Slate
by Jack Shafer

11/09/05

Republican leaders Sen. William Frist and Speaker Dennis Hastert are demanding a congressional investigation into Washington Post reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 Page One revelation about 'black sites' -- the secret prisons where the CIA stashes and interrogates some of its 'most important al Qaeda' suspects. ... But the duo doesn't want Congress to get to the bottom of the establishment of a terrorist prison system. They're not concerned with the administration's concealment of the system from nearly all members of Congress charged with oversight of the CIA's covert operations. They don't want to be bothered to scrutinize the legality of a network of jails that holds terrorists and terrorist suspects in perpetuity and in secret. And they don't seem to care that the administration may have encouraged foreign nations to violate the international human rights treaty, which the United States has signed and which prohibits such jails. No, Frist and Hastert want the leakers unmasked...

http://www.slate.com/id/2129928/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Salon
by Michael Ratner, with Sara Miles

11/10/05

Once the abuse scandals broke, and the reality of what was being done to prisoners emerged, officials began to talk about lack of clarity in the opinions, or a 'failure of supervision' that led to 'excesses.' But this administration is now openly and baldly saying that it claims the right to torture, at its discretion. All the fictions that sustained the war on terror -- that abuses were one-time mistakes by low-level grunts; that the rules about human rights weren't clear; that soldiers didn't understand the parameters when they beat and humiliated and tortured prisoners -- have been replaced by a clear declaration: The United States is going to torture people as it sees fit, to subject them to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment wherever and whenever it decides to... [subscription or ad view required]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/11/10/torture/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Seattle Times

11/08/95

Angered over the alleged rape of a 22-year-old Filipina as she rode in a van with six Marines, demonstrators railed Monday against the presence of U.S. troops in the Philippines. No charges have been filed in Wednesday's incident at the former Subic Bay naval base, but six Marines are being held by the U.S. Embassy in an undisclosed location. U.S. and Philippine officials are conducting separate investigations into allegations that the woman was raped and left by the roadside. Lurid details of the incident have been widely published in the Philippine media. One senator called the Marines 'sex terrorists.' Some critics said the case, like the mistreatment of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, was part of a pattern of abuse by U.S. forces abroad...

http://tinyurl.com/bhc4t


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

A German man who says he was kidnapped by US agents and held for months in an Afghan prison is close to filing a civil suit in a US court to claim compensation. He was the innocent victim of a "rendition" - a practice used by the United States to transfer suspected militants in secret from one country to another for interrogation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905F.shtml

Samuel Loewenberg welcomes readers to Italy's latest scandal: a dizzying tale that catapults the government of Silvio Berlusconi into the unfolding controversy over the Bush administration's trumped-up evidence for weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905D.shtml

Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Maurice Hinchey and other Members will send the attached letter to Mr. Ahmed Chalabi asking for a meeting to discuss his role in manipulating the intelligence that led to war with Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905C.shtml

The Council of Europe has opened an investigation into reports of secret CIA detention centers in Romania and Poland, a European Commission spokesman said on Tuesday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905B.shtml

San Francisco voters have also approved a measure to oust military recruiters from high school campuses in the city.

http://www.nbc4.tv/politics/5286100/detail.html


From Information Clearing House

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, is establishing a fund to help pay for his legal defense in the C.I.A. leak case, and associates of Mr. Libby have begun soliciting money from his friends and Republican donors.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10926.htm

In a critical test of his influence, Mr Cheney is pitting himself against the Senate and leading officials in the departments of State and Defence in his attempt to allow interrogators a free rein in questioning suspects.

http://tinyurl.com/9njk2



Sleepwalking to Fascism:

Detention and interrogation for six months without the right to see a lawyer or your family and without judicial oversight except for secret courts. The military patrol the streets and arrest citizens, camps are set up for the detained, journalists are forced to give details of their sources under threat of imprisonment. Hitler’s Germany? Stalin’s Russia? Certainly, that is what happened then. Now try Australia in 2006.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10928.htm



Inquiries into 'secret CIA detention centres':

The Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, has opened an inquiry into reports of secret CIA detention centres in Romania and Poland, the European commission said yesterday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10936.htm



David Airhart on the killing civilians in Iraq

The abuse of detainees, his transformation to an antiwar activist, and his nonviolent protest at Kent State

http://www.traprockpeace.org/kent_state_students


From Information Clearing House