Free Iraq

NEW YORKERS RALLY TO SUPPORT GAZA FREEDOM MARCH
Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes
Maybe it’s because I’ a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003
I’d be a millionaire
 

FBI documents reveal secret CIA prisoners ‘manacled to the ceiling’
 

Second autopsy: Hampton's death likely murder: A doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination on the body of Timothy Hampton says the nuclear expert's fall from the UN building in Vienna was murder.

The 47-year-old British scientist, who was involved in monitoring nuclear activities, was found dead last week at the bottom of a staircase in the United Nations' building.

The doctor who first examined Hampton's body concluded that there were 'no suspicious circumstances'. Following objections raised by his widow, Olena Gryshcuk, and her family as to the reliability of the assessment, another physician was asked to repeat the autopsy.

The new doctor, Professor Kathrin Yen, of the Ludwig Institute in Graz, Austria, says she has found evidence that Hampton did not commit suicide.

She believes one possible theory is that Hampton was carried to the 17th floor from his workplace on the sixth floor and thrown down from the height.
 

Video (12 min): Fisk lashes out at West in Middle East
 

Video: Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali on Obama's and UK Foreign Policy



(Noam Chomsky, indeed a brilliant intellectual, is, in my opinion, deeply morally flawed. How can one with such vast analytic skills stubbornly support the official stories of 9/11 and JFK ? Were people of his caliber - and here I include Howard Zinn and Alexander Cockburn - to "come out of the closet" on these pivotal events, what a difference might be made. Continuing to honor them for their legitimate contributions I nonetheless mourn their ultimate cowardice.)
 

Video (4 min): South Africans 'fought in Gaza war'
 

"C E N S O R E D"
 

Osama bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks? Where is the Evidence?
 

Iraq signs new overseas oil deal: The country's total daily output of about 2.4 million barrels is lower than it could be, because of sanctions against former Iraqi governments, lack of investment and insurgent attacks, analysts say.

(Oops. They forgot to mention "invasion and occupation".)
 

VIDEOS: War Crimes Multimedia: The following video (Part I and I) produced by Matthias Chang and Christopher Chang was shown at the War Crimes Conference & Exhibition that took place at the Putra World Trade Center (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from October 28 to 31, 2009. The showing of this outystanding video production preceding the official opening address by former the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammed.

Also participating in this event were Cynthia McKinney, Hans von Sponeck, Denis Halliday, George Galloway, Hana Al Bayaty, Dirk Andriensens, among others. Global Research's Director Michel Chossudovsky, who is a member of the Perdana War Crimes Commission was also present.

The conference was followed by hearings of the War Crimes Commission, in which sworn testimonies by the victims of Abu Ghraib and Guantantamo were presented. These included presentations by former Guantanamo detainees Sami Al Hajj, Maozam Begg,

The mandate of the Perdana Tribunal to Criminalise War, is to examine accusations directed against alleged war criminals, including present and past heads of State and heads of government.
 

Italian judge convicts 23 Americans in CIA renditions: An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street, in a landmark case involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in the war on terrorism.

Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom Wednesday that he was acquitting three other Americans.

Former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, received eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants each received a five-year sentence.

The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia as subsequent Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors' extradition request.

In Washington, CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the convictions. He said, “The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar,” the kidnapped man.

Lawyers for the 23 convicted Americans said they would appeal the convictions. ...

The Americans were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released, but has not been permitted to leave Egypt to attend the trial.

The trial is the first by any government over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, which transferred suspects overseas for interrogation. Human rights advocates charge that renditions were the CIA's way to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted.

On Monday, an American federal court ruled that Maher Arar, an Ottawa telecommunications engineer, cannot sue the U.S. government for dispatching him seven years ago to Syria, where he was tortured amid post-9-11 suspicions he was an al-Qaeda terrorist.

Mr. Arar was held and interrogated in New York for almost two weeks before being sent to the country of his birth, where he spent a year in confinement before his release in 2003. A federal commission eventually ruled in his favour and he won a $10.5-million settlement.
 

House Vote On Passage: H. Res. 867: Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict" in multilateral fora.

(Passed by overwhelming majority)
 

House Denounces Goldstone Report on Gaza Assault: The House has approved a non-binding measure denouncing a UN inquiry for accusing Israel of committing war crimes in its assault on the Gaza Strip. The inquiry, headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, also accused Hamas of war crimes and urged both sides to investigate the charges or face international prosecution. But the House measure dismissed the Goldstone report as “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” It also calls on the Obama administration to “strongly and unequivocally oppose” discussion of the report’s findings in any international setting. The resolution passed by a margin of 344-to-46. ...
 

The Tortured Logic Continues: “Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. ...

Just this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York City, dismissed Arar’s case against the government officials (including FBI Director Robert Mueller, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Attorney General John Ashcroft) who allegedly conspired to have him kidnapped and tortured. Arar is safe now, recovering in Canada with his family. But the decision sends a signal to the Obama administration that there will be no judicial intervention to halt the cruel excesses of the Bush-era “Global War on Terror,” including extraordinary rendition, torture and the use of the “state secrets privilege” to hide these crimes.

Arar’s life-altering odyssey is one of the best known and best investigated of those victimized by U.S. extraordinary rendition. After vacationing with his family in Tunisia, Arar attempted to fly home to Canada. On Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes at JFK Airport, Arar was pulled aside for questioning. He was fingerprinted and searched by the FBI and the New York Police Department. He asked for a lawyer and was told he had no rights. He was then taken to another location and subjected to two days of aggressive interrogations, with no access to phone, food or a lawyer. He was asked about his membership with various terrorist groups, about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Palestine and more. Shackled, he was then moved to a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn, strip-searched and threatened with deportation to Syria.

Arar was born in Syria and told his captors that if he returned there, he would be tortured. As Arar’s lawyers would later argue, however, that is exactly what they hoped would happen. ...

For 10 months and 10 days, Maher was held in a dark, damp, cold cell, measuring 6 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet high, the size of a grave. He was beaten repeatedly with a thick electrical cable all over his body, punched, made to listen to the torture of others, denied food and threatened with electrical shock and an array of more horrors. To stop the torture, he falsely confessed to attending terrorist training in Afghanistan. Then, after nearly a year, he was abruptly released to Canada, 40 pounds lighter and emotionally destroyed.

The Canadian government, under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, investigated, found its own culpability in relaying unreliable information to the FBI and settled with Arar, giving him an apology and $10 million. The U.S. government has offered no apology and has kept Arar on a terrorist watch list. ...
 

The Inhuman Stain: Saying Yes to State Terror
 

On the lighter side . . .

Israel's ambassador to Turkey was forced to cancel a university visit in the country's Black Sea region on Wednesday after a group of students pelted his car with eggs. :
 

TWO VIEWS OF OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY
 

Israeli military attacks and takes over Iranian ship
 

Israel preparing public for a new war in Gaza
 

G20 Meet To Finalize Dumping Of Dollar? Researcher and author Daniel Estulin, best known for his exposé of the ultra secretive Bilderberg Group, says inside sources have informed him that the core focus of the G20 meeting this weekend will be to discuss ditching the Dollar and implementing a global centralized monetary system.

... G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland, will debate actions to sink the U.S. Dollar, thereby crashing the present world financial system.
 

A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is.
Even when government officials purposely subject an innocent person to brutal torture, they enjoy full immunity.
 

Chomsky Confronted on 9/11
 

Wingnuts rush to conclusions about Fort Hood shooter -- but cousin says he was 'good American' harassed for being Muslim
 

From Fort Hood to Ramakrishna. Don't be Deceived: ... I suspect this was engineered but what do I know? ... I would be very suspicious of any official explanation. They lie and they lie. It’s in their job description. ...
 

Bipartisan Attack on International Humanitarian Law: In a stunning blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday attacking the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict. ... Perhaps most ominously, the resolution also endorses Israel's right to attack Syria and Iran on the grounds that they are "state sponsors of terrorism."

Having 80% of the U.S. House of Representatives go on record attacking the integrity of one of the world's most respected and principled defenders of human rights is indicative of just how far to the right the U.S. Congress has now become, even under Democratic leadership. In doing so, Congress has served notice to the human rights community that they won't consider any human rights defenders credible if they dare raise questions about the conduct of a U.S. ally. ...

Indeed, the resolution calls on the Obama administration not only "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement" of the report, but to even oppose unequivocally any "further consideration" of the report in international fora. Instead of debating its merits, therefore, Congress has decided to instead pre-judge its contents and disregard the actual evidence put forward. (It's doubtful that any of the supporters of the resolution even bothered actually reading the report.) ...

The House resolution is particularly vehement in its opposition to the report's recommendation that, should Hamas and Israeli authorities fail to engage in credible investigations and bring those responsible for war crimes to justice, the matter should be referred to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution. The resolution insists this is unnecessary since Israel "has already launched numerous investigations." ...

... U.S. support for human rights and international law has always been uneven, but never has Congress gone on record by such an overwhelming margin to discredit these universal principles so categorically. This is George W. Bush's foreign policy legacy, which - through this resolution - the Democrats, no less than their Republican counterparts, have now eagerly embraced.
 

Everything About Nidal Malik Hasan Screams “Patsy”: The Empire strikes back – right when when public support for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan sinks to all time lows, an anti-war Islamic extremist with links to suicide bombers goes on a shooting rampage at a U.S. army base, reinvigorating support for the war on terror and demonizing opposition to it as anti-American extremism. The scam would be believable if it wasn’t so perfectly staged.

Shortly before the massacre, Hasan was caught on camera shopping at the convenience store located on the army base – laughing and joking. Is this the behavior of a man psychologically readying himself for the high-intensity horror of gunning down dozens of his colleagues, or someone unaware of what was to follow?
 

What Happened To The Accomplice Shooters?
 

Just Like 9/11 Patsies, Qurans Immediately Discovered After Hasan Shooting
 

FORT HOOD SHOOTER INFORMATION NOT ADDING UP: ... The media reported that Hasan was promoted to Major in May of this year. ...

Now, why on earth would the military promote a man who was unhappy, had objected to being in the military, had not wanted to deploy to anywhere outside of the U.S., and who had allegedly made himself a security threat with online radical comments? ...

I hate to say it, but this tragedy stinks to high heavens and reaks of clandestine intelligence operations.
 

Dark Glass: Hateful Echoes and Hidden Costs
 

Kucinich: Why is it we have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited Money for War? “The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

“People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street.

“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US.

“The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 

Video (1 min): Sami Yusuf My Only Wish
 

Give that man a contract
 

The Jewish Final Solution : ... They are preparing for the one-state solution by using genocide and economic warfare to ensure that the Palestinians will be in the minority. The process will continue - I guarantee it (and do you really want to hear me tell you 'I told you so' when the next Jewish atrocity occurs?) - with increasing gruesomeness, until the world puts a stop to it by eliminating the Jewish-dominated state in the Middle East. Since the atrocities are inevitable, why not stop them now?
 

Afghan insurgents learn to destroy key U.S. armored vehicle: At least eight American troops have been killed this year in attacks on so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and 40 more have been wounded, said a senior U.S. military official who, like others interviewed on the issue, declined to be further identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The insurgents' success in attacking the hulking machines, which can cost as much as $1 million each, underscores their ability to counter the advanced hardware that the U.S. military and its allies are deploying in their struggle to gain the upper hand in the war, which entered its ninth year last month.

The attacks also raise questions about how vulnerable a new, lighter MRAP, the M-ATV, which is now being shipped to Afghanistan, are to the massive explosive charges that Taliban-led insurgents have been using against its bigger cousin.

The insurgents are also hitting MRAPs with rocket-propelled grenades that can penetrate their steel armor, according to U.S troops in Afghanistan, several of whom showed McClatchy a photograph of a hole that one of the projectiles had punched in the hull of an MRAP.

The Pentagon has spent more than $26.8 billion to develop and build three versions of the largest MRAPs, totaling some 16,000 vehicles, mostly for the Army and Marine Corps, according to an August report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Another $5.4 billion is being spent to produce 5,244 M-ATVs, the smaller version that U.S. defense officials contend offers as much protection as the large models do, but is more maneuverable and better suited to Afghanistan's dirt tracks and narrow mountain roads.

The issue was the subject of a high-level meeting convened on Wednesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the production of MRAPs his highest priority in 2007 as U.S. troops in Iraq were suffering massive casualties from roadside bomb attacks.
 

UN chief to refer Goldstone report to Security Council
 

Palestinians take down parts of West Bank wall
 

Blackwater used 'child prostitutes in Iraq'
 

Obama is white power in black face, protesters say : Over 200 people gathered for the first public demonstration by African-Americans against the Obama administration since his historic inauguration in January, and slammed the president for continuing what they described as Washington's "imperialist" agenda around the world, AFP reported on Saturday.

"He is a tool of our imperialist enemies and we demand our freedom. And we demand that Obama withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan right now," he added.

Protesters also called for Obama to order troops out of Iraq and to scrap Africom, the controversial year-old United States Africa Command.

They also said the US should keep its "hands off" Venezuela and end the Cuba embargo and the Zimbabwe blockade.

Charles Baron, a New York city councilman and former member of the Black Panthers, a Black Power movement active in the 1960s and 1970s, attacked the president for turning a cold shoulder to the plight of African-Americans.

"We are glad that Barack Obama broke up the white male monopoly on the White House, but we were not looking for a change in the occupant of the White House from white to Black, we were looking for change in foreign policies and domestic policies," he added.

"To have a Black person exploiting me just like a white person, that's no easier pain."
 

KBR may have poisoned 100,000 people in Iraq: lawsuit