Puppet MastersS


USA

Pentagon investigating link between U.S. military and torture centres in Iraq

Ewen MacAskill and Mona Mahmood
Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:37 UTC
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Defense Department says 'it will take time' to respond to 15-month investigation by BBC Arabic and the Guardian

The Pentagon is investigating allegations linking the US military to human rights abuses in Iraq by police commando units who operated a network of detention and torture centres.

A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic, published on Wednesday, disclosed that the US sent a veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee Iraqi commando units involved in some of the worst acts of torture during the American-led occupation.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses, implicate US advisers for the first time in these human rights abuses. It is also the first time that the then US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, has been linked through an adviser to the abuses.

Colonel Jack Wesley, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Guardian on Thursday: "Obviously we have seen the reports and we are currently looking into the situation."
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Eye 1

U.S. dismisses claims that CIA gave Chávez cancer as 'absurd'

Rory Carroll
Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:48 UTC
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© Presidency Of Venezuela/ Presidency of Venezuela/Xinhua Press/CorbisNicolas Maduro, left, repeated claims Hugo Chávez was poisoned by the US.
Venezuelan general claims history will reveal plot to poison fallen comrade as vice-president calls for investigation

Conspiracy theorists who wonder about aliens at Roswell and Nasa faking the moon landings have a new issue to ponder: did the CIA murder Hugo Chávez?

The claim has acquired supporters since Venezuela's vice-president, Nicolas Maduro, floated it after announcing Chávez's death on Tuesday following a two-year battle with cancer.

General José Ornella, the head of the presidential guard, told AP: "I think it will be 50 years before they declassify a document [that] I think [will show] the hand of the enemy is involved."

Eva Golinger, a Caracas-based America attorney and pro-government activist, told the local paper Ultimas Noticias the US had tried to assassinate Cuba's former president Fidel Castro with radiation, among other methods, and that there was circumstantial evidence of a plot against Chavez. "We can only imagine the weapons capacity the US possesses today. They have used different biological weapons against their adversaries."
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USA

Bin Laden son-in-law detained in Jordan over links to al-Qaida


Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:48 UTC
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© MBC/AFPSuleiman Abu Ghaith.
US government sources said Suleiman Abu Ghaith had appeared in al-Qaida videos praising the 9/11 attacks

A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who served as al-Qaida's spokesman has been detained in Jordan, US government sources said on Thursday.

The sources said Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a militant who had appeared in videos representing al-Qaida after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, had initially been picked up in Turkey.

The Turkish government then deported him to Jordan, said the sources, where local authorities and the FBI took custody of him.

Initial public confirmation of Abu Ghaith's capture came from Peter King, a senior Republican member of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, and former chairman of the House committee on homeland security.
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USA

Reconciliation in Iraq is impossible without U.S. truth about its dirty war

Ben Emmerson
Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:37 UTC
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© Karim Kadim/APA guard escorts suspected terrorists at the police headquarters in Baghdad, 2008.
America's claim to have helped Iraq to democracy is hollow until the US makes Bush era officials accountable for torture

The investigation by the Guardian and the BBC into direct Pentagon involvement in the systematic torture of Sunni insurgents in Iraq is a bloody reminder of the catastrophe that the 2003 invasion wreaked on the people of Iraq. It also a key reason behind the decade of sectarian violence the war has left in its wake.

After a decade of the most extreme bloodshed on both sides, the Sunni minority is now asserting its collective muscle in an organised fashion under the leadership of figures such as the Sunni scholar Abdul-Malik al-Saadi. The immediate reason for this upsurge in confidence among the Sunnis of Iraq is not hard to find.

The rebellion in neighbouring Syria, which began as essentially secular resistance movement, has attracted Sunni extremist groups from across the globe in support of the effort to bring down President Assad. Armed by regional troika of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they are now about to be provided with military support by the west, including Britain, in an echo of the strategy under which western countries provided firepower to support the Islamist rebel forces in Libya.

This, in turn, has emboldened the Sunni minority, comprising a fifth of Iraq's population, which has been holding large-scale public demonstrations. Their attempt to mount a cross-sectarian challenge to the government in Baghdad has also attracted the support of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Meanwhile, the remnant of al-Qaida in Iraq has been attempting to use the protests as cover for a highly incendiary campaign inciting Sunnis to take up arms against the regime.
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Bad Guys

UN expands North Korea sanctions after U.S. warning over nuclear threat

Tania Branigan and Ewen MacAskill
Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:31 UTC
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© Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesUN ambassador Susan Rice votes at a security council meeting on imposing a fourth round of sanctions against North Korea.
UN resolution condemns third nuclear test 'in the strongest possible terms' and warns the North against further provocations

The United Nations security council has voted unanimously to punish North Korea for last month's nuclear test with a toughened sanctions regime, hours after Pyongyang threatened to unleash a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.

Secretary general Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, said the resolution "sent an unequivocal message to [the North] that the international community will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons".

The decision by the 15-member council followed lengthy negotiations between the United States and China, the North's main ally. Measures range from tightened financial restrictions to cargo inspections and an explicit ban on exports of yachts and racing cars to the North, but experts say the real issue is enforcement.

China's UN ambassador Li Baodong said Beijing, Pyongyang's main trading partner, wanted to see "full implementation" of the resolution.

Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told reporters that the measures would "bite hard". She added: "North Korea will achieve nothing by continued threats and provocations."
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Snakes in Suits

Rand Paul anti-drone filibuster draws stinging criticism from Republicans

Paul Harris
Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:26 UTC
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© AP'I would go for another 12 hours ... but I've discovered that there are some limits to filibustering,' said Paul, drawing his speech to a close.
John McCain claims Paul's effort - in which he held the Senate floor for nearly 13 hours - was 'distortion of the threats we face'

Senator Rand Paul's extraordinary talking filibuster to halt the appointment of new CIA chief John Brennan, due to his concerns over American use of drones, on Thursday drew withering attack from senior members of his own Republican party.

Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, had held the Senate floor for almost 13 hours in a dramatic effort to ratchet up the drones debate.

Paul was particularly exercised about the question of whether the US government believed it could use drones against its own citizens on American soil. But that point of view clearly angered Arizona senator John McCain, like Brennan a keen supporter of drones.

Speaking in the Senate, McCain said Paul's filibuster had been a "distortion of the realities of the threats we face. It is not a mature discussion."

McCain was joined by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who put up a sign on the Senate floor with figures saying that al-Qaida had killed 2,958 US citizens in America, while drones had killed none. "To take this debate into the absurd is what I object to," Graham said.
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Megaphone

GM Seeds and the militarization of food - and everything else

Jon Letman
Truth-out.org
Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:08 UTC
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© Kai MarkellVandana Shiva in Hawaii.
Indian physicist and philosopher, activist and ecofeminist pioneer Vandana Shiva talks with Truthout in Hawaii about GMO, the militarization of agriculture, the politics of occupation and the primacy of biodiversity.

Foot soldiers in the battle against corporate globalization and the privatization of commons like land and water have long been aware of Indian physicist and philosopher Dr. Vandana Shiva. An ecofeminist pioneer, today she is best known as an outspoken opponent of the GMOs (genetically modified organisms) being developed by transnational biotechnology and chemical corporations like Monsanto and Dow.

Shiva disputes the notion that patenting genes and controlling the world's seeds, and thus much of its food supply, will better serve humanity. Biotech companies claim their genetically engineered (GE) crops are able to withstand threats from insects, disease, and man-made pesticides and herbicides while making a serious contribution to feeding an increasingly hungry world.
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Eye 2

Israeli security forces spray raw sewage at Palestinian homes


Middle East Monitor
Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:56 UTC
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Palestinian homes sprayed with sewage as a punishment for organising protests against the Apartheid Wall .
Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with raw sewage as a punishment for organising weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied West Bank land. Human rights watchdog B'Tselem published a video showing Israel's armoured tanker trucks fitted with "water cannons" which spray the foul fluid at Palestinian protesters.
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Snakes in Suits

SOTT Focus: Dr. Heinrich Gross: A perfectly psychopathic doctor


Sott.net
Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:57 UTC
Heinrich Gross SA
© ORF/3satNazi Doctor Heinrich Gross in the illegal SA at the beginning of his life-long career as chief physician and court expert on psychopathology
Filmmaker Andreas Nowak's excellent documentary, Ein ganz normaler Arzt ('A perfectly normal doctor'), dealing with crimes committed during the Second World War, won the Austrian Dr. Karl Renner Prize for Journalism in 2000. We are making this documentary available to a wider audience, complete with English subtitles, because it so clearly illustrates some of the important concepts put forward by Andrzej Lobaczewski in his ground-breaking work on psychopathy and psychopaths in power, Political Ponerology.

A Perfectly Normal Doctor


Nowak's film exposes the systematic practice of euthanasia - so-called "assisted death" - on disabled babies and children that took place during the Second World War. While there were undoubtedly many physicians and nurses involved in such crimes throughout the Third Reich, A Perfectly Normal Doctor focuses on Nazi doctor and psychologist Heinrich Gross, who was at one time in charge of an Austrian hospital where 800 children were killed. Only two cases were ever brought against Gross: one a few years after the end of World War II which resulted in a conviction for manslaughter but which was later overturned on a technicality, and another in 2005, 6 months before his death, where the case was dismissed on the grounds that Gross was suffering from dementia. After his crimes, Gross enjoyed a 50-year-long, high-profile career as a court-appointed expert in psychopathology.

What makes this documentary particularly important is that it not only exposes the pathological nature of the Nazi regime but also the 'Western liberal democracy' that came afterwards, which allowed 'ex-Nazis' like Gross to retain (or continue their rise into) positions of power over others.
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Stormtrooper

Sixty killed in Malaysian raid on Filipino militants


Times of India
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:29 UTC
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Protesters are pushed back by police after breaking through security outside the Presidential Palace in Manila, Philippines.
Malaysia said clashes between intruding Filipino militants and its security forces had left 60 people dead as of late Thursday, as it rejected a ceasefire offer from the fighters' leader.

Police chief Ismail Omar said 32 followers of a self-proclaimed Philippine sultan had been killed in two confrontations since Wednesday near the scene of a three-week standoff in Sabah state, after a military assault to dislodge them.

That brought the total dead to 60, including 52 militants. Eight Malaysian policemen were killed in skirmishes last weekend.

Troops and police are currently hunting the Islamic militants in a remote region of Borneo island, where they landed last month to assert a long-dormant territorial claim in what has become Malaysia's worst security crisis in years.

A spokesman for their Manila-based leader, who called for a midday ceasefire, said 235 people including eight women took part in the original incursion.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, who flew to the region Thursday to inspect security operations, said he told Philippine leader Benigno Aquino by phone the ceasefire offer was rejected.
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