Iraq War embed Rob McClure, witness to war crimes he didn’t report, suffers phantom pain in gonads he never had.


DENVER, COLORADO- Today Occupy Denver political prisoner Corey Donahue was given a nine month sentence for a 2011 protest stunt. Judge Nicole Rodarte’s unexpected harsh sentence came after the court read the victim statement of CBS4 cameraman Rob McClure, who said he still feels the trauma of the uninvited “cupping [of his] balls” while he was filming the 2011 protest encampment at the state capitol. Donahue admits that McClure was the target of a “nut-tap”, but insists it was feigned, as occupiers demonstrated their disrespect to the corporate news crews who were intent on demonizing the homeless participants even as Denver riot police charged the park. Though a 2012 jury convicted Donahue of misdemeanor unwanted sexual contact, witnesses maintain there was no physical contact.

Of course simply the implication of contact would have humiliated McClure in front of the battalion of police officers amused by the antic. That’s authentic sexual trauma, just as a high school virgin is violated when a braggart falsely claims to have of engaged them in sexual congress. Donahue was wrong, but how wrong? Can professionals who dish it out claim infirmity when the tables are turned?

Ultimately the joke was on Donahue, because his mark turned out to be far more vulnerable than his dirty job would have suggested. The CBS4 cameraman who Donahue picked on was a louse’s louse.

Off limits?
While some might assert there is no context which would excuse touching a stranger’s genital region, I’m not sure the rule of no hitting below the belt is a civility to which folks facing riot cops are in accord. Protesters can’t shoot cops, they can’t spit at cops, in fact protesters have to pull all their punches. Some would have you believe demonstrators should do no more than put daisies in police gun barrels, all the while speaking calmly with only pleasant things to say.

Let me assure you, simply to defy police orders is already a humiliation for police. What’s some pantomimed disrespect? Humiliating riot cops is the least unarmed demonstrators can do against batons and shields and pepper spray. Should the authorities’ private parts be off limits for a public’s expression of discontent? Jocks wear jock straps precisely because private parts aren’t off sides.

It’s tempting to imagine that all cops are human beings who can be turned from following orders to joining in protestations of injustice and inequity. This is of course nonsense. But it’s even more delusional to think corporate media cameras and reporters will ever take a sympathetic line to the travails of dissidents. Media crews exploit public discontent just as riot cops enjoy the overtime. Media crews gather easy stories of compelling interest from interviewees eager to have their complaints be understood.

Corey Donahue
On October 15, 2011, Rob McClure turned his camera off when the narrative wasn’t fitting the derogatory spin he wanted to put on the homeless feeding team which manned Occupy Denver’s kitchen, dubbed “The Thunderdome.” Donahue observed the cameraman’s deliberate black out of the savory versus the unsavory and reciprocated with the crowd pleasing nut-tap. In the midst of this circus, Colorado State Troopers, METRO SWAT, and city riot police charged the encampment and made two dozen arrests.

It was hours later, perhaps after reviewing police surveillance footage, that McClure conferred with police commanders and agreed to press charges for the nut-tap. Corey Donahue was one of the high visibility leaders of the crowd. He’d been involved in multiple arrests, but this time his bond would be higher and harder to post because instead of the usual anti-protest violations, Donahue would be charged with sex crime.

Ultimately Donahue sought political asylum in South America rather than face having to report for the rest of his life as a sex offender. The offense was only a misdemeanor and his trial was a miscarriage of justice. Attorney friends later convinced Donahue to return to the US because this crime was arguably not sex related and was likely to be overturned on appeal. Likewise, a sentence was unlikely to exceed time served as the “nut-tap” paled in comparison to the police brutality and excessive force which has since ensued. Neither Judge Rodarte or victim Rob McClure got the memo, and it wasn’t the first time McClure failed to frame public outcry in the context of brutal militarized repression.

It turns out McClure’s own self respect was probably way too fragile to have ventured to cast stones at the slovenly homeless occupiers.

Rob McClure
Cameraman Robert McClure had been an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2004. You might expect such a experience to have toughened him up, or expanded his empathy for critics of US authoritarian brutality, but that is to underestimate the culpability of the corporate media war drum beaters.

And McClure’s guilt ran deeper that that. According to his CBS4 bio, McClure was reporting from a major military detention center. It turns out McClure covered Abu Fucking Ghraib. In 2004 McClure’s assignment was to distort what happened there as rogue misconduct. No thanks to fuckers like McClure, the Abu Ghraib techniques were later confirmed to be standard protocol. The US torture and humiliation of prisoners was systemic.

McClure’s coverage for CBS4 specifically glorified Dr. Dave Hnida, otherwise a family physician from Littleton, but in the service of the military as a battlefield surgeon assigned to treat prisoners of war. While it sounds commendatory to attend to the health of our sworn adversaries, in practice that job involves most commonly reviving prisoners being subjected to interrogation. Hnida’s task was to keep subjects conscious for our extended depredations. Medical colleagues call those practitioners “torture docs”. They shouldn’t be celebrated. They should lose their medical licenses.

So that’s the Rob McClure who wrote Judge Rodarte to say that after all these years, having witnessed unthinkable horror and sadistic injustice, while still spinning stories to glorify American soldiers and killer cops and power-tripping jailers, the memory of Corey Donahue’s prank made his balls hurt.

US torture industry defends its murder of Marvin Booker at Denver federal courthouse

Stop whining murderous crybabies
DENVER, COLO- Well, you’ve almost missed the most compelling courtroom drama this side of television. Although even on TV you don’t see a judge having to repeatedly admonish the audience to refrain from reacting with audible incredulity at the clueless ambivalence, awkward dissembling, and brazen lies being told on the stand by sheriff deputies and their witnesses concerning the death of Marvin Booker, 56, in their custody on July 9, 2010. National law enforcement experts have been flown in to defend the Denver Sheriff’s Department policies. It’s been quite a laugh and the jury seems wise to the scheme. Closing arguments begin Friday. If you’ve followed the Denver Post coverage you can skip the next paragraph, but those who’ve been packing the federal courtroom these past three weeks can assure you, you haven’t been treated to the half of it.

Four years ago Marvin Booker, an itinerant African American street preacher who weighed 135 pounds, died under a pileup of Denver Sheriff deputies simultaneously restraining him, kneeling on his prone body, twisting his wrists, contorting his ankles with nunchucks, choking him by the neck, and Tasing him. All of these methods are permitted means of “pain compliance”. Denver County Jail deputies assert they were trying to stop Booker from struggling. Asked one juror: “Could you keep still if you thought you were being killed?”

They held Marvin Booker in a carotid choke hold for two and a half minutes, and tased him for up 27 seconds.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the anomalies. The deputies met afterward to get their stories straight. Surveillance footage is missing, video of inmate witness testimony is missing, the taser is missing! Now everyone’s memory has gone missing too, they even try the excuse in the present. “No I don’t recall seeing myself do that in the video just now.” But most of what may be damning video is gone. The deputies were said to be high-fiving themselves afterward in an area where the camera footage is missing.

The significance of the missing taser means follow-up investigations can conclude its use is unproved. Another taser with a timestamp indicating it was deployed at an event forty minutes later, was fired for eight seconds. The video and inmate witnesses suggest Booker was tased for 27 seconds, but because the first taser surrendered to investigators hadn’t been fired at all, authorities are allowing for the implausible: that Booker wasn’t tased at all.

[work in progress]

Gary McKinnon escapes US torturers, by staying outside US borders

US efforts to extradite Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange and UK hacker Gary McKinnon, the latter thwarted today by UK courts, point to a puzzling question. Should it matter where accused are charged or tried if the US is looking for justice? The activities of both men are essentially curtailed by house arrest, so why is a timetable frustrated? Probably what the US can only achieve by extradition, where the public eye prevents CIA rendition, is INDEFINITE DETENTION. In American hands, that also includes psychologist-crafted “we don’t torture” torture. In effect, the Department of Justice has defined being within US borders as differential enough in the correctional scheme of things. House arrest in the UK is not a sufficient deterrent to would-be leakers and hackers apparently, US declared adversaries must be remanded to where the Empire already has its dissidents contained, in the custody of US borders.

Tom Hayden says there’s nothing to a US conspiracy against Julian Assange, and he’s got the nothing to confirm it

What an ugly hit piece against Julian Assange, by Tom Hayden in The Nation. Formerly of the American Left, Hayden used to need no introduction, now he mistakenly cross-posts assignments for the State Department (see A view from Sweden). Hayden dismisses notions of a US-led conspiracy to render the Wikileaks mastermind from the UK to Sweden and thence into the US torture system, along the logic that such accusations only anger the Swedes and make the outcome self-fulfilling. Hayden’s argument is to shoehorn Assange to Sweden now, to take his licks, before you make Dad really angry.
 
Based on everyone he’s talked to, Hayden says there’s no conspiracy. Seriously, that’s his logic. And he admonishes us against speculating wildly about unknowns. Whenever a writer prefaces their investigation with “some facts will never be known” I can picture them already leaning on the shovel. Even if Hayden intended to dig, it’s like he’s come upon a suspect’s backyard full of holes. Glancing into each one he concludes, yep, no evidence here.

You wonder what Hayden would make of a document completely redacted.

That’s right, what the Swedish prosecutors won’t tell us, what the USG won’t say, the extraordinarily swift synchronicity of legal actions against Assange kept under a veil? Not even question marks. More important to Hayden are questions he can load, like this one:

Why is the United States pursuing Assange as the conspiratorial mastermind of WikiLeaks, when his reputation, credibility and organization have been so damaged?

I think Assange’s reluctance to be sucked into the black hole that Sweden has become, is reinforced by the fact that the Nation Magazine has to get its “view from Sweden” from an American.

My best clue about Hayden’s focus is when he pretends to restore perspective by reflecting that aspersions cast against Assange (each with an assist by Hayden, if you’re keeping score), be weighed against the good which Wikileaks has done. Thereupon Hayden lists revelations we owe to Wikileaks. But they’re body counts from the Iraq and Afghan documents and nothing from the diplomatic cables, about the Middle East, North Africa, etc. I guess that underlies why Hayden can’t find probable cause for US forces to ally against Assange. It’s the “nothing new here” talking point.

Based on everyone I’ve talked to, Hayden’s an idiot. I’d rather give him less credit.

At the Frontline Club forum on Saturday, Assange said what’s needed now are troves of files from the CIA and FBI, and he added temptingly, the New York Times, the pace car of American media. Assange related that he’d just learned from Daniel Ellsberg that the NYT had 1,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers one month before Ellsberg leaked them. We know the corporate press prints “all the news that’s fit” but wouldn’t it be great to get confirmation?

Don’t worry about Hayden’s nothing, he already has all the confirmation he wants.

Should US torturers of 15-year-old combatant Omar Khadir stay unnamed?

Extending the jurisdiction of military tribunals to civilians and adversaries is not simply unpopular, it’s illegal, and America’s kangaroo courts in Guantanamo mock even self respect. Right now we’re prosecuting Afghanistan combatant Omar Khadr, captured when he was age 15, for lobbing a grenade toward US invaders (are any of our GIs guilty of less?) meanwhile obscuring the identity of American soldiers culpable of torture and murder. Last week four key reporters were banned from Guantanamo proceedings for having revealed the name of “Interrogator #1” guilty of past episodes for abuse of detainees including a death. His name: US Army Specialist Joshua Claus.

How many of these anonymity-seeking torturers can we out on the web? From mercenaries to repentant vets, the least we can do for the memories of their victims and their captives’ loved ones is to publish their identities in public.

You might see the wisdom in protecting the confidentiality of witnesses who were victims of sexual abuse, but perps? Of course a chief problem of military tribunals in addition to permitting testimony obtained through torture is the use of unnamed accusers. Convictions obtained through tribunals will stand up so long as the USA reigns omniscient, but in the eyes of international justice, the US and its torturers remain criminals at large.

CH2M pushes UAE Masdar as model PRT

In writing about the recent PPSBN Sustainability conference, I failed miserably to highlight the keynote speaker Nancy Tuor, who represented CH2M Hill as a model green corporate citizen. Ms Tuor, the “Group President and Executive Sponsor for Sustainability” at CH2M Hill, had headliner status at the conference because she is Program Manager on the MASDAR ‘Green’ City development in the United Arab Emirates, a smoke and mirrors project if ever there was, and it’s smoke from burning oil.

According to the program for this week’s conference in Colorado Springs:

CH2M HILL is the delivery partner for the first phase of the MASDAR development, a carbon-neutral and zero-waste sustainable city nestled in the heart of Abu Dhabi—the first major hydrocarbon producing nation.

First, a sustainable city built on income generated by fossil fuel is an oxymoron. Second, UAE’s efforts appear to be centered on securing the technological rights to new sources and practices before their monopoly on oil expires.

MASDAR is a comprehensive Abu Dhabi government program to address the issues of sustainable energy sources and environmental practices. The program is focused on developing and commercializing advanced and innovative technologies in renewable, alternative, and sustainable energies.

In other words, their definition of sustainable is much like the military’s, they want to sustain their profits.

Minneapolis Confidential‘s Ken Avidor contacted NMT about another outlandish aspect of CH2M’s green charade in Masdar. It relates to an announcement which Nancy Tuor made at the conference:

MIST delays impact PRT schedule. At a sustainability conference in Colorado Springs on November 3, 2009, Nancy Tuor, CH2M Hill’s program manager for the MASDAR ‘Green City’ in the United Arab Emirates, announced that the personal rapid transit (PRT) system will open to public use in about six months.

It seems a central showpiece of the Masdar development is a Personal Rapid Transit system which always fails to materialize. As Avidor writes:

You may have seen blog posts and news stories about a “sustainable” city in the United Arab Emirates called Masdar. One of the supposed “green” features of the Masdar project is a “Personal Rapid Transit” (PRT) system. It turns out the PRT system is a joke… but what do expect from a country where a prominent royal family member tortures people and has it all documented on video.

One of Avidor’s astute readers makes the point that the US tortures people, and documents it on video as well. So much for that dig at UAE, but Avidor’s central criticism stands. PRT projects worldwide are being lauded with out merit, but of critical relevance, PRTs are being used as stalking horses to thwart the finite budgets which metropolitan regions have for mass transit.

Interestingly, Avidor’s blog posts are being dogged by two detractors who can’t sing praises enough for PRTs. Maybe they’re new technology freaks who want to see Jetsons fantasies in their lifetimes. Maybe they believe the argument against mass transit, that contemporary man doesn’t want a community experience when he commutes. If they aren’t PRT industry shills, they should at least concede that no number of personal pods will accommodate the masses. They’re luxury hogs who don’t want to share the ride.

As cars sank the trolleys, so could PRT smoke and mirrors sink trains and subways. But the rich man has no need for mass transit. Why not get the taxpayers to fund something that will be available to only he: personal transit. Where there’s no room for the masses. It’s the same strategy the rich use to fund their charter schools at the expense of public schools.

Where the rich are fleecing the needy, you can always count on Colorado Springs to sign on.

There is no License to Kill

“Licensed to Kill” was an Ian Fleming invention. His friend Richard Meinertzhagen dropped Fleming’s phrase for guests to infer he was a secret agent. RM’s routine of arriving at diner parties with a smoking gun reinforced whispers that he had been the inspiration for James Bond. Meinertzhagen turned out to be a flake, but the authority to play god is still coveted by espionage idolators. Federal statutes prohibit identifying covert CIA operatives, regardless what they’ve done. Is that the same thing? A mythical supra legem indemnity? Sorry Virginia, nemo est.

Okay, some today are above the law, notable examples being Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woo, et al. The jury is still out on who will atone for the Bush Co crimes. But should the Neocon exemption cover assassination squads and torturers too?

The US Department of Justice is up in arms -Fox News probably more than anybody- having learned that defense lawyers for terrorist suspects in US custody, have shown their clients photographs of CIA and private contractor interrogators, to learn which of them might have engaged in harsh techniques defined by the rest of the world as torture.

The John Adams Project, run jointly by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is an effort to document the US torture in Guantanamo and our secret prisons around the globe. The ACLU assures all indignant patriots that asking the detainees to identify their torturers is completely legal.

Researchers for the project have been snapping pictures outside the homes of retired and active, CIA and intelligence industry interrogators. No names have been released except Deuce Martinez, who’d already been outed by the NYT. Martinez was the agent responsible for interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although accounts soft-pedal his participation in the harsher techniques.

That’s the pattern of exposes about torture, those named always claim to have left the room. A remarkably similar motif accompanied the account of CIA interrogator John Kiriakou.

Two well-known names were doctors who attended to the tortured, later opening a consulting firm to train CIA interrogators.
Dr. Jim Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen specialized in maximizing harsh interrogation, and making sure the victim didn’t die.

The defense lawyers have circulated the photographs of 60 suspected perpetrators, but have named only Martinez so far. How are torturers and murderers to be brought to justice, if they are not unmasked?

US gov finally murders ‘ghost detainee’ (POW) tortured by CIA for 7 1/2 years

al Fakhiri, Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al ZaraniLibya reports prison suicide of top Qaeda man this week. Translated form CIA Arabic speak, that means he was murdered. Sure… so much has changed with Obama in office! I’m being facetious here. This man was murdered simply because he knew too much about how the Bush Administration tortured POWs in order to try to get them to fabricate ‘evidence’ about a Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection to justify their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

A hit by the Libyans for Barack to help put a lid on this scandal? Well you speculate some… (Oh, Tony! Barack is not like that at all!) Sure he is. Certainly the government he heads is! I don’t doubt it for a second.

This reminds me of the President of Guatemala who has been just accused by an assassinated dead man of having murdered him. Luckily, unlike this victim of the CIA and Obama, he taped his accusation on youtube and it begins…

‘if you are hearing this, then I am already dead.’ And he is! See the video The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg (English subtitles) and the second part The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano (English sub.) part 2/2

A side note to this report about the CIA murder of this tortured American-held POW, is the last words this man made to Human Rights Watch which were…

“Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?”

Good question, Fakhiri. I went to the Human Rights Watch website again and it is amazing how this group never sees wars of aggression as being human rights violations. There’s nothing about US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan there! Seems to simply have escaped their interest or concern! They, at best, have been like a gnat to the US government at times, but in the meantime, they usually are absolutely MIA. Fakhiri’s murder case is case in point.

Obama hugs Dick Cheney and says torture works!

Obama doesn’t want to prosecute criminal torturers and rallies CIA dogs at rally! Obama says torture works and says Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information’ Barack Obama hugs Dick Cheney, and says, ‘You did well! We just need to step back some for a while and change (HINT, HINT… code word for do nothing). You understand, don’t you?’

Thanks liberals! You really solved the problem with your votes. Good work. No need to do anything else. Problem solved.

No seriously? Isn’t Barack Obama enough to turn your stomach? Black Man talk with forked tongue. White Man in Black Face talk with forked tongue.

Boy is this a sick country! We’re going nowhere but fast! With liberals like these, who needs Dick Cheney?

US ruling class and their torture toads continue to debate how to use US govmt criminality to benefit themselves

CIA capWe have a really stupid US ruling class in God Bless America Land, but then again most class societies on Real Planet Earth actually do. See Ex-CIA chief: Obama risks national security

Some of these ‘American leaders’ just can’t seem to decide whether to go with the rack, or not? Of course, their gut instinct in the majority of them always is to simply call out the torturing class as much, as often, and as chilling as they can… … and then to lye about it all to the general public.

Both Obama and his ‘critics’ are fully on waterboard together about this. What they really disagree on, is how best to LYE to others about their torture use though? YES, how best to do that? How best to continue their eternal war making and cover all that up in lye? They need some abuse there! Under the rug or above?

US documents show that US military did torture multiple POWs to their deaths

Unredacted documents reveal prisoners tortured to death. To think back to all that denial from Americans of all different stripes and stars that POWs were ever being tortured in the least by their beloved ‘boys and girls’ in uniform! All their Pledges of Allegiance and Prayers, their yellow ribbons and gift packs ad nauseum? Meanwhile, our government hid their documentation away out of sight. But we all knew all along….

Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners is routine

Internet megaphoneThe Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) has so much documentation of Israeli torture of Palestinians that I will just give readers the link and let them browse all the documentation all on their own. I am doing this because this web site, Not My Tribe, is now a target for the Israeli government’s propaganda spam machine, the Internet Megaphone, and that device, the IM, has just denied on this blog that Israel tortures prisoners incredible as that might seem to any informed citizen of the US or Israel itself!

US government use of torture on its own POWs held is at one with Israel’s use of torture. The one feeds the other and it must all be exposed and stopped if either society should ever be able to become humane. The US government has many client states, that it allies itself with, that use torture as a routine on their prisoners, and Israel is one of those. Torture Denial by those who use it is merely a sister form of Holocaust Denial. It is sad that the Israeli government engages in such.

Sad, too, is the fact that many American citizens, by and large copy the very same Torture Denial in regards to their own government’s use of torture on people. They simply will not admit that the government does exactly what everybody already knows it does, which is routinely use torture on prisoners. It’s time for all citizens in these 2 countries to stop playing this game of Torture Denial, and to simply get on with banning the practice entirely.

Barack Obama is trying to keep Donald Rumsfeld from being sued for torture!

‘Padilla’ filed a 43-page civil lawsuit in federal court in Charleston against several U.S. officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking a declaration that was done to him, including torture, isolation, and denial of the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights, was illegal and unconstitutional.

Padilla has filed a similar case in San Francisco against Yoo, who authored or co-authored some of the infamous torture memos. At a hearing today in Charleston, Barack Obama’s Justice Department will ask a federal magistrate to dismiss Padilla’s case against Rumsfeld and others. Next week, it is expected to do the same in the case against Yoo.’ See Obama’s Defense of Rumsfeld and Yoo by Jacob G. Hornberger.

US ‘suppressing torture evidence’ says top British government official

Binyam MohamedThe Pentagon has been suppressing the press. ‘Mr Davis said a High Court ruling, which pointed to complicity by the UK and US authorities in his torture, was prevented from being published after the US put pressure on the UK.’ Tory MP demands torture statement be made against the British Labor government’s support of US torture, and thus against the US government’s use of torture, also.

This is a welcome development as the Obama government has decided to continue rendition flights to have Pentagon held POWs tortured in other countries for the US government. MP David Davis is throwing a thorn in the side of the cover-up underway to help try to save the Bush Klan from prosecution.

Obama wants to renounce the use of torture and continue to use it more clandestinely. We should not allow him to get away with this maneuvering. That is a photo of Binyam Mohamed, the man who was tortured at Guantanamo by the US.

Guantanamo highlights the colossal collapse of legality in US legal system

cooking kosher(Judge) Leon declared… “Simply stated, faithfully serving in an al-Qaeda-affiliated fighting unit that is directly supporting the Taliban by helping prepare the meals of its entire fighting force is more than sufficient to meet this Court’s definition of ‘support.’” He added, “After all, as Napoleon was fond of pointing out, ‘An army marches on its stomach.”

Thus, Judge Lion declared in his Wonderland ruling that the cook was a terrorist cook! Blame the Chef- How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo By ANDY WORTHINGTON

Humpty Dumpty has fallen and cannot be put together ever again, Barack, at least not with you as Head of State. You cannot restore accreditation for The US Establishment to the US Legal System now after 7 years of US torture and illegal jailing there of POWs. Sleight of hand just won’t do it and the whole world is watching.

Instead of doing away with the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) nonsense of calling POWs ‘enemy combatants, you are seemingly continuing the entire illegality of the fallen US Legal Establishment. How about a new classification for the POW cook? You can now call him an ‘enemy non-combatant’, and there are many others jailed and tortured by the government you head up now who fall into just this category.

And further, since you are supporting Israel’s terrorist definition of ‘terrorism’, why not just go ahead and classify the children of Hamas as ‘enemy combatants’ and enemy ‘non-combatants’ as well? No need to change American Law to do that since the American Legal System is already totally on board with the Wonderland approach.

I bet you a lot of those murdered IDF Palestinian children in Gaza were cooks, too? Cooking for Hamas would certainly be ruled on by American Judge Leon as terrorist participation and grounds for torture and elimination. Yeah, that’s right! And Israel was right to legally use White Phosphorus to light up the situation in a legal manner so that these tiny terrorists might be stopped in their shoes (though some might have well been bare foot). Terrorists should be seen for just what they are, even if they are tiny cooks, too!

Obama, I know that you can’t turn America around just like that. I’m willing to give you time to show how sweet and good you are. Will 4 years be enough time now for you? Or will you need 8?

Guantanamo highlights the colossal collapse of all but pretense of legality in the American Legal System. There is no real reality now, since America is without real law in the land, as nothing but money and might now rule. Barack Obama’s bought Presidency is part of all that. It is part of the cooking.

US media campaign to help Pentagon defend its use of torture on POWs

George Bush on water boardingThere is a growing effort to defend the use of torture on POWs by the US military, and it centers around the Pentagon’s and the corporate media’s effort to convince the American people that some Guantanamo inmates have become terrorists post discharge. These POWs were discharged because they were found to be innocent of ‘terrorism’, but now the Pentagon and US media want to paint a picture of US military incompetence, all to bolster a campaign to defend those that tortured these POWs when they were at the US run torture concentration camp called Guantanamo (Gitmo).

The corporate media campaign is based on utterly superficial and flimsy ‘evidence’, which is because basically it is Pentagon propaganda and lies. The following gives a link to this so-called ‘evidence’ printed out today in The Christian Science Monitor and scattered throughout today’s US propaganda industry’s coverage of the issue of ‘closing down’ Guantanamo. Ex-Guantánamo inmates return to militancy in Yemen

What is seen quickly, is that all the ‘evidence’ comes from the Saudi government, a dictatorship heavily invested into torturing prisoners. The fact that the US corporate media and the Pentagon turn these American held POWs to these world class criminals and then has the utter gall to report their stewardship over these prisoners as virtual reality and TRUTH really takes the cake! In fact, it is an endorsement of the Saudi torture regime itself, and a use of this foreign torture regime to help justify US military torture in place under Bush, and now Barack Obama.

Per the ‘evidence’ of the Christian Science Monitor stuff, all of the evidence of a supposed return of POWs found innocent and released to supposed criminal activity comes from the word of Saudi government spokesmen! Sick!

Much of American society wants to find a way to justify using torture on other people. They revel in it, and have spent years pretending that torture is not happening, torture is not torture, and in a myriad of ways supporting the use of torture while pretending not to be. This is the latest effort on their behalf by the Pentagon and corporate media, and is utterly a ghost fantasy script written for them, with the aid and assistance of one of the most reactionary regimes in the world, the Saudi Arabian government. This fact alone shows how unembarrassed much of America is about its own criminal use of torture, and this campaign may be used by Barack Obama to step back from actually even making he effort to clean up the US government’s world image by transferring Guantanamo POWs elsewhere?

The use of torture runs deep inside the entire American business of jailing and abusing its own population, too. Guantanamo hardly even begins to be the tip of the iceberg at this point, in uncovering and terminating abuse of prisoners of any kind. We are a very sick country, and many resist the CHANGE needed to turn things around. It is certain that we have a very long way to go to even begin to address these issues, let alone change things for the better. Do not let the corporate media’s lies on behalf of Pentagon use of torture convince you to change your views. America, you simply are not under any sort of threat from ex-jailed Guantanamo POWs.

Barack Obama resembles Gerald Ford more than he does Lincoln

Gerald FordToday’s Denver Post print edition headline reads U.S. closes door on Guantanamo, torture. Of interest is how their internet version of this headline has changed the verb tense from ‘closes’ to ‘closing’. Yes, well it amounts to about the same thing, kind of? Well but is it a closed book, or not? That question has to be asked because Gerald Ford supposedly closed the book on Watergate, which was where a President acted in a criminal manner but was left entirely free from facing any criminal charges! The President will be stopped (after his criminal acts become just too obvious and exposed) but is simply above the law, was how the message was left later to be read by the likes of Dubya Bush and Dick Cheney.

Yes, Barack Obama wants to clean America’s image up and closing Guantanamo’s detention unit down is key to that. But he also wants to sweep the dirt under the rug and get on with it, so to speak. There is no evidence that he plans to prosecute anybody for the crimes they committed by running this Federal torture camp, and this is what makes us look on these seemingly positive moves with a huge amount of scepticism.

Eisenhower, too, eventually stopped the McCarthyite witch hunt from going further forward, but then continued to wage the Korean War that resulted in millions going to their deaths. He kept the Cold War going full tilt, and much of the world worried that the ‘cold’ would become a hot war with nuclear weapons begin launched. In fact, Eisenhower’s military command thought long and hard about nuking China. So looking at the edicts coming out from Barack Obama on his first day about supposedly moving to end the torture regime of the Bush Administration should not be looked at with rose tinged glasses on.

Suspected U.S. missile attacks kill 18 in Pakistan At the same time as Barack is supposedly ending US government torture of POWs, his Administration is continuing the bombing of targets that hit civilians in Pakistan as often as not. Further, the bombing raids are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, same as the continued now Barack Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are, too.

While nobody can expect Barack Obama to reverse all that Bush’s Klan instituted with DP loyal assistance in just one or two days, let alone one or two weeks, there still is really no reason to assume that Barack has any plan to do so… EVER. In this sense, Barack Obama resembles Gerald Ford much more than he resembles Abraham Lincoln. Eventually this will become rather obvious but for now the liberal euphoria continues. They are being led around on their leashes by the corporate media and Barack, but what we are actually seeing so far is Barack Obama pardoning Bush and his gang for crimes committed.

US ally, Thailand, helping spread Pentagon torture wave against Muslims

Thai sex tourismThailand has long been a US government ally, and one that has ‘serviced’ US military personnel with its women for decades now. The Thai government is fully on board the US military reign of State Terrorism abroad, with its own eager embracing of torturing its religious minority, the Muslims of that country. Thailand’s savage southern conflict lists some of the sordid details of that campaign.

Pentagon tortures 15 y/o POW, loses ‘confession’ tape, but still wants to enter it into ‘trial’!

Former Gitmo prosecutor rips military trials, calling interrogators’ practices ‘despicable’ The 15 y/o taken as POW in Afghanistan was tortured, his torture obtained ‘confession’ video taped by his interrogators, and yet now ‘the confession’ is being entered in by the US government-military as supposed evidence against the juvenile POW at their military procedures. All this taking place at its own illegal US government sponsored Kangaroo Court trial for the young man, though the US military claims that they have actually lost the taped confession!

Even Kafka couldn’t have come up with this totalitarian scenario and yet this is the standard of ‘Military Justice’ that will be used to try yet more US soldiers being brought into Fort Carson for ‘trials’. They don’t seem to be planning to charge anybody for crimes of torturing POWs, Barack or no Barack? How is that the case in our alleged democracy?

Free the US GIs that have resisted taking part in these wars waged in such illegal manner. Mohamed was tortured repeatedly at Gitmo, post his Afghanistan taped ‘confession’ obtained from torture. What were they hoping to find from this kid POW? Some Americans that mistakenly entered into the US military don’t want to take part in this sort of illegalities. That’s a crime? They should be honored for helping chip away at this Pentagon torture machine.

Documents show Clinton Administration funded Colombia’s death squad killings

US out of ColombiaBill Clinton presided over murdering off hundreds of thousands of Iraqis via economic warfare, the bombing of multiple civilian targets in Yugoslavia including TV stations, water treatment plants, and the Chinese Embassy, and also the financing of Colombia’s death squads where tens of thousands of Colombians were murdered. Barack Obama has given new jobs in government policy making to these same Democratic Party political hacks that made all this bloodshed happen back in the 1990s. See “Body count mentalities” for some of the Colombian story about Democratic Party promotion of war and torture abroad. This was D.C.’s war, too. It was the Democrats’ war.

Antiwar.com reports that ‘since at least 1990, U.S. diplomats were reporting a connection between the Colombian security forces and far-right drug-running paramilitary groups, according to the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA). In the meantime, the U.S. State Department continued to regularly certify Colombia’s human rights record and to heavily finance its “war on drugs.” The declassified documents were published Jan. 7 by the NSA, a non-governmental research and archival institution located at the George Washington University that collects, archives, and publishes declassified U.S. government documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.’

That was all back when only Israel and Egypt were getting more U.S. ‘aid’ dollars than Colombia was. With the Gaza slaughter underway as I write, we can today see the results there, too, of all that US money. Barack Obama is not about to change a damn thing! He is not CHANGE.

Secret Documents Show US Aware of Colombian Army Killings in 1990s

Barack says his effort at image repair for US government to begin immediately

Western Hemisphere Institute for Security CooperationHow do you begin to repair US image abroad without really doing so much of anything? You don’t say a word really against the torture regime that your political party participated in running along with its supposed political opposition, the Republicans, but you begin to close the US Government’s most blatant image problem down…. name wise. That would be Gitmo… Guantanamo. See: Obama prepares to issue order to close Gitmo.

That’s kind of like in 2000 how Slick Willie Bill Clinton changed the US military’s torture school from the name of School of Americas (the SOA) to the totally obscured name of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Nothing else changed except the name. Not too surprising since Obama has stacked his new Administrative Cabinet with all those old Slick Willie retreads.

Bet you had never even heard of the name WHINSEC, now had you? And I bet you that Obama has no plans to really end US government use of torture but rather to hide it more away. Bets on that Obama will actually close down ‘WHINSEC’? Didn’t think so… The US Government has always used torture on POWs. The Vietnamese could tell the typical American something about that, as so could many a Latino. How many Democratic Party presidents and top politicians have helped administer US military torture through the years? How many countries has the US government helped their government use torture on other peoples? Your guess is as good as mine?

Barack and Dubya walk hand in hand

barack Obama Commander in Chief
WELL, YES HE IS NOW… He is co- Commander in Chief.

It should be becoming increasingly clear to the public by now that both Dubya and Barack have the same programs to ‘rescue the economy’ through increasing government debt, ‘surging’ in Afghanistan, and green lighting Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. Did I mention that they both plan to stay in Iraq, though after the inauguration it will be Barack totally in command of this operation? Does anybody seriously still believe that Barack is somehow against keeping Iraq an occupied country with US troops? Really? Then what kind of dope are you are on would be my question to you?

U.S. could be facing debt ‘time bomb’ this year is the Barack plan for ‘change’, as Obama sugar coats the Democrats plan to bailout the corporate elites with a shallow promise to supposedly create 3,000,000 jobs. Sure you will, Barack, and you will throw the US government into bankruptcy along with your Republican and your Clintonite buddies screwing us, the working public, over royal. It’s clear who your real friends are, and it ain’t us.

And the con game that Barack is playing about not being in office yet with an inability to change US government policy towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza is totally phony. Shoot! Barack and his Buddies are already plotting out space wars with China in the years ahead even. Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link (Update1) It’s just pure gullibility on the part of anybody that actually believes that Obama is not able to intervene in regards to Israel bombing and invading Gaza. The same type of gullibility that made some folk think that Dennis Kucinich was some sort of DP Golden Boy, too. Not much a menace to the gun toting Barack-Hillary group at the top of the party is Dennis. He can’t even open his mouth having caught the same bug that must be ailing Barack on this matter.

And Bush and Obama are walking hand in hand on the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, continuing US torture of POWs, and threatening the Russians, too. Surprising isn’t it, that President Mr. BIG CHANGE has not muttered one word about ending official US government policy of torturing its POWs? He plans merely to cover it up and pretend otherwise. Barack is as much war without end as the Republicans he is now copying like a parrot for.

Don’t get it wrong. Obama will enter into office with a virtual bombardment of meaningless ‘change’ rhetoric, since that is his forte. He’s good at saying nothing real while doing a shuffle. You can continue to fall for it if you want, but think how stupid you will feel down the line? Your only excuse will be…. At least he wasn’t Dick Cheney and Dubya. Small consolation though for you inactivity while you made excuses for this crew. Barack and Dubya are walking hand in hand now, and that’s what your vote bought.