StopTheLie.com News update 12-22-2014
Dick Cheney should be in prison, not on 'Meet the Press' - Greenwald (Video)
Source: RT.com
Journalist Glenn Greenwald said Dick Cheney is able to brag about the success of torture on weekend news shows because the Obama administration has decided to shield torturers rather than prosecute them.
--In an interview on 'Meet the Press,' former Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that torture "worked" and announced he would "do it again in a minute" if given the opportunity.
--In response, Greenwald said that whether torture worked or not is completely irrelevant, and no one should be interested in that because everyone who tortures claims they do it for a good reason even though it has been banned under international treaties and laws. Greenwald said it was former Republican President Ronald Reagan who championed the idea that torture was never justifiable.
Reagan signed the international Convention against Torture in 1988, which became the primary international foundation of anti-torture law. Reagan said at the time the treaty would clearly express the United States' opposition to torture, "an abhorrent practice unfortunately prevalent in the world today."
Watch video at: http://rt.com/usa/216175-cheney-torture-prison-greenwald/
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MEET ALFREDA BIKOWSKY, THE SENIOR OFFICER AT THE CENTER OF THE CIA'S TORTURE SCANDALS
Source: Glenn Greenwald - Peter Maass
--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.
--NBC, while withholding her identity, noted that the same unnamed officer "also participated in 'enhanced interrogations' of self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report."
The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, writing yesterday about the NBC article, added that the officer "is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A." This officer, Mayer noted, is the same one who "dropped the ball when the C.I.A. was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks; she gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the C.I.A. on an absurd chase for Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked."
Read full article at: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer-center-torture-scandals-alfreda-bikowsky/
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Organic Regulations Not Being Enforced—Will USDA Remove Program Management?
Source: Cornucopia.org
--Although Cornucopia was critical of the USDA's operation of the National Organic Program (NOP) during the Bush administration, it says it finds the current conduct of the Obama administration even more "insidious." Engelbert, Cornucopia's board vice president, continued, "The so-called 'Age of Enforcement' the organic community was promised, when the new administration took over in 2009, has been anything but with regard to large-scale 'organic' operations breaking the law."
--"The department's claim that it needs more detailed regulations, specifying minimum amount of space outdoors, before they can enforce the law, is a specious argument," Cornucopia's Kastel affirmed. "If it was a question of whether or not these outfits were affording enough outdoor space to their birds, that would be one thing, but these are confinement operations with no, I mean zero, animals outside. They are flagrantly breaking the law!"
Read full article at: http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/12/investigation-factory-farms-producing-massive-quantities-organic-milk-eggs/
COMMENT: Also from the article:
"The Cornucopia Institute website maintains research-based scorecards rating all organic eggs, dairy products, soy foods, and several other food categories for their adherence to organic ideals, with the stated goal of 'empowering consumers and wholesale buyers in the marketplace — accessing authentic food and rewarding the true heroes in the industry.'"
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Horrifying Details Show Doctors' Role In CIA Torture
Source: BusinessInsider.com
--When the torture outlined in the CIA report got so bad that one detainee's vision "began to deteriorate" the doctor present only intervened so that he could be able to see for the purposes of further questioning. "We have a lot riding upon his ability to see," CIA officers wrote, in a cable. (The detainee eventually lost one eye completely.)
The Office of Medical Services, the agency designed to advise the US State Department on health issues and provide healthcare to the US government, decided when detainees' lacerations and broken bones were sufficiently healed so the interrogators could keep torturing them.
--In 2005, after the Health Affairs Assistant Secretary of Defense released new ethical guidelines for healthcare personnel, a group of doctors released a response in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled: "Coercive US Interrogation Policies: A Challenge to Medical Ethics." The doctors wrote:
The new guidelines are troubling...because they do not come to terms with the participation of physicians and other health care professionals in officially authorized interrogation practices that are absolutely prohibited by international human rights law, the Third Geneva Convention, and US military and domestic law that criminalizes torture, including psychological torture.
Read full article at: http://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-scientists-in-cia-torture-report-2014-12
COMMENT: And for more information on some of the innocent who were tortured:
"--It's important to understand that almost all of the misery Kurnaz endured at Guantanamo came after he had been cleared of any connection to terrorism. As early as February 2002, German intelligence officials had concluded that there was no "direct" evidence that he was involved in terrorism; a September 2002 memo written by a German intelligence officer confirmed that Kurnaz was among the "considerable number" of Gitmo detainees who were "not part of the terrorist milieu."
Another document dated September 26 of that year reported that "the U.S. sees Murat Kurnaz's innocence as established" and predicted that he would be freed within six to eight weeks." By this time, however, three governments -- those in Washington, Berlin, and Ankara -- had decided that freeing Kurnaz without forcing him to admit to something was simply unacceptable.
As one of Kurnaz's fellow detainees, a man named Nuri, observed: "Do you think they'll simply let us go, after all they've done to us?"
So for nearly four more years, this innocent man was beaten, starved, tortured, subjected to endless persecution in the form of interrogations designed to elicit perjured self-incriminating testimony. On September 30, 2004 -- two years after his innocence had been established -- Kurnaz was brought before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal staffed with officers who had access to the exculpatory 2002 memoranda. That august panel designated Kurnaz an "enemy combatant" on the basis of "evidence" it didn't deign to share with the detainee or his assigned military lawyer, who was utterly inert during the proceedings."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/.../american-gulag.html
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Previous Week's News 12-15-2014
Chris Hedges: The Myth of the Free Press (Video)
Source: YouTube.com
"The Myth is that the press is not fettered, that there are no parameters...that it can say whatever it wants; that it can speak truth to power. In fact, the parameters are extremely narrow. Especially, for instance, on issues of national security.
I worked for 15 years for the New York Times and the unofficial motto of the New York Times is: "We will not significantly alienate those on whom we depend for money (which is advertisers) or access (which are the powerful)."
Watch video at: http://youtu.be/tfawE9UgKpE
COMMENT: Chris covers how both "dollars and access to the powerful" are used to justify the lack of journalistic integrity within the mainstream media. (The media doesn't do its job because it needs to maintain its revenue and connections.) But as Bernstein's article points out (below), the "influence" and relationship between those who are supposed to be doing the reporting, and those who are supposed to be "reported on," is more direct.
One thing that people get hung up on is when the media (run by the Establishment) seems to turn against the Establishment's own policies. I believe this only happens when public sentiment becomes so hostile to CIA / Corporate talking points that the propaganda instrument (the media) MUST reverse course to maintain credibility. In other words: The elite have many instruments that they use to manipulate public opinion. If they must abandon or change a policy to protect the prestige of an "opinion-forming agency," they will.
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The CIA and the Media
Source: CarlBernstein.com
--Among the executives who lent their cooperation to [the CIA] were Williarn Paley of [CBS], Henry Luce of [Time] Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service.
Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC], [NBC], the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
The CIA's use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by.
--During the 1976 investigation of the CIA by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, the dimensions of the Agency's involvement with the press became apparent to several members of the panel, as well as to two or three investigators on the staff. But top officials of the CIA, including former directors William Colby and George Bush, persuaded the committee to restrict its inquiry into the matter and to deliberately misrepresent the actual scope of the activities in its final report.
--The CIA also refused the staffs requests for more information on the use of academics. Bush began to urge members of the committee to curtail its inquiries in both areas and conceal its findings in the final report.
"He kept saying, 'Don't fuck these guys in the press and on the campuses,' pleading that they were the only areas of public life with any credibility left," reported a Senate source. Colby, Elder and Rogovin also implored individual members of the committee to keep secret what the staff had found. "There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared," said another source. Exposure of the CIA's relationships with journalists and academics, the Agency feared, would close down two of the few avenues of agent recruitment still open.
Read full article at: http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
COMMENT: It's a very long article, but it covers quite a bit of information (regarding the CIA and the media) that most people are unaware of.
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Larken Rose - Why Speak of Violence? - Porcfest X (Video)
Source: YouTube.com
In a movement whose primary goal is to achieve a world without violence, many people shy away from any discussion of forcible resistance to state aggression. This talk will explain why dodging the topic is a big mistake -- and does a huge disservice to true peace and freedom.
Watch video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYOKVTaflbM
COMMENT: At about 16:30 in, Larken briefly talks about absolute pacifism. My "hypothetical" against the philosophy of never using force has been this:
"I understand that you refuse to protect yourself; that you would 'rather die than harm another human being,' but what if you just brought a newborn baby into the world? And what if a child rapist / murderer, knowing you're an absolute pacifist, saw an opportunity to satisfy their sadistic desires with your infant? Would you do nothing to prevent them from raping and killing your child? Would you just stand there and watch? If so, you should consider the implications: Your philosophy is so at odds with nature, that "nature" itself (using the lowest scum of the earth) would gradually eliminate it from the gene pool."
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Flashback: On Torture
Source: Joe Plummer.com
"--It's important to understand that almost all of the misery Kurnaz endured at Guantanamo came after he had been cleared of any connection to terrorism. As early as February 2002, German intelligence officials had concluded that there was no "direct" evidence that he was involved in terrorism; a September 2002 memo written by a German intelligence officer confirmed that Kurnaz was among the "considerable number" of Gitmo detainees who were "not part of the terrorist milieu."
Another document dated September 26 of that year reported that "the U.S. sees Murat Kurnaz's innocence as established" and predicted that he would be freed within six to eight weeks." By this time, however, three governments -- those in Washington, Berlin, and Ankara -- had decided that freeing Kurnaz without forcing him to admit to something was simply unacceptable.
As one of Kurnaz's fellow detainees, a man named Nuri, observed: "Do you think they'll simply let us go, after all they've done to us?"
So for nearly four more years, this innocent man was beaten, starved, tortured, subjected to endless persecution in the form of interrogations designed to elicit perjured self-incriminating testimony. On September 30, 2004 -- two years after his innocence had been established -- Kurnaz was brought before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal staffed with officers who had access to the exculpatory 2002 memoranda. That august panel designated Kurnaz an "enemy combatant" on the basis of "evidence" it didn't deign to share with the detainee or his assigned military lawyer, who was utterly inert during the proceedings.
Read full article at: http://joeplummer.com/on_torture.html
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Lawless US Policy Makers used Torture to Gain False Confessions
Source: GlobalResearch.ca
--[A] Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…
For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.
--When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued."Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
Read full article at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-tortured-and-killed-innocent-people-for-the-specific-purpose-of-producing-false-propaganda/5419
COMMENT: For more information, check out the documentary below. It chronicles how warlords rounded up innocent people and sold them to the United States Military as "terrorists." It chronicles the "harsh interrogation techniques" (torture) that was used to coerce false confessions from the innocent. Most importantly, it chronicles how torture became a matter of policy; proving (with never before seen documents) that authority was handed down from the highest levels of the Federal Government.
Brought to you by the National Security Archive (George Washington University) this film makes a case for "accountability" that cannot be ignored. HIGHLY Recommended:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/program/
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