Taxi driver freed from Guantanamo Bay after 17 years of brutal torture with no charges
FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Lucas Jackson; (inset) An official Guantanamo Bay photograph of Ahmed Rabbani. © US Department of Defense
RT | October 24, 2021
A Pakistani taxi driver will leave US detention at Guantanamo Bay after 17 years behind bars. Mistaken for a wanted terrorist, the man suffered horrific torture in American custody, despite never being charged with any crime.
Ahmed Rabbani’s release was announced on Friday by Reprieve, a human rights NGO. Rabbani had been unanimously cleared for release by the prison’s Periodic Review Board, made up of senior officials from six US agencies, including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.
Rabbani’s journey through the underbelly of the US’ post-9/11 security infrastructure began in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Mistaken for wanted terrorist Hassan Ghul, the taxi driver was arrested by Pakistani authorities outside Ghul’s apartment complex and sold to American personnel in the country.
Information gleaned from an associate of Rabbani arrested on the same day was used to arrest several suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, including a supposed member of Osama Bin Laden’s security detail. However, Rabbani was never charged with any crime, and is not believed to be involved in terrorism.
Nevertheless, he spent more than 545 days after his arrest being tortured in a CIA ‘black site’ in Afghanistan. The torture inflicted there on Rabbani was detailed in the US Senate’s 2014 torture report, and included long periods of being shackled with his hands outstretched over his head, an agonizing position that led Rabbani to try to cut off his own hand to end the pain.
Testimony from multiple detainees held in the same CIA prison describes permanent darkness, cells flooded with excrement and infested with vermin, beatings, sleep deprivation, being buried in simulated graves, being stripped naked and doused with cold water, and being denied bathing facilities for months on end.
According to Reprieve, Rabbani’s interrogators knew that “they had the wrong man,” but tortured him anyway. After more than a year in the CIA facility, Rabbani was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp on US territory in Cuba. He would spend the next 17 years there, without a charge or trial date.
His case attracted international attention, and in 2018, Rabbani wrote an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times describing physical and sexual abuse by guards, force-feeding, and repeated hunger strikes to protest the conditions of his imprisonment. At the time of the op-ed, Rabbani said that he was suffering from “stomach problems so acute that I cannot consume hard food without vomiting blood,” and was being denied digestible food.
Conditions in Guantanamo chipped away at Rabbani’s mental health. “There is no morning and no evening,” he wrote. “There is only despair.”
“Ahmed’s clearance is long overdue,” said Reprieve attorney Mark Maher. “For those of us who have supported him, the feeling is one of relief, tempered with sadness for all he has lost… but we won’t celebrate until he is back with his family in Pakistan and able to hug his 19-year-old son for the first time.”
Of the 780 people detained in Guantanamo Bay since the facility opened in 2002, 732 have been transferred elsewhere or released, 38 remain there, and nine have died in custody. President Joe Biden has promised to close the notorious prison before he leaves office, a promise that was made, but not kept, by his former boss Barack Obama.
Viral Tweet Opposing ‘Herd Immunity’ Gets Pretty Much Everything Wrong
By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • October 22, 2021
In a recent viral tweet, the anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham criticised the Government’s initial Covid strategy (which, as we know, was later ditched in favour of lockdowns).
I’m no defender of the Government’s response to the pandemic, but it’s hard to imagine a more wrong-headed criticism than this. Indeed, it’s impressive how many fallacies Maugham managed to pack into 280 characters.
First: “Herd immunity”. As the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration have tirelessly pointed out, describing any response to the pandemic as a ‘herd immunity strategy’ is like describing a pilot’s plan to land a plane as a ‘gravity strategy’. Given that Covid cannot be eliminated, herd immunity will eventually be reached, regardless of what we do.
The goal of any plan to address Covid, write Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, “should be to minimise disease mortality and the collateral harms from the plan itself, while managing the build-up of immunity in the population.”
Second, the implication of Maugham’s tweet is that the Government’s initial strategy was motivated by Conservative ideology, and that the alternative – lockdown – is what’s backed by science.
Yet, as I and others have pointed out, it’s actually lockdown that deviates substantially from the pre-Covid consensus. Indeed, the UK’s pandemic preparedness plan does not even mention the term. And in 2019, the WHO classified “quarantine of exposed individuals” as “not recommended under any circumstances”.
Given that the first lockdown was implemented by a communist one-party state, and that subsequent lockdowns were imposed with almost no prior discussion, it would make more sense to say lockdown was motivated by ideology.
Third, the virus does not “target” working class and poorer people, while leaving Etonians and bankers unscathed. It is not some pathogenic agent of class warfare.
If “target” is taken to mean “infect”, then the virus targets people who aren’t immune to it. And if “target” is taken to mean “kill”, then it would be most accurate to say the virus targets the old and the immunocompromised. After all, these groups account for the overwhelming majority of deaths.
Now, it’s true that death rates have been higher in working class occupations, as I noted in a previous post. But this is far more plausibly due to lockdown than to the Government’s initial strategy, which was in any case abandoned in March of 2020.
As the art critic J. J. Charlesworth quipped, “There was never any lockdown. There was just middle-class people hiding while working-class people brought them things.” Middle-class people like Jolyon Maugham, I might add.
Millions Of Americans Are Getting Fired For Not Taking A Jab That’s Now 3% Effective
By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | October 19, 2021
CNN is reporting that a new study involving over 600,000 veterans has found that Johnson & Johnson’s covid vaccine’s protection “fell from 88% in March to 3% in August.”
“A study published Thursday reported a steep decline in vaccine effectiveness against infection by August of this year, especially for people who received the J&J vaccine,” CNN reported over the weekend. “The researchers found that among more than 600,000 veterans, J&J’s vaccine’s protection fell from 88% in March to 3% in August.”
As there are no requirements (yet) that people be triple-jabbed — or double-jabbed in the case of J&J’s shot — this means millions of Americans are getting fired for not having taken a shot that’s now 3% effective.
On the flip side, we know from another Israeli study that “vaccinated individuals had 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease,” as epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff noted.
That Israeli study, which was done between June 1 and August 14, involved only Pfizer recipients.
The new study of vets in America showed that Pfizer’s effectiveness declined to 50% in August from 91% and Moderna’s fell to 64% from 92%. That suggests natural immunity is now more than a hundred times more effective than J&J’s vaccine, yet the federal government and most companies do not even recognize natural immunity as a justification not to get vaxxed.
They insist you take some experimental jab — any jab at all now that the FDA has endorsed mixing and matching vaccines for “boosters” — or get fired from your job.
Meanwhile, the FDA is approving the rollout of boosters despite little to no data showing their effectiveness based off “gut feeling” rather than data.
Israel outlaws 6 Palestinian human rights groups
MEMO | October 22, 2021
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz today declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups terrorist organisations which funnel donor money to outlawed groups.
Under the ruling, the work of Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Busan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees has been banned. Gantz said the groups have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group banned by the Israeli occupation.
The groups, which document alleged human rights violations by Israeli occupation forces and authorities and the Palestinian Authority (PA) against Palestinians, include Addameer, which represents Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli military courts, and Defense for Children-International, a group that advocates for Palestinian children.
“[The] declared organisations received large sums of money from European countries and international organisations, using a variety of forgery and deceit,” Gantz said, alleging the money had supported PFLP’s activities.
Addameer and another of the groups, Defense for Children International – Palestine, rejected the accusations as an “attempt to eliminate Palestinian civil society.”
“They may be able to close us down. They can seize our funding. They can arrest us. But they cannot stop our firm and unshakeable belief that this occupation must be held accountable for its crimes,” Al-Haq Director Shawan Jabarin told the Times of Israel.
The designations authorise Israeli authorities to close the groups’ offices, seize their assets, arrest their staff in the occupied West Bank and ban supporting their activities.
The United Nations Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories said it was “alarmed” at the announcement.
“Counter-terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work,” it said, adding that some of the reasons given appeared vague or irrelevant.
“These designations are the latest development in a long stigmatising campaign against these and other organisations, damaging their ability to deliver on their crucial work,” it said.
An official with the PFLP said they maintain relations with civil society organisations across the West Bank and Gaza, without specific mention of the six bodies in this ruling, Reuters reports.
“It is part of the rough battle Israel is launching against the Palestinian people and against civil society groups, in order to exhaust them,” PFLP official Kayed Al-Ghoul said.
In a joint statement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International said the “decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organisations.”
“Silencing, intimidating & criminalizing #Palestinian civil society org’s & human rights defenders are #Israel‘s way of covering up its abuses while maintaining its impunity. It’s the occupation that must be held to account,” wrote Palestinian diplomat Hanan Ashrawi on Twitter.
The decision comes just four days after Israel revoked the residency of Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri from his hometown of Jerusalem on the basis of “breach of allegiance” to the state, paving the way for his forced deportation from his homeland. Hamouri, the son of a Palestinian father and French mother, is a prominent lawyer and human rights advocate for Addameer.
Six Questions to Ask Before Deciding Whether to Comply With Mask Mandates
All the reasons why mask mandates shouldn’t be reimposed
By Dr. Gary Sidley • The Daily Sceptic • October 20, 2021
On the July 19th 2021, England removed almost all its legal mandates that required healthy people to wear face coverings in community settings. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, opted to retain their mask mandates, as did London on its public transport system. Ominously, the Government’s Covid strategy for this winter includes the prospect of a ‘Plan B’ that could see the return of compulsory face masks in indoor settings in England. After a few months of bare-faced normality, how will the general public react to future directives to muzzle up?
Smile Free – a campaign group seeking the permanent removal of all mask mandates – urges each person to consider the responses to the following six questions before deciding whether to hide your face again.
Q1. Do masks help reduce viral spread?
Although some studies claim otherwise, the real-world evidence strongly suggests that masking the healthy does not significantly reduce the spread of respiratory viruses for neither the wearer nor others. Key reasons for this lack of efficacy are likely to include the improper use and storage of masks in the real world and the growing recognition that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19) is spread via microscopic aerosol particles that are far too small to be kept at bay by face coverings.
Q2. Will wearing a mask cause me any physical harm?
If worn only for short periods, significant physical harms from wearing a mask are unlikely. However, there is evidence that long term use can lead to a number of negative consequences, including: headaches, skin irritation, fatigue and dehydration, reduced heart and lung efficiency and eye irritation. In addition, face coverings may put elderly people at more risk of injury from falls.
Q3. Do masks cause any social or psychological harms?
The social and psychological consequences of hiding our faces from other people are profound. Humans are social animals. We need to interact with others and communicate to sustain our wellbeing. Face coverings are dehumanising, inhibiting all forms of emotional expression and social interaction. Individuality minimised, identity hidden, the masked population appear broadly the same as they trudge along in their social vacuums. The impact of a masked population on children is even more problematic, denying them access to facial expressions that are so crucial for their emotional development.
Q4. Will wearing a mask help to reassure others who are anxious?
Most definitely not. Acting as a crude, highly visible reminder that danger is all around, face coverings are fueling widespread anxiety. Fear is underpinned by a perception of threat and being masked is a blatant indicator that we are all bio-hazards. Furthermore, continuing to wear masks while we gradually try to return to normality will act to keep fear going, as the wearer may attribute their survival to the mask rather than conclude that it is now safe to return to everyday activities. To recommend face coverings as a source of reassurance is akin to insisting people wear a garlic clove around their necks to reduce their fear of vampires.
Q5. Under the law, do I have a ‘reasonable excuse’ not to wear a mask?
In general terms, if wearing a mask is likely to cause you ‘severe distress’, or put you ‘at risk of harm or injury’, you are legally exempt. Mental health problems (such as anxiety, depression, and paranoia) and physical health problems (such as asthma and other respiratory difficulties) are sufficient and lawful reasons not to wear a face covering. Furthermore, you are not obliged to disclose your specific reason for exemption to anybody other than an official enforcement officer (usually a police officer); any other person who challenges you about not wearing a face covering is likely to be acting unlawfully and thereby risking prosecution. Indeed, a service provider has been fined £7000 under the Discrimination Disability Act for denying access to a woman without a mask.
Q6. Do I risk being fined if I don’t wear a mask?
While it is possible that a fine could be imposed for not complying with a mask mandate, such an event seems rare. Thus, in the four-month period June-to-September 2020, only 89 fines were issued (61 on public transport, 28 in retail settings) across the whole of England and Wales. Furthermore, if you are unfortunate enough to receive a fine and decide to contest it in Court, it is highly likely you will succeed; according to figures produced by the Crown Prosecution Service, all charges under the Coronavirus Act have either been withdrawn in Court or quashed after innocent people were wrongfully indicted.
In conclusion, mandating masks for healthy people in their communities is irrational, counterproductive, unethical and ultimately unenforceable. To help continue the fight against legal requirements to wear face coverings, please consider joining our Smile Free campaign.
Deleted Government Report Celebrates How Public Loves to “Conform”
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | October 22, 2021
A deleted government report exploring how to make the public alter its behavior to accept the new ‘green economy’ reveals how COVID-19 restrictions have created a population with a “deep set reverence” for authority and a “powerful tendency to conform.”
The report was inadvertently published by the British government before being hastily pulled down, but numerous journalists were able to retrieve its contents.
The document explored how to weaponize behavioral psychology to ‘nudge’ the public into supporting measures and adopting behavior without them explicitly knowing they’re being manipulated.
The investigation found that the same techniques the government used to force people into accepting lockdown could be used to make them change their lifestyles in the name of preventing climate change.
Under the heading “principles for successful behaviour,” the paper noted;
“Government statements, actions and laws powerfully shape perceptions of normative and acceptable behaviour. For instance, even with public criticism being high, many still perceived government approval as the yardstick for safe behaviour during COVID-19 ‘we’re allowed to do this now [so must be safe]…’. This reveals, for many, a deep set reverence for legitimate government authority, regardless of one’s personal political views.”
While PR stunts such as having officials vaccinated live on television worked to convince people of the narrative, elite hypocrisy (public officials violating lockdown rules) was found to cause significant damage to public trust.
“Perceived hypocrisy can do a lot to undermine efforts to build public engagement and support. This was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic when prominent authority figures broke guidelines, leading to measurable reductions in public compliance as well as shifting attitudes.”
“Green politics has similar deep-seated reputational issues with elite hypocrisy,” notes Breitbart. “A common feature of climate change summits has been high-profile attendees arriving by private or government jet, a disconnect between word and deed that seems unlikely to vanish in the near term.”
The paper concluded that people can be rather easily “nudged” into changing their behavior in response to government announcements and “have a powerful tendency to conform.”
The investigation also found that even if enforced changes to lifestyle are not wanted by the public, most tend to fall in line with the new status quo rather quickly anyway.
The report was prepared by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a quasi-government body that was part of the effort to use “totalitarian” and “unethical” methods of instilling fear into the population as a means of scaring them into complying with lockdown rules.
A related group, the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours team, warned at the start of the first lockdown that a “substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened [by Covid-19].”
“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging,” the group added, leading to numerous lurid propaganda campaigns that exaggerated the threat of COVID to bully the public into total submission.
In summary, the public is largely unthinking, compliant and docile and can be made to go along with just about anything so long as they’re bombarded with the right propaganda.
Wonderful.
Italian Senator suspended for not showing vaccine passport
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 21, 2021
Protesters who have been gathering across Italy to support a campaign against introduction of vaccination certificates, known as “the green pass” in that country have some supporters in high places like senators and members of parliament (MPs).
One of them, Senator Laura Granato, has experienced first-hand what the new rules around Covid passes mean for gainfully employed persons who oppose them: she was suspended and left without her daily allowance for ten days for refusing to show the pass once inside the Senate building.
Granato first managed to get in, but was “reported” for deciding not to show the document. The senator was in this way prevented from taking part in a meeting that was discussing precisely the green passes, which became mandatory both for public and private sector workers on Friday.
These new, more restrictive measures have been described as “some of the toughest in the world,” while Granato echoed the sentiment of Italians opposed to them blasting the passes as “certificates of obedience.”
In Italy, the green pass is designed to show that a person has either been vaccinated, has tested negative (these tests are valid only for several days) or that they recently recovered from Covid. The government believes that mandating green passes for the workplace will boost the vaccine drive and avoid a repeat of lockdowns that have ravaged Italy’s economy over the past nearly two years of the pandemic.
But although many Italians are “obeying the certificates of obedience” – no doubt seeing no way out other than ultimately losing their livelihoods – many others remain defiant and indignant at the prospect, with thousands of dock workers in Trieste protesting over the weekend, along with others elsewhere in Italy.
And while over one million green passes were downloaded on the first working day that the new, tougher Covid restrictions came into force, they have so far failed to significantly increase the number of vaccinations.
Anti-Lockdown Protester Facing Multiple Prosecutions Needs Money to Pay For Legal Defence
By Toby Young • The Daily Sceptic • October 20, 2021
Debbie Hicks, the anti-lockdown protestor who was arrested after filming an apparently empty ward in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital at the end of last year, is facing four separate prosecutions in Magistrates’ Court – mainly for participating in anti-lockdown protests – and she needs to raise more funds to pay for her legal defence. The first case is due to be heard on November 16th and all four will be heard this winter. She has set up a CrowdJusice fundraiser that you can contribute to here.
Debbie’s solicitor plans to move on to the High Court if she loses in the Magistrates’ Court, or if the Magistrates’ Court says it doesn’t have the jurisdiction to consider her cases. That could be expensive, but the cause at stake could not be more important. Here is an extract from a note her solicitor sent to me:
These really are important cases in respect of Freedom of speech and Freedom to protest as:
- Success at the High Court will set a precedent that protest is not, and never has been, completely illegal during the pandemic – even under lockdown.
- Debbie suspects that the prosecution’s ultimate aim is to obtain a criminal behaviour order against her thereby chillingly curbing her ability to protest in the future.
- There are still a large number of other citizens across the country who are being ‘unlawfully’ prosecuted or have been convicted – a successful outcome at the High Court will lead to a landslide of other cases crumbling and open avenues of appeal to others already convicted.
- While the Crown Prosecution Service may try and quietly drop the odd case here and there after defence representations and arguments are filed, this will only occur when a prosecution lawyer reviews the case reasonably and objectively and properly analyses the law which is confusing and opaque – and, as Debbie has found, this is not easy to achieve. Success at the High Court will mean the CPS will have to blanket review all such cases and, with a legal precedent set, this will force the CPS to discontinue all remaining prosecutions.
- Many ordinary citizens without a previous blemish on their record will currently have criminal records because they’ve been convicted of these types of offences. Success in the High Court could lead to an avalanche of appeals and convictions being overturned.
- Success at the High Court will add clarity to the law that protesters have a reasonable excuse to gather and are not therefore committing an offence and cannot be directed to disperse or leave by the police.
- While the prohibition of protests has now been dropped, legislation can always be amended again in the future. Who knows if further lockdowns are on the horizon. We only have to look to Australia as an example of a government completely abusing its powers against its own citizens. Success at the High Court in Debbie’s case will make it harder for our Government to suspend the right to protest again.
Once again, if you’d like to make a contribution to Debbie’s fundraiser, you can find it here.
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From the Archives
Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Can the U.S. Afford to Annihilate Iran? /Seyed M. Marandi
- Elmo Sold mRNA Jabs to Your Toddler. Now They Are “Off-Label.”
- British state targets Palestine Action with yet another crooked trial
- Americans are paying the price to preserve Israel’s nuclear hegemony
- Resistance factions are necessary to ensure a permanent US Iraq withdrawal
- How Israel destabilizes the Middle East: Denying sovereignty and the right to exist
- Europe’s Establishment Is Embracing War – and Losing Voters
- NATO chief advocates war of aggression
- No Vote, No Representation, No State: Democracy, Israeli Style
- Zionist Bought Senate Blocks Information About American Citizens Killed By Israel
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- Inside Lebanon’s 200-page dossier on Israeli war crimes
- Flydubai, genocide, settler violence, Trump abuse of power to deport – Daily Update
- Counting Antisemitic Incidents: What the ADL Audit Reveals — and Obscures
- Mamdani releases plan to combat antisemitism and hate crimes in New York City
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Publish Letter to the American People
- DMFI launches $1 million ad campaign supporting Virginia’s Elaine Luria
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
