In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda [...]
Liz Cheney advocates torture and indefinite detention with no charges, and just launched a repulsive McCarthyite smear campaign equating all detainee lawyers with Al Qaeda. The ACLU has steadfastly opposed Bush’s torture policies as early as anyone, advocates due process for all, and ran a newspaper advertisement pointing out the indisputable fact that military commissions and [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged ACLU, Centrism, Courts, Dana Milbank, Detainees, Drones, Due Process, Glenn Greenwald, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Indefinite Detention, Law, Lindsey Graham, Liz Cheney, Military Tribunals, Predator Drones, Unlawful Combatants
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(Xinhua) Updated: 2010-03-12 16:52
BEIJING – China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009” here Friday.
Following is the full text:
The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as “the world [...]
Filed in Documents, News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged AIDs, Arms Trafficking, BATF, Censorship, Child Labor, China, Civil Rights, Crime, Cuba, Cuban Embargo, Detainees, Discrimination, DOJ, ECHELON, Education, Environment, Equal Pay, Espionage, FBI, FISA, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Speech, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, Hegemony, Homeless, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Hypocrisy, Imperialism, Internet, Labor, Military, Minorities, Murder, NSA, Oppression, Overseas Military Installations, Patriot Act, Poverty, Prisoners, Prisons, Racism, Rape, Rendition, Surveillance, Torture, Unemployment, US Human Rights Record 2009, Veterans, Walmart, Wiretapping, Women
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These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.
Though public, the hundreds of pages of documents authorizing or later reviewing the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” haven’t [...]
Plumlee and other pilots have testified to Congress that they were working for a secret U.S. military intelligence operation that clandestinely sent them from the United States to bring back the so-called damaged and disappeared weapons for retrofitting and repair.
“When the weapons were repaired and tested at China Lake and Twentynine Palms, in California, they [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Arms Trafficking, California, CFR, Colombia, Costa Rica, Covert Landing Strips, DEA, DOD, Drug Trafficking, El Salvador, Gary Hart, Homicide, Investigations, Iran Contra Affair, John Kerry, Kiki Camarena, Latin America, MCAS El Toro, Mexico, Military, Murder, Narcotics, Nicaragua, NSC, Operation Penetrate, Pentagon, Robert Tosh Plumlee, Senate, Tosh Plumlee, Unmarked Planes, USMC, Whistleblower, White House
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Perhaps it is time for the agencies to pool their resources and create a single entity that is responsible for all jurisdictions of the country and has the mandate to protect all critical infrastructures for all levels of government, private sector and its citizens. DHS and the FBI need to refocus on their other duties [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Technology
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Also tagged BATF, Counterterrorism, Crime, Cyber Attacks, Cybersecurity, DARPA, DHS, DOD, FBI, FEMA, Hackers, Hacking, Intelligence, National Security, Networks, NSA, Pentagon, Robert Mueller, RSA Conference, STRATCOM, TSA
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We’ve all seen a television show or a movie about an undercover narcotics cop who become crooked. He loses the trust of his colleagues, then his family. Soon, the only contacts he has are with the world of drug dealers that he originally set out to destroy. Now picture this scenario of the criminal cop [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Cocaine, Colombia, Corruption, Crime, DEA, Douglas Valentine, Drug Policy, Drug Trafficking, FBI, Heroin, Informers, Intelligence, Law, Narcs, Pakistan, Terrorism, The Phoenix Program, Vietnam War, War on Drugs
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Fast forward 18 years to the assassination of Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on Jan. 20, and it is a graphic reminder of just how much the world has changed. Nearly the entire hit was recorded on closed-circuit TV cameras, from the time the team arrived at Dubai’s airport to the time the assassins entered [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA’s secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today.
After years of stonewalling, Warsaw’s air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
In essence, the classified memo cited by Cheney stated that the CIA torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla in 2003. But as Isikoff reports, the newly-released docs point out that Padilla was arrested in 2002 — so torture couldn’t have secured his capture.
This also appears to [...]
Monday, February 22, 2010
Iran’s police chief on Saturday accused the Voice of America and the BBC of being the arms of U.S. and British intelligence agencies, and warned of severe repercussions for journalists and activists caught having contacts with them, state media reported.
Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, whose police forces have played a key role in the government crackdown [...]
Filed in Journalism, News Blurbs
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Also tagged BBC, Espionage, Freedom of Press, Intelligence, Iran, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, Journalism, Media, MI6, Propaganda, Voice of America
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Mohamed case is the most prominent of a number of cases that have come to public attention. While the timeline of Mohamed’s torture places the implementation of the Bush administration’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” many months prior to their questionable legal justification in the August 1, 2002, Jay Bybee memo to the CIA, the [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
KARL: … waterboarding, clearly, what was your…
CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that…
KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?
CHENEY: Yes.
He just admitted being an accomplice. To date approximately 100 detainees (at minimum), including CIA-held detainees, have died during [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Caught on Tape, Crime, Detainees, Dick Cheney, Evidence, Guantanamo, Iraq War, JSOC, Military, Torture, War Crimes, Waterboarding
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Monday, February 15, 2010
There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking.
Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo prisoner, [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Binyam Mohamed, Courts, Crime, Detainees, Dick Cheney, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Hillary Clinton, Intelligence, Law, MI5, Rendition, Torture, War Crimes
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Friday, February 12, 2010
The NYT story also buried the significance of the timeline in the torture case. As both blogger-investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler and blogger-psychologist-activist Stephen Soldz have pointed out in articles Wednesday, the use of CIA-style “enhanced interrogation” torture was directly “conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy designed [...]
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