Former Head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, off-the-record speech ends up on YouTube - March 2, 2011

RAWREPLAY - March 3, 2011 - By Stephen C. Webster

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/03/former-mi6-chief-credits-wikileaks-with-revolutions/

Saeculum Obscurum Antidote

Wikileaks - Its History and what has been made public:

"Wiki Rebels" documentary - 57 minutes



"SECRECY is a basic component of the Policy of Torture: It is essential to the structure of torture that everything takes place in secret, in the dark, beyond consideration of shame or account. When the torturer assures his victim ' no one will ever know' , he is at once working to break the victim's spirit and bolster his own".
From "Settling accounts with torturers"-Lawrence Welsher

Integrity of the judicial process - "Secrecy and Deception in a Detainee Ruling"

Secrecy and Deception in a Detainee Ruling -October 11th, 2010
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/category/secrecy

Published October 11th, 2010 - "Secrecy News" -
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/category/secrecy

"Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists, reports on new developments in government secrecy and provides public access to documentary resources on secrecy, intelligence and national security policy. It is written by Steven Aftergood."


See also:
In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality - by Dafna Linzer

ProPublica, Oct. 8, 2010,

http://www.propublica.org/article/in-gitmo-opinion-two-versions-of-reality

May 11, 2010 - Security Intelligence Review Committee: Gary Filmon Testifies at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU)

May 11, 2010 - The international role of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)

The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security met in a televised session. Presiding: the Chair , Garry Breitkreuz.

WATCH HERE : (1 hour 48 mins)
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/ParlVu/ContentEntityDetailView.aspx?lang=en&ContentEntityId=6143

or HERE

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/CommitteeBusiness/CommitteeMeetings.aspx?Mode=2&Cmte=SECU&SelectedDate=2010-05-11T15:30:00&ControlCallback=pvuWebcast&Parl=40&Ses=3&Organization=SECU&MeetingNumber=17&Language=E&NoJavaScript=true

Minutes of Meeting at:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4520510&Language=E&Mode=2&Parl=40&Ses=3

Event Information:
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/ParlVu/ContentEntityDetailView.aspx?lang=en&ContentEntityId=6143

FRIENDS and ALLIES ?

THE CULT MENTALITY : BEING "SPECIAL"

He was blind of one eye, very resentful and had a megalomaniac perception of himself. His policies included assassinations, forced drugging, imprisonment of dissent, gassing of humans and animals, torture techniques going from having people being hung upside down to being given shock therapy and a of variety of other crimes and offenses from the murder of a whole family to the shooting of police officers, among them the chief of the National Police.

His followers acted in teams and ambitious young graduates from top universities joined them. In the late 1980s there were accusations of deception of recruits, and of holding members against their will and even of murdering a member who tried to leave.

They saw themselves as "special" people with a special mission.
They carried on the "RUSH HOUR" ATTACKS in subway stations. .
They were/are followers of Shoko Asahara, leader of the cult Aum Shinrikyo.

Dr. Robert J. Lifton , author of "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide" and "Destroying the World to Save It", among other books, addressed the issue of doomsday cults such as Aum Shinrikyo.

On Destructive Cults - March 17, 2000



The attack was usually referred to in the Japanese media as the Subway Sarin Incident, the Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. It was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995.
The Aum Shinrikyo is a Japanese religious movement that was founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984.

Among the main perpetrators of the attack:
Ikuo Hayashi - senior medical doctor at the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Kenichi Hirose - Phd in Physics
Toru Toyoda - Master's Degree in Physics
Yasuo Hayashi - Physics graduate from Tokai University's Engineering Department
Yasuo Hayashi - Artificial Intelligence Graduate - Kogakuin University; after graduation he traveled to India where he studied yoga

Other topics of reference:
Sakamoto family Murder - 1989

Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency shooting - 1995

Judges gassing - June 27, 1994 - a computer-controlled system released a cloud of sarin, a nerve agent, over a dormitory that was the residence of three judges sitting on a panel hearing a lawsuit over a real-estate dispute in which Aum Shinrikyo was the defendant. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no4/olson.htm

"A" - A documentaries by Tatsuya Mori - followed by "A2" -
(2006)- "My purpose with 'A2' was different," he says. "Rather than explain Aum, I wanted to show how Japanese society has deteriorated." says Tatsuya Mori
The subject of the two documentaries is the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo and the author's approach looks into how one country changed for the worse after acts of megalomania by the a secretive group.
(http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?ff20020327a1.htm)

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights - Adam Bodnar talks about the "Torture Flights"

RussiaToday — February 24, 2010

Othello in Three Minutes

IAGO, Otelo's "Secret Service" :



From BBsman's Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BBsman22

UN experts point to widespread use of secret detention linked to counter-terrorism

26 January 2010 - Human Rights Council in Geneva

Despite the fact that international law clearly prohibits secret detention, the practice is widespread and “reinvigorated” by the so-called global war on terror, several independent United Nations experts stated, outlining a series of steps aimed at curbing this human rights violation.

In a 222-page study which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in March, the experts conclude that “secret detention is irreconcilably in violation of international human rights law including during states of emergency and armed conflict. Likewise, it is in violation of international humanitarian law during any form of armed conflict.

“If resorted to in a widespread or systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity,” add the authors – the UN experts on counter-terrorism and torture, and the two UN expert bodies on arbitrary detention and enforced or involuntary disappearances.

The study, which took almost a year to complete, involves responses from 44 States to a detailed questionnaire, as well as interviews with 30 individuals – or their family members or their legal counsel – who were victims of secret detention, and in many cases may also have been subjected to torture.

It provides an historical overview of the use of secret detention, noting that it is not a new phenomenon in the context of counter-terrorism. From the Nazi regime to the former USSR with its Gulag system of forced labour camps, States have often resorted to secret detention to silence opposition, according to the report.

The study goes on to address the use of secret detention in the context of the ‘global war on terror’ following the events of 11 September 2001, describing “the progressive and determined elaboration of a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention” of persons suspected of terrorism, involving not only United States authorities, but also other States in almost all regions of the world.

It also highlights that secret detention in connection with counter-terrorism policies remains a serious problem on a global scale, either through the use of secret detention facilities; through declarations of a state of emergency, which allow prolonged secret detention; or through forms of “administrative detention,” which also allow prolonged secret detention.

The experts reiterate that international law clearly prohibits secret detention, which violates a number of human rights and humanitarian law norms that may not be derogated from under any circumstances.

“However, in spite of these unequivocal norms, the practice of secret detention in the context of countering terrorism is widespread and has been reinvigorated by the so-called global war on terror,” states the report, adding that many States, referring to national security concerns – often perceived or presented as unprecedented emergencies or threats – resort to secret detention.

Among their recommendations to address this serious human rights violation, the experts call for explicitly prohibiting secret detention, along with all other forms of unofficial detention. They also urged that safeguards for persons deprived of their liberty be fully respected, and that timely action be taken to ensure that immediate families of those detained are informed of their relatives’ capture, location, legal status and health condition.

The experts also point out that in almost no recent cases have there been any judicial investigations into allegations of secret detention and practically no one has been brought to justice.

“Although many victims feel that the secret detention has ‘stolen’ years of their lives and left indelible traces, often in terms of loss of their jobs and frequently their health, they almost never received any form of reparation, including rehabilitation or compensation.”

Therefore, the experts also recommend a number of steps to provide judicial remedies, reparations and rehabilitation to victims, and in some cases to their families.

The study was issued by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin; Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak; the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (represented by its Vice-Chairperson, Shaheen Sardar Ali); and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (represented by its Chairperson, Jeremy Sarkin).

Working in an independent and unpaid capacity, they all are appointed by, and report to, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.

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Rogue Secret Services : A VAST NETWORK OF INFORMERS , HARASSERS , MURDERERS...

THE STASI

"The need to know everything about the lives of others" - The History of Stasi-the notorious and bygone East Germany intelligence agency:

Ministry for State Security (Mfs) also known known as "Stasi" - the East German Intelligence Agency Strategies:

Torture, Harassment, assassinations, persecution of dissent, illegal surveillance, mobbing and on:


As the enforcement arm of the German Democratic Republic's Communist Party, the Stasi at its height in 1989 employed 91,000 persons full time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of GDR army, along with 173,081 unofficial informants and 1,553 informants in West Germany. In terms of the identity of inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants, by 1995, 174,000 had been identified, which approximated 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60.
A bureaucracy almost three times the size of Hitler's Gestapo was spying on a population a quarter that of Nazi Germany. 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age.

MfS has been accused of a number of assassinations against political dissidents and other people both inside and outside the country. Examples include the East German football player Lutz Eigendorf and the Swedish journalist Cats Falck.

The Stasi had formal categorizations of each type of informant, and had official guidelines on how to extract information from, and control, those who they came into contact with. The roles of informants ranged from those already in some way involved in state security (such as the police and the armed services) to those in the oppositionalist movements (such as dissidents in the arts and the Protestant Church). Information gathered about the latter groups was frequently used to divide or discredit members.Informants were made to feel important, given material or social incentives, and were imbued with a sense of adventure, and only around 7.7%, according to official figures, were coerced into cooperating. A significant proportion of those informing were members of the SED; to employ some form of blackmail, however, was not uncommon.(pp. 242-243 - The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker,Fulbrook, Mary (2005), London: Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300144246)

OPERATIONS:
Full-time officers were posted to all major industrial plants (the extensiveness of any surveillance largely depended on how valuable a product was to the economy)and one tenant in every apartment building was designated as a watchdog reporting to an area representative of the Volkspolizei (Vopo). Spies reported every relative or friend that stayed the night at another's apartment. Tiny holes were bored in apartment and hotel room walls through which Stasi agents filmed citizens with special video cameras. Similarly, schools, universities, and hospitals were extensively infiltrated.After the mid-1950s, Stasi executions were carried out in strict secrecy, and usually were accomplished with a guillotine and, in later years, by a single pistol shot to the neck. In most instances, the relatives of the executed were not informed of either the sentence or the execution.

More :
Stasi:The untold story of the East German secret police - Koehler, John O. (2000), , Westview Press, ISBN 0813337445



MOVIES:
The Lives of Others - Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film-winning German film Das Leben der Anderen (aka as The Lives of Others) involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the MfS - Stasi



ARTICLES:
Piecing together the Dark Legacy of East Germany's Secret Police
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi

CIA Lies: a "standard tecnique" - Former CIA Analysts Speak Out

CIA Influence on the Mass Media: How Disinformation Campaigns Work

They Lie to the World with Impunity while embracing TORTURE, WARS AND MORE : "No Day Light, No Public Oversigh, No Press Scrutiny"

"The irresistible unilateral power of Hiding the truth"

"as somebody who has fight a great deal of his life in a Court room, I feel a great deal of intense personal frustration when I know facts that would rebut a case that an administration is making and they have declassified their side of the argument and kept my side classified and I have to keep my peace eventhough the public is being mislead..."
American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse - October 13, 2009

A video with American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse where he talks about "misleading the public about what the actual facts really are" at the American Senate Intelligence Committee Nomination Hearing for David Gompert as principal deputy director of american national intelligence, on October 13, 2009.

The video can be watched C-SPAN.org at :
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/10/13/HP/A/24220/Senate+Select+Intelligence+Cmte+Nomination+Hearing+for+David+Gompert.aspx

Or to redirect click HERE

Visit Right to Know Website at:

http://www.righttoknow.ca/en/Content/default.asp

About Right to Know: http://www.righttoknow.ca/en/Content/about_right_to_know.asp

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

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.

CANADA'S GLOWING HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD- CSIS Lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian- to WATCH THE HEARING click HERE

CSIS lawyer and advisor on operations and legislation, GEOFFREY O'BRIAN , on a Public Safety Committee hearing today, March 31, 2009 talked about those countries that torture as:

"countries that have human-rights records that are not as glowing as ours"

Regarding CSIS use of information obtained through torture, Mr. O'Brian also claimed that:

"... there is no absolute ban on using intelligence that may have been obtained from countries with questionable human rights records on torture"

He went further saying that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will use information extracted through torture if lives are at stake.

Some experts would disagree with Mr. O'Brian just because they value reliable intelligence.

In a recent article in the Washington Post ( Sunday, March 29, 2009) Former senior American government officials who closely followed the harsh interrogations (torture) affirm that :

" not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of tortured confessions. "

"Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated"

The article - "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots" - by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick , Washington Post, Sunday, March 29, 2009,

can be read HERE

"Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say"
( to read the article, click HERE )

Also, an article where Dan Coleman, the FBI’s senior expert on al-Qaeda, revisits the CIA’s introduction of the torture program, after the successes recorded by the FBI , can explain why experts disagree:
The article:

"The Futility Of Torture and A Trail of Broken Lives"

(click HEREto read the article)

BUT GEOFFREY O'BRIAN , CSIS lawyer and advisor on operations and legislation, probably disagrees with an al-Quaeda expert and even with those senior officials who closely followed the torture of "high value" detainees:

Instead of a respectful and decent intelligence service, capable of gathering reliable information, his claim puts Canadian Secret Services side by side with those who practice barbaric medieval procedures like torture. Not to mention breaking Canadian Laws, the Geneva Conventions and so on..

But Mr. O'Brian still believes that Canada is different from those "others" when the refers to those "other countries" as :

"countries that have human-rights records that are not as glowing as ours".

GLOWING RECORDS ??? Canada has signed and ratified , among others, Nuremberg and Geneva and all international conventions and treaties that BAN TORTURE, making them Canadian law.

Is the Canadian human rights record still glowing that much after information obtained through torture is part of CSIS' intelligence gathering tool kit?

More or less complicity in torture ????!! More or less breaking the Law??? !!!

And still a GLOWING RECORD!!???

The torturers all around the world are having the day of their lives today, for sure!! Canada is a friend !

Canada has just joined the list of those who endorse "a bit of torture" and believe that information gathered in this way is OK!!

At least Mr. O'Brian candid assertions give a clear definition to the Canadian "glowing record" on human rights - some torture here , some torture there is OK!

The reason the cover up of the torture of Canadian citizens happened and a little bit here and there of the "indirect participation" of CSIS/RCMP in torture were well explained today by Mr. Geoffrey O'Brian!

Liberal Mark Holland said something important but why would Mr. O'Brian care?

"We're sending the message today that if it's good enough, that if you torture them well enough and you get information that is marketable enough, then we're going to buy it — we're in the market for information obtained by torture," he said.

"That's a dangerous message to be sending out there," Holland said.

To watch Mr. O'Brian at the Committee hearing and all those present , go to :
SECU Meeting No. 13 - March 31, 2009 at:

http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Parlvu/ContentEntityDetailView.aspx?ContentEntityId=4326



More at: (some articles dated March 31, 2009)

MACLEANS: "Do We Endorse Torture? "
http://www2.macleans.ca/tag/geoffrey-obrian/

Globe and Mail : "CSIS won't rule out tips derived from torture"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090331.wcsis31/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090331.wcsis31

CTV : "Spy agency rejects complete ban on torture info"
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090331/CSIS_torture_090331/20090331?hub=Canada

The Canadian Press:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hwY1L_6m_leNu169qhKQ4y_r3W5w

The Star:
http://www.thestar.com/article/611114