Remember this next time any US official talks about accountability in other nations (via the New York Times): Attorney General… Eric H. Holder Jr.… announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will…
Showing all posts tagged torture
The life and death of favourite US and Israeli thug-in-chief Omar Suleiman
This week saw the death of former Egyptian intelligence head and thug, Omar Suleiman. Closer to Mubarak during his time in power, he was courted by Israel and America while his record of enabling terror was ignored. Of course. Australian citizen and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib alleges Suleiman personally attended sessions when he…
What’s some tortured Iraqis between friends?
Britain, spreading freedom across the world (via the Daily Mail): The Mail on Sunday can today reveal devastating new claims of abuse by British soldiers carried out at a secret network of illegal prisons in the Iraqi desert. One innocent civilian victim is said to have died after being assaulted aboard an RAF helicopter, while… …
How Obama maintained torture and rendition, clearly inspired by Bush’s legacy
A startling if unsurprising extract from a new book by James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power: On December 9, little more than a month after Election Day, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave President-elect Barack Obama a rather astonishing demonstration. The CIA director, a bald-headed,…
Blood on British hands; sending Tamils back to be tortured
These serious allegations are horrific. A government’s duty of care is paramount and yet in this case it seems that the desire for Britain (and indeed, Australia, who says very little about war crimes in Sri Lanka) to have a good relationship with Colombo is central. Also note the use of a private, chartered plane,…
Indian embrace of The Blogging Revolution
My book The Blogging Revolution was released recently in an Indian edition. It’s been receiving positive reviews (including this one in Calcutta’s Telegraph). Here’s another one in The Tribune by Abhishek Joshi: The Blogging Revolution by Australian freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein is a striking account of the writer’s investigation of the web’s role in repressive…
Assange talks Caged Prisoners, Islam, terrorism and resistance
This week’s episode of … The World Tomorrow – here’s past episodes of this essential program – features former Gitmo prisoner… Moazzam Begg and Asim Qureshi, former corporate lawyer, whose human rights organization Cageprisoners Ltd raises awareness of the plight of prisoners who remain in Guantanamo Bay. They discuss the “war on terror”, Obama and Bush, Islam…
Step by step, private companies must be held accountable for torture
Positive news: Today, a federal appellate court dismissed the appeals of two private military contractors who had argued they were immune from litigation when they engage in torture.… The corporate defendants, CACI and L-3, have argued that they should receive the same protections as the United States government and that, therefore, any of their wartime…
How to treat corporations complicit in human rights abuses
The number of lawsuits filed by multinationals against governments is growing globally. It truly shows who controls this world. It’s time for a serious fight-back. Evidence for the prosecution (via the Guardian): Lloyds Banking Group… has become embroiled in a row over its investment in a company accused of involvement in the… rendition… of terror suspects on behalf…
No wonder much of the world thinks the West are hypocrites
It’s only terrorism if “they” do it. Here’s a classic case of the American system protecting officials who brazenly break laws and get away with it: American intelligence agencies including the CIA and the FBI have won a court ruling allowing them to withhold evidence from British MPs about suspected UK involvement in “extraordinary rendition”…