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Torture Did Work — to Produce War (See Footnote 857)

By SAM HUSSEINI | CounterPunch | December 12, 2014

Nothing solidifies the establishment more than a seemingly raging debate between two wings of it in which they are both wrong. Not only wrong, but in their wrongness, helping to cover their joint iniquities, all the while engaging in simultaneous embrace and finger-pointing to convey the illusion of debate and choice.

Such is the case with the “debate” on whether torture “worked” following the release of the Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s “Detention and Interrogation Program.”

On the one side, we have among others Dianne Feinstein: “The big finding is that torture doesn’t work and shouldn’t be employed by our country” she told PBS. Similarly, a headline in the Hill tells us: “McCain: ‘I know from personal experience’ torture doesn’t work.”

Then, we have six former directors and deputy directors of the CIA claiming the “interrogation program” “saved thousands of lives” by helping to capture al-Qaeda members. On this score, the Intelligence Committee report seems to have the goods, quoting CIA emails. While the former CIA directors claim a string successes based on torture: “KSM [Khalid Sheik Muhammed] then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia — in which more than 200 people perished.” But the report quotes CIA officials internal emails: “Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali.”

But that doesn’t mean Feinstein and McCain are right and that’s the end of story. The truth is that torture did work, but not the way its defenders claim. It worked to produce justifications for policies the establishment wanted, like the Iraq war. This is actually tacitly acknowledged in the report — or one should say, it’s buried in it. Footnote 857 of the report is about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion and was interrogated by the FBI. He told them all he knew, but then the CIA rendered him to the brutal Mubarak regime in Egypt, in effect outsourcing their torture. From the footnote:

“Ibn Shaykh al-Libi reported while in [censored: ‘Egyptian’] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa’ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons. Some of this information was cited by Secretary Powell in his speech at the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [censored], 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [censored, likely ‘Egyptians’], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear. For more more details, see Volume III.” Of course, Volume III has not been made public.

So, while CIA head John Brennan now says it’s “unknowable” if torture lead to information that actually saved lives, it’s provable that torture lead to information that helped lead to war and destroyed lives.

Nor was al-Libi the only one tortured to try to make the case for war. Many have reported that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaeda detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times — but few give the exact timing and context: They were so tortured in August 2002 and March 2003 respectively — the beginning and end of the Bush administrations push for the invasion of Iraq.

This was somewhat acknowledged in the other Senate report on torture, released by the Armed Services Committee in 2008. It quoted Maj. Paul Burney, who worked as a psychiatrist at Guantanamo Bay prison: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” The GTMO Interrogation Control Element Chief, David Becker told the Armed Services Committee he was urged to use more aggressive techniques, being told at one point “the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense [Paul] Wolfowitz had called to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO.”

McClatchy reported Sen. Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said at that time: “I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq) … They made out links where they didn’t exist.” But now, Levin seems more muted, saying, in response to the release of the recent report, that false information leads to “time-consuming wild goose chases” — which is quite an understatement given the human horrors that have resulted from the invasion of Iraq.

So, contrary to the claim that torture helped save lives, torture helped build the case of lies for war that took thousands of U.S. lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, helping to plunge the region into astounding violence, bringing al-Qaeda into Iraq, leading to the rise of ISIS and further bloody wars. As Arianna Huffington noted: “A perfect circle: Torture helps start Iraq War, which in turn gives us more people to torture. #happyhumanrightsday”

This oversight perhaps shouldn’t come as too big a shock given who’s calling the shots in Washington: Feinstein and McCain both voted for the Iraq war authorization in 2002, as did virtually everyone running foreign policy atop the Obama administration: VP Joe Biden, Pentagon heads Bill Gates and Chuck Hagel and Secs. of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

Some have made an issue of videos of torture being destroyed — but it’s been widely assumed that they were destroyed simply because of the potentially graphic nature of the abuse. But there’s another distinct possibility: They were destroyed because of the questions they document being asked. Do the torturers ask: “Is there another terrorist attack?” Or do they compel: “Tell us that Iraq and Al-Qaeda are working together.”? The video evidence to answer that question has apparently been destroyed — with barely anyone raising the possibility of that being the reason.

Exploiting false information has been well understood within the government. Here’s a 2002 memo from the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency to the Pentagon’s top lawyer — it debunks the “ticking time bomb” scenario and acknowledged how false information derived from torture can be useful:

“The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible — in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life — has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture. … The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate intelligence. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption.” The document concludes: “The application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably, the potential to result in unreliable information. This is not to say that the manipulation of the subject’s environment in an effort to dislocate their expectations and induce emotional responses is not effective. On the contrary, systematic manipulation of the subject’s environment is likely to result in a subject that can be exploited for intelligence information and other national strategic concerns.” [PDF]

So torture can result in the subject being “exploited” for various propaganda and strategic concerns. This memo should be well known but isn’t, largely because the two reporters for the Washington Post, Peter Finn and Joby Warrick, who wrote about in 2009 it managed to avoid the most crucial part of it in their story, as Jeff Kaye, a psychologist active in the anti-torture movement, has noted.

One reporter who has highlighted critical issues along these lines is Marcy Wheeler — noting as the recent report was being released: “The Debate about Torture We’re Not Having: Exploitation,” where she writes: “Some other things exploitation is used for — indeed the very things the torture we reverse-engineered for our own torture program was used for — are to help recruit double agents and to produce propaganda.” Her reporting also raises questions about how torture was used to push a whole host of policies, which would make us a virtual tortureocracy: CIA director “John Brennan has admitted to using information from the torture program in declarations he wrote for the FISA Court. This means that information derived from torture was used to scare [FISA judge] Colleen Kollar-Kotelly into approving the Internet dragnet in 2004.” (Disclosure: Wheeler writes a column for ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work.)

Many presumed critics of torture have been either intentionally or not obscured its connection to war making and other agendas. Teju Cole notes in an interview with the New York Times on Dec. 10 about that outlet: “The paper’s fabrications and support for the Iraq war is a generational shame that shouldn’t be too quickly forgotten. It should haunt us for a long time.” But his comments on the torture report betray a total lack of understanding of the connection between torture and the invasion of Iraq, ascribing to it the very human emotions of revenge rather than the more Machiavellian realities of policy making: “Let’s acknowledge torture for what it is: It is punishment, vengeance. It’s the kind of havoc you wreak on an enemy or bystander merely because your rage needs an outlet. It has vanishingly little to do with intelligence-gathering. It spreads grief, and though it intends to do so, it spreads even much more than it intends. It destroys the perpetrators too. Rage is not a precision weapon.”

But the rage of the general public — steered in large measure by major media — might have been useful in increased public acceptance of torture in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but that’s not what makes decisions in the U.S. It’s decided by the machinations of a narrow set of elites who act in their interests as the utility of torture shows. The coverups for how war was made have grown so complex that critics like Teju Cole have been sucked into it.

Researchers for Human Rights Watch have done some good work in getting information on the al-Libi case, but Ken Roth, the head of the group doesn’t seem to take to heart the lessons of that case, writing that the CIA “forgot its own conclusions from 1989: inhumane interrogation was ‘counterproductive,’ yielded false answers’ in reference to a recent New York Times piece: “Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed Approach.” But it’s not that the CIA “forgot”– the torture regime is actually designed to produce false but useful information that can be used to justify hideous polices. Pretending it’s a “failed approach” is to exactly avoid telling the truth about the torture program just as everyone is claiming that they are telling the truth about it.

And there are arguably other utilities of torture for war makers, often portrayed only as costs to the society as a whole: It’s profitable to a few. It helps stifle dissent as a method of social control. It was likely especially effective at silencing the Arab and Muslim American community just as the U.S. was gearing up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

The recent report highlights a CIA memo that relayed instructions from the White House to apparently hide the program from then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell could “blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s going on,” the email said. But when I questioned Powell on the connection between torture and war, he was remarkably defensive. His former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson wrote in 2009 that the Bush administration’s “principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.” Shortly after he wrote that, I questioned Colin Powell at the “media stakeout” as he left the CBS studios in DC:

Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

Colin Powell: I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case.

SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?

CP: I don’t know that. I don’t know what information you’re referring to. So I can’t answer.

SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

CP: So what? [inaudible]

SH: So you’d think you’d know about it.

CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.

But my questioning was based on statements by Wilkerson, who was in the room. Presumably Powell has been waiting for the CIA to call him and tell him directly that torture was used to extract some of the information he used. See my piece “How Colin Powell Showed That Torture Works” and video.

This problem of torture yielding useful but false information was not unforeseeable. Professor As’ad AbuKhalil appeared on a news release for the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work, the day after Powell’s notorious UN speech: “The Arab media is reporting that the Zakawi story was provided by Jordanian intelligence, which has a record of torture and inaccuracy.” Indeed, the utility of torture might also help further explain U.S. government ties to brutal regimes. Part of what the U.S. government derives from them is capacity to torture and kill. As professor Lisa Hajjar has noted, it was the Egyptian “Torturer in Chief” Omar Suiliman who got al-Libi to talk about a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda — the U.S. torturers in Gitmo had apparently failed. Bob Woodward quotes former CIA head George Tenet: “We created the Jordanian intelligence service and now we own it.”

Of course such regimes sometimes fall in an out of favor, there can be little honor among thieves. Al-Libi himself was eventually turned over to Muammar Qaddafi, at a time when — to the bewilderment of many — the U.S. government was rather cordial with the former Libyan dictator. In 2009, a newspaper run by one of Qaddafi’s son’s claimed al-Libi committed suicide in his Libyan jail cell. Juan Cole wrote at the time: “The best refutation of Dick Cheney’s insistence that torture was necessary and useful in dealing with threats from al-Qaeda just died in a Libyan prison.”

But only if we insist on forgetting this case and the evidence that lies for war and torture are joined at the hip.

Sam Husseini is communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy. He also founded VotePact.org, which encourages disenchanted Demorats and Republicans to team up. His website is: husseini.posthaven.com He’s on twitter: @samhusseini.

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Game Is Rigged: Why Americans Keep Losing to the Police State

“The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.”—Leo Tolstoy

By JOHN W. WHITEHEAD | RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE | December 13, 2014

My 7-year-old granddaughter has suddenly developed a keen interest in card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Blackjack, and War. We’ve fallen into a set pattern now: every time we play, she deals the cards, and I pretend not to see her stacking the deck in her favor. And of course, I always lose.

I don’t mind losing to my granddaughter at Old Maid, knowing full well the game is rigged. For now, it’s fun and games, and she’s winning. Where the rub comes in is in knowing that someday she’ll be old enough to realize that being a citizen in the American police state is much like playing against a stacked deck: you’re always going to lose.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, we stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that our luck will change.

The problem, of course, is that luck will not save us. The people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the country and us.

It really doesn’t matter what you call them—the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.

Incredibly, no matter how many times we see this played out, Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that it’s our politics that divide us as a nation. As if there were really a difference between the Democrats and Republicans. As if the policies of George W. Bush were any different from those of Barack Obama. As if we weren’t a nation of sheep being fattened for the kill by a ravenous government of wolves.

We’re in trouble, folks, and changing the dealer won’t save us: it’s time to get out of the game.

We have relinquished control of our government to overlords who care nothing for our rights, our dignity or our humanity, and now we’re saddled with an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

Even revelations of wrongdoing amount to little in the way of changes for the better.

For instance, after six years of investigation, 6,000 written pages and $40 million to write a report that will not be released to the public in its entirety, the U.S. Senate has finally concluded that the CIA lied about its torture tactics, failed to acquire any life-saving intelligence, and was more brutal and extensive than previously admitted. This is no revelation. It’s a costly sleight of hand intended to distract us from the fact that nothing has changed. We’re still a military empire waging endless wars against shadowy enemies, all the while fattening the wallets of the defense contractors for whom war is money.

Same goes for the government’s surveillance programs. More than a year after Edward Snowden’s revelations dominated news headlines, the government’s domestic surveillance programs are just as invasive as ever. In fact, while the nation was distracted by the hubbub over the long-awaited release of the Senate’s CIA torture, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court quietly reauthorized the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records. This was in response to the Obama administration’s request to keep the program alive.

Police misconduct and brutality have been dominating the news headlines for months now, but don’t expect any change for the better. In fact, with Obama’s blessing, police departments continue to make themselves battle ready with weapons and gear created for the military. Police shootings of unarmed citizens continue with alarming regularity. And grand juries, little more than puppets controlled by state prosecutors, continue to legitimize the police state by absolving police of any wrongdoing.

These grand juries embody everything that’s wrong with America today. In an age of secret meetings, secret surveillance, secret laws, secret tribunals and secret courts, the grand jury—which meets secretly, hears secret testimony, and is exposed to only what a prosecutor deems appropriate—has become yet another bureaucratic appendage to a government utterly lacking in transparency, accountability and adherence to the rule of law.

It’s a sorry lesson in how a well-intentioned law or program can be perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes. The war on terror, the war on drugs, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school zero tolerance policies, eminent domain, private prisons: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns. However, once you add money and power into the mix, even the most benevolent plans can be put to malevolent purposes.

In this way, the war on terror has become a convenient ruse to justify surveillance of all Americans, to create a suspect society, to expand the military empire, and to allow the president to expand the powers of the Executive Branch to imperial heights.

Under cover of the war on drugs, the nation’s police forces have been transformed into extensions of the military, with SWAT team raids carried out on unsuspecting homeowners for the slightest charge, and police officers given carte blanche authority to shoot first and ask questions later.

Asset forfeiture schemes, engineered as a way to strip organized crime syndicates of their ill-gotten wealth, have, in the hands of law enforcement agencies, become corrupt systems aimed at fleecing the citizenry while padding the pockets of the police.

Eminent domain, intended by the founders as a means to build roads and hospitals for the benefit of the general public, has become a handy loophole by which local governments can evict homeowners to make way for costly developments and shopping centers.

Private prisons, touted as an economically savvy solution to cash-strapped states with overcrowded prisons have turned into profit- and quota-driven detention centers that jail Americans guilty of little more than living off the grid, growing vegetable gardens in the front yards, or holding Bible studies in their back yards.

Traffic safety schemes such as automated red light and speed cameras, ostensibly aimed at making the nation’s roads safer, have been shown to be thinly disguised road taxes, levying hefty fines on drivers, most of whom would never have been pulled over, let alone ticketed, by an actual police officer.

School zero tolerance policies, a response to a handful of school shootings, have become exercises in folly, turning the schools into quasi-prisons, complete with armed police, metal detectors and lockdowns. The horror stories abound of 4- and 6-year-olds being handcuffed, shackled and dragged, kicking and screaming, to police headquarters for daring to act like children while at school.

As for grand juries, which were intended to serve as a check on the powers of the police and prosecutors, they have gone from being the citizen’s shield against injustice to a weapon in the hands of government agents. A far cry from a people’s court, today’s grand jury system is so blatantly rigged in favor of the government as to be laughable. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the growing numbers of Americans betrayed and/or victimized by their own government, in which case, you’ll find nothing amusing about the way in which grand juries are used to terrorize the populace all the while covering up police misconduct.

Unfortunately, as I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’re long past the point of simple fixes. The system has grown too large, too corrupt, and too unaccountable. If there’s to be any hope for tomorrow, it has to start at the local level, where Americans still have a chance to make their voices heard. Stop buying into the schemes of the elite, stop being distracted by their sleight-of-hands, stop being manipulated into believing that an election will change anything, and stop playing a rigged game where you’ll always be the loser.

It’s time to change the rules of the game. For that matter, it’s time to change the game.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

Copyright © 2014 The Rutherford Institute

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Decade of Increasing Taxpayer Funding

By Janet McMahon | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | December 2003

Since it first opened 10 years ago, one of Washington, DC’s most popular attractions has been the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located adjacent to the National Mall. Created by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1980, the Museum describes its primary mission as “to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.”

As its Web site, explains, the museum was “built on land donated by the federal government and funded with more than 200,000 private donations… As required by law, all funds for planning, constructing and equipping the museum were raised exclusively from private, tax-deductible contributions.”

That was then, however. Now American taxpayers provide some 67 percent of the Holocaust Museum’s annual budget, this year to the tune of $38.4 million. Its funding for fiscal year 2004 was increased to $39,997,000. By comparison, this year the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts received less than $34 million in federal funding. That figure was cut to $32,560,000 for fiscal year 2004.

On Oct. 12, 2000, moreover, then-President Bill Clinton signed legislation granting the museum permanent status as a federal agency, in effect locking in federal support. As a museum press release explained at the time, “Permanent status permits Congress to provide funding without having to review the federal role. Every U.S. government entity requires congressional authority before funds can be allocated; but not every federal institution is given permanent status.”

It is Congress, of course, which allocates taxpayer dollars—specifically, in the case of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on interior and related agencies. In addition to the Department of Interior, “other agencies” for which the subcommittee is responsible include the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Kenndy Center.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs readers who wish to keep track of how many of their tax dollars go to support the Holocaust Museum are therefore advised to pay attention to news reports on federal arts and humanities funding—and to continue reading beyond the first few paragraphs.

It’s not only the legislative branch which supports the Holocaust Memorial Museum, however. On Sept. 3 the Anti-Defamation League—which a few years ago was ordered to cease spying on American citizens—proudly announced that it had been awarded a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to support a joint ADL/Holocaust Memorial Museum training program for law enforcement professionals.

According to the ADL press release, the program “brings law enforcement officers to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC for an intensive program that challenges them to examine their relationship with the public and to explore issues of personal responsibility and ethical conduct.”

Americans well might wonder why, at a time when a memorial to World War II veterans who died for this country only now is being undertaken, when a national museum dedicated to Native Americans is just being completed, and when ground is far from being broken for a museum devoted to African Americans—the latter two groups having suffered here, at the hands of this country—the U.S. government places a higher priority on a museum dedicated to the victims and survivors of a European horror.

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

The Canadian torture state

By J. Baglow | Rabble | December 12, 2014

Whipping with cables. Prolonged solitary confinement. Other unspeakable acts, committed against citizens with official blessing. Use of “information” gathered by torture considered legitimate.

No, no, I don’t mean the Torture Report. I’m talking about Canada.

Let the other sordid drama play itself out in America. We’ve now learned more about “rectal feeding” (read: medically unjustified anal rape) than we ever wanted to know, and that’s just for starters. Did the authorities raid every prison for the criminally insane to swell CIA ranks? Far worse, we’re watching a desperate attempt to frame this whole series of vile acts as a period in (recent) history now thankfully ended. Don’t you go believing that fairytale, now.

Torture and other state-sanctioned violence against civilians continues. Gitmo persists, despite Obama’s promises. His drones are still killing and maiming civilians in far-off lands. American citizens can now be extra-judicially executed by Presidential decree. Due process, Obama’s Attorney General explains, doesn’t necessarily mean judicial process — just a convo in the Oval Office will satisfy Constitutional requirements. Recall also that Obama gave immunity to the creatures who enabled and committed state torture under his predecessor. They aren’t hurting any. The monstrous John Yoo, for one, who advocated for the legality of crushing the testicles of children, is now a well-paid professor in California. Dick Cheney is still making a fortune on the speaking circuit.

Well, as I said, let the U.S. be the U.S., that godawful prison-house, continuing on its downward spiral. But no one should imagine for one moment that it is alone in using torture as a routine implement of policy.

While the current Canadian government — particularly its former Paraguayan wing — is known for its open support of torture as a supposed information-gathering tool, the rot really set in under the previous Liberal administrations of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. Just ask a victim of “extraordinary rendition” like Maher Arar. Talk to others tortured and imprisoned thanks to the collegial complicity of CSIS with the secret police in Syria, Egypt and Sudan — Canadian citizens Muayyed Nureddin, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou El-Maati, and Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Or ask (if any remain alive) the Afghan detainees turned over by Canadian Forces to Afghan government torturers. Stephen Harper was willing to risk all the marbles there, and he successfully maintained his cover-up after all was said and done. CSIS was up to its neck in that one, too. Most of the documents will likely never be made public, despite an historic ruling by the then-Speaker of the House of Commons, Peter Milliken.

Then there is child soldier Omar Khadr, tortured (once again with CSIS complicity, this time after the fact) in Guantanamo. His only way out of that hellhole was to cop a plea. He’s sitting in a Canadian jail at the moment, while the Harper government continues to make his life miserable.

Is this torture thing just about national security? Not at all. Take the use of solitary confinement within Canada’s prison system. Prolonged solitary confinement is well-recognized as a form of torture. But Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney has now confirmed that it will continue to be imposed on mentally ill inmates, rejecting out of hand the key recommendation from the coroner’s inquest into the death of Ashley Smith.

Let us not be too smug, then, about the horrific revelations south of the border. Because, to put it bluntly, we torture too — and under Stephen Harper, torture has been officially and publicly sanctioned. Compliments of the season, everyone.

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 2 Comments

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): Israeli military arbitrarily change rules around Checkpoint 56 closure, detains elderly, sick people

CPTnet | December 12, 2014

On 10 December, Israeli soldiers prevented teachers from the Qurtuba School, elderly people, a disabled man, and both a doctor and an ill woman trying to reach the hospital from passing through Checkpoint 56 in Hebron. In some cases, they delayed people trying to pass through for one hour; in others, as much as three.

Checkpoint 56 has been subject to closure and restrictions by Israeli forces since it was burned from the inside nearly three weeks ago.

1503631_10155042835460647_2568974929906096407_nNo one knows who is responsible for the burning of the checkpoint, and Israeli forces have not released footage.

Leading onto the small section of Shuhada Street on which Palestinians are allowed to walk, checkpoint 56 connects Bab iZaweyya, the commercial district in Palestinian Authority-governed H1, with the neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida in Israeli-controlled H2.

Checkpoint closure here demands that families living in Tel Rumeida and school children and teachers from the Qurtuba School walk an extra hour or that they walk a difficult route through the homes and gardens of other Palestinians to reach their homes. For the past week, Israeli soldiers and border police have permitted elderly people, teachers, children and ill people seeking medical treatment to pass the checkpoint.

When CPTers arrived at 11:00 a.m. on 12 December, one 60-year-old doctor told them that he had been at the checkpoint for two hours.

CPTers, ISMers, and those wishing to pass through the checkpoint, attempted to ascertain the reasoning behind this change, which was subjecting teachers leaving work, and older people of varying physical abilities to stand in the sun for hours. CPT and ISM stood in solidarity with the affected Palestinians and joined them in negotiating with soldiers to reopen the checkpoint.

At about 12:00 p.m., soldiers allowed individuals through the checkpoint one by one until approximately twenty minutes later when an elderly man arrived with a donkey, which initiated another arbitrary change in the ‘rules’ of occupation. The Israeli military again closed the checkpoint, and CPT was unable to gain an answer from the soldiers as to why this donkey appeared to necessitate another closure.

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment