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November 17, 2011

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ANTI-HACKING LAW CRIMINALIZES MOST COMPUTER USERS, FORMER PROSECUTOR SAYS

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The nation’s premier anti-hacking law poses a threat to the civil liberties of millions of Americans who use computers and the internet and could lead to the arrest and prosecution of many users who violate the law on a regular basis, says a former federal prosecutor who wants the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act revised.

“In the Justice Department’s view, the CFAA criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake name on Facebook or lying about your weight in an online dating profile. That situation is intolerable,” says Orin Kerr, George Washington University law professor and a former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the Criminal Division.

Currently, the law punishes anyone who “intentionally … exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer.”

Kerr is testifying on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and is asking Congress to amend the law to narrow how prosecutors can interpret what it means to exceed authorized access on a computer.

When the legislation was first enacted in the 1980s, it specifically targeted computer hacking and other computer misuse, Kerr argues in a written version of the testimony (.pdf) he plans to give. But since then, Congress has broadened the statute significantly four times, expanding the law’s reach and rendering it “unconstitutionally vague.”

The law as it currently stands allows prosecutors to criminally prosecute users for violating an internet service provider’s terms of service agreement, something that would normally be a breach of contract issue handled in civil court rather than through criminal prosecution.

In 2008, federal prosecutors used this exact interpretation of the CFAA when they charged Missouri resident Lori Drew under the law in order to punish her for her role in a cyber-bullying incident that led a teenage girl to commit suicide.

Prosecutors argued that Drew was guilty under the CFAA for violating MySpace’s terms-of-service agreement in setting up a fraudulent account that was used to bully the teenage girl. The government argued that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking.

Drew was convicted on misdemeanor charges, but a judge subsequently threw out the verdict on grounds that the CFAA was constitutionally vague and that upholding the verdict would set a precedent for anyone who breaches similar contracts to be criminally prosecuted.

Kerr was part of Drew’s defense team as pro-bono co-counsel.

Prosecutors also used the CFAA last year to charge a ring of online ticketbrokers who wrote a script to circumvent CAPTCHA challenges used by TicketMaster and other ticket vendors to detect and slow down computers attempting to purchase large numbers of tickets.

Prosecutors asserted that bypassing CAPTCHA constituted unauthorized access of ticket-seller servers. U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden allowed the case to proceed, saying, “The Court is satisfied that the indictment sufficiently alleges the elements of unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access under the CFAA, and sufficiently alleges conduct demonstrating defendants’ knowledge and intent to gain unauthorized access.”

The defendants ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and hacking.

In arguing that the statute needs to be revised, Kerr is calling on Congress to follow the Senate’s lead. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved an amendment to a pending bill that would limit the interpretation of exceeding authorized access under the CFAA. Per the amendment, it would ‘‘not include access in violation of a contractual obligation or agreement, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or non-government employer, if such violation constitutes the sole basis for determining that access to a protected computer is unauthorized.”

Kerr says this would still allow prosecutors to pursue cases against government employees for misusing sensitive government databases, but would not sweep in an entire class of other people for merely violating a contractual agreement with a web site or their ISP.

 

Source: https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anti-hacking-law-too-broad/

Filed Under: America, Banks, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Education, Internet, Law, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Science, Surveillance, Telecommunication, The Hidden Empire, Wealthy Elite

WHITE HOUSE DENIES RESPONSIBILITY FOR CONFUSING EVERYONE ABOUT MEDICAL MARIJUANA

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In a long piece detailing Obama’s badly botched approach to medical marijuana, the San Francisco Chronicle has a rather ridiculous quote from the White House:

A White House spokesman said that its position on medical marijuana “has been clear and consistent.”

“While the prosecution of drug traffickers is a core priority, targeting individuals with cancer and serious illnesses is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources,” said the spokesman, Adam Abrams.

It’s really an amazing thing to say, considering that literally nobody understands what the hell Obama’s position on medical marijuana is supposed to be anymore. To describe as “clear and consistent” something that has created sweeping confusion across the country is hilariously dishonest and insulting, but I guess it’s exactly the kind of crap we ought to expect from these people at this point.

I’d just love to hear someone at the White House explain to me why it is that their “clear and consistent” messaging about medical marijuana policy was so thoroughly misunderstood by the mainstream media, the medical marijuana industry, and the numerous state governments that invested countless hours developing new regulatory mechanisms as a direct result of the Obama administration’s statements. If every single interested party is horribly confused, then you are not in a good position to claim that you’ve been communicating clearly.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/white-house-denies-responsibility-for.html

Filed Under: America, Big Pharma, Campaigning, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Drugs, Earth, Environment, Health, Law, Lobbying, Marijuana, Money, New World Order, Police, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Self-Sustainability, The Hidden Empire

The American Legal System: A Ball Game Played by Lawyers & Jurists

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Why of Not Doing the Right Thing

The unfairness of American society is being recognized by many. Eighty-nine percent of Americans say they don’t trust their government; Congress has a mere 9% approval rating; America’s financial institutions are widely considered to be corrupt; the Occupy movement has emerged, some are seeking to enact an amendment to the Constitution to undo the Court’s decision in Citizen’s United. But not doing the right thing, unfairness, injustice has deep roots in America. Oliver Wendell Holmes once confirmed that fairness or justice is not the concern of the Supreme Court. Only playing the game according to the rules is. Since the Court cannot be relied upon to “do the right thing,” why should anyone believe that any American institution can be counted on to do it? What is required is a complete overhaul of the legal system.

Half a century ago, I served on a commission in the state of North Carolina which was tasked with revising the state’s criminal code. The commission was comprised of law school professors, prominent judges, and practicing attorneys. We were appointed by the state’s newly elected attorney general who had hoped that the commission would improve the law in substantive ways that would reduce the injustice that had been written into statutes and case law. He and I both quickly learned, however, that the members of the legal community on the commission were not about to do that; they insisted that no changes be made that would burden the legal community by requiring it to relearn even parts of the code and adjust practices and procedures accordingly. As a result, all that was done was that some ambiguous sentences were rewritten to be less ambiguous and some outdated diction was changed to more modern locutions. Chalk one up for changeless change. If the law was unjust, well, it was left so.

Now it is being reported that when fairness and the law collide, Justice Alito is troubled:

“the Supreme Court considered the case of Cory R. Maples, a death row inmate in Alabama whose lawyers had missed a deadline to file an appeal. ‘Mr. Maples lost his right to appeal,’ Justice Alito said, ‘through no fault of his own. . . . But a ruling for Mr. Maples,’ Justice Alito continued, ‘could require the court to adopt principles that would affect many, many cases and would substantially change existing law.’ He said he was reluctant to impose new burdens on government officials and to allow clients to second-guess their lawyers’ decisions in order to provide relief to Mr. Maples.”

Notice how easy it is for Mr. Alito to justify denying Mr. Maples justice because of a “reluctance to impose new burdens on government officials.” My, my, those poor overburdened governmental officials! Does their need for protection from their being overburdened trump a plaintiff’s need for just treatment? Apparently so.

The Court’s justices claim that “error correction” in particular cases is not their function but that the Court’s task is to “establish legal principles that will apply in countless cases.” But the Constitution never tasks the judicial system with that function, although it does direct not only the Court but the nation to “establish Justice.” Furthermore, if the establishment of legal principles were the Count’s primary function, after almost two and a half centuries, one would expect to have on hand a list or booklet of such principles that have been established. But no such booklet or list exists. Establishing legal principles is not what the court does. To understand what the Court does do, see my piece, The Supreme Court’s “Make Believe Law.”

Cases such as Cory R. Maples, Petitioner v. Kim T. Thomas, Interim Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections where a conflict exists between some legal principle and justice are not rare. At the present time several such cases are before the Court: a Georgia case about whether government officials are protected from civil lawsuits even if they tell lies that lead grand juries to vote for indictments, and an appeal from Charles Rehberg who was indicted three times involving charges that he harassed doctors affiliated with a politically connected south Georgia hospital system. After the third indictment was dismissed even before a trial, Rehberg sued local prosecutors and their investigator, James Paulk arguing that Paulk’s false grand jury testimony led to the indictments. In two other cases, the Court has shown little enthusiasm for reopening the cases of criminal defendants who lost good plea deals because of bad advice or bungling by their lawyers. At issue is whether to extend the right to competent legal advice to plea deals. Most of the justices seem to be reluctant to give defendants a new trial or a shorter prison term because a lawyer’s mistake caused them to miss out on a favorable plea.

Most people, I suspect, would say that it is unfair, and in a legal context unjust, to penalize someone for someone else’s mistakes. But not the Court. Fairness or justice is not it’s concern as Oliver Wendell Holmes once confirmed:

In a 1958 lecture, Judge Learned Hand, a towering presence on the federal appeals court in New York, recalled saying goodbye to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as the justice left for the Supreme Court. “I wanted to provoke a response,” Judge Hand said, so as he walked off, I said to him: “Well, sir, goodbye. Do justice!” Justice Holmes gave a sharp retort: “That is not my job. My job is to play the game according to the rules.”

Well, there you have it, plain and simple, straight from a horse’s mouth. The American legal system is nothing but a game played by lawyers and jurists to rules they have made up themselves. Justice, fairness, doing the right thing, has nothing to do with it. How could this ever have come about?

Well, it happened a long time ago. In 1803, the Court issued what is often referred to as a “landmark” decision that is a paradigm for the Court’s unjust opinions.

William Marbury, who had been appointed by President John Adams as Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia but whose commission was not subsequently delivered, petitioned the Court to force Secretary of State James Madison to deliver it. Although the Court, with John Marshall as Chief Justice, held that Marbury had a right to the commission, the petition was denied. Marshall held that the part of the statute upon which Marbury based his claim was unconstitutional. So here, in this “landmark” case, the Court denies a plaintiff what he is entitled to. No justice here!

Of course, Marshall provided an argument, but it is entirely specious. What this case is most famous for is not what was done to Marbury but for what the Court did to the Constitution. This case was used by the Court to establish its superiority over the other two branches of the government. Marshall claimed that, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department [the judicial branch] to say what the law is,” thus establishing what is known as the doctrine of judicial review in American jurisprudence. However, nothing in the text of the Constitution explicitly or even implicitly grants that power to the Court.

There is much dispute over the origins of the doctrine, but it certainly can be traced to England in the 1600s, a time when the Monarch was supreme and the legislature was subordinate. But the English abolished this practice in the Glorious Revolution (1688) when the idea that courts could declare statutes void was abolished as King James II was removed and the elected Parliament declared itself supreme. The Glorious Revolution began modern English parliamentary democracy; never since has the monarch held absolute power, but Marshall introduced this anti-democratic practice into America by making the Court’s decisions absolute. There is no procedure for voiding them. So John Marshall destroyed democracy in America a century after the principle he relied upon was removed from English law as the English progressed toward becoming a democracy. Marshall gave America the monarchial legal system of England that was in effect in the 1600s, and since the American constitution presented no easy way to overturn this decision, America has been stuck with a 17th Century legal system ever since. The backwardness of American society was insured in 1803. Marshall usurped the young nation’s constitution and made the United States into just another reactionary seventeenth century European authoritarian society adorned with the trappings of democracy. At that moment, America’s fate as a failed state was assured, if success is measured by the goals set forth for the nation in the Constitution’s Preamble.

Marshall knew this, of course. He knew that he and his colleagues on the Court could rule any way they wanted to and nothing could be done about it. They could just as easily have granted Marbury’s petition and justified it on the grounds of having to “establish justice.” But they didn’t! In a sense, what the Court did can be viewed as unconstitutional.

This decision opened the door for the Court’s long history of unjust and spuriously argued opinions issued by people, such as Louis Powell and the members of the current Court, with personal agendas. These decisions stand only because no method of rejecting them exists. So the Court cannot be relied upon to ever “do the right thing.” It will always do merely what the majority of the Court’s justices want to. A long line of justices have used this power to write their own predilections and opinions into American case law, a result of which is a plethora of unjust principles embedded in American jurisprudence which results in the injustices being repeated over and over.

So not doing the right thing, unfairness, injustice has deep roots in America. And since that is so, why should anyone believe that any American institution can be counted on to do the right thing if the courts cannot?

The unfairness of American society is being recognized by many. Eighty-nine percent of Americans say they don’t trust their government; Congress has a mere 9% approval rating; America’s financial institutions are widely considered to be corrupt; some are seeking to enact an amendment to the Constitution to undo the Court’s decision in Citizen’s United. But the overturning one decision will not ameliorate no less solve America’s problem with unfairness. It requires a complete overhaul of the legal system.

What’s most difficult to understand, however, is why no one respected in the legal community will stand up and say, “It’s wrong”! Where are the deans of our law schools, our eminent legal scholars, our judges, our practicing attorneys? Why have none either the moral courage or the intellectual honesty to stand up for “doing the right thing”? Is a legal education so brain washing that these people have no minds of their own? (If you want an example of the type of student that is attracted to law, read, Massachusetts Law Professor Calls Care Packages for U.S. Troops ‘Shameful’.

The framers of the Constitution wanted to insure that the government created by it could never become strong enough to become tyrannical. They sought to put checks and balances on the branches of government; however, they neglected to place a check on the Court and the Court’s justices quickly used that failure to become an absolute oligarchy whose opinions could not be overturned. They became James II puppets. The only way to correct this problem is to place a check on the Court’s power, not overturn a decision here or there. The Court’s power needs to be limited. I can think of at least a half dozen ways of doing that, but I suspect that the most effective would be by giving the American people the power to reject Court decisions by means of referenda. Such a practice would put the power right in the hands of the people; thus, not only limiting the Court’s power but enriching American democracy at the same time. Marbury v Madison would be undone.

What this piece presents is not especially new. Thoughtful people have known it since Marbury v. Madison was promulgated. Thomas Jefferson knew it immediately, and said so. Was he the only true patriot America ever had? It’s certainly possible.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27684

Filed Under: America, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Law, Lobbying, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, The Hidden Empire, Truth, Wealthy Elite

The Egyptian Military is Lifting Its Mask

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The killing under torture in a maximum security prison in Cairo of Essam Ali Atta Ali, a 24-year-old Egyptian, raises concern on the role of the Egyptian military in the “New Egypt.” His death was likened to that of Khalid Said, who was beaten to death by the police in Alexandria last year. What Atta’s death show is that the same abuses that were perpetrated under former president Hosni Mubarak continue, and that true democracy and respect for people’s rights are still a long way off in Egypt.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi is Egypt’s defense minister and chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military group that took power on Feb. 11, 2011, after weeks of unrest directed at President Hosni Mubarak. He is currently the country’s de facto leader. It is Mr. Tantawi, perhaps more than any other single person, who is now driving events in Egypt.Atta was arrested last February, convicted of “thuggery.” He was sentenced to two years in prison. According to the Interior Ministry, he was also carrying an unlicensed weapon. He is one of 12,000 cases who, according to human rights activists in the country, have been tried by military, instead of civilian, courts. In contrast, Mubarak and his cronies are being tried in civilian courts and their trials are expected to last for months or even years.

“The military justice system should never be used to investigate or prosecute civilians. Military courts are fundamentally unfair, as they deprive defendants of basic fair trial guarantees,” states Amnesty International. One may recall, in this regard, George Clemenceau’s statement that, “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”

What makes his case special, however, is that it proves that torture and assassination continue to be practiced in Egyptian jails. Atta was sodomized to death by prison guards who used hoses to inject water into his mouth and anus which produced profuse bleeding leading to his death. A statement from the military government attributed Atta’s death to “unknown poisoning” and said that prison guards tried to save him.

According to his father, however, after being tortured for more than an hour other prisoners pleaded with the prison guards to stop torturing him. When the guards stopped, he was transferred to Kasr El-Aini hospital where he died an hour later. After seeing Atta’s bloodied body for a short time at the morgue, where she was verbally abused by the guards, Aida Seif al-Dawla, an official at the El-Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, called Atta “the second Khalid Said”.

When the military adopted a calming behavior during the revolt in Tahrir Square many thought, or hoped, that this event signaled a change in the military’s policy towards its former associates. They also thought that the military was going to open the way for the creation of authentic democracy in Egypt. History shows, however, that once the military assume direct power, they only relinquish it by force or after a serious national crisis, as has been proved in Argentina, Chile and in many other countries worldwide.

The continued practice of torture in Egyptian jails is only one of many Tahrir activists’ complaints against the ruling military junta. Activists are concerned that the military would like to perpetuate their rule, either holding power for as long as possible or by opening the way for one of their own to become president.

Recently, several hundred posters appeared in Cairo and Alexandria, calling on Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to run for president, feeding people’s fears that the military may want to indefinitely remain in power. Two members of the military council recently stated that the military plans to retain full control of government after the election of Parliament begins in November and until a new president is elected, a process that could well extend into 2013 or even longer.

In the meantime, and following the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, the SCAF not only kept the state of emergency but has broadened the law’s mandate, including now “aggression against freedom to work, sabotaging factories and holding up transport, blocking roads and deliberately publishing false news, statements or rumors.” The law gives security forces wide powers of search, arrest and detention and shows the big divide between people’s demands and actions by the military, which in 2010 had promised that it would use the law only to combat terrorism and drug trafficking.

The evidence of systematic torture, expanding the reach of the emergency law and the military’s heavy hand in quelling civilian protests such as the one on October 9 in which 27 people –mostly Christians- were killed raises serious doubts about the military allowing peaceful dissent and allowing democracy in the country. Slowly, and surely, the Egyptian military is lifting its democratic mask.

 

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/14-2

Filed Under: Banks, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Democracy, Egypt, Law, Martial Law, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politics, Prison, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, Torture, War

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Forced Home Entry Over DUI

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The US Supreme Court ruled 27 years ago that police could not forcibly enter someone’s home over suspected drunk driving. The Fourth District US Court of Appeals in an unpublished decision is looking to change the precedent. A three-judge appellate panel considered the case of Alan J. Cilman who had filed a false arrest lawsuit after Officer M.A. Reeves busted down his door, without a warrant, on October 3, 2004.Earlier that day, Cilman had left Neighbors Restaurant where he watched a football game and had dinner and drinks. Reeves claimed Cilman drove out of the Neighbors parking lot at a “high rate of speed.” Reeves followed, noting that Cilman had run a stop sign, failed to signal and accelerated quickly in turns. Accounts differ over whether Reeves turned on his police lights before Cilman made it to the driveway of his home, which was not far away. Reeves got out of his cruiser as Cilman was walking briskly to the door. Reeves told Cilman to stop, but he did not say the man was under arrest. Cilman told the officer to get off his property as he went inside and locked the door.

Reeves waited for backup, then kicked in Cilman’s door and arrested him for being drunk in public and evasion without force — not driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Prosecutors later dropped those charges. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed that kicking in Cilman’s door without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but a jury awarded Cilman $0 in damages as compensation. Officer Reeves appealed the judge’s finding that he had violated the Constitution, because under state law he would be forced to resign if found guilty of a second constitutional violation.

In the 1984 US Supreme Court case Welsh v. Wisconsin, the high court ruled that “police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI.” The US Court of Appeals panel ruled this precedent did not apply because Virginia imposes a higher fine and longer jail sentence than Wisconsin for DUI.

“No controlling Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit precedent speaks to a person’s right to be free from a warrantless entry into his home in circumstances like those in the case at hand,” the appellate judges ruled in a per curiam decision.

Cilman charged that Vienna’s police exhibited a pattern of Fourth Amendment violations, but the appellate panel dismissed this by calling the reports “isolated, unprecedented incidents.” The judges reversed every judgment in Cilman’s favor and ordered the case dismissed in its entirety.

A copy of the ruling is available in a 50k PDF file at the source link below.

Link: Cilman v. Reeves (US Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, 11/4/2011)

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/federal-appeals-court-upholds-forced.html

Filed Under: America, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Corporations, Corruption, Human Rights, Law, Money, New World Order, Police, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Revolution, Rights, The Hidden Empire, Truth

60 MINUTES: ARE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TRADING STOCKS ON INSIDE INFORMATION?

November 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information - but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate.

For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it’s time for the law to change.

The following is a script of “Insiders” which aired on Nov. 13, 2011:

The next national election is now less than a year away and congressmen and senators are expending much of their time and their energy raising the millions of dollars in campaign funds they’ll need just to hold onto a job that pays $174,000 a year.

Few of them are doing it for the salary and all of them will say they are doing it to serve the public. But there are other benefits: Power, prestige, and the opportunity to become a Washington insider with access to information and connections that no one else has, in an environment of privilege where rules that govern the rest of the country, don’t always apply to them.

Questioning Pelosi: Steve Kroft heads to D.C.

When Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, and other lawmakers wouldn’t answer Steve Kroft’s questions, he headed to Washington to get some answers about their stock trades.

Most former congressmen and senators manage to leave Washington - if they ever leave Washington - with more money in their pockets than they had when they arrived, and as you are about to see, the biggest challenge is often avoiding temptation.

Peter Schweizer: This is a venture opportunity. This is an opportunity to leverage your position in public service and use that position to enrich yourself, your friends, and your family.

Peter Schweizer is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. A year ago he began working on a book about soft corruption in Washington with a team of eight student researchers, who reviewed financial disclosure records. It became a jumping off point for our own story, and we have independently verified the material we’ve used.

Schweizer says he wanted to know why some congressmen and senators managed to accumulate significant wealth beyond their salaries, and proved particularly adept at buying and selling stocks.

Schweizer: There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy. So it’s not illegal, but I think it’s highly unethical, I think it’s highly offensive, and wrong.

Steve Kroft: What do you mean honest graft?

Schweizer: For example insider trading on the stock market. If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply.

Kroft: So congressman get a pass on insider trading?

Schweizer: They do. The fact is, if you sit on a healthcare committee and you know that Medicare, for example, is- is considering not reimbursing for a certain drug that’s market moving information. And if you can trade stock on- off of that information and do so legally, that’s a great profit making opportunity. And that sort of behavior goes on.

Kroft: Why does Congress get a pass on this?

Schweizer: It’s really the way the rules have been defined. And the people who make the rules are the political class in Washington. And they’ve conveniently written them in such a way that they don’t apply to themselves.

The buying and selling of stock by corporate insiders who have access to non-public information that could affect the stock price can be a criminal offense, just ask hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam who recently got 11 years in prison for doing it. But, congressional lawmakers have no corporate responsibilities and have long been considered exempt from insider trading laws, even though they have daily access to non-public information and plenty of opportunities to trade on it.

Schweizer: We know that during the health care debate people were trading health care stocks. We know that during the financial crisis of 2008 they were getting out of the market before the rest of America really knew what was going on.

In mid September 2008 with the Dow Jones Industrial average still above ten thousand, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were holding closed door briefings with congressional leaders, and privately warning them that a global financial meltdown could occur within a few days. One of those attending was Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, then the ranking Republican member on the House Financial Services Committee and now its chairman.

Schweizer: These meetings were so sensitive- that they would actually confiscate cell phones and Blackberries going into those meetings. What we know is that those meetings were held one day and literally the next day Congressman Bachus would engage in buying stock options based on apocalyptic briefings he had the day before from the Fed chairman and treasury secretary. I mean, talk about a stock tip.

While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts.

Congressman Bachus declined to talk to us, so we went to his office and ran into his Press Secretary Tim Johnson.

Kroft: Look we’re not alleging that Congressman Bachus has violated any laws. All…the only thing we’re interested in talking to him is about his trades.

Tim Johnson: Ok…Ok that’s a fair enough request.

What we got was a statement from Congressman Bachus’ office that he never trades on non-public information, or financial services stock. However, his financial disclosure forms seem to indicate otherwise. Bachus made money trading General Electric stock during the crisis, and a third of GE’s business is in financial services.

During the healthcare debate of 2009, members of Congress were trading health care stocks, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, who led the opposition against the so-called public option, government funded insurance that would compete with private companies. Just days before the provision was finally killed off, Boehner bought health insurance stocks, all of which went up. Now speaker of the House, Congressman Boehner also declined to be interviewed, so we tracked him down at his weekly press conference.

Kroft: You made a number of trades going back to the health care debate. You bought some insurance stock. Did you make those trades based on non-public information?

John Boehner: I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities in my account. And haven’t for years. I don’t- I do not do it, haven’t done it and wouldn’t do it.

Later Boehner’s spokesman told us that the health care trades were made by the speaker’s financial adviser, who he only consults with about once a year.

[Peter Schweizer: We need to find out whether they're part of a blind trust or not.]

Peter Schweizer thinks the timing is suspicious, and believes congressional leaders should have their stock funds in blind trusts.

Schweizer: Whether it’s uh- $15,000 or $150,000, the principle in my mind is that it’s simply wrong and it shouldn’t take place.

But there is a long history of self-dealing in Washington. And it doesn’t always involve stock trades.

Congressmen and senators also seem to have a special knack for land and real estate deals. When Illinois Congressman Dennis Hastert became speaker of the House in 1999, he was worth a few hundred thousand dollars. He left the job eight years later a multi-millionaire.

Jan Strasma: The road that Hastert wants to build will go through these farm fields right here.

In 2005, Speaker Hastert got a $207 million federal earmark to build the Prairie Parkway through these cornfields near his home. What Jan Strasma and his neighbors didn’t know was that Hastert had also bought some land adjacent to where the highway is supposed to go.

Strasma: And five months after this earmark went through he sold that land and made a bundle of money.

Kroft: How much?

Strasma: Two million dollars.

Kroft: What do you think of it?

Strasma: It stinks.

We stopped by the former speaker’s farm, to ask him about the land deal, but he was off in Washington where he now works as a lobbyist. His office told us that property values in the area began to appreciate even before the earmark and that the Hastert land was several miles from the nearest exit.

But the same good fortune befell former New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, who helped steer nearly $70 million dollars in government funds towards redeveloping this defunct Air Force base, which he and his brother both had a commercial interest in. Gregg has said that he violated no congressional rules.

It’s but one more example of good things happening to powerful members of Congress. Another is the access to initial public stock offerings, the opportunity to buy a new stock at insider prices just as it goes on the market. They can be incredibly lucrative and hard to get.

Schweizer: If you were a senator, Steve, and I gave you $10,000 cash, one or both of us is probably gonna go to jail. But if I’m a corporate executive and you’re a senator, and I give you IPO shares in stock and over the course of one day that stock nets you $100,000, that’s completely legal.

And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs. One of those came in 2008, from Visa, just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies, began making its way through the House. Undisturbed by a potential conflict of interest the Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64. The credit card legislation never made it to the floor of the House.

Congresswoman Pelosi also declined our request for an interview, but agreed to call on us if we attended a news conference.

Kroft: Madam Leader, I wanted to ask you why you and your husband back in March of 2008 accepted and participated in a very large IPO deal from Visa at a time there was major legislation affecting the credit card companies making its way through the- through the House.

Nancy Pelosi: But-

Kroft: And did you consider that to be a conflict of interest?

Pelosi: The- y- I- I don’t know what your point is of your question. Is there some point that you want to make with that?

Kroft: Well, I- I- I guess what I’m asking is do you think it’s all right for a speaker to accept a very preferential, favorable stock deal?

Pelosi: Well, we didn’t.

Kroft: You participated in the IPO. And at the time you were speaker of the House. You don’t think it was a conflict of interest or had the appearance-

Pelosi: No, it was not-

Kroft: -of a conflict of interest?

Pelosi: -it doesn’t- it only has appearance if you decide that you’re going to have- elaborate on a false premise. But it- it- it’s not true and that’s that.

Kroft: I don’t understand what part’s not true.

Pelosi: Yes sir. That- that I would act upon an investment.

Congresswoman Pelosi pointed out that the tough credit card legislation eventually passed, but it was two years later and was initiated in the Senate.

Pelosi: I will hold my record in terms of fighting the credit card companies as speaker of the House or as a member of Congress up against anyone.

Corporate executives, members of the executive branch and all federal judges are subject to strict conflict of interest rules. But not the people who write the laws.

Schweizer: If you are a member of Congress and you sit on the defense committee, you are free to trade defense stock as much as you want to if you’re on the Senate banking committee you can trade bank stock as much as you want and that regularly goes on- in- in all these committees.

Brian Baird: There should only be one thing in your mind when you’re drafting legislation, ‘Is this good for the United States of America?’ That’s it. If you’re starting to say to yourself ‘how’s this going to affect my investments,’ you’ve got- you’ve got a mixed agenda and a mixed purpose for being there.

Brian Baird is a former congressman from Washington state who served six terms in the house before retiring last year. He spent half of those 12 years trying to get his colleagues to prohibit insider trading in Congress and establish some rules governing conflicts of interest.

Baird: One line in a bill in Congress can be worth millions and millions of dollars. There was one night, we had a late, late night caucus and you could kind of tell how a vote was going to go the next day. I literally walked home and I thought, ‘Man, if you- if you went online and made- some significant trades, you could make a lot of money on this.’ You- you could just see it. You could see the potential here.

So in 2004, Baird and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter introduced the Stock Act which would make it illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks on non-public information and require them to report their stock trades every 90 days instead of once a year.

Kroft: How far did you get with this?

Baird: We didn’t get anywhere. Just flat died. Went nowhere.

Kroft: How many cosponsors did you get?

Baird: I think we got six.

Kroft: Six doesn’t sound like a very big amount.

Baird: It’s not, Steve. You- you could have- ‘National Cherry Pie Week’ and get 100 cosponsors.

When Baird finally managed to get a congressional hearing on the Stock Act, almost no one showed up. It’s reintroduced every session, but is buried so deep in the Capitol we had trouble finding congressmen who had even heard of it.

Kroft: Have you ever heard of the Stock Act?

Steve Palazzo: The what?

Kroft: The Stock Act. Do you know anything about it?

Congressman: No.

Kroft: Congressman. Congressman. Congressman.

Congressman Quayle: I haven’t heard about that one yet.

Kroft: Have you ever heard of something called the Stock Act?

Congressman Watt: No

Male voice: I’ve heard about, but not. I can’t say it’s an issue I’ve spent a lot of time on.

Male voice: I would have no problem with that.

Kroft: Okay.

Male voice: But then again I am a big fan of, you know, instant disclosure on almost everything.

Kroft: They’re looking for co-sponsors.

Male voice: And yet, I’ve never heard of it.

Baird: When you have a bill like this that makes so much sense and you can’t get the co-sponsorships, you can’t get the leadership to move it, it gets tremendously frustrating. Set aside that it’s the right thing to do, it’s good politics. People want their Congress to function well. It still baffles me.

But what baffles Baird even more is that the situation has gotten worse. In the past few years a whole new totally unregulated, $100 million dollar industry has grown up in Washington called political intelligence. It employs former congressmen and former staffers to scour the halls of the Capitol gathering valuable non-public information then selling it to hedge funds and traders on Wall Street who can trade on it.

Baird: Now if you’re a political intel guy. And you get that information. Long before it’s public. Long before somebody wakes up the next morning and reads or watches the television or whatever, you’ve got it. And you can make real- real-time trades before anybody else.

Baird says its taken what would be a criminal enterprise anyplace else in the country and turned it into a profitable business model.

Baird: The town is all about people saying- what do you know that I don’t know.

This is the currency of Washington, D.C.

And it’s that kind of informational currency that translates into real currency. Maybe it’s over drinks maybe somebody picks up a phone. And says you know just to let you know it’s in the bill.

Trades happen. Can’t trace ‘em. If you can trace ‘em, it’s not illegal. It’s a pretty great system.

You feel like an idiot to not take advantage of it.

 

 

Source: https://www.theblaze.com/stories/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-trading-stocks-on-inside-information/

Filed Under: America, Banks, Censorship, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Law, Lobbying, Money, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Truth, Wealthy Elite

Torture - From Guantanamo to Bahrain

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“But the one person from Bahrain who fought for our freedom till the end was Nabeel Rajab from the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.”

This was part of an interview with Juma Mohammed Al Dossary, a former Guantanamo prisoner from Bahrain, after his release in 2007.

Mohammed Khalid, a pro-gov and Salafist MP, who campaigned for release of the detainees and compensating them, asked in 2005: “What about the Guantanamo prison, which is out of the sight of all rights and humanitarian organizations, where the matter could be worse than Abu Ghraib or Afghanistan?”. He said that many released prisoners “had talked about being submitted to human suffering and sexual abuse during interrogation”.

Some of the torture and abuse described by AlDossary through his lawyer included: religious abuse like cursing and insulting beliefs, being urinated on and spat on by GI’s, being burnt by cigarettes, severe beating while in extreme positions, and being sexually assaulted by female interrogators. The sexual assault was mainly to offend the men or lure them to talk.

Fast forwarding and on the other side of the Atlantic in another island hosting a US base. This is basically some of what’s happening and has been happening in Bahrain for the past 30 years. Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer and consultant with HRW, worked with Rajab to secure the release of Bahraini Guantanamo prisoners.

He describes how the same Bahraini MPs who gave him a standing ovation rejected HRW’s findings when it came to their citizens’ claims and evidence of torture in Bahraini jails.

MP Mohammed Khalid, who stood firmly with Guantanamo’s detainees on the basis of universality of human rights, was instrumental in igniting sectarian hatred against Shia when protests erupted, and is now in the front-line campaign supporting government’s measures of mass detentions and military courts calling the protesters traitors and Iranian agents and using the most offensive anti-Shia language.

Nabeel Rajab, on the other hand, is facing a fierce propaganda campaign in an attempt to discredit him and assassinate his character accusing him of being an Iranian agent.

From a 1997 special report on torture in Bahrain to the UN Human Rights Commission:

“The methods of torture reported include: falaqa (beatings on the soles of the feet); severe beatings, sometimes with hose-pipes; suspension of the limbs in contorted positions accompanied by blows to the body; enforced prolonged standing; sleep deprivation; preventing victims from relieving themselves; immersion in water to the point of near drowning; burnings with cigarettes; piercing the skin with a drill; sexual assault, including the insertion of objects into the penis or anus; threats of execution or of harm to family members; and placing detainees suffering from sickle cell anemia (said to be prevalent in the country) in air-conditioned rooms in the winter, which can lead to injury to internal organs.”

These exact methods are being used now. Since Feb 14, 2011, four people have died in Bahraini prisons as a result of torture. The total number is more than 20 since 1971. Those recently killed in prison were: Hassan Maki, Ali Saqer, Zakaria Al-Asheeri (Journalist), & Kareem Fakhrawi (Businessman). Among the hundreds of prisoners are politicians, MPs, human rights activists, doctors, nurses, students, lawyers, journalists, news photographers, and bloggers. Severe torture and sexual abuse have been widely reported.

In an April 14 Time’s article, Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, expressed his concern: ”I very much fear there will be more death because there is no transparency in all this,”. He adds: “We’re not seeing where they’re being held, or their names, and it’s these kinds of conditions that make for torture and brutality and death.”

Bush’s administration was in a “war against terrorism”, in which alleged foreign fighters were flown to Guantanamo; the Bahraini Government on the other hand is in a war against its unarmed population. The situation in Bahraini prisons might be way worse than Guantanamo as Obama announced an end to torture. However, as the information in the previous report suggests or rather proves, the US government, along with that of the UK and other countries, is morally and historically responsible for what happened and what’s happening in Bahraini prisons.

On May 16th, NY Times reporter Nick Kristof tweeted: “Our close ally, Bahrain, has a consistent record of using sexual abuse of male and female detainees as a form of torture.”

The next report will deal in more detail with Sexual Abuse in Bahraini prisons. Testimonies of tens of prisoners and detainees will be presented. This is what lies beneath the fake and promoted liberal posture of Bahrain.

Bahrain: The Systematic Use of Sexual Abuse

Bahrain’s security apparatus and secret police were established by the British, and were headed by Ian Henderson, “The Butcher of Bahrain” for 30 years. The rationale is that the people of Bahrain are basically the subjects of their (the British’s) subjects (the Khalifas). Add to that, the mentality of the ruling “conquering” family who believe Bahrain is their private property (owning 30% of its land) and its people are their slaves. With naturalization of foreigners to work in the security forces, things became messier for Bahrainis. The people were not only subjected to a colonial power, and a non-compromising ruling family; but also subjected to an uneducated and ruthless foreign mercenary force.

Since Shiites are generally not allowed into security forces, the animosity they are faced with has an ugly anti-Shia and sectarian nature. The police and security forces feel no shame destroying their mosques, wrecking their cars, stealing their possessions, verbally abusing them and their beliefs, humiliating them, and even sexually molesting and abusing their children, men, and women. The systematic nature of such behavior means that it’s not just an anti-Shia sentiment that drives them, but a well-designed policy dictated from the high chair of the decision maker down the ladder to the recently shipped Pakistani mercenary.

Sexual Abuse is used and has been used systematically in Bahrain. The same methods used in the 80s, were used in the 90s, and are being used now. The main aim are to extract confessions and to crush the prisoner’s will and dignity. Of course, with time, it becomes just a normal perverted behavior of a sadistic security force. In a conservative society like that of Bahrain, a rape victim can face a multitude of psychological and social problems and in many instances refrain from speaking out. In recent events, the government is accusing protesters with all kinds of bogus charges, and most of the time these charges are baseless. Following an old protocol, interrogators force detainees to sign confessions after severely torturing them and sexually assaulting them, or threatening them with rape.

Below cases were documented after the latest uprising that started with protests on Feb 14. They are testimonies of people brutalized or detained by security forces. The below accusations and the nature of the subject and the crackdown suggest that there are many untold stories.

Post February 14, 2011:

1) In a short documentary “Bahrain’s Dark Secret” about recent events by SBS Australia, Nabeel Rajab describes a midnight raid on his house followed by his arrest. They used anti-Shia language with him, and threatened to rape him.

2) In the same documentary, a woman named Fatima expressed her sorrow over her husband’s arrest by 50 masked security personnel. She finds trouble describing how 5 men hit her, used profane-insulting language against her, and sexually harassed her. One of the men put his penis in front of her face.

3) Abdulhadi AlKhawaja, a prominent human rights activist, who’s in jail and facing charges, was threatened with rape. His torturers wanted to videotape him confessing and appologizing to the King; when he refused, he was taken to another room, where they used ”foul language and threatened him with rape,” “they also threatened to rape his activist daughter.”

“At this point the men started undressing and showing their private parts after which they started touching (Khawaja) inappropriately,”

“When they tried to take off his pants, he threw himself down and started hitting his head on the ground continuously until he almost passed out. Seeing this they returned him to his prison cell.”

4) In a report in the Herald Sun titled ” Men raped, tortured in Bahrain”, interviews were conducted with 6 Bahraini men on how they were tortured. A 20 year-old named Mohammed, who claimed he had nothing to do with the protests, was detained, tortured and raped!

5) A female doctor was tortured by a female interrogator. The next day, a male interrogator threatened her with rape:

He told her: “You must have had Mutah with demonstrators at the (Pearl) roundabout,” “I will have Mutah with you,”

Another interrogator threatened her: “I will hang you from your breasts and rape you,”

She later signed the confession.

6) Ayat AlQurmuzi, a student who read a poem critical of the royal family was imprisoned. Her family said she was severely tortured and abused. They said her torturers spat in her mouth, and wiped her face on toilets. She was also threatened with rape, and exposure of degrading photos on the internet. And according to the Independent, pictures of Ayat began showing up on pornographic and dating websites.

7) 28 Shiite employees working in Bahrain International Circuit were detained, tortured and fired from their jobs. They were stripped out of their clothes.

According to one employee: “They said they’d rape us. They tried to touch you in various places to make you feel it’s going to happen.”

8)A woman doctor in custody was threatened with rape; a security officer told her: “We are 14 guys in this room, do you know what we can do to you? It’s the emergency law [martial law] and we are free to do what we want.”

9) AlJazeera English interviewed a 16-year old schoolgirl who was taken from school, detained and tortured for three days along with three other girls. She says the police officer took her head-scarf off by force after slapping her. Security officers swore and spat on them, called them “prostitutes”, and threatened to rape them.

10) A report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) on the storming of Salmaniya Hospital by Bahraini forces, accused them of “torture, beating, verbal abuse, humiliation, and threats of rape and killing.”:

One of the armed men with a Saudi accent started shouting anti-Shia insults: “Grave worshippers! Sons of whores! Sons of Muta!”

An officer with a Jodranian accent threatened to rape a patient, named Ali. Ali was previously shot in the face with bird shot.

11) A prisoner in his 60s named Jawad told his family that they were forced to kiss a picture of King Hamad, and another of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia every morning. If they kissed them, their torturers would spit in their mouths; if they didn’t, they would urinate in their mouths.

12) France 24’s reporter Nazeeha Saeed was detained overnight; she was severely tortured, humiliated and insulted by female interrogators accusing her of links with Hizbollah and Iran. One of the interrogators held a plastic bottle and put it against her mouth; “Drink, it’s urine,” she said. Nazeeha knocked the bottle; the interrogator then poured it on her face.

13) Nabeel Rajab said he met another rape victim on June 12th. She was kidnapped, blindfolded, taken to a deserted area, and raped by secret police. She reported this to a police station with no results. This is the second reported case according to Rajab.

Bahrain’s Security Forces: A History of Sexual Sadism

“There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of torture.” Sam Vaknin, The Psychology of Torture

Unlike witnesses to horrors of war who usually share a collective memory with a community, victims of torture face a unique and special type of trauma. The physical and mental pain associated with torture and sexual abuse has been a subject of study in the past 50 years; intelligence agencies, good-willed psychiatrists, psychologists and philosophers have all showed special interest. No matter how much you read or watch about torture, or even if you work first-hand with torture victims, there’s no way you can truly comprehend the magnitude of their suffering.

Eliane Scarry, in her book “The Body in Pain”, says “Pain comes unsharably into our midst, at once that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed”. Psychologist Shirley Spitz, in a seminar about torture: “Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied therein”. She then tries to explain pain: “Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language… Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards.”

Typically, torture victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They can experience insomnia, irritability, restlessness, attention deficits, night terrors, flashbacks, cognitive impairment, reduced capacity to learn, memory disorders, sexual dysfunction, social withdrawal, inability to maintain long-term relationships, or even mere intimacy, phobias, ideas of reference and superstitions, delusions, hallucinations, psychotic microepisodes and emotional flatness.

The torture and sexual abuse inflicted on Bahrainis, like that inflicted on Argentineans, Filipinos and others, is not only meant to crush the political prisoner, but to break-down the entire community; spreading fear, anguish, and mistrust. Many torture victims become anti-social and suicidal; and as witnessed in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere, torture victims and their family members are among the easiest to recruit in terrorist and militant organizations.

In 2009, Chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin in a conference asserted: “the abuse of detainees in our custody has served as a recruitment tool for terrorists”. Despite 200 years of oppression and more than 40 years of torture, we haven’t seen serious violence or major terrorist acts in Bahrain by dissidents.

Sexual abuse is a tool that has been used in Bahrain for a long time; most torturers aren’t Bahrainis, and therefore, feel no sympathy towards the tortured.

The below cases were documented prior to recent events, in the 80s, 90s, & 2000s; they illustrate how sexual abuse and assault are basics in Bahrain’s Security Forces’ manual:

1) In a British documentary about Ian Henderson, “Blind Eye to the Butcher”, a former Bahraini prisoner Hashem Redha who’s currently living in the UK, was interviewed. He was most probably imprisoned in the 80s and early 90s era; he was severely tortured and his nose was disfigured. He described how he was tortured with sticks and hoses, and that they sexually assaulted him by putting a pencil in his anus. He also described how Henderson, himself, was supervising those torture sessions, and in one instance, he personally put his finger in the prisoner’s anus, and asked if the prisoner had confessed yet.

2) Robert Fisk interviewed a prisoner who “claims that in the 1980s he was sexually abused in Henderson’s headquarters by another British officer who forced a bottle into his anus in an attempt to persuade him to reveal the names of Shia opponents of Sheikh Issa’s regime. The man identified the Briton by name”. Fisk said he “have confirmed that a British officer of the same name worked for Henderson at the time”.

3) In 1996, Robert Fisk interviewed Sayed Hisham al-Moussawi, an opposition figure in exile was imprisoned and tortured. He claimed “British officer – not Henderson or ”Brian” – was present during the ill-treatment. He named a Briton who worked with Henderson as responsible for his torture in 1983”. Moussawi: ”[He] wanted me to confess to political activities. They beat my wife up in front of me and then the Briton pushed a bottle up my anus.”

4) Said Al-Eskafi claimed his son Ali, who died under torture, was sexually abused.

5) In an interview, a Bahraini who spent many years in jail describes how he was tortured severely, and that once when he asked for water, a torturer told another to urinate in his mouth. They also threatened him that they would rape his mother and sister. He says many detainees were raped and conditions were way worse than AbuGhraib.

6) Another prisoner, Tawfiq Mahrous, also said one of his torturers urinated in his mouth. He describes how rape used to happen in front of prisoners. According to Mahrous, officer, Jama’a Nafe’e was specialized in rape and sexual assault, and these acts happened under his supervision. He also goes on to describe how they used to put their heads in toilets.

7) From a 2010 Human Rights Watch Report titled “Torture Redux, The Revival of Physical Coercion during Interrogations in Bahrain”:

“Isa Abdullah Isa told Human Rights Watch that an officer said to him, “If you don’t confess, I will bring your wife and let all the guards have her, I swear to God.” Isa heard the officer tell someone to “start the car” before saying to Isa that he was going to get Isa’s wife. Isa said he then falsely confessed to giving a gun to another individual.”

“Isa Abdullah Isa reported that while he was blindfolded in a room at Adliya, guards tied a plastic flexible handcuff around his penis and forced him to drink a bottle of water. Every 15 to 30 minutes, the guards forced him to drink more water and Isa began to feel a strong urge to urinate. He cried out, asking to use the toilet, but the guards refused. Isa said he considered urinating where he stood, but the flexicuff prevented him from doing so. Eventually, a guard removed the flexicuff, but Isa still was not permitted to use the bathroom. He urinated on himself.”

“Naji Ali Hassan Fateel reported that while being suspended with his hands above his head officers told him that he had to cooperate. Otherwise, one of the officers told Fateel, security forces would arrest Fateel’s wife and put her with a Pakistani guard who would rape her. The officer said that the Pakistani’s regular “job” was to rape boys.”

“On the day of his arrest, Yassin Ali Ahmad Mushaima was being questioned regarding pipe bombs. When Mushaima said he knew nothing about bombs, guards removed his clothing and threatened to rape him. They also said that they would rape his sister and mother. At CID headquarters in Adliya, an officer taunted Ahmad Jaffer Muhammad by saying that he was going to have sex with Muhammad. Muhammad, who was blindfolded at the time, told Human Rights Watch that the threat terrified him.”

“They ripped my pants and shirt, and tore off all my clothes,” al-Hamadi said. “They made me lie on my side on the floor. I was handcuffed and they held my legs down. An Egyptian was holding an electric device and he put it on my sexual parts. He put it on and off many times.”Al-Hamadi reported that the device was never placed on his body for more than a second or two.”

“When al-Shaikh, who was blindfolded, said that he knew nothing about a gun, the officers removed his clothes and pulled his legs apart. Then, al-Shaikh said, they inserted what he believes was a baton into his anus for a few seconds. One of the officers said, “If you want to pretend to be a real man, we’ll show you how to be a real man.”

8) Maitham AlSheikh, mentioned above, who was tried in 2009 for alleged possession of arms, accused security forces of sexually assaulting him, and said that the doctor report proved it. In an interview, he also described how they hanged him upside down naked and used sticks to sexually assault him repeatedly. His torturers also electrocuted his genitals. His torture sessions would last up to 7 hours.

9) Essa Al Sarh, in an interview to BCHR also said Bassam Al Me’eraj, an officer, threatened him that he’ll bring his wife and undress her in front of him, if he didn’t sign the confession; which he signed after the threat.

10) Hassan Abdulnabi was imprisoned along with his wife. His torturers also threatened him they would rape his wife if he didn’t confess.

11) From a BHCR report about torture and sexual abuse: “the most recent case was in Dec. 2006 when Mossa Abdali, a human rights activist was allegedly abducted and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. As a result of such atrocities, Mr Abdali was granted political asylum in the UK starting August 2007”

12) In 2008, Mohamed Alsingace, the head of the Committee to Combat High Prices and detainee, told his family that was beaten and sexually molested by two security officers, Moftah (Bahraini) and Parvis (Non-Bahraini) in front of Sergeant Adnan Bahar. Two other detainees, Mahmood Hassan Saleh and Mohemmed Makki Ahmed complained about sexual abuse.

13) In 2008 as well, a number of opposition activists were arrested:

Hamed Ebrahim Fardan : “..I was stripped naked in full. They kept playing with my “penis”, tied it with a rope and pulled it until I fainted. Because of that, I lost control of urination (involuntary urination) for more than a week.” “They threatened to bring my wife and assault her before my eyes.”

Hameed Adnan Omran, Jawad Hameed Adnan, Jawad Hameed Adnan, Sadiq Sayed Ibrahim Jumaa and Kumail Ahmad Ali Mahdi all claimed they were threatened with rape and sexual assault. Abdulla Juma Abdalla was threatened and sexually molested.

14) In 2010, BCHR blamed “Bahraini authorities for torturing Shia clerics and stripping several human rights defenders off their clothes in order to humiliate them. The human rights center also reported that some of the detainees, among them Shia clerics, were tortured, mutilated and sexually harassed and abused inside their cells.”

15) In 2010, 76 children have been detained, many were subjected to torture and sexual abuse. Their ages range from 10 to 17 year old. BCHR received a number of complaints on cases of child abductions by armed militias in civilian clothing. They are taken blindfolded to unknown centers where they are “tortured, severely beaten, and stripped naked” and “photographed” and “sexually harassed”. The incarceration could take from several hours to several days. Among the abducted, Ahmed Ibrahim (15 years), Ali Jaffer Aradi (15 years), Jasim Ahmed Habib (16 years), and Ali Ibrahim (17 years) who were all abducted on the 15th of last August from the village of Arad. “They were tortured and then dumped naked in the dawn of the next day at one of the country’s coasts”.

“The youngest child arrested is Jihad Aqeel AlSari (10 years), who was arrested on the eve of the Universal Children’s Day, November 19, 2010. This came after the family had received a call that Jihad was to go to the Police Ceter, which he refused to do fearing for his life. His family believes that the reason for his arrest is to put pressure on his father, the Shiite cleric Mr. Aqeel AlSari who is a detainee accused of participating in what is known as the “terrorism network”, especially after speaking before the Court on October 28th about how he was tortured in detention.”

16) Also, more on abductions by secret police: in August, 2010 armed militia in civilian clothing kidnapped Hakeem Al-Ashiri and Hussein Ali Dawood from Dair area and took them to an unknown location. “Their clothes were stripped off entirely, and were photographed nude and they were sexually harassed.”

On August 15th, Ali Hasan Al-Sitri, a law student and an activist, was abducted, tortured, and photographed naked. He was later told by an interrogator that this was only a message, and that his family members will be raped if he continued his activism. He was imprisoned for 2 days.

In another incident, Ahmed Ali Hussein Abdullah was abducted, tortured, stripped naked, rubbed with oil, sexually assaulted, and photographed. He was told that his photos will be published on the internet. He was questioned about his relation with the opposition, and he was threatened with raping his family members as well.

“Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of power” Shirley Spitz

 

 

Source: https://arabunity2011.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/torture-part-3-bahrain%E2%80%99s-security-forces-a-history-of-sexual-sadism/

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Family, Health, Human Rights, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Psychology, Rights, Surveillance, Torture, War, Wealthy Elite, Whistleblowers

What Are The Five Most Prevalent Forms of Torture And Why?

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In 2000, human rights group Amnesty International and African social sciences organization CODESRIA published a handbook for watchdog groups monitoring prisons where torture is suspected.

The guide offers insight into just what qualifies as cruel, inhuman and degrading (CID) treatment.

The book also mentions the most common forms of torture.

The guide cites among the most common torture methods as “beatings, imposition of electricshocks, hanging by the arms or legs,” mock executions and forms of sexual assault, especially rape [source: Amnesty International]. While four are physical — or black torture - mock executions are white torture (psychological) [source: Ceseraenu].

There is little distinction between black and white forms of torture; both are equally insidious. As the humanitarian group SPIRASI puts it, “Methods of physical and psychological torture are remarkably similar, such that one should not separate their effects from each other” [source: SPIRASI].

What follows are the five most prevalent forms of torture that prisoners throughout the world endure:

5: Beatings

One study of 69 refugees found that 97 percent of survivors reported being beaten at the hands of their captors [source: Olsen, et al]. “Beatings are universal, although implements may vary,” writes Vincent Lacopino in “The Medical Documentation of Torture” [source:Locapino]. Beating torture can be as simple as punching, slapping or kicking a victim. Beatings may come spontaneously, or in conjunction with other methods. Tibetans held in Chinese prisons in the 1980s and 1990s reported suffering combinations of torture, including beatings and electric shock [source: Government of Tibet in Exile]. Beatings may also be delivered via instruments like hoses, belts, bamboo shoots, batons and other blunt weapons.

There are some specific methods to this kind of torture, too. Thefalanga (or falanka, depending on where in the world you’re being tortured) method involves beating the soles of the feet. This type of torture can leave victims’ feet insensitive to touch and temperature. It can also result in “pain in [victims'] feet and lower legs and a compensated gait pattern, usually with severe pain during walking” [source: Prip and Perrson].

4: Electric Shocks

Electric shock torture methods haven’t been around as long as many other widely used methods — humans didn’t figure out how to harness electricity until the late 19th century. Once established, however, electricity soon came into use as a method of torture. “Americans didn’t just develop electric power,” writes torture expert Darius Rejali, “they invented the first electrotorture devices and used them in police stations fromArkansas to Seattle” [source:Boston Globe]. Electrical shocks can be delivered using stun guns, cattle prods and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) devices.

This type of torture can be as crude as introducing a current to a victim via a cattle prod or other device designed to deliver a shock attached to a car battery. Shocks are used as a torture method because they’re cheap and effective. One 22-year-old Chechen survivor recounts being tortured with electricity at the hands of Russian military personnel: “They gave me electric shock under my fingernails and under the nails of my little toes so later I had to have the nails removed from my fingers and toes” [source: Amnesty International Danish Medical Group]. What’s more, shocks leave behind little obvious physical trace of the agony they produce. One expert suggests, “Torturers favor electric torture because it leaves no marks other than small burns that, one can allege, were simply self-inflicted” [source: Rejali].

3: Sexual Assault

Rape is a common form of torture, especially during wartime. Rape of men, women and children has occurred during conflicts across the globe. In the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, Muslim Bosnian womenwere subjected to systematic rape at the hands of Serb soldiers. In the Congo, from 2000 to 2006 alone, more than 40,000 women and children were raped [source:The Guardian]. In Rwanda in the early 1990s, an estimated 25,000 women were raped. Soldiers reportedly told their victims that they were “allowed to live so that [they] will die of sadness” [source: The Guardian].

Both men and women may suffer sexual assault. Whether the assaulter uses his or her body to inflict harm or brandishes a device to penetrate the victim’s body, the act is constituted as rape. What’s more, experts believe estimates of the number of men who’ve endured rape torture are low: “Men tend to underreport experiences of sexual violence. They may have doubts about their sexuality and fear infertility, and both sexes commonly experience sexual difficulties following sexual violence and may need reassurance about sexual function” [source: Burnett and Peel].

While sexual assault is defined specifically, some experts assert that all torture is a form of rape because the victim’s body is violated.

2: Hanging by Limbs

During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong employed a form of torture called “the ropes.” In “Human Adaptation to Extreme Stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam,” the book’s authors describe this type of torture many Americanservicemen faced after capture, explaining, “Although there were many variations of this torture, it usually took the form of tying the elbows behind the back and tightening them until they touched or arching the back with a rope stretched from the feet to the throat” [source: Wilson, et al]. The tension created in the muscles by this extreme tightening -exacerbated by hanging victims from their limbs — can cause lasting nerve damage.

Dissident Turkish national Gulderen Baran was tortured by police when she was in her early 20s. In addition to other forms of torture, she was hung by her arms, both on a wooden cross and from her wrists bound behind her. Baran suffered long-term damage to her arms, losing strength and movement in one arm, and the other suffering total paralysis [source: Amnesty International].

1: Mock Executions

A mock execution is any situation in which a victim feels that his or her death — or the death of another person — is imminent or has taken place. It could be as hands-off as verbally threatening a detainee’s life, or as dramatic as blindfolding a victim, holding an unloaded gun to the back of his or her head and pulling the trigger. Any clear threat of impending death falls into the category of mock executions. Water boarding, the method of simulated drowning, is an example of mock execution.

The U.S. Army Field Manual expressly prohibits soldiers from staging mock executions [source: Levin]. But reports of some U.S. military members staging these executions have emerged from the Iraq War. In 2005, one Iraqi man questioned for stealing metal from an armory was tortured by being asked to choose one of his sons to die for his crime. When his son was taken around a building, out of the man’s sight, he was led to believe that the son had been executed when he heard gun shots fired. Two years earlier, two Army personnel were investigated for staging mock executions. In one circumstance, an Iraqi was taken to a remote area and made to dig his own grave, and soldiers pretended he would be shot [source: AP].

American military are certainly not the only group to violate international law regarding mock executions as torture. In 2007, 15 Britons were captured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. After their second night, the prisoners were lined up facing a wall, blindfolded and bound. Behind them, the detainees heard guns cocked, followed by the clicks of firing hammers falling against nothing [source: Daily Mail].

Despite bans against them, mock executions continue to be used as a means of torture — perhaps because of their effectiveness in breaking a detainee’s will. The effects of such threats on the victim’s life are deep and lasting: The Center for Victims of Torture say torture victims who’ve undergone mock executions reported flashbacks, “feeling as if they’ve already died,” and said they begged their tormentors to kill them to avoid further constant threat [source: CVT].

 

Source: https://science.howstuffworks.com/five-forms-of-torture5.htm

Filed Under: Human Rights, Money, Politics, Prison, Propaganda, Protests, Psychology, Rights, Torture, War, Whistleblowers

Seven Elephants Now Thrashing Your Living Room

November 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

According to the mass media fog machine, the following phenomena are really not worth reporting. In fact, by their omission they literally do not fully exist in people’s minds but are just slight vague ephemeral illusions dancing on the fringe of their consciousness.

As many people say to this day, “if 9/11 was an inside job the media would have been all over it.”

Conditioning complete.

Here They Come . . . Just 7 Of The Herd for Starters

1. Fukushima Is Irradiating the Planet
Estimated to have already far surpassed Chernobyl in dangerous radioactive emissions that are not abating in the least and expected to get worse, we hear nothing about this in the mainstream news.
In fact, the level of denial is outright Orwellian. Here’s a perfect example in recent news:

Nuke agency reports unusual radiation in Europe

VIENNA (AP) — Very low levels of radiation, which are higher than normal but don’t seem to pose a health hazard, are being registered in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The agency said the cause was not known but was not the result of Japan’sFukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which spread radiation across the globe in March.

Go ahead and rub your eyes, but you actually just read that. In fact in Japan the denial is so great that people are moving BACK to Fukushima and eating the contaminated food while children play in its highly toxic playgrounds.

All part of the same message; “The elephant doesn’t exist.”

2. Illegal Drone Attacks are Terrorizing Innocent Populations
Be sure to click on the BBC link at the bottom of this quote for a glimpse into a terrorized teen’s last words before he was beheaded by a drone attack while driving his car with his cousin who was also murdered.

The human toll of the US drone campaign

The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC demoted and then fired its then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the “one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S. media of America’s civilian victims). It’s easy to cheer for a leader who regularly extinguishes the lives of innocent men, women, teenagers and young children when you can remain blissfully free of hearing about the victims. It’s even easier when the victims all have Muslim-ish names and live in the parts of the Muslim world we’ve been taught to view as a cauldron of sub-human demons. That’s why it’s periodically worth highlighting the actual impact of those drones and the actual people they kill, as the BBC did today.

3. Geoengineering and Weather Wars
The amount of documentation and evidence supporting the existence of these ongoing programs is staggering, yet never a word in the mainstream press. All you hear about is more hype regarding “climate change problems” and the scientific community’s “concern” and ideas for “mitigating this problem”, where they slowly introduce weather mod “ideas” that are actually black ops programs already under way for years.

That the UN had to pass a treaty to NOT use weather weapons as far back as 1977 says it all. Where do you think they are with that technology now, 34 years later?

Wikepedia: Weather control, particularly hostile weather warfare, was addressed by the “United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Conventionnon the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques” was adopted. The Convention was: Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977; Entered into force October 5, 1978; Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979; U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980.

With earthquakes and storm systems demonstrably proven to be manipulated or outright caused by powerful EMF manipulation, and our skies constantly streaked with a chemical haze emitted by thousands of planes worldwide, one might think there would be cause for alarm and a little public education

“Nope, no elephant here….cuz we don’t even talk about it.”

4. The Obama Hoax

Now this one you may think is obvious but it’s a doozy. Here’s a guy who came out of nowhere and they can’t even find anyone who knew him where he claimed to go to college. He produces no paperwork on his nationality, education or health records, has multiple social security numbers and whose only credentials are a book by himself about himself! ..and of which he is very likely not even the author!

And the contents of the book? How much is true and how much is just made up and cleverly packaged? At least with a food package you get a contents list. This fable rivals a Disney production.

He comes in on a hope and change anti-war ticket and what does he do? The same as the rest of them and no one seems to notice!

He escalates America’s illegal wars and wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He promises transparency and we know less about the government’s goings on than ever. And he has devolved the US government into a defacto fascist dictatorship with his use of Czar appointments, executive orders and arbitrary war forays without Congressional approval.

And he’s President of the United States! Not only that, he has presided (as figurehead) over the worst downturn in American history and is now running for re-election based on his amazing record of accomplishments!

“No elephant here. He’s hope and change! More smoke up my butt please…”

5. Universal Sickcare

This is business as usual for the PTBs but it’s still a giant stomping elephant in every room of the house.

When organic food and supplements are on the verge of being banned, growing your own food regulated and hindered, and the Federal Drug Administration approves poisonous toxins in your food and water and the genetic modification of living organisms that we consume but have no right to know which ones they are…we have a problem.

When our children are being drugged and vaccinated, and given a steady diet of junk food laden with MSG, aspartame, wood pulp and genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, just to name a few of their poisons…we have a problem.

When doctors won’t treat unvaccinated patients, chemotherapy becomes mandatory and natural and homeopathic treatments are illegal…we have a problem.

It’s not a healthcare system. It’s sick, and promotes sickness. Hey, don’t believe me? Follow the money. Cui bono?

6. Media Magick Madness

That they can get away with camouflaging and ignoring and getting the public to ignore major issues such as these is akin to magick or sorcery. They do this by,amongst other things, introducing subconscious rules and guidelines as to what we should consider truth or not. And one of the rules is, “if we the media mogul mouthpieces don’t talk about it, it might as well not exist because we don’t consider it important”.

Truth erased by omission and supplanted with a false narrative.

The perfect example again is 9/11. There’s not an iota of the official story that is provable except that things blew up, while the anomalies in what transpired that day are myriad. And is this even debatable? No. In fact even challenging the official story has become tantamount to heresy. After all, rule #1 is to NEVER point out an elephant. Elephants simply do not exist.

That kerosene can’t melt steel? Sorry, never heard that on TV. That an Arab passport flutters supernaturally in perfect condition from this horrific exploding plane hitting and supposedly melting an entire building? Wow, what luck!

And the pancake theory? Anyone see any pancaked floors? “Oh well, I’m sure they were there cuz they told us that’s how it happened, move along.” And to this day mention building 7 and you’ll be shocked how many people never even heard of it.

Why? The old news blackout trick. Do the same with Oklahoma City…review what was on the news the first day and notice how you never ever heard again about “the other bombs” they found that day that were sophisticated military grade munitions. The reporters said these were crucial evidence and were going to help identify the culprits.

Gone. Erased by omission from the public mind. Virtually the “lone gunman” story once again. JFK redux. How convenient.

Besides the lies and political side show, when the populace is bombarded with shallow roll models, decadent athletes and rock stars, degrading sexual deviancy and an endless stream of horrific violent images via TV, movies, computer games and even actual war…we have a problem.

7. Marginalization Of Extra “Ordinary” Phenomena

What UFOs? 10′s of thousands of sightings doesn’t apparently mean squat if “official sources” don’t acknowledge their existence. A secret space program and mega militarization of space? “C’mon, they couldn’t hide something like that! And underground bases? That would be such a story the media would never ignore and surely someone would have spoken up about them.”

Mind control? “Now who would do that to you but a demonic Asian in a POW camp? Get over it. It’s not possible any more. I’m a free entity, there’s no way they could pull that off. Pass the cool aid, honey, I’m thirsty..”

Funny, they talk about the technological capability to do things like these, and put out scores of movies on these subjects, but in order to apply it to your reality they’ve positioned themselves as the final authority on every subject. For example, that the wicked PTBs may be targeting the general population with mind control techniques, never mind manipulating thousands of actual Manchurian candidates around the world would seem crazy to most. Yet they know advertising works on this very basis.

But again, that’s been cleverly camouflaged, excused and justified as “free enterprise”. Clever little bastards, aren’t they?

“And now those wackos are talking about secret societies, ritual child abuse and paedophilia amongst the elites? All that stuff’s nonsense. Why the news man would laugh at all that, honey. I could tell by the smirk on his face not to believe all that stuff in that interview…”

And consciousness and extra-dimensional realities? That’s relegated to “scientists” to package up and serve in some remote non-applicable sanitized fashion. Otherwise, you talk about that stuff and you’re a new age paranoid conspiracy nut job.

Again, the false choice technique…neither option they give you is the Truth.

Conclusion

These are just 7 of these things. There is an entire herd of elephants running around the whole human household with more roaming through each day! The extent to which humanity is being massively manipulated can be overwhelming at first, but it’s actually quite liberating once you get through most of the maze and start to “get it”.

But this is real education. The other is predominantly programming your mind to accept a predetermined version of reality that they would like you to have.

Solution: Pull the Plug

It’s clear the so-called government and it’s plethora of bloated agencies are not there to help you, but to manage, seduce, suppress, subjugate and control you. Yet they convince you otherwise to keep you dependent and upside down and backwards while telling you everything’s on the up and up.

Their fundamental technique is trauma-based mind control and cognitive dissonance. Keep affronting your senses with violent images and then reversing your sense of right and wrong and telling you white is black and black is white long enough and you’ll finally give in.

The only place to turn is OFF. Turn it all off. Get your real life back. Read, play, love those around you, laugh, visit inspiring and revelatory alternative internet sites while they’re still available. Spend time in nature. Just get away from televisions and any form of mass media. Have you noticed how TVs are constantly playing in just about every lobby, restaurant, lounge, terminal etc., and people leave them on at home just for companionship?

Big Brother wants your attention. Don’t give it to him.

And be careful as to what music you listen to. I cringe when I see young people with their earbuds in and a strange stare on their faces or slumped over in obvious depression. I can only imagine what rubbish their subjecting themselves to thinking it’s cool or OK cuz it’s some famous group or something iTunes is pushing. Music is programming, either good or bad.

Skepticism Is Good

Their pollution has become so pervasive it’s hard to trust anything any more. Don’t worry, that’s a healthy attitude.

Stay free…it takes some doing and undoing, but it’s what life is all about. And help others do the same.

Conscious awareness is a thrill worth detaching for!

 

Source: https://beforeitsnews.com/story/1359/061/7_Elephants_Now_Thrashing_Your_Living_Room.html?currentSplittedPage=0

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The Obama administration’s human rights hypocrisy continues

November 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In September of this year a Senate Appropriations committee voted to repeal a Bush-era restriction on military aid to the dictatorial regime of Islam Karimov regime in Uzbekistan, with the help of the Obama administration.

Waiving this restriction will, if the bill is enacted, allow military and police aid to the Uzbek government, all on the taxpayer’s dime.

However, it is not just a matter of money, this represents another instance of the Obama administration propping up brutal dictators while pretending to care about human rights.

The entire justification for attacking Libya was that Gaddafi was engaging in egregious human rights violations against his people.

The mainstream media and corrupt Washington politicians continue to decry the actions of the Assad government in Syria.

Yet, when a similar situation is evolving in Bahrain and Uzbekistan, the U.S. does not only stay silent but even provides the aid necessary to continue the crackdown.
In the case of Bahrain, the Obama administration was preparing to sell the ruling regime $53,000,000 in arms before postponing the sale until the completion of an inquiry into their human rights violations, due November 23rd.

The restrictions on aid to Uzbekistan have been in place since 2004 due to the brutal dictatorship of Islam Karimov which has continued “to silence civil society activists, independent journalists, and all political opposition; severely curtail freedom of expression and religion; and organize forced child labor on a massive scale”, according to a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The joint letter expresses concern over Washington’s move to resume “business as usual” with the Karimov regime and was signed by 20 organizations, some much more questionable than others (like the International Crisis Group, for example).

Setting aside the suspicious and thoroughly untrustworthy organizations that signed the letter to Clinton, the move by Washington clearly highlights the hypocrisy that is involved in America’s approach to human rights abroad.

Human rights only matter to the morally bankrupt politicians in Washington when there is a secondary benefit of some kind and when a regime is strategically vital to our so-called “national interests” then human rights violations are swept under the rug.

For instance, the Karimov regime has been charged with jailing and killing dissidents, some of which have been boiled alive, according to doctors who examined the body of 35-year-old Muzafar Avazov, an individual who was detained in Uzbekistan’s Jaslyk Prison.

Regardless of the many charges leveled against the brutal Karimov regime, Secretary of State Clinton said that the dictatorship was “showing signs of improving its human rights record and expanding political freedoms.”

She added that the United States is seeking to strengthen its ties to the Uzbek regime because they are “proving very helpful to the U.S. in bringing supplies into Afghanistan and supporting U.S.-led efforts to rebuild its southern neighbor.”

Here is where the typical ulterior motive comes to light. Lifting the ban on aid has nothing to do with improving human rights; it has everything to do with the Uzbek regime playing ball with the colonial nation building efforts in Afghanistan.

This is especially pertinent given Pakistan’s slow move away from the United States and towards rising powers like China.

All of the evidence supporting the claim that Karimov is improving the situation in his country is based on his “word.”

A senior official from the State Department, when asked “when was the last time you were aware of that some of Karimov’s thugs actually boiled people alive? Or is that a thing of the past?” said, “That’s a thing of the past.”

When a questioner said, “But it wasn’t that long ago,” the State Department official flippantly responded, “That’s right. Oh, well.”

When confronted about the human rights violations committed by the Uzbek dictator, and his commitment to improving them, the senior State Department official said, “He wasn’t defensive at all.”

A questioner retorted, “But do you believe this?” To which the official responded, “Yeah. I do believe him.”

Based on what? Surely you cannot trust a vicious dictator based on just his word?

But apparently that is exactly what they are doing, evidenced by the official saying, “he’s said several times that he’s committed to [improving human rights]. He’s made a speech last November where he talked about this.”

Karimov has a history of brutal oppression of his people, especially in May of 2005 when, in response to so-called pro-democracy demonstrations in Andijan and other cities, the Uzbek government slaughtered over 700 protesters in a two-day period.

The Bush administration then blocked a NATO call for an internal investigation into the massacre but a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report claimed that the Uzbek government forces utilized “indiscriminate use of lethal force against unarmed people” based on the testimony of eyewitnesses.

Of course, HRW is far from a reliable organization and their motives should always be questioned and weighed against the evidence they are presenting.

Karimov claimed that the police acted independent of his orders, but the British Independentreported, “He was in command of the situation having flown to Andijon from the capital Tashkent and almost certainly personally authorized the use of…deadly force.”

The same senior State Department official quoted above said of the incident, “We’ve definitely – we’ve moved on from that.”

A senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco, Stephen Zunes, points out that if this goes through, it will give other brutal dictators the green light to kill dissidents while still receiving American assistance.

Zunes says that “This is nothing short of a license to kill. Other despots will likely interpret such assistance to indicate that warnings – such as those given by the Obama administration to the Egyptian military back in February that ties would be severed if pro-democracy protesters were massacred – are not to be taken seriously.”

Given the United States’ history of selective attention to human rights violations and even more selective treatment of the violators, I do not think that anyone takes Washington’s warnings seriously.

That is, of course, unless you don’t play ball with America, in which case you and your peoples’ heads are on the chopping block as we have seen in Libya.

Clearly the support of the Uzbek regime is a strategic move to keep a channel open for transport of troops and military equipment to and from Afghanistan.

Karimov improving the situation in Uzbekistan is the last thing on Washington’s mind as we can see by their blind belief in his “word.”

The complete lack of coverage of this issue in the mainstream media is nothing short of disturbing and it is yet another instance of the corporate controlled media presenting a narrative which is wholly removed from reality.

Anything that contradicts said narrative is either ignored or spun and it will be interesting to see how the mainstream media chooses to treat this issue if aid is issued to the Karimov regime.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/obama-administrations-human-rights_11.html

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