Bush in “Fantasyland” : The Terrorist and War Criminal

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In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Bush in “Fantasyland” : The Terrorist and War Criminal

Last month’s failed missile defense test was categorized as a “No Test” by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The target missile didn’t fly into range of the interceptor so it was never launched.

Even though it was deemed a “No Test” by the MDA, an agency spokesman nevertheless claimed that the results of “the failed test underscored the need of the US to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against potential missile attack from Iran…. It showed that any missiles that Iran launched could similarly go astray and land in Europe even if Europe was not Iran’s target.”

Huh?

Welcome to what Joseph Cirincione – senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and author of the new book, Bomb Scare – calls, “This week’s episode of President Bush in Fantasyland.”

“President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist,” Cirincione says. “Iran is at least 5 to 10 years away from the capability to build a nuclear weapon and at least that far from having a missile that could hit Europe let alone the US. And anti-missile systems are still nowhere near working despite $150 billion spent since the 1983 Star Wars program started and years of phony tests staged to demonstrate ‘progress’ and ‘success.’”

None of this has stopped Bush from continuing to tout his Czech Republic and Poland-based “proposed missile defense system designed to thwart a possible nuclear attack from Iran.” Adding to the irony (and the outrage) is the fact that while Bush continues to frame the weapons system as indispensable to democracy – “This is aimed at a country like Iran… so they couldn’t blackmail the free world” – the people of the Czech Republic and Poland continue to oppose the plans (as I initially reported here). Recent polls show that over 60 percent of Czechs are opposed and only 25 percent of Poles support the missile defense plan.

The mayor of the Czech village of Trokavec where the radar site would be located recently held a referendum and 71 of 72 votes were cast against the plan. The mayor of Stitov, Vaclav Hudec, and “most of” his village’s 58 residents “are bitterly opposed” to the radar site. Hudec wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd outlining the opposition of “nearly two dozen” Czech mayors to the missile defense plan.

“This is a crisis of our own making,” Cirincione says. “President Bush so fervently believes in something that doesn’t exist that he jeopardizes – again – our real security interests. The fact is the Czechs don’t want the radar, the Europeans don’t trust his explanations and deplore his unilateralism, the Congress has already cut the funds on purely programmatic grounds. This was a dumb idea before, now it is yet another foreign policy disaster.”

All of this for a system Cirincione says isn’t important to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who view these programs as “expensive pet rocks.”

“The Joint Chiefs were happy to cut this budget as soon as Presidents Reagan and Bush left office,” he says. “In 1993 they formally wrote President Clinton and recommended spending only $2.8 billion with $2.3 billion of that devoted to short-range defenses.” (We currently spend in the range of $10 billion per year.)

And while many in the mainstream media swallow the Bush Administration talking points on Russian President Vladimir Putin as if once again being spoon-fed pre-war intelligence, other experts on arms control and foreign policy suggest Putin has real reason to worry about the Bush Administration’s moves.

In The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy, published in Foreign Affairs last year, Keir A. Liber and Daryl G. Press wrote: “… the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one – as an adjunct to a US first-strike capability, not as a stand-alone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal – if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes…”

Cirincione adds that he thinks Putin’s response is a “clever gambit.”

“There is a reason Russians are the best chess players – they know how to read the board and exploit their opportunities,” he says. “President Putin thinks the US policies represent a new imperialism. Now, he sees President Bush trying to build permanent military bases on Russia’s borders. Putin isn’t afraid of 10 interceptors but he has to worry about what comes next – any Russian leader would. He doesn’t believe President Bush and many Europeans don’t either. This issue feeds into the mistrust of America that Europeans feel on a host of Bush Administration policies from global warming to Iraq.”

So why is the Bush administration imposing this sucker of a weapons system that nobody wants on an already inflamed relationship with Russia? Why risk sparking a renewed nuclear arms race?

“Politics drives this deployment decision,” Cirincione says. “Bush Administration officials are trying to lock in the program before they leave office. They are trying to build bases they hope the next president will find impossible to shut down.”

Thank you, Mr. Bush. One more relic from your Fantasyland we could do without.

UPDATE: Today, Putin stated that he would not object if the radar-based system were placed in Azerbaijan instead of the Czech Republic. He didn’t comment on the issue of the interceptors being placed in Poland.

Putin noted, “… as soon as a country, for instance, Iran, carries out its first test of its long-range missile… Three to five years will be necessary… until the system is operational. This time is fairly enough to deploy any ABM system. Therefore, no matter how long our talks are going on, we will never be late…. I’m grateful to the President of the United States for a constructive dialogue today.”

“Brilliant move by Putin,” Cirincione said in an e-mail. “He is basically doing to President Bush what Bush is trying to do to the Europeans on global warming: offer a counter proposal that appears to be constructive but has the effect of delaying the entire process and moving it in a completely different direction. Moving the radar to Azerbaijan both solves some of the Russian military concerns–as the radar will not be able to track Russian ICBMs from that site–and Russian geostrategic concerns by placing any radar in a country much more in their sphere of influence…. Better, the talks about where to site the radar will take months. Putin could well play out the clock on Bush’s presidency. But how can President Bush refuse to talk? Isn’t Putin doing exactly what President Bush had asked–that is, talk about cooperating on anti-missile systems? If he does refuse, he will look even more the aggressor, eroding what is left of his administration’s credibility. President Bush has fallen neatly into Putin’s trap. They may have to invent a new name for this gambit.”

source:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=203257

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US ‘world rights champion’ : Only an Idiot believe that!

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

From correspondents in Washington

 

June 08, 2007 07:05am

Article from: Agence France-Presse

THE US views itself as the world human rights champion, a senior US spokesman said today, despite reports this week that it runs secret prisons and flouts civil liberties.

A new report this week found that 14 European countries had either colluded with or tolerated the secret transfers of terror suspects by the United States. Two of them, Poland and Romania, may have harboured CIA detention centres, the report said.

Meanwhile, six human rights groups named 39 people believed to be held in Central Intelligence Agency prisons.

But State Department spokesman Tom Casey said none of the criticism would diminish Washington’s commitment to safeguarding human and civil rights.

“We recognise that the United States … does not always have a perfect record, and historically has not always done so,” Mr Casey said.

“That does not lessen the fact that the United States has been and continues to be the world’s leading advocate for human rights around the world,” he said.

“In fact, it would be a dereliction of our responsibility and a negation of our values if we didn’t,” he said.

Mr Casey quoted his boss, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, defended America’s rights record in a US report earlier this year on global civil rights.

“We do not issue these reports because we think ourselves perfect, but rather because we know ourselves to be deeply imperfect,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said upon the report’s release in March.

US President George W. Bush admitted to the existence of the secret prisons in September but said all remaining prisoners had been moved to the US naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Six rights groups overnight, however, released a list of 39 people still missing from Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain, and suspected to be detained by US authorities.

The list was released by Amnesty International, Cageprisoners and Reprieve, along with US-based Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

source:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21870353-5005961,00.html

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‘Off the record’ secret CIA detention

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

At least 39 individuals who remain missing are believed to have been subjected to enforced disappearance by the US authorities. The wives and children of other detainees in secret CIA custody have also been held in custody and interrogated, either as potential sources of information or to secure the capture of their husband or father.

Based on research by six leading human rights groups – Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve -, the briefing paper Off the Record provides the most comprehensive account of these 39 individuals’ apprehension and detention to date, including four missing detainees here identified for the first time.

The full list includes cases of nationals from countries including Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya and Spain. They were arrested in countries including Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret sites run by the US government.

In many cases, the current fate and whereabouts of detainees included on the list are completely unknown. In other cases, some speculative information has emerged in the press or through research and investigation.

In all cases, the US government’s silence has created grave uncertainty. The US government must end the use of secret detention, clarify the fate and whereabouts of all people who have been secretly detained and allow them access to their families and to adequate legal process.

The US has the duty to detain and bring to justice anyone responsible for crimes but it must do so in a manner that respects human rights and the rule of law.

You can make a difference.
Click here to take action against secret detention and enforced disappearance.

source:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/stoptorture-070607-features-eng

Related materials
Press release: Leading human rights groups name 39 CIA ‘disappeared’ detainees

Report: Off the Record – U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘war on terror’

Video: Interview with Rabia Khan, the wife of Majid Khan, transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA custody

Video: Interview with Moazzam Begg, unlawfully detained in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay for 3 years

Feature: USA: Government must end all secret detention and guarantee fair trials

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The Prison is the War Crime

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

The Prison is the War Crime

 

No “Unlawful” Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo

By MARJORIE COHN

In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld famously called the detainees at Guantánamo “the worst of the worst.” General Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were “very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down.” These claims were designed to justify locking up hundreds of men and boys for years in small cages like animals.

George W. Bush lost no time establishing military commissions to try the very “worst of the worst” for war crimes. But four and a half years later, the Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that those commissions violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. So Bush dusted them off, made a few changes, and rammed his new improved military commissions through the Republican Congress last fall.

Only three detainees have been brought before the new commissions. One would expect the people Bush & Co. singled out for war crimes prosecutions would be high-level al-Qaeda leaders. But they weren’t. The first was David Hicks, who was evidently not so dangerous. The U.S. military made a deal that garnered Hicks a misdemeanor sentence and sent him back to Australia.

Salem Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who used to be Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, was the second. Hamdan, whose case had been overturned by the Supreme Court, was finally brought before a military commission Monday for arraignment on charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism.

The third defendant was Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, who appeared for arraignment the same day as Hamdan. Khadr was 15 years old when he arrived at Guantánamo. He faced charges of conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, spying, and supporting terrorism.

On Monday, much to Bush’s dismay, two different military judges dismissed both Hamdan’s and Khadr’s cases on procedural grounds.

The Military Commissions Act that Congress passed last year says the military commissions have jurisdiction to try offenses committed by alien unlawful enemy combatants. Unlawful enemy combatants are defined as (1) people who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its allies; or (2) people who have been determined to be unlawful enemy combatants by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) or another competent tribunal. The Act says that a determination of unlawful enemy combatant status by a CSRT or another competent tribunal is dispositive.

But there are no “unlawful” enemy combatants at Guantánamo. There are only men who have been determined to be “enemy combatants” by the CSRTs. The Act declares that military commissions “shall not have jurisdiction over lawful enemy combatants.” In its haste to launch post-Hamdan military commissions, Bush’s legal eagles didn’t notice this discrepancy. That is why the charges were dismissed.

The Bush administration may try to fix the procedural problem and retry Khadr and Hamdan. But regardless of whether Guantánamo detainees are lawful or unlawful enemy combatants, the Bush administration’s treatment of them violates the Geneva Conventions. Lawful enemy combatants are protected against inhumane treatment by the Third Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. Unlawful enemy combatants are protected against inhumane treatment by Common Article Three.

Omar Khadr was captured in Afghanistan and brought to Guantánamo when he was 15 years old. In both places, he has been repeatedly tortured and subjected to inhumane treatment. At Bagram Air Base, Khadr was denied pain medication for his serious head and eye shrapnel wounds. At Guantánamo, his hands and feet were shackled together, he was bolted to the floor and left there for hours at a time. After he urinated on himself and on the floor, U.S. military guards mopped the floor with his skinny little body. Khadr was beaten in the head, dogs lunged at him, and he was threatened with rape and the removal of his body parts.

Khadr cried frequently. He has nightmares, sweats and hyperventilates, and is hypervigilant, hearing sounds that he can’t identify. When Khadr’s lawyer saw him for the first time in 2004, he thought, “He’s just a little kid.”

Why was Khadr treated this way? He comes from a family allegedly active in al-Qaeda. His charges stem from an incident where the U.S. sent Afghans into a compound where Khadr and others were located. The people inside the compound killed the Afghans and began firing at the U.S. soldiers. The Americans dropped two 500-pound bombs on the compound, killing everyone inside except Khadr. After Khadr threw a hand grenade which killed an American, the soldiers shot Khadr, blinding and seriously wounding him. Khadr begged them in English to finish him off. He was then taken to Baghram and later to Guantánamo.

According to Donald Rehkopf, Jr., co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Military Law Committee, “The government has steadfastly refused to allow hearings on this alleged [unlawful enemy combatant] status because there are so many prisoners at GTMO that were not even combatants, much less ‘unlawful’ ones. Khadr is in an unusual situation because he has a viable ‘self-defense’ claim – we attacked the compound that he and his family were living in, and the fact that he was only 15 at the time.”

If Khadr were a U.S. citizen, he would not even be subject to trial by court-martial because of his age. When the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that children under 18 at the time of their crimes could not be executed, it said that youths display a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility” that “often results in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” A juvenile, the Court found, is more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and his character is not as well-formed as that of an adult. “From a moral standpoint,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” The Bush administration’s treatment of Omar Khadr flies in the face of the Court’s reasoning.

The United States may be able to retry Khadr and Hamdan. They have a few days to file an appeal. But the Court of Military Commissions Review hasn’t even been established yet, so it’s unclear where the appeals would be brought.

The Military Commissions Act, which denies basic due process protections, including the right to habeas corpus, is a disgrace. But an even bigger disgrace is the concentration camp the United States maintains at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Act should be repealed and the Guantánamo prison should be shut down immediately.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published in July.

source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn06072007.html

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Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Stephen Grey

Thursday June 7, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America’s most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council’s report, which has been seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons’ operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.

The council has also established that within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Nato signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states’ airspace.

The report states: “We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA’s illegal activities on their territories.”

That agreement may have been illegal, the council’s investigators believe.

The full extent of British logistic support for the extraordinary rendition programme was first disclosed by the Guardian, which reported in September 2005 that aircraft operated by the CIA had flown in and out of UK civilian and military airports hundreds of times.

The 19-month inquiry by the council, which is responsible for promoting human rights across Europe, was headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator and former state prosecutor. He said: “What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice.”

His report says that there is “now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania”.

Mr Marty has told Channel 4′s Dispatches, in a report to be broadcast on Monday, that although the jails were run “directly and exclusively” by the CIA with local officials barred from access the prisons were only possible because of “collaboration at various institutional levels of America’s many partner countries”.

He succeeded in confirming details of the CIA’s closely-guarded secret by using his own “intelligence methods”, which included tracking and persuading to talk intelligence agents on both sides of the Atlantic, including serving members of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.

“All the conclusions drawn in this report rely upon multiple sources,” he said.

He concludes that in eastern Europe, the CIA had trusted “point-men” who alone knew about the prisons; their partners were Poland and Romania’s military intelligence agencies who reported directly to then president Aleksander Kwasniewski in Poland, presidents Ion Iliescu and then Traian Basescu in Romania, and their nearest security advisers.

This meant that civilian intelligence agencies, parliamentary oversight committees, and even the countries’ prime ministers could “credibly deny” knowledge of the CIA facilities.

In Poland the main CIA jail was in a former Soviet-era military compound at Stare Kjekuty, near Szmany airport in north-eastern Poland. This prison was for the most high value detainees, known as HVDs. Those held there included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of 9/11.

It was at the Polish site, said Mr Marty, that some of the CIA’s “enhanced methods” of interrogation, such as extreme sleep deprivation and water-boarding were used. “These methods amounted to illegal torture,” he told Dispatches.

Mr Marty concludes that the CIA was able to move around Europe, flying prisoners to its secret sites and organising renditions of prisoners to other countries, due to an agreement signed by all Nato members, including Britain, just after September 11.

On October 4 2001, Nato’s then secretary-general, Lord Robertson, had said alliance members had agreed to grant “blanket over-flight clearances” as well as basing rights to US forces involved in the so-called war on terror. Although Lord Robertson referred only to military flights, the full text of the agreement has remained classified.

Quoting its own confidential sources, the Council of Europe says a secret part of the agreement also gave total freedom of movement for the civilian jets used by the CIA for its prisoner operations.

Government officials in Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied the existence of CIA facilities or the presence of detainees held by US authorities.

But Mr Marty concluded: “All the members and partners of Nato signed up to the same permissive – not to say illegal – terms that allowed CIA operations to permeate throughout the European continent and beyond; all knew that CIA practices for the detention, transfer and treatment of terrorist suspects left open considerable scope for abuses and unlawful measures; yet all remained silent and kept the operations, the practices, their agreements and their participation secret.”

There was no immediate comment from Nato.

· Stephen Grey presents Dispatches – Kidnapped to Order on Monday June 11 at 8pm on Channel 4

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2097935,00.html

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Report: CIA ran secret jails – Detention centers alleged in Poland and Romania

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Report: CIA ran secret jails

Detention centers alleged in Poland and Romania

By Elaine Ganley, Associated Press | June 9, 2007

PARIS — The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks, and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said yesterday.

The CIA called the report “distorted,” but stopped short of denying the existence of such prisons. The agency said it does not discuss the location of its overseas facilities. Poland and Romania also vehemently denied the allegations.

“High value detainees” like self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and suspected senior Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah were held in Poland, said the report, which cited CIA sources. It said lesser detainees, but still of “remarkable importance,” were taken to Romania.

Top officials in both countries knew of the detention centers, according to the report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, a former prosecutor who investigated on behalf of the Council of Europe.

The council, a human rights watchdog for several European nations, called for the investigation after media reports of secret CIA prisons emerged in 2005.

Marty did not rule out the CIA having more such prisons in Europe, but told reporters he did not include that in his report because his sourcing was insufficient. He accused Germany and Italy of obstructing investigations into secret detentions.

The report said its conclusions about the clandestine prisons relied on “multiple sources which validate and corroborate one another.” Marty said his team spoke with “over 30 one-time members of intelligence services in the United States and Europe” as well as former or current detainees and human rights activists.

While conceding at a news conference that sources for the report were limited, Marty said they were “well placed,” including some who “were implicated.”

The alleged prisons were at the center of a “spider’s web” of purported human rights abuses that Marty outlined in his initial investigation a year ago.

That report focused on flights to spirit detainees to CIA hideouts with landing points in at least 14 nations.

Clandestine prisons and secret CIA flights involving European countries would breach the continent’s human rights treaties, although the Council of Europe has no power to punish countries. The council, which is separate from the European Union, was set up four years after World War II to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Europe.

Officials at the EU have said previously that they trust the denials of Poland and Romania about hosting secret jails.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano did not address whether there were secret detention centers, but he disputed the report’s characterization of the agency’s activities.

“When you see words like apartheid and torture in the document, that tells you it’s biased and distorted,” he said. “The CIA’s counterterror operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed, and of benefit to many people — including Europeans — in disrupting plots and saving lives. Our counterterror partnerships in Europe are very strong.”

Bush acknowledged the existence of a secret detention program last September, when he announced the CIA had moved Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other suspected terrorists to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay.

source:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/06/09/report_cia_ran_secret_jails/

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9/11 Firefighters: Bombs and Explosions in the WTC

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

9/11 Firefighters: Bombs and Explosions in the WTC

The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday [September 11]. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday [September 6], bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. [NY NewsDay]

The independent commission probing the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington decided not to hear from the worker group that lost more lives than anyone else to the terrorists: The Fire Fighters. [Workday Minnesota]

[Firefighter Louie] Cacchioli was called to testify privately [before the 9/11 Commission], but walked out on several members of the committee before they finished, feeling like he was being interrogated and cross-examined rather than simply allowed to tell the truth about what occurred in the north tower on 9/11. “My story was never mentioned in the final report [PDF download] and I felt like I was being put on trial in a court room,” said Cacchioli. “I finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and when they wouldn’t let me do that, I walked out. … It was a disgrace to everyone, the victims and the family members who lost loved ones. I don’t agree with the 9/11 Commission. The whole experience was terrible.” [Arctic Beacon]

Firefighters shocked by a loud explosion.
WMV video download (306kB)

“At 10:30 I tried to leave the building, but as I got outside I heard a second explosion … And then a fire marshal came in and said we had to leave, because if there was a third explosion this building might not last.”
WMV video download (231kB)

“We were trying to get some of the people out, but then there was secondary explosions and then subsequent collapses.”
MOV video download (321kB)

“As we were getting our gear on and making our way to the stairway, there was a heavy duty explosion.”

WMV video download (181kB)

“We really never even got that close to the building. The explosion blew and it knocked everybody over”
WMV video download (110kB)

source:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_firefighters.html

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Viewers get whitewashed version of history : West Media Lie and Propaganda

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Viewers get whitewashed version of history : Media Lie and Propaganda

 

Jun 08, 2007 04:30 AM

Antonia Zerbisias

There are moments – when U.S. president John F. Kennedy was shot or when the World Trade Center fell – you never forget.

The end of the 1967 Six-Day War, which resulted in Israel’s lightning strike takeover of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, was one for me.

There was little Israel, the land of milk, honey and orange-picking kibbutzim, whose very existence was threatened by her bigger Arab neighbours. Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, boasted of having the country for lunch. In my predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in Montreal, where Holocaust survivors and their children still live, the fear was palpable.

So it is with crystal clarity that I can recall when, 40 years ago this Sunday, just as the lunch rush began, my father held a portable radio up to the intercom in his restaurant and blasted the news of victory all the way from the deli counter to the grill to the soda fountain to the waitresses’ station.

People tossed rye bread in the air.

Now, depending on your politics, and how you get your news and history, that was either a very good moment … or a very bad one.

No question that it changed the Middle East, and the world.

It also changed journalism, as anybody who covers that tinderbox painfully learns.

The perfect illustration is a stunning $1.2 million Canada-Israel-France co-production, Six Days in June. Fast-paced and rich with archival footage, its stories are told not by “experts,” nor pundits, nor academics. The people who we see are witnesses – as fighters, journalists, politicians, diplomats, refugees or survivors.

Two not-so-subtly different versions have already aired this week. Both about two hours in length, one ran in French, on CBC’s sister networks Radio-Canada and the all-news RDI, the other in English on PBS. (A three-hour edition also aired to rave reviews in Israel.)

The PBS version repeats Sunday at 3 a.m.on WNED.

The French edition is what Montreal-based producer Ina Fichman calls the “international version,” which was sold to Italy’s RAI, Australia’s SBS and elsewhere.

It depicts, among other historical facts, the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians by the Israeli army, a move the narrator delicately describes as “the first change to the demographics of the West Bank.” It shows, through the eyes of a former Arab resident and an Israeli who photographed the event, that, where large villages stood, now are forests (many planted with Canadian charitable donations).

There is also a sequence, as related by the American-born Abdullah Schleifer, editor of Palestine News, as well as an Arab whose home was destroyed, about the overnight razing of a 700-year-old Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem by the triumphant Israeli defence minister, General Moshe Dayan.

“When I saw this destruction, there was a part of me that felt tremendous dread, that a whole new problem was going to be created,” says Schleifer. He says this in the PBS version as well, but the horrifying context is stripped away for American sensibilities.

“PBS is really not a liberal left-wing broadcaster,” says Fichman. “It’s subscription and sponsor-based, with members of the Jewish community among its supporters.”

Fichman said that PBS demanded entire scenes and sequences come out, and others be softened.

The sad part is that, unless the feature-length “director’s cut” by Israeli-born filmmaker Ilan Ziv gets distribution, Canadians will not get to view what the rest of the world, including Israel, has.

CBC-TV, for example, did not buy it because PBS already had North American rights. The film also did not fit with its focus on “contemporary political and social issues.”

And so, we get the whitewashed version of history. Not surprising.

As the narrator says, “The Six-Day War will prove to be an unfinished war, just one battle in a conflict that has never ended.”

source:
http://www.thestar.com/article/222996

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

More Taliban suspects allege abuse : Canadian War Crime

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

More Taliban suspects allege abuse : Canadian War Crime

Last Updated: Saturday, June 9, 2007 | 11:40 AM ET

CBC News

The Foreign Affairs Department has adjusted upward the number of detainees who have alleged they were abused after being captured by Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan and transferred to Afghan jails.

There are now six abuse allegations, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said late Friday.

Andre LeMay said the department has been keeping track of reports since Canada signed a new detainee monitoring agreement in May.

On Wednesday, MacKay and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told a joint parliamentary meeting that four allegations of abuse involving Taliban suspects had been reported.

Day said the four prisoners making the claims showed no visible signs of abuse. Taliban fighters have been coached to allege mistreatment while in detention, he added.

LeMay said the Afghan government will be working closely with the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission to investigate the claims.

The latest revelation could boost a legal challenge by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which have applied to Federal Court for an injunction to halt the transfers.

They argue that Canada could find itself complicit in torture if it knowingly hands prisoners over to authorities who will abuse them.

The first two claims, which surfaced in April, set off bitter opposition attacks against the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

After two weeks of contradictory explanations, the Conservatives signed a revised transfer agreement with Afghanistan that allows Canadian officials direct, private access where the condition of detainees can be checked.

The initial agreement, inked by the former government under Paul Martin in the early weeks of the 2005-06 election, did not provide such access.

source:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/09/afghan-detainees.html

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The Whole World by “War on Terror” – 24 Jumadil Awal 1428 H (10.6.07)

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America’s War On Iraq – At Least 655,000 + +

http://tinyurl.com/usq4x

 

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America’sWar On Iraq 3504

http://icasualties.org/oif/

 

The War in Iraq Costs $432,805,108,172 – See the cost in your community

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

 

===

 

Arrogance or stupidity? US ‘world rights champion’

THE US views itself as the world human rights champion, a senior US spokesman said today, despite reports this week that it runs secret prisons and flouts civil liberties.
http://tinyurl.com/2kebu5

 

===

 

Bush in “Fantasyland” : Terrorist and War Criminal

“President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist,”
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=203257

 

===

 

Don’t Trust US Government

In reading an excellent book, Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation, by R.T. Naylor, I suddenly realized why Adolf Hitler was so popular during the first years of his administration.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17854.htm

===

 

 

The Threat is Real

All of us in this country are finally starting to realize that George W. Bush and his right wing, corporate controlled, allies with their grandiose view of military dominance but not backed up by any actual military experience has brought this nation to what can only be described as the lowest point in our history.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17848.htm

 

===

 

Lies, Sighs and Politics

Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17851.htm

 

===

Viewers get whitewashed version of Israeli history: US Propaganda Media Hypocrisy

“PBS is really not a liberal left-wing broadcaster,” says Fichman. “It’s subscription and sponsor-based, with members of the Jewish community among its supporters.” Fichman said that PBS demanded entire scenes and sequences come out, and others be softened.
http://www.thestar.com/article/222996

 

===

 

9/11 Firefighters: Bombs and Explosions in the WTC

The independent commission probing the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington decided not to hear from the worker group that lost more lives than anyone else to the terrorists: The Fire Fighters. [Workday Minnesota]

[Firefighter Louie] Cacchioli was called to testify privately [before the 9/11 Commission], but walked out on several members of the committee before they finished, feeling like he was being interrogated and cross-examined rather than simply allowed to tell the truth about what occurred in the north tower on 9/11. “My story was never mentioned in the final report [PDF download] and I felt like I was being put on trial in a court room,” said Cacchioli. “I finally walked out. They were trying to twist my words and make the story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and when they wouldn’t let me do that, I walked out. … It was a disgrace to everyone, the victims and the family members who lost loved ones. I don’t agree with the 9/11 Commission. The whole experience was terrible.” [Arctic Beacon]
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_firefighters.html

 

===

 

US War Crime : ‘Off the record’ secret CIA detention

At least 39 individuals who remain missing are believed to have been subjected to enforced disappearance by the US authorities. The wives and children of other detainees in secret CIA custody have also been held in custody and interrogated, either as potential sources of information or to secure the capture of their husband or father.
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/stoptorture-070607-features-eng

 

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : CIA ran secret jails

The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks, and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/ythwnc

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : Pentagon appeals Guantanamo case

The Pentagon is to ask US military judges to reconsider a decision earlier this week to throw out charges against two Guantanamo Bay detainees.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6735505.stm

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : The Prison is the War Crime

No “Unlawful” Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn06072007.html

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : Bureau of Prisons can suspend attorney-client privileges

One month after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule that gave its Bureau of Prisons the right to scrap traditional notions of attorney-client privilege in order to monitor conversations between inmates suspected of terrorism and their lawyers.
http://www.gsnmagazine.com/may_07/bureau_prisons.html

 

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : Trial of CIA agents begins in Italy

Italian intelligence agents and a number of agents from America’s CIA have gone on trial in Italy, in the first trial involving the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme
http://tinyurl.com/2s8bwy

===

 

US 9/11 Crime : Secret CIA prisons confirmed by Polish and Romanian officials

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America’s most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2097935,00.html

 

===

 

Critics Say U.S. Focus On Al-Qaida In Iraq Is Overblown : al-Qaeda-phobia

Nine out of 10 times, when it names a foe it faces, the U.S. military names al-Qaida in Iraq. – Critics say this is overblown and possibly a diversion.
http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBBE0KJP2F.html

 

===

 

U.S. Marine Testifies He Was Ordered to Destroy Photos of Civilian Killings

Laughner said he felt the order amounted to obstruction of justice but that he complied and later lied when asked whether any pictures had been taken.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,279416,00.html

 

===

 

US Desperate : Have We Just Seen The Last U.S. Combat Injury In Iraq?

This photo — taken by embedded photojournalist Michael Kamber two weeks ago during a fateful patrol in search of missing U.S soldiers — could well become the last visual evidence of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.
http://tinyurl.com/28tvqz

 

===

 

In Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals

British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq’s heritage is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2098272,00.html

 

===

 

Israel will pay the price for war in Iraq, former CIA official says

“If al-Qaeda and Iran are the big winners of the war in Iraq, Israel is the strategic loser,” former CIA official Bruce Riedel said in an exclusive interview with Ynet.
http://tinyurl.com/2c55z8

 

===

 

Soldier morale damaged by Iraq

BBC 7 Minute Video:
Mark Urban reports on how the Iraq conflict appears to be eroding the morale of some British soldiers.
http://tinyurl.com/2atmf4

 

===

 

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 8 June 2007

• Pro-Iranian Shi‘i sectarian militias backed up by US-run puppet troops blow up Sunni mosque, launch major offensive against Sunni district in Baghdad Friday, in pursuance of Zionist plans to partition Iraq on sectarian lines.
• US forces blow up house in Baghdad, killing child Thursday afternoon.
• US troops gun down Iraqi man standing in his doorway in western Baghdad Thursday evening.
• Iraqi Resistance bombs destroy US minesweeper, disable American armored vehicle near ad-Dulu‘iyah at dawn Friday. US troops respond with indiscriminate gunfire, killing Iraqi child.
• Witnesses report murderous rampage by Shi‘i sectarian puppet “Interior Ministry Shock Troops” in Samarra’.
• Suspicious bombs in Shi‘i Turkoman town kill at least 19, amidst efforts by US-backed Kurdish separatists to expel Arabs and Turkomans from oil-rich Kirkuk area.
• Resistance bombs south of Ba‘qubah kill puppet police officials Friday afternoon.
• Each college professor in Karbala’ to have bodyguard, gun permit, following assassinations of academics.
• Vehicle bombs kill 30 as Shi‘i sectarian militias tussle for power in southern Iraq.
• Al-Basrah Morgue: every day 25 to 35 bodies of victims of sectarian hit squads brought in. Contrary to official line, violence in Iraq’s second-largest urban area has been on the rise for several weeks as rival Shi‘i sectarian militias battle for supremacy in anticipation of British withdrawal.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2007/0607/iraqiresistancereport_090607.htm

 

===

 

Losing Afghanistan: Firepower Doesn’t Always Win Wars

Foreign powers are clearly failing in Afghanistan; they neither won hearts and minds nor contributed to the stability and rebuilding of the country in any meaningful way – 60 percent of the country’s economy is now dependent on narcotics exports.
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/1634/1/

 

===

 

More Taliban suspects allege abuse: Canadian War Crime

The Foreign Affairs Department has adjusted upward the number of detainees who have alleged they were abused after being captured by Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan and transferred to Afghan jails.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/09/afghan-detainees.html

 

===

 

Violence kills 6 Afghan police

Roadside bombs and battles with Taliban forces killed six police and left 13 Taliban fighters dead or wounded in separate incidents in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
http://tinyurl.com/yt2nbg

===

 

Taliban strikes kill police at record rate

National police are dying at a record rate so far this year and need urgent financial and technical support if a robust Taliban insurgency is to be defeated in distant provinces, the Interior Ministry says.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070607-105400-5808r.htm

===

 

British occupation force soldier killed clearing Taliban camp

A British occupation force soldier killed in action in Afghanistan was named by the Ministry of Defence today.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2631516.ece

 

===

 

Lies and outrages… would you believe it?

It was Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the straits of Tiran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17853.htm

 

===

 

A must watch: The Six-Day War Deceptions : Video

Former UN observer describes how he witnessed Israel provoked their Arab neighbors in the run up to the Six-Day War
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17849.htm

===

 

Rockets, Napalm, Torpedoes & Lie

Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06082007.html

===

 

Palestinians battle inside Israel

At least four gunmen rammed the border fence at the old Kissufim crossing, near Deir al-Baleh even as Israeli soldiers in tanks invaded Gaza near the town of Rafah
http://tinyurl.com/yoq57j

 

===

 

Time for the truth about the USS Liberty: Zionist War Crime

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel’s June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070608/news_lz1e8boston.html

===

 

Zionist War Crime : Loss of Liberty : Video

‘Loss of Liberty’ dramatically attempts to prove, beyond any doubt, that the attack by Israel on June 8, 1967 against the US naval intelligence gathering ship USS Liberty, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, was deliberate.
http://tinyurl.com/ynqawm

 

===

 

Blair an ‘ex-Prime Minister’, says Putin

Russia has dismissed Tony Blair as an “ex-Prime Minister” as it hit back at his warning that British companies would not invest in the country unless it accepted Western values.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2631522.ece

 

===

 

The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt

He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he’d always kept hidden: who killed JFK
http://tinyurl.com/2shuz5

 

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW