Ex-CIA Officer: Prison Was Torture Whistleblowing PunishmentFormer CIA officer John Kiriakou is the only CIA employee connected to its interrogation program to go to prison. But he was prosecuted for providing information to reporters, not for anything connected to waterboarding or other actions that today’s Senate Intelligence Committee report calls “torture.”
‘Stripped naked, kept in solitary’: Manning tortured like terrorist, Welsh relatives sayUS authorities tortured Chelsea Manning with barbaric CIA techniques, which posed a threat to her psychological health, the Welsh aunt of the jailed whistleblower revealed to local media. Before her trial for providing WikiLeaks with the largest cache of classified information in US history, Chelsea Manning was humiliated in a similar way that terrorist suspects were, her Welsh relatives told WalesOnline on Sunday.
Woman f-bombs police and gets rewarded $100K compensationReuters/John Taggart “F*** police” is political speech, a US court ruled. A woman who was arrested for swearing and raising a middle finger at law enforcers has been acquitted and awarded $100,000 in settlement.
Visa, MasterCard sued for blocking donations to WikiLeaksLawyers representing the credit card processor used by WikiLeaks are suing Visa and MasterCard in the United States over the 2010 banking blockade that kept the anti-secrecy group from receiving funds.
The Complicity of Psychologists in CIA TortureEarlier this week the Senate Intelligence Committee released the long-awaited executive summary of its 6,000-page classified report on the CIA’s brutal post-9/11 detention and interrogation program. The report provides gruesome details of the abuse that took place in several “black site” prisons – waterboarding, confinement in a coffin-sized box, threatened harm to family members, forced nudity, freezing temperatures, “rectal feeding” without medical need, stress positions, diapering, days of sleep deprivation, and more.
Overseas, Torture Report Prompts Calls for ProsecutionThe release of the Senate report on the graphic torture of terrorism suspects by the Bush-era Central Intelligence Agency led to calls at the United Nations and elsewhere on Tuesday for criminal prosecutions and caused an international explosion on social media, including online jihadist exhortations for retaliation.
New evidence Bush misled Americans into Iraq war – senatorThe chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has released new information claiming the Bush administration misled the American people in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on Thursday that a 2003 CIA cable warns the administration of former President George W.
Udall urges CIA chief to resign for stifling torture probeSen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) blasted both the CIA and the White House on Wednesday over what the lawmaker considers to be complicity with regards to propagating long-standing lies about the United States’ use of torture against foreign detainees.
Hush money: CIA paid Poland to host its secret prisons and detaineesThe CIA paid at least a million dollars to Poland for it to host secret prisons, where it incarcerated alleged 9/11 terror suspects, according to the recent US torture report. Warsaw had initially tried to halt the transfer of suspects, but after a generous offer, it suddenly became more “flexible.
Facing justice: UN, HRW, Amnesty call for prosecuting US officials for tortureAFP Photo/Paul J. Richards The UN and prominent human rights groups have demanded justice for CIA torture victims, urging to prosecute the responsible US officials listed in the Senate’s report. The Justice Department says it will not pursue charges, even after seeing the report.
Beyond Money in Politics: Corruption Now “Business as Usual”JANINE WEDEL, jwedel at gmu.edu Wedel, an anthropologist and professor at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, is the author of the just-released Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom and Security. She recently wrote in USA Today: “What do the words ‘dark money’ mean to you?
2 IL Veterans Force 102 Corrupt Officials to Resign, Place Entire Local Board Under Citizen’s ArrestWith four former governors having served time behind bars, Illinois’ government is widely-viewed as being riddled with corruption. However, according to a recen
UK intelligence agencies spying on lawyers in sensitive security casesThe intelligence services have routinely been intercepting legally privileged communications between lawyers and their clients in sensitive security cases, according to internal MI5, MI6 and GCHQ documents. The information obtained may even have been exploited unlawfully and used by the agencies in the fighting of court cases in which they themselves are involved, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has been told, resulting in miscarriages of justice.
Lobbyists, Bearing Gifts, Pursue Attorneys GeneralWhen the executives who distribute 5-Hour Energy, the popular caffeinated drinks, learned that attorneys general in more than 30 states were investigating allegations of deceptive advertising – a serious financial threat to the company – they moved quickly to shut the investigations down, one state at a time.
Vegas prosecutors used ‘super seal’ to hide fortune seized from gamblersCalling their conduct “constitutionally abhorrent,” a federal judge recently chided government prosecutors for working in secret to keep millions of dollars in cash and assets seized from a Las Vegas gambler and his family in a decadelong bookmaking investigation. In his 31-page opinion, U.S.
Small town sends armored vehicle, 24 officers to collect debt from 75-year-oldAFP Photo An armored military vehicle and 24 armed police officers: That’s what the sheriff’s department in a small Wisconsin town used to collect a civil judgement from a 75-year-old man, who has filed a $4.5 million lawsuit against the town over the incident.
Former CBS reporter accuses government agency of bugging her computerA journalist formerly with CBS News claims in her new memoir that a United States “government-related entity” hacked into her computer to conduct surveillance and set her up for possible criminal charges.
NYPD assaults, arrests busker after confirming he did nothing illegal (VIDEO)A musician was assaulted and arrested after he wouldn’t stop playing guitar in a New York subway station on Friday morning. The video of the incident went viral, drawing attention to his cause: The police’s unfair treatment of buskers. Andrew Kalleen, half of the indie/folk/rock duo Lawrence and Leigh, was playing his guitar around 1:30 a.m.
GMO backlash: Syngenta faces mounting lawsuits over genetically-modified seedsRIA Novosti / Katerina Sovdagari Agribusiness giant Syngenta AG now faces lawsuits from farmers in 11 US states claiming the seed-and-chemical company’s sale of a genetically-engineered variant of corn yet to receive approval in China depressed market prices for the grain.