CIA Transfers Another Detainee From Secret Prison System

The US Defense department announced March 14 that the CIA had transferred a detainee held in secret for at least six months to the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. The transfer, the second since the Bush administration admitted the existence of the secret CIA prison network a year and a half ago, is further confirmation that the US continues to use secret prisons to illegally hold and torture prisoners.

The detainee, Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani, was captured in Pakistan last summer by local police and handed over to the CIA in August. US officials described Rahim as a “high-level member of al Qaeda and a close associate of Osama bin Laden,” who helped in the hiding and escape of al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan following the US invasion. Rahim allegedly worked as a translator and an assistant to bin Laden.

In a memo circulated to agency employees, CIA director Michael Hayden also alleged that Rahim was plotting to attack US troops in Afghanistan with chemical weapons, although no such attack took place and no evidence was provided for the allegation.

Like thousands of other detainees held by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, Rahim has not been charged with a crime, and has not had contact with legal or human rights groups.

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China Admits Shooting Tibet Protesters!

China today admitted for the first time that anti-government demonstrations had spread to other regions and that soldiers had shot rioters "in self-defense".

The state-run Xinhua news agency reported recent unrest in Sichuan and Gansu provinces, blaming supporters of the Dalai Lama.

It said Chinese forces had shot and wounded four rioters "in self defence" during unrest in Sichuan last weekend.

China has come under international pressure to act with restraint in Tibet.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was reported to have "strongly urged" her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, to tread carefully in the region during a 20-minute phone call.

Rice also pushed Beijing to open talks with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown said the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, had told him he was willing to meet the Dalai Lama if the Tibetan leader ruled out independence and renounced violence - conditions which have already been met.

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UN Says Israel Guilty of Gaza War Crimes

A United Nations official confirmed yesterday that the targeting of a Hamas government office by Israel which resulted in serious casualties at a wedding being held nearby was a war crime and that those responsible should be brought to justice.

UN human rights rapporteur , John Dugard said “Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.”

A UN Human Rights Commission statement slammed the Israeli attack saying “It violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military and civilian targets.”

Iraq Better Off Under Saddam Says U.S. Military Aide

Lutfi Saber, an aide to the military coalition in Iraq, has said that the country would be better off if it were still under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Saber slammed the current system in Iraq saying, "None of these people trust each other. Everything comes down to that. The whole system is set up to ensure that nobody does anything that somebody else thinks is wrong."

He went on to say that the country was "engulfed in chaos and nobody does anything because they all refuse to take responsibility". Meanwhile, US President George W Bush continues to insist that progress is being made.

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

Libby Is Disbarred in Washington

I. Lewis Libby’s career suffered another blow today as a result of the investigation into a C.I.A. leak in 2003, this one from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:

It is hereby ORDERED that I. Lewis Libby, Jr. is disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, and his name shall be stricken from the roll of attorneys authorized to practice before this court.

The former aide to Vice President Cheney was suspended from practicing law in the nation’s capital since his conviction on four counts, but that is not enough for disbarment. The key factor, the ruling said, was whether he was guilty of “moral turpitude” in any of those charges, all stemming from lies during the inquiry.

The judges decided that three of the four charges qualified. “This court has held that obstruction of justice and perjury are crimes of moral turpitude,” the ruling said. The fourth conviction — for lying to F.B.I. investigators asking about Mr. Libby’s conversations with Tim Russert of NBC — did not make the cut.

The ruling [pdf] was widely expected and not contested by Mr. Libby, who expected to lose his license, according to his lawyer. “This action is required by the rules following a conviction regardless of the merits of the case,” William Jeffress told The Associated Press.

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Fed Deal Done in Secret By Secret Central Banker!

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented bailout of Bear Stearns was crafted not at the White House or the Treasury but in secret by a New York central banker whose name is unknown to Washington power brokers and who was a Clinton administration presidential appointee.

"It's a new day," commented one investor and longtime Fed watcher. Around the world, that day's dawning is viewed with apprehension because of election-year rhetoric from America.

The plan pressed by Timothy F. Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, effectively substitutes the central bank for the market in determining financial outcomes. Nobody takes seriously the assertions by Fed spokesmen that the aid for Bear Stearns and its dictated bargain-price sale to J.P. Morgan was "extraordinary." In Washington and New York, the question is who will be next. Speculation turned to who else will qualify as "too big to fail."

One candidate was Lehman Brothers, whose stock dropped 19.1 percent the day after the bailout was announced. Government-backed lending agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also been seen as bailout candidates.

The central bank's bold new role relieves the pressure on American financiers who have committed serious errors, but it does not reassure investors around the world who are alarmed by what they perceive in the U.S. political process, where class warfare has gained traction.

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AP President: U.S. Arrests Journalist in Iraq to 'Control' Information

Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information.

"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.

Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."

Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

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Video of Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan spoke at the 9/11 Truth conference in Sydney

Editor's Note: Thank you for the link, Damien!

Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan (national legislature), spoke at the 9/11 Truth conference in Sydney.

Mr Fujita is the single most important person to step forward to ask hard questions about 9/11 and the “War on Terror” this year.

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Markets Down, Taxes Up

By Janet Novak / Forbes

Stocks are having a rotten year. Federal capital gains and dividend tax rates are at historic lows. Yet as they complete their 2007 1040s, individual investors are paying the biggest tax bill ever on distributions of capital gains and dividends from their mutual funds.

Lipper Senior Analyst Tom Roseen, who plans to release his widely watched annual tally of fund taxes on April 15th, told Forbes.com that his preliminary calculations show investors' 2007 tax tab will top the record $31.3 billion they paid for 2000. "It's going to be monstrous,'' he says. "This is the year people are going to wake up and go 'wow, taxes matter again,' '' he adds.

Roseen's report isn't about the taxes investors pay when they sell mutual fund shares for a profit. Rather, he tracks the tax burden from the unique--and some argue unfair--tax code treatment of mutual funds.

Funds don't pay taxes themselves, but must distribute at least 90% of their net gains annually to shareholders. When an investor holds fund shares in a taxable account--as opposed to a tax-deferred one, such as an IRA or 401(k)--he pays tax each year on those distributions. That's true even if he has all those payouts automatically reinvested in the fund. By contrast, an investor who owns individual stocks in a taxable account doesn't have to pay capital gains tax until he actually sells the shares, giving him a greater ability to minimize his tax bill.

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Judge Clears Way For CIA "Rendition" Trial

An Italian judge on Wednesday ordered the resumption of a trial against U.S. and Italian spies accused of abducting a terrorism suspect, in a blow to efforts to halt a case that Rome says violates state secrecy rules.

The trial in absentia against 26 Americans -- almost all believed to be CIA agents -- is the first anywhere over the U.S. practice of "extraordinary rendition", whereby terrorism suspects are secretly transferred to third countries.

Italian spies, including the former head of Italy's military intelligence agency Nicolo Pollari, are accused of helping the CIA team abduct Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in 2003 and fly him to Egypt. There, Nasr says he was tortured.

Judge Oscar Magi had suspended proceedings shortly after they began in June last year, saying the criminal trial should wait until Italy's highest court ruled whether prosecutors had broken state secrecy rules when building their case.

But after months of high court delays, Magi decided the trial in Milan could go forward regardless.

"The measure suspending (the trial) can be removed," Magi told the court. "It will not cause any harm to the defense".

Prosecutors say a CIA-led team grabbed Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, off a Milan street, bundled him into a van and drove him to a military base in northern Italy.

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Winter Soldiers

By Madeleine Mysko / Baltimore Sun

From testimony of Jason Hurd of the Army's 278th Regimental Combat Team: One day, Iraqi police got into an exchange of gunfire with some unknown individuals ... [and] some of the stray rounds ... hit the shield of one of our Hummers. The gunner atop that Hummer decided to open fire with his 50-caliber machine gun into that building. We fired indiscriminately and unnecessarily at this building. We never got a body count, we never got a casualty count afterward. ... Things like that happen every day in Iraq. We react out of fear, fear for our lives.

On the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, my reflections go back much further - to the spring of 1969, when I entered basic training at Fort Sam Houston as a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. I had volunteered to serve, but not really out of patriotic duty. I was young and naive, and somehow had begun to picture myself as an angel of mercy who would tend to wounded soldiers.

I knew little about why we were fighting in Vietnam. I hardly ever read the news and had little interest in politics.

For us nurses, basic training was less about nursing and more about acclimation to military life. We were taught how to wear the uniform, how to salute, how to read a map in the wilderness, how to shoot a firearm, how to put on a gas mask in a hurry.

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DNA Collection Bill Runs Into Opposition!

Editor's Note: Anyone can be accused of a crime! Let's contact the Maryland Attorney General or the Governor of Maryland and let them know that unreasonable seizure of our DNA will not be tolerated!

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's bid to expand collection of DNA samples from criminal suspects is sparking intense debate in Annapolis, with black lawmakers so upset they walked out of a Democratic caucus meeting in protest.

With objections from both ends of the political spectrum, the House of Delegates postponed debate on the bill until Thursday.

"This issue is very emotional with many people," said Del. Kumar P. Barve, House majority leader, a Montgomery County Democrat. He declined to discuss what took place at the closed-door caucus, but added: "There's hardly anything more personal than your genetic information."

The House Judiciary Committee approved the administration's DNA bill late Friday, but with significant amendments that would delay the collection and analysis of the samples taken from suspects. It also provided for automatic expungement of the information in some cases if charges are dropped.

But critics in both parties say they remain concerned about the measure, fearing it could infringe on people's constitutional rights and might wind up costing far more than the administration has predicted.

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The Collapse Of American Power

By Paul Craig Roberts

In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war.

Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power. From their inception, America's 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets.

The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. 

Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the President himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country.

The Bush administration's $410 billion deficit forecast is based on the unrealistic assumption of 2.7% GDP growth in 2008, whereas in actual fact the US economy has fallen into a recession that could be severe.

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Robert Fisk: The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

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Cheney Says He Doesn't Care What Americans Think About Iraq War!

Editor's Note: Obviously, the VP doesn't know the definition of the word "fluctuation". The American people have not fluctuated at all about the Iraq war! There has been a steady increase in dissatisfaction since the war began!

By Mike Nizza / NY Times

The Vice President Cheney, already a lightning rod for critics of the Iraq war, seemed likely to ruffle more feathers today with remarks he made to a TV interviewer as the nation marked five years of war in Iraq.

Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Mr. Cheney in Amman, Jordan, one of several stops on a Middle East tour that includes Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Oman, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

After Ms. Raddatz asked about the economy — which he said was in “a rough patch,” not a recession — the subject turned to the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war. Here’s a transcript of the exchange, released by the network:

Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

Cheney: So?

Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?

Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

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Five Years After the Invasion of Iraq: A Debacle for U.S. Imperialism

Five years after Washington inaugurated its "shock and awe" campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.

The war’s costs, in terms of both US imperialism’s global position and sheer dollar amounts, have eclipsed the immense damage wrought by the protracted intervention in Vietnam nearly four decades ago. It has already lasted longer than the American Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, after five years of major troop deployments, the withdrawal of American forces had already begun.

A "war of choice" that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.

For the Iraqi people, the war has produced a catastrophe. For the American people, as well, it has yielded nothing but suffering and tragedy. It unquestionably constitutes the single greatest war crime of the twenty-first century. In both its motivation and execution, it embodies the essential characteristics of similar crimes carried out in the last century.

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25 Intolerable Contradictions: The Final Undoing of the Official 9/11 Story

by Elizabeth Woodworth

A review of "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," by Dr. David Ray Griffin.

At last there is a book about 9/11 that politicians and journalists can openly discuss without fear of being labeled "conspiracy theorists".

9/11 Contradictions advances no theories. It simply exposes 25 astonishing internal contradictions that will haunt the public story of this unparalleled event for all time.

Until now, the persistent and disturbing questions about the day that changed the world have confused and alienated journalists and politicians, because:

1. The technical issues regarding the collapse of the towers, the failure of the military to intercept the flights, and the relatively minor damage to the Pentagon have been considered too complex for analysis in the media.

   However, Griffin’s new book requires no technical expertise from the reader, because each readable chapter revolves around one simple internal contradiction inherent in the public story. "If Jones says ‘P’ and Smith says ‘Not P’, we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true."

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U.S. Infrastructure: I-95 Shut in Philadelphia After `Severe Damage' Found

A section of Interstate 95, the busiest highway on the East Coast, was closed in Philadelphia because of ``severe damage'' to a steel-reinforced concrete supporting column, state officials said.

The 3-mile (4.8-kilometer) stretch was shut shortly before midnight local time yesterday. An engineer inspecting the 15- foot-high column saw that a half-inch crack discovered in October had widened to as much as 5 inches, Pennsylvania Transportation Department spokesman Gene Blaum said.

Cities and states throughout the U.S. have been rushing to inspect and repair elevated highways and bridges since a span of I-35 across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed in August, killing 13 people.

New York Democratic senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, speaking today in Philadelphia, said I-95 was ``closed because of our failure to deal with our infrastructure, something that is long overdue.''

``This is yet another wake-up call following the collapse of levees in New Orleans and the bridge in Minneapolis,'' Clinton said in a televised news conference.

I-95 will be shut between the Allegheny Avenue and Girard Avenue exits while four steel support towers are built. They will allow the damaged column to be repaired while the road is open, Blaum said in a telephone interview.

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Opponents of Iraq War Plan Series of Protests in D.C.

Antiwar protesters said yesterday that they plan a series of demonstrations starting this evening and lasting through tomorrow that could disrupt traffic, hamper commuters and block access to some buildings in downtown Washington.

The actions, aimed to draw attention to the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, are directed at business, government, political and media centers that demonstrators blame for the continuation of the war, according to members of the United For Peace and Justice coalition, which is heading the protest.

Activists plan tomorrow morning to target the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, at 12th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, which they said they hope to shut down. They said they will also protest at various corporations in the vicinity of K Street between 13th and 18th streets NW.

Antiwar military veterans plan a 9 a.m. march tomorrow on the Mall from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Capitol.

Other events -- including a die-in, a knit-in and a torture simulation -- are planned at the Department of Veterans Affairs, McPherson Square, Lafayette Square, the American Petroleum Institute and the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on Capitol Hill.

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Social Insecurity, Sooner Than You Think!

By Allan Sloan / Washington Post

One of Washington's rites of spring is almost upon us. It's the wonks' version of the Cherry Blossom Festival: the release of the annual Social Security trustees' report showing the health of our nation's biggest social program. Each year, the report touches off a debate, mostly misguided, about Social Security's financial status. Given the political environment this year, you can expect more heat than usual when the report comes out. But you're unlikely to see much light.

So let me try to illuminate things for you. Forget all the talk you'll hear about how Social Security is okay until 2040 or thereabouts. That is, as we'll soon see, utter nonsense. The real problem starts only a decade or so from now, when Social Security begins to take in less cash than it spends.

How can I say that, given Social Security's $2.3 trillion (and growing) trust fund? It's because the fund owns nothing but Treasury securities. Normally, of course, Treasury securities are the safest thing you can hold in a retirement account. But Social Security's Treasurys won't help cover the program's cash shortfall because Social Security is part of the federal government. Having one arm of the government (Social Security) own IOUs from another arm (the Treasury) doesn't help the government as a whole cover its bills.

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