UK agents ‘colluded with torture in Pakistan’

Mark Townsend
Observer
Feb 22, 2009

A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.

In the study, which will be published next month by the civil liberties group Human Rights Watch, at least 10 Britons are identified who have been allegedly tortured in Pakistan and subsequently questioned by UK intelligence officials. It warns that more British cases may surface and that the issue of Pakistani terrorism suspects interrogated by British agents is likely to “run much deeper”.

The report will further embarrass the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has repeatedly said the UK does not condone torture. He has been under fire for refusing to disclose US documents relating to the treatment of Guantánamo detainee and former British resident Binyam Mohamed. The documents are believed to contain evidence about the torture of Mohamed and British complicity in his maltreatment. Mohamed will return to Britain this week. Doctors who examined him in Guantánamo found evidence of prolonged physical and mental mistreatment.

…….full article here

War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted

Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research
Feb 19, 2009

Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA’s secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. “My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said. “But,” he added, “generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn’t have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush’s watch.

…….full article here

Massive deployment of US and allied troops in Afghanistan

Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Feb 19, 2009

The Obama administration is committed to a massive deployment of US and alled troops in Afghaniustan. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, had requested 30,000 troops. Sofar the president has authorized 17,000 troops “and the Pentagon identified 12,000 to send.”

NATO troops are facing fierce resistance. NATO countries have been called upon by the US to increase their troops in Afghanistan officially to combat the “war on terrorism”.

Afghanstan is a strategic geopolitical hub in Central Asia bordering on China and the former Soviet Union. It is at the crossroads of stragegic oil and gas pipelines.

It also supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of heroin. Retail sales worldwide of Afghan heroin are of the order of 200 billion dollars a year. It is worth noting these multibillion proceeds of the Afghan drug trade, deposited in Western banks, constitute, at a time of crisis, a financial safety net for the Western banking system.

In recent developments, Germany is to to contribute to the surge in Afghanistan.

…….full article here

Operation Uptick: Obama Launches Afghan Surge

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Feb 18, 2009

And so it begins: the great Obama “surge” in Afghanistan. Before withdrawing a single soldier from Iraq, Barack Obama is throwing 17,500 more troops into the boiling Afghan cauldron. The deployment is the first installment of what Obama aides affirm could be a much larger escalation down the road: as soon as the vaunted “strategic review” of Afghan policy – led by hawks like Joe Biden, Richard Holbrook and General David “Pre-President” Petraeus – is completed.

Most of the new troops are apparently going to be sent on a fool’s errand to eradicate the only means of support of poor Afghans: the opium crop. Previous such efforts by American forces and their allies have produced nothing but more poverty, anger, extremism and support for the insurgency. And whatever the mission, increased troop levels and military action have led invariably to steep rises in civilian casualties – which, in turn, produce more poverty, anger, extremism and support for the insurgency.

In fact, on the very day that Obama was announcing his own personal Terror War surge, the UN released a report that confirmed the already obvious fact that the American-led occupiers of Afghanistan have been lying about the number of civilians they have been killing. The UN report documents the killing of 2,118 Afghan civilians in 2008 – 828 of them killed by the American-led forces.

…….full article here

US occupation of Iraq: An ongoing criminal enterprise

Bill Van Auken
WSWS.org
Feb 18, 2009

Recent media reports on the mounting evidence of wholesale corruption in US reconstruction efforts in Iraq are symptomatic of the criminal nature of Washington’s war and occupation from their inception nearly six years ago. These crimes are continuing under the Obama administration, with no end in sight.

Citing unnamed senior government officials and court documents, the New York Times reported Sunday that federal investigators have turned their sights on two senior US military officers who were in charge of contracting out reconstruction projects in Iraq in the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion.

Those named as subjects of the probe are Col. Anthony B. Bell, now retired from the Army, who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who functioned as a top contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004.

According to the Times, information about multimillion-dollar payoffs and bribes involving the office where the two men worked was supplied by Dale Stoffel, an American arms dealer who was shot to death in Iraq in late 2004, shortly after becoming a key witness for US investigators.

…….full article here

Media Lens: Putting out the People’s Eyes – Machiavelli adn the Press Complaints Commission

Creative-i
Feb 17, 2009

Last week, the Media Standards Trust (MST), an independent charity, published a report assessing the British media’s capacity to regulate itself under the leadership of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The MST report found that the current system is neither independent nor effective. Martin Moore, director of the MST comments:

“The current system is paid for by the newspaper industry, its rules are written by working newspaper editors, and almost half the Commission itself is made up of newspaper and magazine editors.

“You would be forgiven, as a member of the public, for thinking that the system was geared more towards protecting the interests of the press than the public.” (Moore, ‘A More Accountable Press – Part 1: The Need for Reform,’ Media Standards Trust, February 9, 2009; www.mediastandardstrust.org/medianews/blogs/blogdetails.aspx?sid=30997)

The results of the PCC’s work speak for themselves: if a member of the public makes a complaint against the press, he or she has about a 250:1 chance of getting an adjudication in his or her favour. Moore describes these as “pretty terrible odds”

…….full article here

Who is the Judge Who Judges? Who is a Terrorist?

Mats Svenson
Counterpunch
Feb 17, 2009

There is a shrinking group of free people, people who believe in a context with everyone’s equal worth. This group still dreams about a society where everyone is included and for this, one is prepared to struggle.

The hours are not enough. Daddy Obama tries every night to give Natasha and Malia some of his time. The hours are not enough. That is just the way it is. Part of the job, the assignment. Much has been promised and every promise has to be kept.

I can see how Malia follows dad Obama on TV. Even when he is not at home, he is still present. Malia flips the channel; dad is always there, channel after channel, both short and long segments. Segments about what has been said and even more about what had not been said. CNN does not miss a word, a pause, a look, a hand shake.

…….full article here

Newly declassified DOD documents says detainees were tortured

Jason Leopold
Online Journal
Feb 17, 2009

Newly declassified Defense Department documents describe a pattern of “abusive” behavior by U.S. military interrogators that directly led to the deaths of several suspected terrorists imprisoned at a detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002.

The previously secret pages from the report were part of the a wide-ranging report into detainee abuse known as the Church Report, named after Vice Admiral Albert T. Church who conducted the investigation. That report said there was “no policy that condoned or authorized either abuse or torture.”

But the declassified Pentagon documents, coupled with a report issued last December by the Senate Armed Services Committee, tell a different story and lend credence to claims by civil libertarians and critics of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that refusal to release a fully classified version of the Church Report several years ago amounted to a cover-up.

…….full article here

UK Recession Watch- Britain’s Great Depression?

Nadeem Walayat
Market Oracle
Feb 17, 2009

The purpose of this analysis is to map out to the trend of the UK recession for 2009 and 2010 in terms of depth, the bottom and the potential recovery. The most recently released GDP data shows that the UK economy actually did fall off of the edge of a cliff during the fourth quarter of 2008 by contracting by a shocking 1.5% GDP. This compares against the governments recent forecast for 2% GDP contraction for the whole of 2009 which paints a picture of gross under estimation of the actual extent of the degree of economic contraction that is taking place at this time, and hence the adoption of the easy going terminology of “Quantative Easing” to hide the truth of money printing on a scale that could bankrupt Britain, the evidence of which has been played out in the currency markets with sterling’s fall to a 23 year low against the dollar, a fall of over 30% in barely 6 months.

…….full article here

Lawyers condemn UK over torture in ‘war on terror’

Afua Hirsh
Guardian
Feb 16, 2009

The United Kingdom is one of a number of countries that has undermined international law and fallen into a “trap set by terrorists”, according to a three-year study by senior international jurists released today.

The report, by the International Commission of Jurists, expresses “deep concern” over the findings of changes to the legal landscape since September 11 in more than 40 countries including the UK, the US, and countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Singling out the UK’s use of a wide range of counterterrorism laws, the report highlights allegations of complicity in torture and intelligence sharing, the practice of rendition, and the system of control orders, as areas of particular concern.

“We have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counterterrorism measures,” said Justice Arthur Chaskalson, former president of the South African constitutional court, who headed the study.

…….full article here