UN rights watchdog accuses Kiev forces of torture, inhumane treatment of civilians
RT | December 16, 2014
Azov battalion soldiers take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Kiev’s Sophia Square before being sent to the Donbass region. (RIA Novosti / Evgeny Kotenko)
Kiev-controlled volunteer battalions and the Ukrainian Security Service are involved in an increasing number of human rights violations including torture and forced disappearances of those suspected of “separatism,” according to a UN OHCHR report.
The report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says that Kiev’s actions in eastern Ukraine to “restore order” have led to “arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances of people suspected of ‘separatism and terrorism’. Most of such human rights violations appear to have been perpetrated by certain voluntary battalions or by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).”
The eighth OHCHR report on the human rights situation in Ukraine released on Monday added that the procedural rights of people have not always been observed, with reports of ill-treatment and reprisals upon release.
The report, which covers from November 1-30, says the Office of the Military Prosecutor has not taken any actions to investigate the “considerable” number of allegations of human rights violations, “including looting, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment by members of certain voluntary battalions such as Aidar, Azov, Slobozhanshchina and Shakhtarsk.”
For instance, OHCHR says that raids carried out by armed masked men in uniforms without insignia on 85 homes in the district of Krasnyi Lyman have led to a large number of forced disappearances. Those interviewed by UN staff reported being beaten and intimidated to “confess to participation in the armed groups.”
Recruits are sworn in for Azov Battalion in Kiev’s Sophia Square. (RIA Novosti / Evgeny Kotenko)
In another instance, the UN report cites an interview of a man who claims to have been arbitrarily detained by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and kept incommunicado for two months in the SBU building in Kharkov.
Furthermore, the report notes that authorities are also lagging behind investigating more than 300 cases of shelling civilian areas.
“The indiscriminate shelling of built-up areas continued with over 100 incidents reported in November alone,”the report highlights.
In regards to a number of mass graves found in the conflict-torn eastern Ukraine, the report says that “no clear evidence of mass summary executions either by the armed groups or by the Ukrainian armed forces have been revealed to the public so far.”
The UN mission also blames anti-Kiev forces for human rights abuses, namely “killings, abductions, torture, ill-treatment, sexual violence, forced labour, ransom demands and extortion of money by the armed groups.”
The UN says that 4,707 people have died and another 10,322 have been wounded in the Ukraine conflict over the past nine months.
READ MORE: Russia calls for intl probe into Ukraine burials with signs of execution
Interview: Mexico Gov’t Claims on Disappeared Students Exposed
teleSUR | December 16, 2014
Explosive allegations were published in Proceso, one of Mexico’s leading news weeklies, this past Sunday, revealing strong evidence pointing to direct participation by federal authorities in the presumed killings of dozens of education students from the drug war-torn state of Guerrero.
The investigation also revealed that Mexican federal, state and municipal authorities were tracking the exact movements of the students on the same night of the massacre in question this past September 26 and that according to the government’s own documents, and in at least five clear instances, key testimony obtained by officials to sustain their version of the events was actually induced via illegal interrogation techniques that amounted to torture, which included electric shocks to testicles and extreme beatings.
The investigation’s revelations are not only a stark contrast with what has been officially maintained by the Peña Nieto administration, but also contradict most of what most mainstream news has reported from Mexico and beyond.
The Official Version
The official version of what happened on September 26, the night of the disappearance , largely emanates from a press conference that has by now become widely known and has even served as a reference point for a nation-wide movement that has been ongoing since soon after the presumed massacre occurred. That is because the Attorney General leading the press conference, Jesus Murillo Karam, mentioned that he was “tired” at the end of the hour-long conference. The #YaMeCanse Twitter hashtag arose almost as soon as the conference itself ended, and has actually served as the battle-cry for a nation-wide movement that has attracted international support and attention, including a day of protests which featured over 200 actions across the globe and cross-border protests, as previously reported by teleSUR English.
During the press conference, and reiterated through a variety of official accounts since that time, authorities have claimed that Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife ordered local municipal police to attack several buses of the “normalistas” (students training to become teachers) on several occasions. The attacks wound up killing at least three people and disappearing 43 students. The Guerreros Unidos (Warriors United) drug gang was then given the 43 kidnapped students which went on to brutally assassinate, dismember, torture and burn the victims to death, again, according to official accounts, but disputed by the parents.
The ex-Mayor and his wife have since been detained in connection to the presumed massacre. Acting on a tip from the couple’s landlord in Itzapalapa, the “imperial couple,” as local media dubbed them, were considered by federal officials to be the main culprits behind the crime. The official allegation was that the couple acted in cahoots with a gang that had long suspected, close ties to the Mayor and his wife.
State Version Undermined
The investigation, which was penned by acclaimed Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez and the University of California at Berkeley-based journalist Steve Fisher, blows the lid off of official accounting in a number of ways, in alleging that: federal, state and local officials closely tracked, monitored and were quite aware of the whereabouts of both the killed, disappeared and presumably murdered education students; key testimonies obtained by officials were garnered through illegal torture techniques; federal police and soldiers from the military were present at the scene of the killings; the government has deliberately withheld this information in an attempt to maintain their own official accounting of the events in question.
The allegations also come during a time in which the government’s version of the events was already being questioned by other sources. A research team headed by a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, argued that the government claims that the Guerreros Unidos gang incinerated to death all 43 students lacked any “scientific explanation.”
In an extended interview via a three-way telephone call with the authors of the investigation with teleSUR English, Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher discussed and detailed their findings.
Journalists Discuss Disturbing Findings
The ever-passionate and expressive Hernandez is no stranger to explosive investigations and allegations, so much so that her home was raided by official authorities late last year. The award-winning and internationally acclaimed journalist has also been subjected to harrowing threatening acts, such as having found animal body parts at the doorstep of her home. In her latest investigation, however, Hernandez made the case that her co-authored findings starkly revealed that governmental responsibility for the presumed massacre is much higher than what has been previously admitted.
“The point is that we know that the federal police were there, we know that they knew when the students [were] abducted and we know that many of the testimonies that the PGR [Mexico’s Attorney General’s office] were obtained and acquired through torture techniques. But in Mexico, evidence obtained through torture is illegal,” Hernandez told teleSUR.
In contrast to the official version, which maintains that the federal government was unaware of the massacre, Hernandez and Fisher allege that federal police and military soldiers directly participated in the presumed massacre itself and were one of three levels of government closely monitoring the students whereabouts throughout the night of the presumed massacre.
According to Hernandez and Fisher’s accounting of the unedited Guerrero state report they obtained, which was drawn up for the Interior Ministry (SEGOB) and obtained by the magazine about a month and a half ago, students were monitored as soon as they left their school grounds at 5:59pm. Both federal and state police were monitoring the students while they traveled from the Chilpancingo-based Control, Computational and Communications Center (C4).
The article goes into further detail, noting that at 8pm, the federal and state police arrived to the highway where the students were fielding donations; at 9:21pm, a federal police chief – Luis Antonio Dorantes – was advised of the student’s arrival; and at 9:40pm the C4 center reported the first gunshots.
The report was also based on 12 videos recorded by surviving students on their cell phones, whereby one now publicly released video has audio clearly noting a surviving student yelling in distress: “The police are now coming, the federales are staying and they are going to want to screw us over!”
In sum, various levels of government were much more aware of the students and more present at key points throughout the evening in question, than what has been previously admitted.
Hernandez made it clear to teleSUR, however, that their investigation didn’t reveal whether or not the United Warriors gang were involved with the massacre. Fisher elaborated on this point: “We cannot say whether or not Guerreros Unidos was ultimately involved with this, or not, but we can say that the evidence we have acquired was that they were tortured [before their testimonies were given]. It is thus suspect that they could actually get proper testimonies considering the fact that they were tortured brutally, including electric shocks to testicles and extreme beatings.”
Hernandez added that other telltale signs of torture were uncovered in their investigation, including bruised ribs, blackened eyes and black-and-blue marks on the neck. Such findings were especially damning, Hernandez pointed out, considering that, “the attorney general’s version was based solely on testimony by presumed drug traffickers.”
Fisher spoke to this point, telling teleSUR that, “I would say that in any case where there is torture involved, it brings into question the entire investigation. It would be interesting to know why the PGR would base this very important investigation on, according to their own documents, information obtained through people that were brutally beaten and tortured.”
Hernandez and Fisher wrote that the Peña Nieto administration has withheld the information they reported on.
Soon after the disappearance of the education students, the Guerrero Attorney General’s office requested that the Mexican Federal Police, their investigation notes, hand over extensive documentation related to the potential participation of federal police agents, including the exact registries of when agents clocked in and out while on the job the night of the attack. However, the investigation added that since the Peña Nieto administration took over the investigation this past October 4, the requested documentation was never handed over to the Guerrero office.
“It is clear that the PGR has been manipulating the case, that the federal government has been manipulating the case, and that now, the official version of the case has been shown to not be trustworthy,” Hernandez passionately asserted during the extensive interview, adding that in subsequent conversations with government officials, none of their allegations were officially denied to either of the reporters.
Investigation Points to a Number of Implications
Considering the many contradictions between the investigation and official accounts , many questions can be asked. Since Mexican officials have long claimed that Warriors United was the group which took custody of the students from local police authorities who had initially detained them, have there been any false arrests among the 74-some people that have been rounded up since September 26?
The accused leader of Warriors United, Sidronio Casarrubias, is among the many detained, which include an array of local law enforcement officials. Casarrubias has since revealed to officials the kind of relationship he had with Abarca while he was mayor, but it is not clear whether or not he was among the five people tortured in Herandez and Fisher’s account.
“Warriors United has sewn a web of complicity with several mayors and above all with security officials,” Murillo previously told the press. “In Iguala, the complicity was between the authorities, the local police and the Warriors United,” Murillo added.
If there is one official acknowledgment which Hernandez and Fisher do not dispute, it is the systematic relationship that exists between drug cartels and the Mexican state. It is that very relationship which has served as a spark plug to a nation that has undertaken a significant amount of resistance since September 26.
Nation-wide Movement Continues to Wage Protest
The revelations by Herandez and Fisher come at a time that the nation’s ire was already raised to a feverish boiling point. In one of the largest countries and economies of Latin America. Mexico has witnessed near daily and nation-wide actions of resistance.
Since the disappearance of the “normalistas” on September 26, the country has been brimming with mass marches, candle-light vigils, university-campus and labor-union-led strikes, occupations of official and university buildings, riot police-led arrests of demonstrators, property destruction of official buildings, sit-ins, panels ruminating over the ills of narco-state violence and international bridge closings.
Most recently, at least 22 people were injured this past Sunday during protests in Chilpancingo, Guerrero which featured police opening fire on demonstrators. TeleSUR English reported that three parents of the forcibly disappeared, a journalist, a student from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a member of an education union were among those injured.
The violent law enforcement response to the protests, specifically that of Sunday’s occurrences, prompted the National Human rights Commission to demand that authorities conduct themselves within the law.
The disappearance clearly served as the catalyst for the movement’s inception, much of the country has long been weary of the systematic problem of disappearances and the eerie official impunity which has often surrounded them. Nothing less than some 22,000 disappearances, over the course of the last three years alone, account for official estimates. Other analysts estimate the actual total as being higher than that.
Mass Graves Point to Narco-State Crimes
The disappearances of the normalistas are emblematic of a long-running problem in Mexico: thousands upon thousands of cases of disappearances, many of whose investigations were found ‘inconclusive’ and long ago closed, exist throughout the country. Some estimates range as high as 24,000 disappearances having occurred since 2011 alone, the overwhelming amount of which were “unsolved” and/or “closed” cases.
In another case of official law enforcement involvement in a crime, 22 alleged kidnappers were summarily executed by Mexican soldiers in Tlatlaya in June 2014. A federal judge recently charged three soldiers with murder and four others with abuse of authority and other charges in relation to the massacre.
At least a dozen mass grave sites have been discovered since the time of the Ayatzinapa disappearances. Meanwhile, movement activists and organizers alike have alleged that many more mass grave sites exist than what has been officially acknowledged.
Regardless of the actual total of mass grave sites, their undisputed existence still point to a problem more familiar to locals and residents of the area: Guerrero is not only a drug war-torn state, but a complex nexus of corruption and corroboration between local, regional and state authorities and their allies in street gangs and powerful drug cartels. Even federal officials have since admitted that the disappeared students pointed to a larger, narco-state reality.
While the troubles of living under a narco-state is one which local residents of Guerrero have long been familiar, in the wake of what seemingly is a never-ending case of the disappearances of the Guerrero students, it has now become a reality with which the whole nation of Mexico, and well beyond, are becoming familiar with as well.
But now, in light of the explosive allegations revealed by Hernandez and Fisher, it will become yet a more complex reality with which the nation will have to come to grips and to which the government may have to provide yet more answers during tiring press conferences.
Israeli crimes continue in al-Quds
Israel continues its widespread crackdown on the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem al-Quds. The rights groups have dubbed Israel’s crackdown an act of “collective punishment” against the Palestinian population.
More than 1,300 local residents have been arrested since summer, 40 percent of them children, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, an advocacy group.
Over the past weeks, the al-Aqsa Mosque has been the scene of clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli settlers and troops.
Israel has tried over the past decades to change the demographic makeup of al-Quds by constructing illegal settlements, destroying historical sites and expelling the local Palestinian population.
BOMBSHELL INTERVIEW: Eric Garner’s Death a Retaliatory Move by NYPD
By Matt Agorist | Free Thought Project | December 15, 2014
New York, NY — The Free Thought Project has been given exclusive information as to why Eric Garner may have been killed by the NYPD. This new information paints an entirely different picture as to why police were harassing Garner that fateful day back in July.
The information comes from an interview that took place last Thursday with Benjamin Carr. Benjamin Carr is Eric Garner’s stepfather, who was in the media recently peacefully resolving a situation with an angry protester.
The brief clip, obtained exclusively by the Free Thought Project, is part of a much larger collection of video which is going to be part of a documentary on police misconduct, which is why the videographer who gave it to us, has placed a watermark over it.
In the interview, Carr tells us that police didn’t show up that day because Garner broke up a fight or sold loosey cigarettes; they were there because police had a history of harassing Garner.
Carr explains that police had actually stolen money from Garner, who subsequently planned to file charges against the NYPD for this theft. Police were there that day, Carr says, not to shake Garner down for selling smokes, but to retaliate against him for filing charges against them.
When the interviewer asks Carr if he thinks that the police singled out Garner because he was black, this is what he said,
“I wouldn’t really say [he was killed] because Eric was a black man. It’s due to the fact that they stole money from him and refused to give him his money, and he filed charges against them. This is why they had a vendetta against him.”
The Free Thought Project tried multiple times to confirm this complaint against the NYPD by reaching out to their Staten Island precinct. However, after being placed on hold by the NYPD for long periods of time, hung up on, and eventually ignored, we were unable to get a statement from them in regards to this case. The recordings of these calls will be put up on our Radio Show youtube channel for review.
However, we did confirm with a member of Garner’s family that Eric Garner was frequently harassed by these officers, and it goes much deeper than money. Garner had actually been sexually assaulted by the NYPD, on multiple occasions, according to our sources.
Of course, this sounds ridiculous. How would the NYPD sexually assault a man like Eric Garner, and why? But if we dig a little deeper we see that officer Daniel Pantaleo, the man who was responsible for Garner’s death, has been sued three times for violating the constitutional rights of other black males in the area, by performing humiliating strip searches and fondling the genitalia of his victims, some of them in public view.
The most recent of these lawsuits was just filed in November and comes from Kenneth Collins, who says in the lawsuit that he “was subjected to a degrading search of his private parts and genitals by the defendants.”
The NYPD paid out a settlement last year to two men who sued the city because Pantaleo forced them to strip naked in public as he “touched and searched their genital areas, or stood by while this was done in their presence.”
According to another lawsuit, victim Rylawn Walker, was charged with marijuana possession and underwent similar rights violations by Pantaleo. The charges were dismissed against Walker and the case sealed on a motion from prosecutors. His lawsuit against the NYPD stated that Walker “was committing no crime at that time and was not acting in a suspicious manner.”
Defense lawyer Michael Colihan summed up this atrocity when he wrote a letter in August 2014 to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos. In his letter, Colihan said:
“To put it mildly, many police on Staten Island have been playing fast, loose and violently with the public they seem to have forgotten they are sworn to protect,” wrote Colihan. “After litigating about 200 of these civil rights matters in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York since 1977, I have seen no interest by the managers of the New York City Police Department, or anyone employed by the city of New York, in doing anything to stop this.”
After knowing what the NYPD is capable of, these allegations by Benjamin Carr are not surprising in the least. In fact, just 2 months ago, an NYPD officer was actually caught on film stealing over $1,000 in cash from victim Lamard Joye, during a “stop and frisk.” The entire incident was caught on film and we were told that it’s “under internal investigation,” yet nothing has happened.
How many incidents like this one happen daily without consequences for the perpetrators?
Is it any surprise now, seeing why Garner reacted to police with such contempt and non-violent resistance? We are looking at a man being shaken down by people, who’ve allegedly sexually assaulted him multiple times, as well as stolen money from him. And from the video of the incident, it appears that they wished to cause him harm as well.
Would you have been as cordial if armed men with a history of stealing from you and feeling up your private parts, were there to do it all again?
Denver Cops Arrest Man who Exposed them Beating Man on Video While Promoting Cop who did the Beating
By Carlos Miller | PINAC | December 14, 2014
A man who video recorded Denver police repeatedly punching a man in the face, causing his head to bounce off the pavement, before tripping his pregnant wife and causing her to fall on her face – sparking an FBI investigation into the department – was arrested Thursday in what appears to be a case of retaliation.
After all, Denver police not only arrested him on what they called a “newly activated traffic warrant” from a nearby county after he had just left the FBI office with whom he is cooperating on the federal investigation, they refused to allow him to bond out of jail, even though the warrant was regarding a measly missed court date over failure to provide proof of insurance and registration during a traffic stop a few months ago.
Denver police are obviously upset that upset Levi Frasier managed to recover the footage from his Samsung tablet after they had deleted it, which led to them being investigated by the feds.
Not that it stopped them from promoting the cop, Charles “Chris” Jones IV, seen on video punching the suspect to sergeant earlier this month.
Denver police officer Charles “Chris” Jones IV was recently promoted to sergeant despite being under a federal investigation for beating a man on camera.
According to FOX 31:
Frasier was reportedly arrested after leaving the FBI office and before he arrived at FOX31 Denver studios for a schedule interview.
Frasier was not allowed to bond out and was spending the night in jail.
We emailed DPD for a comment and other clarifications after hours.
Cmdr. Matt Murray replied, “I would check with the jail. They could provide the most accurate information about why Mr. Frasier is in jail.”
Frasier is a key witness in an ongoing DPD internal affairs investigation. After recording an arrest on his electronic device, Frasier accused officers of seizing his Samsung tablet without a warrant and scrolling through his video files without permission.
Frasier reported that when the tablet was given back to him, the video was missing, but he restored it with a cloud application.
FOX 31 has been doing a great job on keeping up with this story, dedicating more than six minutes in the previous segment, which you can see below along with the latest segment on his arrest.
They also published a piece that cops have no legal right to seize phones and delete footage, something the mainstream media has always had trouble addressing:
In an exclusive interview with FOX31 Denver, Frasier said, “I didn’t give it to them at all. I went back to the van and grabbed it and as I was walking up — it was taken out of my hand.”
Frasier claimed Denver officers violated his civil rights and federal law when they searched his personal photos file without a court order.
Legal experts said Frasier has a right to be angry. Police cannot, except in rare circumstances, seize your mobile devices without a search warrant.
A June Supreme Court ruling, Riley v. California, greatly limits under what circumstances police can look into a persons cellphone or tablet digging for evidence.
“They crossed the line – absolutely!” said Flores’ attorney Benjamin Hartford.
The incident has prompted the Denver Police Department to turn on the Police PR Spin Machine by issuing a four-page release justifying the behavior of the cops in punching the suspect and tripping his wife, but also putting Frasier’s character into question because he has served time in prison years earlier.
But that letter led to the Citizen Oversight Board, whose seven members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, to issue its own letter, criticizing the four-page press release, accusing them of lacking objectivity, an excerpt which you can read below, or read in its entirety by clicking here.
The press release also made statements to attack the credibility of the witness who came forward with the video. It stated that the witness has a criminal record, and listed several crimes that he was allegedly imprisoned for in another state. It stated that he was recently released after a “lengthy” prison sentence, and that the witness has “six aliases,” which occurs as a result of a legal name change or “the illegal use of someone else’s name or lying about one’s identity to the police.”
We strongly believe that it was not appropriate for the DPD to make these statements. There is already significant community concern and distrust of the DPD and IAB. Instead of thanking the witness who came forward to share information, the DPD publicly attacked his character. It is very likely that the DPD’s attacks on this witness will only reinforce fears in the community, and inhibit other members of the public from cooperating with DPD or IAB if they witness possible officer misconduct in the future.
We are aware that the stated purpose of IAB investigations is to fairly determine the facts so that decisions can be made about whether any officers engaged in misconduct. There should be no predetermined conclusions at the beginning of an IAB investigation. In this case, however, the DPD has publicly stated that the force was appropriate before IAB has even conducted its investigation. In the news story, the DPD Commander admitted that the Department had not yet viewed the witness’ full video of the use of force. Isn’t that a very important piece of evidence that would have to be viewed before deciding that repeatedly punching the man and tripping his pregnant girlfriend was appropriate?
Romania agreed to host CIA ‘black sites’ to be accepted into NATO – ex spy chief
RT | December 14, 2014
Romania allowed the CIA to use a number of sites on its territory, a former head of the country’s intelligence confessed. He added that Bucharest’s bid to join NATO at the time prevented it from asking the US about the purposes of the sites.
The sites in question were called “transit centers” and Romania was unaware of whether they were used for detention, Ioan Talpes, who headed Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service from 2000 to 2004, told the daily Adevarul in a video interview posted online on Saturday.
“The Romanian side was not interested in what the Americans were doing, purposely to show them that they could trust us,” said Talpes.
AFP cited the interview, in which Talpes specifically stressed that at the time the decision was made, Bucharest was waiting to join NATO.
The ex-spy chief said talks on “sites that the Romanians would place at the disposal of CIA representatives” began after September 11, 2001.
“What is certain is that we were not aware of the presence of detainees,” Talpes insisted in the interview.
The US Senate report on torture, published earlier this week, revealed among other things that 119 people were captured and held in CIA detention sites hosted by other countries.
Although none of the countries were specifically named in the heavily redacted document, the list of those assumed to be mentioned includes Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand and Afghanistan.
Romania’s president at the time, Ion Iliescu, denied earlier this week any knowledge of the so-called “black sites” in the country, AFP reports.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta said questions about the sites should be addressed to the Foreign Ministry, which hasn’t as yet commented on the issue.
Poland earlier confirmed that it housed a facility that was used to interrogate Al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2003.
In July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Poland violated an international treaty to protect human rights by hosting secret CIA prisons.
ECHR also ordered Warsaw to pay €230,000 to two former secret facility detainees. Poland is appealing the decision.
The ruling, meanwhile, could serve as a precedent for other European states alleged to have hosted CIA prisons. Romania and Lithuania have similar cases filed against them with the ECHR.
READ MORE:
CIA torture far exceeded waterboarding, brought suspects ‘to point of death’
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.
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.
No 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.
Rousseff hails unveiling of Brazilian torture report
The BRICS Post | December 11, 2014
Brazilian national Truth Commission’s report presented to President Dilma Rousseff moved her to tears as it published accounts of torture, killings and disappearances during two decades of military rule from 1964-85.
“I am very proud to be here, because the people here contributed to combat the violation of human rights,” Rousseff said during an emotional speech at the ceremony on Wednesday.
“We, who so love democracy, hope that the wide circulation of this report helps to reaffirm the priority that we must give to upholding democratic liberties. In this way, we must show our absolute aversion to authoritarian states and dictatorships of any kind,” President Rousseff said.
Rousseff is a former leftist guerrilla once imprisoned and tortured by the country’s military regime. The report has identified 377 people of committing “crimes against humanity”, 200 of whom are still alive.
“This is a key step in the right direction for Brazilians: knowing their history they can build a better society,” Rousseff tweeted on Wednesday.
The Brazilian leader has alluded to her past imprisonment and physical torture under the military dictatorship during the presidential campaigning this year.
“I have come up against hugely difficult situations in my life, including attacks which took me to the limit physically. Nothing knocked me out of my stride,” said Rousseff.
Hundreds of Brazilians were murdered and thousands were tortured by the Brazilian military rule but the Latin American nation has never put anyone on trial for the murder and widespread torture of political dissidents during its dictatorship.
In 1979 the Brazilian army pushed an amnesty law to shield themselves from future prosecutions through the Brazilian Congress.
The report released on Wednesday has identified Germany’s Volkswagen AG as one of several foreign companies that provided the Brazilian military with lists and accounts of union activists.
Brazil is seeking a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and was this week voted in with a majority to the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).
The vote marked the first time a Latin American country was admitted to the agency’s top consultative body, which advises on “key strategic decisions,” said the UNRWA.
Obama Administration Fights to Keep Details of Justice Department Torture Report Secret
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | December 12, 2014
While the media parsed the details of the Senate committee’s report on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torturing of detainees last decade, the Obama administration was fighting in court to prevent documents from another investigation into the spy agency’s program from being examined by a leading national newspaper.
The New York Times has sued in federal court to obtain thousands of pages from a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the torture of detainees by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. The materials that the newspaper wants to see include “10 reports and memorandums totaling 1,719 pages — more than three times the number of pages in the Senate report,” wrote the Times’ Charlie Savage, who is a party to the lawsuit. The documents in question include transcripts of interviews by a special prosecutor with about 100 witnesses as well as documents explaining why no charges were ever filed.
The Justice probe into the CIA program was conducted by prosecutor John H. Durham, who spent four years delving into the controversy but ultimately recommended to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to not file charges against the agency or any of its employees or contractors. Holder followed Durham’s suggestion and refrained from going after the CIA.
The Justice Department filed court documents on the same day that the Senate Intelligence Committee released its 524-page report on the CIA’s rendition and torture program. It argued in its filing with the New York federal court that all of the pages requested by the Times should remain locked away “because disclosing them could affect the candor of law enforcement deliberations about whether to bring criminal charges,” according to Savage.
To Learn More:
U.S. Tells Court That Documents From Torture Investigation Should Remain Secret (by Charlie Savage, New York Times )
New York Times v. Department of Justice (U.S. District Court, Southern New York)
Judge Gives Obama Administration until December to Justify Withholding 2,100 Photos of U.S. Use of Torture in Iraq and Afghanistan (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
Obama Refuses to Turn Over 9,400 CIA Torture and Interrogation Documents to Congress (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )
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Trans agenda is ‘normalization of sadism’ – US author
RT | September 23, 2026
The US Democratic Party has embraced a transgender agenda that amounts to “the normalization of sadism,” author A.J. Rice has said, warning that radical trans policies would return if the party is allowed to regain power.
Speaking to RT’s America First host Scotty Nell Hughes about his new book, ‘The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity’, Rice argued that activists have gained significant influence in schools, medicine, and corporate America while people who questioned the agenda have faced pressure to stay silent.
The author described the “trans mafia” as the sprawling network of people and institutions that have helped the movement gain influence. He singled out parts of academia, wealthy backers, and corporations, and stated that providers of transition-related treatment also have a financial incentive to keep young people in their care indefinitely.
Rice argued that the consequences of these policies ultimately fall on children who are being drawn toward gender-affirming medical treatments and on girls who are expected to share locker rooms or compete in sports with biological males.
He noted that while voters rejected the Democrats’ approach to gender in 2024, the party, which has been “captured by madness,” has since only doubled down and is seeking what is effectively “the normalization of sadism.” … Full report
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