Clinton is threatening U.K. if doesn’t continue to bury evidence of C.I.A. torture; Eric Holder shouldn’t have passed his first semester of law school; C.P.D. backtracking on its “deadly force” policy announcement; “Land reform” is a global heist with more guns than any other; Senior U.S. military adviser: Get out of Iraq; H.R. 1207 up to 271 co-sponsors; and more…
U.S. Secy. of State Hillary Clinton is seeking a gag order to prevent the U.K. government from releasing evidence of C.I.A. torture. Binyam Mohamed, tortured at C.I.A. “black sites” and Gitmo for seven years is seeking the release of the C.I.A.’s summary of his treatment. Lord Justice Thomas said Mrs. Clinton has “merely demonstrated that the C.I.A. would like the court to withhold from the public findings about C.I.A. wrongdoing”. (AntiWar.com)
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said, “Waterboarding is torture…. We will not criminalize policy differences” to ABC’s “Nightline”. What the fuck? You can’t call it “torture” and a “policy difference” at the same time. One is objectively illegal and the other is an arbitrary guideline. We’re going into our last years of law school and know this. The guy at the corner store who loves watching “Law & Order” knows this. Mr. Holder has a J.D., was a criminal prosecutor as U.S. attorney from 1993-1997, and Deputy Atty. Gen. from 1997-2001, but we’re supposed to believe he doesn’t know this? Mr. Holder should be disbarred, at the least.
Sami al-Hajj, the ALE cameraman recently released from U.S. captivity at Gitmo for over six and a half years, spoke to AJE. Read the interview here.
“Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis was forced to backtrack on his deadly force policy amendment… allowing cops to shoot at suspected felons fleeing in motor vehicles,” Michael Sneed reported today (Chicago Sun Times). “City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges and Mayor [Richard M.] Daley were flummoxed by the order, which they felt could have been a huge liability problem for a city already reeling in debt.” Click “deadly force” to see the update. The policy isn’t scrapped. The City Council is weighing the cost:benefit. Sayyid is making phone calls throughout the day trying to secure statements from city councilmen.
Iran police used sticks and batons to disperse a peaceful gathering to mourn the deaths of those murdered by the gov’t and its Basiji since the June 12 election (AJE). Primary opposition presidential candidate Mir Housein Mousavi was forced away from participating before he could pray at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan (NYT), murdered by the State like an Afghan child.
Mississippi cops put prioritizing aside, opting to instead spin a wheel in determining who to arrest. You really can’t make this stuff up. (RAW STORY)
“Sergeant James Crowley believes that putting on a uniform and a badge puts him above just-folks like you and me and Henry Louis Gates, and so that it entitles him to special treatment,” writes Charles Johnson (RadGeek). “And that’s why, when he is in uniform, he’s willing to bully, browbeat, and physically coerce you into handcuffs and jail, just to violently punish you if you should dare to tell him off in your own foyer — because he stupidly believes that his work clothes entitle him to command, and to expect obedience from, people he doesn’t even know. That’s stupid.” I love it.
“Because of the political sensitivity of the modern-day land grab, it is often only the country’s head of state who knows the details,” Horand Knaup and Juliane von Mittelstaedt report (Der Spiegel) “In some cases, however, provincial governors have already auctioned off land to the highest bidder, as in the case of Laos and Cambodia, where even the governments no longer know how much of their territory they still own.” This article shows how mulitinationals target poor feudalist countries, seek earmarks from their ‘richer’ governments, and use their own ‘richer governments to broker “privatization” deals in the name of so-called “free trade” — mainly in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. “Land reform” is the one the most oppressive doublethink terms in the Newspeak dictionary. There are a lot of socio-fascist dictators in Latin America who are demonized as reactionaries to these incremental policies of genocide. Read this article and you’ll see why they’re generally so beloved by ‘their citizens’.
H.R. 1207, the bill to audit the Federal [sic] Reserve written by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), has 271 co-sponsors in the House (RT). 178 Repubicans and 97 Democrats are supporting the bill with 75% of the American people (3:22):
Some banks bailed out by TARP are charging more than 150% on short-term loans. Predatory lending is an understatement (IPS).
“The sense of Israeli exceptionalism and entitlement that drive the process, which has been noted and challenged even by many liberal Israelis and diaspora Jews, is without a doubt racist in origin,” writes former C.I.A. agent Philip Giraldi. “Israel has long had an unspoken policy of making life hopeless for the Arabs in its midst and over which it rules to force them to leave for economic reasons. This policy has not been completely successful, with the Arab population inside Israel proper sustaining itself due to its high birth rate in spite of a large rate of emigration.” The article is called “The Disappearing Palestinian” and is a must-read.
Senior U.S. military adviser in Iraq Col. Timothy Reese sent a memo “urging the U.S. to dramatically speed up its pullout from Iraq, saying it should be announced that all troops will be out of the nation by August 2010,” writes Jason Ditz (AntiWar.com).
The U.S. Air Force is looking to the ‘private sector’ to create more approaches to more efficiently monitor gov’t employees’ internet behavior (Wired).
$7.7m of Obama stimulus bought airport surveillance cameras (Wired).
U.S. is threatening Eritrea with sanctions for allegedly backing the Somali “insurgents”. Yes, Eritrea is becoming the new anti-christ…. Eritrea.
The U.K. inquiry into the events leading to its involvement into the Iraq invasion through July 2009 could go into 2011, chairman Sir John Chilcot said, who wants to avoid “a long drawn out inquiry”. Fmr. PM Tony Blair pressed for the inquiry to be fully private, but Sir John is not ruling out “he possibility of hearings being televised and live streaming on the internet” (BBC).
China revoked the licenses of more the 50 human rights lawyers last week. “The lawyers handle a wide-range of cases, from families affected by last year’s tainted milk scandal, to Tibetan and Uighur rights and the representation of prominent dissidents,” AJE reports. “Last week police raided the offices of another Beijing law firm, Gongmeng, which offers legal aid specialising in human rights issues.” Lawyers estimate 70% of human rights lawyers have been harassed in the last few months.
The Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin signed an oil pact with Cuban state-owned Petroleo on behalf of the Russian oil corporation, Zarubezhneft, Granma reported (FT)
“Thirty four year-old blogger, Elisha Strom, has been arrested in Bedford County, Virginia for posting photos and the home address of an undercover narc on her blog,” writes Brad Taylor. “She is being charged with harassing a police officer, with police arguing that revealing the identity of undercover officers puts them in danger.” Can I charge the Chicago Police for its existence putting me in danger?
Little Alex in Wonderland 