Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
Harper’s Magazine writes about a cover-up of murders of three Guantanamo Bay prisoners June 9th 2006.
The article convincingly documents how interrogators transferred three prisoners from their prison cells to a “black site” outside of the regular prison compound and tortured and killed them. The commanding officers at Guantanamo Bay then covered up the murders as suicides.
After a whistleblower came forward the Department of Justice also participated in the cover-up.
-TPP
A New York Times article documents the plight of a Pakistani citizen, Mr. Muhammad Saad Iqbal, who was arrested in Indonesia in 2002, then transferred to Egypt by CIA to be tortured.
He was finally released from Guantanamo Bay in August of 2008 after more than six months in captivity. He had repeatedly been cleared by lie detectors and other interrogation techniques of having anything to do with Al Qaeda. Yet it took the US six years to release this man.
He’s been on antibiotics for more than five years and is dependent on multiple drugs. He has multiple infections in his ears and suffers from injury to his back that’s making walking difficult. He’s attempted suicide twice and went on hunger strike three times while held illegally by the United States.
You have to wonder about a Government that’s supposed to be the champion of democracy and justice all over the world, and does things like this to innocent people. Here’s hoping a jury awards this man a multi-billion dollar settlement once his lawyers get around to suing the US Government for torture, kidnap and illegal detainment.
-TPP
The inquest into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London underground in 2005 is currently under way in UK.
The police killed Mr. de Menezes suspecting him to be a terrorist about to blow up the London underground during the hysteria surrounding the terrorist attacks in the London underground. Mr. de Menezes was mistakenly identified as a terrorist suspect when in fact he was just an ordinary person traveling in the underground. He was shot in the head at close range and killed by the police.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick had some interesting comments at the inquest:
But if you are asking me did we do anything wrong or unreasonable, then I don’t think we did.
The police shoot and kill an innocent man, and they have the audacity to say that? Incredible.
-TPP
Upstate New York has been all up in arms about all kinds of things lately.
An Iraqi artist named Wafaa Bilal wanted to exhibit his project at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. He was using a modified video game to have viewers view the Iraq war from the Iraqi point of view. And not just any Iraqi’s point of view, but a suicide bomber’s at that.
That didn’t go so well with the local neo-cons, who first got RPI to cancel the exhibit by pressuring them with withdrawn donations and “safety” issues. Apparently the FBI was also alerted about a possible “terrorist” threat.
A local art gallery called Sanctuary for Independent Media then decided to let Mr. Bilal exhibit there.
That wasn’t ok with the local neo-cons either, who continued to protest against the art exhibit. One of the leading voices protesting was one Robert Mirch, Republican Majority leader in the city of Troy.
The day before the exhibit was to go on, the Sanctuary for Independent Media premises were shut down by the Department of Public Works for building code violations. It appears that the doors of the 108-year-old building the gallery resides in were 3 inches too narrow. And that’s a violation. The gallery had been cited for the violation some time ago, and at that time given until mid April to correct the issues. It is not mid April yet. It just happens Mr. Mirch is the commissioner of the Department of Public Works in the city of Troy. What a coincidence!
Well done Robert! Keep up the good work up there in Troy! We are all so very proud of you.
-TPP
The Washington Post is writing about an alarming development in the “war on terror”.
It seems that instead of being content on just searching people’s electronic devices, without a warrant or other grounds, the US Customs officers are now copying information out of travelers’ laptops, cell phones, mp3 players and other electronic devices that store information on them.
Nobody’s been able to find out what they’re actually doing with the data after it’s been copied. Where is it stored, who sees it, what is done with the information. Nobody knows.
Everything seems to be free game. Call logs from cellphones, browsing histories from browsers, Word documents, etc.
Naturally companies whose employees travel out or into the US often are quite concerned. The Washington Post article lists several real concerns about this “policy”. How are they to protect trade secrets, sensitive information about clients or journalistic sources when the information can be copied at will by minimum wage flunkies on the US border.
-TPP
Bruce Schneier, a security expert, writes in Wired about how security policies in the US are based on cover your ass mentality rather than careful planning and assessment of real security threats.
He calls the concept Cover Your Ass Security. I’d call it After The Fact Security myself. He gives great examples of how security policy always changes after the fact as a response to a specific attack that already happened elsewhere.
-TPP
Is it just me, or are those cartoon characters flipping the finger? If so, that’s strangely appropriate given what happened in Boston the other day.
See the linked article about a ABC News segment that pretty much sums up the whole “terrorist” plot angle quite nicely.
To commemorate the moment the people at raplica.com have created two most excellent T-Shirts:Â Never Forget and ATHF is the bomb. Links via T-Critic.
-TPP
A Syrian born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was detained in 2002 in JFK airport in New York, NY, USA on a connecting flight to Montreal. He was arrested under suspicion of terrorism, interrogated for 11 days by the FBI, then deported to Syria for further “interrogation”. Turns out the Syrians are rather fond of torturing their terror suspects. The FBI, of course, was completely unaware of this. Suuuuuuuuure.
The reason Mr. Arar was detained in New York was that Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had supplied the FBI information that was later found inaccurate.
The Canadian Government has issued a formal apology over its role in Mr. Arar’s detainment and torture and has agreed to pay about $10M in compensation to Mr. Arar as reported by CNews.
Meanwhile the US Government is refusing to apologize or remove Mr. Arar from the terrorism watch list. They refuse to investigate the issue at all.
It seems to be that in the name of the war on terror, the US Government is effectively terrorising innocent people.
How proud must Osama bin Laden be. Mission truly and utterly accomplished.
-TPP
The Guardian is reporting on new plans by the US Government to extend the US-Visit program’s fingerprinting requirements for foreign visitors to the US.
The US is planning on taking 10-digit, instead of today’s two-digit, fingerprints from all foreign visitors, storing the fingerprints in the FBI fingerprint database, and allowing sharing the fingerprint information with foreign law enforcement agencies effectively bypassing any due process rights you might’ve otherwise had in case you do end up in legal trouble.
All this, of course, to catch the terrorists. Terrorists, who wouldn’t forge their identity, including fingerprints. Yes, that’s entirely possible, and according to studies, even easy.
Let’s see who is the first innocent bystander, who gets falsely identified as a terrorist.
Does anyone know if it’s possible to have plastic surgery to get 10 middle fingers? Anyone?
-TPP
