre was part of a string of Resistance-related murders during the past few weeks alone. On December 3, Walter Trochez, 25 a well-known activist in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community was snatched off the street and thrown into a van, again by four masked men, in downtown Tegucigalpa. In the report that he later filed to local and national authorities, Walter said he was interrogated for hours for information on Resistance members and activities, and was beaten in the face with a pistol for refusing to speak. He was told that he would be killed regardless, and he eventually escaped by throwing open the van door, falling into the street, and running away.

It wasn't the first time Walter had been subject to these kinds of threats. He was a much-loved organizer against the coup who had been documenting human rights violations, particularly in the gay community. Walter had just published two articles. One following the elections was titled "The Triumph of Abstentionism", on the success of the effort by the Resistance to encourage citizens to refuse to vote. The other was called "Escalation of Hate and Homophobic Crimes against the LGBTT Community Rooted in the Civil-Religious-Military Coup d'état in Honduras".

In both, he concludes: "As a revolutionary I will be today, tomorrow and forever on the front lines of my people, all the while knowing that I may lose my life".

On Dec. 13, one week later, Walter was shot in the chest by a drive-by gunman while walking home. He died at the hospital.

On Dec. 5, Santos Garcia Corrales, an active member of the National Resistance Front, was detained by security forces in New Colony Capital, south of Tegucigalpa. He was then tortured for information on a local merchant who was providing food and supplies to the Resistance. After reporting the incident to local authorities, Santos' body was found five days later on Dec 10, decapitated.

There have been others as well, notably a rise in murders in the LGBT community since the coup. In particular, several transvestites have been recently killed in similarly gruesome ways. Human rights advocates report that "up to 18 gay and transgender men have been killed nationwide - as many as the five prior years - in the nearly six months since a political crisis rocked the nation."

The latest victim, Carlos Turcios, was kidnapped outside his home in Choloma Cortes, at three in the afternoon of Wednesday Dec. 16. He was found dead the next day, with his hands and head cut off. Carlos had been vice-president of the Choloma chapter of the Resistance Front, a town located a few hours outside of the capital. Andres Pavón, president of CODEH (Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras), commented: "We believe this horrendous crime joins others where the bodies show signs of brutal torture...This aggression is directed to the construction of collective fear."

It is a sinister effort to shake up a community that is now in fact stronger than ever. As Walter Trochez noted (and CNN confirmed), most of the country refused to go to the polls that day. Many of the world's governments, including most of Latin America, refused to recognize the results.

In this climate of fierce repression, citizens can no longer depend on authorities for the most basic protective rights, and those fearful for their lives cannot report to the police. Complaints they file, such as those of Santos and Walter, could soon become signatures to their own death letters. Many believe with good reason that the killings are state-sponsored. At the very least, they are the result of new conditions which allow for the widespread deterioration of state protection.

Pavón and other human rights leaders in Honduras have been extremely vocal in denouncing these atrocities, but the story has remained under the radar for most Hondurans and almost all international media. At the time when Hondurans most need exposure to these abuses, they've been left to fend for themselves.

How did this happen? Why are people being randomly executed in dark corners of the country for simply standing in opposition to a military coup?

Most of the bloodshed is on the hands of coup president Roberto Micheletti and other leaders of the regime. However, President Barack Obama and the US State Department played a major role in allowing conditions to get to this point. The US government took no concrete action against the thousands of documented violations since the coup took place June 28. It's no shock that the violence has worsened dramatically with the eyes of the world now averted.

In a recent interview, Francisco Rios of the National Front Against the Coup reiterated Frente communiqués which stated that the Resistance, though now lying low, is preparing a massive organization effort for next year and beyond. Rios reported that they have stopped meeting publicly as a safety measure for now, but will soon begin dividing into chapters around the country with plans to emerge as a new, strengthened political force. Walter, Santos, Carlos, and all of the Resistance fighters who gave their lives have inspired others in the movement to continue the struggle for justice in Honduras.

Joseph Shansky was reporting from Honduras during the recent military coup, and can be reached at fallow3@gmail.com. More articles on the coup in Honduras are available at j-shansky.net

British soldiers tortured and murdered Iraqi grandmother

2010-01-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242205/Princess-Wales-Royal-Regiment-soldiers-tortured-murdered-Iraqi-grandmother.html

Sophie Borland
UK Daily Mail
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:18 EST

Gather round troops, I've a little secret I want to tell you: we're not here to help Iraqis - we're here to blast them back to the stone age.

British soldiers are being investigated over allegations they tortured and murdered a 62-year-old Iraqi grandmother.

The body of Sabiha Khudur Talib was found dumped by the roadside three years ago after her family home was raided by troops.

The Royal Military Police are now investigating claims from her relatives that she was led away by soldiers from the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment before being brutally tortured and shot.

It is one of the most serious charges levied against the British Army during its six-year occupation in southern Iraq.

Ministers are to be handed crime reports filed by Basra police that conclude Mrs Talib's body was dumped by a roadside in a British bodybag in November 2006.

Injuries to her face were consistent with torture and she had been shot in the abdomen.

Lawyers for Mrs Talib's family say their are preparing legal action in the High Court against the MOD.

Statements from relatives who were at home during the raid claim that they saw her being led away by British soldiers shortly before she died.

The MOD confirmed that Mrs Talib was shot by British soldiers from the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment in 2006 but deny she was murdered or tortured.

But an investigation led by Lieutenant Haidar Yashaa Salman from Al-Qibla police station of the Al-Hussein Police Directorate in Iraq concluded: 'At 11 o'clock, we were informed by the police operation room of the finding of a dumped body, so went to the site and found out that the body belonged to the victim Sabiha Khudur Talib, who was arrested by the British forces on 14-15 November 2006.

'I saw the body in a brown dish- dash [one-piece tunic], bare feet and hands with marks of handcuffs.'

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, who is representing the family told The Independent: 'The possibility that British forces in 2006 could have tortured and executed an innocent elderly woman should shock the nation.

'Such an allegation must be immediately independently investigated as a possible murder.'

A sign of empire pathology

2010-01-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=268359

A sign of empire pathology
By Finian Cunningham
January 12, 2010

Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).

Since 2001, when Washington launched its so-called war on terror, there has been a dramatic year-on-year increase in US military suicides, particularly in the army, which has borne the brunt of fighting abroad. Last year saw the highest total number since such records began in 1980. Prior to 2001, the suicide rate in the US military was lower than that for the general US population; now, it is nearly double the national average.

A growing number of these victims have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. What these figures should tell us is that there is something fundamentally deranged about Washington’s “war on terror” – which is probably why western news media prefer to ignore the issue. How damning is it about such military campaigns that the number of US soldiers who take their own lives outnumber those killed by enemy combatants.

What is even more disturbing is that the official figures only count victims of suicide among serving personnel. Not included are the many more veterans – officially classed a civilians – who take their own lives.

Most likely, these deaths are reported in some small-town newspaper in “a brief” news item with no context or background as to what drove these individuals to take their own lives. It is estimated that the suicide rate among veterans demobbed from fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is as high as four times the national average. The US Department of Veteran Affairs calculates that over 6,000 former service personnel commit suicide every year.

Many of these men have come home to a country they have fought for only to find no jobs, their homes repossessed by banks that have enjoyed trillion-dollar bailouts and broken relationships.

Meanwhile, President Obama – the erstwhile peace candidate – has taken on the role of Commander in Chief with gusto, telling his countrymen and women that they are fighting a “just war” to “defend American lives”. Only a year ago, he was campaigning for the presidency on a ticket to end such wars. Now, more than his predecessor, George W Bush, Obama is committing to wars without end. How soul-destroying is that for a grunt holed up in a bunker, with his young family back home probably telling him that they have just signed up for food stamps? In their guts, these US soldiers must know – as many other ordinary people around the world do – that these wars are nothing but a desperate, pathological bid by a dying power to salvage its crumbling empire – an empire that enriches a tiny elite and impoverishes the majority. Is it any wonder that many of them simply lose the will to live?

The issue of 10,000 disappeared persons haunts Pakistan government

2010-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-issue-of-10-000-disapp-by-Abdus-Sattar-Ghaza-100109-173.html

January 9, 2010
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Rocking the unpopular US-client government of President Asif Ali Zardari, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has reopened the cases of thousands of missing or disappeared persons during General Musharraf's regime. In a major setback to the government, Pakistan's Supreme Court last month declared the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) as unconstitutional and ordered the government to reopen money laundering case against him in Switzerland.

Perhaps the issue of missing persons and the NRO's legality were the main causes behind the US and President Zardari's reluctance to reinstate the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftekhar Chaudhry. However, under intensive public pressure and massive pro-Chief Justice demonstrations, President Zardari and Washington agreed to his restoration in March last year.

Now the nightmare is coming true.

The Supreme Court decision against the NRO has already opened a Pandora's box. There are calls for the resignation of President Zardari and many of his ministers who were given amnesty under the NRO.

On January 7, 2010, the Supreme Court opened another front against the Zardari government with the resumption of hearings on the case of thousands of disappeared or missing persons apparently kidnapped by the intelligence agencies and many of whom have been handed over to the United States.

What is an enforced disappearance?

An enforced disappearanceoccurs when a person is arrested, detained or abducted by the state or agents acting for the state, who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law. Very often, people who have disappeared are never released and their fate remains unknown.

Governments use enforced disappearance as a tool of repression to silence dissent and eliminate political opposition, as well as to persecute ethnic, religious and political groups. In recent years, in the course of the "war on terror", the U.S., sometimes with the complicity of other governments, has carried out enforced disappearances of terror suspects.

The term 'disappearance' was created during the 1960s at the School of Americas, an institute set up by the US military at Fort Guilick in Panama, which ran there till 1984. 45,000 Latin American officers were trained in counter insurgency there. Along with anti-guerrilla tactics, they were taught how to torture, and how to 'manage' prisoners. As soon as the officers left for their home countries, they applied what they had learned with 'disappearances' taking place in a large number of South American nations through the 1960s and 1970s. Four decades on, the families of the 'disappeared', in Argentina, in Chile, in Venezuela and in other countries are still pursuing the matter and are succeeding in gaining at least some justice.

A generation ago, officials from Argentina's Naval Mechanics School, known by its Spanish acronym, ESMA, secretly loaded drugged prisoners into aircraft and threw them out over the brown and frigid waters. As many as 5,000 people were "disappeared" at the hands of ESMA, perhaps the most horrifying symbol of South American repression in the 1970s.

In December 2009, almost 40 years after these crimes were committed, 19 officials from ESMA, who were previously given amnesty by the government, finally appeared in court.

Not surprisingly, similar methods are being adopted by the Pakistani intelligence agencies in their cooperation with Washington's "war on terror.' During the Musharraf era, people were picked up from their homes, work places, even from buses and till now the families of those disappeared don't know about their dear ones. There are calls that not only the disappeared people should be recovered but those responsible for their kidnapping should be punished just as is happening in Latin America after four decades.

Often, forced disappearance implies murder. "The practice often involves an extra-judicial killing followed by the concealment of the body to get rid of any material evidence of the crime and to ensure the impunity of those responsible," says Iqbal Haider, Secretary-General, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Pakistan's disappeared persons

Nobody knows the exact number of the people who have been picked up by the intelligence agencies during the last few years, particularly after 9/11. According to the Defense of Human Rights of Pakistan, between 8,000 to10,000 people disappeared while a government list provided to the Supreme Court, says 1,390 people are missing. Baluchistan province's government says that 922 Baluchis are missing. It may be added that a separatist movement is underway in Baluchistan province while several Sindhi separatist groups are working under the umbrella of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz.

Who are the missing persons? They include Sindhi and Balochi nationalists, those suspected of involvement with militant groups, journalists, others who seem to fit no definite category but may have, in one way or the other, evoked the ire of influential people.

The missing persons' case has dominated apex court proceedings for more than four years now. In November 2007, it also led to the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry by the military ruler President General Parwez Musharraf. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was reinstated in March 2009 after an intensive civil society campaign.

During Wednesday's proceedings, when Advocate Hashmat Habib requested the court to summon heads of the Military Intelligence and the Inter-Services Intelligence, the presiding judge, Justice Javed Iqbal, said that last time when "we tried to summon them we were sent home for almost 16 months".

Since Pakistan's involvement in the US-led "war on terror" seven years ago, several hundred Pakistanis have been abducted, detained and tortured. Some have been handed over to US intelligence officials. The former President General Musharraf acknowledged in his book "In the line of fire": We have captured 689 (people) and handed over 369 to the United States. Various people have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars. (Page 237)

Interestingly, Acting Attorney-General Shah Khawar informed the Supreme Court in November last that a detailed list of people handed over to the US by the Musharraf regime would help a lot in resolving the cases of missing persons. Apparently, the civilian government is not in a position to get such a list from the intelligence agencies which operate outside the control of the civilian government. In 2006, officials of the defense and interior ministries told the Sindh High Court in a case involving the disappearance of three political activists that the Military Intelligence and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) did not fall under their operational control.

Human rights groups across the country have been taking out rallies on a regular basis to keep the issue alive. However, so far very few of the missing persons have been recovered.

In 2006 the Supreme Court took up regular hearings of petitions filed on behalf of Pakistan's 'disappeared' or missing persons. However, in November 2007, Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency and deposed the majority of judges. Since the elections in February 2008, not much has improved for the "disappeared" or their families. Amnesty International has called on the new government to act now to end this grave human rights violation.

Surprisingly, kidnapping of people continues under the present government. According to the Chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Asma Jehangir, at least 30 people are missing from Swat where the Pakistan army has been operating since May 2009. She says that there are reports of missing persons from South Punjab, Sindh and NWFP even after a democratic government came into power after February 2008 elections.

The case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

The case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui echoed during Wednesday's proceedings when her counsel, Advocate Hashmat Habib, requested the bench to ask the concerned authorities to inform how Dr. Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, went missing and was handed over to the US.

Trial of Aafia Siddiqui, accused of firing at U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan, begins in New York on January 19.

In 2003, Dr. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared while on their way to Karachi airport to get a flight to Islamabad. In August 2008, US officials claimed she had been in their custody in Afghanistan only since July 2008, even though she had disappeared five years earlier. The whereabouts of her two children remain unknown.

Case studies of some of the disappeared persons

Asad Usman, a nine-year-old boy, was picked up by the Balochistan Frontier Constabulary paramilitary force, who is on the record as saying that he would be released after his wanted elder brother surrendered. He was detained in Tump or Mand, near Turbat in Balochistan province. The Supreme Court ordered his release on April 27, 2007.

Masood Janjua, a 45-year-old businessman, was apprehended by Pakistani security forces while on a bus in July 2005 with his friend Faisal Faraz, a 25-year-old engineer from Lahore. The government has not acknowledged that it is holding Janjua, despite testimony from several former detainees. His wife, Amna Janjua, is now heading the Defence of Human Rights organization.

Dr Imran Munir, a Malaysian citizen of Pakistani origin, was arrested in July 2006 and his whereabouts remained unknown until the Supreme Court was informed in its hearing on May 4, 2007, that he was facing a court martial on charges of "spying against Pakistan". A month later, the court was informed that Dr Munir had been sentenced to eight years in prison.

The court ordered his appearance in court and, on finding that his health was deteriorating, ordered his admission into hospital. Dr Munir was set to record his statement regarding his enforced disappearance when the hearing was disrupted with the imposition of the state of emergency in November 2007. Dr Munir's conviction was set aside by military authorities after the Supreme Court questioned the conviction. Dr Munir is still confined to a hospital in Islamabad.

Shamsun Nissa, 60, remembers her only son Attiqur Rehman, who she says was picked up by intelligence agencies from his hometown Abbottabad on the day he was to get married in June 2004.

Saud Memon, a Karachi businessman, disappeared in March 2003. He was wanted in connection with the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl as he allegedly owned the shed where Pearl's body was found. Four years later, Memon was dropped off, emaciated and near death, at the doorstep of his family home in Karachi. He died two weeks later. While hospital authorities said he died of tuberculosis and meningitis, his family alleged he had been tortured by the authorities. He was never officially arrested or detained and lost contact with the family. Investigators at Human Rights Watch believe he was held in CIA custody before being turned over to Pakistani intelligence agents.

Abid Zaidi, 26, was released from illegal captivity by the law enforcement agencies. Narrating his ordeal of prolonged torture and ill-treatment, he said that he was kidnapped on false charges of being involved in a bomb blast in Karachi. "I was handcuffed and blindfolded for over three months during which they constantly accused me of the crime I was not involved in and forced me to admit that I was a part of the conspiracy," he said. Abid, who is a PhD from the KarachiUniversity, was "picked up' on April 26, 2006, and was released three months later.

International convention on the disappeared

August 30th, 2010, will be the 27th International Day of the Disappeared. Every year, Amnesty International, along with other NGOs, families associations and grassroots groups, remembers the disappeared and demands justice for victims of enforced disappearances through activities and events.

To combat enforced disappearance, in 2006 the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Once entered into force, the Convention will be an effective way to help prevent enforced disappearances, establish the truth about this crime, punish the perpetrators and provide reparations to the victims and their families

The Convention's definition of enforced disappearance is:

"The arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons, or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."

The Convention addresses the violations linked to an enforced disappearance and the problems facing those who try to investigate and hold perpetrators to account. It also recognizes the families' rights to know the truth about the fate of a disappeared person and to obtain reparations.

The Convention obliges states to protect witnesses and to hold any person involved in an enforced disappearance criminally responsible. It also requires states to institute stringent safeguards for people deprived of their liberty; to search for the disappeared person and, if they have died, to locate, respect and return the remains.

The Convention also requires states to prosecute alleged perpetrators present in their territory, regardless of where they may have committed the crime, unless they decide to extradite them to another state or surrender them to an international criminal court.

The Convention is now only a few ratifications away from entering into force. Amnesty International calls on all governments that have not done so already to ratify the Convention as soon as possible. Ratification will send a powerful signal that enforced disappearances will not be tolerated and will give those searching for their loved ones a much needed new tool.

Intriguingly, Pakistan is not a signatory to the UN Convention on disappeared persons. Currently Amnesty International is focusing its ratification campaign on the following ten countries: Burundi, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Portugal, Serbia, and Timor Leste.

The Black Sites

2010-01-11T08:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer

THE BLACK SITES
A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.
by Jane Mayer
AUGUST 13, 2007

In the war on terror, one historian says, the C.I.A. “didn’t just bring back the old psychological techniques—they perfected them.”

In March, Mariane Pearl, the widow of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, received a phone call from Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General. At the time, Gonzales’s role in the controversial dismissal of eight United States Attorneys had just been exposed, and the story was becoming a scandal in Washington. Gonzales informed Pearl that the Justice Department was about to announce some good news: a terrorist in U.S. custody—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks—had confessed to killing her husband. (Pearl was abducted and beheaded five and a half years ago in Pakistan, by unidentified Islamic militants.) The Administration planned to release a transcript in which Mohammed boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

Pearl was taken aback. In 2003, she had received a call from Condoleezza Rice, who was then President Bush’s national-security adviser, informing her of the same news. But Rice’s revelation had been secret. Gonzales’s announcement seemed like a publicity stunt. Pearl asked him if he had proof that Mohammed’s confession was truthful; Gonzales claimed to have corroborating evidence but wouldn’t share it. “It’s not enough for officials to call me and say they believe it,” Pearl said. “You need evidence.” (Gonzales did not respond to requests for comment.)

The circumstances surrounding the confession of Mohammed, whom law-enforcement officials refer to as K.S.M., were perplexing. He had no lawyer. After his capture in Pakistan, in March of 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency had detained him in undisclosed locations for more than two years; last fall, he was transferred to military custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There were no named witnesses to his initial confession, and no solid information about what form of interrogation might have prodded him to talk, although reports had been published, in the Times and elsewhere, suggesting that C.I.A. officers had tortured him. At a hearing held at Guantánamo, Mohammed said that his testimony was freely given, but he also indicated that he had been abused by the C.I.A. (The Pentagon had classified as “top secret” a statement he had written detailing the alleged mistreatment.) And although Mohammed said that there were photographs confirming his guilt, U.S. authorities had found none. Instead, they had a copy of the video that had been released on the Internet, which showed the killer’s arms but offered no other clues to his identity.

Further confusing matters, a Pakistani named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had already been convicted of the abduction and murder, in 2002. A British-educated terrorist who had a history of staging kidnappings, he had been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the crime. But the Pakistani government, not known for its leniency, had stayed his execution. Indeed, hearings on the matter had been delayed a remarkable number of times—at least thirty—possibly because of his reported ties to the Pakistani intelligence service, which may have helped free him after he was imprisoned for terrorist activities in India.

Mohammed’s confession would delay the execution further, since, under Pakistani law, any new evidence is grounds for appeal.

A surprising number of people close to the case are dubious of Mohammed’s confession. A longtime friend of Pearl’s, the former Journal reporter Asra Nomani, said, “The release of the confession came right in the midst of the U.S. Attorney scandal.

There was a drumbeat for Gonzales’s resignation. It seemed like a calculated strategy to change the subject. Why now? They’d had the confession for years.” Mariane and Daniel Pearl were staying in Nomani’s Karachi house at the time of his murder, and Nomani has followed the case meticulously; this fall, she plans to teach a course on the topic at Georgetown University. She said, “I don’t think this confession resolves the case. You can’t have justice from one person’s confession, especially under such unusual circumstances. To me, it’s not convincing.” She added, “I called all the investigators. They weren’t just skeptical—they didn’t believe it.”

Special Agent Randall Bennett, the head of security for the U.S. consulate in Karachi when Pearl was killed—and whose lead role investigating the murder was featured in the recent film “A Mighty Heart”—said that he has interviewed all the convicted accomplices who are now in custody in Pakistan, and that none of them named Mohammed as playing a role. “K.S.M.’s name never came up,” he said. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer, said, “My old colleagues say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that it was not K.S.M. who killed Pearl.” A government official involved in the case said, “The fear is that K.S.M. is covering up for others, and that these people will be released.” And Judea Pearl, Daniel’s father, said, “Something is fishy.

There are a lot of unanswered questions. K.S.M. can say he killed Jesus—he has nothing to lose.”

Mariane Pearl, who is relying on the Bush Administration to bring justice in her husband’s case, spoke carefully about the investigation. “You need a procedure that will get the truth,” she said. “An intelligence agency is not supposed to be above the law.”

Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.

The C.I.A.’s director, General Michael Hayden, has said that the program, which is designed to extract intelligence from suspects quickly, is an “irreplaceable” tool for combatting terrorism. And President Bush has said that “this program has given us information that has saved innocent lives, by helping us stop new attacks.” He claims that it has contributed to the disruption of at least ten serious Al Qaeda plots since September 11th, three of them inside the United States.

According to the Bush Administration, Mohammed divulged information of tremendous value during his detention. He is said to have helped point the way to the capture of Hambali, the Indonesian terrorist responsible for the 2002 bombings of night clubs in Bali. He also provided information on an Al Qaeda leader in England. Michael Sheehan, a former counterterrorism official at the State Department, said, “K.S.M. is the poster boy for using tough but legal tactics. He’s the reason these techniques exist. You can save lives with the kind of information he could give up.” Yet Mohammed’s confessions may also have muddled some key investigations. Perhaps under duress, he claimed involvement in thirty-one criminal plots—an improbable number, even for a high-level terrorist. Critics say that Mohammed’s case illustrates the cost of the C.I.A.’s desire for swift intelligence. Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the top defense lawyer at the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, which is expected eventually to try Mohammed for war crimes, called his serial confessions “a textbook example of why we shouldn’t allow coercive methods.”

The Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to keep secret the treatment of the hundred or so “high-value detainees” whom the C.I.A. has confined, at one point or another, since September 11th. The program has been extraordinarily “compartmentalized,” in the nomenclature of the intelligence world. By design, there has been virtually no access for outsiders to the C.I.A.’s prisoners. The utter isolation of these detainees has been described as essential to America’s national security.

The Justice Department argued this point explicitly last November, in the case of a Baltimore-area resident named Majid Khan, who was held for more than three years by the C.I.A. Khan, the government said, had to be prohibited from access to a lawyer specifically because he might describe the “alternative interrogation methods” that the agency had used when questioning him. These methods amounted to a state secret, the government argued, and disclosure of them could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” (The case has not yet been decided.)

Given this level of secrecy, the public and all but a few members of Congress who have been sworn to silence have had to take on faith President Bush’s assurances that the C.I.A.’s internment program has been humane and legal, and has yielded crucial intelligence. Representative Alcee Hastings, a Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “We talk to the authorities about these detainees, but, of course, they’re not going to come out and tell us that they beat the living daylights out of someone.” He recalled learning in 2003 that Mohammed had been captured. “It was good news,” he said. “So I tried to find out: Where is this guy? And how is he being treated?” For more than three years, Hastings said, “I could never pinpoint anything.” Finally, he received some classified briefings on the Mohammed interrogation. Hastings said that he “can’t go into details” about what he found out, but, speaking of Mohammed’s treatment, he said that even if it wasn’t torture, as the Administration claims, “it ain’t right, either. Something went wrong.”

Since the drafting of the Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross has played a special role in safeguarding the rights of prisoners of war. For decades, governments have allowed officials from the organization to report on the treatment of detainees, to insure that standards set by international treaties are being maintained. The Red Cross, however, was unable to get access to the C.I.A.’s prisoners for five years. Finally, last year, Red Cross officials were allowed to interview fifteen detainees, after they had been transferred to Guantánamo. One of the prisoners was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What the Red Cross learned has been kept from the public. The committee believes that its continued access to prisoners worldwide is contingent upon confidentiality, and therefore it addresses violations privately with the authorities directly responsible for prisoner treatment and detention. For this reason, Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, said, “The I.C.R.C. does not comment on its findings publicly. Its work is confidential.”

The public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report. Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State’s legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report.

Confidentiality may be particularly stringent in this case. Congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report said that it harshly criticized the C.I.A.’s practices. One of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act, which Congress passed in 1994. The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.

Concern about the legality of the C.I.A.’s program reached a previously unreported breaking point last week when Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the intelligence committee, quietly put a “hold” on the confirmation of John Rizzo, who as acting general counsel was deeply involved in establishing the agency’s interrogation and detention policies. Wyden’s maneuver essentially stops the nomination from going forward. “I question if there’s been adequate legal oversight,” Wyden told me. He said that after studying a classified addendum to President Bush’s new executive order, which specifies permissible treatment of detainees, “I am not convinced that all of these techniques are either effective or legal. I don’t want to see well-intentioned C.I.A. officers breaking the law because of shaky legal guidance.”

A former C.I.A. officer, who supports the agency’s detention and interrogation policies, said he worried that, if the full story of the C.I.A. program ever surfaced, agency personnel could face criminal prosecution. Within the agency, he said, there is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution” for the interrogation program. If congressional hearings begin, he said, “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus.” He noted that a number of C.I.A. officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees.

Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the C.I.A., denied any legal impropriety, stressing that “the agency’s terrorist-detention program has been implemented lawfully. And torture is illegal under U.S. law. The people who have been part of this important effort are well-trained, seasoned professionals.” This spring, the Associated Press published an article quoting the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Silvestre Reyes, who said that Hayden, the C.I.A. director, “vehemently denied” the Red Cross’s conclusions. A U.S. official dismissed the Red Cross report as a mere compilation of allegations made by terrorists.

And Robert Grenier, a former head of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, said that “the C.I.A.’s interrogations were nothing like Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo. They were very, very regimented. Very meticulous.” He said, “The program is very careful. It’s completely legal.”

Accurately or not, Bush Administration officials have described the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as the unauthorized actions of ill-trained personnel, eleven of whom have been convicted of crimes. By contrast, the treatment of high-value detainees has been directly, and repeatedly, approved by President Bush. The program is monitored closely by C.I.A. lawyers, and supervised by the agency’s director and his subordinates at the Counterterrorism Center. While Mohammed was being held by the agency, detailed dossiers on the treatment of detainees were regularly available to the former C.I.A. director George Tenet, according to informed sources inside and outside the agency. Through a spokesperson, Tenet denied making day-to-day decisions about the treatment of individual detainees. But, according to a former agency official, “Every single plan is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level—meaning the director of the C.I.A. Any change in the plan—even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added—was signed off by the C.I.A. director.”

In September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a secret Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to create paramilitary teams to hunt, capture, detain, or kill designated terrorists almost anywhere in the world. Yet the C.I.A. had virtually no trained interrogators. A former C.I.A. officer involved in fighting terrorism said that, at first, the agency was crippled by its lack of expertise. “It began right away, in Afghanistan, on the fly,” he recalled. “They invented the program of interrogation with people who had no understanding of Al Qaeda or the Arab world.” The former officer said that the pressure from the White House, in particular from Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense: “They were pushing us: ‘Get information! Do not let us get hit again!’ ” In the scramble, he said, he searched the C.I.A.’s archives, to see what interrogation techniques had worked in the past. He was particularly impressed with the Phoenix Program, from the Vietnam War. Critics, including military historians, have described it as a program of state-sanctioned torture and murder. A Pentagon-contract study found that, between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. But, after September 11th, some C.I.A. officials viewed the program as a useful model. A. B. Krongard, who was the executive director of the C.I.A. from 2001 to 2004, said that the agency turned to “everyone we could, including our friends in Arab cultures,” for interrogation advice, among them those in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all of which the State Department regularly criticizes for human-rights abuses.

The C.I.A. knew even less about running prisons than it did about hostile interrogations. Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of European operations at the C.I.A., and the author of a recent book, “On the Brink: How the White House Compromised U.S. Intelligence,” said, “The agency had no experience in detention. Never. But they insisted on arresting and detaining people in this program. It was a mistake, in my opinion. You can’t mix intelligence and police work. But the White House was really pushing. They wanted someone to do it. So the C.I.A. said, ‘We’ll try.’ George Tenet came out of politics, not intelligence. His whole modus operandi was to please the principal. We got stuck with all sorts of things. This is really the legacy of a director who never said no to anybody.”

Many officials inside the C.I.A. had misgivings. “A lot of us knew this would be a can of worms,” the former officer said. “We warned them, It’s going to become an atrocious mess.” The problem from the start, he said, was that no one had thought through what he called “the disposal plan.” He continued, “What are you going to do with these people? The utility of someone like K.S.M. is, at most, six months to a year. You exhaust them. Then what? It would have been better if we had executed them.”

The C.I.A. program’s first important detainee was Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda operative, who was captured by Pakistani forces in March of 2002. Lacking in-house specialists on interrogation, the agency hired a group of outside contractors, who implemented a regime of techniques that one well-informed former adviser to the American intelligence community described as “a ‘Clockwork Orange’ kind of approach.” The experts were retired military psychologists, and their backgrounds were in training Special Forces soldiers how to survive torture, should they ever be captured by enemy states. The program, known as SERE—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—was created at the end of the Korean War. It subjected trainees to simulated torture, including waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to temperature extremes, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds, and religious and sexual humiliation.

The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.’s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. “They were very arrogant, and pro-torture,” a European official knowledgeable about the program said. “They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences.”

The use of psychologists was also considered a way for C.I.A. officials to skirt measures such as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’ ” He said that, inside the C.I.A., where a number of scientists work, there was strong internal opposition to the new techniques. “Behavioral scientists said, ‘Don’t even think about this!’

They thought officers could be prosecuted.”

Nevertheless, the SERE experts’ theories were apparently put into practice with Zubaydah’s interrogation. Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was not only waterboarded, as has been previously reported; he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a “dog box,” which was so small that he could not stand. According to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of “learned helplessness.” (Mitchell disputes this characterization.)

Steve Kleinman, a reserve Air Force colonel and an experienced interrogator who has known Mitchell professionally for years, said that “learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.” Mitchell, he said, “draws a diagram showing what he says is the whole cycle. It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners’ ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence.”

As the C.I.A. captured and interrogated other Al Qaeda figures, it established a protocol of psychological coercion. The program tied together many strands of the agency’s secret history of Cold War-era experiments in behavioral science. (In June, the C.I.A. declassified long-held secret documents known as the Family Jewels, which shed light on C.I.A. drug experiments on rats and monkeys, and on the infamous case of Frank R. Olson, an agency employee who leaped to his death from a hotel window in 1953, nine days after he was unwittingly drugged with LSD.) The C.I.A.’s most useful research focussed on the surprisingly powerful effects of psychological manipulations, such as extreme sensory deprivation. According to Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, who has written a history of the C.I.A.’s experiments in coercing subjects, the agency learned that “if subjects are confined without light, odors, sound, or any fixed references of time and place, very deep breakdowns can be provoked.”

Agency scientists found that in just a few hours some subjects suspended in water tanks—or confined in isolated rooms wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs—regressed to semi-psychotic states. Moreover, McCoy said, detainees become so desperate for human interaction that “they bond with the interrogator like a father, or like a drowning man having a lifesaver thrown at him. If you deprive people of all their senses, they’ll turn to you like their daddy.” McCoy added that “after the Cold War we put away those tools. There was bipartisan reform. We backed away from those dark days. Then, under the pressure of the war on terror, they didn’t just bring back the old psychological techniques—they perfected them.”

The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”

The U.S. government first began tracking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 1993, shortly after his nephew Ramzi Yousef blew a gaping hole in the World Trade Center. Mohammed, officials learned, had transferred money to Yousef. Mohammed, born in either 1964 or 1965, was raised in a religious Sunni Muslim family in Kuwait, where his family had migrated from the Baluchistan region of Pakistan. In the mid-eighties, he was trained as a mechanical engineer in the U.S., attending two colleges in North Carolina.

As a teen-ager, Mohammed had been drawn to militant, and increasingly violent, Muslim causes. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of sixteen, and, after his graduation from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, in Greensboro—where he was remembered as a class clown, but religious enough to forgo meat when eating at Burger King—he signed on with the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, receiving military training and establishing ties with Islamist terrorists. By all accounts, his animus toward the U.S. was rooted in a hatred of Israel.

In 1994, Mohammed, who was impressed by Yousef’s notoriety after the first World Trade Center bombing, joined him in scheming to blow up twelve U.S. jumbo jets over two days. The so-called Bojinka plot was disrupted in 1995, when Philippine police broke into an apartment that Yousef and other terrorists were sharing in Manila, which was filled with bomb-making materials. At the time of the raid, Mohammed was working in Doha, Qatar, at a government job. The following year, he narrowly escaped capture by F.B.I. officers and slipped into the global jihadist network, where he eventually joined forces with Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan. Along the way, he married and had children.

Many journalistic accounts have presented Mohammed as a charismatic, swashbuckling figure: in the Philippines, he was said to have flown a helicopter close enough to a girlfriend’s office window so that she could see him; in Pakistan, he supposedly posed as an anonymous bystander and gave interviews to news reporters about his nephew’s arrest. Neither story is true. But Mohammed did seem to enjoy taunting authorities after the September 11th attacks, which, in his eventual confession, he claimed to have orchestrated “from A to Z.” In April, 2002, Mohammed arranged to be interviewed on Al Jazeera by its London bureau chief, Yosri Fouda, and took personal credit for the atrocities. “I am the head of the Al Qaeda military committee,” he said. “And yes, we did it.” Fouda, who conducted the interview at an Al Qaeda safe house in Karachi, said that he was astounded not only by Mohammed’s boasting but also by his seeming imperviousness to the danger of being caught.

Mohammed permitted Al Jazeera to reveal that he was hiding out in the Karachi area. When Fouda left the apartment, Mohammed, apparently unarmed, walked him downstairs and out into the street.

In the early months of 2003, U.S. authorities reportedly paid a twenty-five-million-dollar reward for information that led to Mohammed’s arrest. U.S. officials closed in on him, at 4 A.M. on March 1st, waking him up in a borrowed apartment in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The officials hung back as Pakistani authorities handcuffed and hooded him, and took him to a safe house. Reportedly, for the first two days, Mohammed robotically recited Koranic verses and refused to divulge much more than his name. A videotape obtained by “60 Minutes” shows Mohammed at the end of this episode, complaining of a head cold; an American voice can be heard in the background. This was the last image of Mohammed to be seen by the public. By March 4th, he was in C.I.A. custody.

Captured along with Mohammed, according to some accounts, was a letter from bin Laden, which may have led officials to think that he knew where the Al Qaeda founder was hiding. If Mohammed did have this crucial information, it was time sensitive—bin Laden never stayed in one place for long—and officials needed to extract it quickly. At the time, many American intelligence officials still feared a “second wave” of Al Qaeda attacks, ratcheting the pressure further.

According to George Tenet’s recent memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” Mohammed told his captors that he wouldn’t talk until he was given a lawyer in New York, where he assumed he would be taken. (He had been indicted there in connection with the Bojinka plot.) Tenet writes, “Had that happened, I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.” Opponents of the C.I.A.’s approach, however, note that Ramzi Yousef gave a voluminous confession after being read his Miranda rights. “These guys are egomaniacs,” a former federal prosecutor said. “They love to talk!”

A complete picture of Mohammed’s time in secret detention remains elusive. But a partial narrative has emerged through interviews with European and American sources in intelligence, government, and legal circles, as well as with former detainees who have been released from C.I.A. custody. People familiar with Mohammed’s allegations about his interrogation, and interrogations of other high-value detainees, describe the accounts as remarkably consistent.

Soon after Mohammed’s arrest, sources say, his American captors told him, “We’re not going to kill you. But we’re going to take you to the very brink of your death and back.” He was first taken to a secret U.S.-run prison in Afghanistan. According to a Human Rights Watch report released two years ago, there was a C.I.A.-affiliated black site in Afghanistan by 2002: an underground prison near Kabul International Airport. Distinctive for its absolute lack of light, it was referred to by detainees as the Dark Prison. Another detention facility was reportedly a former brick factory, just north of Kabul, known as the Salt Pit. The latter became infamous for the 2002 death of a detainee, reportedly from hypothermia, after prison officials stripped him naked and chained him to the floor of his concrete cell, in freezing temperatures.

In all likelihood, Mohammed was transported from Pakistan to one of the Afghan sites by a team of black-masked commandos attached to the C.I.A.’s paramilitary Special Activities Division. According to a report adopted in June by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, titled “Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees,” detainees were “taken to their cells by strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes.” (Some personnel reportedly wore black clothes made from specially woven synthetic fabric that couldn’t be ripped or torn.) A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout” of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to “sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.” The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.” The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.

A secret government document, dated December 10, 2002, detailing “SERE Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure,” outlines the advantages of stripping detainees. “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.” The document advises interrogators to “tear clothing from detainees by firmly pulling downward against buttoned buttons and seams. Tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.” The memo also advocates the “Shoulder Slap,” “Stomach Slap,” “Hooding,” “Manhandling,” “Walling,” and a variety of “Stress Positions,” including one called “Worship the Gods.”

In the process of being transported, C.I.A. detainees such as Mohammed were screened by medical experts, who checked their vital signs, took blood samples, and marked a chart with a diagram of a human body, noting scars, wounds, and other imperfections. As the person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry put it, “It’s like when you hire a motor vehicle, circling where the scratches are on the rearview mirror. Each detainee was continually assessed, physically and psychologically.”

According to sources, Mohammed said that, while in C.I.A. custody, he was placed in his own cell, where he remained naked for several days. He was questioned by an unusual number of female handlers, perhaps as an additional humiliation. He has alleged that he was attached to a dog leash, and yanked in such a way that he was propelled into the walls of his cell. Sources say that he also claimed to have been suspended from the ceiling by his arms, his toes barely touching the ground. The pressure on his wrists evidently became exceedingly painful.

Ramzi Kassem, who teaches at Yale Law School, said that a Yemeni client of his, Sanad al-Kazimi, who is now in Guantánamo, alleged that he had received similar treatment in the Dark Prison, the facility near Kabul. Kazimi claimed to have been suspended by his arms for long periods, causing his legs to swell painfully. “It’s so traumatic, he can barely speak of it,” Kassem said. “He breaks down in tears.” Kazimi also claimed that, while hanging, he was beaten with electric cables.

According to sources familiar with interrogation techniques, the hanging position is designed, in part, to prevent detainees from being able to sleep. The former C.I.A. officer, who is knowledgeable about the interrogation program, explained that “sleep deprivation works. Your electrolyte balance changes. You lose all balance and ability to think rationally. Stuff comes out.” Sleep deprivation has been recognized as an effective form of coercion since the Middle Ages, when it was called tormentum insomniae. It was also recognized for decades in the United States as an illegal form of torture. An American Bar Association report, published in 1930, which was cited in a later U.S. Supreme Court decision, said, “It has been known since 1500 at least that deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture and certain to produce any confession desired.”

Under President Bush’s new executive order, C.I.A. detainees must receive the “basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.” Sleep, according to the order, is not among the basic necessities.

In addition to keeping a prisoner awake, the simple act of remaining upright can over time cause significant pain. McCoy, the historian, noted that “longtime standing” was a common K.G.B. interrogation technique. In his 2006 book, “A Question of Torture,” he writes that the Soviets found that making a victim stand for eighteen to twenty-four hours can produce “excruciating pain, as ankles double in size, skin becomes tense and intensely painful, blisters erupt oozing watery serum, heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.”

Mohammed is said to have described being chained naked to a metal ring in his cell wall for prolonged periods in a painful crouch. (Several other detainees who say that they were confined in the Dark Prison have described identical treatment.) He also claimed that he was kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room, where he was doused with ice water.

The practice, which can cause hypothermia, violates the Geneva Conventions, and President Bush’s new executive order arguably bans it.

Some detainees held by the C.I.A. claimed that their cells were bombarded with deafening sound twenty-fours hours a day for weeks, and even months. One detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who is now in Guantánamo, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that speakers blared music into his cell while he was handcuffed. Detainees recalled the sound as ranging from ghoulish laughter, “like the soundtrack from a horror film,” to ear-splitting rap anthems. Stafford Smith said that his client found the psychological torture more intolerable than the physical abuse that he said he had been previously subjected to in Morocco, where, he said, local intelligence agents had sliced him with a razor blade. “The C.I.A. worked people day and night for months,” Stafford Smith quoted Binyam Mohamed as saying. “Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.”

Professor Kassem said his Yemeni client, Kazimi, had told him that, during his incarceration in the Dark Prison, he attempted suicide three times, by ramming his head into the walls. “He did it until he lost consciousness,” Kassem said. “Then they stitched him back up. So he did it again. The next time, he woke up, he was chained, and they’d given him tranquillizers. He asked to go to the bathroom, and then he did it again.” This last time, Kazimi was given more tranquillizers, and chained in a more confining manner.

The case of Khaled el-Masri, another detainee, has received wide attention. He is the German car salesman whom the C.I.A. captured in 2003 and dispatched to Afghanistan, based on erroneous intelligence; he was released in 2004, and Condoleezza Rice reportedly conceded the mistake to the German chancellor. Masri is considered one of the more credible sources on the black-site program, because Germany has confirmed that he has no connections to terrorism. He has also described inmates bashing their heads against the walls. Much of his account appeared on the front page of the Times. But, during a visit to America last fall, he became tearful as he recalled the plight of a Tanzanian in a neighboring cell. The man seemed “psychologically at the end,” he said. “I could hear him ramming his head against the wall in despair. I tried to calm him down.

I asked the doctor, ‘Will you take care of this human being?’ ” But the doctor, whom Masri described as American, refused to help. Masri also said that he was told that guards had “locked the Tanzanian in a suitcase for long periods of time—a foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit.” (Masri did not witness such abuse.)

Masri described his prison in Afghanistan as a filthy hole, with walls scribbled on in Pashtun and Arabic. He was given no bed, only a coarse blanket on the floor. At night, it was too cold to sleep. He said, “The water was putrid. If you took a sip, you could taste it for hours. You could smell a foul smell from it three metres away.” The Salt Pit, he said, “was managed and run by the Americans. It was not a secret. They introduced themselves as Americans.” He added, “When anything came up, they said they couldn’t make a decision. They said, ‘We will have to pass it on to Washington.’ ” The interrogation room at the Salt Pit, he said, was overseen by a half-dozen English-speaking masked men, who shoved him and shouted at him, saying,

“You’re in a country where there’s no rule of law. You might be buried here.”

According to two former C.I.A. officers, an interrogator of Mohammed told them that the Pakistani was kept in a cell over which a sign was placed: “The Proud Murderer of 3,000 Americans.” (Another source calls this apocryphal.) One of these former officers defends the C.I.A.’s program by noting that “there was absolutely nothing done to K.S.M. that wasn’t done to the interrogators themselves”—a reference to SERE-like training. Yet the Red Cross report emphasizes that it was the simultaneous use of several techniques for extended periods that made the treatment “especially abusive.” Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has been a prominent critic of the Administration’s embrace of harsh interrogation techniques, said that, particularly with sensory deprivation, “there’s a point where it’s torture. You can put someone in a refrigerator and it’s torture. Everything is a matter of degree.”

One day, Mohammed was apparently transferred to a specially designated prison for high-value detainees in Poland. Such transfers were so secretive, according to the report by the Council of Europe, that the C.I.A. filed dummy flight plans, indicating that the planes were heading elsewhere. Once Polish air space was entered, the Polish aviation authority would secretly shepherd the flight, leaving no public documentation. The Council of Europe report notes that the Polish authorities would file a one-way flight plan out of the country, creating a false paper trail. (The Polish government has strongly denied that any black sites were established in the country.)

No more than a dozen high-value detainees were held at the Polish black site, and none have been released from government custody; accordingly, no first-hand accounts of conditions there have emerged. But, according to well-informed sources, it was a far more high-tech facility than the prisons in Afghanistan. The cells had hydraulic doors and air-conditioning. Multiple cameras in each cell provided video surveillance of the detainees. In some ways, the circumstances were better: the detainees were given bottled water. Without confirming the existence of any black sites, Robert Grenier, the former C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, said, “The agency’s techniques became less aggressive as they learned the art of interrogation,” which, he added, “is an art.”

Mohammed was kept in a prolonged state of sensory deprivation, during which every point of reference was erased. The Council on Europe’s report describes a four-month isolation regime as typical. The prisoners had no exposure to natural light, making it impossible for them to tell if it was night or day. They interacted only with masked, silent guards. (A detainee held at what was most likely an Eastern European black site, Mohammed al-Asad, told me that white noise was piped in constantly, although during electrical outages he could hear people crying.) According to a source familiar with the Red Cross report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed that he was shackled and kept naked, except for a pair of goggles and earmuffs. (Some prisoners were kept naked for as long as forty days.) He had no idea where he was, although, at one point, he apparently glimpsed Polish writing on a water bottle.

In the C.I.A.’s program, meals were delivered sporadically, to insure that the prisoners remained temporally disoriented. The food was largely tasteless, and barely enough to live on. Mohammed, who upon his capture in Rawalpindi was photographed looking flabby and unkempt, was now described as being slim. Experts on the C.I.A. program say that the administering of food is part of its psychological arsenal. Sometimes portions were smaller than the day before, for no apparent reason. “It was all part of the conditioning,” the person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said. “It’s all calibrated to develop dependency.”

The inquiry source said that most of the Poland detainees were waterboarded, including Mohammed. According to the sources familiar with the Red Cross report, Mohammed claimed to have been waterboarded five times. Two former C.I.A. officers who are friends with one of Mohammed’s interrogators called this bravado, insisting that he was waterboarded only once.

According to one of the officers, Mohammed needed only to be shown the drowning equipment again before he “broke.”
“Waterboarding works,” the former officer said. “Drowning is a baseline fear. So is falling. People dream about it. It’s human nature. Suffocation is a very scary thing. When you’re waterboarded, you’re inverted, so it exacerbates the fear. It’s not painful, but it scares the shit out of you.” (The former officer was waterboarded himself in a training course.) Mohammed, he claimed, “didn’t resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick.” He said, “A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable. K.S.M. was just a little doughboy. He couldn’t stand toe to toe and fight it out.”

The former officer said that the C.I.A. kept a doctor standing by during interrogations. He insisted that the method was safe and effective, but said that it could cause lasting psychic damage to the interrogators. During interrogations, the former agency official said, officers worked in teams, watching each other behind two-way mirrors. Even with this group support, the friend said, Mohammed’s interrogator “has horrible nightmares.” He went on, “When you cross over that line of darkness, it’s hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but it’s well outside the norm. You can’t go to that dark a place without it changing you.” He said of his friend, “He’s a good guy. It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”

Among the few C.I.A. officials who knew the details of the detention and interrogation program, there was a tense debate about where to draw the line in terms of treatment. John Brennan, Tenet’s former chief of staff, said, “It all comes down to individual moral barometers.” Waterboarding, in particular, troubled many officials, from both a moral and a legal perspective.

Until 2002, when Bush Administration lawyers asserted that waterboarding was a permissible interrogation technique for “enemy combatants,” it was classified as a form of torture, and treated as a serious criminal offense. American soldiers were court-martialled for waterboarding captives as recently as the Vietnam War.

A C.I.A. source said that Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding only after interrogators determined that he was hiding information from them. But Mohammed has apparently said that, even after he started coöperating, he was waterboarded. Footnotes to the 9/11 Commission report indicate that by April 17, 2003—a month and a half after he was captured—Mohammed had already started providing substantial information on Al Qaeda. Nonetheless, according to the person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, he was kept in isolation for years. During this time, Mohammed supplied intelligence on the history of the September 11th plot, and on the structure and operations of Al Qaeda. He also described plots still in a preliminary phase of development, such as a plan to bomb targets on America’s West Coast.

Ultimately, however, Mohammed claimed responsibility for so many crimes that his testimony became to seem inherently dubious. In addition to confessing to the Pearl murder, he said that he had hatched plans to assassinate President Clinton, President Carter, and Pope John Paul II. Bruce Riedel, who was a C.I.A. analyst for twenty-nine years, and who now works at the Brookings Institution, said, “It’s difficult to give credence to any particular area of this large a charge sheet that he confessed to, considering the situation he found himself in. K.S.M. has no prospect of ever seeing freedom again, so his only gratification in life is to portray himself as the James Bond of jihadism.”

By 2004, there were growing calls within the C.I.A. to transfer to military custody the high-value detainees who had told interrogators what they knew, and to afford them some kind of due process. But Donald Rumsfeld, then the Defense Secretary, who had been heavily criticized for the abusive conditions at military prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, refused to take on the agency’s detainees, a former top C.I.A. official said. “Rumsfeld’s attitude was, You’ve got a real problem.” Rumsfeld, the official said, “was the third most powerful person in the U.S. government, but he only looked out for the interests of his department—not the whole Administration.” (A spokesperson for Rumsfeld said that he had no comment.)

C.I.A. officials were stymied until the Supreme Court’s Hamdan ruling, which prompted the Administration to send what it said were its last high-value detainees to Cuba. Robert Grenier, like many people in the C.I.A., was relieved. “There has to be some sense of due process,” he said. “We can’t just make people disappear.” Still, he added, “The most important source of intelligence we had after 9/11 came from the interrogations of high-value detainees.” And he said that Mohammed was “the most valuable of the high-value detainees, because he had operational knowledge.” He went on, “I can respect people who oppose aggressive interrogations, but they should admit that their principles may be putting American lives at risk.”

Yet Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and later the State Department’s top counsellor, under Rice, is not convinced that eliciting information from detainees justifies “physical torment.” After leaving the government last year, he gave a speech in Houston, in which he said, “The question would not be, Did you get information that proved useful? Instead it would be, Did you get information that could have been usefully gained only from these methods?” He concluded,

“My own view is that the cool, carefully considered, methodical, prolonged, and repeated subjection of captives to physical torment, and the accompanying psychological terror, is immoral.”

Without more transparency, the value of the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program is impossible to evaluate. Setting aside the moral, ethical, and legal issues, even supporters, such as John Brennan, acknowledge that much of the information that coercion produces is unreliable. As he put it, “All these methods produced useful information, but there was also a lot that was bogus.” When pressed, one former top agency official estimated that “ninety per cent of the information was unreliable.” Cables carrying Mohammed’s interrogation transcripts back to Washington reportedly were prefaced with the warning that “the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead.” Mohammed, like virtually all the top Al Qaeda prisoners held by the C.I.A., has claimed that, while under coercion, he lied to please his captors.

In theory, a military commission could sort out which parts of Mohammed’s confession are true and which are lies, and obtain a conviction. Colonel Morris D. Davis, the chief prosecutor at the Office of Military Commissions, said that he expects to bring charges against Mohammed “in a number of months.” He added, “I’d be shocked if the defense didn’t try to make K.S.M.’s treatment a problem for me, but I don’t think it will be insurmountable.”

Critics of the Administration fear that the unorthodox nature of the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program will make it impossible to prosecute the entire top echelon of Al Qaeda leaders in captivity. Already, according to the Wall Street Journal, credible allegations of torture have caused a Marine Corps prosecutor reluctantly to decline to bring charges against Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an alleged Al Qaeda leader held in Guantánamo. Bruce Riedel, the former C.I.A. analyst, asked, “What are you going to do with K.S.M. in the long run? It’s a very good question. I don’t think anyone has an answer. If you took him to any real American court, I think any judge would say there is no admissible evidence. It would be thrown out.”

The problems with Mohammed’s coerced confessions are especially glaring in the Daniel Pearl case. It may be that Mohammed killed Pearl, but contradictory evidence and opinion continue to surface. Yosri Fouda, the Al Jazeera reporter who interviewed Mohammed in Karachi, said that although Mohammed handed him a package of propaganda items, including an unedited video of the Pearl murder, he never identified himself as playing a role in the killing, which occurred in the same city just two months earlier. And a federal official involved in Mohammed’s case said, “He has no history of killing with his own hands, although he’s proved happy to commit mass murder from afar.” Al Qaeda’s leadership had increasingly focussed on symbolic political targets. “For him, it’s not personal,” the official said. “It’s business.”

Ordinarily, the U.S. legal system is known for resolving such mysteries with painstaking care. But the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program, Senator Levin said, has undermined the public’s trust in American justice, both here and abroad. “A guy as dangerous as K.S.M. is, and half the world wonders if they can believe him—is that what we want?” he asked. “Statements that can’t be believed, because people think they rely on torture?”

Asra Nomani, the Pearls’ friend, said of the Mohammed confession, “I’m not interested in unfair justice, even for bad people.” She went on, “Danny was such a person of conscience. I don’t think he would have wanted all of this dirty business. I don’t think he would have wanted someone being tortured. He would have been repulsed. This is the kind of story that Danny would have investigated. He really believed in American principles.” ♦

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printable=true#ixzz0cK9P9eLe

CIA takes revenge with missile strikes in Pakistan

2010-01-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/cia1-j07.shtml

By Bill Van Auken
7 January 2010

In an apparent campaign of revenge at least 20 people have died in drone missile attacks in Pakistan since the December 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian intelligence agent.

The most deadly of the strikes by the CIA’s Predator drone aircraft took place Wednesday in the Datta Khel region of North Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border.

Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the Associated Press reported that one of the pilotless drones fired two missiles into a house, killing seven people. This was followed more than an hour later by another missile, launched as local villagers struggled to rescue survivors and pull bodies from the rubble. This second strike killed at least another five people. Some Pakistani media put the total death toll from the two missile strikes at 15.

The Islamabad-based International News Network Web site reported that the missile strikes had sown widespread panic in the area. There are growing fears in Pakistan that the response to last week’s suicide bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan’s Khost province, just across the border from North Waziristan, will be an intensified and sustained campaign of drone attacks that will claim many more lives.

The Predator strikes have provoked widespread anger in Pakistan, both because of the loss of life and the blatant trampling on the country’s sovereignty. Government officials have also routinely condemned the attacks, though it is evident that Islamabad has allowed the strikes, many of which are launched from a covert airfield in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

The CIA agents and private contractors killed at the base in Afghanistan were responsible for choosing targets for the drone attacks.

The bomber who killed them, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was a Jordanian doctor, regarded by the US intelligence agency as one of its most important “assets” in the covert war on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In the wake of the bombing, intelligence officials have confirmed that Balawi lured the operatives, including the second highest ranking CIA officer in Afghanistan, to the base with the promise of intelligence on Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor widely considered to be the real leader of Al Qaeda.

CBS News reported Wednesday that Balawi had provided the CIA with “actionable intelligence” used to choose targets for missile attacks. Given that Balawi was evidently working for Al Qaeda while pretending to be infiltrating it, it can be assumed that the intelligence he provided was false and missiles were directed at targets that had nothing to do with either Al Qaeda or armed elements fighting US occupation forces in Afghanistan.

The bombing at Base Chapman represents a major setback for the CIA campaign in Pakistan and threatens to undermine the Obama administration’s strategy for escalating the US military intervention in the region.

The incident has also raised some troubling questions for the CIA.

Balawi was offered to the CIA by Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, the monarchial regime’s secret police agency, also known as the Mukhabarat. One of its operatives, Ali bin Zaid, was also killed in the December 30 bombing. Bin Zaid was reportedly Balawi’s “handler.”

The Jordanian doctor was arrested by the Mukhabarat in early 2009 after he volunteered to join a medical mission to Gaza following the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territory. He was supposedly recruited to infiltrate Al Qaeda while in prison and then dispatched to Pakistan.

The incident has brought into focus the continuing intimate relationship between the CIA and the Jordanian Mukhabarat. The Washington Post quoted former CIA agent Jamie Smith as saying that the Jordanian secret police are “particularly prized for their skill in both interrogating captives and cultivating informants.”

Indeed, Jordan was a central hub in the practice of “extraordinary rendition” in which the CIA abducted people from a number of countries, detained them without charges and sent them to third countries—among the most prominent, Jordan—to be interrogated under torture.

Human rights groups have repeatedly pointed to the “expertise” of the Mukhabarat, which routinely tortures Jordanian political dissidents.

As the Post reported, the “special relationship” between the CIA and the Mukhabarat is so close that “the CIA liaison officer in Amman enjoys full, unescorted access to the GID’s fortress-like headquarters.”

For the Jordanian regime, these reports are extremely unwelcome. It has attempted to hide its role as Washington’s proxy because of the overwhelming opposition to US policies within Jordan and throughout the Middle East.

As for the CIA’s role, the continuation and deepening of these ties raises the question of whether the Obama administration is still utilizing the “special expertise” of the Jordanian secret police.

The other fallout from the bombing is the identification of two of its victims as employees of Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, the most prominent supplier of mercenaries for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were apparently employed as CIA contractors.

CIA Director Leon Panetta announced last month that the agency had severed a previously secret contract under which Blackwater-Xe contractors were employed loading missiles and servicing Predator drones in Pakistan. Previously, Panetta had revealed to the US Congress the existence of a secret assassination program that was to employ Blackwater mercenaries. He claimed that it had never gone beyond the planning stages.

It would appear that the company continues to operate as a surrogate for the CIA under another, previously undisclosed contract.

The firm changed its name from Blackwater to Xe in an attempt to shed its infamous reputation, which included the slaughter of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.

Black men are the leading cause of death among young blacks

2009-12-30T07:31:00.001-08:00

http://cofcc.org/2009/09/black-men-are-the-leading-cause-of-death-among-young-blacks/

Black men are the leading cause of death among young blacks.

Based on a 96 page report on the causes of premature death by the CDC, the leading cause of death among young blacks of both sexes appears to be black men. See report.

AIDS.

According to the CDC, black men are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV or AIDS than white men. Among black men who allege that they have never engaged in a homosexual act, the figure rises to about 15 times the rate that heterosexual white men are diagnosed. Studies by the CDC also conclude that black men are more likely to have HIV or AIDS and go undiagnosed than white men.

All of this translates to black women being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS at a rate of over 20 times that of white women. The general trend is for black men to catch HIV/AIDS from each other in prison and then give it to black women when they are released. The CDC believes that 74% of black women who have HIV/AIDS contracted it through heterosexual contact with a man.

A 2004 report by the CDC says that AIDS is the:

* the leading cause of death for black women aged 25–34 years.
* the 3rd leading cause of death for black women aged 35–44 years.
* the 4th leading cause of death for black women aged 45–54 years.

By way of comparison, AIDS was only the 11th leading cause of death for white women aged 25-34!

Homicide

The same CDC reports say that homicide is the:

* the leading cause of death among black men aged 15-34 years. (Three age categories!)

* the second leading cause of death for black women aged 15-24 years.
* the fifth leading cause of death for black women aged 25-34 years.

Among women aged 15-24, homicide accounts for 5% of premature deaths in white females, but 20% of all premature deaths by black females.

Among both black and white men, homicide deaths peak at aged 25-34. The death rate by homicide among white men in this age group is 12.5 per 100k, and accounts for 10% of all premature deaths. The death rate by homicide among blacks in this age group is 101.8 per 100k, and accounts for 48% of all premature deaths.

The majority of black female homicide victims are killed by a current or former boyfriend, which many refer to as “femicide.” About 93% of all black homicide victims are killed by a black perpetrator overall. 85% of white homicide victims are killed by a white perpetrator.

“The National Black Women’s Health Project” has identified the battering of women as the number one health issue for African American women (Joseph, 1997).

Femicide is a leading cause of premature deaths in African American women aged 15-44. (Journal of Issues in Nursing Vol 7, No. 1)

In 1998, Salber and Taliaferro reported that the spousal homicide rate among African Americans is 8.4 times more than for whites. The incidence of spousal homicide is 7.7 times higher in interracial marriages compared to intraracial marriages. (Source WebMD.com)

Relationships with black men dramatically increase a woman’s chances of dying young.

Black females aged 15-19 are 3.9 times more likely to die of homicide or AIDS than white females in the same age group. This increases to 4.4 time for females aged 20-24 and 7.3 times for 25-34.

White women who engage in relationships with black men dramatically increase their chances of premature death or long term health problems from murder, beatings, and STDs.

Will You Be one of the 15,000 That Are Killed By CT Scans Next Year?

2009-12-29T05:58:00.000-08:00

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/12/29/Will-You-Be-one-of-the-15000-That-Are-Killed-By-CT-Scans-Next-Year.aspx

Will You Be one of the 15,000 That Are Killed By CT Scans Next Year?
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 29 2009

CT scans deliver far more radiation than has been believed, and may contribute to 29,000 new cancers each year, along with 14,500 deaths.

One study found that people may be exposed to up to four times as much radiation as estimated by earlier studies. While previous studies relied on dummies equipped with sensors, authors of the new paper studied more than 1,000 patients at four hospitals.

Based on their measurements, a patient could get as much radiation from one CT scan as 74 mammograms or 442 chest X-rays.

Young people are at highest risk from excess radiation, partly because they have many years ahead of them in which cancers could develop. Among 20-year-old women who get one coronary angiogram, a CT scan of the heart, one in 150 will develop cancer related to the procedure.

IT ALL ADDS UP TO MURDER

2009-12-28T14:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9916

FIGURES DON'T LIE BUT THEY SURE FIND LIARS
IT ALL ADDS UP TO MURDER
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

A reader was challenging my use of the figure 58,000 killed in Vietnam. I consider the figure very conservative, but since I was asked, I verified that 58,209 died, over 47,000 in direct combat from wounds. In the process, I ended up in the VA casualty and pension website and am now confused, more than that, like my hero Chuck Norris, "I am flabbergasted."

OK. One war was around ten years and the other 4 days. One war had 47000 combat deaths, the other had 147. However, there are 1.1 million Vietnam veterans on disability pensions and, according to the DVA, nearly 900,000 Gulf War I vets on pension. Lets play some games with these numbers and see if we can stimulate some thinking. In the gulf war, for every combat death there were over 6000 disabled veterans. In Vietnam, for every combat KIA, there are 21 disabled veterans. This means that Gulf War vets are 300 times as likely to be found disabled by the VA, based on combat death figures, than Vietnam vets. 300 to 1. What the hell is this?

Statistics can be a game like any other. OK. Lets take 96 hours of combat. This means we have nearly 10,000 disabled veterans for each hour of combat. These figures almost match the number of awards John McCain got for each hour he spent flying an airplane. Thus, none of this makes any sense.

Ok, lets go from battle deaths to wounds. Gulf War I. For every wounded soldier, non fatal, there are 1848 disabled veterans. The figure this gets you going the other way is 5.411255411255411e-4 or a ratio of .00005 (5 in 10,000). You could say this. If you are a disabled Gulf War vet, there is a .00054 chance you were disabled from a wound.

We are now using figures that apply to random strikes by meteors.

Taking this over to Vietnam, 15% of disabled vets would have had direct combat wounds. (153,000 wounded) The comparison looks like this: .15 Vietnam .00054 Gulf War.

This means, using the "wounded in action" figure, you are 278 times more likely to be found "disabled" if you are a Gulf War vet than a Vietnam vet. Another way of looking at it, if you are comparing Vietnam vets and their ability to get thru the disability process with Gulf War vets, Vietnam vets lose by astounding figures.

For every 100 Gulf War vets (using our WIA figure as a base) who is found disabled, you get about 1/3rd of a Vietnam vet who manages to get thru the same process.

Figure that Vietnam vets had 15 more years to work on it and we get extra crazy.

What we don't have is any rational system of analysis as to the human cost of either war. We know we are losing many Gulf War vets. The figures are being tracked by individual units, but we know they are high.

We also know that we have lost, not tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans but now, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or more, maybe 2 million depending on whose figures you use.

What do we know? We know that two armies were poisoned, one with GWI, Gulf War Illness and the other with Agent Orange. We don't know which is worse, there are no comparisons.

We do know, however, that a Vietnam veteran is much less likely to be found disabled by the VA than he is to win over 10 mil in the lottery.

Check the odds.

I have spent the last 2 hours reviewing the medical records of an Agent Orange victim named Temple. He is severely ill with brain cancer directly tied to Agent Orange along with other AO related problems. He was denied any compensation though, perhaps the one of the most famous doctors on earth wrote a 38 page report castigating the VA for malpractice beyond human measure.

With the client/patients authorization, I have received his medical and legal records and VA findings. They read like a damned horror story. Imagine showing up with brain cancer, giving the LPN, yes, not a Registered Nurse or Nurse Practicioner, no, not a doctor, not a Neurologist, not an Oncologist, but an LPN the symptoms of brain cancer as your complaint.

Imagine then being sent to a smoking cessation class and being given anti-depressants. Before a real but highly unqualified doctor sees you, your minor brain tumor, slow growing, is now malignant and the size of a baseball or larger.

Reading the charts and the medical reports along with the lawyers appeal, I can't help but conclude that the driving force behind failing to diagnose and treat a patient, a patient the VA couldn't have done more to murder if they thru him under a truck, was to avoid paying him disability compensation for several extremely obvious agent orange related diseases of the most serious type imaginable.

There is no other possible conclusion.

Is this gross negligence? Of course. Is it willful negligence? Of course. Will it or has it caused GBH, "great bodily harm" and likely death? Of course.

Is this the crime of murder in most of the United States according to laws currently on the books? Of course.

Are we being told that killing Vietnam veterans and maybe thousands of Gulf War veterans also, as more reports I receive tell me, is a pattern of misconduct at the VA? Of course.

Are there documents to support this from highly qualified authorities? Of course.

Thus, we come back to the numbers. In the Gulf War we managed to make nearly a million people sick. We have that many "in the system." We don't know how much compensation they are receiving nor do we know the quality of medical care they get. As a matter of fact, we know the VA spends almost nothing at all on medical research related to this 1 million patients.

Should Gulf War victims be thankful, even if they are dying, just because they are being treated better than Vietnam veterans, so much better that the difference, the mathematical difference anyway, is "astronomicial?"

Are Gulf War vets being cared for or have we learned to apply the old addage, "deny deny deny until they die" while, at least, keeping some tabs on the sick?

Tabs. What is "tabs." Showing up once in awhile while a nurse charts your decline to death. This is "tabs."

Vietnam was different. Vets from Vietnam didn't even get "tabs." Math, its all in the math.

Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.

"They're Wasted:" The Price of Pushing Our Troops Too Far

2009-12-16T11:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/199007-They-re-Wasted-The-Price-of-Pushing-Our-Troops-Too-Far

"They're Wasted:" The Price of Pushing Our Troops Too Far
William Astore
TomDispatch
Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:15 EST

An Introduction by Tom Engelhardt:

Last week, the U.S. Army released its suicide figures for November. Twelve soldiers on active duty were classified as "potential suicides" for the month, bringing the yearly suicide total to 147, 19 more than for all of 2008, and the fifth year in a row the rate has risen. In the same week, a Rand Corporation study was released which found, not surprisingly, "that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in the general population. The researchers also found that the longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the more likely their children were to have difficulties in school and at home."

In fact, you didn't have to look far that week to see signs of trouble in the military. It's true that Major Nadil Malik Hasan, the psychiatrist who murdered 12 military personnel and one civilian, while wounding 29, at Fort Hood, Texas, had at least briefly faded from the news. In Grant County, Oregon, however, a judge sentenced 27-year-old Jessie Bratcher, an Iraq veteran, to a state psychiatric hospital in a murder case in which he had shot an unarmed civilian during what was claimed to be a post-traumatic stress disorder-induced "war flashback."

Meanwhile, in Boise, Idaho, George Nickel Jr., another Iraq War veteran, armed with a handgun and wearing "a tactical vest with as many as 90 rounds of ammunition," and "accused of shooting into two locked apartments before getting into an armed confrontation with Boise police officers this summer," pleaded guilty to "the unlawful discharge of a firearm into an occupied dwelling." Nickel, whose year in Iraq was spent disarming IEDs, "suffered a broken leg and shrapnel in his face in a roadside bomb explosion that killed three Idaho soldiers." He is "diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder." He faces up to 15 years in prison.

Last week, across the continent, 20-year old Joshua Hunter, a military policeman accused of stabbing "his two Army buddies" to death in the apartment they shared near Fort Drum in New York state, was arraigned on second-degree murder charges. All three men had served in Iraq. Hunter's last message at MySpace included this: "I will not be stopped until I get my revenge." According to the Associated Press, Hunter's wife said "that her husband was outgoing before he went to war, but when he returned stateside, he was an emotional wreck. 'He wasn't in any good mental shape at all... I tried to get him to go to therapy. They prescribed him medicine and stuff, but it just wasn't enough.'"

Unlike the week when Hasan struck at Ft. Hood and media attention was overwhelming, stories like these are small-scale and generally local in nature, yet they have now become a regular feature of the American landscape. Most of us may only half-notice, and yet something is happening here, even if we don't know what it is, Mr. Jones. Certainly, William Astore, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and TomDispatch regular, has a strong sense of where it may lead.
"They're Wasted"
The Price of Pushing Our Troops Too Far
By William Astore

When I was on active duty in the military, an Army friend used to remind me: "Any day you're not being shot at is a good Army day." Today's troops, especially if they're "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Afghanistan, don't have enough good Army days. Many of them are on their fourth or fifth deployments to a combat zone. They're stressed out and tired; they miss their spouses and families. And often they've seen things they wish they'd never seen.

But you'd hardly have known this listening to the debate over President Obama's decision to escalate yet again in Afghanistan. Its tone was remarkably antiseptic. I can't help recalling old wargames I played as a kid in which deploying infantry brigades to faraway places was as simple as picking up a few cardboard counters, tossing the dice, and pinning my troops to a new spot on the map. No gore splattered on my face when I rolled snake eyes after pushing my grunts too far into the Fulda Gap while playing MechWar '77.

As we roll the dice again in Central Asia, it's clear that we're pushing our Army and Marines too far. Naturally, our troops, notably the brass, will deny this. For them, it's "Army Strong" or "Semper Fi"; only losers whine or bellyache. Well, we Americans need to recognize the limits on our troops, even if they refuse to do so.

So let me be blunt: We're wearing them out.

Our "Wasted" Troops

Quietly, almost imperceptibly, our Army is hollowing out. Such is the predictable result of eight years of ceaseless deployments in support of ill-advised wars. Remarkably, the Army has, so far, managed to maintain its combat effectiveness, in part by its recourse to a "Stop Loss" policy -- essentially a backdoor draft (only recently curtailed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) that involuntarily extended the enlistments of 60,000 troops. It has also relied heavily on the use and reuse of the Reserves and the National Guard. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania noted last month on Meet the Press that "our troops are tired and worn out. [With respect to the] Pennsylvania National Guard, most of our guardsmen have been to either Iraq [or] Afghanistan, over 85 percent, and many of them have gone three or four times and they're wasted."

Signs of severe strain, of being "wasted," are often not visible to the American public. Nevertheless, they are ominous and growing. Suicides have hit record highs in the Army. Cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression, having reached an alarming 300,000 in 2008, according to Invisible Wounds of War, a RAND study, continue to escalate, constituting a mental health crisis for the Army. Traumatic brain injuries from IEDs and other explosive shocks in our war zones, difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat, may already exceed 300,000, another health crisis exacerbated by a lack of treatment available to veterans. Divorce rates among active duty troops continue to climb. An epidemic of domestic violence and crime has been linked to returning veterans and to the difficulty of readjusting to "normal" life after months, or years, in combat zones. These are just five of the better documented signs of an Army that's struggling to cope with wars of unprecedented length and still uncertain outcomes.

To maintain its force structure, given these kinds of symptomatic pressures, the Army has taken several questionable steps. It has boosted the maximum age of enlistment from age 35 to age 42 at a time when its operational tempo is burning out far younger men and women. It has authorized enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 for new soldiers, and reenlistment bonuses to select soldiers, also for up to $40,000. As the Army attempts to entice enlistees with big-money bonuses and benefits, it's also accepting more recruits who lack high school diplomas; the rate of new recruits with high school diplomas declined to 71% in 2008, a 25-year low. Counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns -- the sort of wars promoted by Centcom commander General David Petraeus and Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal -- theoretically demand restraint, tact, and flexibility exercised at the squad level by so-called strategic corporals. What's the likelihood that enough of today's recruits will develop the sophistication, the so-called "soft" yet decidedly hard-won "people skills" they need to succeed as strategic corporals?

Within the officer ranks, the Army has been boosting the success rate of those promoted to major (a point at which weaker officers are typically winnowed out) to better than 95%. In the past, it hovered around 80%. As Colonel Paul Aswell, chief of the Army's Officer Personnel Policy Division notes, "Every [Army promotion] board is going to select every officer that they can to [the rank of] major for as far as I can see right now."

Because so many seasoned but stressed-out captains are choosing to leave the Army after their initial service commitment is up, the selection rate for major will likely remain above 90% for years to come. "[W]e really don't think that's healthy," concludes Aswell. Plans to add 65,000 new recruits to the Army over the next few years only exacerbate the problem; an expanded Army necessitates even more field-grade billets. Many of these new billets are likely to remain vacant, since it takes 10 years to develop the "Iron Majors," who, along with mid-level NCOs, form the core of the Army.

Instead of a stable pyramid, then, think of an expanded yet still exhausted service taking on a more unstable, hourglass shape: heavy at the top with long-serving colonels and generals, heavy at the bottom with "green" privates and lieutenants, but corseted at its essential core due to shortages of experienced platoon sergeants and battle-hardened company and battalion commanders.

In the military, leaders are supposed to be promoted based on demonstrated potential to fulfill the expanded responsibilities inherent in a higher grade, but here the Army is trapped in a Catch-22 situation: It has to promote virtually every eligible captain to major (and quickly) precisely because so many captains are leaving the military.

Whether at the company or field-grade level, the simple fact is that the Army is bleeding experienced officers. Ever larger numbers of promising lieutenant colonels, for instance, are now taking earlier-than-expected retirements, opening further "must-fill" rungs on the promotion ladder. I know of two highly qualified Army lieutenant colonels who, as outstanding battalion commanders, could easily have reached colonel and might perhaps even have ended up with a general's star. Tired of repeat deployments, constant stress, and extraordinary burdens placed on their spouses and children, they chose instead to retire from active duty.

As we bleed experienced officers and promote marginally qualified ones almost automatically, it's sobering to consider another modern drain on the military -- the vast pay disparities that exist between those serving in the All Volunteer Army and civilian contractors often operating beside them in the same combat zone. Whereas an unmarried Army sergeant makes roughly $85 a day and a married captain roughly double that, a "protective security specialist" employed by Blackwater (now Xe) makes 14 times the pay of our sergeant. Of course, no one joins the Army to get rich, but such dramatic inequities are hardly conducive either to high morale or to retaining experienced military specialists who know they can sell their skills at top value elsewhere.

Indeed, the Army (and so the American taxpayer) is being forced to compete with Xe, Triple Canopy, DynCorp International, and similar private security outfits for the services of experienced non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Even a reenlistment bonus of $40,000 for a staff sergeant with interpreter/translator experience may be unpersuasive when such an NCO could double or triple his take-home pay -- and perhaps decrease his stress level as well -- by hiring on with a paramilitary contractor.

So what, you may ask? Well, despite what Napoleon said, an Army doesn't march on its stomach. It marches because experienced NCOs boot it in the butt and get it moving in the right direction. NCOs are the backbone of any effective army. Lose too many and you're done for.

"Decades More" of Dread and Death

It's this under-compensated, over-stressed Army that we're sending into Afghanistan to accomplish what could only be termed a herculean task. It's not only supposed to defeat the Taliban insurgency by force of arms -- something its troops are, at least, trained for -- but build a nation by negotiating a complex "human terrain." That's Army jargon for the reality that roughly 80% of so-called nation-building operations basically add up to armed social work. Simultaneously, our troops are being tasked with training an Afghan army that, despite years of effort, exists more on paper than in the field.

By all appearances, that Afghan army is hollow. Making it solid and reliable in a few short years is truly a bridge too far for our trainers.

And if that's an overly imposing task, no less imposing are the literal mountains of Afghanistan. One can hardly overstate the mind-numbing fatigue suffered by troops fighting at high altitude. Our soldiers typically carry nearly 100 pounds of equipment, including body armor, weaponry, helmet, ammunition, water, radio, extra batteries, night vision goggles, GPS receiver -- the list goes on. Now, think of hauling yourself and 100 pounds of gear up goat paths at altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet. Think about fighting a lightly-armed, lightly dressed, fleet-footed enemy with better knowledge of the harsh terrain, and with physiologies acclimated to the thinner, drier air.

I asked an Army battalion commander to put the plight of our troops and the challenge of COIN in terms the average American could understand. His reply was sobering:
"Dread is the term most soldiers apply to their emotions in the six months leading to deployment. Not dread of the enemy, but dread of the prison-like conditions of their service [overseas]. There are no leave breaks in Paris or at the canteen. Even coming home for mid-tour leave is stressful as hell.

"Then of course you add the mental grind of constant exposure to [the] lethal threat of roadside bombs and sniper fire and hotter engagements. Or the converse that many times absolutely nothing happens for these soldiers other than traveling to, securing, and returning from endless marginally productive meetings with local leaders. [Add to that] the separation from family, the enforced celibacy and enforced sobriety and uncorrectable disruption of social lives.

"Imagine working without a break in your current job with no weekends... no social events, no wife, no bars, no permanent buildings, no funding. That's what the grind is... Putting up with those conditions and heading out the gate every day... and grinding away at those armed social-working tasks is the new criterion of valor.

"The cost of winning an insurgency is staying at it for years, decades. In a fundamentally flawed operating environment like Afghanistan, we could be there at or above our current level of commitment for decades more."
Decades more: So much for an 18-month timeline for our latest Afghan surge and withdrawal.

The Horrifying Legacies of War

By sending up to 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we're further stressing a military that, if not entirely "wasted," is nevertheless showing serious signs of strain. This shouldn't be surprising. Our Army, after all, isn't made up of rootless, robotic "universal soldiers," but men and women who are deeply rooted within our communities. Indeed, that very rootedness may help explain their remarkable staying power over the last eight years. Sooner or later, however, such roots will be cut if we continue to send them on lost causes.

Consider our latest "surge": What will happen to our Army if its augmented presence only alienates Afghans further? What if it ends up strengthening Taliban recruitment efforts and prolonging the war instead of shortening it? What if our enemies simply choose to wait us out? Are we truly prepared to stay for a decade, or even decades, more?

Prolonging a stalemated war will, in fact, only mean more hurt for both Afghans and Americans. The hurt to Afghans will undoubtedly be worse, for their homes are the battlefield, but our own hurt shouldn't be underestimated. More broken bodies and shattered minds. More echoes of the horrifying violence that accompanies war.

To paraphrase William Faulkner on history's relationship to the past: Even when war is officially declared over, it's not dead. It's not even past. The horrors of war endure in the hearts and minds of the people who experience them, and they dwell, to some degree, in the collective consciousness of us all.

Are we willing, then, to sit and watch as our military strives to endure what may ultimately prove unendurable? Do we really want to risk returning to the hollow army of the mid-1970s, reeling from defeat in Vietnam, that judged the American public numb to its service and sacrifices?

What if, upon returning to the American "homeland," whether in 2012 or 2052, an exhausted, embittered, and demoralized army again judges us and finds us even more wanting? What if, as in the 1970s, some alienated soldiers come to see the public as treacherous backstabbers, with all the potential dangers that entails?

As we embrace policies and strategies that erode our army, we risk more than a weakened military; we risk breeding resentments and recriminations that could lead to a future domestic surge of militant nationalism of our very own, conceivably imperiling the foundations of our democracy.

And that's a peril -- and a price -- too terrible to contemplate.

Unrepentant "Blond Angel" 18 Others From the ESMA Stand Trial

2009-12-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.truthout.org/1215096

Unrepentant "Blond Angel" 18 Others From the ESMA Stand Trial
Tuesday 15 December 2009
by: Sam Ferguson, t r u t h o u t | Report

Buenos Aires, Argentina - It is hard to describe the dimension of the horror at Argentina's Naval Mechanic's School, known by its Spanish acronym as the ESMA. Some compare it to Dante's inferno for the dizzying psychological treatment that prisoners suffered while on the inside of this torture center and the eternal scars that it has left. Others invoke a historical comparison, calling it Argentina's Auschwitz, because of the thousands of people who were murdered there. Others simply call it a symbol - the largest and longest lasting secret detention center maintained during Argentina's "dirty war," the brutal repressive campaign which left 9,000-30,000 people missing, known as "the disappeared."

In total, as many as 5000 people are estimated to have disappeared from the ESMA, which functioned as a secret prison from 1976-1983.

In 2003, Argentina opened the book on this dark past, when the Congress annulled a series of amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987, paving the way for prosecution of the officials at the ESMA, along with hundreds of other former military officials around the country who helped maintain 340 secret prisons.

On December 11, 16 officials from the ESMA's notorious Work Unit 3.3.2 were escorted into federal court in handcuffs. Ostensibly charged with pursuing the Montonero guerrilla organization, the victims in the case include leftist sympathizers, poverty activists, human rights workers, journalists, members of the church and even family members who were seeking information on their missing relatives. Prosecutors allege that the Work Group turned the ESMA into center of "kidnapping, torture and extermination."

In total, 19 officials were charged on an array of counts of kidnapping, torture and murder of 86 victims. (Three were excused from attending for health reasons)

In a prepared statement, Julio Alak, Argentina's attorney general, called the ESMA case "transcendent," because of the number of officials accused, and the symbolism of the repression which took place there. The case is a disturbing glimpse at Argentina's violent past.

The Blond Angel and the Grupo Santa Cruz

In the most well-known crimes of the trial, prosecutors allege that 11 of the defendants infiltrated, kidnapped and executed 12 human rights activists, known as the "Grupo Santa Cruz," named after the church where the activists had sometimes met.

The protagonist in the incident is Alfredo Astiz, known by his nom de guerre "blond angel," apparently given to him for his boyish looks and neat tuft of hair.

Prosecutors, relying on the extensive investigation by journalist Uki Goñi in his book "Judas," about Astiz infiltration, said that Astiz adopted the pseudonym Gustavo Niño and began attending meetings of family members while claiming to have a missing brother.

Members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women who began to march in protest of the dictatorship in 1977 at the height of the regime's power to demand information on their missing children, remember "Gustavo" marching with them and confronting the police on their behalf, which they later believed was an elaborate scheme by Astiz and federal police forces to help infiltrate the organization.

Between December 8-10, 1977, 12 people were kidnapped in a series of raids across Buenos Aires, including three of the Mothers and two French nuns who had been meeting with the families.

At the raid at the Santa Cruz church, which had served as a safe haven for opponents of the regime and leftist dissidents from all over Latin America, Astiz allegedly marked his victims with a kiss on the cheek, the traditional Argentine salutation, at which point intelligence agents waiting on the street stormed the meeting and kidnapped Astiz's targets.

The incident caused immediate international outrage. Survivors of the ESMA recall that the Navy forced the nuns to stand in front of a banner with the inscription "Montoneros" and take a picture, to try and make it look like the guerrilla organization had in fact kidnapped the nuns. La Nacion, Argentina's conservative daily, published the photo, and several international media outlets, such as the Christian Science Monitor, relayed the reports from the Argentine press.

Two weeks after the raids, five bodies washed up on Argentina's Atlantic shore. In 2005, the five bodies were identified as the three mothers - Azucena Villaflor, Maria Ponce de Bianco and Esther Ballestrino de Careaga - one of the nuns and another activist amongst the 12 disappeared.

Bone damage indicated that the victims suffered heavy impact, probably caused by the ESMA's notorious "death flights," where prisoners were drugged, loaded onto cargo planes and thrown out alive over the South Atlantic.

In 1990, France convicted Astiz in absentia for the disappearance of the nuns, Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet.

Bernanrd Kouchner, France's foreign minister, released a prepared statement "to salute the new political will which has sparked Argentine authorities to continue ahead with [prosecutions] against the dictatorship," continuing that Argentina has "assumed with courage its responsibility for memory." France has sought Astiz's extradition since 1990, but the statement said "crimes committed in Argentine territory against an Argentine citizen should be judged, in the first instance, in Argentina, which will finally happen."

Ana Maria Careaga, whose mother Esther was one of the three disappeared mothers, had conflicting emotions over the start of the trial. "On one side, it's very painful.... it once again puts on the table the whole route of [the Grupo Santa Cruz] and everything that happened at the ESMA ... their horrible, cruel and inhumane destination. But ... as a family member, one needs and always asks: what was their final destination? Even though it's hard, it's important to be able to say goodbye and that there is justice."

In 1998, Astiz gave a wide-ranging interview to Argentine journalist Gabriella Cerruti. About the mothers, Astiz said "I didn't betray them, because I was never one of them ... What I did was infiltrate, and this is what they won't forgive me for. Because I infiltrated them two times. When they accuse me of other things I get mad, but, for this I laugh."

In the interview, Astiz defended his work at the ESMA, saying that he helped defeat terrorism and followed orders. (Astiz later said that Cerruti violated an off-the-record agreement, and denied most of the content of the article).

In defense, Astiz has said that he cannot be prosecuted for following superior orders. He has also said that he did not participate in torturing anybody, that his job, rather, was to detain suspects and bring them to the ESMA.

Jorge "Tigre" Acosta

The other notorious defendant in the case is Jorge Acosta, known as Tigre ("tiger"). Prosecutors allege that Acosta, chief of the intelligence section of the Work Unit 3.3.2, oversaw the ESMA's torture activities until 1979. They also allege that Acosta coordinated an "a process of recuperation," choosing a select bunch of prisoners to collaborate and eventually be released. Some were put to work on mundane tasks. Others were used to analyze press documents and provide context to the intelligence unit on the division amongst Argentina's left-wing movements. Others, known as the "mini-staff," were used by the Work Unit 3.3.2 to identify targets and participated in kidnapping raids.

Victor Basterra, a prisoner for over four years at the ESMA, was put to work making false identification documents, smuggled some photos out as he gradually began to gain his freedom. (Acosta had left the ESMA by the time Basterra was allegedly kidnapped). Prosecutors have relied heavily on these photos to corroborate victims' testimony and to identify who worked at the ESMA. Survivors never knew their captors' names, because they used "combat names."

Seventeen defendants in the case have personally identified Acosta as their torturer. But like Astiz, Acosta has publicly defended his tactics.

In the 1980s, during Argentina's fragile transition to democracy, the government of Raul Alfonsin ordered the prosecution of the military's top commanders. In 1985, five of the nine members of the ruling juntas were convicted. Soon thereafter, prosecutors moved down the chain of command.

Many middle-ranking officers publicly defended the tactics of the "war against subversion," angry that their superiors did not stand up for them in the trial of the junta, and were allowing prosecutions to proceed. When called to court, these middle-ranking officers used the opportunity to defend the tactics of the dirty war, simultaneously naming all their superiors who knew about their activities, and denying to state any of their subordinates.

When called before a military court in 1986, Acosta, told the military court, "I have been a repressor because my conscience asked it of me and my hierarchical post ordered it of me. Nobody can wash our good name and honor."

Speaking of the survivors who accuse Acosta of personally torturing them, Acosta has repeatedly said that they were "intelligence agents" for the Navy who had volunteered to help infiltrate the Montonero guerrilla organization, after realizing the error of their political fight.

In another case in 1986, responding to his treatment of Graciela Daleo, one of the 86 victims in the current trial and a survivor of the ESMA, Acosta remembered "after a few moments of rabid hate, in which I remember that she insulted me, I responded with a slap, because she was having a hysterical attack. She volunteered to remain with us forever and the truth is we had a desire to achieve peace through occidental and Christian principles."

In more recent declarations before the justice system, Acosta has mostly refused to testify.

Prosecution, Amnesty and Prosecution

Charged statements like those that Acosta made were part of a military gamble during the transition to democracy that the military could win over public approval for their tactics during the dictatorship through a combination of threat and propaganda. When rhetoric failed, the army rebelled in opposition to prosecution and the government was forced to pass an amnesty law shielding middle- and lower-ranking officers from prosecution in 1987. Higher-ranking officers were later pardoned in 1989 and 1990.

Human rights activists were unsatisfied with this outcome, and continued to fight for prosecution throughout the '90s. Through an exception to the amnesty law, activists continued to file civil suits, and sporadic prosecutions for the kidnapping of babies continued. (Several hundred children were kidnapped and illegally adopted by military families. The Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group which searched for the missing children, has identified 99).

In 1998, prosecutors formed a case for the "systematic appropriation of babies," and again indicted some of the military's top officials, including Acosta, who was charged with operating a maternity ward inside of the ESMA. (The case is ongoing). These high-profile cases kept the issue of human rights in the media, and sustained a decades-long fight to break the impunity.

In 2003, shortly after taking office, former President Nestor Kirchner made human rights a centerpiece of his new administration. He pushed through a law which annulled the amnesty laws, opening up cases which had been shut for nearly two decades, including the ESMA case. (Mr. Kirchner's wife, Cristina, became president in 2007 and has sustained the politics of human rights.)

But since then, the case has languished in the pre-trial stages. Participants and observers cite a number of reasons - Argentina's formalistic justice system, ideological resistance on the part of some judges, poor investigation, legal and procedural wrangling - all of which have contributed to delay.

The day before the trial started, Astiz and Oscar Montes, the former chief of Naval Operations during the dictatorship, both fired their lawyers in an apparent attempt to delay the opening of the case. The court rejected a request to postpone the start date, which had already been pushed back twice.

Defense

Defense attorneys say that the trial is unconstitutional, violating the prohibition on retroactive criminal laws. They say that the amnesty law passed in 1987 cannot be revoked.

The Supreme Court, however, rejected that argument in the 2005 Simon decision, saying the crimes against humanity such as state-sponsored torture cannot be amnestied, pardoned or subject to statutes of limitation. (The court had previously upheld the amnesty law in the 1980s).

Defense attorneys also plan to attack the sufficiency of the evidence. Victims at the ESMA were generally hooded, and defense attorneys say that the prosecution cannot sufficiently pinpoint who participated in the crimes.

"They can prove that a crime happened, but they cannot prove who did it," says Lucas Tassara, a defense attorney for Antonio Pernias and now for Astiz.

Victims' lawyers, however, plan to argue that the defendants are co-authors of all the crimes committed by the Work Unit 3.3.2 for taking part in a systematic criminal structure. They say that direct eyewitness evidence is not needed to convict.

Private defense attorneys have also launched a charged ideological defense. Alfredo Solari, an attorney for six of the defendants in the case, said in an email to Truthout that the prosecution forms part of a region-wide "political plan with the ultimate objective ... of pursuing [the American military], not with arms, but through the creation and application of a 'juridical' system that will allow for neutralization of it as a defense force." In May, Solari sent a 25-page complaint to the United States embassy and several other governments saying that the trials violated international human rights law, calling the defendants "political prisoners" of the successive Kirchner administrations.

Juan Maria Aberg Cobo, who until December 10 served as Astiz's lawyer, said in an interview four weeks before the trial, "These are trials like Nuremburg, but in reverse. The winners of the war are being tried." He also accused human rights groups of "revenge, vengeance and hate."

Privately, one of the defense attorneys involved in the case expressed his frustration at working on the case, saying that it was the "law of exception." He said that the political and social pressures on judges in these cases made it hard to work.

Pablo Eduardo Garcia Velasco, one of the defendants in the case, claims that he has been misidentified. His twin brother also worked for the Navy.

"Volver a Matar"

The defendants entered the courtroom at 11 AM. Oscar Montes, the former head of Naval Operations and the oldest amongst the defendants, sat in a wheelchair for the duration of the proceedings. As the highest-ranking official amongst the defendants, Montes is facing the most charges, along with Manuel Jacinto Garcia Tallada, who succeeded him in his post.

Some entered the courtroom seemingly indifferent, such as Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, who was arrested in Mexico in 2000 on orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, under the principle of universal jurisdiction and later sent to Spain. Cavallo formed part of the operations squad of the 3.3.2, charged with finding and kidnapping suspects who were later brought to the ESMA.

Others, like Juan Carlos Rolon, entered cocky and triumphant, standing tall and blowing kisses to the 30 or so military supporters seated in the upper gallery. Prosecutors allege that Rolon was one of eight defendants in the intelligence section of the 3.3.2, charged with torturing prisoners and sorting through stolen goods. He is also one of nine defendants charged with the kidnapping and murder of guerrilla journalist Rodolfo Walsh, who ran the Latin American Clandestine News agency and was one of the first to report on the abuses of the dictatorship.

The supporters seated in the upper gallery were boisterous and proud of the defendants throughout the proceedings.

"It was a war," said Cecilia Pando, of the Association of Friends and Family of Political Prisoners. (The name refers to the group's belief that the defendants are currently being held as political prisoners. It does not refer to the thousands who were summarily detained and executed by the military regime). "It was terrible on both sides," she said, calling the trial a "political circus" and "judicial terrorism."

Throughout the proceedings, Astiz, who dressed in jeans and a ratty, blue sweater, held a book in his lap, but never opened it. As the judges retired at approximately 5:30, a group of human rights activists began to chant and sing. "Terrorists!" yelled a woman from the upper gallery as the sounds from below filled the courtroom. As Astiz was lead out of the courtroom, he looked toward the protesters on the other side of a wall of bulletproof glass. Seemingly unrepentant, he provocatively waved the book he had been guarding all afternoon. The title: "Volver a Matar" ("Return to Kill").

The Sex Scandal No One Wants To Talk About

2009-12-14T13:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Sex-Scandal-No-One-Wan-by-Martha-Rosenberg-091213-98.html

December 13, 2009
The Sex Scandal No One Wants To Talk About
By Martha Rosenberg
Chicago, IL

Neighborhood can be forgiven for not being too relieved that convicted killer/rapist Andre Crawford is eligible for the death penalty.

47-year-old Crawford was found guilty of 11 murders, nine rapes and an attempted murder in a Chicago trial last week.

The reason is they have heard "we got the killer" before. They heard it for years in the South Side neighborhoods of Englewood and New City but the murders of vulnerable women during the 1990's continued.

In fact, in the same neighborhood and time period Crawford preyed, police charged Hubert Geralds Jr., with six murders, Geoffrey Griffin with one murder--suspecting him of eight more-and Gregory Clepper with fourteen murders.

At one point, police said three killers were murdering women within 12 blocks of each other--two in the same abandoned building.

Police later charged Earl Mack Jr. with one of Clepper's murders and another suspect with one of Geralds' murders--making the "South Side strangler" everyone was hoping would be caught possibly six different killers.

Women at Genesis House, a safe house on Chicago's North side, during the scourge discussed their wives-in-laws--women working with the same pimp--being found strangled in lonely outposts. But few could quit working and most tried not to think about it.

Of course Chicago is famous for John Gacy's murder of 33 boys. And even today prostitutes on the street experience violence once a month according to a study co-written by the University of Chicago's Steven D. Levitt, the author of Freakonomics. They are extorted into sex in one out of 20 transactions, he says.

Yet as Crawford is convicted, we know and hear less about the 40 plus women killed by the South Side strangler or stranglers--80 women if we believe Clepper's macabre boasting to police--than we know of Tiger Woods' string of mistresses.

Of course one reason is the Pretty Woman factor wherein people want to think of bought sex as white party girls, punch bowls and billion dollar golfers not the unholy trinity of a woman, the monkey on her back and a man that could kill her that it often is.

"If white middle-class college students are targeted, then it becomes a national case," Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston told the Chicago Tribune in 1999. "If it's black prostitutes, you're talking about marginalized people. It doesn't even get the attention locally."

But there's also the fact that families abusive enough to push women to the streets which many or most survival prostitutes have--think the movie Precious--are also families that aren't heartsick over their absence and don't report them missing.

There's also the fact that violence reported to police can be shamefully ignored as in the case of registered sex offender and Cleveland murder suspect Anthony Sowell whom police arrested 37 days after a woman told police he choked and raped her in his house. Sowell is charged with the death of 11 women and suspected of three more.

And finally there is collective denial over society's throwaway women.

Like Chicago, 60 street prostitutes and drug addicts disappeared from Vancouver's downtown Eastside neighborhood in the ten years before the arrest of Canadian pig farmer Robert Pickton in 2002. He is charged with 26 of the murders, six of which he was convicted for in 2007. Didn't anyone notice or care?

Covering Pickton's trial for orato.com, former sex worker Trisha Baptie says his crimes left her "reeling at the horror at what had been done to the women I used to work alongside on Vancouver's streets" and that her "soul cried and mourned."

But she also notes, "If I went missing today, I have total confidence it would be reported; I would be searched for."

Hopefully the same can be said for Chicago's women today.

.

$475,000 Wrongful Death Lawsuit Win- Families, Clergy, Attorneys Decry Murders in Prisons

2009-12-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/-475-000-Wrongful-Death-La-by-Dr-B-Cayenne-Bir-091212-674.html

December 12, 2009
$475,000 Wrongful Death Lawsuit Win- Families, Clergy, Attorneys Decry Murders in Prisons
By Dr. B. Cayenne Bird

The video belows shows highlights of the press conference held on Friday, December 4, 2009 at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.Five families whose loved ones were killed in prison, their attorneys, five clergymen, a former CDCr Forensic Psychologist and others spoke out about the death toll taking place in the prisons beneath the radar of most media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gv1fRkTtu4

There is almost a total lack of accountability for torturing and killing a state prisoner except for the rare victory of a lawsuit. The parents of Joseph Sullivan were awarded $475,000 in damages for the wrongful death of their son Joseph at Chuckawalla Prison. That is no compensation at all for the loss of a loved one through medical neglect and torture.

The overcrowding has caused deliberate indifference and medical neglect to be a pattern which results in the death of a prisoner every day. The media is banned, so the public cannot see this death toll visibly. But the three judge panel in the Coleman-Plata case knows of this death toll, and it is imperative that prisoner releases begin right now. None of the people who have been killed had a death sentence.

Attorneys Abraham Goldman and David Springfield successfully litigated the Sullivan case. They have made an especially compelling statement here.

http://www.1union1.com/Dec4_springfield.html

I will be adding more written remarks from the speakers to this web page, but a number of them are already up here.

http://www.1union1.com/dec4_main_index.html

The full video of all the speakers will be in the newsblaze.com channel soon, this one has highlights only.

After you view the video, the last thing you will be thinking about is clicking on the stars to rate it, but that's how You Tube works, the video with the most star ratings gets moved to the top of the viewing selections, so please do it so that more people can see these victims of a hidden crisis.

I will be writing more soon on this topic. Please get active in the UNION so you can learn to become an advocate for change and help us build the necessary voting lobby it takes to be able to elect, recall, win initiative campaigns (change the laws) and be a force to be reckoned with.

rightor1@yahoo.com

Brazil police 'kill 11,000 in six years'

2009-12-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/6765724/Brazil-police-kill-11000-in-six-years.html

Brazil police 'kill 11,000 in six years'
Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many in execution-style murders, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch.
09 Dec 2009

Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labelled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.

The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations' finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a "significant portion" of 48,000 slayings the year before.

"Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."

Isabel Figueiredo, Brazil's coordinator-general of human rights and public safety, acknowledged that police violence is a widespread problem and "it concerns the federal government a great deal."

Ms Figueiredo said authorities have launched a series of initiatives to confront the problem, including training police to respect human rights and the appropriate use of force, in addition to the purchase of less-lethal weapons for state police forces.

Security forces "have begun to understand that instead of solving the problem, confronting criminals with weapons leads to casualties on both sides," she said.

Officials from the Rio and Sao Paulo police departments did not comment.

Eisenhower's Slaughter Of Nearly 2 Million German POWS Inside 'Eisenhower's Death Camps' -

2009-12-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

http://rense.com/general88/eisen.htm

Eisenhower's Slaughter Of Nearly 2 Million German POWS
Inside 'Eisenhower's Death Camps' -
A U.S. Prison Guard Tells His Story
By Martin Brech
The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 161-166
12-3-9

In October, 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short. My furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South Carolina was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a "repo depot"(replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned and don't recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April, 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly, they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from "higher up." No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was "out of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food and that these orders came from "higher up." But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense," and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down.Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when.I was put on the "graveyard shift," from two to four A.M. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something; I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up. Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket, under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day, I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the French zone, where I soon would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner, even allowing them to play with it at their request! This thoroughly "broke the ice," and soon we were singing songs we taught each other or I had learned in high school German ("Du, du liegst mir im Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my "Eisenhower jacket" and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to major in philosophy and religion.

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off by French soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club until he died. The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For many, this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our "killing fields."

When I finally saw the German women in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were holding them prisoner. I was told they were "camp followers," selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.

I was used increasingly as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One rather amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.P's. I was told he had a "fancy Nazi medal," which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her back," but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his "dirty work."

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, if they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told their supply of food had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more "available," but despite this, rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle butt and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.

"So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours." It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded; ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am speaking out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse ever to condone our government's murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.

I realize it is difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I's sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feeling suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses that "the truth will make us free, have no fear." We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all.

Eisenhower's Holocaust - His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans

2009-12-13T07:05:00.000-08:00

There were all kinds of 'hidden murders' in WWII from all sides!

http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm

Eisenhower's Holocaust - His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans
Author Unknown
6-22-8

"God, I hate the Germans..." (Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his wife in September, 1944)

First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice.

It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world.

You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists.

No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night, with no shelter from the cold, biting rain.

Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair, and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before.

Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the General Dwight David Eisenhower.

One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language of those orders was this statement,

"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."

Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German General Staff, thousands of people, after the war.

Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible.

Of course, that was illegal under International law, so he issued an order on March 10, 1945 and verified by his initials on a cable of that date, that German Prisoners of War be predesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" called in these reports as DEF. He ordered that these Germans did not fall under the Geneva Rules, and were not to be fed or given any water or medical attention. The Swiss Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for under the DEF classification, they had no such authority or jurisdiction.

Months after the war was officially over, Eisenhower's special German DEF camps were still in operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying that they were prisoners. As soon as the war was over, General George Patton simply turned his prisoners loose to fend for themselves and find their way home as best they could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a specific order to Patton, to turn these men over to the DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we know that these orders were largely ignored, and it may well be that Patton's untimely and curious death may have been a result of what he knew about these wretched Eisenhower DEF camps.

The book, OTHER LOSSES, found its way into the hands of a Canadian news reporter, Peter Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research through contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his column on September 12,1989 the following, in part:

"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal of epic proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in peace than were killed in the European Theater."

"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing German POW's on the Russians. Until now, no one dug too deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared the American camps to Buchenwald."

It is known, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for these German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied them. Many men died of gangrene from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local German people who offered these men food, were denied. General Patton's Third Army was the only command in the European Theater to release significant numbers of Germans.

Others, such as Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried, and ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. However, a SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower, countermanded them on May 15th.

Does that make you angry? What will it take to get the average apathetic American involved in saving his country from such traitors at the top? Thirty years ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was written setting out the political and moral philosophy; of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE POLITICIAN, by Robert Welch. This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of Jacob David Eisenhower and his wife Ida. Everyone is all excited about the celebration of this landmark in the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert Dole, in honor of the Commander of the American Death Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport be renamed the Eisenhower Airport!

The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is actually issuing a special Eisenhower Centennial Silver Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4 million of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are promoting these coins under the slogan, "Remember the Man...Remember the Times..." Pardon me if I regurgitate!

There will be some veterans who will not be buying these coins. Two will be Col. James Mason and Col. Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps who published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in 1950. They stated in part:

"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud ... water was a major problem, yet only 200 yards away the River Rhine was running bank-full."

Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the Eisenhower Silver Dollars is Martin Brech of Mahopac, New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an 18 year old Private First Class in Company C of the 14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and interpreter at the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along the Rhine River. He stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:

"My protests (regarding treatment of the German DEF'S) were met with hostility or indifference, and when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our deliberate policy not to adequately feed them."

"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans ... Some of the men were really only boys 13 years of age...Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand ... I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds...I have received threats ... Nevertheless, this...has liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine." (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)

Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point yearbook picture when he was dubbed "IKE, THE TERRIBLE SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to the last in his class. This article was first printed in 1990, but we thought it was meaningful to reprint it now.

Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West Point Academy, Eisenhower was summoned to the office of the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions. At the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's blood to insure White racial integrity.

Apparently, there was a question of Eisenhower's racial lineage and this was brought to Eisenhower's attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After some discussion, Eisenhower admitted having Jewish background. The headmaster then reportedly said, "That's where you get your Oriental blood?" Although he was allowed to remain at the academy, word got around since this was a time in history when non-Whites were not allowed into the academy. Note - The issue of Eisenhower's little-known Jewish background in academically essential in understanding his psychopathic hatred of German men, women and children.

Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy graduating class yearbook, published in 1915, Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."

Wherever Eisenhower went during his military career, Eisenhower's Jewish background and secondary manifesting behavior was a concern to his fellow officers. During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, MacArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff.

In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.

Thus it comes as no surprise that General George Patton, a real Aryan warrior, hated Eisenhower.

[Ed: Patton was keen to fight the Soviets, and reportedly kept some German units ready to move against the Soviets...unsurprisingly he was killed; after the war, in a 'car crash,' just like Lawrence of Arabia was conveniently bumped off, in a similar manner, for his 'pro-fascist' views].

Comment
From George
12-28-3

Finally, the truth about Ike. He was a zionist!, a racist! and a slaughterer of innocents! He was always these things. And all anyone remembers is his famous quote "to beware of the military/industrial complex." Like this knowledge means he was a great precient prophet, when he was really a part of the NWO and helped set the US up for all that followed. The tooling jobs and industry started to leave the US in the early '50's, when Ike got into power. It was Japan they were building. Notice the difference between the destruction of Japan and the quick buildup of the Philipines and Japan and the Pacific the US took over, after the war of hegemony to steal the wealth of the Pacific Rim and present day Afghanistan, Iraq etc., now that the zionists rule the 'world'. The zionist essence is evil, destructive and self-destructive. Ike was a tool of the zionist evil essence.

German POW's Diary Reveals More Of Ike's Holocaust
12-29-3

Note - The following diary extract has been provided by the nephew of the author under the conditions we honor his request for anonymity. -ed

A transcript of my Uncle's words...from my Mother's diary:

"Suddenly an American Jeep moved towards us and several American Soldiers surrounded us. There was no officer in charge, and the first thing the 'Amis' did - they liberated us, I mean, from our few valuables, mainly rings and watches........ We were now prisoners of war- no doubt about it!

The first night we were herded into a barn, where we met about 100 men who shared the same fate. To make my story short, we were finally transported to Fuerstenfeldbruck near Munich. Here we, who were gathered around Hermann, interrupted him and gasped in dismay.

Fuerstenfeldbruck had become known to us as one of the most cruel POW camps in the American zone.

Then my brother continued:

Again we were searched and had to surrender everything, even our field utensils, except a spoon. Here, in freezing temperature, 20,000 of us were squeezed together on the naked ground, without blanket or cover, exposed day and night to the winter weather.

For six days we received neither food nor water! We used our spoons to catch drops of rain.

We were surrounded by heavy tanks. During the night bright searchlights blinded us, so that sleep was impossible. We napped from time to time, standing up and leaning against each other. It was keeping us warmer that sitting on the frozen ground.

Many of us were near collapse. One of our comrades went mad, he jumped around wildly, wailing and whimpering. he was shot at once. His body was lying on the ground, and we were not allowed to come near him. He was not he only one. Each suspicious movement caused the guards to shoot into the crowd, and a few were always hit.

German civilians, mainly women of the surrounding villages, tried to approach the camp to bring food and water for us prisoners. they were chased away.

Our German officers could finally succeed to submit an official protest, particularly because of the deprivation of water. As a response, a fire hose was thrown into the midst of the densely crowded prisoners and then turned on. Because of the high water pressure the hose moved violently to and fro. Prisoners tumbled, fell, got up and ran again to catch a bit of water. In that confusion the water went to waste, and the ground under us turned into slippery mud. All the while the 'Amis' watched that spectacle, finding it very funny and most entertaining. They laughed at our predicament as hard as they could. Then suddenly, they turned the water off again.

We had not expected that the Americans would behave in such a manner. We could hardly believe it. War brutalizes human beings.

One day later we were organized into groups of 400 men .... We were to receive two cans of food for each man. This is how it was to be done: The prisoners had to run through he slippery mud, and each one had to grab his two cans quickly, at the moment he passed the guards. One of my comrades slipped and could not run fast enough, He was shot at once ....

On May 10th , several truckloads of us were transported the the garrison of Ulm by the Danube..... As each man jumped into the truck, a guard kicked him in the backbone with his rifle butt.

We arrived in the city of Heilbronn by the Neckar, In the end we counted 240,000 men, who lived on the naked ground and without cover.

Spring and summer were mild this year, but we were starving. At 6;00 am we received coffee, at noon about a pint of soup and 100 grams of bread a day........

The 'Amis' gave us newspapers in German language, describing the terrors of the concentration camps. We did not believe any of it. We figured the Americans only wanted to demoralize us further.

The fields on which we lived belonged to the farmers of the area...soon nothing of the clover and other sprouting greens were left, and the trees were barren. We had eaten each blade of grass.....

In some camps there were Hungarian POW's. 15,000 of them. Mutiny against their officers broke out twice amongst them. After the second mutiny the Americans decided to use German prisoners to govern the Hungarians. Since the Hungarians were used as workers they were well fed. There was more food than they could eat. But when the Germans asked the Americans for permission to bring the Hungarians' leftovers into the camps of the starving Germans, it was denied. The Americans rather destroyed surplus food, than giving it to the Germans.

Sometimes it happened that groups of our own men were gathered and transported away. We presumed they were discharged to go home, and naturally, we wished to be among them. Much later we heard they were sent to labor camps! My mother's cousin, feared that he would be drafted into the Hitler Youth SS, he volunteered to the marines, in 1945 his unit was in Denmark. On April 20th they were captured by the Americans. his experience in the POW camp was identical that of my brother's. They lived in open fields, did not receive and food and water the first six days, and starved nearly to death. German wives and mothers who wanted to throw loaves of bread over the fence, were chased off. The prisoners, just to have something to chew, scraped the bark from young trees. my cousins job was to report each morning how many had died during the night. "and these were not just a few!" he adds to his report he wrote me.

It became known, that the conditions in the POW camps in the American Zone were identical everywhere. We could therefore safely conclude, that it was by intent and by orders from higher ups to starve the German POW's and we blamed General Eisenhower for it. He, who was of German descent could not discern the evildoers during the Nazi time from our decent people. We held that neglect of knowledge and understanding severely against him.

I wish to quote the inscription on the grave stones of those of my German compatriots who have already passed away:
We had to pass through fire and through water. But now you have loosened our bonds.

Toxic munitions cause of baby deaths and deformities in Fallujah

2009-12-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16442

Toxic munitions cause of baby deaths and deformities in Fallujah

By David Randall
Global Research, December 7, 2009
View Zone

In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 -- before the invasion -- records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.

The data -- contained in a letter sent by a group of British and Iraqi doctors and campaigners to the United Nations last month -- presaged claims made in a report in The Guardian yesterday that there has been a sharp rise in birth defects in the city. The paper quoted Fallujah General's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais, as saying: "We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies... There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of brain tumours." Earlier this year Sky News reported a Fallujah grave-digger saying that, of the four or five new-born babies he buries every day, most have deformities. [right: Iraqi boys play with remains of US rocket.]

The campaigners' letter to the UN calls for an independent investigation to be set up, "the cleaning up of toxic materials used by the occupying forces, including depleted uranium and white phosphorus", and an inquiry launched to discover if any war crimes have been committed.

The campaigners believe that either white phosphorus or depleted uranium is a major, if not only, cause of the birth defects. White phosphorus, which US military has admitted firing on insurgents in heavily populated Fallujah, has a long history of military use, dating back to the First World War.

And although no scientific study has ever proved a causal link between depleted uranium and serious medical problems Ð and several studies seem to have proved the opposite -- it is by no means in the clear. Ever since the first Gulf War, its use has been linked to cancers among returning troops.

WHAT IS DEPLETED URANIUM?

Depleted Uranium, or DU, is a waste material left over from the nuclear industry. A vast amount of this waste DU is produced when natural uranium is enriched for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Only the uranium isotope U-235 can be used in nuclear processes, such as reactors and weapons. As most of this isotope is removed from naturally occurring uranium, the remaining uranium product comprises U-238 and smaller amounts of the more highly radioactive U-235 and U-234. DU is both chemically toxic and radioactive. It is this latter product, the left over uranium, comprising mainly U-238, which has been used to make 'depleted' uranium weapons. It is used for weapons because this heavy, dense metal is judged by the army to be an excellent penetrator of enemy armour, tanks, and even buildings.

A large amount of DU in the stockpiles held in the United States has been contaminated with recycled spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. For example trace amounts of U-236 and highly radioactive substances such as plutonium, neptunium and technetium were found in a DU anti-tank shell used in Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this contaminated stock was exported to the UK, France and other countries in the 1990s. The extent to which this DU has been contaminated with recycled spent fuel is still unknown and undisclosed.

Governments have largely ignored the serious dangers this recycled fuel represents. A common defence used by the British and US governments and their militaries is to claim that depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium and therefore does not constitute a risk to human health. This statement is, however, misleading. In its natural form uranium is present in our environment in very small quantities as an ore, for example in rocks and soil. Conversely, the DU used by the military has been concentrated relative to background amounts, and is therefore many times more radioactive than uranium ore.

In May 2003 Scott Peterson, a writer with the US newspaper CSM, examined radioactivity levels next to DU bullets in Baghdad and found Geiger-counter readings were 1900 times greater than background radiation levels next to DU bullets. When natural uranium is concentrated in a similar form to 'depleted' uranium it emits about 40% more alpha radiation, 15% more gamma radiation and around the same level of beta radiation. The chemical toxicity of uranium does not depend on the isotope, therefore enriched, 'normal', and depleted uranium are equally toxic chemically.

It is extremely difficult and expensive for the nuclear industry to store DU. It is thought that the US currently has 1 billion tonnes of depleted uranium radioactive waste, while the UK has at least 50,000 tonnes. This waste is stored in cylinders at many sites across the US and UK and is vulnerable to corrosion and leaks owing to ageing cylinders and outside storage. It is stored mainly in the form of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) which can leak if the corroding cylinders are breached. At least 10 cylinders are known to have breached during the past 10 years.

Turning this DU waste into weapons solves some of the problem faced by the Government and nuclear industry, concerning what to do with these large stockpiles. Not only is DU practically free of charge for the arms manufacturers, but it no longer has to be stored and monitored indefinitely.

THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM

Depleted uranium is a risk to health both as a toxic heavy metal and as a radioactive substance. The UK and US Governments have long sought to play down these risks. While, as late as 2003, the UK Government was claiming that DU presented no harm to soldiers or civilians, yet accumulating and alarming evidence from scientists, soldiers and activists has forced them to back down and recognise the risks posed.(1) However what is clear from reading all major studies is that more research urgently needs to be done. There exists very little research on the effects of uranium contamination in humans and accurate tests to understand exposure doses from military uses of DU have never been done.

There are three main routes through which DU exposure on the battlefield takes place: inhalation, ingestion and wounding.(2) As a DU penetrator hits its target some of the DU from the weapon reacts with the air in the ensuing fire and becomes a fine dust (often called an 'aerosol') that makes inhalation and ingestion a possibility for those in the area. Even after the dust has settled, the danger remains that it may be resuspended in the future by further activity or the wind, and again pose a threat to civilians and others for many years into the future. DU particles have been reported as travelling twenty-five miles on air currents.(3) Open wounds also allow a gateway for DU into the body and some veterans have also been left with DU fragments in their bodies, remaining after combat.

Inhaled DU dust will settle in the nose, mouth, lung, airways and guts. As a DU penetrator hits its target, the high temperatures caused by the impact ensure the DU dust particles become ceramic and therefore water insoluble. This means that, unlike other more soluble forms of uranium, DU will stay in the body for much longer periods of time. This aspect of uranium toxicology has often been ignored in studies of the health effects of DU, which base their excretion rates on soluble uranium. DU dust can remain in the sticky tissues of the lung and other organs such as the kidneys for many years. It is also deposited in the bones where it can remain for up to 25 years.(4) This helps explain why studies of Gulf War veterans have found that soldiers are still excreting DU in their urine over 12 years after the 1991 conflict (5) . Ingested DU can be incorporated into bone and from there will irradiate the bone marrow, increasing the risk of leukaemia and an impaired immune system. (6)

External exposure to DU entails exposure to alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Although the skin will block alpha particles, beta and gamma radiation can penetrate beyond the dead outer skin layers and damage living tissue. Beta particles can penetrate to a depth of 2 cm, while gamma radiation (through a process called 'the Compton effect') generates beta particle radiation along its trajectory through the body. Neither is all external exposure to alpha radiation harmless. Cataracts, for example, can be caused by exposure to alpha radiation.(7)

Inside the body, DU poses a health risk in a variety of ways to different organs. The kidneys are the first organ to be dfamaged by DU. At a high dose kidney uranium levels can lead to kidney failure within a few days of exposure.8 Lower doses lead to kidney dysfunction, and can lead to an increased risk of kidney disease later in life.

As a radioactive emitter, DU also presents a risk to the lungs. Traditionally, radiation dosimetry measures the extent of harm by calculating the external radiation absorbed by the tissues; the so-called 'absorbed' dose.(9)However because DU dust is inhaled or ingested, it can remain in the body tissues and emit intensive radiation over a longer period. This way it can cause a large amount of damage over a relatively small area, changing a person's genetic codes and causing cancers. For these reasons soldiers and civilians exposed to DU risk developing lung cancers, particularly if they are smokers because their lungs will already have been irritated.

There is much new evidence emerging about the risks from so-called 'low level' radiation and the damage it can do to DNA. Considerable evidence has been accumulated recently about the 'by-stander' effect, which shows that irradiated cells pass on damage to surrounding healthy cells. In this way it is thought low-level radiation can cause much greater damage than would otherwise be expected.(10) Studies have also shown that irradiated cells pass on chromosomal aberrations to their progeny so that non-irradiated cells several generations, or cell divisions later, will exhibit this radiation-induced genomic instability (RIGI).(11)

New evidence is also suggesting that the chemical toxicity of DU and its radioactivity reinforce each other in a so-called 'synergistic effect', which means it 'punches above its own weight' in terms of the damage it can do to cells. Alexandra Miller of the US Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in the USA found in a study in 2003 that when human bone cells are exposed to DU, fragments break away from the chromosomes and form tiny rings of genetic material. This damage was seen in new cells more than a month after removal of the DU, leading to an eight-fold increase in genetic damage relative to that expected.

It's not just in terms of increased risk of cancer that DU DNA damage can affect health. It is also implicated in causing a depressed immune system, reproductive problems, and birth defects. For example, a study of US Gulf War veterans has found that they are up to three times as likely to have children with birth deformities than fathers who had not served; and that pregnancies result in significantly higher rates of miscarriage.(12) A major 2004 Ministry of Defence-funded survey study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that babies whose fathers served in the first Gulf War are 50 per cent more likely to have physical abnormalities. They also found a 40 per cent increased risk of miscarriage among women whose partners served in the Gulf.

In Basra, in southern Iraq, there have been striking reports for a number of years about the rise in local childhood cancers and birth deformities seen there. The findings of a leading Iraqi epidemiologist, Dr Alim Yacoub,13 were presented in New York in June 2003 and suggest there has been a more than five fold increase in congenital malformations and a quadrupling of the incidence rates of malignant diseases in Basra.(14)

The Dutch Journal of Medical Science reported the findings of the Flemish eye doctor, Edward De Sutter. He found 20 cases out of 4000 births in Iraq of babies with the phenomenon anophthalmos: babies who have been born with only one eye or who are missing both eyes. The very rare condition usually only affects 1 out of 50 million births.

The damaging effects to health that DU weapons present are of particular concern because of the likelihood of civilians becoming exposed after conflicts have ended. Children especially are at risk because of playing in and ingesting contaminated soil and most of the health risks discussed are of particular danger to younger children.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION FROM DU

The release of DU into the environment can pollute land and water for decades to come. Its danger is not limited to battlefield releases but will expose present and future generations of civilians to contaminated food and water supplies. Environmental releases of this sort can also be expected to have negative effects on plant and animal life although little is known about this.

DU dust in the environment can become resuspended through weather conditions and human activity, such as farming. Of particular worry is that children are especially vulnerable to receiving significant exposures through playing on sites and ingestion of contaminated soil by way of typical hand-to-mouth activity.

DU can also contaminate soil through corrosion from the original penetrator. It is believed that 70-80% of all DU penetrators used in the Gulf and the Balkans remain buried in the soil. A United Nations Environment Programme study in Spring 2002 found that recovered penetrators had decreased in mass by 10-15%. Corrosion can feed uranium into groundwater, where it can travel into local water supplies. DU in soil can also enter the food chain since it is taken up by plants grown in it and by animals used for food. A UNEP post- conflict report on Bosnia and Herzegovina has indeed found that DU had also leached into local groundwater. The same study found that radioactive hotspots persisted at some of the sites studied. Klaus Toepfer, the Executive Director of UNEP, said at the time, "Seven years after the conflict, DU still remains an environmental concern and, therefore, it is vital that we have the scientific facts, based upon which we can give clear recommendations on how to minimise any risk".

The British and US militaries have demonstrated extreme irresponsibility in releasing DU into the environment, using it without proper monitoring or information about the risks it poses even in their own countries. In January 2003, the US Navy admitted routinely firing DU from its Phalanx guns in prime fishing waters off the coast of Washington state since 1977. At the Dundrennan testsite in Scotland around 30 tonnes of DU rounds have been fired into the Solway Firth. Only one has ever been retrieved, when it was found in a fisherman's net.

Both governments have been equally callous in their disregard concerning the long term risk to civilians in countries where they have used DU.

DU AND THE MILITARY

DU is used in a variety of military applications. It is attractive to the military, governments and the nuclear industry for three main reasons. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, it is in cheap and plentiful supply and solves the problem of storage and monitoring. Secondly, it is a very effective battlefield weapon because its high density and self-sharpening qualities enable it to penetrate hard targets with ease. Thirdly, DU is pyrophoric, which means it burns on impact, enhancing its ability to destroy enemy targets. The UK test firing of DU began at the Eskmeals range in Cumbria in the early 1960s. Testing continues today at Dundrennan, in Southern Scotland, most recently before the 2003 attack on Iraq. DU is now used in two types of ammunition in the British armed forces: the 120 mm anti-tank rounds (CHARM 3), which is fired by the Army's Challenger tanks and 20mm rounds used by the Royal Navy's Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (a missile defence system). The Phalanx system was developed by the US Navy and is used by both the Australian and British Navies. In 1993, a leaked Pentagon report revealed how the use of DU could lead to increased cancer risks: this leak caused the US manufacturers to switch to tungsten alternatives. Because of this the Royal Navy has been forced to convert its replacement ammunition to tungsten too, although it still has stockpiles of DU.

The US military uses DU mainly for its Abrahams tanks and A10 warplanes, although it is also used in its Bradley fighting vehicles, AV-8B Harrier aircraft, Super Cobra helicopter and its Navy Phalanx system. It is also used by the US military for a variety of other applications including bombshells, tank armour plating, aircraft ballast and anti-personnel mines. Although the US and UK militaries are the only countries who have been properly documented as using DU weapons, they are known to be held by at least seventeen other countries including: Australia, Bahrain, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

The testing of DU weapons has caused considerable contamination at test sites across the world. At Dundrennan, in Scotland, for example, a 2004 Ministry of Defence report revealed how, since 1982 over 90 shells had either been misfired or had malfunctioned and scattered fragments of DU across the ground. Despite searches, some of these fragments have never been recovered. Contamination levels were high in these areas, which have had to be fenced off. At Okinawa in Japan, and Vieques, an island of Puerto Rico, the US military used DU weapons without the appropriate licences and without informing their respective governments or local populations. In the US, the Army is attempting to walk away from its responsibilities to decontaminate former test sites, such as Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey and Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana.

It is now clear that the military have known the risks of depleted uranium but failed to provide safety instructions to soldiers in both the 1991 Gulf Wars and the Balkan conflicts. A study prepared for the US Army in July 1990, a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait, says: "The health risks associated with internal & external DU exposure during combat conditions are certainly far less than other combat-related risks. Following combat, however, the condition of the battlefield and the long-term health risks to natives & combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU."

Furthermore, a leaked 1993 document from the US Army Surgeon General's office said, "When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk ... that increase can be quantified in terms of projected days of life loss."

DU IN IRAQ

The 1991 Gulf War saw the first verified use of DU weapons. Around 320 tonnes of DU in weapons were used in the war, of which about 1 tonne was used by the UK military. According to data from the US Department of Defense, tens or hundreds of thousands of US military personnel could have been exposed to DU. Both the US and UK Governments refused any responsibility for decontamination and both refused to study the exposure rates or after-effects of this DU use. After a few years, evidence began to emerge from Iraq about the increasing incidence of cancer and birth deformities in the south of the country. After heavy US lobbying in November 2001 the UN General Assembly voted down an Iraqi proposal that the UN study the effects of the DU used there.

In the 2003 attack on Iraq, the US and UK militaries used DU again despite the lack of reliable data on the effects of using it in Iraq 12 years previously. The British Government has admitted using 1.9 tonnes of DU. Even though this is only a tiny proportion of all DU used in Iraq, it is double the amount used in 1991. The US authorities have still not said how much has been used, although an initial Pentagon source revealed 75 tons of DU may remain in Iraq from A-10 planes alone.

The implications for Iraqi civilians are very alarming. Unlike the first Gulf War, which was largely confined to desert areas, much of the DU use has been in built-up, heavily populated areas. The US Government has refused any cleanup of DU in Iraq, clinging to the statement that it has no link with ill health, while the British Government has for the first time admitted it does have a responsibility but says it is low on their list of priorities.

OTHER COUNTRIES CONTAMINATED BY DU

BOSNIA 1994-1995

DU rounds were used in Bosnia by US A-20 warplanes under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Around 10,800 DU rounds, or 3 tonnes, were used in Bosnia. However NATO always denied DU had been used until 2000, 6 years after the attacks, when media reports began to emerge. For all this time no cleanups or public awareness campaigns could be run, leading to unnecessary civilian exposures. The UNEP report,1 mentioned earlier, and released in March 2003, found DU contamination of drinking water and radioactive 'hotspots'. UNEP recommended ongoing monitoring of drinking water, cleanup of DU sites, cleaning of contaminated buildings and the release by NATO of all DU-attack coordinates.

KOSOVO, YUGOSLAVIA - 1999

US A-10 aircraft fired around 31,300 rounds of DU, or 9 tons of DU in areas of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro during NATO action there in 1999. Partial information about the use of DU was released a year after the war when UN Secretary General KofiAnnan sent a letter requesting the information to NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson. An analysis in a UNEP Post-Conflict field study of recovered DU shells, published in March 2001, found that some of the shells were made with recycled uranium (that is, with uranium that had been through a nuclear reactor) and were contaminated with plutonium. The study did not find widespread contamination but did find evidence of airborne movement of DU dust. It also found localised points of concentrated contamination showing U-238 at 10,000 times normal background levels. The study recommended decontamination, removal of penetrators and drinking water monitoring. A separate report published by UNEP on DU contamination in Serbia and Montenegro found "widespread, but low-level DU contamination, airborne DU particles" and that "DU dust was widely dispersed into the environment."

As well as official reports there has been widespread anecdotal evidence of so-called 'Balkans syndrome' among both soldiers deployed in the region and civilian populations. Symptoms are similar sounding to "Gulf War Syndrome" with heightened levels of leukaemia, respiratory and immune system illnesses. By mid-2004 twenty-seven Italian soldiers have died of symptoms thought to be linked to DU exposure. A court in Rome ordered the Italian Ministry of Defence to compensate the family of Stefano Melone, a soldier who died of a malignant vascular tumour. According to the court, Mr Melone's death was "due to exposure to radioactive and carcinogen substances" on missions in the Balkans.

Tension was caused within NATO as member countries were not warned that their soldiers would be entering DU contaminated zones.

AFGHANISTAN 2001- 2004

There is some evidence that DU has been used in Afghanistan, although this has never been confirmed officially. For example, US A-10s and Harrier aircraft, which both use DU ammunition, are known to have been active in the region. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the US has found radioactivity indicating DU use by the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

Geneva Convention Rules (to which US and UK are signees)

- The limitation of unnecessary human suffering [Art.35.2]
- The limitation of damage to the environment [Art. 35.3 and 55.1]
- It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering [Art. 35.3]
- It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment. [Art. 35.2]
- In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives. [Art. 48]
- Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. [Art.51.4]
- Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population. [Art. 55.1]

Iraq: Over 900 prisoners face execution by New Year

2009-12-09T05:48:00.001-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16416

Iraq: Over 900 prisoners face execution by New Year
17 women among those set to die with fears government is 'playing politics'
Global Research, December 5, 2009
Amnesty International - 2009-12-04

Iraq is preparing to execute hundreds of prisoners, including 17 women, warned Amnesty International today, as it issued an 'urgent action' appeal to try to prevent the deaths.

The 900-plus prisoners have exhausted all their appeals and their death sentences are said to have been ratified by the Presidential Council, meaning that they could be executed at any time. Amnesty supporters are contacting Iraqi embassies around the world, including that in London, in a bid to stop the executions.

The condemned prisoners have been convicted of offences such as murder and kidnapping, but many are likely to have been sentenced after unfair trials. The 17 women are thought to include a group known to have been held on death row at the 5th section (al-Shu'ba al-Khamissa) of Baghdad's al-Kadhimiya Prison.

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said:

'This is a staggering number of people facing execution and the fact that the government may be playing politics over these cases is truly frightening.

'Wholesale use of the death penalty was one of the worst aspects of Saddam Hussein's regime and the present government should stop aping his behaviour.

'Instead of sending nearly a thousand people to a grisly death by hanging, the Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and impose an immediate death penalty moratorium.'

Iraqi media reports suggest that the Iraqi government is currently trying to present itself as 'tough' on crime ahead of national elections scheduled for January. Iraqi opposition politicians have expressed concern that executions may be carried out to give the ruling party a political advantage ahead of the elections, and there have been calls for the government to temporarily suspend all executions.

Amnesty is warning that Iraq's use of capital punishment is already spiralling. At least 120 people are known to have been executed in Iraq this year, greatly up on the 34 executions recorded during 2008.

Iraq is now one of the world's heaviest users of the death penalty. After the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority suspended the death penalty following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, Iraq's subsequent reintroduction of capital punishment led to a rapid acceleration in death sentences and executions. Despite this, and contrary to some claims made by the Iraqi authorities, use of the death penalty has not seen a drop in crime levels in the country, with rises and falls in insurgency violence having no discernible relation to execution rates.

The Untold Stories of Violence Against Women

2009-12-02T14:58:00.001-08:00

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49433

The Untold Stories of Violence Against Women
Miren Gutierrez & Oriana Boselli
IPS News
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:44 EST

Robert Dijksterhuis, Jac SM Kee, Monia Azzalini,Paula Fray, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Laila Al-Shaik.
Rome - "You don't need to go far, it is all around us," said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. "Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way - most often by someone she knows," he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

The audience, a group of committed women - and men -, had gathered in Rome to discuss this widespread emergency and the role media have in relation to it in a conference organized by the IPS news agency and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reports in the paper "Violence against women worldwide" that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime - the majority from husbands, partners or someone they know. Among women aged 15 - 44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

And violence against women is pervasive.

During the conference, IPS launched the handbook "Reporting Gender-Based Violence".

"Violence against women has presented particular challenges to the media and to society because of the way in which it has been consigned to the private sphere -dampening public discussions and stifling media debate. Yet, the media has the potential to play a lead role in changing perceptions that, in turn, can help galvanize a movement for change," says the introduction by IPS Africa Director Paula Fray.

The handbook deals with issues such as religious and harmful traditional practices, domestic violence, sexual gender-based violence, femicide, sex work and trafficking, sexual harassment, armed conflicts, HIV and AIDS, child abuse, the role of men, the criminal justice system, and the costs of gender-based violence, with real stories illustrating how these issues and trends can be tackled by the media, discussion points, fact checks and additional resources.

In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by someone she knows; in Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In São Paulo, Brazil, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds. Rape of women is widespread in armed conflicts such as those of Colombia and Darfur, Sudan.

This phenomenon affects not only developing countries, but also the developed world. In the U.S., 83 percent of girls aged 12 - 16 experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools, and one-third of women murdered each year are killed by partners; in the European Union between 40 and 50 percent of women experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace.

However, according to UNFPA, civil society, media and politicians have begun only recently to join their efforts to change the perception of the phenomenon of violence against women, trying to knock down the wall of indifference and misconstruction that has always surrounded it.

And this is where the media comes in.

According to the Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Scotti, "communication can be one of the most powerful tools" in the fight against this type of violence.

In "Changing cultural and social norms that support violence", the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that media - which have been successful in addressing a wide range of health issues - could play a bigger role in fighting violence.

Meanwhile papers like "The influence of media violence on youth", published by the American Physiological Society, show how female victimization in story lines reduces the perceptions of violence in the reality.

This problem is exacerbated by the under-representation of women in media and misrepresentation of their role. Media Monitoring Africa - a watchdog organization that promotes fair journalism - denounces the scarcity of women working in the media and the marginalized way in which they are portrayed, often limited to victims or someone's relative.

"The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research," acknowledges a report entitled "The Gender of Journalism", authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

Djerf-Pierre's study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, "journalism as a field has remained male-dominated." (Sweden ranks number four in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum.) Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, the study shows. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men. In other countries the situation is worse.

According to Dijksterhuis, some of the ways communication can be used in a changing landscape with new technologies are trying to set the agenda; forging stronger linkages with NGOs, media and other actors (an issue that was highlighted by many speakers in this conference); and monitoring the results, since "most information is biased towards men."

Communications rights should be part of these efforts, said Jac SM Kee, coordinator of Women's Rights Advocacy in the Association for Progressive Communications. Her organization is involved in an effort to "reclaim ICTs" (Information Communication Technologies) to end violence and address the intersections between communication rights and women's human rights, especially in relation to violence against women.

Meanwhile, Mona Azzalini, of the Global Media Monitoring Project in Italy, talked about the biggest global survey about women's participation in the media, to be released in 2010.

The initiative "promotes a change in the way women are portrayed" and creates a "network of advocacy groups" fighting discrimination and stereotypes in the media. The last monitoring - done in 2005 - was focused on four issues: the representation of women as subjects of information, the journalists, the content of the news including cases of stereotypes and discrimination, and journalistic practices.

The results of the 2010 survey will be compared with the 2005 report, which showed that only 21 percent of the sources are women, and most experts quoted (83 percent) are men. The point of view of women is nowhere to be seen: in politics only 14 percent of the sources were women; while in economic issues, 20 percent were women. Even when the issue is violence against women, most of the voices (64 percent) are men's.

And how do media talk about these issues?

"Victim means weakness; weakness means violence... Media love violence," said Laila Al Shaikhli, anchorwoman of Al Jazeera, who spoke about the difficulty of getting the real story, when women are reluctant to speak out and carry on a social stigma, when they themselves participate in the cycle of discrimination, educating children with the same paradigms.

The result is that the image of women comes out distorted.

In Italy, for example, "80 percent of people form their opinions based on TV," said Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate. "And I am not satisfied with how women's images are transmitted in our media. It is a humiliating image... Working women do not exist. The role of media is an important part of whichever strategy you want in place when fighting against violence. It is not marginal or complementary, it is essential to forming the idea of women."

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls about 90 percent of the TV audience through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI.

Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa's ambassador to Italy, spoke from the point of view of a gender activist and a former journalist during apartheid about the definition of what is news and its ownership, and who transmits it. Not women, she said. And this is something that has to change if violence against women is to end.

Bhopal: The Victims are Still Being Born

2009-12-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bhopal-the-victims-are-still-being-born-1830516.html

Bhopal: The Victims are Still Being Born
Nina Lakhani
The Independent
Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:38 EST

Twenty-five years on, the world's worst industrial accident continues to kill and blight many lives. And still there's been no trial.

Bhopal is a calamity without end. On 3 December 1984, clouds of poison leaking from a Union Carbide pesticides plant brought death to thousands in this central Indian city. Today, fully a quarter of a century later, victims of this, the world's worst industrial disaster, are still being born.

Here, in neighborhoods where people depend on water contaminated by chemicals leaking from the abandoned factory and to mothers exposed to the toxic gas as children, brain damaged and malformed babies are 10 times more common than the national average. Doctors at Bhopal's Sambhavna Clinic say that as many as one in 25 babies are still born with defects and developmental problems such as a smaller head, webbed feet and low birth weight.

Those who were mere children when the fumes overcame this city of a million are suffering, too. Painful skin lesions, stomach problems and raw, itchy eyes are common complaints among thousands of families, some of whom moved to Bhopal only in recent years. And the clinic says that Bhopal now has some of India's highest rates of gall bladder and oesophageal cancers, TB, anaemia and thyroid abnormalities. Young girls start menstruating much later than normal and experience painful gynecological problems, which often lead to hysterectomies at a young age.

These problems, say campaigners such as the Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA), are linked to the continuing pollution of parts of the local water supply by chemicals such as chloroform and carbon tetrachloride. Families have no choice but to use ground water for washing, cooking and drinking when safe sources run dry, according to new research that will be published by the BMA on Tuesday. The study found higher levels of several carcinogenic chemicals in water sources this year compared with last year - strongly suggesting that future generations will be poisoned unless the area is decontaminated. This flies in the face of recent claims by state and national ministers that the site is clean.

Meanwhile, the legal fight for the chief executive of Union Carbide to be tried for his company's alleged negligence is no nearer success than it was 25 years ago. Amnesty International will this week call on the Indian government and Dow Chemicals, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, to take "urgent and decisive action" to ensure that the accused appear in court - more than 20 years after arrest warrants were first issued. Dow continues to deny any responsibility for the criminal case.

It was in the early hours of 3 December 1984 that 27 tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas - 500 times more toxic than cyanide and used to manufacture the pesticide Sevin - began to leak from the Union Carbide plant into the surrounding areas. Hundreds of thousands were injured by the gas as they slept. Men, women and children living in the shanty settlements just over the factory fence woke up, gasping for breath and blinded by the gas as it rapidly dispersed.

Around 8,000 people are now believed to have died within the first 72 hours. Hundreds died in their beds; thousands more staggered from their homes to die in the street. Another 15,000 are estimated to have died as a result of the gas exposure since then, often from painful and horrific damage to their lungs, heart, brain and other organs, according to Amnesty International. An estimated three-quarters of the area's pregnant women spontaneously aborted their babies within hours or days after "that night". Hundreds more babies have since been born with deformities such as missing limbs, abnormal organs, misshapen heads and tumors. None of the plant's six safety systems was operational that night.

Even today, Amnesty International estimates that 120,000 people exposed to the gas have chronic medical conditions. While the factory was closed down in 1985, another 30,000 people have become sick from water contaminated by the chemical waste buried underground or dumped in nearby ponds, according to health workers in Bhopal. Children and livestock are still spotted playing and grazing on the grass that hides the waste because the local government has failed to secure the site properly.

Hazira Bee, 53, lives in J P Nagar, one of the worst affected areas to the north of the city. On the night of the disaster, after awakening to the smell of burning chili, she and her husband ran with their children, their eyes and lungs stinging with the gas. In the panic, her middle son, Mansoor Ali, aged four, was left behind. He has spent the majority of his life in and out of hospital, severely weakened by chronic lung damage. His daughter, now aged three and a half, was unable to hold her head up or turn on her side until she was 18 months old; she has just started to walk. All Hazira's family have suffered from respiratory, neurological and skin conditions since the leak.

Hazira said:
"The scene inside the factory was terrible. I saw dead bodies and injured people with foam coming out of their mouths. Since the gas leak we have all been sick. Because of this, my children couldn't study and now they can't get good jobs. Today I am the only breadwinner of the family. If this disaster would have taken place in America, the US government would have taken good care of their citizens. We want UC to take their waste back to America."

The BMA water analysis report supports previous studies by Greenpeace which established that the areas north of the disused factory are worst affected because the ground water runs in that direction. The Sambhavna Clinic - set up 13 years ago with private donations - sees 150 people like Hazira and her family every day. There are 23,000 people who were either exposed to the gas or who have since used contaminated water supplies registered with chronic conditions such as liver disease, paralysis and severe anaemia. Doctors report new patients - adults and children - at the clinic every day.

According to Satinath Sarangi, a founder of the Sambhavna Clinic, tuberculosis is rife among people whose immune systems have been worn down by chronic exposure to poisonous water. Cancer clusters and children born with deformities are another distinction of the area, found by the clinic's researchers who are conducting a door-to-door survey of tens of thousands of local people.

Earlier this year, the Indian Council of Medical Research finally bowed to public and international pressure by restarting a government-funded research program to understand the alarming rates of still births, cancers, neurological and gynecological problems seen by Bhopal's doctors. Charities and pressure groups had been left to study the long-term health problems of Union Carbide's victims after ICMR controversially abandoned its research program in 1994.

The $470m out-of-court settlement made by Union Carbide in 1989 is regarded as grossly inadequate by the city's health professionals and survivor organizations. It was based on early estimates of only 3,800 deaths and 102,000 injured, and the maximum amount any victim received was $1,000 - about 11 cents a day over 25 years. Had compensation been the same as for those exposed to asbestos under US court rulings against defendants that also included Union Carbide, the liability would have exceeded $10bn.

The Dow Chemical Company insists that it has no responsibility for toxic legacy. Yet internal correspondence, seen by The IoS and Amnesty, between different Indian ministries (including the Prime Minister's Office) shows that the company continues to lobby Indian ministers in an attempt to close down the ongoing civil cases. These could require Dow to decontaminate thousands of tonnes of polluted soil.

Colin Toogood, of the BMA, said:
"We want to see a full clean-up of the disaster site and surrounding area, including the ground water aquifer - a huge undertaking, but reasonable considering this was the world's worst industrial disaster. The $470m compensation payout only ever pertained to people affected by exposure to the gas on that night. It does not, and never did, cover children born with terrible defects as a result of their parent's exposure; people being affected by the environmental or water contamination; and it does not cover the environmental contamination itself."

Tom Sprick from Union Carbide, said: "Neither Union Carbide nor its officials are subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant... The government of India needs to address any ongoing medical and health concerns of the Bhopal people."

But according to Tim Edwards, a trustee of the BMA and author of the forthcoming Amnesty report, this conveys contempt for the process of law. He said:

"In every form of civilized society it is the judicial system that decides whether an accused has a case to answer. India's courts have decided that Union Carbide and its new owner, Dow, do - but the company sticks two fingers up."
Scot Wheeler, from Dow, responded:

"Attempts to attach any liability to Dow are misplaced... like all global companies, it is common for Dow leaders to meet with government leaders and officials wherever we do business and have plans to grow. It is also common for companies to discuss challenges and opportunities related to investment."

‘Wall Street’s excesses caused more deaths among children than the tsunami four years ago'

2009-12-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00420

‘Wall Street’s excesses caused more deaths among children than the tsunami four years ago'
COMMENTARY | November 24, 2009
By Richard Parker

This is the text of the Kelman Seminar Lecture by Richard Parker at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard Nov. 10, co-sponsored with the Shorenstein Center, the Nieman Foundation and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

“Attitude and action are linked in a continuing reciprocal process, each generating the other in an endless chain.”
—Herbert C. Kelman

The Kelman Seminars honor Herbert Kelman, Cabot Prof of Social Ethics Emeritus, and the singularly eminent Harvard psychologist. Kelman’s work on reconciliation has done much to advance our understanding of the underlying psychological processes determining both conflict and the opportunity for reconciliation.

Of perhaps even greater importance, he has pioneered applied invaluable practical means for achieving reconciliation among conflicting parties. In this Prof. Kelman represents a model for us all in the social sciences on how to use scientific research in the solution of some of humankind’s most daunting problems.

Much of his work has focused on inter-national conflict, the underlying personal and group psychological bases for national and ethnic collective identity, and the role of reconciliation in altering the very coordinates of both national and ethnic identity as part of the process for achieving reconciliation. Given that body of work, its enormous importance, and in particular Prof. Kelman’s invaluable contributions in recent years to the hard and often frustrating work of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, one might reasonably ask a simple question:

Dr. Parker, who invited you here today? It is, I must say, a fair question.

I am not a specialist in reconciliation, not a social psychologist, not even a psychologist. Instead I am an economist, a card-carrying member of a profession that has spent the past century running away from psychology and toward physics, a profession that has long avowed an almost irrational belief in the rational nature of human choice and human motivation, a profession that disdains any idea of reconciliation save the role of price to reconcile supply and demand.

Yet there is precedent here that my presence is not entirely in error. In 2000, Daniel Kahneman, the distinguished Princeton psychologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. His long-time research partner Amos Tversky would almost certainly have shared the prize, but Tversky by then was dead, and the Nobel’s rules allow its award only to living recipients.

Kahneman’s and Tversky’s work lies at the heart of a new field in my discipline called “behavioral economics”, which has rapidly become one of the hottest interests among a younger generation of economists—even as it has provoked widespread unease among many of the profession’s elders. The reason for excitement among the young and dis-ease among the elders of my tribe is simple: “behavioral economics” rejects one of the profession’s central tenets, that human beings are rational maximizers of their self-interest.

The goal of my Kelman Seminar lecture today is to explore with you some of the challenges that “behavioral economics” and its cousin “behavioral finance” are raising, specifically by looking at the current global financial crisis. I’ve chosen the global financial crisis, moreover, not simply as a heuristic opportunity to delve into this new paradigm in economics. I want to raise for you what amounts to a much larger, indeed for me, a daunting question: whether or not global civilization has reached a point at which the idea of “reconciliation” as Prof. Kelman and others have developed it requires new application to economics theory and real-world economic relations.
***************

As I understand reconciliation and its practitioners, to date most of their quite admirable work has focused on the consequences of the physical and psychological destruction caused by the hostility of large groups often within a single conflicted society (such as Rwanda or Northern Ireland), or to the aftermath of state-based oppression (as in post-communist Eastern Europe) or of more egregious state-based violence, especially when directed toward a large identifiable racial, ethnic, or political groups governed by the state (such as South Africa, Argentina, and East Timor).

My question is not whether such work is useful, indeed necessary—indeed that seems to me unchallengeable. Mine rather is a question about the extension of such work—whether the globalization of economic relations—the modern-day reconstitution and integration of societies as markets—has brought us to a new era in which we need to enlarge the scope of reconciliation’s work beyond the classic horrors of civil war, of political torture, and systemic political oppression to the consequences of economic relations, economic systems, and economic theories.
************

The global financial crisis is in that sense an immediate and familiar arena in which to ask that question—but not the only one. As both anthropogenic climate change and species destruction accelerates, I think it is fair to say that almost every aspect of modern globalization raises profound issues for those doing and theorizing about reconciliation. The twentieth century was, by all assessments, the most violent in human history in terms of the total dead caused by wars and other mass acts of state-organized violence, accounting for some 175-200 million deaths.

One scholar, Matthew White, has summarized the principal causes as follows:
Genocide and Tyranny: 83,000,000
Military Deaths in War: 42,000,000
Civilian Deaths in War: 19,000,000
Man-made Famine: 44,000,000
TOTAL: 188,000,000
Now if one estimates the total human deaths in the 20th century at four billion (a number subject to serious estimation error, given lack of systematic mortality records, but probably order-of-magnitude correct), that means that roughly five percent of all human deaths in the 20th century were induced by state-organized means, what one scholar has helpfully classified as “the democides” of the past century. If we are to avoid the cynicism alleged of Josef Stalin, who is said to have remarked that “one death is a tragedy, but a million a statistic” we need not only to reflect on the sheer scope of those 200 million dead but their nature, and their relevance to the work of reconciliation going forward.

Given that much of reconciliation’s work has been concentrated on post-conflict societies, four questions stand out for me:

Are we likely to see the sort of massive concentrated deaths caused by World War II repeated in this century, the kind that resulted in Nuremberg Trials as primogenitor form of systematic justice-seeking by means other than violent revenge?
Are the wars of the 21st century much likelier to be smaller in terms of casualties, but durable or even expanding in terms of number of wars, and hence total casualties? If so, have we in fact systematically been able to distinguish even analytically among causations that are ethnic, religious, political, and economic, and if possible analytically, are the distinctions of some significant use in shaping efforts at reconciliation?

Pertinent to my concerns about economics and reconciliation, what should we conclude from the list of 20th century democides which shows that a quarter of those deaths, nearly 50 million, were caused by famine—a figure equal to the number of military war deaths and twice the number of civilian war deaths?

Are we yet able to understand that an entire category of deaths not measured above—the category development economists now refer to as “preventable death, particularly from disease and malnutrition”—may indeed come to represent a greater challenge that the sum of likely wars and civil wars combined?

One recent estimate of such preventable mortality—measured as the gap between actual population size today and population size assuming globalized standards of modestly modern but not cutting edge nutrition, public health, and collective violence levels common among today’s OECD countries—estimates that more than 1.2 billion people, the great majority of them children under the age of five, have died needlessly by these standards since 1950 alone, a figure SIX TIMES the 200 million “democides” estimated above.

Why am I tracing out these differences? Because if in fact the concern of reconciliation is to reduce conflict, promote healing post-conflict, and generally create conditions for productive human life globally, these data suggest that the deep challenge of our age lies in grappling with systemic economic deprivation measured through means such as the UN’s Human Development Index.
***********
Why is this so, and why is economics relevant?

Let’s pause for a moment here and look back on those 50 million famine-induced deaths. What’s so singularly striking to me, first, is that the majority of them were caused by human beliefs about the proper economic organization of society rather than failures of nature. That is, by far the largest single cause of famine-induced deaths in the past century was in effect faith in scientific rationality: Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s and Mao’s in the 1950s. Put in none too bald terms, nearly 40 million people died in the 20th century as the result of an experiment in the economic organization of human societies meant to improve well-being.

When one looks at other large modern famines—which account for the bulk of the remaining famine-related deaths, what’s no less striking is the conclusion of Amartya Sen (in “Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation”) —that the vast majority of those dead fell victim not to an absolute shortage of food but to human-induced scarcity caused by hoarding and other forms of social misallocation in time of crisis. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in essence a second experiment in the economic organization carried out by those most likely to deplore Stalin’s and Mao’s handiwork.

These two factors—both of them ideologically-driven economic experimentation and allocational failure based on the exercise of unequal political and economic power—are, it seems to me, at the very heart of why I am so concerned about the need to advance the work of reconciliation beyond the classic boundaries it has to date assumed.
And this brings me to today’s global financial crisis in the first of several ways.

Perhaps the most overlooked feature of the crisis, at least here in the US, are the ways in which we have failed to recognize how it is actually increasing hunger across the planet as I speak.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of human beings living in outright hunger has soared past 1 billion—one in six of the world’s inhabitants, more than the combined population of all the developed nations of the world. That explosion is because 75-100 million have been added to their ranks in each of the last two years, and with similar growth expected ahead for three to five more years at least. The FAO is excoriating in linking this massive increase in malnutrition to the global financial crisis, including the role of commodity price speculation in foods, fuels, and fertilizers, as well as the collapse in both private-market credit and public-sector aid to the most vulnerable. (See also the World Bank’s analysis here.)

UNICEF has meanwhile estimated that global infant mortality has soared by 300,000 a year and will not begin to fall back to pre-financial crisis levels before 2014. In other words, Wall Street’s financial excesses caused more deaths among children than all those killed by the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia four years ago. Over the estimated cycle, it moreover will produce twice the total estimated death count for Rwanda, Darfur, and the Balkans combined.

And the ILO calculates that by the end of 2009, given the global slowdown of output and trade, 45 percent of all the world’s workers will be earning less than $2 A DAY. (See also IOM’s assessment of the impact on global migration and worker remittances here.)

I cite these data to underscore the scope of the impact of our global financial crisis on those whom I think of as the world’s invisibles—invisible that is to those of us with eyes to see. Here in America the tragic and malign consequences of Wall Street’s meltdown are by no means as horrific, but they are no less shocking.

By narrow measure, US employment is now 10 percent, and by better measures including those working part-time who want fulltime work, those who’ve given up looking for work, etc.—the figure is growing perilously close to 18 percent. The average length of unemployment is now twice what it was a decade ago, and there are 6 jobseekers for every job currently on offer.

Measured from the start of the current collapse, ten million American families will have lost their homes by the end of this calendar year. One in five homeowners owe more on their mortgages than they have equity in their homes.
Fifteen percent of Americans live in poverty, but forty percent will spend at least a year or more in poverty in the next ten years—and two-thirds of Americans will spend a year or more in poverty before the end of their working lives.

(On poverty per decade, see Michael Zweig, “What's Class Got to do With It, American Society in the Twenty-first Century.” On poverty rate over lifetime, see Jacob Hacker, “The great risk shift: The new insecurity and the decline of the American dream.”)

Over the past thirty years—the three decades that have defined the slow but steady deregulation of Wall Street, and the increased globalization of the American economy, the share of US income received by the top 1 percent has doubled from 10 percent to 20 percent. This represents the highest level of income inequality since the US began recording income data in the early 20th century, and now demarcates the US as the single most economically inegalitarian country among the developed nations of the world.
***********

All this—the compelling evidence of millions of needless deaths particularly among the youngest and most vulnerable, the measured increase of malnutrition by over 100 million in just two years, the troubling problems across the industrialized work including the US—all point, in the context of conflict resolution and reconciliation to what I think is a profound question:

In seeking to address and remedy sources of conflict and suffering through principled acts of reconciliation particularly in post-conflict societies, have the theorists and practitioners of reconciliation somehow misidentified a principal—if not the principal—identifiable cause of such conflict, i.e., unresolved issues of economic wellbeing, power, and identity, both individual and collective, arising from the very nature of our current economic relations globally?

In short, has the global financial crisis of the past two years—its effects visible far beyond the esoterics of collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and the oblique questions of what new regulatory conditions (and whether they ought to be market-generated in the manner of the Basel II accords or resemble something more akin to the era of Glass-Steagall)—exposed a level of consistent global harm sufficient for us to redefine the work and scope of reconciliation itself.

It strikes me that we cannot here begin to define precisely what the shape of a new and better global financial architecture can look like without those of you most committed to the work of reconciliation asking the following four fundamental questions:

Will the rapid advance of globalized finance and globalized markets, with the systemic integration of economies from the most advanced to the most primitive, give reason to reorient the perceived primary challenge of reconciliation away from the geographically local nature of wars and civil wars and their consequences?

Has this process of market globalization—of highly mobile capital and means of production set against the fixed immobility of states and mostly fixed mobility of citizens—in some way marginalized the state, and the power of the state, that requires reconciliation workers to think increasingly in post-national terms?

Is the corporation—in particular the multinational private corporation as well as the growing role of state-owned and state-controlled corporation the fulcrum for conflict resolution in ways that only states were a century ago? That is, have we reached a century in which the control of the behavior of large corporations is as seminal to human wellbeing as control of state actors was in the 20th century?
In what sense does reconciliation work increasingly require a morally-framed vision of universal citizenship with universal rights and duties incumbent on both human beings and corporate legal entities alike as the necessary teleological goal toward which we must aim?

***********
I wish I could give an easy set of answers to those questions, but I cannot. What I hope I have done today is encourage those of you who work with far greater skill, knowledge, and experience in the field of reconciliation to use these reflections to enlarge and orient the ambit of your work, scholarly and applied.

Prof. Kellman long ago insisted that we must learn to distinguish ontological needs from values from interests in order to seek negotiable goals in the work of reconciliation. It would seem to me that something like this work remains to be done across the entire range of economic questions that encompass not only our current economic crisis, but the roles and identities we draw from economic life itself. Perhaps the greatest challenge to liberal democracy in the 21st century lies in using the skills of reconciliation to re-appropriate from the economic not simply the means but the purpose of being human.

Richard Parker is Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy University.

Pesticide exposure may make you want to kill yourself

2009-12-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027625_pesticides_suicide.html

December 1 2009
Pesticide exposure may make you want to kill yourself
by Paul Louis, staff writer

(Natural News) China has a very high suicide rate. Forty-four percent of the world's suicides are committed in China. Suicide is also the fifth-leading cause of death in China. This caused the World Health Organization to raise some concern about the connection between organophosphate (OP) based pesticides and insecticides with suicide rates.

Organophosphates (OPs) were developed for the weapon of mass destruction known as nerve gas. OP based insecticides and pesticides are heavily used and stored in Chinese homes and farms since they are so inexpensive and they have not been banned for residential use as in several other countries.

"Many organophosphates (OPs) are potent nerve agents, functioning by inhibiting the action of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in nerve cells. They ...are frequently intentionally used in suicides in agricultural areas." (Wikipedia)

There are also long term effects from exposure to OPs. Neurotransmitters such as acetylchloline are affected by long term low dosage OP exposure, which is absorbed through the lungs or skin. So there are established neurotoxic dangers that can result in degenerative mental conditions such as Alzheimer's.

But the WHO wanted to determine if these OP neurotoxins had the mental effect of suicide ideation -- the emergence of suicidal impulses and thoughts. Dr. Robert Stewart from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London, in conjunction with scientists from Tongde Hospital Zhejiang Province, in China conducted a preliminary study to determine a link for pesticide exposure with suicidal ideation.

The targets of their survey included people in different geographic areas, economic levels and walks of life. People were asked if they had ever attempted suicide or considered it. They found that people with the highest levels of pesticide/insecticide exposure in their homes exhibited suicidal ideation more than others.

This is the first study to offer epidemiological evidence linking OP based pesticide and insecticide exposure to suicidal thoughts. Dr. Stewart concluded "Organophosphates . . . are particularly lethal chemicals when taken in overdose and are a cause of many suicides worldwide . . . higher [long term] exposure to these chemicals might actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts . . . ."

Dr. Jianmin Zhang, Associate Chief Psychiatrist of Tongde Hospital added, "The findings of this study suggested potential causal links . . . for the much higher incidence of suicide in rural rather than urban areas in China".

Both researchers agreed more should be done to create international policies regarding exposure to neurotoxic organophosphate based pesticides and insecticides. Their findings were published in the October 2009 issue of the WHO Bulletin.

US workplace suicides jump 28 percent

2009-11-30T10:05:00.000-08:00

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/us-workplace-suicides-jump-28-percent/

US workplace suicides jump 28 percent
2009 AUGUST 22

Workplace suicides in the United States have jumped by a record 28% amid widespread layoffs.

A US report has found a record 28% rise in workplace suicide rates last year as the global economic meltdown continues to take its toll in the country.

According to a report by the US Labor Department, 251 people committed suicide at the workplace in 2008, amid widespread layoffs and overall belt-tightening.

That’s the highest figure ever recorded in the United States for suicide attempts at the workplace.

Labor Department officials did not explain the startling rise but pointed to the economic recession as the main reason behind the death rate.

Meanwhile, a separate study by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine has also found that over a third of US homeowners who went through foreclosures are now suffering from severe depression.

More than 30 thousand people end their own lives each year in the United States where suicide is the second highest cause of death for men aged 25 to 34.

Call it Ecocide: Babies With No Heads, 2 Heads or Monstrous Deformities

2009-11-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/25186

Call it Ecocide: Babies With No Heads, 2 Heads or Monstrous Deformities
by Robert C. Koehler | November 26, 2009

In the cradle of civilization, young women have become terrified about having children.

This is the news I take with me into Thanksgiving and the season of gratitude and family togetherness: that doctors in Fallujah, the Iraqi city we devastated in two military assaults in 2004, have begun documenting a startling rise in birth defects -- about 15 times the pre-invasion occurrence of early-life cancers and brain and nervous-system abnormalities, according to the U.K.'s Guardian.

A group of British and Iraqi doctors have petitioned the United Nations to investigate the situation, which is clearly related to the U.S. invasion and occupation. According to their letter: "In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days (and) a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed." In comparison, the letter said, in August 2002 -- before the invasion -- 530 babies were born; six of them died within the first week, with a single birth defect reported.

Young women in Fallujah, the doctors wrote, "are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs."

What might be causing this nightmare? The most likely factors are chemical or radiation poisoning, according to the Nov. 14 Guardian article, which noted: "Abnormal clusters of infant tumors have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf -- areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used."

Finally, this is just another story about ecocide -- the murder of a nation's ecosystem, both intentionally and as a predictable consequence of military actions -- which is the true name for war. When the New York Times and all other mainstream outlets see the need to write about the future ecocide ventures we are now preparing for, or the current ones we are always in the process of throttling down or up, I wish they'd stop using the romantic word "war." The modern manifestation of this exercise in mutual and collective insanity is so toxic and destructive, its effects cannot simply be absorbed by the human race, the environment in which our lives are possible or even our DNA.

Whatever we think we're doing -- defending ourselves, securing our interests, bringing democracy to the Third World -- we are first and foremost committing ecocide, in collusion with our enemies, perhaps, but this hardly reduces our own responsibility for such consequences as widespread PTSD and, oh Lord, birth defects.

The craven defense from the military-industrial sector is that there's "no proof" . . . no proof that white phosphorous, for instance, or depleted uranium, two of the prime suspects in the Fallujah nightmare, cause birth defects.

There was also "no proof," for several decades, that Agent Orange, the defoliant containing dioxin, caused harm to American soldiers, much less the Vietnamese (3 million of whom, and/or their offspring, still suffer the consequences of their exposure to it). For 17 years, there was "no proof" that the toxic brew stirred up by Gulf War I -- DU, insect repellant, anti-nerve gas medication, smoke from burning oil wells -- was responsible for returning troops' array of horrific symptoms that were known as Gulf War Syndrome. And then, after years of study, stonewalling and damage control, lo and behold, proof, as they say, happened.

And proof will happen in regard to the hell being inflicted by the war on terror, but not now, not while its expansion is being debated. For now, there's "no proof" that white phosphorous does anything but burn the enemy's skin off; or that DU munitions, with their extraordinary penetrating prowess and vaporization upon impact, do anything except destroy tanks and promote freedom.

But if we called what we're doing in Iraq ecocide, maybe we could start tallying up the toxic -- including the emotionally toxic -- substances we're pumping into the country's air and water and earth and sand, and into the psyches of our own soldiers.

There's no controlling force on earth with less accountability and more impunity than the world's various military authorities, because their barbaric mandate is sheer dominance over declared or potential enemies, and all moral, social and ecological compunction is thrown into the breach as they pursue their agendas.

Is the endless movement of military traffic across the fragile desert ecosystem potentially harmful? Excuse me, but there's "no proof" that the ghastly increase in dust storms sweeping across Iraq, turning the Fertile Crescent into the Dust Bowl, as reported in July in the Los Angeles Times, is caused, or even partially caused, by the movement of U.S. military tanks and trucks, which have broken the desert's fragile crust of sand.

And there's "no proof" that the lung-clogging, almost daily dust storms -- and the toxic and radioactive substances, including the microscopically fine power of spent depleted uranium ammunition, that are mixed in with the blowing sand -- have anything to do with the increase in birth defects and early cancers in Fallujah. So let's wait at least a decade before we call it ecocide.
_______

Afghan Children Die of Neglect 7 Miles from Kabul

2009-11-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15103

November 27, 2009
Afghan Children Die of Neglect 7 Miles from Kabul
By Jason Paz

Living in a make-shift camp on the edge of Kabul, residents told Al Jazeera's James Bays that no government official has ever come to see how they have been forced to live. The claim comes as UN officials say Afghan children are suffering disastrous levels of abuse and deprivation.

::::::::

Afghan Children Die from Neglect

Afghan refugees who fled the war-torn south have claimed they are so neglected by government in Kabul that their children are dying from hypothermia for want of the most basic supplies.

Families that left Helmand, Kandahar and other southern provinces to escape the fighting between US-led forces and a resurgent Taliban say the cold is much more lethal.

Living in a make-shift camp on the edge of Kabul, residents told Al Jazeera's JamesBays that no government official has ever come to see how they have been forced to live.

The claim comes as UN officials say Afghan children are suffering disastrous levels of abuse and deprivation.

Rights of the child

At a news conference marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child this week, officials said children's rights were being neglected despite vast flows of Western aid into the country.

“Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world," said yCatherine Mbengue, country representative for the UN children's fund Unicef.

“Seventy per cent of the population has no access to safe drinking water. Thirty percent of children are involved in child labour. Forty-three per cent of girls are married under-age,” she said.

More than one in four children born in Afghanistan die before the age of five, according toUnicef estimates.

Source: Al Jazeera

Assassinated by the State: The federally sanctioned murder of a Black Panther

2009-11-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5203/assassinated_by_the_state

Assassinated by the State: The federally sanctioned murder of a Black Panther
Salim Muwakkil
In These Times
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:04 CST

Street door to the Black Panthers’ headquarters after the October 1969 police raid
Jeffrey Haas tells a story that many of us have long waited to read. His book, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (Lawrence Hill Books, November), is a much-needed corrective to a badly distorted mainstream narrative of a key event in the history of the left and African-American politics of the late '60s. Haas reveals just how deeply the Nixon Justice Department was involved in the Chicago police raid on December 4, 1969, that killed Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton headed the Panthers' Chicago branch and Clark the Peoria, Ill., branch.

It is now clear that Hampton and Clark were victims of a plot hatched by the FBI and executed by the Cook County State's Attorney and Chicago police officers. Nonetheless, conventional wisdom portrays the Panthers as the villains. In 2006, Chicago's City Council, under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police, voted down a routine city ordinance to name the block on which Hampton's murder took place in his honor.

The accumulation of facts presented in Haas' book portrays Chicago police as all too willing to violate the constitutional rights of Panther members and supporters. He reveals the cynical treachery of State Attorney Edward Hanrahan, whose office planned the raid under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Haas also provides a damning portrayal of one obstinate judge's continued attempts to thwart the legal process.

But Haas also offers captivating details that add color and context to those turbulent times. He evokes the infectious spirit of change and activism that infused so many idealistic young Americans during the hallowed '60s. His accounts of growing up Jewish and middle-class in Atlanta, Ga., help locate the source of his unconventional political leanings. Haas' grandfather, for example, was an attorney for Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner who was lynched in Georgia after being wrongly accused of murdering a teenage girl. His father was deeply involved in the civil rights movement in the South. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an icon of that movement, wrote the eulogy for his father's funeral.

Haas' forebears held radical positions for Southern whites, and it seems Haas was simply following ancestral footsteps when he aligned himself with the emergent black radical movement of the 1960s. Although many thought it unusual for an attorney with University of Chicago credentials to eschew wealth and status to associate with black radicals, it was a natural move for Haas.

His accounts of the life at the U of C law school, where he met a "persuasive" Bernardine Dohrn, who would become the leader of the Weathermen faction of Students for a Democratic Society, evoke a period infused with political passions. At that time, Dohrn chaired a group that sent law students to the South for summer jobs with civil rights lawyers. Haas was sent to his home, Atlanta.

"I had to go to Chicago to take my first steps to confront segregation where I grew up," he writes. Though easily parodied, the earnest idealism of those days provoked real change. Haas' volume reminds us how important naïve and optimistic students were to toppling barriers of segregation in the South.

Back in Chicago, after passing the bar and while defending suspects arrested during the violence that erupted following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Haas met a like-minded attorney named Dennis Cunningham. They formed a friendship and partnership, and in 1969 they joined with two other lawyers to open the People's Law Office, which has since gained an international reputation for conscientiously defending victims of overzealous law enforcement.

Haas also provides some historical context for the rise of the Black Panther Party, a group started in 1966 by college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to address issues of police brutality in their hometown of Oakland, Calif. Seale and Newton decided to form an organization of armed volunteers to confront abusive police officers directly. At the time, it was still legal to brandish unconcealed weapons in California.

The idea that African-Americans could physically resist police mistreatment was very attractive to urban black youth of that era. I was one of them. And, like me, many had grown weary of watching nonviolent protesters for civil rights endure humiliating beatings at the hands of police.

The Black Panther Party's disciplined audacity offered black youth an alternative that resonated with the militant tenor of the times. Although the group embraced a quasi-Marxist ideology and provocatively challenged police authority, it spread like wildfire - mostly in the urban north. Their urgent sense of commitment to social justice permanently altered the street-gang culture of urban America.

The first Panther office opened in Chicago in November 1968. Fred Hampton, a charismatic 20-year-old who formerly led the Maywood, Ill., NAACP youth chapter, was given the leadership role by Bobby Rush, now an Illinois congressman, but then the Defense Minister of the Illinois Black Panthers. Haas gives us one of the few accounts of Hampton's life outside of his connection to the Panthers. Hampton grew up in Chicago's southern suburbs, the third child of Louisiana immigrants Francis and Iberia Hampton.

The true strength of this book is Haas' meticulous reconstruction of the particulars that led to the partial victory (the plaintiffs received a $1.85 million settlement, although the government admitted no wrongdoing) and legal vindication of the People's Law Office. He details how the FBI, the Cook County State's Attorney's office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He clearly reveals, for example, how COINTELPRO, which sought to "neutralize" black leaders, provided motivation for the Hampton murder. The book's exhaustive account of this incident is one of the few investigations to explore the Hampton assassination. This is odd because many strands of U.S. history converge at this point. The FBI's COINTELPRO program, uncovered in 1973 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, sought to "prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant Black Nationalist movement." That FBI directive helps us understand just how deeply the federal government feared the Black Panthers and someone like Fred Hampton. A popular leader with great potential, Hampton embodied the electrifying appeal of the Black Panther Party among a certain segment of black youth.

In retrospect, it's clear that Hoover's designation of the Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" provided law enforcement with a virtual license to kill. What's more, the reckless bravado of the Panthers often provided police a convenient pretext.

Haas' important book clarifies how the racial paranoia of an out-of-touch federal government produced a deceitful policy that trashed constitutional rights even as it ignored legitimate grievances.

This book should alter the conventional wisdom that the Panthers were a dangerous threat that the police had to eliminate at all costs. Haas reveals that the cost was much too high.

The Resistance Of The Oppressed Americans

2009-11-25T16:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24039.htm

The Resistance Of The Oppressed Americans
Paul Balles
Information Clearing House
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:03 CST

© Unknown
The Indian [was thought] as less than human and worthy only of extermination. We did shoot down defenseless men, and women and children at places like Camp Grant, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee. We did feed strychnine to red warriors. We did set whole villages of people out naked to freeze in the iron cold of Montana winters. And we did confine thousands in what amounted to concentration camps. - Wellman, The Indian Wars of the West, 1934
On Thursday, November 26, 2009, Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. The holiday is celebrated in remembrance of the pilgrims and in order to give thanks for the harvest. About the holiday, Professor Robert Jensen has written:
European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the "encounter" between Europeans and American Indians.
Today there are approximately 310 American Indian reservations (or should we refer to them as Bantustans?) in the continental U.S. Perhaps we should call the forced Palestinian enclaves reservations. North America, South Africa, Palestine--all invaded and occupied with indigenous populations exterminated and imprisoned.

Their lands and homes have been taken by settlers protected by troops. They've been herded onto refugee camps called reservations or Bantustans and kept in poverty and despair.

Their fathers tell them stories of how they or their grandfathers resisted the oppressors and how their arrows or stones were no match for the guns and cannons used by the foreign settlers.

Now, the young tribesmen read newspapers in English and watch television. Some even have computers and the Internet.

They see films about Japanese Kamikaze pilots during WWII and about the French resistance. We read about Palestinians blowing themselves up because the settlers in Palestine have been their oppressors.

If I die while killing 20 of my enemies, doesn't that serve my people in their war against oppression? Hasn't this been the justification for all soldiers dying in all wars?

Didn't we send our youth into Iraq because we approved the certain suicide of all those who would die? That's what's so attractive about invading places like Afghanistan and Iraq: we can act like oppressive settlers again.

Perhaps that's what Americans love about Israel. Israelis act like America's early settlers and garrisons of troops murdering and maiming tribes of people they consider lesser breeds.

America has forgotten the outcome of other conquests by nations and empires that over-extended themselves. All have fallen! America should know better, having fallen to resistance in Viet Nam. How many young lives succumbed to our leaders' suicidal commitment?

But what about the resistance to occupations? Isn't South Korea feeling occupied? What about the Philippines? Japan recently complained about American troops in Okinawa. How about all the other places where America has over-extended its military presence?

What would the U.S. do if a number of American Indian tribesmen decided they had been occupied long enough, been impoverished long enough? Suppose they rose up against the oppression.

Should there be an American Indian uprising--a resistance move after generations of submission - would the only path for America to take and remain true to itself be to eliminate the terrorists? Isn't that what Israel does now?

Destroy their homes and camps; force them across borders into Canada and Mexico, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Build walls. Wipe out all potential weapons sources. Don't call it genocide! Call it "eliminating terrorism"! Call it "self defense"!

Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see.

Monsanto's gift to India: Seven cotton farmers in Vidarbha end lives in 24 hrs

2009-11-25T16:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.hindustantimes.com/maharashtra/Seven-Vidarbha-cotton-farmers-end-lives-in-24-hrs/477978/H1-Article1-477892.aspx

Pradip Kumar Maitra
Hindustan Times
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:20 CST
Deep in debt, they chose to end their lives.

Seven farmers from Vidarbha region committed suicide in 24 hours till Wednesday evening. The seven farmers, including one woman, had availed of loans from banks or private moneylenders and they were unable to repay the same due to crop failure.

While four of the victims ended their lives by consuming pesticide, the woman farmer set herself ablaze at her residence, late on Tuesday.

Collector of Yavatmal district, Sanjay Deshmukh, confirmed reports of five farmer suicides in the district on Wednesday.

"We have not been able to get details of the cause of the suicides," said Deshmukh. "Family members of the deceased have been busy with the last rites."

Among the latest suicides, five were in Yavatmal - the region's most suicide-prone district. One each was reported from Wardha and Gondia.

The region's farmer suicide toll due to the agrarian crisis has touched 42 so far this month while the figure for last month stood at 54, according to the Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti. The organisation has been documenting farmer suicides since 2001.

This year, 154 cotton farmers have ended their lives in Yavatmal district while 142 were from Amravati.

This year, Vidarbha's cotton crop has turned out to be a killer for many a farmer. The failed monsoon has had a drastic impact on the cotton yield.

US rejects landmine ban treaty

2009-11-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Wonder Why? Landmines and other implements of war and murder make a lot of money for capitalism!

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/2009112545638164209.html

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2009
US rejects landmine ban treaty

Landmines cause thousands of deaths and injuries each year.

The US administration has rejected a global treaty, supported by more than 150 countries, banning the use of landmines.

The state department explained the decision on Tuesday, saying a policy review had found the US could not meet its "national defence needs" without landmines.

"This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our landmine policy remains in effect," Ian Kelly, the state department spokesman, said.

"We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defence needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention," he said.

The US decision comes just days before a review conference on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty, credited with reducing landmine casualties around the world, is due to get under way in Cartegena, Colombia.

The treaty plans to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in landmines.

Besides the US, countries holding out on the agreement include China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia.

'Lost opportunity'

Patrick Leahy, a US senator and a leading advocate for the treaty, called the decision "a default of US leadership" and criticised the state department's policy review as "cursory and half-hearted".

"It is a lost opportunity for the United States to show leadership instead of joining with China and Russia and impeding progress"

Patrick Leahy,
US senator

"It is a lost opportunity for the United States to show leadership instead of joining with China and Russia and impeding progress," Leahy said in a statement.
Landmines are known to have caused 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Kelly said the US would still attend the conference next Sunday, which is expected to draw more than 1,000 delegates from more than 100 countries, including ministers and heads of state.

"As a global provider of security, we have an interest in the discussions there," he said.

"But we will be there as an observer, obviously, because we haven't signed the convention, nor do we plan to sign the convention."

US observers

Anti-landmine campaigners welcomed the development as it will be the first time the US will send observers to a gathering of states that have accepted the treaty.

"The very fact that they are showing up we take as a positive sign of movement on this issue within the [Barack] Obama administration," Steve Goose, director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, said, referring to the US president.

"We hope they're not coming empty-handed."

To some extent the US already abides by the provisions of the treaty.

Goose noted that America has not used anti-personnel mines since the 1991 Gulf War, has not exported any since 1992 and has not produced them since 1997.

AIDS, malaria eclipse the biggest child-killers

2009-11-24T14:02:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091119/ap_on_re_as/as_world_s_children_forgotten_killers

AIDS, malaria eclipse the biggest child-killers
By MARGIE MASON, AP Medical Writer
Thu Nov 19, 3:01 pm ET

HANOI, Vietnam – Diarrhea doesn't make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention.
Yet even though cheap tools could prevent and cure both diseases, they kill an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 each a year globally — more than HIV and malaria combined.

"They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis to HIV and AIDS and other issues," said Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw, a UNICEF official in Africa. "These age-old traditional killers remain with us. The ones dying are the children of the poor."

Global spending on maternal, newborn and child health was about $3.5 billion in 2006, according to a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That same year, nearly $9 billion was devoted to HIV and AIDS, according to UNAIDS.
Pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under 5, claiming more then 2 million lives annually or about 20 percent of all child deaths. AIDS, in contrast, accounts for about 2 percent.

If identified early, pneumonia can be treated with inexpensive antibiotics. Yet UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate less than 20 percent of those sickened receive the drugs.

A vaccine has been available since 2000 but has not yet reached many children in developing countries. The GAVI Alliance, a global partnership, hopes to introduce it to 42 countries by 2015.

Diarrheal diseases, such as cholera and rotavirus, kill 1.5 million kids each year, most under 2 years old. The children die from dehydration, weakened immune systems and malnutrition. Often they get sick from drinking dirty water.

The worst cholera outbreak to hit Africa in 15 years killed more than 4,000 people in Zimbabwe last year. The country recently reported new cases of the waterborne disease, and more are expected as the rainy season peaks and sewers overflow.

Rotavirus, a highly contagious disease spread through contaminated hands and surfaces, is the top cause of severe diarrhea, accounting for more than a half million child deaths a year.

A vaccine routinely given to children in the U.S. and Europe is expected to reach 44 poorer countries by 2015 through the GAVI Alliance.

"Every child in the United States gets it, even though they have access to clean water and hygiene," said John Wecker, of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based nonprofit that is part of the vaccine alliance. "The only effective way to prevent these deaths is through vaccination."

Diarrheal diseases received more attention in the 1980s and 1990s, he said, but interest has waned or been diverted elsewhere, allowing them to creep back.

"How did the leading killers end up at the bottom of the global health agenda? I don't know," Wecker said at a recent GAVI meeting in Hanoi. "We've got the tools. We're not looking for the next technological breakthrough. It's here now and it's not being used."

Death can often be prevented by giving children fluid replacement, a simple recipe of salt and sugar mixed with clean water to help ward off dehydration. Yet 60 percent of children with diarrhea never receive the concoction, according to a WHO and UNICEF report released last month.

"It is so preventable," said Dr. Richard Cash, a Harvard University expert who helped develop the oral rehydration therapy 40 years ago. "Preventing the deaths is at the very least what we should be striving for."

Deadlier than Cocaine, Heroin, and the Swine Flu?

2009-11-21T11:51:00.001-08:00

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/21/Whats-the-Real-Pandemic-in-US-Hint-It-Is-NOT-the-Swine-Flu.aspx

Deadlier than Cocaine, Heroin, and the Swine Flu?
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
November 21 2009 | 15,084 views

Addiction to prescription painkillers — which kill thousands of Americans a year — has become a largely unrecognized epidemic, experts say.

In fact, prescription drugs cause most of the more than 26,000 fatal overdoses each year, says Leonard Paulozzi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of overdose deaths from opioid painkillers — opium-like drugs that include morphine and codeine — more than tripled from 1999 to 2006, to 13,800 deaths that year, according to recently released CDC statistics.

In the past, most overdoses were due to illegal narcotics, such as heroin, with most deaths in big cities. Prescription painkillers have now surpassed heroin and cocaine however, as the leading cause of fatal overdoses, Paulozzi says.

Experts say it's easy to see why so many Americans are abusing painkillers. As Americans age and carry extra pounds, more are asking for pain relief to cope with joint problems, back pain and other ailments.

Aspirin Kills 400% More People than H1N1 Swine Flu

2009-11-21T11:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.naturalnews.com/027548_swine_flu_vaccines_death_risk.html

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00 EST

The CDC now reports that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. This number is supposed to sound big and scary, motivating millions of people to go out and pay good money to be injected with untested, unproven H1N1 vaccines. But let's put the number in perspective: Did you know that more than four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin?

The July 1998 issue of The American Journal of Medicine explains it as follows:

"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone." (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S)

So for every person the CDC claims was killed by H1N1 swine flu this year, common painkillers like aspirin have killed four! Yet you don't see the CDC, FDA, WHO or mainstream media running around screaming about the extreme dangers of aspirin, do you? All those deaths apparently don't matter. Only swine flu deaths lead to hysteria.

Understanding risk

According to death statistics tables available on the 'net, you are ten times more likely to die in a car accident this year than be killed by swine flu.

Nearly 100,000 Americans die every year from adverse reactions to FDA-approved prescription drugs. That's twenty-five times the number of people killed by H1N1 swine flu (even if you believe the CDC's numbers). So where's the big warning about the dangers of prescription drugs? Why isn't the CDC warning Americans about an "epidemic of dangerous drugs" that poses a far greater threat to your health?

The answer, of course, is that health authorities want to push people to buy vaccines that are about to become worthless (they're only good before swine flu fizzles out). And the only way to sell more vaccines to people who don't need them is to hype up a bunch of scare stories by citing bold statistics that make H1N1 swine flu seem really, really dangerous.

But the flu is no more dangerous than aspirin. In fact, H1N1 swine flu may be safer than aspirin.

Here's another quote from the New England Journal of Medicine:

"It has been estimated conservatively that 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur among patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis every year in the United States. This figure is similar to the number of deaths from the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and considerably greater than the number of deaths from multiple myeloma, asthma, cervical cancer, or Hodgkin's disease. If deaths from gastrointestinal toxic effects from NSAIDs were tabulated separately in the National Vital Statistics reports, these effects would constitute the 15th most common cause of death in the United States. Yet these toxic effects remain mainly a "silent epidemic," with many physicians and most patients unaware of the magnitude of the problem. Furthermore the mortality statistics do not include deaths ascribed to the use of over-the-counter NSAIDS." (Wolfe M. MD, Lichtenstein D. MD, and Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs", The New England Journal of Medicine, June 17, 1999, Vol. 340, No. 24, pp. 1888-1889.)

Did you catch that? The 16,500 figure for deaths each year doesn't even include over-the-counter painkiller drugs! If you add in those numbers, you're probably looking at something closer to 40,000 Americans kills each year by these drugs. And that makes these drugs 1000% more deadly than swine flu (because 40,000 is ten times greater than 4,000).

Swine flu vs. seasonal flu

Also according to CDC statistics, swine flu is only approximately one-tenth as dangerous as regular seasonal flu. That's because the CDC maintains that seasonal flu kills 36,000 Americans each year (a figure that I've already pointed out is highly suspect, but that's what they claim).

But even seasonal flu is nothing to get all worked up over. Unless you're in a state of terrible health with a compromised immune system, obesity and asthma, beating seasonal flu is a no-brainer: Just nourish your body with vitamin D, zinc, superfoods and natural health supplements and let your built-in immune technology do its job. Your immune system has already saved your life countless times. It knows how to do it if you give it the right nutrition.

There are lots of things that are far more dangerous than swine flu and yet are openly sold to consumers. Over 400,000 Americans die each year from smoking and yet you can buy cigarettes at Walgreens, Wal-Mart and CVS pharmacies. That means statistically, these pharmacies knowingly sell a product that kills 400 times as many people as swine flu has this year. Where's the alarm about the epidemic of tobacco-related deaths? Nowhere. Not a word from the CDC or WHO.

Also, if pharmacies really cared about your health, why do they openly sell a product that causes cancer and heart disease?

Think about it...

They're just trying to sell you something that will harm you

The fact is, pharmacies will sell anything that makes money: Tobacco, processed junk food, and of course H1N1 vaccines. If they could make money selling influenza, they'd sell that, too. To the pharmaceutical retailers, it doesn't matter how many people die from the products they sell. They're just in business to sell anything that turns a profit, regardless of the consequences to public health.

And the vaccine industry is similarly motivated to sell you false ideas that make money. By selling you on the concept that swine flu is extremely dangerous, they can manipulate you into buying yet more harmful stuff they're hawking at pharmacies... like H1N1 vaccines. And they're counting on the fact that the American people won't do the math (or can't).

Most people have a very poor understanding of risk, and the vaccine industry is counting on precisely that risk assessment ineptitude to push its dangerous vaccines. If people knew that they are 40 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to have their life saved by a swine flu vaccine, very few would line up to be injected with one. But they don't grasp the difference between numbers that are very far apart such as 10^2 versus 10^5. To many people, those factors are "about the same" and it's worth getting injected with a vaccine "just in case."

That's why I've always stated a simple truth that still holds true today: People who seek out vaccine shots are the same kind of people who regularly play the lotto. Both decisions demonstrate a complete lack of understanding risk vs. reward. In fact, if you get a swine flu vaccine injection on the same day you buy a lotto ticket, you have a greater chance of buying a winning lotto ticket than being saved by the swine flu vaccine.

Playing the lotto is actually smarter than getting a swine flu vaccine shot. Plus, the lotto ticket won't potentially cause neurological damage that puts you in a coma or causes the spontaneous abortion of your baby -- both of which have been happening to people after receiving H1N1 vaccine shots.

Mystery of World's Worst Mass Arsenic Poisoning Finally Solved

2009-11-21T05:03:00.000-08:00

Mystery of World's Worst Mass Arsenic Poisoning Finally Solved
By , AFP
November 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144041/

PARIS — Researchers have pinpointed the source of what is probably the worst mass poisoning in history, according to a study published Sunday.

For nearly three decades scientists have struggled to figure out exactly how arsenic was getting into the drinking water of millions of people in rural Bangladesh.

The culprit, says the new study, are tens of thousands of man-made ponds excavated to provide soil for flood protection.

An estimated two million people in Bangladesh suffer from arsenic poisoning, and health experts suspect the toxic, metal-like element has caused -- and will continue to cause -- many deaths as well.

Symptoms include violent stomach pains and vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions and cramps. A large dose can kill outright, while chronic ingestion of small doses has been linked to a large range of cancers.

It has long been known that the arsenic comes from water drawn from millions of low-tech "tube wells" scattered across the country.

Ironically the wells were dug -- often with the help of international aid agencies -- to protect villages from unclean and disease-ridden surface water.

Tragically, millions of people continue to knowingly poison themselves for lack of an alternative source of water.

Earlier studies succeeded in filling in a few pieces of the deadly puzzle.

They showed that water with the highest concentrations of arsenic is roughly 50 years old, and that the organic carbon which, once metabolised by microbes causes the poison to leach from sediment, does not take long to filter down from the surface.

But the source of both the contaminated water and the organic carbon remained unknown until a team of researchers led by Charles Harvey of MIT in Boston, Massachusetts cracked the secret.

Working in the Munshiganj district of Bangladesh, the researchers analysed the flow patterns of surface and underground water in a six square-mile (15.5 square-kilometre) area.

They used natural tracers and a 3-D computer model to track water from rice fields and ponds, and tested the capacity of organic carbon in both settings to free up arsenic from soil and sediments.

"We saw that water with high arsenic content originates from the human-built ponds, and water with lower arsenic content originates from the rice fields," said Rebecca Neumann, a co-author and postdoctoral associate at Harvard.

Chemical analysis showed that the organic compound that unleashes the poison first settles on the bottom of the ponds and then slowly seeps into the ground.

The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, "suggest that the problem could be alleviated by digging deeper drinking water wells below the influence of the ponds, or by locating shallow drinking wells under rice fields," Neumann said in a communique.

The same team of researchers plan to dig such wells in different region to see whether it leads to improved health for villages.

Scott Fendorf, a professor at Stanford University who studies arsenic content in soils and sediments along the Mekong River in Cambodia, said the new study was clearly a breakthrough.

"It shows that human modifications are impacting the arsenic content in the groundwater," he said in a statement. "The ponds ... are having a negative impact on the release of arsenic."

Political Apathy Contributes to Six Million Child Deaths Each Year

2009-11-21T01:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.worldvision.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.3376

World Vision
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:44 EST

Nearly nine million under-fives die each year in developing countries
A failure of political will worldwide is contributing to the unnecessary deaths of more than six million children a year, according to a new report by World Vision.

Nearly nine million children die each year before their fifth birthday in the developing world; the overwhelming majority from preventable conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhea and neonatal complications.

At least two-thirds of these children could be saved, if governments make child health a priority and refocus health spending on prevention in the community and not just cures at the clinic, says World Vision.

Child rights violation

In a week that marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the aid agency condemns preventable child deaths as "the biggest child rights violation of our time".

In order to save lives, World Vision calls for more intelligent health spending, and points to a complete mismatch between where the need lies and where funding is directed.

"Over a quarter of a billion children live in a healthcare desert, miles from the nearest clinic or hospital," says World Vision UK Chief Executive Justin Byworth.
"These unreachable children need simple life-savers in their homes and villages, such as mosquito nets, nutritional supplements and safe, clean drinking water, if we are going to prevent children dying from conditions such as diarrhea and malaria."
Child Health Now campaign

The report is published to mark the launch of Child Health Now, a global five-year campaign to hold governments to account on their pledge to cut under-five deaths by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. World Vision argues there is still time to achieve this target, but drastic action is required.

Further highlighting the inequity between health spending and the need, the report shows:

More than 80% of child deaths occur in just 30 countries but these countries receive less than 50% of health-focused aid.

More than one-third of child deaths are a result of malnutrition but only 1.5% of aid for health is directed towards nutrition.

World Vision calls on the UK government to prioritize spending on preventive measures in the worst-affected countries and publish action plans, setting out how the £6 billion they have allocated to health over the next seven years will be spent to ensure it gets to the children who need it most.

Justin Byworth says: "Success is possible...

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world but has halved child deaths since 1990 by investing in simple preventive measures within communities, by distributing mosquito nets and increasing the number of skilled birth attendants.

In contrast, Kenya, the richest country in East Africa, has seen child mortality increase since 1990.

Saving six million children each year is achievable, but not without the political will to make it happen."

Financial failure is simply the final, fatal

2009-11-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Suicide is self-murder!

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/46320,news-comment,news-politics,financial-failure-is-simply-the-final-fatal-blow-for-suicides

Financial failure is simply the final, fatal blow
Insurmountable anger, not losing millions, is often the determining factor in suicide cases linked to debt, says COLINE COVINGTON
FIRST POSTED JANUARY 19, 2009

How many more victims of the financial crisis will there be? The US, the UK, Japan, India, and Egypt have all reported growing concern over suicides linked to debt. They are wise to be worried: in Japan the suicide rate increased by 34 per cent during the 1998 financial crisis.

On the face of it, it is hardly surprising that a sudden downturn in an individual's finances can precipitate depression and, in certain cases, suicide. But what is most striking about many of the suicides reported here and in the US in the last few months is their extreme rage. Men who have lost their fortunes kill themselves and sometimes their families as well; wives kill themselves when their husbands lose everything; men and women kill themselves as their houses are repossessed.

These suicides may appear to be fuelled by despair, helplessness, shame, and in some cases guilt, but in many cases the suicide note reveals overwhelming anger. One woman, facing foreclosure on her house, wrote to the mortgage company: "You have failed to protect me. You have broken your promise. You have destroyed my life."

Italian poet Cesare Pavese coined the phrase ‘suicides are shy homicides’
Mortgage companies, banks, investment companies, and now governments are being blamed by many people for their devastating losses. Since they can't murder the institutions or the Madoffs of this world, people are killing themselves instead. The Italian poet Cesare Pavese coined the phrase "suicides are shy homicides". Recent suicides linked to the financial crisis are no exceptions.

But it is not simply the case that people who have suffered these huge financial losses feel angry, let down, and helpless. For many of these suicides, financial failure is the final blow in a long history of feeling inadequate, rejected and robbed of love. The murder that takes place is against an internal parental figure who has made the individual believe that he can only be loved if he is successful; more often than not, this also means self-reliant and hard working.

So, when financial loss occurs it is especially traumatic. The efforts to gain love in the eyes of the parent have been suddenly wiped out in one fell swoop, and further efforts seem utterly futile. There is a powerful sense that everything is doomed to fail because it will all be undone in the end. Being left with no money (or house) is equivalent to being left with a parent who has withdrawn love for no apparent reason.

More specifically, it is like

For many of these suicides, financial failure is the last straw in a long history of feeling inadequate, rejected and robbed of love
being let down by a parent who puts their own needs first, leaving the child at risk. What seemed safe and relatively secure no longer exists, and the failure of the banks and mortgage companies to go on providing this security inevitably triggers off memories of parental failure that can feel life-threatening.

In some cases, the parent who needs to be pleased may also be projected onto the wife or husband, and the experience of rejection may thus be twofold. Failing one's spouse can be humiliating and shameful but also persecuting. One banker, referring to a colleague's suicide, described it as an act of honour because his colleague had felt so responsible to his clients for inadvertently losing their money in the Madoff fraud.

The guilt and despair such failure elicits is enormous. But so is the rage. In the case of people who have traumatic histories of emotional insecurity, the combination of despair and rage can produce a fatal cocktail. Add to this the impotence in not being able to actually kill the parent who has failed you (that is, the person or institution on whom you depended and who has betrayed you), and you come up with suicide.

Report: CIA torture prison found in Lithuania

2009-11-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=101581

Report: CIA torture prison found in Lithuania
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:33:19 GMT

This former Lithuanian horse stable was converted into a secret CIA detention center.

The CIA has built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, ABC News has reported.

Citing a Lithuanian government official and a former US intelligence agent, the US TV network said the agency built the concrete prison inside what had been an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius.

Documents provided by Lithuanian officials showed a now-defunct CIA front company, Elite LLC, bought the property from a family and built the "black site" in 2004, the report added.

After former president George W. Bush visited Lithuania in 2002 and pledged to support its bid to join NATO, the country agreed to allow the CIA prison, according to ABC News.

"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the US role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the (United States) asked for during that period," said former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who now works as an ABC News consultant.

This is while Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite denied ABC's request for an interview.

ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now, the precise site had not been confirmed.

Former CIA officials told ABC that as many as eight al-Qaeda suspects were held for more than a year at the prison. A thick concrete wall inside the onetime riding area hid cells and interrogation areas from locals' view.

The Lithuanian prison was the last "black" site open in Europe, after the CIA's secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.

The prison was the last of eight built after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks where the CIA detained and interrogated alleged al-Qaeda operatives ABC said. Other CIA prisons were in Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco and Afghanistan it added.

720 brutally murdered as 'gay cleansing' continues unchecked in Iraq

2009-11-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.examiner.com/x-4107-International-LGBT-Issues-Examiner~y2009m11d16-720-brutally-murdered-as-gay-cleansing-continues-unchecked-in-Iraq?cid=examin#

720 brutally murdered as 'gay cleansing' continues unchecked in Iraq
November 16, 2009
Kelvin Lynch

An organization dedicated to securing asylum for LGBT refugees from Iraq estimates that over 720 LGBT men and women have been murdered by extremist militias in the last six years.
London-based Iraqi LGBT reports the Iraqi government has largely been absent in pursuing the roaming "death squads" in Iraq who seek out LGBT victims, likely due to the influence of extremist Shia religious parties that are calling for a moral cleansing of Iraq.

The organization says the rise of fundamentalist groups in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion has proven deadly to LGBT Iraqis, who are now being forced to either hide or face the consequences. On its website, Iraqi LGBT says, "there is little hope for Iraqis suffering under the new socio-political climate. Once the most liberal and secular of the Arab nations, nowadays religious extremism has taken hold of the country to the detriment of its people."

The extremist groups and police were using the Internet to track down LGBT Iraqis this past summer, but at least two gay Iraqis were able to be saved by Iraqi LGBT. In August, police raided the houses of Asad Galib and Faeq Ismail, both 24 years old, and took them into custody. They were held and questioned for about four hours and accused of viewing gay websites in an internet café. Both men denied the accusations and explained that the websites had already been open when they began using the computers. They were later released and put in a safe house sponsored by Iraqi LGBT.

But the big question continues to be, why hasn't the U.S. government done anything to help? It is hearbreaking that Iraqi LGBT has to beg for donations on its website, instead of getting any form of help whatsoever from us to help stop the gay genocide in Iraq.

President Obama has remained completely silent on the issue, even after receiving a letter from Rep. Jared Polis urging his administration to take action, and a 67-page report by Human Rights Watch in August outlining in explicit detail the torture and murder of LGBT Iraqis, which was featured prominently in nearly every U.S. media outlet, including the New York Times and CNN. Since the HRW report was released, there hasn't been a single change in military strategy to protect LGBT Iraqis from the roaming death squads or the Iraqi police.

Better question - why haven't American LGBT people and their supporters expressed more outrage about the horrendous situation facing LGBT Iraqis? Are we so caught up in our own myopic obsession with equal rights here that we forget about the plight of our brothers and sisters in the (still) U.S.-occupied territory? Why aren't we doing more to try and help them? Why aren't we doing more to speak out on their behalf?

Iraqi LGBT is doing all it can, but being the only organization dedicated to helping gay Iraqis, it's difficult for them to make much of an impact. So far, Iraqi LGBT says nearly 100 individuals in Iraq have directly benefited from their work, and they have been involved in securing asylum for Iraqi refugees who have been forced to flee the country.
But so much more is needed.

Each Day 16 Americans Get Killed Due to Poor Worker Safety Laws

2009-11-16T07:41:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Each-Day-16-Americans-Get-by-Press-Release-091116-281.html

November 16, 2009
Each Day 16 Americans Get Killed Due to Poor Worker Safety Laws
By Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Martha de Hoyos
(310) 204-0448, ext. 225

martha@bravenewfoundation.org

Each Day 16 Americans Get Killed Due to Poor Worker Safety Laws

Brave New Foundation Launches New Worker Safety Campaign

Culver City-Brave New Foundation launches a new worker health and safety campaign, highlighting the weak enforcement mechanisms and poor deterrents currently in place in worker safety laws. Under current worker safety laws, civil penalties are weak and rarely lead to criminal prosecutions.

To view the first installment of 16 Deaths Per Day please click the link below:

www.16deathsperday.com

"It is only a six month misdemeanor if [an employer] willfully commits a violation of worker safety laws. It is only considered a misdemeanor if a worker dies." David Uhlmann, Professor and Director of Environmental Law and Policy Programs at Michigan University.

"[The companies] consider OSHA a mosquito. They'd rather pay the fines than bring the plants into compliance [with the laws]. They think the law is so ineffective that it's more profitable for them to take the risk by not having safety programs in place than to comply with the law." Charles Jeffress, Former Assistant Secretary of Labor, OSHA

The goal of the 16 Deaths Per Day campaign is to strengthen support for the Protecting America's Workers Act (H.R. 2067), which aims at toughening both enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and penalties for violating the law. If H.R. 2067 passes, it will be the first time work and safety laws are strengthened in twenty-years.

Revolutionary new physics could lead to ultimate weapons of mass destruction

2009-11-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

Revolutionary new physics could lead to ultimate weapons of mass destruction
Roland Michel Tremblay
http://www.themarginal.com/finaltheory.pdf
September 18, 2009

As a sci-fi author and science consultant for films and television documentaries, I have made it my mission to seek out every alternate theory out there – no matter how crazy they may seem – to explore any possibility of new physics that might be uncovered and put to use. That is, until I came across something so perfect and convincing that I had to stop in my tracks.

I now realize, to my complete astonishment, that the true Theory of Everything may already exist, in a book published soon after the new millennium – you just haven’t heard about it yet. Who is this author, Mark McCutcheon, and what is this book, The Final Theory, that I have read? My God! This is not the usual crackpot theory used as fodder for some lame sci-fi TV series; this is it – the first truly viable new physics to have ever arisen.

As I read on and on, for the first time gaining a complete understanding of all that is currently mysterious and weird in theoretical physics, including Newton’s gravity, Einstein’s relativity, and especially the quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr, I found myself making a complete turn around. I will never see the world the same way again.

Yes, this Theory of Everything really does explain it all, up to the mysteries surrounding the Pioneer satellites leaving the solar system and the difficulties we have encountered landing spaceships on other moons and planets. McCutcheon has just rewritten the whole of physics and it makes sense, backed up with mathematics to prove it all. I cannot see how he could be wrong, and believe me I have tried to prove him wrong in a long correspondence with him now spanning several years.

I then started wondering how this new understanding of every single phenomenon in physics might be used to perfect weapons of mass destruction, even build the most powerful nuclear weapons ever made. Up until now we never truly understood what was behind the physics that we have exploited to make such weapons possible – it was largely a progression of abstract models and trial-and-error. Now I believe, through this new theory, we can have a complete understanding of it all. I cannot fault it; perhaps you can?

Who would have thought one single little idea could revolutionize the whole of physics and completely rewrite Newton, Einstein and Bohr, all in one time swoop? That is the now almost mythical hope for the long-sought Theory of Everything, but who among us actually believed it was possible? Completely rewriting the books on all these theories of gravity and relativity and quantum mechanics, all based on one singular new principle running throughout it all?

Yet I assure you this could be it; this is what I feel McCutcheon has achieved, I’m sure without even realizing the enormous impact this will have on the world, and how we will go about building more powerful weapons of mass destruction as a consequence.

Are we wise enough to handle this new knowledge, this entirely new physics, if it turns out to be the true Theory of Everything? Well, above all else we must do our best to uncover and communicate the whole truth to everyone, to every single child studying physics, mathematics and chemistry world-wide. We also have a duty to verify independently the validity of Expansion Theory. There would be no point going any further on our current path in science – our Standard Theory, filled with warped space-time, quantum mysteries and relativity paradoxes.

These are chronic issues in our science that never disappear and which no one truly understands – despite the odd academic assurance to the contrary. This is not because the vast majority of us lacks the intellectual capacity, while the handful who are heavily invested in these specialties are, oddly, so far beyond the rest, but because these concepts are inherently nonsensical to any sensible mind without an agenda.

Only now can I see this with crystal clarity. I can now re-read the explanation attempts offered for the various paradoxes in our science and see the obvious logical flaws in all of them. McCutcheon makes a convincing case in answering and solving virtually all these paradoxes. I challenge you to read this book and tell me otherwise (I want to hear your views):

“The Final Theory, Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy”
http://www.thefinaltheory.com

Now we could potentially have a true understanding of what E=mc2 really means. Now we may know the true nature of subatomic and atomic bonds, furthering research in such areas as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. I don’t know, but with such a convincing understanding of how physics and chemistry truly work, I think we may have finally stumbled upon the Holy Grail of all wars.

And yet, I cannot say this should be hidden from view. I cannot say that such an understanding of all physics should be kept secret. I believe we should seek the truth above all else, especially considering how many billions of dollars we spend on experiments that can now be clearly demonstrated to be primitive, misguided or useless by theory alone.

This strikes me all the more now when I encounter documentaries about time travel, wormholes, parallel universes and the like, where presumably great theoretical physicists like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking and Lawrence M. Krauss, could actually just be wasting time and money that could be far better spent if they had the real physics to work with, furthering the urgency for more theoretical physicists to prove or debunk Expansion Theory.

Expansion Theory, as McCutcheon has aptly named this new theory, could ensure we will never struggle to understand how to land a spacecraft on any moon or planet in the solar system, or needlessly lose one more astronaut. Gravity may not be what we think it is today – it could finally have a proper, entirely new definition.

I am now going to give you, for the first time ever, a core insight from the new theory, which you can take or leave as you see fit. But if you read the book, I feel you may very well be convinced of its truth, just like I am now. I urge you not to dismiss the idea off hand or comment that this is crazy without reading the book, since it solves every single paradox in physics, with mathematical proof.

And it is simply this: all can be explained by the fact that the electron is the only fundamental particle in the universe, and that it constantly expands, causing all atoms, which are composed of them, to also expand. And since atoms are expanding entities, all objects made of atoms expand as well, at a rate confirmed mathematically in a neat little equation McCutcheon has derived in the book. Every atom or object in the universe doubles in size every 19 minutes, though this growth is unseen directly since everything maintains the same relative size.

That means the Earth expands by 4.9 meters each second. Falling objects never truly fall, they float in the air until the Earth reaches them whilst expanding. This finally explains why a truck and a feather reach the ground at the same time in a vacuum. Isn’t that revolutionary? And yet, I cannot see how it could be otherwise. It explains all of gravity, all orbits, all of energy.

This would mean Newtonian gravity completely destroyed. In this theory, objects are not attracted to each other by a mysterious attracting gravitational force at a distance. The distance between objects simply diminishes due to the fact that all objects undergo a constant underlying expansion, while empty space does not, resulting in effectively constant-sized objects moving toward each other. The expansion of electrons and atoms explains everything: gravity, chemical bonds, a new model of both the electron and the atom without any inherent charge or magnetism.

The entire universe could be alive with expanding electrons, pushing against each other both within and outside the atom, in electron clouds or electron clusters that explain radiating heat and light. The theory goes on to explain radio waves and the whole spectrum of energy waves, which are no longer waves at all, but various configurations of expanding electrons.

The whole of physics can now be explained by expanding electrons. We now have light without mysterious photons, without Einstein, without quantum mechanics. No more weird claims that no one can understand or explain.

I never thought in a million years that one man could come up with such a radical change of the whole of physics all in one go, all within one revolutionary book. I cannot shake this impression that Mark McCutcheon could soon explode unto the world of physics world-wide and be declared a greater genius than Albert Einstein. I am eager to get more people to read and see if Expansion Theory can be proved wrong, I found no loophole.

Can you explain what you observe in the world around you? Planetary orbits, atomic bonds, the configuration and dynamics of all matter in this world? The true nature of all these energy forces, which is shown to be an obsolete concept in this new theory? Now I believe I can. It is all now simplified completely; there are no more mysteries. Now I can worry about how such an understanding of the true physics of this world, how the strongest candidate ever for a true final Theory of Everything, could potentially be used to annihilate the world we live in.

We should always remain one step ahead, shouldn’t we? I know there are many crackpots out there coming up with new definitions of just about everything in physics, including gravity. But I feel Mark McCutcheon is the one voice in the crowd who has finally truly struck gold; he cannot possibly be wrong in my opinion, and his book proves it in theory, with so many proofs page after page.

In fact, I am so impressed, I think this is such an important book that could revolutionize physics, I’m thinking about turning the book into a television documentary. If you read the book and you are interested in financing such a documentary, please contact me. This entirely new paradigm truly needs to get around – it has to be assessed and recognized so we can stop wasting time, money and energy on the wrong physics, if somehow this is the real thing.

I can’t believe how hard it is without a proper marketing machine to reach out and tell the world about a critical new development. In an ideal world, a book such as this should have had such an impact by now, but obviously our world is far from ideal, so more must be done and said. You too I think will have no doubt about this once you read the book. It seems to me difficult to read it and state that this is not it, that “Expansion Theory” does not explain everything in physics, unless somehow you feel threatened by such a revolution. At the very least it will make you think twice, and then hopefully you can prove it wrong. Just read the comments of those who have read it:

http://www.amazon.com/Final-Theory-Rethinking-Scientific-Legacy/dp/1581126018

We could have here the long-awaited revolution in science we’ve been looking for, we could now have a true Theory of Everything for the first time ever. And now let’s see the leaps and bounds science could make when finally we have a full understanding of what we are doing.

It could lead to better weapons of mass destruction, it could also lead to a new technological revolution that has been too long in coming. It could be our only hope to instantly solve the energy crisis which is responsible for most wars in this world. Considering what is at stake, I hope you will give it an honest chance, I’ve got a feeling this is it.

***

“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”

Roland Michel Tremblay
http://www.themarginal.com/finaltheory.pdf

The Tortured Logic Continues

2009-11-04T15:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/print/49042

Published on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Tortured Logic Continues
by Amy Goodman

"Extraordinary rendition" is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He's a Canadian citizen who was "rendered" by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.

Just this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York City, dismissed Arar's case against the government officials (including FBI Director Robert Mueller, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Attorney General John Ashcroft) who allegedly conspired to have him kidnapped and tortured. Arar is safe now, recovering in Canada with his family. But the decision sends a signal to the Obama administration that there will be no judicial intervention to halt the cruel excesses of the Bush-era "Global War on Terror," including extraordinary rendition, torture and the use of the "state secrets privilege" to hide these crimes.

Arar's life-altering odyssey is one of the best known and best investigated of those victimized by U.S. extraordinary rendition. After vacationing with his family in Tunisia, Arar attempted to fly home to Canada. On Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes at JFK Airport, Arar was pulled aside for questioning. He was fingerprinted and searched by the FBI and the New York Police Department. He asked for a lawyer and was told he had no rights. He was then taken to another location and subjected to two days of aggressive interrogations, with no access to phone, food or a lawyer. He was asked about his membership with various terrorist groups, about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Palestine and more. Shackled, he was then moved to a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn, strip-searched and threatened with deportation to Syria.

Arar was born in Syria and told his captors that if he returned there, he would be tortured. As Arar's lawyers would later argue, however, that is exactly what they hoped would happen. Arar was eventually allowed a call-he got through to his mother-in-law, who got him a lawyer-and a visit from a Canadian Consulate official. For nearly two weeks, the U.S. authorities held the Syria threat over his head. Still, he denied any involvement with terrorism. So in the middle of the night, over a weekend, without normal immigration proceedings-without telling his lawyer or the Canadian Consulate-he was dragged in chains to a private jet contracted by the CIA and flown to Jordan, where he was then handed over to the Syrians.

For 10 months and 10 days, Maher was held in a dark, damp, cold cell, measuring 6 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet high, the size of a grave. He was beaten repeatedly with a thick electrical cable all over his body, punched, made to listen to the torture of others, denied food and threatened with electrical shock and an array of more horrors. To stop the torture, he falsely confessed to attending terrorist training in Afghanistan. Then, after nearly a year, he was abruptly released to Canada, 40 pounds lighter and emotionally destroyed.

The Canadian government, under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, investigated, found its own culpability in relaying unreliable information to the FBI and settled with Arar, giving him an apology and $10 million. The U.S. government has offered no apology and has kept Arar on a terrorist watch list. He is not allowed to enter the U.S. Two years ago, he had to testify before Congress via video conference.

He said: "These past few years have been a nightmare for me. Since my return to Canada, my physical pain has slowly healed, but the cognitive and psychological scars from my ordeal remain with me on a daily basis. I still have nightmares and recurring flashbacks. I am not the same person that I was. I also hope to convey how fragile our human rights have become and how easily they can be taken from us by the same governments that have sworn to protect them."

Given the excesses of the Bush administration and Barack Obama's promise of change, it has surprised many that these policies are continuing, and that Congress and the courts have not closed this chapter of U.S. history. President Obama has never once condemned extraordinary rendition. Arar's lawyer, Maria LaHood of the Center for Constitutional Rights, calls the court decision against Arar "an outrage." In his dissent, Judge Guido Calabresi wrote, "I believe that when the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay." Given the torture that Arar suffered, his response was remarkably measured: "If anything, this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law."

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Will chemical weapons proliferate?

2009-11-04T15:18:00.001-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/will_chemical_weapons_proliferate/

Michael Crowley | Thursday, 29 October 2009
Will chemical weapons proliferate?

The danger of security agencies, military forces and violent groups using “incapacitatant” chemical agents to disable adversaries has grown since the Moscow theatre siege of 2002. International regulation is needed.

It is seven years since, at 6am on 26 October 2002, Russian security forces deployed an incapacitating chemical weapon in an attempt to free over 800 people who had been held hostage by armed Chechen fighters for 57 hours in a Moscow theatre.

Most of the hostages were saved, but more than 120 died as a result of the incapacitant (and all the 41 attackers were killed in the operation). The damage was compounded by the secrecy surrounding its deployment, which delayed and compromised the treatment of the surviving hostages, in turn contributing to further deaths and long-term health problems.

It was only on 30 October that Russian health minister Yuri Shevchenko partially identified the incapacitating agent as "a mixture of derivative substances of the fast-action opiate fentanyl." The minister refused to be more precise about the chemicals used; he even replied to a parliamentary question on 11 December 2002 by saying this was a "state secret." To this day, the Russian authorities have still not explained what chemical or chemicals were employed, nor provided any details of the levels of production or stockpiling of such agents. Moreover, there are reports of the later use of incapacitants by Russia, as well as of continuing research by a number of states and interest shown by certain international organisations.

Since the Moscow siege, however, the international community has refused to address the dangers of the development and proliferation of such weapons. This makes timely a new report by the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP) - Dangerous Ambiguities: Regulation of Riot Control Agents and Incapacitants under the Chemical Weapons Convention - which highlights the inability of the international-control regime established under the The international-control regime established under the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1992 effectively to regulate incapacitants.

There is no agreed definition of incapacitants (which are also referred to as advanced riot-control agents; biochemical agents; biotechnical agents; calmatives; incapacitating biochemical weapons; and immobilising agents). They can be described as a disparate range of agents - including pharmaceutical chemicals, bioregulators and toxins - which act on the body's biochemical and physiological systems (such as the central nervous system) to disable the victim. This can happen by causing disorientation, hallucination, or loss of consciousness; in higher doses, their action can result in death.

It is true that incapacitants are covered by the 1992 convention; but it is flawed by dangerous ambiguities in the text and limitations in its current implementation. These weaknesses have been reinforced by a collective failure of CWC states-parties and policy-making organs to confront the problem.

Research, risk and regulation

This situation carries four risks.

First, it allows state practice to determine the scope and nature of incapacitant regulation. The potential consequences of this are outlined by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission:

"There is an increasing interest among some governments to adopt a more flexible interpretation of the CWC rules on the use of incapacitating chemical weapons, even as a method of warfare, in order to use them in diverse situations. Such an interpretation, in the view of the Commission, would constitute a dangerous erosion on the fundamental ban on chemical weapons that the authors of the Convention intended."

Second, a number of countries appear to have initiated or continued work on incapacitants. China, the Czech Republic, the United States and Russia have undertaken research activities of concern; France and Britain, and Nato and the European Defence Agency have shown an interest in these agents.

Third, the likely consequence of this work and interest is that the dangers of law-enforcement officials using incapacitants - for repression, or by military personnel in armed conflict - will grow; in turn the risk of their acquisition by terrorists, paramilitary organisations and criminal gangs will also increase.

Fourth, incapacitant research, if allowed to continue unchecked and in secret, may lead to even more perilous developments. In particularly, if weapons designers put to use some of the current revolutionary advances in genomics, biotechnology, synthetic biology, neuroscience and medical pharmacology, the resulting violations could be profound. The British Medical Association (BMA) summarised the danger in a 2007 report:

"Using existing drugs as weapons means knowingly moving towards the top of a ‘slippery slope' at the bottom of which is the spectre of ‘militarization' of biology; this could include intentional manipulation of peoples' emotions, memories, immune responses or even fertility" (see "The use of drugs as weapons", British Medical Association, May 2007).

Such concerns are reinforced by a report published in 2008 by the National Research Council in the United States. Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies discusses several areas of contemporary and possible future research and development that could be applied to the weaponisation of incapacitants.

The potential misuse of medical pharmacology is only part of the story. The report also warns of the threats resulting from developments in nanotechnologies or gas-phase techniques that allow dispersal of highly potent chemicals over wide areas: "technologies that could be available in the next 20 years would allow dispersal of agents in delivery vehicles that would be analogous to a pharmacological cluster bomb or a land mine."

The 188 states parties to the CWC will gather in The Hague on 30 November 2009 to assess its implementation. These governments have previously considered the regulation of incapacitants a problem too difficult to deal with, but it is one they must now face. If they do not then the events in Moscow in October 2002 may well become the prelude to greater horrors.

Michael Crowley is project coordinator of the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP). He is the author of the project's report, Dangerous Ambiguities: Regulation of Riot Control Agents and Incapacitants under the Chemical Weapons Convention (University of Bradford, October 2009). This article is published by Michael Crowley, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.

Rack 'em and Screw 'em, Boys!

2009-11-03T11:48:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rack-em-and-Screw-em-Bo-by-Sheila-Samples-091101-922.html

November 1, 2009
Rack 'em and Screw 'em, Boys!
By Sheila Samples

Is there anything scarier than the New York Times' Halloween treat entitled, "Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails"?

Pardon my Palinese, but -- You betcha! You damnbetcha!

For starters, the "conditions" the Times mentions only briefly are, in reality, depraved, corrupt, immoral, inhumane torture. According to the Times...

"F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw'. . ."

What is more frightening -- that the C.I.A. got its jollies by torturing, even murdering human beings in its secret sodomy frat-houses -- or that the F.B.I. took one look, fled the scene and remained silent for years?

Perhaps it's the two-page memo President George Bush had circulated seven months earlier wherein he determined -- under his authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the United States --

"...none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because, among other reasons, al Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva." (emphasis added)
[...]

"...I determine that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva. I note that, because Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al Qaeda, al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war."

Bush then added piously that our values as a nation that we shared with many nations (?) required us to treat humanely even those not qualified as humans nor entitled to such treatment. So -- wink, wink -- rack 'em and screw 'em, boys!

According to the Times, the documents were released as a result of several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch. Makes you wonder if this nation's mainstream media, both print and electronic, has no access -- nor interest -- in freedom of information, doesn't it?

The Times did provide links (see below) to the released documents -- 953 pages it knew most of us would never read. To offset that, the Times assigned two of its top investigative reporters -- Scott Shane and Charlie Savage -- to get the critical information out.

These guys hopped right on it and, after yawning through the assignment, their bland 306-word "news" article was published on page A28.

I don't know about you, but even for Halloween -- that's scary!

Links to released documents via New York Times
A.C.L.U. vs. C.I.A. (SDNY) (pdf) (13 pages)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (DDC2) (pdf) (441 pages)
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