Puppet MastersS


Document

Flashback New document details arguments about torture at a JSOC prison

Jeff Kaye
My Firedog Lake.com
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:06 UTC
Image
© Shrieking TreeAmnesty International projection "Torture is Wrong" outside of the Newseum during the screening of Zero Dark Thirty in Washington DC.
Journalist Michael Otterman, author of the excellent book, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, was kind enough to forward to me some months ago a document he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. The document consists of the after-action reports made by Colonel Steven Kleinman and Terrence Russell, two of the three team members sent by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) to a top-secret special operations facility in Iraq in September 2003.

The reports, written shortly after both JPRA officials finished their assignment, present two starkly different accounts of what took place that late summer in the depths of a JSOC torture chamber. Even more remarkable, Col. Kleinman, who famously intervened to stop torture interrogations at the facility, had his own report submitted to Russell for comment. Indeed, Kleinman's report as released contains interpolations by Russell, such that the documents become a kind of ersatz debate over torture by the JPRA team members, and at a distance, some of the Task Force members.

This extraordinary document is being posted here in full for the first time. Click here to download.
Read More...
Books

Flashback Corrupt legal system: U.S. Judge won't order inquiry over psychologist's role in Guantánamo

John Eligon
The New York Times
Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Virginie Montet/AFP/Getty
New York State cannot be forced to investigate a psychologist accused by a human rights organization of overseeing coercive interrogation tactics at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge in Manhattan ruled on Thursday.

The rights group, the Center for Justice and Accountability, had brought a suit claiming that the psychologist, John Francis Leso, helped develop a plan of coercive techniques, including sleep deprivation and isolation, to use on detainees at Guantánamo. The suit was brought on behalf of Steven Reisner, a psychologist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. It sought an investigation of Dr. Leso by a professional disciplinary office in the state's Education Department that regulates psychologists' licenses.

But in a 12-page ruling filed in State Supreme Court, Justice Saliann Scarpulla wrote that Dr. Reisner had no standing to force an investigation. Nothing in state education law, Justice Scarpulla wrote, guarantees that the office "formally investigate every single complaint of professional misconduct, no matter the contents or applicability of the complaint."

The judge also ruled that Dr. Reisner did not suffer an injury as a result of the state's decision not to investigate.
Read More...
Wolf

Flashback Dr Steven Reisner on case filed against psychologist accused of torture in Guantanamo interrogations

Democracy Now
You Tube
Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00 UTC
The Obama administration announced Monday that key suspects in the 9/11 attacks will be tried by military commissions at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, and not in U.S. civilian court. There will, however, be one Guantánamo case tried in New York.

Today the New York State Supreme Court will hear the case against Dr. John Leso, a psychologist accused of participating in torture during interrogation of detainees in Guantánamo. The case was brought on behalf of Dr. Steven Reisner, who is at the center of a growing group of medical professional campaigning against the participation of psychologists in the U.S. government's interrogation programs.

Democracy Now! interviews Reisner about the case right before he heads to the courtroom.

Read More...
Heart - Black

Was systematic sexual assault a political tactic in Tahrir Square?

Angelina Fanous
Vice.com
Tue, 13 Aug 2013 09:42 UTC
Mohammed Mahmoud Street
© David DegnerJust off Tahrir Square, Mohammed Mahmoud Street is where Yasmine El Baramawy was beaten and raped.
It was almost 11 PM on Friday, November 23, 2012, when from the window of her apartment in downtown Cairo, not far from Tahrir Square, Ghada heard a crowd screaming, "She has a bomb strapped to her stomach!" Ghada (who wishes to be known only by her first name) immediately thought of her children who were outside among those who had gathered. She ran to the balcony to search for them, but her terror shifted into action when she saw a naked woman pinned against the hood of a car, with a circle of men around her. Ghada grabbed her husband and some clothes for the stranger, and they sprinted downstairs to rescue her. They pushed through the crowd and into the circle, pulling the girl to safety.
Read More...
Star of David

Ariel Sharon: The legacy of a psychopath

Mohammad Fadhel
Gulfnews
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
In a display of political and diplomatic hypocrisy, most western leaders praised the late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon for his transformation from a fierce fighter for Israel to a man who took initiatives to make peace with the Palestinians.

Israeli President Shimon Peres described him as a "brave military leader", while Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted that Sharon was "a great leader of Israel. A brilliant military commander, but also a wise statesman seeing the necessity of peace". As Sharon had been marketed long ago as a military "hero", most western newspapers couldn't avoid reminding readers of his responsibility for the massacre of Sabra and Shatila following Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. And the Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, said on January 12 that "his escapades earned him simultaneous adulation and criticism, most notably from prime minister David Ben-Gurion".

"Escapades" is a very polite euphemism for describing Sharon's record as a military man because he, like many Israelis, had one definition of victory: "The number of their victims." That's why Sharon was always associated with massacres and mass killings. In 1948, he started his career through a gruesome massacre in the town of Lydda (Al Lid) that took the lives of 426 Palestinians who were caught up in a mosque. And in 1953, he was a major heading the special unit "101" and carried out another massacre in the village of Qibya in the West Bank, which claimed the lives of 170 Palestinian civilians. It wasn't a mistake but a strict implementation of a military order encapsulated in document No. 207/56/644 of the Israeli army archive: "Implement the demolition and inflict blows paramount in lives in order to push the villagers to flee their homes".
Read More...
Pirates

Best of the Web: America's real welfare queens

The Big Picture RT
RT America
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 07:48 UTC
Image
No only do Zombie Corporations and Zombie Banks not actually produce anything useful for the real economy, they just take and take and take from it...
When Republicans talk about "welfare queens," they're really talking about their buddies in big banks, Big Oil, and giant transnational corporations. It's time to cut off the corporate welfare pipeline, and use those billions of dollars to help our economy recover, and to help those Americans who need it the most.
Read More...
Bad Guys

The Shock Doctrine: Syria's heritage in ruins: before-and-after pictures‏

Martin Chulov
The Guardian
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 12:00 UTC
umayyad mosque
© AlamyUmayyad mosque, Aleppo – pictured in 2012, before fighting destroyed it in 2013.
They were sleepy tree-lined boulevards where people lived and worked, time-worn markets where they came to trade and exquisitely detailed mosques where, throughout the ages, they prayed.

All now stand in ruins, ravaged by a war that is not only killing generations of Syrians but also eradicating all around them, including sites that have stood since the dawn of civilisation. Across Syria, where a seemingly unstoppable war is about to enter a third year, a heritage built over 5,000 years or more is being steadily buried under rubble.
Read More...
Light Sabers

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) vs. Syria's "moderate" Al Qaeda terrorists

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Thu, 23 Jan 2014 07:00 UTC
ISIL
© ReutersFighters of al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant carry their weapons during a parade at the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, near the border with Turkey Jan. 2, 2014
The Western media has tacitly acknowledged, faced with overwhelming evidence, that the opposition rebels have not only committed countless atrocities, they were also behind the chemical weapons attack of August 21.

In the wake of these tragic events, a new dribble of media disinformation is unfolding.

The evolving media narrative - which coincides in a timely fashion with the Geneva 2 Peace Conference - consists in distinguishing between two categories of Al Qaeda affiliated rebel organizations.

The story runs roughly as follows:
  • There are moderate Al Qaeda rebels ("good guy Jihadists") including those affiliated to Al Nusrah, which are now part of the Western supported moderate Islamic Front. The latter is now openly supported and financed by the US and its allies.
  • And then there are the so-called extremists associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Read More...
Bomb

Gladio B in Egypt: Car bomb not a suicide bomber - video

Scott Creighton
American Everyman
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 05:09 UTC
egypt bombings
© Mahmoud Khaled/AFP/GettyEgyptian emergency personnel inspect the site of a car bomb explosion outside the Cairo police headquarters.
Isn't it funny that just as soon as world public opinion was turning so drastically against the illegal dictatorship in Egypt for killing so many protesters and arresting so many members of the leading opposition party (Muslim Brotherhood), suddenly there is a bombing spree, blamed on the Brotherhood, which promises to justify all the illegal activities of the current junta in power? Anyone remember what Operation Gladio was? Bombings in various countries across Europe carried out by far right fascist organizations and blamed on lefties to justify all kinds of nifty brutality.

Comment: This is the case with most if not all 'suicide bombings'. They're military intelligence operations where someone willingly, or under coercion, takes part in planting explosives that are then detonated remotely or with a timer.

British Government's Agent Provocateurs Exposed!

The Myth Of The Palestinian Suicide Bomber

Read More...
Binoculars

Snowden to German TV: NSA is after industrial spying


RT.com
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 04:36 UTC
snowden
The NSA agency is not preoccupied solely with national security, but also spies on foreign industrial entities in US business interests, former American intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, has revealed in an interview to German TV.

Edward Snowden chose the German ARD broadcaster to make his first TV interview ever since he became a whistleblower. The interview was made in strict secrecy in an unspecified location in Russia, where Snowden is currently living under temporary asylum.

"There is no question that the US is engaged in economic spying," said Snowden.

If an industrial giant like Siemens has something that the NSA believes "would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States, they will go after that information and they'll take it," the whistleblower said, giving an example.
Read More...