StopTheLie.com News update 12-29-2014
James Corbett: The Net is Mightier Than the Sword (Video)
Source: YouTube.com
.
Watch video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05m8w7rD_4
======================================================
Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses
Source: NYtimes.com
--Mr. Obama has said multiple times that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.
Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like "rectal feeding," scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of "suspected hypothermia."
These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.
Read full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?smid=re-share&_r=2
COMMENT: Flashback: Arguing with "my" Senator about torture:
<<" Some have expressed concerns about provisions within the defense authorization bill that address how we treat terrorist detainees-those we capture who are members of al Qaeda or associated groups who are seeking to kill Americans and our allies….At issue is the fundamental question about whether the United States is at war with radical Islamists who are seeking to kill Americans and our allies. Some would prefer to treat terrorists as common criminals">>
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. "At issue" is your assumption that a person IS what they're accused of being based on nothing but an accusation.
It amazes me that U.S. representatives don't even possess this basic understanding of the American justice system...You are not authorized to strip an individual of their rights based on an accusation alone. Evidence must be presented and an individual must be permitted to defend his or herself. Prior to this due process a person is merely an ACCUSED criminal. (Thief, rapist, murderer or terrorist…the crime that an individual is accused of does not alter the process by which guilt is determined.) Nobody opposes this law because they want to protect 'terrorists,' they oppose it because they want to protect people who are FALSELY ACCUSED of being terrorists or 'associated' with terrorists.
Full exchange available here:
http://stopthelie.com/challenging-my-senator-on-ndaa.html
======================================================
PLEASE forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to our news list can sign up at: http://stopthelie.com/stl_newsletter.html
Other sources for alternative news:
http://www.PrisonPlanet.com/
http://www.RealityZone.com/currentperiod.html
http://www.FreedomsPhoenix.com/Front-Page.htm
http://libertycrier.com/
Previous Week's News 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/
======================================================
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/
======================================================
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.'"
======================================================
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
PLEASE forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to our news list can sign up at: http://stopthelie.com/stl_newsletter.html
James Corbett: The Net is Mightier Than the Sword (Video)
Source: YouTube.com
.
Watch video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05m8w7rD_4
======================================================
Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses
Source: NYtimes.com
--Mr. Obama has said multiple times that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.
Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like "rectal feeding," scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of "suspected hypothermia."
These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.
Read full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html?smid=re-share&_r=2
COMMENT: Flashback: Arguing with "my" Senator about torture:
<<" Some have expressed concerns about provisions within the defense authorization bill that address how we treat terrorist detainees-those we capture who are members of al Qaeda or associated groups who are seeking to kill Americans and our allies….At issue is the fundamental question about whether the United States is at war with radical Islamists who are seeking to kill Americans and our allies. Some would prefer to treat terrorists as common criminals">>
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. "At issue" is your assumption that a person IS what they're accused of being based on nothing but an accusation.
It amazes me that U.S. representatives don't even possess this basic understanding of the American justice system...You are not authorized to strip an individual of their rights based on an accusation alone. Evidence must be presented and an individual must be permitted to defend his or herself. Prior to this due process a person is merely an ACCUSED criminal. (Thief, rapist, murderer or terrorist…the crime that an individual is accused of does not alter the process by which guilt is determined.) Nobody opposes this law because they want to protect 'terrorists,' they oppose it because they want to protect people who are FALSELY ACCUSED of being terrorists or 'associated' with terrorists.
Full exchange available here:
http://stopthelie.com/challenging-my-senator-on-ndaa.html
======================================================
PLEASE forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to our news list can sign up at: http://stopthelie.com/stl_newsletter.html
Other sources for alternative news:
http://www.PrisonPlanet.com/
http://www.RealityZone.com/currentperiod.html
http://www.FreedomsPhoenix.com/Front-Page.htm
http://libertycrier.com/
Previous Week's News 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/
======================================================
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/
======================================================
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.'"
======================================================
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
PLEASE forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to our news list can sign up at: http://stopthelie.com/stl_newsletter.html
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