In case you missed it w/ all the Cheney drama
C-span :House Hearing on National Security Whistleblowers

House Subcmte. hearing on “National Security Whistleblowers in the post-9/11 Era: Lost in a Labyrinth and Facing Retaliation by Security Clearance Revocation”

National security whistle-blowers allege retaliation
WASHINGTON (SH) – Military and intelligence officers told spellbound lawmakers Tuesday that their careers had been ruined by superiors because they refused to lie about Able Danger, Abu Ghraib and other national security controversies.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, wearing a crisp olive Army uniform with the Bronze Star and other awards, delivered his first public testimony about his central role in Able Danger, a Pentagon computer data-mining program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to infiltrate the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 15 2006 8:21 utc | 4

This broke me tonight…
No bravery. He has been here.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 15 2006 9:15 utc | 6

Well well, just as I wrote about here
and in particular here , ABC news is reporting: EXCLUSIVE: The Secret Tapes — Inside Saddam’s Palace

Feb. 15, 2006 — ABC News has obtained 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein meeting with top aides during the 1990s, tapes apparently recorded in Baghdad’s version of the Oval Office.
ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney, a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated the tapes for the FBI. Tierney said the U.S. government is wrong to keep these tapes and others secret from the public. “Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them,” says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office. ..

That Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz are some damn fine investigative journalists…lol geez.
Or could it be, Allah on the Holodeck?
I suspect It very well could be the result of voice “morphing” technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico
When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing
However, the sad ironic thing is, once a people lose trust in their government it can never be fully regained. Even if these tapes are the real mccoy , who trusts these guys with anything. Therein lies the problem, (punn intended). Just as Thomas Barnett writes in Donald Rumsfeld: Old Man in a Hurry, “wholesale reform” and ideological “Defense transformation” is their agenda across the board. And as Barnett writes of one of Rumsfeld’s senior aides, Pete Geren, “When your ‘crisis response’ lasts several thousand days, it stops being a crisis and starts being a feature of your strategic landscape.” Clearly, these guys believe themslves to be true political revolutionaries. Permanent Revolution, Trotskyism, noble lies and all that.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 16 2006 0:14 utc | 8

@Jonku I think we can be confident that some ‘contributor’ has taken the leader of the Pentagon beach aquisitions team out for a round of golf or two by now.
The contractor will be explaining exactly why any old desert sand just will not do and that is why $15-$50 mill has been allocated in the contingency fund to import the sand from Hawaii, but that the contractor is pleased to see that our man in the Pentagon has such an interest in sand because there has been a bit of talk in the boardroom about the neccessity of having someone skilled in the geology of beaches as well as military aquisition procedures at an executive level in their organisation and he (our man in the pentagon) sounds like just the person for the job.
As for permanent bases the saying “If wishes were horses all men would ride” comes to mind. I seem to remember similar grand edifices being constructed in certain locations nor more than a spit away from Ho Chi Minh city.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 16 2006 1:26 utc | 10

There has been widespread speculation that Kerkorian, who has a long history of corporate takeover attempts, plans to take advantage of GM’s falling share values to buy a controlling interest in the automaker at a fire-sale price. Analysts say he could then sell off the company’s most profitable assets, such as the GMAC financing arm, and push the car company—along with its pension and healthcare obligations—into bankruptcy, allowing him to walk away with billions.
Until John Brown returns and starts killing the ultra-wealthy, this will continue.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 16 2006 2:09 utc | 12

From Denmark’s paper of record correspondent:
Capture the Flag
THERE seems to be some surprise that the Danish people and their government are standing behind the Jyllands-Posten newspaper and its decision to publish drawings of the Prophet Muhammad last fall. Aren’t Danes supposed to be unusually tolerant and respectful of others?
Not entirely. Denmark’s reputation as a nation with a long tradition of tolerance toward others — one solidified by its rescue of Danish Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps in 1943 and by the high levels of humanitarian aid it provides today — is something of a myth.
What foreigners have failed to recognize is that we Danes have grown increasingly xenophobic over the years. To my mind, the publication of the cartoons had little to do with generating a debate about self-censorship and freedom of expression. It can be seen only in the context of a climate of pervasive hostility toward anything Muslim in Denmark.
There are more than 200,000 Muslims in Denmark, a country with a population of 5.4 million. A few decades ago, Denmark had no Muslims at all. Not surprisingly, Islam has come to be viewed by many as a threat to the survival of Danish culture.
For 20 years, Muslims in Denmark have been denied a permit to build mosques in Copenhagen. What’s more, there are no Muslim cemeteries in Denmark, which means that the bodies of Muslims who die here have to be flown back to their home countries for proper burial…
This is not the only example of Denmark’s new magical thinking. After the flag burnings, the Danish news media began to refer to the white cross on the flag’s red background as a Christian symbol.
There was something discordant about this, for we’ve come to connect the flag less and less to religion. Denmark, after all, is one of the most secular countries in Europe. Only 3 percent of Danes attend church once a week.
Still, the news media were right. Up to a point. Legend has it that the flag fell from heaven during a battle between the Danes and the Estonians nearly 800 years ago. It was a sign from God, and it led the Danes to victory. Now that flag has become a symbol around the world of Denmark’s contempt for another world religion.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 16 2006 2:35 utc | 14

morons!

Posted by: DM | Feb 16 2006 3:19 utc | 16

@DM If amerika is racing to the bottom it’s not gonna be before that country’s ‘leadership’ kicks the nearest scapegoat in the nuts on the way down.
This ‘story’ here tells us that AIPAC strikes again and wants to starve the Palestinian people to death for having the gall to try and prevent the theft of their nation.
This drop in the ocean of the funding which goes to support the corrupt and decadent colonial occupier that is the state of Israel, is being used to bludgeon the Palestinian people into submission.
If there were any logic behind it other than not getting offside with the zionist lobby during an election year, the move could be described as cruel but pragmatic. But the people who are likely to be most effected by this moronic move are those who voted for the Fatah organisation which lost the election because it succumbed to the bribery, blackmail and murder of the US and Israel in the first place.
Since one of the few legitimate (in the eyes of the colonial occupier and its supporters) powers the Palestinian people have to determine their future is to vote in the occasional P.A. elections, what should Fatah supporters do now?
They voted for Fatah and got kicked in the guts by Israel and a mob of foreigners. Yet the people who sided with Hamas which has never depended upon Israel or the US for support are doing better.
It doesn’t take a foreign service degree in fucking over smaller nations to tell you that the only option the Fatah followers have is to change their allegiance from Fatah to Hamas.
But that is almost irrelevant. In the big picture the US and it’s allies have been lecturing the M.E. along with the rest of the not-developed world on the virtues of voting to resolve issue. The Palestinians had their voted and now that same group of people is punishing them for voting.
The fact that many of the people pushing for this oppression are foreigners who have never set foot in Palestine or Israel yet those foreigners have far more civil rights in those ersatz nations than any Palestinian does, will not go un-noticed.
Even if the US managed to prevent ME countries diverting some of the pittance paid those states for their oil to the soon to be starving Palestinians, they won’t be able to prevent a good proportion of the elites in those nations from privately supporting Hamas and the Palestinian people.
Does anyone think that those of the ME elites that are caring and that do provide aid are going to feel closer to the mores of the USA and Europe after this blackmail?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 16 2006 9:45 utc | 18

Something occured to me today which is so off the wall it is probably correct.
That is the publication of the latest Abu Ghraib pix sure diverted everyone’s attention away from the video of English squaddies jumping up and down on the children of Basra.
The notion has a certain symmetry. One of the major differences in Australian foreign policy between the two biggest political parties is that the Labor party (currently in opposition) follows the US line whereas the Tories (the mis-named Liberal Party) believes in being British.
The SBS of old (which is a govt funded TV and radio outlet) wouldn’t go with either ideology, but who knows what havoc little Johnny Howard has pulled on them by now.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 16 2006 9:58 utc | 20

Damn, Did , I thought everyone knew that this is the standard operating procedure (SOP)(e.g. permanent siege mentality) of these trans-national thugs in their theatre of cruelty…
They, the elite of “the civilized world,” all have one goal, and one goal only, corporate singularity. The Bush Blair Howard project.
And here in the New Merica, we have to face it, the public has ceased to care. The years SINCE Watergate have basically been spent teaching the public how little their vote really matters, and how the government will do whatever the hell it wants no matter what the People have to say about it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 16 2006 10:55 utc | 22

I ran across the following (some nice word candy) in my travels on the internets tonight, and thought to share…

I want someone to tell me and explain the way it is not what it feels like being eaten by some kind of bug.
I want someone to know and tell why it is not that that these little opportunistic moves are all chewy and digestive and calm collected maneuverings of mandible-like appendages.
I want someone who knows and can tell to tell so I won’t feel like the meal in a festive atmosphere.
I want someone outside the system to say it’s possible to be outside the system because ‘here I am, being there’.
I want someone who can point to the way through this to point to the way through this.
I want the recognition burned into the genes of these canine impostors wearing the uniforms of dead heroes that they are not even fit to be denounced as usurpers they’re more like swineherds clustered around a smoldering fire of ancient rags and wet wood in the rubble and silence of some other empiric dream realized in marble and granite and proportionate grace and fallen as the spirits left for another time’s more welcome labor.
I want it burned into their DNA so indelibly that they’ll kick resonant harmonics into starlight.
I want them shocked and hesitant at the arrogance that places their snivelling treachery in its new context of necessity.
I want them cognizant that what they are is foul, that what they are and are continuing to become is foul, that there are no criminal statutes to contain what they are but there it is, there it is you bastards.
I want at the same time there to be a place I won’t get to because the contamination of them might go there too, but it’s there and someone there is saying thank you.
I want the purification of intense heat, and the relentless drive toward knowledge of my own incomplete and collapsing youthful drunken sprawl on the threshold of numinous acceptance and vomit and aching and afterward the impossible the Xenic steps marked out ahead of time and all is lost but nothing to do but climb and climb and still rolling down Sysyphean.
I want that little mechanism to trip the bomb of rose perfume that spreads its promise across their skies in antidote to the corrupt and chemically obscene stench of patented greed sadism and bondage that rises from their pristine obedient yards and sterile agricultural dirt.
I want to be the last of the shambing incompetents and each one that comes after to rise one on the other toward what we all know is there but have been trained so painfully to pretend can never be.
I want to not be food for this worse-than-arachnoid aggrandizement because the black widow in her peaceful darkness is maternal and full of as much grace and kindness as any of their mothers but they have renounced that and harmed it and damaged it for all time and created a darkness that eats sunlight that goes about in the light of day like a man in a brand-new suit selling vampiric shadows to children.
I want to be like the guy who picks up the guitar and makes all the other musicians feel comfortable because he’s so unapologetically mediocre and insistently there at the accessible bottom of aesthetic purchase and climb.
I want to hear from angels in transit the equivalent of driving all night only on that scale of vast mobility and they’re on their way it’s okay hang on.
Hang on.

I’ll have a scotch while waiting…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 16 2006 11:40 utc | 24

Thanks Uncle $cam. For some reason I was reminded of this:

The Unknown Soldier
by Luc Sante
The last thing I saw was a hallway ceiling four feet wide, with a plaster molding that looked like a long row of small fish, each trying to swallow the one ahead of it. The last thing I saw was a crack of yellow sky between buildings, partly obscured by a line of laundry. The last thing I saw was the parapet, and beyond it the trees. The last thing I saw was his badge, but I couldn’t tell you the number. The last thing I saw was a full shot glass, slid along by somebody who clapped me on the back. The last thing I saw was the sedan that came barreling straight at me while I thought, It’s okay, I’m safely behind the window of the doughnut shop. The last thing I saw was a boot, right foot, with nails protruding from the instep. The last thing I saw was a turd. The last thing I saw was a cobble. The last thing I saw was night.
I lost my balance crossing Broadway and was trampled by a team of brewery horses. I was winching myself up from the side of a six-story house on a board platform with a load of nails for the cornice when the weak part of the rope hit the pulley sideways and got sheared. I lost my way in snowdrifts half a block from my apartment. I drank a bottle of carbolic acid not really knowing whether I meant to or not. I got very cold and coughed and forgot things. I went out to a yard to try to give birth in secret, but something happened. I met a policeman who mistook me for somebody else. I was drunk on my birthday and fell off the dock trying to grab a gold piece that looked like it was floating. I was hanged in the courtyard of the Tombs before a cheering crowd and people clogged the rooftops of buildings, but I still say that rascal had it coming. I stole a loaf of bread and started eating it as I ran down the street, but there was a wad of raw dough in the middle that got caught in my throat. I was supposed to get up early that morning, but couldn’t move. I heard a sort of whistling noise above my head as I was passing by the post office, and that’s all I know. I was hustling a customer who looked like a real swell, but when we got upstairs he pulled out a razor. I owed a lot of rent and got put out and that night curled up in somebody else’s doorway, and he came home in a bad mood. I ate some oysters I dug up myself. I felt very hot and shaky and strange, and everybody in the shop was looking at me, and I kept trying to tell them that I’d be all right in a minute, but I just couldn’t get it out.
I never woke up as the fumes snaked into my room. I stood yelling as he stabbed me again and again. I shot up the bag as soon as I got home, but thought it smelled funny when I cooked it. I was asleep in the park when these kids came by. I crawled out the window and felt sick looking down, so I just threw myself out and looked up as I fell. I thought I could get warm by burning some newspaper in a soup pot. I went to pieces very slowly and was happy when it finally stopped. I thought the train was going way too fast, but I kept on reading. I let this guy pick me up at the party, and sometime later we went off in his car. I felt real sick, but the nurse thought I was kidding. I jumped over to the other fire escape, but my foot slipped. I thought I had time to cross the street. I thought the floor would support my weight. I thought nobody could touch me. I never knew what hit me.
They put me in a bag. They nailed me up in a box. They walked me down Mulberry Street followed by altar boys and four priests under a canopy and everybody in the neighborhood singing the “Libera Me Domine.” They collected me in pieces all through the park. They laid me in state under the rotunda for three days. They engraved my name on the pediment. They drew my collar up to my chin to hide the hole in my neck. They laughed about me over baked meats and rye whiskey. They didn’t know who I was when they fished me out and still don’t know six months later. They held my body for ransom and collected, but by that time they had burned it. They never found me. They threw me in the cement mixer. They heaped all of us into a trench and stuck a monument on top. They cut me up at the medical school. They weighed down my ankles and tossed me in the drink. They named a dormitory after me. They gave speeches claiming I was some kind of tin saint. They hauled me away in the ashman’s cart. They put me on a boat and took me to an island. They tried to keep my mother from throwing herself in after me. They bought me my first suit and dressed me up in it. They marched to City Hall holding candles and shouting my name. They forgot all about me and took down my picture.
So give my eyes to the eye bank, give my blood to the blood bank. Make my hair into switches, put my teeth into rattles, sell my heart to the junkman. Give my spleen to the mayor. Hook my lungs to an engine. Stretch my guts down the avenue. Stick my head on a pike, plug my spine to the third rail, throw my liver and lights to the winner. Grind my nails up with sage and camphor and sell it under the counter. Set my hands in the window as a reminder. Take my name from me and make it a verb. Think of me when you run out of money. Remember me when you fall on the sidewalk. Mention me when they ask you what happened. I am everywhere under your feet.

Posted by: beq | Feb 16 2006 14:12 utc | 26

@debs:
US cutting off aid to the Palestinians could be a good thing, as it could strip the last veneer off of the hollow “US impartiality” myth.
In any event, the two pie charts accompanying the story are interesting. Half of US aid is USAID $, which is pure bribery money–it will probably be increased. 20M is ‘debt relief’, which the Palestinians probably wouldn’t pay anyway.
The EU spends a measly $35M on hunger relief? When 40% of the population is malnourished? Boy, it’s pretty cheap to play good cop these days. They certainly aren’t trying to prevent hunger with that measly expenditure.
The other story is that the two pie charts represent only EU and US donations, as if that were all the aid they got. To have the Palestinians align themselves with the rest of the world could only be a good thing.
This is another example of the administration being pennywise and poundfoolish to accomplish their objectives (not mine).

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 16 2006 14:21 utc | 28

Salon exclusive: The Abu Ghraib files

Based on a verbal description of the files and images, Olshansky said she believes that the material obtained by Salon represents all of the Abu Ghraib images and video the Pentagon has been fighting to keep confidential. “I’m guessing that what you have is a pretty rare and complete set,” she said.

Posted by: beq | Feb 16 2006 19:50 utc | 30

Yes, we said Bush-filth. Let’s lay the blame for these tortures squarely where it belongs: on the shoulders of the “Commander-in-Chief.” It’s only fair; if this gibbering goon is going to lay claim to unrestricted powers, then by God he will have to bear unrestricted, unmitigated responsibility as well.

Posted by: DM | Feb 16 2006 23:44 utc | 32

They do not know that an entire alternative world exists above and beyond the Republicans and Democrats.

Posted by: DM | Feb 16 2006 23:58 utc | 34

From the low volume of noise on this and other boards, I guess that BushCo has once again manipulated the domestic MSM to play down the call from the UN to close Guantanamo immediately and either free the inmates or give them a real trial with real lawyers.
Even the man that amerika loves to have a love/hate relayionship with; UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is backing the key elements of the report.
Even though in Annan’s weak as piss, two bob each way manner, he has said “he did not agree with all the findings” Annan still calls for it to closed down.
The US media has done their public a great disservice by playing down the world wide reaction to the concentration and torture camp.
Although they back the US line that the report was written by people who hadn’t been to Gitmo, they don’t go behind the claim that the interviews with former inmates meant nothing as terrarists would say anything.
Remember when the world was told those few who were released were innocents rolled up in a flawed process? If they were innocent when released, how did they become guilty when they spoke about their experiences.
By the same token with former guards ‘spilling the beans’, surely even Bushco realises that the rest of the world esp those countries like the UK who wish to divert attention from their own misdeeds are going to hop on the ‘Gitmo is the root of all evil’ meme.
I’ve a feeling that despite the hard work put into domestic spinning, Gitmo is going to haunt BushCo and US citizens for many years yet.
Because it has been so well documented and so challenged, Gitmo may well be the base of War Crimes charges in the future.
Amongst all of the evidence that has been so well covered by statements from the Whitehouse and TV filming that it is beyond denial or equivocation, there will certainly be some where BushCo failed to keep all their ducks in a row.
The charges may not come while BushCo is still in charge at WH, or depending on the spine of dems, once the rethugs lose their control in Senate and Congress, but they will come.
Parts of BBC articles linked to above that are worth quoting:

“UN human rights investigators have called for the immediate closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
A UN report on conditions in the Cuba camp says the US should try all inmates or free them “without further delay”.
Some aspects of the treatment of the 500-strong camp population amount to torture, the UN team alleges.”….From here
…..”One of the most disturbing interrogations Sgt Saar says he saw in his six months at the prison concerned a female interrogator trying to break a Saudi detainee, captured after enrolling in a US flight school.
He tells how she began peeling off her clothes, taunting the man sexually in an attempt to shame him and stop him relying on his faith for support.
She left the interrogation room, Sgt Saar says, and found a red marker pen.
“‘Brooke’ came back round his [the prisoner’s] other side, and he could see that she was beginning to withdraw her hand from her pants,” said Sgt Saar.
“As it became visible, the Saudi saw what looked like red blood on her hand.”
When the interrogator wiped what he thought was menstrual blood on his face, the prisoner raged, almost breaking free from his handcuffs.
But “Brooke” taunted him further, said Erik Saar, asking whether Allah would be pleased with him and telling him to have fun trying to pray.
Finally the detainee was returned to his cell without water, leaving him unable to cleanse himself.”….. From Soldier lifts lid on Guantanamo ‘abuse’
…..”The US has dismissed most of the findings of the report which include allegations of torture.
It said most of the allegations were “largely without merit” as the five investigators never actually visited Guantanamo Bay.
The investigators say they rejected an offer to go to Guantanamo, as they would not have been allowed to meet the prisoners.”…. Here
…..”Meanwhile, three British residents held at Guantanamo Bay have won permission to seek a High Court order requiring the UK to petition for their release.
A judge said claims of torture at the camp meant the government might have an obligation to act on their behalf.
But there were “formidable arguments” against Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna and Omar Deghayes’s case, he added.
The UK government had contended it could not represent non-British citizens at the camp – thought to number nine.
The judge Mr Justice Collins remarked during the hearing on Thursday that the US’ idea of torture: “Doesn’t appear to coincide with that of most civilised countries.” ….. Here

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 17 2006 7:51 utc | 36

@Noisette If the increasing international opposition to ‘Gitmo” Hell I don’t like that shortening, lets call it what it is: “The US’s most notorious concentration and torture institution, believed to be outside the clutches of the increasingly irrelevant US constitution because it is located on land seized by force from a foreign nation.” (TUMNCATIBT BOTCOTIIUC BIILOLSB FFAFN or TUMNCATI for short)
Anyway if the opposition was just coming from the confused Annan (I find references to him such as Koffee as unfortunate if not downright racist as those who called Powell the “House Nigger” since what a person does is what we need to look at rather than his/her forbears.) we could write it off as pointless murmerings.
But the opposition to these practices; allegedly first instituted at TUMNCATI then spread into Iraq, Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and the rest is widespread.
BushCo ignore this at their peril. The Empire is mortally wounded.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 17 2006 22:21 utc | 38

And they lack local competence because it takes heart and love to actually come to know others. More and more we are quitting them, they are breaking our hearts every day, and we are quitting them. So this generation of vipers is content not to win but instead to fail and thrash around destructively to profit from failure. And we are quitting them faster now.
Eventually they will fail to win at failing. Because they will have only heartless men and women – each other – to rely on. They will have nothing.

Posted by: citizen | Feb 17 2006 23:39 utc | 40

brian concannon jr on the nyt’s foreign policy agenda re the preval victory

An editorial in this Friday’s New York Times proclaims that this future begins now. The Times declares that the election deal “tarnishes the democratic legitimacy” of Preval’s landslide. It recommends that Preval remove the tarnish by “reaching out to his opponents” (e.g. pursuing policies that the voters rejected), and “reining in his violence-prone supporters.” The editorial did not suggest that Mr. Preval’s opponents, many of whom were key players in the violent overthrow of Haiti’s democracy two years ago which led to thousands of deaths, rein in their supporters. Nor, when it declared that “Haiti will need international support for a long time,” did the Times mention its own groundbreaking report of January 29 that the U.S., among other members of the International Community, intentionally undermined and overthrew Haiti’s elected government in 2004.
Although the Times does not find the context of two weeks or two years ago relevant, it does catalogue Preval’s sins from his first administration, and it is a fair bet that we will hear this list often over the next five years. The police “remained brutal and corrupt” (by any account, the police have become much more brutal and much more corrupt under the IGH); “no progress was made toward creating a competent judiciary” (Preval’s administration saw the two best human rights prosecutions in Haiti’s history in 2000, both lauded by the UN, Amnesty International and, among others, the New York Times; Preval also made the Judges Academy, dismantled by the IGH, operational); “legislative elections were badly flawed;” “drug trafficking flourished;” etc.
Last week’s election was Haiti’s fourth Presidential election since 1990. The previous three- 1990, 1995 and 2000- were all conducted without serious violence. Each time, the voters supported the candidate of the Lavalas political movement at levels unheard of in “mature democracies”-no runner-up ever topped 16% of the vote. But each time a minority in Haiti, with support from the International Community, successfully limited this mandate. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the victor in the first and third of those elections, suffered two successful coup d’etats, and spent half of his two terms in exile. President Preval managed to spend his whole term in office and pass power to an elected successor (the first Haitian President to do so), but a manufactured political crisis and perpetual squabbling about the extent of the Lavalas landslides prevented the seating of a legislature. More important, the crisis successfully diverted President Preval’s energies and attention away from the economic and social development policies he was elected to implement.
Haiti’s politics are not parlor games. Each coup d’etat leads to thousands of deaths, and many more times that are killed by diseases that would be prevented or treated by the programs of a less embattled government. The life expectancy for men in Haiti has dropped below 50. It is far past time for the International Community to stop condemning Haiti to repeating this outrageously unjust history.

Posted by: b real | Feb 18 2006 5:13 utc | 42

interesting article by douglas valentine on a cia deep cover agent’s recounting of the cia-led raid on iraq’s osirak reactor in 1981 – The Raid On Iraq.

Posted by: b real | Feb 18 2006 18:32 utc | 44

I guess this is what they mean “democracy with a small ‘d'”
U.S. asks Palestinians to return $50 million in aid

Posted by: tgs | Feb 19 2006 0:12 utc | 46

somebody needs to keep don rumsfeld away from the horse. that’s only supposed to be for the recruits…

Posted by: b real | Feb 19 2006 3:25 utc | 48

big brother is coming. Who is watching all this video with the latest budget cuts. can I have a job? What’s it gonna protect, nothing. good reason for us to leave the cities and move back to small towns.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 19 2006 5:33 utc | 50

The Washington Posts resident cynic, Dana Milbank, has a good OpEd piece on the Democrats:
Precriminations

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found that, approaching the midterm elections, Democrats enjoy their biggest advantage over Republicans in 14 years. Issue after issue — Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Jack Abramoff and now Harry Whittington — gives the opposition party a potential advantage. And then there’s the historical advantage enjoyed by the opposition in the elections midway through an incumbent president’s second term. To some, this might be cause for celebration. But not to Democrats. Beaten in the last three election cycles, the party has a serious insecurity complex. Convinced they will face another disappointment in November, Democrats are already busy figuring out who among them should be blamed for the inevitable defeat. Here’s a guide for handicapping the Democratic precriminations.
…
It’s Hillary’s fault.
…
It’s Bill’s fault.
…

Posted by: b | Feb 19 2006 8:56 utc | 52

Higher in the thread, others question the lack of attention to the UN report and Guantanamo. Inexplicable.
At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick asks the same question and reviews the findings of the UN report, as well as two others on the facility, all released in the last 2 weeks. The reports unmask the menadacity of all govt claims for continuing to maintain the facility and hold the prisoners. Why, again, is media coverage so slight?

Most detainees are being held for the crime of having “associated” with the Taliban or al-Qaida—often in the most attenuated way, including having known or lived with people assumed to be Taliban, or worked for charities with some ties to al-Qaida. Some had “combat” experience that seems to have consisted solely of being hit by U.S. bombs. Most were not picked up by U.S. forces but handed over to our military by Afghan warlords in exchange for enormous bounties and political payback.
But weren’t they all proved guilty of something at their status review hearings? Calling these proceedings “hearings” does violence to that word. Detainees are assumed guilty until proven innocent, provided no lawyers, and never told what the evidence against them consists of. That evidence, according to another report by Hegland, often consists of little beyond admissions or accusations by other detainees that follow hundreds of hours of interrogations. (A single prisoner at Guantanamo, following repeated interrogation, accused over 60 of his fellow inmates—or more than 10 percent of the prison’s population. Some of his accounts are factual impossibilities.) Another detainee “confessed” following an interminable interrogation, shouting: “Fine, you got me; I’m a terrorist.” When the government tried to list this as a confession, his own interrogators were forced to break the outrageous game of telephone and explain it as sarcasm. A Yemeni accused of being a Bin Laden bodyguard eventually “admitted” to having seen Bin Laden five times: “Three times on Al Jazeera and twice on Yemeni news.” His file: “Detainee admitted to knowing Osama Bin Laden.”

Clearly the detainees know it’s a cruel, absurd circus.
Lithwick concludes that the only reason that the administration continues to maintain Guantanamo is to avoid having to admit to a mistake. It’t true that they don’t seem to know the word “mistake”. I wish I felt more confidence in her simple explanation.
But Halliburton banked $30mil contract last June for a permanent detention facility to be completed by June 2006, included expanding solitary cells from 50 to 200 and adding a shiny $1.7mil psychiatric wing.
Then there is the new almost-no-torture law. Did I hear correctly yesterday on Democracy Now? Is there a provision in the bill that says,”For the purposes of this bill, Guantanamo is not a territory of the U.S. subject to the laws and Constitution of the U.S.”?!
What kind of territory is it, then? A private Executive military reserve? But the military personnel there are subject to the laws of the U.S. and of the military, just as they are anywhere in the world. (Whether the laws have any effective meaning and whether they are enforced will be a separate question for the present legal theoretical consideration.) In other words, 1-isn’t such a clause legal nonsense to start with? and 2-more ominously, what is the intent of inserting that condition in the torture “ban”?
Or did I misunderstand Professor McCoy yesterday?

Posted by: small coke | Feb 19 2006 11:56 utc | 54

@small coke
The mention in your post of the 1.7mil psychiatric wing made my heart sink and gave me cause for trepidation; Their relentless Aesopian Language, (i.e., communication that convey an innocent meaning to outsiders but hold a concealed meaning to informed members of a conspiracy or underground movement)never ceases to astound me.
For one of Professor McCoy’s salient points was in which he says, “Let’s make one thing clear. Americans refer to this often times in common parlance as “torture light.” Psychological to torture, people who are involved in treatment tell us it’s far more destructive, does far more lasting damage to the human psyche than does physical torture. As Senator McCain said, himself, last year when he was debating his torture prohibition, faced with a choice between being beaten and psychologically tortured, I’d rather be beaten.”
Having said that, and knowing what I suspect (and this is highly complete, speculation) they could create an army of Patty Hearsts, political prisoners being brainwashed especially, with what is now known with 21st century brainwashing: and the science of thought control . The equivalent of the manchurian candidate.
Imagine, Gitmo-hypnotized, CIA trained and brain washed terrorist cells let loose on Merican soil -or any geostrategic place for that matter- and the havoc that could benefit the powers that be.
For example, Wilson explains how easy it is to “reduced the subject to infantile helplessness: for afterall, army is the ultimate model of all brainwashing experiences, whose politics is a matter of strength, stealth and treachery.Further, in Wilsons view, To create a new imprint, reduce the victim to an infantile state, i.e., first-circuit vulnerability.
Never the less, Western technology and the people who have employed it have been the most amazingly destructive forces in all of human history. We badly need the haudenosaunee, basic call to consciousness.
Or maybe, I just have a over reactive paranoid and pareidolia mind, drink far to much, or hell, not enough…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 19 2006 14:12 utc | 56

uncle & small coke-
i will suggest that gitmo is a lab, that rumsfeld’s new category of pow’s are, in all practicality, one set of lab rats, those of a desired ethnicity & cultural makeup, and that the other set of lab rats are the judicial & legislative branches of the united states government, who are being monitored closely as they are led to press the desired levers.

Posted by: b real | Feb 19 2006 19:23 utc | 58

b real, yeah lab rats is about right. new orleans is another lab, hell we are all the lab rats.

Posted by: annie | Feb 19 2006 20:30 utc | 60

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=loose+change“>loose change version 2 has probably been posted here before, but if anyone hasn’t seen it, i recommend.

Posted by: annie | Feb 19 2006 23:38 utc | 62

flashback — july 2005 : The Gitmo Experiment: How Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

A major article in this week’s issue of The New Yorker magazine reveals how methods developed by the US military for withstanding torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
According to the article, titled “The Gitmo Experiment,” a number of medical and scientific personnel working at Guantanmo Bay are not at the prison camp to provide care for detainees but rather to use their skills to assist in interrogations. The people working in this capacity are members of what are called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams or BSCT’s – in military jargon they are known simply as Biscuits.
After September 11th, interrogators and BSCT’s at Guantanamo were advised by psychologists and medical staff versed in techniques employed at a Pentagon-funded program known as SERE or “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.”
SERE was created by the Air Force, at the end of the Korean War, to teach pilots and other personnel considered at high risk of being captured by enemy forces how to withstand and resist extreme forms of abuse.
The New Yorker writes, “The theory behind the SERE program is that soldiers who are exposed to nightmarish treatment during training will be better equipped to deal with such terrors should they face them in the real world. Accordingly, the program is a storehouse of knowledge about coercive methods of interrogation.”
Those methods included desecration of religious texts such as the Bible, waterboarding, sexual embarrassment and humiliation.

new yorker: THE EXPERIMENT: The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo?

…a number of critics, including human-rights officials, detainees’ lawyers, and others with knowledge of the inner workings of the detention center, believe that the problems at Guantánamo are the result of a more systematic effort. The strange accounts of torment that have steadily emerged, these critics say, are connected to decades of research by American scientists into the psychological nature of warfare and captivity. The research, which began during the Cold War, developed new currency after September 11th, when the Bush Administration declared a global war on terror and began trying to extract intelligence from radical Islamists, many of whom have been trained not to reveal anything about their activities. Since 2001, the critics say, medical and scientific personnel have played a role, largely hidden, in helping to design and monitor interrogations that are intended to exploit the physical and mental vulnerabilities of detainees. According to a former interrogator at Guantánamo who was interviewed at length by a lawyer, behavioral scientists control the most minute details of interrogations, to the point of decreeing, in the case of one detainee, that he would be given seven squares of toilet paper per day.

the history of the united states possession of guantanamo bay here makes a few mentions of its selection as the base for a variety of experiments, primarily b/c of its uniqueness & proximity to the mainline. didn’t they also do some aids experimentation on haitian detainees/refugees prior to the blood for oil experiment?

Posted by: b real | Feb 20 2006 2:23 utc | 64

HEADS UP KIDS, another PSA, BROUGHT TO YOU BY Uncle:
Live webcast (this morning)
ACLU’s National Town Hall on Illegal Spying: 2/20 at 11 am EST

Presidents Day morning, February 20, 2006, at 11:00 a.m. EST, the American Civil Liberties Union is holding a National Town Hall, via live streaming webcast, on the timely subject of Freedom at Risk: Spying, Secrecy and Presidential Power.
This event will be held at George Washington University, Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21st St., NW, Washington, D.C., before a live audience, and will feature an impressive panel and be moderated by journalist Marvin Kalb. The panel will include:
Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director;
John W. Dean, former White House counsel;
Laurence H. Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard University;
Jim Harper, Cato Institute; and
Mary DeRosa, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

attydave writes, “This should obviously be a hard-hitting and substantive forum on the illegal and unconstitutional NSA spying program and a powerful push-back at BushCo’s pack of lies in attempting to justify it.”
We’ll see or not…
as Blake said, “One law for the Lion and different one for the Ox is Tyranny.”

Posted by: PSA from Uncle $cam | Feb 20 2006 8:07 utc | 66

Jimmy Carter: Don’t Punish the Palestinians

During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.
Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government’s functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.
This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

Posted by: b | Feb 20 2006 9:11 utc | 68

Where did the Americans learn their humiliation tactics ?
Secrets Of Unit 1391
Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares.

By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
June 28 issue – Sometimes a country’s darkest secrets have a way of surfacing in the most offhanded manner. Gad Kroizer, an Israeli historian, was researching old British police buildings when he stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect. The map showed the location of 62 police compounds built by the British in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arabs and Jews who agitated against Britain’s occupation were interrogated. What caught Kroizer’s eye was a camp called Meretz, which he had not seen on any contemporary Israeli map or read about in any modern writing on security compounds in the Jewish state. “There was a discrepancy between the map I had and the lists I’d been looking at,” says Kroizer, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches at Bar-Ilan University. “I started putting two and two together.”
What Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper (published in the March 2004 issue of Cathedra, circulation: 1,500) was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel’s military intelligence, whose members—all Arabic speakers—are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. According to Arabs who’ve been imprisoned in 1391, some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel’s own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as “moderate physical pressure.”

What was that de Goya quote? Oh yeah, “from the sleep of reason…”
geez…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 20 2006 10:30 utc | 70

short interview w/ michael parenti on his latest book, the culture struggle

Posted by: b real | Feb 20 2006 16:23 utc | 72

b real,
ordered it, maybe i’ll report on it

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 20 2006 19:19 utc | 74

@ b real – Legos are made in Denmark, right?

Posted by: beq | Feb 20 2006 19:56 utc | 76

@skod
looks like the world city theme – ala blade runner or something – was first issued in 2003. here’s the lego product page. there’s also an unmarked police van,
and an armoured car. “Crooks can try to slow it down, but no barricade can stop the armoured car!”
i’ll let you know when i find the product page showing kids trying to piece the u.s. constitution back together again in lego blocks. 😉

Posted by: b real | Feb 20 2006 23:19 utc | 78

I remember castles and knights. “We are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite.”

Posted by: beq | Feb 21 2006 0:17 utc | 80