"ANYTHING GOES"

The Ottawa Citizen - October 18, 2010 - By David Pugliese

Mental review was sought for ex-soldier after he criticized Veterans Affairs: Officials pre-determined likely outcome of psychiatric assessment, documents reveal

Read more:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Mental+review+sought+soldier+after+criticized+Veterans+Affairs+note/3685794/story.html

Canadian Gulf War vet personal information accessed 4,131 times over 10 years by more than 600 department officials

And two months after he first testified against a controversial change to veterans’ disability payments, Veterans Affairs Canada attempted to discredit him by hospitalizing him and making his advocacy a psychological issue.
Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard ordered a full audit as reported on October 7, 2010.

WATCH:
CTV's Question Period interview with Veteran Sean Bruyea and his wife:
Two months after he first testified against a controversial change to veterans’ disability payments, Veterans Affairs Canada attempted to discredit him by hospitalizing him and making his advocacy a psychological issue.

"As an intelligence officer who studied Soviet Russia, I mean I knew about the Gulags in Stalinist Russia, and I thought: 'This isn’t much different. They are trying to make my advocacy a psychological issue'.”

The interview can be watched at:
http://watch.ctv.ca/news/ctvs-question-period/oct-10/

MORE:
- "Vet alleges government tried to hospitalize him" - By Althia Raj, Parliamentary Bureau-Toronto Sun - October 10, 2010
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/10/10/15646606.html

- "Privacy breach at Veterans Affairs ‘struck terror in our hearts’"
by Bill Curry - Globe and Mail - Sep. 22, 2010

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/privacy-breach-at-veterans-affairs-struck-terror-in-our-hearts/article1718767/


- Privacy Commissioner finds evidence of systemic abuse at Veterans Affairs
by Murray Brewster - Ottawa— The Canadian Press - Sep. 28, 2010
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/privacy-commissioner-finds-evidence-of-systemic-abuse-at-veterans-affairs/article1731233/

Black Ops Mercenaries servicing the Canadian military

The Nation Magazine - September 15, 2010
by Jeremy Scahill

The article at:
http://www.thenation.com/article/154739/blackwaters-black-ops

Interview:

Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism by Sherene H. Razack

Sherene H. Razack is also the author of :

Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslins from Western Law and Politics
2008 - Sherene Razack - ISBN 978-0802094971
Sherene H. Razack looks at how "race thinking" supports the idea that the suspension of rights for racialized groups is warranted in the interests of national security. She points out to "race thinking" as being a structure of thought that divides up the world between the deserving and undeserving according to racial descent.

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
George Santayana , 1905 - Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284

The "Somalia Affair" (1993) Revisited

The Somalia Affair was a 1993 military scandal that was later dubbed "Canada's national shame".

Shidane Abukar Arone was a Somali teenager who was tortured and beaten to death by Canadian soldiers in the Canadian Base in Somalia, on 17 March 1993.

Arone was caught on March 16 attempting to steal supplies from the Canadian base. Two members of the Canadian Military Base, Master Corporal Clayton Matchee and Private Kyle Brown, bound Arone and tortured him over the next several hours. Ultimately, he died of his injuries.

While the military initially claimed Matchee and Brown had acted alone, it was later revealed that sixteen others had visited the tent while Arone was captive, including superior officers.

At first DND officials told the media that Arone had likely died from natural causes. It took several weeks for the Canadian people to become aware of the actual events in Somalia.

An inquiry officially known as The Somalia Commission of Inquiry began in 1994 after public outcry.

The military disengagement from accountability and evasion strategies permeated the inquiry where Air Force General Jean Boyle blamed his subordinates for wrong doing.

It ran until 1997 when it was cut short by the government in the months before the 1997 election.The inquiry was never able to examine top level governmental decision-making, nor did it actually examine the alleged events in Somalia.

"Conspicuously absent from the report is anything on the most sensitive aspect of the Somalia affair — the torture and murder of Shidane Arone."
[Somalia debacle a high-level cover-up - The CBC Digital Archives Website- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - [Page consulted on May 23, 2009.] -
WATCH HERE

See Rex Murphy's piece: The Somalia affair-
"Macho thuggery," scapegoating, blockading requests for information, and evasive testimony taint the noble pursuit of peacekeeping."

The CBC Digital Archives - WATCH HERE
[Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]


"We promised them peacekeepers,and in some cases, we sent them thugs."

Reference: "Bloody and contemptuous images"- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Digital Archives Website.

[Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]

WATCH HERE

The Somalia Inquiry heard from witness who testified that the lack of accountability sent the wrong message to the troops and that military police were deliberately stalled from investigating a shooting by Canadian soldiers of unarmed Somalins in the back, killing one Somalian and wounding another that took place just 12 days before the torture and murder of Shidane Arone.

"Somalia investigation hit 'inexplicable delay'" - Broadcast Date: March 10, 1997

The CBC Digital Archives- WATCH HERE - [Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]


References:
The Killing Of a Somali Jars Canada - The New York Times - Feb 11, 2006 - by CLYDE H. FARNSWORTH
[Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/11/world/the-killing-of-a-somali-jars-canada.html

Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia- [Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]
http://www.dnd.ca/somalia/somaliae.htm

CBC Archives - The Somalia Affair - http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/peacekeeping/topics/723/
[Page consulted on May 23, 2009.]

Somalia Cover-Up; A Commissioner's Journal 1997 by Peter Desbarats - Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (November 15, 1997)- ISBN-10: 0771026846

CIA use of psychological torture - a short History - Prof. Alfred McCoy

Alfred McCoy, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, explores the history and use by the CIA of psychological torture in terms of how this particular form of torture was discovered, perfected and made legal.

He is the author of the book "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror ( 2006)

Keen on lying ?“The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing.” - says the former Director General of MI5

Ex-UK Intel Chief: US Misled Allies on Treatment of Prisoners
Elizabeth Manningham-Buller, former Director General of MI5, the British internal national security agency stated that the United States mislead allies on the torture of foreign prisoners.

In the House of Lords, on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, Manningham-Buller said the Bush administration deliberately hid details of its treatment of prisoners.

The former Director General of MI5 said: “The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing.”

Full article:

Financial Times UK - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cacdbf58-2bd4-11df-8033-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
"London protested at torture, says ex-MI5 chief" - by John Lloyd
Published: March 9 2010 23:49

COMPLICITY

M.D. William Henry Anderson, former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay, CALLS FOR THE KILLING OF 100,000 MUSLIN "ZEALOTS"

His article was published in the Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies .

Article published Monday August 31, 2009 - by Jeff Kayne: (HERE)

"This story reports on an extraordinary 2004 article by a Harvard lecturer and former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay, which made the shocking claim that "hard-core zealots" had "brains that are structurally and functionally different from us." Furthermore, the article stated, 100,000 "zealots" within the Muslim body politic would have to be eliminated, the way "malignant [cancer] cells" are removed from a healthy body.

The author of the article, "Terrorism - The Underlying Causes," in the Winter/Spring 2004 issue of the Intelligencer, Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (PDF), house organ for the American Federation of Intelligence Officers (AFIO), was William Henry Anderson, M.D. Anderson's piece received a stinging protest letter to the editor from psychologist and military ethics expert, Jean Maria Arrigo, but I'm not aware of any other complaint regarding this racist, fascistic article in the pages of a major intelligence services journal."

SHAMELESS USA : Rendition Torture Flights Doctor "Col. (Dr.) James W. Walter Gets Medal for Serving on Torture Program

Originally posted at Firedoglake

"Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, reported on September 17 that Col. (Dr.) James W. Walter has been awarded the Air Medal "for his meritorious service on delicate assignments providing medical care to enemy detainees."

From January 2007 to 2009 as the senior detainee movement flight surgeon, he provided 106 combat hours of support to the 14 Joint Task Force Detainee Movement Operations missions in the C-17A. His service included travel into 15 different countries, some of them in an active enemy fire zone."

Air Force Doctor Gets Medal for Serving on Rendition Torture Flights
By Jeff Kaye
Maxwell-Gunther Dispatch.com, the web news site for personnel and interested partisans of Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, reported on September 17 that Col. (Dr.) James W. Walter has been awarded the Air Medal “for his meritorious service on delicate assignments providing medical care to enemy detainees.”

From January 2007 to 2009 as the senior detainee movement flight surgeon, he provided 106 combat hours of support to the 14 Joint Task Force Detainee Movement Operations missions in the C-17A. His service included travel into 15 different countries, some of them in an active enemy fire zone.

The article goes into great detail about “self-professed military brat” Walter’s career as a NASA space shuttle launch and recovery physician, and says nothing more about the service for which he was awarded a medal. That’s because the military’s rendition program is highly secret. Stephen Grey in his 2006 book, Ghost Plane, noted the existence of the military’s rendition program, and proclaimed it was larger than the CIA’s. But Grey’s research concentrated on the CIA’s program. The Pentagon’s rendition program received its first major outing in the pages of the New York Times only in August 2008:

WASHINGTON – The United States military has secretly handed over more than 200 militants to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries, nearly all in the past two years, as part of an effort to reduce the burden of detaining and interrogating foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to American military officials.
The system is similar in some ways to the rendition program used by the Central Intelligence Agency since the Sept. 11 attacks to secretly transfer people suspected of being militants back to their home countries to be jailed and questioned.

And tortured? The United States supposedly seeks “assurances” that the prisoners will not be tortured when sent back to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. An article by Eric Umansky at Pro Publica, published just after the Times expose, noted that though American officials insist they obtain guarantees that “detainees” will be treated “humanely,” rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, aren’t so sure:

The growing weight of evidence and international expert opinion indicates that diplomatic assurances cannot protect people at risk of torture from such treatment on return. Sending countries that rely on such assurances are either engaging in wishful thinking or using the assurances as a fig leaf to cover their own complicity in torture. In either case, governments seeking diplomatic assurances against torture are in effect trying to circumvent their own obligations not to return people to face such treatment.
All the governments offering diplomatic assurances have long histories and continuing records of employing torture, a fact that most sending governments acknowledge….
In October 2002, the U.S. government transferred Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen, from New York via Jordan to Syria based on diplomatic assurances of humane treatment. Arar was released in October 2003. An independent fact-finder appointed by an official Canadian Commission of Inquiry into Arar’s treatment concluded in October 2005 that Arar had been tortured in Syrian custody, despite Syrian assurances to the contrary and several visits from Canadian consular officials.

While Col. (Dr.) Walter is said to have orthopedic experience, it’s most likely he was there to monitor and/or administer sedating drugs which numerous reports have indicated were administered to rendition victims. I suppose if a “detainee” needed some stitches after a beating, or even a bone set after an “incident,” the good doctor would be there to make sure the prisoner arrived in good shape for his Saudi or Egyptian torturer. Of course, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were surely not the only destinations for rendition flights, as the Maxwell-Gunther article notes Walter’s planes traveled to at least 15 different countries. It is worth noting here, by the way, that the Obama administration has refused to end the rendition program, though its officials offer the same bland assurances about prisoner safety as those of their GOP predecessors.
According to the New York Times article, once captured, the prisoners are first held in one of two Special Operations prisons, “in Balad, Iraq, and Bagram, Afghanistan, for up to two weeks,” more if Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gives the high sign. They are imprisoned without notice to the International Red Cross, until they’re ready for transfer. According to Steven Grey, no hearing takes place prior to their rendition back to a country that might torture them, as is required by international law. Perhaps that’s because the prisoners supposedly “can block their transfers to home countries.” As Pro Publica’s Umansky laconically noted, “No word on what happens to the prisoners if they choose to exercise their apparent right to veto.” Apparently, as of August 2008 over 200 prisoners had already been transferred to their home countries under the military’s rendition program. (In 2006, Grey thought the number as high as 1,000.) But with all the attention on the CIA’s rendition program, the Pentagon’s version appears to have flown under the radar, news-wise.
Until Col. (Dr.) Walter got his medal. How ironic it comes only days after Physicians for Human Rights released a “white paper” on doctors aiding torture. Steven Miles, author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and America’s War on Terror, has written: “The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations” in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. The participation of doctors in the rendition program, which has sent an untold number of prisoners back to the torture dungeons of some of the most brutal regimes on this planet, is both a crime and a violation of medical ethics of the highest sort.
It is a painful truth that actions that should be condemned and punished are instead, in 2009 America, awarded medals. And how did Col. (Dr.) Walter respond to his high honor?

“It’s kind of neat to get a medal on the flying side rather than the medical side,” said Colonel Walter. “My father would be proud.”

Another illegal Human Experiment by the CIA in progress ?

The History of CIA Torture: "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror"

The Canadian connection with the the "no-touch torture" techniques of the CIA:

Interview with Professor Alfred W.McCoy in the ABC Radio National Australia, "LateNightLive", aired March 16, 2006:

LISTEN HERE:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1593534.htm

Topics of the interview include:
- the Canadian Defence Board sponsored experiments to induce psychosis
- the sensory deprivation chamber commissioned at McGuill University (the Manhatan Project of the Mind) - t in Montreal to today

Professor Alfred W.McCoy has been studying the CIA for twenty years, in his new book he traces the the evolution of CIA interrogation methods back to the failed mind control experiments of the Cold War, and argues that the images from Abu Ghraib reveal a systematic and deliberate application of those methods.

Title: A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror
Author: Alfred W McCoy
Publisher: Henry Holt