Empire Watch: Human Rights Violations, Bogus Figures, and a 'Silent Coup'
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-31 22:58:28 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-31 23:00:55 UTC
Summary: This week's news about torture, assassination, and endless wars of conquest
-
By the fall of 2007, Italy was in a significant state of conflict with the US over the Bush administration's policy of extraordinary rendition. Of specific note were Italian kidnapping charges against nearly two dozen CIA agents for the kidnapping of Muslim cleric Abu Omar, resulting in 23 convictions. The New York Times reported, "Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives."
[...]
It's not clear if Amanda Knox will foot the bill for the 23 convicted CIA agents, but what is clear is that Italy and many other countries view America's policy of rendition as indeed extraordinary, and they have a point to make.
-
A decision by a court in Lithuania ruling that a Saudi Arabian national has a right to an investigation into his alleged torture in a secret CIA detention centre in the country is a breakthrough for justice, said Amnesty International.
-
Vilnius Regional Court has ruled prosecutors unfoundedly refused to launch a pre-trial investigation into claims a Saudi Arabian citizen was kept in a secret CIA detention center in Lithuania in 2004-2006.
-
Three senators pummeled CIA Director John Brennan at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday, peppering him with tough questions on torture and domestic surveillance that he has refused to answer in public.
Brennan defended the CIA against accusations that it is double-dealing with the Intelligence committee about a report on agency torture, and he also received surprisingly pointed questions about whether the CIA spies on Americans. Such public hearings offer senators critical of the intelligence agencies the chance to telegraph their private concerns about classified programs -- and these questions could suggest there is something the public isn't being told about what the CIA does at home.
-
The Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania is a short drive from the Black Sea and the port city of Constanta, a sprawling metropolis with beach resorts, museums, and nightclubs. It's also about to become the main transit point for the tens of thousands of U.S. troops flowing out of Afghanistan. It won't be the first time Washington has used the base for a sensitive mission, however: If human rights groups are correct, the facility also used to house one of the CIA's notorious "black site" detention facilities.
-
US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has said in Warsaw that the US-Polish partnership can "withstand testing and questioning" over allegations of a secret CIA prison in Poland.
-
Poland's official stance of denying it hosted a secret CIA jail is harming its reputation and it needs to be frank about what really happened, a senior intelligence official at the time the alleged prison was operating told Reuters.
-
Prosecutors leading Poland's investigation into an alleged CIA prison where terrorist suspects were held and tortured have asked for another extension to the probe.
-
David Petraeus, the chairman of the KKR Global Institute and former commander of the US Central Command, said that while the energy boom had extended to Canada and Mexico, the Arabian Gulf’s oil and gas still fuelled the US’s trade partners and would for the foreseeable future.
He was speaking at a lecture on the forthcoming North American decades at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research last night.
“According to projections, the US is set to become a leading oil producer by 2020,” he said. “Crude oil production is expected to reach 9.5 million barrels a day by only 2016, and this situation is dramatically changed since 2008-2009, when many experts said oil production had peaked and wasn’t ready to climb. They couldn’t have been more wrong.”
-
The subtitle of Gareth Porter’s new book, “The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” is well-chosen. Large parts of “A Manufactured Crisis” are indeed untold till now. They amount to what the author terms an “alternative narrative”.
-
The Central Intelligence Agency should not be launching deadly military strikes. We would be better off if the C.I.A. returned to being an agency that collected and analyzed intelligence and stopped being a secretive paramilitary organization.
-
Dozens of Wisconsin residents phoned or visited the district offices of our senators and representatives to call for an end to drone warfare. The visits and calls were timed for Jan. 15-21 when our nation commemorated its prophet of peace and nonviolence, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
-
In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on the United States to "move off a permanent war footing," citing his recent limits on the use of drones, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and his effort to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama also vowed to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs to ensure that "the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated." Jeremy Scahill, whose Oscar-nominated film "Dirty Wars" tackles the U.S. drone war and targeted killings abroad, says Obama has been a "drone president" whose operations have killed large numbers of civilians. On NSA reform, Scahill says "the parameters of the debate in Washington are: Should we figure out a way to streamline this and sell it to the American people, or should we do more surveillance?"
-
On issues from domestic inequality to foreign policy, President Obama delivered the fifth State of the Union with a vow to take action on his own should Congress stonewall progress on his agenda. But will Obama’s policies go far enough? We host a roundtable with three guests: Jeremy Scahill, producer and writer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield;" and senior investigative reporter at First Look Media, which will launch in the coming months; Bob Herbert, Distinguished Senior Fellow with Demos; and Lorella Praeli, Director of Advocacy and Policy at the United We Dream Coalition.
-
An Arizona lawmaker who wants to prohibit police departments, prosecutors and state courts from helping the National Security Agency with its data mining and surveillance plans on adding anti-drone language to the measure.
-
Development of modern drone technologies will never eliminate civilian collateral damage in conflict deployment, Michael Raddie, antiwar activist told RT, arguing that investing in drones makes warfare more acceptable for general public.
-
It is the fullest official record of the covert campaign yet to emerge, providing the dates, precise times and exact locations of drone strikes, as well as casualty estimates. The document abruptly stops routinely recording civilian casualties after the start of 2009, but overall casualty estimates continue to be comparable to independent estimates such as those compiled by the Bureau.
-
I am not a lawyer but I am certain that the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, needs to take very seriously a legal opinion which was handed to Parliament this week.
It comes from Jemima Stratford QC. She has given a judgment on whether GCHQ can pass information onto the US, which is later used to facilitate drone strikes.
-
It's been over 10 years since the United States entered Iraq. Though the war in Iraq has officially been over since 2011, our involvement in the Middle East is stronger than ever. And from 9/11 until now, popular opinion in favor of or against the war in Afghanistan has ebbed and flowed.
-
Undoubtedly, the role of the Saudi Arabia and its influence on the Middle East has long been under the discussion. Now with Iran and the West trying to reach an agreement on the nuclear matter, the monarchy is trying to amend the situation to their favor, with the Washington’s support, according to recent reports.
-
Before the hearing began, activists from CODEPINK stood up holding signs reading ‘Stop – Killing, Lying, Spying’ and called for the firing of James Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan, Director of the CIA, and James Comey, Director of the FBI.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft-Connected Sites Trying to Shift Attention Away From Microsoft's Megebreach Only Days Before Important If Not Unprecedented Grilling by the US Government?
- Why does the mainstream media not entertain the possibility a lot of these talking points are directed out of Redmond?
- [Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
- Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
- Microsoft ("a Dying Megacorporation that Does Not Create") and IBM: An Era of Dying Giants With Leadership Deficits and Corporate Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
- Microsoft seems to be resorting to lots of bribes and chasing of bailouts (i.e. money from taxpayers worldwide)
-
- Links 18/05/2024: Deterioration of the Net, North Korean IT Workers in the US
- Links for the day
- Windows in Lebanon: Down to 12%?
- latest from statCounter
- Links 18/05/2024: Caledonia Emergency Powers, "UK Prosecutor's Office Went Too Far in the Assange Case"
- Links for the day
- US Patent and Trademark Office Sends Out a Warning to People Who Do Not Use Microsoft's Proprietary Formats
- They're punishing people who wish to use open formats
- Links 18/05/2024: Fury in Microsoft Over Studio Shutdowns, More Gaming Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 17, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, May 17, 2024
- Links 18/05/2024: KOReader, Benben v0.5.0 Progress Update, and More
- Links for the day
- [Meme] UEFI 'Secure' Boot Boiling Frog
- UEFI 'Secure' Boot: You can just ignore it. You can just turn it off. You can hack on it as a workaround. Just use Windows dammit!
- The Market Wants to Delete Windows and Install GNU/Linux, UEFI 'Secure' Boot Must Go!
- To be very clear, this has nothing to do with security and those who insist that it is have absolutely no credentials
- In the United States Of America the Estimated Share of Google Search Grew After Microsoft's Chatbot Hype (Which Coincided With Mass Layoffs at Bing)
- Microsoft's chatbot hype started in late 2022
- Techrights Will Categorically Object to Any Attempts to Deny Its Right to Publish Informative, Factual Material
- we'll continue to publish about 20 pages per day while challenging censorship attempts
- Links 17/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, More YouTube Censorship
- Links for the day
- YouTube Progresses to the Next Level
- YouTube is a ticking time bomb
- Journalists and Human Rights Groups Back Julian Assange Ahead of Monday's Likely Very Final Decision
- From the past 24 hours...
- [Meme] George Washington and the Bill of Rights
- Centuries have passed since the days of George Washington, but the principles are still the same
- Daniel Pocock: "I've Gone to Some Lengths to Demonstrate How Corporate Bad Actors Have Used Amateur-hour Codes of Conduct to Push Volunteers Into Modern Slavery"
- "As David explains, the Codes of Conduct should work the other way around to regulate the poor behavior of corporations who have been far too close to the Debian Suicide Cluster."
- Video of Richard Stallman's Talk From Four Weeks Ago
- 2-hour video of Richard Stallman speaking less than a month ago
- statCounter Says Twitter/X Share in Russia Fell From 23% to 2.3% in 3 Years
- it seems like YouTube gained a lot
- Journalist Who Won Awards for His Coverage of the Julian Assange Ordeals Excluded and Denied Access to Final Hearing
- One can speculate about the true reason/s
- Richard Stallman's Talk, Scheduled for Two Days Ago, Was Not Canceled But Really Delayed
- American in Paris
- 3 More Weeks for Daniel Pocock's Campaign to Win a Seat in European Parliament Elections
- Friday 3 weeks from now is polling day
- Microsoft Should Have Been Fined and Sanctioned Over UEFI 'Lockout' (Locking GNU/Linux Out of New PCs)
- Why did that not happen?
- Gemini Links 16/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, Cash Issues
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, May 16, 2024
- Ex-Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier Did Not Retire, He Just Left IBM/Red Hat a Month Ago (Ahead of Layoff Speculations)
- Rather than retire he took a similar position at another company
- Linux.com Made Its First 'Article' in Over and Month, It Was 10 Words in Total, and It's Not About Linux
- play some 'webapp' and maybe get some digital 'certificate' for a meme like 'clown computing'
- [Meme] Never Appease the Occupiers
- Freedom requires truth. Free speech emancipates.
- Thorny Issues, Violent Response
- They say protests (or strikes) that do not disrupt anything are simply not effective. The same can be said about reporting.
- GNU/Linux in Malaysia: From 0.2 Percent to 6+ Percent
- That's like 30-fold increase in relative share
- Liberty in Liberia? Windows Falls Below 10% and Below iOS
- This is clearly a problem for Microsoft
- Techrights Congratulates Raspberry Pi (With Caution and Reservations)
- Raspberry Pi will "make or break" based on the decisions made in its boardroom
- OSI Makes a Killing for Bill Gates and Microsoft (Plagiarism and GPL Violations Whitewashed and Openwashed)
- meme and more
- The FSF Ought to Protest Against UEFI 'Secure Boot' (Like It Used To)
- libreplanet-discuss stuff
- People Who Defend Richard Stallman's Right to Deliver Talks About His Work Are Subjected to Online Abuse and Censorship
- Stallman video removed
- GNU/Linux Grows in Denmark, But Much of That is ChromeOS, Which Means No Freedom
- Google never designs operating systems with freedom in mind
- Links 16/05/2024: Vehicles Lasting Fewer Years, Habitat Fragmentation Concerns
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Reaches 6.5% in Canada (Including ChromeOS), Based on statCounter
- Not many news sites are left to cover this, let alone advocate for GNU/Linux
- Links 16/05/2024: Orangutans as Political Props, VMware Calls Proprietary 'Free'
- Links for the day
- The Only Thing the So-called 'Hey Hi Revolution' Gave Microsoft is More Debt
- Microsoft bailouts
- TechTarget (and Computer Weekly et al): We Target 'Audiences' to Sell Your Products (Using Fake Articles and Surveillance)
- It is a deeply rogue industry that's killing legitimate journalism by drowning out the signal (real journalism) with sponsored fodder
- FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
- We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
- Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
- Links for the day
- Windows in Times of Conflict
- In pictures
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024