Top UK judges find US and Britain guilty of torture

The Appeal Court in Britain this week rejected efforts by the Foreign Office to suppress seven paragraphs of a report drawn up by British judges in August 2008, based on their access to more than 40 US intelligence documents. The paragraphs, now published in redacted form on the Foreign Office web site, find that Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was subjected to treatment that “could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities.” 

The posted document also states: “The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972.”

Ethiopian-born Mohamed, a British resident, was arrested in Pakistan on April 10, 2002 as he was about to board a flight to Britain. After being imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan, he was turned over to the FBI.

A victim of extraordinary rendition at the hands of the CIA, he was flown to Morocco, where he was again tortured, including being slashed with scalpels or razor blades on his chest and penis. He was then moved to Afghanistan, where he was frequently tortured in the infamous “Dark Prison” before being finally detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

There he was held for four years, again suffering torture and abuse. He was released in February 2009 without charge, after nearly seven years in prison.

Mohamed is suing the British government on the grounds that the M15 intelligence agency was complicit in his torture and provided questions and information to his interrogators.

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White House projects long-term mass unemployment

The White House Council of Economic Advisers released its Economic Report to the President on Thursday, outlining the administration’s economic projections and policies. The report shows that the White House is expecting mass unemployment to continue for years, with only minor decreases from the current rate of nearly 10 percent through 2012. 

According to the report, the official unemployment rate—which does not include those who have given up looking for work—will remain at 10 percent this year, slightly higher than its current 9.7 percent. In 2011, it is expected to fall to 9.2 percent, and in 2012 to 8.2 percent. Official unemployment is not expected to fall below 6 percent until 2015, and will remain above 5 percent through 2020.

The projections are in fact optimistic. They are based on the assumption that real GDP will grow by 3.0 percent this year (4^th quarter to 4^th quarter), and 4.3 percent in 2011. This compares to real GDP growth of -1.9 percent in 2008 and -0.5 percent in 2009.

The administration notes in a side comment that the high unemployment will keep wages low, stating, “Traditionally, the large amount of slack would be expected to put substantial downward pressure on wage and price inflation.”

The proposals that the report outlines to address the crisis are derisory, focusing largely on tax breaks, continuing the administration’s policy of rejecting any direct government hiring. High unemployment makes “a compelling case for additional measures to spur private sector job creation,” the report states.

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Blackwater Accused of Cheating Government

Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security contractor of defrauding the government for years through phony billing, including charging taxpayers for alcohol-filled parties, spa trips and a prostitute.

In court records unsealed this week, a husband and wife who worked for Blackwater said they have firsthand knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and improperly charging the government for personal expenses. They said they witnessed "systematic" fraud in the company's security contracts with the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Blackwater is the State Department's largest security contractor, and a State Department spokesman said Thursday that his agency and the Justice Department reviewed the allegations in 2008, when the lawsuit was filed under seal in federal court in Virginia. The spokesman, P.J. Crowley, could not determine what came of the review.

Brad Davis, a former Marine, served as a Blackwater team leader and security guard, including in Iraq. His wife, Melan Davis, worked as a finance and payroll employee, starting in Louisiana. Their lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act, which allows whistle-blowers to win a portion of any money the government recovers as a result of the information. However, the Justice Department has chosen not to join them in pursuing their lawsuit, a decision that led to the suit being unsealed this week.

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Guantanamo Detainee Deaths: Responding To The DOD Whitewash

On December 7, 2009, under the direction of Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R) published its 15th GITMO report titled, "Death in Camp Delta," covering three simultaneous deaths on June 9, 2006 in the maximum security Alpha Block. The detainees were found hanged in separate cells shortly after midnight on June 10, unobserved for at least two hours, rags stuffed down their throats, despite constant surveillance by five guards responsible for 28 inmates in a lit cell block monitored by video cameras. One of them was scheduled for release in 19 days, so why would he commit suicide?

The report found "dramatic flaws in the government's investigation (and) raise(s) serious questions about the security of the Camp (and) derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies," who either let them die or killed them, then whitewashed the investigation to suppress it.

DOD responded, adding to the coverup, CP&R saying:

"The Center has found DOD's defense contradictory to, and inconsistent with, DOD's prior statement in its Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) report."

According to Professor Mark Denbeaux:

"Amazingly, some of DOD's statements purporting to defend the NCIS investigation actually impeach it; others are irrelevant or misdirected.

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A Greek crisis is coming to America

FT.COM

It began in Athens. It is spreading to Lisbon and Madrid. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding will remain confined to the weaker eurozone economies. For this is more than just a Mediterranean problem with a farmyard acronym. It is a fiscal crisis of the western world. Its ramifications are far more profound than most investors currently appreciate.

There is of course a distinctive feature to the eurozone crisis. Because of the way the European Monetary Union was designed, there is in fact no mechanism for a bail-out of the Greek government by the European Union, other member states or the European Central Bank (articles 123 and 125 of the Lisbon treaty). True, Article 122 may be invoked by the European Council to assist a member state that is “seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control”, but at this point nobody wants to pretend that Greece’s yawning deficit was an act of God. Nor is there a way for Greece to devalue its currency, as it would have done in the pre-EMU days of the drachma. There is not even a mechanism for Greece to leave the eurozone.

That leaves just three possibilities: one of the most excruciating fiscal squeezes in modern European history – reducing the deficit from 13 per cent to 3 per cent of gross domestic product within just three years; outright default on all or part of the Greek government’s debt; or (most likely, as signalled by German officials on Wednesday) some kind of bail-out led by Berlin.

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Brown says global bank tax near: report

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said major economies are close to agreeing a global bank tax and hinted a deal could be reached at a G20 summit in June, in an interview published on Thursday.

"I'm interested in the way support is building up for international action," he told the Financial Times.

Brown, who strongly backs a tax on financial transactions, believes opinion shifted in favour of a global levy after US President Barack Obama's proposal last month to raise 90 billion dollars from banks in 10 years, said the paper.

The prime minister has been promoting the idea of a global bank tax, urging leading economies to consider the move to make banks more accountable to society amid fears that the United States might act alone.

"Look out for the G20," Brown told the paper, hinting at a possible deal on the bank tax at the meeting of major world economies in Canada in June.

"People are now prepared to consider the best mechanism by which a levy could be raised," he said.

Britain hopes an agreement in principle can be agreed by world leaders at the June meeting but the details of how exactly it would work would take longer to thrash out, according to the report.

The G20 summit will take place after general elections, which are expected on May 6. Brown's comment suggests he is still confident he can win the ballot, which most commentators think he will lose.

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Barack Obama 'doesn't begrudge' bankers their million-dollar bonuses

The US President, in an apparent reversal given his earlier comments attacking "obscene bonuses", likened Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan's chairman, and Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chairman, to successful athletes who are simply paid more because they are better than their rivals. In a series of surprising comments – following months of anti-Wall Street rhetoric – Mr Obama appeared to offer an olive branch over executive compensation.

"I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen," the President said in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system."

When questioned over the $17.1m (£10.9m) Mr Dimon was paid for 2009, the President said that while it is "an extraordinary amount of money... there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don't get to the World Series either, so I'm shocked by that as well".

Mr Blankfein was awarded a long-dated, all-share bonus of $9m by Goldman last week, while Mr Dimon was awarded an all-share bonus of $16.1m, half in restricted shares, half in long-dated options, plus a $1m salary. As Mr Obama points out, leading baseball players can receive much more than the average Wall Street chief executive, with New York Yankees' all-rounder Alex "A-Rod-" Rodriguez receiving $33m last season after winning the 2009 World Series, while left-fielder Manny Ramirez, of the LA Dodgers, was paid $23.8m last year in spite of not making it to baseball's equivalent of the FA Cup.

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Top judge: Binyam Mohamed case shows MI5 to be devious, dishonest and complicit in torture

MI5 faced an unprecedented and damaging crisis tonight after one of the country's most senior judges found that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression" that undermined government assurances about its conduct.

The condemnation, by Lord Neuberger, the master of the rolls, was drafted shortly before the foreign secretary, David Miliband, lost his long legal battle to suppress a seven-paragraph court document showing that MI5 officers were involved in the ill-treatment of a British resident, Binyam Mohamed.

Amid mounting calls for an independent inquiry into the affair, three of the country's most senior judges – Lord Judge, the lord chief justice, Sir Anthony May, president of the Queen's Bench Division, and Lord Neuberger – disclosed evidence of MI5's complicity in Mohamed's torture and unlawful interrogation by the US.

So severe were Neuberger's criticisms of MI5 that the government's leading lawyer in the case, Jonathan Sumption QC, privately wrote to the court asking him to reconsider his draft judgment before it was handed down.

The judges agreed but Sumption's letter, which refers to Neuberger's original comments, was made public after lawyers for Mohamed and media organisations, including the Guardian, intervened.

They argued that Neuberger had privately agreed with Sumption to remove his fierce criticisms without giving then the chance to contest the move.

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Prepare for an apocalyptic anarchy ending Wall Street's toxic capitalism

MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Wake up investors. Are you prepared for the economic anarchy coming after a global-debt time bomb explodes? Are you thinking outside the box? Investing differently? Act now -- tomorrow will be too late.

Start by looking past the endless cable skirmishes between Rush, Glenn, Bill and Shawn versus Harry, Nancy, Ben and Barack. Look way past the insurgency bonding Sarah and her diehard Tea Party revolutionaries with Ron Paul's Neo-Reaganite ideologues, Fat-Cat Bankers and the Party of No, all planning a massive frontal assault on the 2010 elections, hell-bent on destroying the presidency. All that's the sideshow.

The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdown combined. A huge market blowout. And as Bloomberg-BusinessWeek predicts: "The results won't be pretty for investors or elected officials."

After the global-debt bomb explodes don't expect a typical bear correction followed by a new bull. Wall Street's toxic pseudo-capitalism is imploding. Be prepared for a massive meltdown. Yes, already the third major bubble-bust of the 21st century, triggered once again by Wall Street's out-of-control Fat Cat Bankers. And it's dead ahead.

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More TARP Corruption, Secrecy

JUDICIAL WATCH

Adding insult to injury, the U.S. government has paid private firms nearly $160 million to distribute funds from its severely mismanaged and fraud-infested program to bail out the nation’s financial institutions. 

Rife with waste and abuse the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has already proven to be a troubling experiment of U.S. tax dollars with virtually no oversight. In fact, dozens of criminal investigations have been launched into the controversial bailout and the risk is only going to grow, according to a Treasury Department Inspector General report issued last spring.

So far investigations have centered on securities fraud, tax law violations, mortgage modification fraud and insider trading involving recipients of the federal money. Administered through the Treasury Department, TARP buys failing assets from financial institutions to supposedly ease the credit crunch by allowing banks to clear the balance sheets and lend money. It also allows the government to insure, instead of purchase, banks’ troubled assets.

On top of its well-documented troubles and multiple incidents of waste, the Treasury Department has paid private companies and legal firms at least $159 million to dole out TARP funds, according to a report published this week by an investigative journalism group.

Here is the best part; the government doesn’t want the public to know details of the arrangements, including the labor rates and how the private companies were selected to do the government work.

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TSA detained student over Arabic flashcards

A Pomona College student filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that he was abusively interrogated, handcuffed and detained for five hours at Philadelphia International Airport in August because he carried a set of English-Arabic flashcards as part of his college language studies.

Nicholas George, 22, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and its Pennsylvania chapter, charged that three Transportation Security Administration officers, two Philadelphia police officers and two FBI agents violated his constitutional rights to free speech and freedom from unreasonable seizure.

Representatives of the TSA, FBI and Justice Department in Washington, where most of the federal government was closed because of a severe winter storm, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia police, which also were dealing with the storm, had no immediate comment.

"I want TSA agents to do their job to keep flights safe," George said in a statement released by the ACLU. "No one should be treated like a criminal for simply learning one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world."

"Arresting and restraining passengers who pose no threat to flight safety and are not breaking any law not only violates people's rights, but it won't make us any safer," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project added.

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Britain reveals once-secret U.S. data about Guantanamo detainee

The British government disclosed Wednesday once-secret details about the United States' harsh treatment of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee after losing a lengthy legal battle to suppress the information.

The British government had warned that the disclosure would harm intelligence-sharing between London and Washington and threaten national security.

The information, from a judge's summary of a classified CIA report to British authorities about Binym Mohamed, said he was subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment during interrogations in Pakistan in 2002 that included him being shackled and deprived of sleep while interrogators played upon "his fears of being removed from United States custody and 'disappearing.' "

Seven paragraphs of information were read in court and posted on the Foreign Office's Web site.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the House of Commons that he had fought to keep the seven paragraphs secret not because of their content, but because of the "principle of their disclosure by an English court against U.S. wishes."

At the heart of the legal battle, said Miliband, was an agreement that Britain should not reveal intelligence that the United States passes on in confidence unless the Americans agree.

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Scannergate: Facts Contradict Heathrow Claim That Naked Images Can’t Be Printed

Heathrow Airport’s denial that Indian film star Shahrukh Khan’s naked body scanner images were printed and circulated by airport staff because the devices have no capability to print or distribute images contradicts leaked government documents that prove the x-ray backscatter machines do have the option to store and send images, as well as actual images of the print outs that are freely available on the Internet.

Heathrow today denied that naked body scanner images of Khan were printed and circulated by airport security staff, telling the London Telegraph the claims were “completely factually incorrect” because the body-scanning equipment had no capability to print images.

The BAA spokeswoman “stressed that images captured by the equipment could not be stored or distributed in any form”.

Heathrow are trying to avoid any investigation into the incident by claiming it “simply could not be true”.

However, leaked government documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and confirmed as authentic by CNN show that the devices must have the ability to store and send images when in “test mode.”

“That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines — which can see beneath people’s clothing — can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg,” according to the report.

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Court quashes student's terrorism conviction

LONDON (Reuters) - A British student, described by prosecutors as a "wannabe suicide bomber," had his main conviction for possessing terrorism-related materials quashed on Tuesday after spending nearly four years in custody.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 24, from central Scotland, had been jailed for eight years in 2007 for four offences under terrorism and breach of the peace laws, including distributing terrorist material via websites.

On Tuesday, appeal court judges in Edinburgh formally overturned the most serious conviction against him, which accounted for six years of his term, the Press Association reported.

The judges were confirming a ruling last month that he had suffered a miscarriage of justice after the trial judge misdirected the jury.

At an appeal last year, Siddique's lawyers had argued that much of the material in his possession, which helped secure his conviction, was widely available on the internet.

They also argued that the judge in the original trial had failed to direct the jury that a connection must be established between materials Siddique was found with and a specific act of terrorism.

Prosecutors at Scotland's Crown Office said they would not seek a retrial as it would have little practical effect.

They said Siddique had already served most of his sentence for the quashed offence, and had effectively served the full sentence for the three lesser charges, of which he remained convicted.

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No More Weapons (of Mass Destruction)

Steel Pulse, in the 80's, was one of my favorite bands. Their more recent music is a bit too commercial but I'll always have a place in my heart for their earlier hits like: Earth Crisis, Chant a Psalm and Not King James Version.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

To Allah doth belong the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, and it is He Who hath power over all things. - Qur'an 5:120

Neither he who thinks the living entity the slayer nor he who thinks it slain is in knowledge, for the self slays not nor is slain. - Bhagavad Gita 2.19

Watchdogs need not bark together

By Joseph Stiglitz | FT.COM

In the years before the crisis, there was a race to the bottom, with countries competing on the "lightness" of regulation. Iceland may have been the winner of that race, but its citizens were the losers. As the consequences of these failures continue to manifest themselves and discussions of the new regulatory regime proceed, the problem of global co-ordination has moved centre stage.

Banks within any jurisdiction threaten to take their business elsewhere if tough regulations are imposed (or even if they are asked to pay for a fraction of the costs they have imposed on others). Modern finance is a footloose industry, so the threat seems at least partially credible. If regulations are different in different jurisdictions, there is a real risk of regulatory arbitrage. With finance moving to the least well regulated jurisdiction, there is a danger that the problems that marked the global financial system before the crisis will persist.

These are among the reasons that there is a consensus on the need for global co-ordination. But progress in creating an effective global regulatory regime has been remarkably slow. The Financial Stability Forum, created for that purpose after the last global financial crisis, did little - obviously too little to prevent an even worse meltdown a decade later. This body has now been entrusted with guiding the international community towards a new regulatory regime. The Group of 20 leading economies may hope that changing the name to the Financial Stability Board, and adding a few new members, will make all the difference; but I wouldn't count on it. Perhaps those who believed in the liberalisation mantra that was responsible for the crisis and its rapid spread have learnt the lessons; but mindsets are often not so easily changed.

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Goldman Sachs made billions by pushing AIG to bankruptcy

An investigative report published Sunday by the New York Times provides a glimpse of the predatory practices of major Wall Street banks that played a central role in the financial meltdown and global economic crisis.

The article, headlined “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push AIG to Precipice,” documents the role of Goldman Sachs, the biggest and most profitable US investment bank, in pushing the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) to the brink of bankruptcy.

At the height of the financial crisis, in mid-September 2008, the Bush administration stepped in to rescue AIG with $85 billion in taxpayer money. Since then, under Bush and then Obama, government aid to the company has grown to $182.3 billion. The firm is currently 80 percent owned by the US Treasury.

AIG has used its government bailout to award its top traders and executives hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. In the face of public outrage, the Obama administration has intervened to shield the company and block any moves to limit these pay awards.

The Times article, by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, is based on a review of internal AIG documents and a recording of a January 29, 2008, conference call between Goldman Sachs executives and AIG. It describes how Goldman, in the two years preceding AIG’s bailout, worked to undermine investor confidence in the insurer, then the biggest seller of credit default swap contracts, and drive down the market value of mortgage-backed securities.

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Bob Kerrey: 9/11 was part of a 30 year old Conspiracy

Dan Noel who is also an engineer member of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth hands Bob Kerrey a card of information directing him to the proof of controlled demolition of the three WTC towers http://www.ae911truth.org.

Paul Wittenberger asks Kerrey about Building 7. Jeremy confronts Kerrey about the aspects of treason involved with covering up the truth about 9-11, and Kerrey responds "It's (9-11) a 30 year conspiracy".

French Government Queries US, 1950s Secret LSD Experiment

By F. William Engdahl
Author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian
Democracy in the New World Order
2-9-10

A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of "mass insanity" in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.

According to reliable US sources, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research has been given a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency DSGE (Directorate General for External Security). According to the report the inquiry regards a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France.

The strange outbreak severely affected nearly five hundred people, causing the deaths of at least five, two by suicide. For nearly 60 years the Pont-St.-Esprit incident has been attributed either to ergot poisoning, meaning that villagers consumed bread infected with a psychedelic mold or to organic mercury poisoning.

Scientists with the highly respected British Medical Journal were quickly drawn in September 1951 to what it dubbed the "outbreak of poisoning."

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Exposing possible NASA cover-up

EXAMINER

Breakthroughs in new imaging technology developed by the firm of Ron Stewart/Ron Nussbeck may now permit human observers to identify what appear to be planet-sized extraterrestrial UFOs exiting from dimensional portals in the Sun (See images and slideshow in article below).   A giant solar UFO wave commenced January 18, 2010, as predicted by the singularity theory of physicist Nassim Haramein that postulates that planet-sized UFOs access our solar system using the Sun as a star gate.   

Images of the Sun taken by NASA Stereo spacecraft independently on January 21, 2010 and again on January 23, 2010 were submitted by this Examiner.com reporter to a demonstration test using this new proprietary imaging technology.  The resulting images and analysis arguably visually confirm the existence of extraterrestrial or interdimensional giant UFOs exiting from what the images show as portals or tunnels on the Sun, in both sets of images from independent NASA Stereo photos dated Jan. 21 and 23, 2010, respectively.  These results were released by the Ron Stewart/Ron Nussbeck firm in a report, parts 1 and 2 dated February 2 and 3, 2010.

According to communications with this reporter from film director Jose Escamilla and Mike Bird, director of Exopolitics Canada, NASA has acted to remove Stereo images of the Sun containing giant UFOs from their website. Dr. Joe Gurman, NASA Stereo Project scientist, stated the giant solar UFOs are “compression artifacts.

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