CIA interrogations report

KSN: WASHINGTON (AP) — "We're going to kill your children."

With those words, a CIA interrogator tried to squeeze intelligence information from accused terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

On Monday, the threat was revealed in a newly declassified report on alleged detainee abuse as President Barack Obama's Justice Department launched a criminal probe of "unauthorized ... inhumane" tactics during George W. Bush's war on terrorism.

The five-year-old report by the CIA's inspector general, released under a federal court's orders, described harsh tactics used by interrogators on terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Seeking information about possible further attacks, interrogators threatened one detainee with a gun and a power drill, told another he would have to watch his mother sexually assaulted and tried to frighten a third with a mock execution of still another prisoner"

The Michael Jackson Story: Part 2

We're going to touch on one of the issues that the media brought up in the immediate hours, even minutes following the death of Michael Jackson. And this is a very difficult topic to write about, difficult as it seeps into other fraught areas of the history of music. Suffice to say it's not really a topic about Michael Jackson himself, more to do with some of the media noise.

And right from the get go of the coverage the media made it an issue, where I really don't think it was an overt issue before that.

And that is the controversial theme of race. Needless to say, I suppose generally this theme has been excited by Michael's changing appearance over the years.

Some time back US President Barrack Obama is asked by a reporter why he didn't say more about Michael's passing, as this has caused 'concern in the black community'. Interesting isn't it ? It's been decided that it isn't even an issue that it may have caused concern or be noticed by anyone else.

(As it went, Jackson's image must have became strained enough for Obama to distance himself as far as possible from this even being a serious proposition. In a politically astute way, Obama goes to some lengths to annotate, or rather funnel his tribute to Jackson through a great wariness about his' tragic and sad personal life', and he's 'glad to see that he's primarily being remembered for his entertaining and great gifts'.)

But perhaps some of the race theme is best encapsulated in a CBS interview with director Spike Lee:

Like Obama, Lee says that incredible talent and gifts are accompanied by other idiosyncrasies. That's absolutely correct, and it is very important people understand that. You can't judge certain kinds of people; gifted people, creative people etc through the same lens as you tend to judge everyone else. That's not to say people should be exonerated from anything and everything but at the same time it is simply naive to expect to hold them to the same criteria as everyone else. And I want to come back to this topic later on.

But Lee, injects that in a film he made he has a white guy list his heroes who are all black but goes on to say they are 'more than black'. This is a source of great amusement for Lee, who thinks he's discovered something really cool.

Lee, frankly at least partly at the media goading/fawning of interviewer Katie Couric goes on to suggest that Jackson's 'provenance' is such a sensitive issue and he even has no qualms about recounting some story of some guy getting attacked because he didn't sufficiently acknowledge Jackson's heritage.

Yet in a world where we are constantly asked to be colour blind when that angle suits, or even told that there is no such thing as race, the media's clear determination to revise the death of Michael Jackson into a narrative about racial group identity, rather than a narrative about a great man with a tremendous reach becomes a little conspicuous.

I'm sure some will disagree, and I don't wish to sound like I'm criticising whatever genuine feelings people may have, but clearly at times his death was also being shifted into some other statement, and this was happening immediately.

And this has specific effects, and one of those is that we end up looking at race rather than individuals, and although I understand it in one way, I also find this a slightly distorting emphasis to be placed on anyone, and it also puts something of a fence around the legacy of Michael Jackson.

Repeatedly it has been said in the coverage, that Michael Jackson opened the door to a lot of black artists, and that Michael Jackson broke into MTV where black artists were not generally encouraged previously.

The New York Times quoting Al Sharpton said, "“Before Michael we were limited and ghettoized,” Mr. Sharpton told the mostly black crowd. “But Michael put on a cutaway military jacket, pulled his pants leg up, put on a white glove and smashed the barriers of segregated music."

I think Al Sharpton has said some really wonderful things about Michael Jackson, some of them are said from a certain perspective, but they are poignant, moving and powerful. In one of these speeches says something like "You are Bad Michael Now, you are the Baddest". It was a great line I wish I could remember it properly or find the clip.

But how times change.

If Michael Jackson had a hand opening the door to presumably what came out, and the media are now telling us this is important, it just happens to be Michael Jackson also represented a set of things that like them or not, that I think were rather different.

At times you almost see Michael Jackson, and I don't mean to sound rude, but relegated to history as foot in the door for race-first self-esteem, with his own career as an artist something on the side.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking that's what it was all about if you knew nothing about Michael Jackson and just listened to some of the coverage of his death alone.

As far as Michael Jackson was concerned anything that even smelt like a bellicose 'dose of race' or any kind of specified racial delimiter publicly came much later on when his career was in trouble and I think it also needs to be seen in a certain context which gets even more controversial, because as far I'm aware this never had significant painstaking attention given to it in the music itself before that.

Songs like Black or White, which although I personally didn't care for at all, I generally understood as the opposite to the above, possibly the other extreme of racial comment. As a side note I think Michael was inadvertently playing into the hands of other trends when he made that song, but I believe it was genuine and well intentioned, and I know it has fans.

Michael Jackson is someone who brought light, hope, dazzle, joy and inspiration, instead of nonsense, despair, anger and confusion, and he had a tremendous global following and like a lot of great figures is difficult to categorize.

In his prime he was detached from the atmosphere of political correctness and group banner waving that's applauding him now. He was himself, an incredibly gifted person and it's that that makes someone a 'problem'.

Indeed, it's difficult to disagree with Michael's friend actress Elizabeth Taylor about the real reason at least for some of Michael's difficulties, where she said in 1993 in the interview with Oprah Winfrey, "He is larger than life and some people just cannot accept that" (1:14)

Part 3 Next...

Media ignores Torture Photos showing Prison Guards Raping Children

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com 21/5/09: "The real reason behind Obama’s reversal of a decision to release the torture photos has been almost completely ignored by the corporate media - the fact that the photos show both US and Iraqi soldiers raping teenage boys in front of their mothers.

The Obama administration originally intended to release photos depicting torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of May, following a court order arising out of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit first filed by the ACLU in 2004.

However, a reversal of Obama’s decision was announced this week, after he “changed his mind after viewing some of the images and hearing warnings from his generals in Iraq and in Afghanistan that such a move would endanger US troops deployed there,” according to a Washington Post report.

In response, the ACLU charged that Obama “has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup.” The Obama administration has also sought to protect intelligence officials involved in torture from prosecution at every turn.

The primary reason why Obama is now blocking the release of the photos is that some of the pictures, as well as video recordings, show prison guards sodomizing young boys in front of their mothers, both with objects as well as physical rape.

This horrific detail has been almost completely ignored by the establishment media in their coverage of the story this week, despite the fact that it’s been in the public domain for nearly five years, after it was first revealed by investigative [reporter] Seymour Hersh during an ACLU conference in July 2004.

“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

Hersh’s contention that minors were raped by prison guards while others filmed the vulgar spectacle is backed up by a leaked Abu Ghraib memorandum highlighted in a 2004 London Guardian report, in which detainees Kasim Hilas describes “the rape of an Iraqi boy by a man in uniform”. The testimony was also part of the military’s official Taguba Report into the torture at Abu Ghraib.

“I saw [name blacked out] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass,” Mr Hilas told military investigators. “I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.”

Another inmate, Thaar Dawod, described more abuse of teenage boys.

“They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer [Corporal Charles Graner, one of the military policemen facing court martial] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners,” he said.

A 2004 London Telegraph report also described photos which showed “US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death and having sex with a female PoW,” as well as a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, which shows “Iraqi guards raping young boys”

John Mearsheimer: Saving Israel From Itself

May 15, 2009 The American Conservative:

"The United States and Israel fundamentally disagree about the need to establish a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. President Obama is committed to a two-state solution, while Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is opposed and has been for many years. To avoid a direct confrontation with Washington, Netanyahu will probably change his rhetoric and talk favorably about two states. But that will not affect Israel’s actions. The never-ending peace process will go on, Israel will continue building settlements, and the Palestinians will remain locked up in a handful of impoverished enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza. Anticipating this outcome, Obama has told Congress to expect a clash with Israel.

This is not a fight Obama is likely to win, even though the United States is more powerful than Israel and most Americans favor creating a Palestinian state and bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a close.

Look at the historical record. Since 1967, every American president has opposed settlement-building in the Occupied Territories. Yet no president has been able to put meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements, much less dismantle them. Perhaps the best evidence of American impotence is what happened during the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land, constructed 250 miles of connector and bypass roads, doubled the number of settlers, and built 30 new settlements. President Clinton did hardly anything to halt this expansion.

The main reason no president has been able to stop Israel from colonizing the Occupied Territories is the Israel lobby. It is an especially powerful interest group that has pushed the American government to establish a “special relationship” with Israel, which is, as Yitzhak Rabin once said, “beyond compare in modern history.”

The special relationship means Washington gives Israel consistent, almost unconditional diplomatic backing and more foreign aid than any other country. In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes, like building settlements. Furthermore, Israel is rarely criticized by American officials and certainly not by anyone who aspires to high office. Recall what happened earlier this year to Charles Freeman, who was forced to withdraw as head of the National Intelligence Council because he had criticized certain Israeli policies and questioned the merits of the special relationship.

Many hope that Obama will be different from his predecessors and stand up to the lobby. The indications thus far are not encouraging. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama responded to charges that he was “soft” on Israel by pandering to the lobby and publicly praising the special relationship. He was silent during the recent Gaza War—when Israel was being criticized around the world for its brutal assault on that densely populated enclave—and he said nothing when Freeman was forced to quit his administration. Like his predecessors, Obama appears to be no match for the lobby."

Rest of article...

Paul Craig Roberts: Who rules America ?

14/5/09 Information Clearing House:

"What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.

Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.”

It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester’s campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.

The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama “change” administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing “Yes we can!”

The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion “defense” budget for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball number--is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders?

These “wars” are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over American citizenry.

Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a “city on the hill, a light unto the world.”

Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, continues to attack “targets” in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.

Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population..

According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the “security” bureaucracy.

The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration. http://www.truthout.org/051209J?n

In the Afghan “desert of death” the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munition corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned."

Amnesty calls on US to suspend arms sales to Israel

"Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel's extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International listed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the US president, Barack Obama, to suspend military aid to Israel" Guardian

More on Gaza devastation

LA Times: "Reporting from Jerusalem -- Israel finished pulling its forces out of the Gaza Strip today, timing the withdrawal to President Obama's first full day in office."



"Palestinian sisters Dunia, 10, and Dana, 5, sort out their school books after finding them among the debris of their destroyed parents' home on Tuesday in the southern part of Gaza City"

BBC: (yesterday):



"Fresh images from the Gaza Strip are showing the massive scale of destruction of Israel's three-week bombardment and ground offensive, which ended on Saturday.



In Ezbat Abed Rabbu, part of Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza, residents have been returning to find their entire neighbourhood reduced to rubble.



Palestinian families left destitute by the Israeli military campaign struggle to utilise some of what remains of their property, in this case a veranda which somehow escaped unscathed.



Dangers remain for Gazans - more than 36 hours after Israeli leaders declared a unilateral ceasefire, a suspected lump of Israeli-fired white phosphorus is ignited in a street in Beit Lahiya.



The UN has warned reconstruction in Gaza Strip will cost billions of dollars, with tens of thousands of people left homeless and hundreds of thousands with with no running water or electricity"

Obama celebrity pledge video

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet:

"A mind-numbingly cringeworthy and deeply disturbing MySpace video release shows vacuous celebrities pledging their “service” to the incoming Obama government in the form of activities such as not flushing the toilet after taking a piss and selling their “obnoxious” cars.

The video was produced by actress Demi Moore for the MySpace Presidential Pledge project, and features a gaggle of highly annoying actors, singers and other patent phonies such as Sean P. “Diddy” Combs, Courtney Cox Arquette and Ashton Kutcher.

“The Presidential Pledge is a platform for people across the nation and throughout the world to make a first person commitment of service to our new President, articulating a specific intent or action to become an agent of positive change,” said Kutcher.

In the video, Sean P. “Diddy” Combs pledges to “turn the lights off,” presumably to help Obama combat “global warming” as America freezes under record low temperatures, while actor Jason Bateman promises to “flush only after a deuce never a single” and another celebrity states his pledge to “sell my obnoxious car and drive a hybrid”. Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis pledges “to be of service to Barack Obama”.

At the end of the clip, in perhaps the creepiest moment, Moore and Kutcher pledge to “be a servant to our President” as the shot pans out to show all the actors echoing a cult-like mantra, “because together we can, together we are and together we will be the change that we see,” as the shot morphs into the now familiar Marxist motif 1984-style image of Obama.

Several respondents to the video noted that the sentiments expressed were at best misguided and at worst “creepy,” “sick” and “cult-like”... Read On...

Video here

"Al-Qaeda vows to hurt Obama's US "

The second-in-command of Islamic militant network al-Qaeda has called on Muslims to harm "criminal" America. In a message purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda deputy accused US President-elect Barack Obama of betraying his Muslim roots.

He likened him to a "house slave" - who had chosen to align himself with the "enemies" of Islam. Mr Obama has said stamping out al-Qaeda "once and for all" will be a top priority during his administration.

On Sunday, he said capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden was "critical" to US security. He has also promised to bolster the US presence in Afghanistan - a policy that would fail, said the al-Qaeda deputy.

The US said the message did not signal any increased threat against America.

[...] The audio message, which ran with photographic stills and some video footage, appeared on militant websites.

BBC

Blair's advice to Obama: "Clash of Civilizations"

"Tony Blair has urged Barack Obama to take the initiative on issues from climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way to heal the divisions between America and Europe.

In an interview with the Guardian during a visit to Rwanda, the former prime minister said Obama's election as US president opened up "an era of real possibility". (Let's hope not -j)

"I think he can say to Europe, look I'm going to champion a global deal on climate change, I'm going to take the Middle East peace process seriously, I'm going to make sure that poverty in Africa is right at the top of the agenda, I'm going to listen to your concerns and get a shared agenda with you" ("Shared agenda" who remembers 'shared global values'?)

[...] Obama faces inflated expectations, as Blair did in 1997 — in part born out of antipathy to the outgoing administration — that the president-elect's staff are already trying to dampen.

"There's enormous expectation," said Blair. "But I think he's a very smart guy and the only thing you can do in these circumstances is to try and meet the reasonable expectations.

"I personally think that one of the essential things both for the next American president and for the world is to regard this region [the Middle East], and broader than this region, as one problem because you face the same issue everywhere, which is a battle between those who want a modern and progressive future and those who are reactionary extreme," he said.

"Whether it's in Iraq or in Palestine or what's happening in all the different parts of Afghanistan or Pakistan, it's the same issue." (Guardian)

And it's just outrageous. Blair who obviously has no interest in regret or understanding and who has apparently willfully learned absolutely nothing since leaving office earns enormous sums of money giving these after dinner speeches presumably filled with exactly this kind of shocking crap. It's just amazing.

Obama mania

Give Obama his credit, he seems on the surface pretty likable, a very charismatic speaker, he did tremendously well with his campaign. But I saw a bit of Question Time tonight, and it underlined how Obama mania is out of control, and actually quite reminiscent of when Labour and Tony Blair came to power promising their 'Third Way' back in 1997. Anyone remember ? Even satirical things like Rory Bremner at the time presented a loving poem lavishly dedicated to Labour winning the election. All this stuff, and talk of a 'huge mandate' and 'change' is very dangerous of course, and Americans may not be prepared for what that could mean.

I also caught a bit of This Week with Andrew Neil, unsurprisingly dedicated to more of the same and he had on Clarence Jones who (co-?) wrote the "I had a Dream" speech for Martin Luther King. They were talking about how non Obama-voters will 'adapt' to Obama and he let slip a little thing about 'The White Mind'.

We'll see what happens.

Obama must declare the War on Terror over

It's been a while. How you guys doing ?

John Steele in the Guardian:

"While his instincts are cautious and pragmaticc, he has not repudiated the war on terror. Rather, he insists that by focusing excessively on Iraq, the Bush administration "took its eye off the ball". The real target must be Afghanistan and if Osama bin Laden is spotted in Pakistan, bombing must be used there too.

This is a cul-de-sac. If the most important single thing that Obama should do quickly is to announce the immediate closure of Guantánamo Bay, the corollary has to be a declaration that the war on terror is over. Accept that terrorism is a technique. It is not an ideology. The west faces no global enemy, no worldwide Islamofascist conspiracy. Foreign crises should be treated on a case-by-case basis. Their roots lie in the complex interplay of local tensions, social grievances, economic inequalities, unemployment, food and water shortages and cultural prejudice that plagues so many countries."

And various actions and atrocities inflicted or supported by instigators and proponents of the 'War on Terror' -j.