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Targeting Whistleblowers: Truth Telling Endangered
by Stephen Lendman
On April 16, journalist John Cole wrote:
"The message is clear - you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted."
In fact, it's worse. Under Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Obama who absolved CIA torturers, despite unequivocal evidence of their guilt. But leaking it risks criminal prosecution for revealing state secrets and endangering national security.
What went wrong with Obama
By Numerian posted by Michael Collins
One of the fictions propagated in American history courses – of the order of Washington throwing a dollar coin across the Potomac – is the theory that America always comes up with brilliant leaders at a time of crisis. Witness Washington himself, and Lincoln, Wilson, or Franklin Roosevelt (Republicans will throw in Reagan for balance). This was supposed to have something to do with the genius of the Constitution and the American political system’s ability to surface political talent.
A time of crisis is certainly upon the US, and the entire globe for that matter. The financial system is ratcheting itself down step by step into a total, catastrophic collapse, bringing default and ruin to over-leveraged borrowers everywhere. The global economy’s dependence on petroleum is more and more seen as a point of extreme fragility which could, like the corrupt financial order, bring economic growth to a complete halt. The nations of the world cannot agree what to do about global warming, and this failure alone seems to show we are incapable of setting aside personal gain for the common good, even when the survival of so many species (including our own) is at stake.
Did CIA doctors commit war crimes for Bush?
Mary Shaw
Not only were terrorism suspects tortured under the Bush administration, it now appears that they were used as human guinea pigs as well.
On June 7, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) released a report containing evidence that CIA doctors and other medical personnel engaged in illegal experimentation on prisoners regarding "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e., torture).
OCHA's Special Focus on Occupied Palestine
by Stephen Lendman
On June 9, McClatchy and other publications revealed some of what's rarely, if ever, acknowledged in the press - that Israel's blockade of Gaza is "economic warfare," not for security as most commonly reported, based on an Israeli document the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement's lawsuit obtained.
Gisha's director, Sari Bashi, said the document shows the siege is collective punishment, in violation of Fourth Geneva's Article 33 stating:
Torture Research and Experimentation: Official Policy under Bush and Obama
by Stephen Lendman
Nazi and imperial Japanese doctors performed horrific human experiments on unwilling subjects. At Auschwitz and other death camps, Josef Mengele, Carl Clauberg, Herta Oberheuser, Karl Brandt, Aribert Heim and others conducted ones involving freezing temperatures, toxic chemicals and gas, sterilizations, high altitudes, radiation, electroshock, starvation, amputations, bone, muscle and nerve transplants, and numerous other atrocities called crimes of war and against humanity at Nuremberg.
At its infamous Unit 731, Japanese doctors and scientists did their own, involving vivisections, germ and other forms of biological warfare, toxic chemicals, and other atrocities causing severe pain, disease and certain death. Yet in 1945, General Douglas MacArthur agreed secretly with Dr. Shiro Ishil to turn over 10,000 pages of human experimentation information in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Justice for their victims was denied.
They're Coming: Freedom Flotilla Two and Others Planned
by Stephen Lendman
The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) is "an umbrella body" of 34 European human rights and humanitarian organizations supporting the right of Palestinians "to live in peace and dignity," to be free from occupation, and to have "their own independent and sovereign state, (and) encourages all peoples of conscience and human rights advocates to intensify their efforts to highlight this life-theatening issue and end the catastrophe."
On its June 6 web site posting (savegaza.eu), ECESG reported that preparations for an even larger Freedom Flotilla Two are well advanced, and will be launched in the coming weeks, saying their mission is humanitarian, and others will keep coming until the siege is lifted and aid can enter freely.
THE CRUCIFIXION OF KINDNESS
BY GILAD ATZMON
Panic is detected in Israel. Strategic affairs minister, Moshe Boogi Ya'alon who served as acting PM during last week's massacre in the high seas said yesterday that “someone failed to prepare a standard operating procedure.” A senior IDF official was quick to respond "If there wasn't a standard operating procedure, why didn't he make sure there was one. He was the acting prime minister and it was his responsibility.” War criminal Tzipi Livni is also unhappy with the Government for failing to take responsibility. Two days ago she led a no confidence vote in the Israeli Knesset.
Seemingly the Israelis are starting to blame each other. This may look like a positive move, however, not a single Israeli is yet to ask for forgiveness. Seemingly no one in Israel grasps the scale of the atrocity in the high seas. No one in Israel comprehends the level of outrage amongst the nations. Israelis, are instead concerned with their Hasbara failure, their military operational mistakes and so on. Up until now, they fail to see that in the high seas, they have managed to kill Christ again.
Afghanistan: Funding both sides
Eric Walberg
Delegates in Shangra-La pledge eternal war in Afghanistan, as the US creates new and very dangerous allies there.
War junkies popped their champagne corks on 7 June to celebrate the 104th month of US military engagement in Afghanistan, America’s longest war in history (Vietnam lasted 103 months). Presumably they toasted the five NATO soldiers killed on 6 June. Troop deaths have skyrocketed this year and NATO forces are continuing to “mow the grass”, killing dozens of “Taliban” every day, and lots of civilians, though no one seems to know just how many of each or how to tell the difference. In any case, what’s the point of questioning numbers provided by those doing the killing?
German Missionary School in Jerusalem displays virulent Islamophobia
by Khalid Amayreh
A nun with a headscarf at the Schmidt Girls School
On 22 May, 2010, the Schmidt Girls School in East Jerusalem flagrantly fired a Palestinian female teacher, Nadera al Nimmari, reportedly for wearing a headscarf.
According to news reports, the school principal and his secretary escorted al-Nimmari to the school’s outer gate, telling her that she could be reinstated only if she removes the headscarf off her head.
Humiliated and emotionally tormented, al-Nimmari left her school, not understanding what was going on.
In Jerusalem itself, the incident has been viewed as an expression of sheer hatred of and fanaticism against Islam by an institution which claims to promote interreligious tolerance.
Israel’s Hasbara Arab agents
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine
Just as Israel’s barbarianism was being exposed to hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, following the criminal state’s bloody raid on the Gaza Freedom flotilla on 31 May, Abdul Rahman al Rashed was barking from London, blaming Hamas for the persistence of the Israeli or more correctly Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the coastal territory.
This is the same Abdul Rahman al Rashed that only a few years ago claimed that while all Muslims were not terrorists, it was clear that all terrorists were Muslim.
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