Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Iraq snapshot

 Wednesday, March 16, 2022.  So many dangers in the world -- who knew the hideous hosts of THE VIEW would be part of that?


US President Joe Biden continues to persecute journalist Julian ASsange.  For the 'crime' of reporting the truth, Joe wants Julian brought to the US and wants him to stand trial and, understand, the US can be trusted to be fair and to protect him while he is in their custody.  Those laughable claims come as Kevin Reed (WSWS) reports:


A newly declassified 2008 document from the CIA’s inspector general reveals that one of the detainees currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was used as a living prop at a black site in Afghanistan to teach trainees the infamous enhanced interrogation techniques adopted by the administration of George W. Bush.

Ammar al-Baluchi, a Kuwaiti citizen, was rendered into US detention in 2003 from Pakistani custody and taken to a CIA torture facility known as the Salt Pit north of Kabul. According to the declassified document, the CIA was aware that rendering al-Baluchi was illegal because he was no longer a terrorist threat.

Proving that the Bush-Cheney administration’s pseudo-legal justifications for torture were themselves a sham, Baluchi was initially subjected to two torture techniques that were not on the approved list. The first was the use of a stick behind the knees in a stress position, and the other involved leaning back while kneeling and dousing with ice water.

One of the approved torture techniques being taught by the CIA and used repeatedly on Baluchi was “walling.” The CIA inspector general’s report says the torture trainees lined up to take turns smashing Baluchi head against a plywood wall.


According to the results of an MRI of Baluchi’s head carried out in 2018, a neuropsychologist found “abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage” in areas affecting memory formation and retrieval, as well as behavioral regulation. The analysis found that the “abnormalities observed were consistent with traumatic brain injury.”

The walling of Baluchi involved placing his heels against a specially designed plywood wall “which had flexibility to it” and putting a rolled up towel around his neck. The heavily redacted report states, “The interrogators would then grab the ends of the towel in front of and below the detainees face and shove [Baluchi] backwards into the wall, never letting go of the towel.” While Baluchi was “naked for the proceedings,” the goal of the interrogators was to “bounce” him off the wall.

While the report states that there was no time limit for the walling sessions, “typically a session did not last for more than two hours at a time,” they went for as long as necessary for training purposes.

The declassified report also says that the treatment of Baluchi was not to extract information from him because the trainees were only interested in completing an interrogation course and becoming certified. As a former trainee told the CIA investigators, “all the interrogation students lined up to ‘wall’ Ammar so that [the instructor] could certify them on their ability to use the technique.”

The US government tortured prisoners.  Appalling enough.  But these butchers don't even try to hide behind the nonsense of 'we ignored the law because we needed information' -- no, they did it because they wanted to be 'checked off' on having learned the torture and how to carry it out.


THis is the sort of thing that lands people in prisons in functioning governments.  And should land people in prison in this dysfunctional government.


Why doesn't that happen here?  Because despite Kevin's laughable invocation of Bully Boy Bush and Dick CHeney, the torture was bipartisan.  By January 2007, the Congress -- both houses -- were controlled by the Democrats.    By January 2009, Barack Obama was president.  He came in promising he would close down the gulag at Guantanamo Bay and he never did.  He had two terms to do it and he never did.  Was one of the reasons he refused to shut it down because he was worried what the world would think when they learned how the government had tortured and traumatized?  


This same government is now supposed to be entrusted with protecting Julian Assange if they get him in their clutches?  

Thomas Scripps (WSWS) notes:


Julian Assange was shunted a step closer to his would-be executioners on Monday. The UK Supreme Court issued a one-line decision refusing to hear the WikiLeaks founder’s appeal against an earlier decision ordering his extradition to the United States.

The case will now be returned to the original court as a formality before being passed to the home secretary, Priti Patel, to give the final order. Once Patel receives the case, Assange could be on a plane to the US in just four weeks’ time, except for inevitable further appeals.

The Biden administration intends to prosecute Assange for charges under the Espionage Act with a potential sentence of 175 years in prison. This would be served in barbaric conditions that previous judgements acknowledged could drive him to suicide. His health has already been destroyed by years of incarceration in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.

Despite the immense danger faced by the most significant journalist of the 21st century, many major newspapers did not cover the Supreme Court decision. Those that did ran entirely perfunctory stories, largely without comment.

Britain’s leading liberal newspaper, the Guardian, did not write a single critical line in its cursory 350-word article, quoting just two sentences from his legal team. The US New York Times managed, “If Mr. Assange were extradited to the United States and faced a trial, the case could raise profound First Amendment issues. His prosecution has alarmed advocates of press freedom.”

These are publications which have spent the last weeks screaming about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s censorship and attacks on free speech and journalistic freedoms. When speaking out about democratic rights lines up with imperialist war aims, they are fervent advocates. In the case of Assange, who exposed the systematic crimes of US and British imperialism, the “democratic principles” they so fiercely defend in Russia whither on the vine.

The NATO-Russia war over Ukraine has not only accelerated Assange’s persecution, but intensified his long and deliberate isolation by the corporate media.

At a briefing with the Foreign Press Association last month, to introduce his new book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution, UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer accused the mainstream media of failing in their duty as the “fourth estate” to hold governments to account. Melzer’s book is based on his three years of efforts to end the illegal mistreatment of the WikiLeaks founder.

In it, he criticises the “too little, too late”, “tame and lame” reporting of the British, American and American press, exposing their cynical pseudo-support for Assange:

“A handful of half-hearted opinion pieces in the Guardian and the New York Times rejecting Assange’s extradition are not bold enough, and so fail to convince. While both papers have timidly declared that convicting Assange of espionage would endanger press freedom, not a single mainstream media outlet protests the blatant violations of due process, human dignity and the rule of law that pervade the entire trial. None holds the involved governments to account for their crimes and corruption; none has the courage to confront political leaders with uncomfortable questions; none feels dutybound to inform and empower the people—a mere shadow of what was once the ‘fourth estate’.”


Joe Bidens going to protect Julian?  Joe had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and yet he didn't do that as Guantanamo Bay makes very clear.  He was a US senator and he knew what was going on and elected to look the other way.  He didn't even muster faux tears the way a certain Illinois senator loves to do.  Joe didn't protect anyone then and he won't protect them now.  The UK turning Julian over to the US is turning him over to torture and that's very clear to everyone paying attention at this point.


Andrea Germanos writes:


The case has sparked global concern from press freedom and human rights groups who warn that prosecution of Assange would have far-reaching impacts on journalists and publishers who dare to challenge powerful governments by exposing their most closely-guarded secrets.

In a statement, Assange’s solicitors lamented that the request for appeal was denied, saying that “the court had found that there was a real risk of prohibited treatment in the event of his onward extradition.”

The legal team also said that they would be able to submit documents to Patel’s office for the next four weeks ahead of her decision and that Assange could still appeal on other grounds.

The high court ruled in December that Assange can be extradited, overturning an earlier ruling by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court that found extradition would endanger Assange’s life.

In a January statement, Committee to Protect Journalists deputy executive director Robert Mahoney warned that “the prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder in the United States would set a deeply harmful legal precedent that would allow the prosecution of reporters for news gathering activities and must be stopped.”

Mahoney, like other defenders of free speech and journalism, additionally called on the U.S. Justice Department to stop the extradition proceedings and drop its charges against Assange.


He exposed the War Crimes of the United States -- War Crimes carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In what world is it plausible to then turn him over to the government that carried out the War Crimes?


Richard Medhurst addressed the latest developments on his YOUTUBE program.



Richard Medhurst attempts to accomplish something.  I have no idea what THE VIW attemtps to do thse days but broadcast an hour of hate speech with a bunch of overweight and under educated women braying incessently.


Ana Navarro came to this country as a young child but apparently never bothered to learn the Constitution -- she was apparently using her entire school day to go through the lunch line repeatedly which would explain the gifth.  The right-wing zealot loves US empire because her disgusting father wouldn't have had wealth without the US empire and she loathed those who argued for equality.  That's how she ended up in the US.  How she ended up on TV is another issue.  She's unattractive and her voice annoys.  She shouldn't be on TV or radi o for those reasons alone.  But there she is as Whoopi Goldberg's wingman. You now Whoopi, the failed actress.  Won an Academy Award and couldn't doa d amn thing with it because she never had the taste or sense to tell what qualified as drama resulting in one bad film after another.  


She's undereducated, obviously.  You can tell that when she speaks, you can tell that when she 'writes' (that laughable ghost0written bio).  She's not informed and she's not a thinker despite all the gas baggery she puts over the airwaves.  


She's an ugly person with an even uglier soul and in the '00s we called her out at THIRD for her embrace of torture -- no one else seemed too concerned about that.  Maybe they're still not concerned about what she's doing?


Here's RISING.



i really wish that RISING was a left show.  It's not.  


A left show might be calling out Whoopi for her comments -- especially when she starts with, "They used to arrest people for doing stuff like this.  . . .'' She's speaking of journalist Tucker Carlson and former Congress member Tulsi Gabbard.  But she's speaking of two other people as well.


Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg.


They were executed.


Why is she speaking of them?  She didn't get enough of a backlash for antisemitism last month?


Because she's a blood thristy whore who uses the public airwaves to celebrate witch hutns and executions?


Her remarks are appalling.  You'd expect that sort of crap fro m the ghost of William F. Buckley but not from a so-called fun show broadcast by DISNEY.  It's outrageous.  It's offensive.  


She's lamenting the end of the Red Scare and she's calling for a new one while explaining that nothing cheers her on like the execution of Ethel and Julius?


Unifnormed and uneducated minds do not belong on the ariwaves as hosts for political discussions.  Anything beyond food and bitchy is clearly beyond the hosts.  


Barbara Walters had a vision.  She deserves credit for that.  But what THE VIEW is today is not what she envisioned and it's appalling to watch this garbage.  (I don't.  I've included RISIN because that's where I saw Whoopi and Ana frothing at the mouth.)


It's outrageous and its shameful and it's so far beyond celebrating humanity that we really ned to rethink Whoopi Goldberg.  She's no longer just an idiot who manages to pull off a comedy line somebody else wrote, she's not a rabid person addicted to hate who wants to invoke the executions of the Rosenbergs as a good thing and something that our country is missing.


In Iraq, the political stalemate continues.  THE NEW ARAB notes:


The Iraqi parliament on Tuesday scheduled a March 26 session for deputies to hold a delayed vote on the country's president.

Parliament also released a final list of 40 candidates for the post, a largely ceremonial role reserved for the Kurds.

Among the frontrunners are Barham Saleh, the incumbent and member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Rebar Ahmed of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the PUK's rival.




New content at THIRD:


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