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Introducing Alfreda Bikowsky: Senior officer at the CIA and otherwise known as "The unidentified Queen of torture"

Glenn Greenwald and Peter Maass
The Intercept
Fri, 19 Dec 2014 12:28 UTC
Image
© Sergey Petrov / shutterstock
NBC News yesterday called her a "key apologist" for the CIA's torture program. A follow-up New Yorker article dubbed her "The Unidentified Queen of Torture" and in part "the model for the lead character in 'Zero Dark Thirty.'" Yet in both articles she was anonymous.

The person described by both NBC and The New Yorker is senior CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. Multiple news outlets have reported that as the result of a long string of significant errors and malfeasance, her competence and integrity are doubted - even by some within the agency.

The Intercept is naming Bikowsky over CIA objections because of her key role in misleading Congress about the agency's use of torture, and her active participation in the torture program (including playing a direct part in the torture of at least one innocent detainee). Moreover, Bikowsky has already been publicly identified by news organizations as the CIA officer responsible for many of these acts.

The executive summary of the torture report released by the Senate last week provides abundant documentation that the CIA repeatedly and deliberately misled Congress about multiple aspects of its interrogation program. Yesterday, NBC News reported that one senior CIA officer in particular was responsible for many of those false claims, describing her as "a top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA."
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Airplane

Oswald and Atta: Erratic, protected, seeking attention -- CIA patsies

Kevin Ryan
Dig Within
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 01:34 UTC
Image

Atta and Oswald: CIA suckers.
Graeme MacQueen's new book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, reveals stunning links between the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks that immediately followed. The book also reviews some of the interesting actions taken by alleged hijacker leader, Mohamed Atta, in the years preceding 9/11. These actions suggest that Atta was trying to leave the people he encountered with memories that would support the official myth. In the few years before JFK's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald engaged in similar attention-seeking actions. Considering this leads to the discovery that Oswald and Atta had a lot in common.

The legend of Mohamed Atta describes a man who seemed to be everywhere at once. In just the two years before 9/11, Atta reportedly lived and/or plotted in Germany, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan (via Turkey and Pakistan), Oklahoma, Las Vegas, Spain, and numerous locations in Florida. Oswald also traveled extensively in the years before the JFK assassination - back and forth from California to Japan, to New Orleans, Dallas, and Fort Worth, to Mexico City, and to Minsk and Moscow.

Comment: In case anyone is still wondering, Al-Qaeda was and is 100% made in America. Using fronts like those provided by Fethullah Gulen and others, the CIA trains, funds, and directs operatives under the "Islamic terrorist" moniker. (Also listen to last weekend's episode of The Truth Perspective on the SOTT Radio Network for more on Gulen's operation.) Those operatives in turn train and recruit patsies who actually believe they are doing "God's will" -- well, apparently God is an American, and he works for the CIA. These patsies are then sent on "missions" planned by their CIA handlers, or they are coerced into taking part in 'drills', in which they and others are killed, providing the necessary spectacle to keep the 'strategy of tension' in operation.

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Boat

The blackmail 'reparations' continue: Germany to finance Israeli military


Yahoo! News
Mon, 15 Dec 2014 15:42 UTC
Image
© Kockums
Your ancestors killed some of our ancestors: therefore give us weapons so we can kill other people.
Germany plans to finance part of the cost of four new corvette warships for the Israeli navy made by German firm Thyssen Krupp under a deal struck with the Jewish state in November, the government said on Monday.

Following approval by German parliament's budget committee the contract could be finalised before the end of this year, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

As part of its atonement for the Nazi Holocaust, Germany is committed to Israel's security and has often helped pay for the cost of military equipment such as submarines.

The mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday that Berlin had earmarked up to 115 million euros for the warships -- which would cost around 1 billion euros in total.

Seibert declined comment on the size of the German contribution.

Comment: The Holocaust was 70 years ago. Just as the U.S. keeps EU countries in line via blackmail, so does the Mossad. That's the only rational explanation for this ludicrous policy. It's only a matter of time before the world turns on the psychopathic nation of Israel for its gangster tactics and genocidal mentality.

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Light Sabers

Erdogan tells EU to 'mind own business' over Turkey arrests

Stuart Williams and Fulya Ozerkan
Yahoo! News
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Erdogan
© Adem Altan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday told the European Union to "mind its own business", in a blistering attack against the bloc over criticism by EU officials of police raids against opposition media.

Turkey has come under fire over the arrests Sunday of over two dozen journalists, television producers, police and even TV drama scriptwriters linked to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who has emerged as Erdogan's arch-foe.

Comment: One more leader who has the courage to stand up to the Anglo-American empire.

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Light Sabers

NSA and Electronic Frontier Foundation to square off in court over internet surveillance


RT
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Electronic frontier Foundation
© Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach
A digital rights group in the United States plans to argue in federal court this week that the National Security Agency's internet surveillance operations violate the US Constitution's ban against unlawful searches and seizures.

Six years after the Electronic Frontier Foundation brought suit against the NSA on behalf of a former AT&T customer, Carolyn Jewel, US District Court Judge Jeffrey White for the Northern District of California will hear an EFF attorney argue on Friday for summary judgment and attest that the intelligence agency's data collection methods breach the Constitution's Fourth Amendment clauses intended to protect private information.

Filed back in 2008, the EFF's fight against the NSA long predates the public's awareness of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about the agency's surveillance operations in 2013 and has since been charged with espionage and theft by the US Department of Justice. The disclosures attributed to Snowden and subsequent admissions from the intelligence community have in the past year provided the EFF and others with ample fodder to plead their cases against the government, however, and on Friday, Judge White is expected to be told by the group that the operations of the NSA as they're known today are unconstitutional.

Comment: It may be a long battle, but we can't forget how Aaron Swartz spearheaded a successful campaign that stopped the internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA).

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Binoculars

Jon Stewart: Dick Cheney is a psychopath

Jenée Desmond-Harris
Vox
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:42 UTC
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On Sunday's Meet The Press, former Vice President Dick Cheney stubbornly - and, many would argue, illogically - defended the controversial CIA interrogation techniques that were the subject of a recent horrifying report. In part, he seemed to insist that they should not be labeled torture, despite the Senate Intelligence Committee's conclusions, because only the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States deserve that label.


Comment: Finally, finally, after 13 years of SOTT.net sounding like a broken record player, someone with a mainstream audience spells it out: Dick Cheney is a psychopath.

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SOTT Logo Radio

Behind the Headlines: Year in Review: 2014


Sott.net
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 19:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Welcome to the radio network of SOTT.net, your media source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. Each Sunday on the SOTT Radio Network, SOTT.net editors Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley host the Behind the Headlines talkshow, analyzing global impact events that shape our world and future. Connecting the dots to reveal the bigger picture obscured by mainstream programming, Behind the Headlines is current affairs for people who think.

From the crisis in Ukraine to the ISIS in Iraq, from increasingly extreme weather to surviving in a world ruled by psychopaths, your hosts, their colleagues (and occasional guests) explore the deeper truths driving world events by exposing the manipulations behind what passes for 'news'. In this final show of the year, your hosts and their colleagues will be taking a look back at events in 2014 and considering what 2015 holds in store.

Running Time: 02:22:00

Download: MP3

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Gear

Lukashenko says Belarus is ready to help Ukraine


ITARR-TASS
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 17:51 UTC
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
© Michail Metsel/TASS
Belarus is ready to offer support to Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday at a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko.

"I want everything in Ukraine to be well. Many interpret it as some kind of games. I know you are not among them," the Belarusian news agency BELTA quoted Lukashenko as saying. "That is why, and I have told you this before: if you want anything from Belarus, just say it, we will give you anything you might ask in just a day."

"I am telling it openly, we have always done everything the Ukrainian president asked us. And we will continue that way," Lukashenko said.

"This is not a game for us. Not just because of trade but because we are neighbours, we live side by side, we are kinsfolk," he added.

The Ukrainian president, in turn, said he hoped the Minsk talks on the settlement in eastern Ukraine would proceed as energetically as they had started. He said that thanks to "efficient cooperation" with the Belarusian side "such terms as the 'Minsk format,' the 'Minsk memorandum,' the 'Minsk protocol,' and the 'Minsk agreements' are part of the history of diplomacy now."

Comment: Lukashenko's statement of helping Ukraine with anything is pretty wide open to interpretation. However it doesn't appear this includes any military assistance.

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Eye 2

CIA 'enhanced interrogation' vs. ISIS torture: See if you can tell the difference

Jared Keller
Mic
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 15:04 UTC
Abu Ghraib prison
© AP
A file photo of renovated Abu Ghraib prison, now renamed Baghdad Central Prison, Iraq.
It's been a big week for abhorrent torture manifestos.

On Tuesday, the Senate released its much-anticipated report outlining the CIA's brutal post-9/11 torture program. A few days before, the Islamic State (IS) group released what appears to be an "abhorrent" pamphlet to its followers with guidelines on how to capture, keep and sexually abuse female slaves, a reminder of the militant group's vicious tactics. Both document are testaments to the brutality of the war on terror, from the CIA interrogators fighting to "save American lives" to IS waging a bloody war against the West.

What's even more disturbing is how accounts of CIA and Islamic State torture - from the Senate report for the former and months of news reports from the latter - are, at times, virtually indistinguishable from one another. Speaking on the Senate floor after the release of the CIA torture report, Sen. John McCain passionately asserted that "our enemies act without conscience. We must not." As it turns out, that moment is long past.

Read the 13 torture accounts below see for yourself:

1. Prisoners were "routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding."

2. The waterboarding of one prized prisoner devolved into a "series of near drownings," where the process induced convulsions and vomiting.

3. Prisoners were subjected to "rectal rehydration" or "rectal feeding."

4. Interrogators "chained [a prisoner's] feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there."

5. Prisoners were forcefully kept awake, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.

6. Detainees "were starved and threatened with execution by one group ... only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them."

7. Prisoners were subjected to extended isolation and experienced "hallucinations, paranoia and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation."

Comment: ISIS was, in part, trained and funded by the CIA. So it's really no wonder that both groups employ the same tactics.

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Eye 1

The government is spying on you - What's the big deal?

Scott Lazarowitz
LewRockwell.com
Sat, 20 Dec 2014 17:00 UTC
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Recent polls show that, despite the Senate's torture report, most Americans still support the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture on suspects. Obviously the mainstream media misinform the public, neglecting to tell them that such torture techniques do not even produce reliable information and are mainly used to extract false confessions from innocent detainees.

And on the National Security Agency's spying on innocent Americans, people love it, and then they hate it, and now they're back to loving it again. Alas, Most people are ignorant of the actual criminality being committed by the federal goons.

Comment: It's the old argument: "If you have nothing to hide ...", but only the most gullible and naive (or corrupt) people really believe that. Imagine your neighbour having full access to your home, laptop, email, etc. Would you tolerate that?

Certainly not!

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