Friday, July 31, 2009

Evading Oversight Laws - The military , the police and the use of contractors- Sweet deals for contractors and an off-books method

NATO, domestic spying, Torture, private contracts and more:

The recent exposure of John Towery, also known as “John Jacob”, who posed as an activist but was in fact a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewisthe with addresses at both Fort Drum, Upstate New York,USA and Brussels, associated with NATO

Posing as an anarchist while working for the Military - "John Jacobs":




And recent News (July 2009) around the use of spies, infiltrators, agent provocateurs (French for "inciting agent") hired through private contracting firms to infiltrate political groups, harass its members and also :

"fusion centers" - originally created to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence , : some fusion centers have grown to include the participation not just law enforcement, but other government entities, the military and even select members of the private sector - more HERE

In the NEWS:

Declassified documents and interviews:

Article:

From Guantanámo to your doorstep: the intelligence industry's revolving cash door

By Julian Assange (investigations editor, WikiLeaks) (HERE)

And the recent revelations around the use of spies, infiltrators, agent provocateurs (French for "inciting agent") hired through private contracting firms to infiltrate domestic political groups and the role of the "domestic intelligence "fusion" centers".


Documents HERE:

- Confidential 1525 page file HERE - Wikileaks

VIDEOS:

Christopher Pyle, Military Surveillance of Civilians today and the Church Committee in the 70's:





MORE AT

http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/four-important-articles.html


http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Spying_on_anti-war_protesters:_US_Army_Concept_of_Operations_for_Police_Intelligence_Operations%2C_4_Mar_2009


Germany Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Federal Intelligence Service (BND) may not be withheld information from Parliament





Friday, July 31, 2009
Matt Glenn at 8:49 AM ET

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court [official website, in German] ruled Thursday that the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) [official website, in German] may not withhold information from parliament without good cause. The case began in 2006 when the BND refused to tell Germany's Green Party whether it was spying on members of parliament. Thursday's ruling requires that the government present a detailed explanation [Tagesschau report, in German] of its reasoning when it refuses to divulge information to parliament. Some members of parliament said they expect currently classified information to become declassified as a result of the the ruling.

Intelligence services of a number of countries have come under government scrutiny in the past month. Earlier this month the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was criticized [JURIST report] by Canada's Security Intelligence Review Committee for its role in interrogating a Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee. Also this month, the UK Metropolitan Police Service announced it was looking into [JURIST report] allegations that British intelligence officers mistreated former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed [JURIST news archive]. The United States House of Representatives Intelligence Committe announced earlier this month that it would open a formal investigation [JURIST report HERE] into a plan to assassinate al Qaeda members that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) failed to disclose to Congress.



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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

ON EMBARASSMENT AND SHAME - FROM THE FIRST SLAP IN THE FACE ...TO THE IDEA OF JUSTICE


"What an irony that it is the tortured not the torturer, who feels shame and embarassment from the first slap in the face to the non accountability of those who participated directly or indirectly in torture and its irreversible damages."





"Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured." Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be at easy in the world...faith in humanity , already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again..."
Jean Améry, Austrian philosopher tortured by the Nazis - At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities - 1980


HOW CAN IT BE THAT THOSE WHO AUTHORIZED, ORDERED AND/OR PARTICIPATED IN TORTURE WALK FREE, RECEIVING THE "DE FACT" IMPUNITY ?

"...I ask you to act in service to the truth and to the principle that no matter how high the position held nor how much power accrues to it, its incumbent must be held accountable to the law. ...to do less is to betray the very idea of Justice"

From the letter of Sister Dianna Ortiz, U.S. citizen tortured in Guatemala in 1989, to President Obama - July 2009



In France, the top Secret "Alliance Base":
"Under the directions of the CIA, the countries that have sent officers to be part of the "Alliance Base" based in France, include: Canada, Britain, France, Australia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070201361.html?referrer=emailarticle


see post JULY 3, 2009 HERE

ON EMBARASSMENT AND SHAME - FROM THE FIRST SLAP IN THE FACE ...TO THE IDEA OF JUSTICE


'What an irony that it is the tortured not the torturer, who feels shame and embarassment from the first slap in the face to the non accountability of those who participated directly or indirectly in torture and its irreversible damages."



In France, the top Secret "Alliance Base":
"Under the directions of the CIA, the countries that have sent officers to be part of the "Alliance Base" based in France, include: Canada, Britain, France, Australia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070201361.html?referrer=emailarticle

see post JULY 3, 2009 HERE


"Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured." Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be at easy in the world...faith in humanity , already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again..."
Jean Améry, Austrian philosopher tortured by the Nazis - At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities - 1980


HOW CAN IT BE THAT THOSE WHO AUTHORIZED, ORDERED AND/OR PARTICIPATED IN TORTURE WALK FREE, RECEIVING THE "DE FACT" IMPUNITY ?

"...I ask you to act in service to the truth and to the principle that no matter how high the position held nor how much power accrues to it, its incumbent must be held accountable to the law. ...to do less is to betray the very idea of Justice"

From the letter of Sister Dianna Ortiz, U.S. citizen tortured in Guatemala in 1989, to President Obama - July 2009

Secrecy, Complicity in a Torture Policy, The Rule of Law and the evolution into Atrocities

"Protection from embarrassment is not covered in our security laws"
- Canadian Federal Court Justice Simon Noel


TORTURE POLICY - "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

and some extracts from the book "The Nazi Doctors" - by Robert Lifton

"In the process of being improved, technology itself comes increasingly to dominate the perpetrators field of attention. Thus, the Nazis could reach a state of function in which ethics played no part - the word does not exist". The technology helps create a hermetic world in which everyone is motivated to help make things "work". And the preoccupation takes on a sense of everydayness, of normality"

"Genocide requires two groups of people: a professional elite that formulates and supervises the killing, and professional killers to kill"

THE TORTURE POLICY - USA - video from ABC Australia featuring John Yoo , one of the lawyers for the "Torture Program"



The "bad apples" - 2003 and Past Atrocities against a group- 1943
---

"Early perpetrators become a scientific and moral elite and form a spiritual
engine of biological necessity. The rest of the population is not deemed
ready for full knowledge; there is an ambivalence between secrecy tinged
with shame and pride of achievement as the genocidal radius moves outward
into an increasingly enveloping system of order and policy, of bureaucratic
and technological arrangement. That image of absolute revitalization
applied to both genocidal rehearsal and larger act. "

"The smaller genocide develops the technology, personnel and institutional structure. But the prior event does more: it provides a shared sense, notably among the elite, that it can be done; that one can move from relatively amorphous imagery of victimization and triage for the act of total murder; and that it seems to work - a problem is solved, there is a sense of achievement"


from the book "The Nazi Doctors" - by Robert Lifton - ("The Genocidal Threshold" Chapter)

Robert Jay Lifton, born May 1926, is an America psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of political violence and war. His studies of the behavior of people who had committed war crimes, both individually and in groups, concluded that such crimes do not require any unusual degree of personal evil or mental illness, and are nearly sure to happen given certain conditions (either accidental or deliberately arranged) which Lifton called "atrocity-producing situations". In order to "make things work", secrecy becomes the most important and fundamental ingredient of the professional elite's world where ethics plays no part.

The book "The Nazi Doctors" was the first in-depth study of how professionals rationalized their participation in torture, killings and in the atrocities of the holocaust.

Monday, July 27, 2009

UK Restoring the Rule of Law - Secret of Ghost Flights to be Revealed - CIA could not have acted alone in The Rendition Program




Jeppesen UK Gives In, Will Give Up "Ghost Plane" Evidence on Renditions
Which governments were complicit in extraordinary rendition is finally going to be exposed as :

The article:

Secrets of CIA 'ghost flights' to be revealed

July 26, 2009 - Sunday - UK Guardian

HERE



MORE and In the NEWS:

Toronto Star December 4, 2005 -Ghost flights over Canada-By Tim Harper - HERE

STEPHEN GRAY - author of the book "GHOST PLANE" interview at:
Watch Video: EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION - HERE

IN CANADA, IN THE PAST, TORTURE WAS A STORY FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES...

When a Democracy turns its back to the Rule of Law:

ACCOUNTABILITY - The Rule of Law

Friday, July 24, 2009

Deepak Obhrai - parliamentary secretary to foreign affairs


"Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to foreign affairs, visited ABOUSFIAN ABDELRAZIK in Sudan in March 2008, a consular official told him he would have to answer questions on his views on 9/11, Israel, Osama bin Laden and Hamas in exchange for help returning to Canada."

Toronto Star, Jul 24, 2009

Article HERE:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/671100

ABOUT DEEPAK OBHRAI:
Obhrai was born in July 5, 1950 in Oldeani, Tanzania.
He represents the riding of Calgary East for the Conservative Party of Canada. He is currently serving as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada.[1]

He was first elected in 1997 for the Reform Party of Canada, and was re-elected when the Reform Party became the Canadian Alliance in 2000. In 2004 and 2006 he was elected as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada. He was also one of four Alliance MPs who agreed to sit with the Progressive Conservative caucus after the December 9, 2003 creation of the merged Conservative Party, as the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parliamentary caucuses were not officially merged until a few weeks later.

Obhrai is a former businessman. He is a past president of the India-Canada Association, the Monterey Community Association and the Hindu Society of Calgary, and Vice-President of the National Indo/Canadian Council.

Reference: Parliament of Canada Biography at:

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/Files/Parliamentarian.aspx?Item=9f0040ba-a9d7-4aa4-b2e4-f3213a4e024f&Language=E


Deepak Obhrai in the news:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/18/the-commons-and-then-suddenly-an-answer/#more-65600


See also - Deepak Obhrai explains why Omar Khadar is not a child soldier:

"At one point, Deepak Obhrai, the parliament secretary for foreign affairs, ventures this explanation as to why his government doesn’t consider Khadr a child soldier.

As I have said, the opposition members have been raising issues here about child soldiers and Canada’s human rights record. As I stated in my intervention with the Bloc, I was in Burundi where I met child soldiers and looked into their eyes. I can tell members that the reason those guys were child soldiers was economic. It was not a war on terrorism. What we are facing out here was not based on ideology."

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/03/13/age-is-just-a-number/ [retrieved July 24, 2009]

CSIS THREATS TO Abdelrazik: "YOU WILL SEE..."

CSIS Official to Abdelrazik: "MY COUNTRY DOESN'T NEED YOU"!!





Videos of the press conference can be watched here - July 23, 2009:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090723/abdelrazik_presser_090723/20090723?hub=TopStories

Updates at:

http://www.peoplescommission.org/en/abdelrazik/updates.php

BEFORE AND AFTER - Abdelrazik's Return

UPDATE July 23, 2009

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/video/abdelrazik-speaks-part-1/article1228590/







Bitter anniversary for rendition victim

Bitter anniversary for rendition victim

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The long History of CIA's Abuses: hiding misconduct, harassment , intimidation, false confessions, drugging

The Canadian Participation in CIA and Military abusive Human Experiments


Detailed description and documentation - book:

Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
by  Alfred W. McCoy - 2012
  • University of Wisconsin Press (Aug. 24 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 0299288544 / ISBN-13: 978-0299288549


 - The CIA and Canada - Science in Dachau's Shadow  - pg .71 -80


 - Our Man in Montreal - details of Canadian  McGill University funding and participation in the CIA mind control experiments - pg. 63- 72 


In Canada, among inumerous victims were Velma Orlikow, the wife of Canadian MP David Orlikow, Anne Collins , author of the book:

"In The Sleep Room: The Story Of The CIA Brainwashing Experiments In Canada"

A Documentary based on the book was aired as :

The Sleep Room- Documentary by The Fifth Estate - CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Although this compreensive documentary was available on YOUTUBE, it no longer is. It was first aired on January 6, 1998



A Major Television Documentary  mini-series was based on the book:

In The Sleep Room: The Story Of The CIA Brainwashing Experiments In Canadaby Anne Collins - 1998

http://books.google.ca/books/about/In_the_Sleep_Room.html?id=WJIJAAAACAAJ

(and released official records list bellow


______________________________________


14 published reports of the Church Committee contain a wealth of information on the formation, operation, and abuses of U.S. intelligence agencies and its allies. They were published in 1975 and 1976, after which recommendations for reform were debated in the Congress and in some cases carried out.
THE NAVY INVOLVEMENT :Research - Brain Damage without leaving marks
Top Secret PROJECT #54
Extract from Hearings before the Committee on Intelligence- United States Senate - August 3, 1977
HERE - retrieved July 21, 2009
"Senator SCHWEIKER. Subproject 54, MKULTRA, which involved examination of techniques to cause brain concussions and amnesia by using weapons or sound waves to strike individuals without giving and without leaving any clear physical marks.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

New York Times, July 16, 2009: BREAKING THE LAW - Bush team's Standard Operating Procedure

July 16, 2009 - New York Times editorialized (HERE) about accountability for rendition, torture and other Bush-era war crimes:

"Once the Bush team got into the habit of breaking the law, it became their operating procedure that any means are justified: ordering the nation’s intelligence agents to torture prisoners; sending innocents to be tortured in foreign countries; creating secret prisons where detainees were held illegally without charge."

July 16, 2009 - CIA ASSASSINATION PROGRAM STILL ACTIVE IN JUNE 2009 -The Washington Post reported that the Assassination Program would operate with "no geographical limitations on the agency's action" (HERE)

"The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive."

and HERE
"No geographical limitations" presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone -- including even the US itself. And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question"

AS BUSH's LAWYERS ARE ALSO BEING CALLED INTO ACCOUNT, HOPEFULLY, THESE ACTIONS IN UNITED STATES WILL ALSO STIMULATE BUSH ERA ACCOMPLICES TO START LOOKING INTO THEIR OWN WRONGDOINGS AND STOP CLAIMING THE NEED FOR SECRECY TO "PROTECT ALLIES".



More on recent actions:

July 17, 2009 - Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Chair of the House Intelligence committee, has announced an investigation into this secret CIA assassination program that Leon Panetta says he recently ended, and which Dick Cheney reportedly ordered kept secret from Congress. From Reyes's statement:

"After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, I am announcing an official Committee investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1974.

This investigation will focus on the core issues of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during Director Panetta's June 24th notification and whether there was any official decision or direction to withold (sic) information from the Committee."

More at "Congress to Probe CIA Program" - July 17, 2009 - HERE

And about the Program: "CIA Assassin Program could operate anywhere- Even inside U.S." HERE


July 11, 2009 - Newsweek Magazine reported that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate these crimes. (HERE)

While this, the United Nations takes action on the international stage and the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the rights of peoples to self-determination will carry out an official visit to the United States of America from 20 July to 3 August 2009. From a statement released by the U.N. (HERE)

The Working Group will in particular focus on questions of transparency and accountability of PMSCs and their personnel, instances and circumstances which may give rise to impunity of contractors for violations of human rights as well as guarantees for ensuring that victims of violations have access to effective remedies. It will also look into the general trend towards the privatization of war and its consequences.

More information HERE

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Canadian Security Intelligence Service- Problems beyond Torture:personal accountability and the moral necessity of Nuremberg’s fundamental ethic




CSIS and "the Nuremberg Defense" - "Just following orders"

THE NUREMBERG ETHIC

- "One cannot evade ethical responsibilities by “just following the law,” “just following orders,” “just following regulations,”


Is this the reason CSIS's employees are not accountable for their actions? "Just following orders"?


After the findings of wrongdoing by Canadian cops and spooks (O'Connor and Iacobucci Reports, e.g.) Canadian officials were not hold accountable for their actions and their names and actions have been protected by a secrecy that gives these "faceless taxpayer money paid people", the power to, with impunity, destroy the lives and reputation of innocent people and still hide behind institutions that look like prepared to do whatever it takes to avoid accountability.

No Nuremberg Ethic in Canadian Institutions? Is the “Nuremberg Defense” acceptable and allowed by Canadian Intelligence Services Codes?

For individual conclusion – “Nuremberg Ethic” :

- "One cannot evade ethical responsibilities by “just following the law,” “just following orders,” “just following regulations,” etc

- “Ethical Responsibilities” go beyond torture to include:
- behaviors often termed “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
- activities such as using soldiers or civilians as human subjects without their knowledge or informed consent
- using therapy relationship as pretense to obtain information from or about those held in prisons, jails, holdingcells, detention centers, or other institutions and other activities that might be undertaken in service of national security, intelligence, or defense agencies, or under the auspices of national, state, or local law enforcement, correctional, judicial, or other governmental authorities
- unfair discrimination and other concepts associated with civil rights or fair and just treatment.

PS:

The Nuremberg Defense: "just following orders”, was used by NAZI criminals who, among other things, tried to justify their actions hiding behind institutions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some facts about Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CIA, USA...and more:

1 - CSIS "very close relationship" w/CIA:Alliance Base,Secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers

The Washington Post, By Dana Priest, July 3, 2005, (HERE) :
In 2002, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, funded a top secret center in Paris, code-named "Alliance Base".

It would give the necessary cover to countries that did not want to be perceived perceived as taking direction from the CIA.
The center's working language is French, as revealed in the article, which would play down the U.S. role and the CIA main role.
Countries who have sent officers to be part of the top secret "Alliance Base" include:Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States.


--------------------------------------------
2- John Di Gangi, then the director of foreign intelligence at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department:(HERE) “The U.S. would like Canada's assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik,” John Di Gangi, then the director of foreign intelligence at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, writes in the note sent to top officials in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and other security agencies, following a high-level diplomatic request from senior U.S. officials. “If Canadian police or security agencies shared what they had, it might prove to be enough for the U.S. to proceed as the threshold for prosecution there [in the U.S.] was lower than here [in Canada].”[ post June 21, 2009]

---------------------------------------------------------
From harassing people to "squeeze" them out of the country, participation in "interrogation" in a notorious torture prison to recent "omissions" to Federal Court judges (HERE), CSIS's list of "mistakes" goes on and on. But since there has been no accountability, the problem , looks like, is not what they have been doing but the fact that, in some cases, they were caught...


THE HILL TIMES - October 2, 2006 - CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada - HERE

And more at "Canadian role in Syria torture" - BBC News, October 24, 2008 - HERE

In 2007, as part of the investigation into government foreknowledge of the torture, it was revealed that Jack Hooper, former CSIS deputy director, had sent an earlier memo on October 10, 2002 that included the reference "I think the United States would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him".

He also contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 2003 to tell them that it was not in Canada's interests to demand that the United States return Maher Arar, rather than deporting him to Syria.


3- CANADIAN SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE (CSIS) IN THE TORTURE PRISON OF GUANTANAMO:

OFFICIAL REPORTS:
In "preparation" for the Canadian Officials "visit", the Canadian citizen was put in the "frequent flyer program: for the three weeks before Mr. Gould's visit, Umar has not been permitted more than three hours in anyone location. At three hours intervals he is moved to another cell block, thus denying him uninterrupted'sleep and a continued change of neighbours. He will soon be placed in isolation for up to three weeks and then he will be interviewed again"

(All documents available are on line at The University of California Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas - click HERE)

video HEREOmar Kadhar when he was captured at the age of 14


In ONE of CSIS "visits" to Guantanamo, on March 30, 2004, Jim Gould, CSIS officer, was one of the interrogators at Guantanamo:, and doesn't look like that he was there to get ""information which can prevent something like the Air India bombing, the Twin Towers".

"I want to talk to the honest Omar I was talking yesterday. I don't want to talk to this Omar"

Video at:
Newsweek Magazine, July 15, 2008:

http://video.newsweek.com/#?t=1868992093&l=18465772001

Or at CBC News - timeline and video HERE:


Documents also show that in "preparation" for the Canadian Officials "visit", the Canadian citizen was put in the "frequent flyer program: for the three weeks before Mr. Gould's visit, Umar has not been permitted more than three hours in anyone location. At three hours intervals he is moved to another cell block, thus denying him uninterrupted'sleep and a continued change of neighbours. He will soon be placed in isolation for up to three weeks and then he will be interviewed again"(extracetd from the report HERE)

Omar Khadr, was 15 years old when he was captured in July 2002 and was transferred to the US prison at Bagram airbase, where was subjected to chronic abuse. He was severely wounded by then. One of his interrogators at Bagram prison was Sgt. Joshua Claus, who was later charged of various crimes, including assault and “maltreatment of a detainee” in connection with the murder of the two men, and was sentenced to five months in jail in 2006.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Torture, murder and disappearances: US tools in US Wars - THE CONTAINERS

Afghan Massacre - The Convoy of Death - Documentary by former BBC producer Jamie Doran

The film tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military's Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. Some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison, when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds. Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Some of the witnesses in the film have already been killed. While US Administration has deepened the United States’ commitment to Afghanistan, sending 21,000 more American troops there and asking the support of its allies, Afghan General Dostum, was on the CIA payroll at the time of the massacre, has been reappointment as military chief of staff to the Afghan president Karzai.

On July 10, 2009, in the New York Times, James Risen wrote about the massacre HERE.

Obama on the Massacre - CNN's Anderson Cooper July 12, 2009:


THE DOCUMENTARY:


Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Bench: The Bush Six: newyorker.com

THE UNIQUE RESPONSIBILITY OF LAWYERS TO UPHOLD JUSTICE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES AND THOSE WHO TAKE THIS RESPONSIBILITY


The Bench: The Bush Six: newyorker.com (HERE)

by Jane Mayer


"Philippe Sands is a law professor and a certified Queen’s Counsel (the kind of barrister who on occasion wears a powdered horsehair wig) who works at the same law practice as Cherie Blair. " Sands’s book, “Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law" ,” offers a forensic investigation of deception at the highest levels of White House and of the steps taken by Bush officials to that shiled those responsible for the "American Torture Program".


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Saturday, July 11, 2009

Afghan CIA Protegé shielded from criminal investigation. Is being on CIA payroll a "criminals passport" to impunity?Are US allies also accomplices?

Update on this post HERE (July 13, 2009) :Obama Orders National Security Team To Investigate Dasht-e-Leili Massacre



On CIA payroll, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai military chief of staff shielded from investigation into the mass killing of surrended P.O.W.'s


Afghanistan General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Karzai's Military Chief of staff, has been
on the CIA payroll for years. As a CIA protege, he has been shielded from investigations into mass killing of more than 1,500 surrended POW's since 2002.

In an article published
July 10, 2009 in the The New York Times, (HERE) James Risen reveals that an investigation sought by the FBI into the killing of hundreds or maybe thousands prisioners of war (POW) never went ahead because Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. .
Several officials said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai., in which General Dostum is now military Chief of staff.

A recently declassified 2002 State Department intelligence report concluded that about 1,500 surrended prisoners of war taken by Gen. Dostum died after being stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water: many suffocated and other prisoners were killed when guards under the instructions of Karzai's General shot into the containers. Afghan witnesses of the mass killing were later tortured or killed.
More on the topic HERE

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Torture Collusion : The “enhanced interrogations” - Created by the Military and Intelligence Services with the collusion of psychologists


"The direct involvement of medical professionals in torture, covering up extrajudicial killings, and other extreme conduct is a phenomenon common to many societies and periods of national crisis" - Extract from:
"Interrogations, Forced Feedings, and the Role of Health Professionals New Perspectives on International Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, and Ethics" by Ryan Goodman and Mindy Jane Roseman (HERE)




What about the possible Canadian involvement in the "Torture Program"?

A close look at "a very close relationship" is probably required even if it is to show that Canada has no collusion with the worldwide implemented "American Torture Program" which in some aspects looks like a "North American Operation Condor".

Operation Condor was a campaign of political repressions involving assassinations, torture, kidnappings and many other intelligence and military operations officially implemented in 1975 by the governments of several countries in the Southern Cone- South America. Many of the participants of the Operation were trained in USA in torture and other activities at the School of the Americas, a United States Department of Defense facility at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia in the United States.
Its name was recently changed to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"
(more on the School of the Americas at: "School of the Americas Assassins" - a documentary film produced by Robert Richter. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.)

More on the Operation Condor:

"Declassified memos show Kissinger, Nixon condoned assassination, human rights abuses in South America" (HERE)

And HERE :"The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents"

By July 2009 , in North America, as the Torture Program is brought to light, its similarities with the "Operation Condor" are visible when it comes to the "integrated operations" of American allies, in a worldwide spread campaign of torture, kidnappings, assassinations.

Recent facts about the American Program:

Some of the participants in the Design and Implementation of the "TORTURE PROGRAM":


- CIA torture firm: Mitchell Jessen and Associates

- psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen:
designed and implemented the CIA’s “enhanced interrogations” torture program. (HERE , HERE and HERE )

- Military Intelligence Division: Maj. John Leso

- American Psychological Association: among other participants is former APA President, Joseph Matarazzo.

The "torture program" has been gradually exposed by now. Among the Reports :

- Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)
Report (pdf doc): HERE
SASC Chair Carl Levin described in his opening statement how:
"a... senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA's CounterTerrorism Center, went to GTMO, attended a meeting of GTMO staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from GTMO who, a couple of weeks earlier, had attended the training given at Fort Bragg by instructors from the JPRA SERE school.

"While the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes (TAB 7) clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees."


More HERE

Friday, July 3, 2009

Did Canada become accomplice in US Torture Program?Canada's "very close relationship" w/CIA:Alliance Base,Secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers

As revealed for the first time in an article in the Washington Post, By Dana Priest, on July 3, 2005, (HERE) , in 2002, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, funded a top secret center in Paris, code-named "Alliance Base".

It would give the necessary cover to countries that did not want to be perceived perceived as taking direction from the CIA.

The countries who have sent officers to be part of the top secret "Alliance Base" include:
Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States.

The center's working language is French, as revealed in the article, which would play down the U.S. role and the CIA main role.

The foreign operatives, are usually supervised by the CIA which was/is also in charge of selecting individuals for assignments, paying them and keeping them physically separate from their own institutions in Britain, France, Germany, Canada or Australia.

All activities of the "Alliance Base" have taken place through these secretive alliances between the CIA and these countries' intelligence services.

The work of the "Alliance Base" is that of of handfuls of U.S. intelligence case officers working with handfuls of foreign operatives.

The base selects its cases carefully, chooses a lead country for each operation, and that country's service runs the operation , be it a kidnapping(rendition) or wahtever is decided necessary.

The base objective is not that of sharing information among countries. Instead , besides being multinational, it plans operations. This was the status of the "program" when it was revealed in an article in the Washington Post, By Dana Priest, on July 3, 2005.

As revealed in the same article, it also provides a way for case officers to read information from their own country's law enforcement authorities, even when the country's law bars criminal authorities from sharing certain information directly with their intelligence agencies.


THE ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070201361.html?referrer=emailarticle

The existence of such secret alliances with the CIA can most probably shed some light on "operations" that actually took place when Canadian Citizens were "squeezed out of the country" and ended up in torture prisons. No wonder they want to keep every inquiry secret - so much to hide!

This "close relationship" of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service - CSIS and the CIA, which activities are now being scrutinized due to the possible illegality and even criminality, is probably one of the reasons why CSIS has been so diligent in covering up its "mistakes".

At the end of the day, the CIA was in charge but CSIS needs to save its face and will go to great lenghts to cover up its wrongdoings and complicty, as the Courts have been finding out.

Was CSIS just "following orders" of the CIA?For sure it was not gathering intelligence since this was not the objective of the "Alliance Base". Hopefully the truth will come out about the depths of the Canadian complicity with an abhorrent lawless American Torture program.

More on the topic and details about the Secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers at:

Foreign Network at Front of CIA's Terror Fight Joint Facilities in Two Dozen Countries Account for Bulk of Agency's Post-9/11 Successes By Dana Priest, Washington Post, November 18, 2005; HERE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111702070_pf.html

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Deaths by U.S. torture -"not one instance of actionable intelligence came out of these interrogation techniques"- Army Lt. Gen. Sanchez, US commander




Death of innocent people by torture in the hands of American military, CIA interrogators and others are documented facts by now.

Some autopsy reports are here and a full article about the issue is at:

The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture

by Glenn Greenwald - Tuesday June 30, 2009 - (Article HERE)


On May 30, 2009, even retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq from 2003-2004 called for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era interrogation and torture tactics. He went on to say:
“during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these "interrogation techniques".”

“If we do not find out what happened,then we are doomed to repeat it.”(HERE)

As part of the Culture Project's "Blueprint for Accountability" series, Link TV has produced a video that presents a portion of the panel discussion where General Ricardo Sanchez called for a truth commission to investigate the abuses and torture which occurred there.The panel took place on May 31 at The Times Center Times Center in New York City.

USA - What country is it after it officially adopted a Torture Policy




This discussion is part of the Project
"Blueprint for Accountability: Working the Dark Side"

The larger program can be watched at Link TV - HERE

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CANADA !!! Celebrating Canada Day and the Rule of Law !


As Canadian Courts stand up for Constitutionality and Legality, there is a lot to celebrate on Canada Day.

"..this is what we stand for: Justice, Truth and the value of a single human being"

(from "Judgment at Nuremberg" )

“Lawyers, as the guardians of Constitutionality and Legality, have a special responsibility to ensure that The Rules of Law are protected"

And the Rules of Law should be protected mainly and above all when
"THE REAL COMPLAINING PARTY IS CIVILIZATION".

The return of Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik only happened after Federal Court Justice Russell Zinn ordered the Canadian government to fly him home.

Federal Court Justice Russell Zinn, in his Federal Court decision dated June 4, 2009, wrote about Abousfian Abdelrazik, detained in Sudan with CSIS complicity:

"He is as much a victim of international terrorism as the innocent persons whose lives have been taken by recent barbaric acts of terrorists."

(Court Decision in pdf HERE)

Regardless the United States "desire" in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik and CSIS complicity with his arrest, Canadian Courts prevailed.

(Mr. Abousfian ordeal was most probably triggered by an American government "wish", to which Canada bended without any restriction, as revealed by the Globe and Mail , June 20, 2009:

"“The U.S. would like Canada's assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik,” John Di Gangi, then the director of foreign intelligence at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, writes in the note sent to top officials in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and other security agencies, following a high-level diplomatic request from senior U.S. officials."

article HERE)


At the end, the Rule of Law prevailed as Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said: "The government will comply with the court order."

Canadian Courts and Canadian Government decisions come as an answer to:

- a CSIS official who speculated in a memo in October 2003, that :

"It is unlikely that, should Abdelrazik's detention in Sudan become public knowledge, there would be the same sort of outcry that surrounded Maher Arar's arrest and deportation from the USA."

- Giuliano Zaccardelli, then RCMP commissioner, at a Senate Committee in 2006”:

“The tendency is for the Crown and Law enforcement to want to go to Court and successfully prosecute the case…CSIS would say that there may be another way of dealing with the matter. Particularly since 9/11, we have had to accept going to a disruptive mode…”

- Jack Hooper, then director general of CSIS’s Toronto (2001) to the same committee:

“At the end of the day, if prosecution is not viable, there are other techniques”.

As the Rule of Law slowly but steadily prevails, Canada is BACK TO REALITY!


Happy Birthday , Canada!


And as History has a lot to teach us, a piece of the film: “JUDGEMENT at NUREMBERG” follows.
It was the fictionalized account of real cases. The official title of the case is “United States v. Josef Altstotter and others” (1947) and Brigadier General Telford Taylor, the American Chief Justice.

“There are those in our country too, who speak of the “protection of the country”, of survival.
A decision must be made in the life of every Nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way.
The answer to that is :

SURVIVAL AS WHAT?

A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self.

It's what it stands for.
It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult.

"For the people of the world, let it now be noted that here in our decision this is what we stand for:

Justice, Truth and the value of a single human being"

(from "Judgment at Nuremberg" )


The film was made in 1961 and tells the story of the prosecution of a group of lawyers for complicity in crimes committed by the German State.









Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) - The Movie
The film examines the questions of individual complicity in crimes committed by the state.
Although a fictionalized account of the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials, the film is notable for showing actual historical footage. It centers around a military tribunal in which four judges are accused of crimes against humanity for enacting Nazi law.