Wednesday, Nov 05th
Last update10:41:16 AM GMT
The issue of Western complicity in the torture of terrorist suspects is not going away.
But amid the furore about whether members of the intelligence services, or their political masters, should be held accountable, there has been no scrutiny of those who arguably played an equally critical role: the doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other medical personnel whose expert opinion was relied upon in arguing that "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not constitute torture.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and drugmakers Pfizer and Matrix Laboratories Ltd announced a deal on Thursday to lower the cost of treatments for patients with drug-resistant forms of HIV/AIDS.
Second-line antiretroviral therapies and a drug used to treat tuberculosis for those with drug-resistant HIV/AIDS will be made available at a reduced cost and in more convenient regimens, saving as many as hundreds of thousands of lives in the developing world.
The same Turkish lobby has also, according to information gleaned from Edmonds and others, based on her first-hand knowledge as an FBI case translator, helped to ensnare many of those same officials in a broad infiltration scheme of the U.S. Government and sensitive military facilities, by operatives from the U.S., Turkey, Pakistan and elsewhere, including alleged bribery of then Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Some of the charges against Hastert were detailed in a remarkable 2005 Vanity Fair exposé. Additional allegations, concerning the the proliferation of nuclear secrets to the black-market in Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, Libya, Iran and beyond, as detailed in an explosive front-page series by London's Sunday Times last year.
Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.
"The ugly Israeli" in the guise of the arms dealer (mostly former intelligence and military officials), who promotes weapons sales on behalf of Israeli military industries, with the backing of the defense establishment, have given Israel a bad name world-wide. Israelis have been involved in civil wars (in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast) and in aiding dictatorial regimes such as in Equatorial Guinea and the two Congo republics.
In a startling accusation, defense lawyers in the case of an adolescent arrested and brought to Guantanamo Bay six years ago claim the Justice Department may bring a criminal case against the young man based on testimony from witnesses paid by the U.S. government for their cooperation. Mohammed Jawad was as young as 12 when he was arrested by Afghan police in 2002 and accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers. Although he confessed to the crime after Afghan officials threatened to kill him and his family, his statements were later ruled inadmissible by two U.S. judges because they were coerced.
There are many police and law enforcement officials who are concerned with the growing trend of using military-experienced mercenaries to train and work with local police officers in the United States, but there are many who believe the events of September 11, 2001 dictate the need for this new paradigm.
“Man-made and natural disasters require an immediate robust response. Blackwater Worldwide’s extensive training facility and staff of former military and law enforcement professionals can provide the needed training and operational expertise to prepare security teams to effectively support state and federal emergency response units,” according to Blackwater’s mission statement.
The hoaxers have claimed that this certificate provided by the Obama campaign is a fake, but have yet to produce any evidence to back that claim up. Their approach, straight out of the Napoleonic code, is to make continual accusations and demand that the accused prove their innocence. They hope that simply by repeating a claim often enough, useful idiots will come to believe it. But here in the United States, we follow the principle that the ACCUSER must prove the accused guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. What that means is that when the Swift-Boaters accuse Barack Obama of fraud, it is they who are required to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, we as citizens are obligated to ignore such baseless accusations, and certainly refuse to forward them along to everyone in our mailing lists (as these spammed emails always insist we must do).
Is it because she is fleeing prosecution for knowingly submitting a forged document to a federal court? Is it because she is secretly an Israeli agent working to undermine Barack Obama? Is it because she fears that black men in suits and sunglasses are coming from Washington to kill her?Page 903 of 1153
