Audio and Video of first session of the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration is now available at the Commission web site http://www.bushcommission.org !

For the first time brought together, four categories of indictable crimes:

1) Wars of Aggression, with particular reference to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

2) Torture and Indefinite Detention, with particular reference to the abandonment of international standards concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and the use of torture.

3) Destruction of the Global Environment, with particular reference to systematic policies contributing to the catastrophic effects of global warming.

4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights, with particular reference to the genocidal effects of forcing international agencies to promote "abstinence only" in the midst of a global AIDS epidemic.

Included in this remarkable first session are keynote speakers Marcus Raskin, Howard Zinn, and Michael Ratner, followed by searing testimony from such witnesses as Barbara Olshansky (coordinator of Guantanamo defense attorneys), Denis Halliday (former head of UN Humanitarian Mission In Iraq), Camilo E. Mejia (U.S. Army retired!), Ted Glick (Climate Crisis Coalition), and suvivors from New Orleans of the Bush policies before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.

To contact the Commission write to: commission@nion.us.


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545


Informant: C. Clark Kissinger

From ufpj-news

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/13133346.htm


From Information Clearing House

The regime of torture continues because the military provides a shield that keeps the public from intervening. The military is the facilitator of torture; the "enabler" of torture. Without its support the system would fall apart.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10949.htm



Rumsfeld can override Pentagon policy barring torture:

A little-noticed loophole in the directive gives the Defence Secretary or his deputy authority to override the policy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10948.htm



U.N. Blasts Practice of Outsourcing Torture: Six countries -- the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan -- have been singled out for violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10952.htm

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can authorize exceptions to a new Defense Department policy on military interrogations that bars torture and calls for "humane" treatment of detainees, a spokesman said Wednesday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111005Y.shtml

Max J. Castro writes that Bush, more disliked by Latin Americans than any US president in history, was met not just by one revolt but by two, one by the masses and the other by some of the region’s biggest countries, including Brazil and Argentina. On the streets of this celebrated resort town, as many as 25,000 people joined a peaceful protest against Bush led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Argentinean soccer star Diego Maradona.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111005M.shtml

More than 15,000 have been wounded in action. Bob Herbert writes that the problems of the military go far beyond the casualty figures coming out of the war zone. The Army, for example, has been stretched so taut since the September 11 attacks, especially by the fiasco in Iraq, that it's become like a rubber band that may snap at any moment.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111005K.shtml

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush, and then directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny, according to newly disclosed documents.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111005J.shtml

William Rivers Pitt writes that despite the fact that Powell publicly distanced himself from his now-humiliating UN display, and despite several reports in the British press describing in detail what these mobile facilities were actually used for, you can still hear Bush defenders talk about them in the American press to defend the invasion.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111005I.shtml