Senator Mark Udall: The CIA Is Still Lying

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)

Senator Mark Udall
(D-CO)

By Elaine Magliaro

On Wednesday, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said that the CIA was still lying about “its post-9/11 torture program.” During a speech on the floor of the Senate, Udall “delivered a blistering critique of the agency’s torture during the George W. Bush Administration…” He said that the “CIA’s lies have been aided and abetted by President Barack Obama’s White House…” He called on the president “to ‘purge’ his administration of CIA officials who were involved in the interrogation program detailed in the report.” Udall added, “It’s bad enough to not prosecute these officials, but to reward and promote them is incomprehensible. The president needs to purge his administration.”

In his speech, Udall talked about a secret internal review that had been conducted by former CIA director Leon Panetta. “In my view the Panetta Review is a smoking gun,” Udall said. He added, “The refusal to provide the full Panetta Review and the refusal to acknowledge facts detailed in both the committee study and the Panetta Review lead to one disturbing finding: Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other words: The CIA is lying.”

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Posted in American History, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Society, United States | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

A Mark Fiore Video: Who Killed Michael Brown?

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Michael Brown

Michael Brown

By Elaine Magliaro

Political cartoonist Mark Fiore said it seems as if “everyone but Darren Wilson is responsible for the death of Michael Brown. It’s Michael Brown’s fault, black-on-black violence is at fault, it’s a culture of disrespect and lawbreaking that’s at fault, take your pick.” Fiore added it might be that “the best spew of logic came from Rudy Giuliani, who essentially said, if you black people didn’t kill yourselves so much we wouldn’t have to send so many white cops down there to kill you as well.”

Fiore:

Yes, crime in black communities is bad. Yes, white police officers killing unarmed black people is bad. Are we not capable of holding two thoughts in our collective head at the same time? It sure seems that many people only talk of “black-on-black” crime when they are defending a white police officer.

Now that another tragedy has happened in the blink of an eye and the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death on camera was not indicted (who you gonna’ believe, your lyin’ eyes or the police union?), let’s hope the growing outrage continues to spotlight police brutality and brings an end to these all-too-frequent killings.

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Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Society, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

NYT: Obama Administration Urges Court to Reject Freedom of Information Request to Disclose Documents from Justice Department Investigation into CIA Torture of Detainees

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

US-DeptOfJustice-Seal.svgBy Elaine Magliaro

Charlie Savage reported in The New York Times today that the Obama administration “has urged a court to reject a request to disclose thousands of pages of documents from a Justice Department investigation into the torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency, including summaries of interviews with about 100 witnesses and documents explaining why in the end no charges were filed.”

Savage said the administration “made the filing late Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times, hours after the Senate Intelligence Committee made public a 524-page executive summary of its own investigation into C.I.A. torture.” Savage noted that the committee had based its report “on a review of C.I.A. documents but did not conduct any interviews.”

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Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Rep. Peter King of New York Declares That CIA Detainees Were Not Tortured

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Rep. Peter King R-NY

Rep. Peter King
R-NY

By Elaine Magliaro

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)–who made the news last week after claiming that Eric Garner was responsible for his own death because he was obese and had asthma and a heart condition–is back making headlines again. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed reported today that King claimed that the 525-page Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention techniques “does not detail torture, but instead just procedures which create what King described as ‘tremendous discomfort.’”

Today, King spoke with both local radio and NewsMaxTV’s America’s Forum. He was quoted as saying “it would be a crime if we didn’t take these actions and that those who support the release of the Senate’s scathing report have an attitude of ‘hate America first,’ ‘self-loathing,’ and ‘self-hatred.’”

King told W-CBS in New York, “I don’t believe these are torture at all. For instance waterboarding, there were medical personnel present during the whole time. It creates tremendous discomfort there’s no doubt about it. It creates tremendous fear, but the fact is there was no lasting damage to these people and we got information from them, which is very helpful.”

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Posted in American History, Government, Hypocrisy, Media, Politics, Presidents, Propaganda, Society, United States | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Two Psychologists Who Worked As Interrogation Advisers for the CIA Were Paid $81 Million for Their Services

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

200px-CIA.svg

By Elaine Magliaro

Paul Blumenthal and Christina Wilkie published an article Tuesday night at Huffington  Post about two psychologists who worked as interrogation advisers for the CIA. The two men helped the government agency “implement its brutal interrogation program targeting detainees in the war on terror…” According to the Senate torture report, the psychologists were generously remunerated for services rendered. They were paid $81 million.

Blumenthal and Wilkie:

The contract psychologists are identified with pseudonyms — Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar — like most of the individuals named in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program. Published reports dating back to 2007, however, identify the two men as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both former members of the military.

According to the documents released Tuesday, Mitchell and Jessen — aka Swigert and Dunbar — played a key role in this grim chapter of American history.

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Posted in American History, Government, Politics, Propaganda, United States | Tagged , | 28 Comments

Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress Provides Information about Some of the “Disgraceful Facts” That Were Buried in the Senate’s Torture Report

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

200px-CIA.svgPosted by Elaine Magliaro

Igor Volsky  has an informative post about the CIA torture report over at ThinkProgress titled 17 Disgraceful Facts Buried In The Senate’s 600 Page Torture Report.

Here are a few of the “disgraceful facts”:

2. CIA personnel objected to torture techniques, but were “instructed” by the CIA headquarters to continue.

“The non-stop use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was disturbing to CIA personnel at DETENTION SITE GREEN. These CIA personnel objected to the continued use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques against Abu Zubaydah, but were instructed by CIA Headquarters to continue using the techniques…”Several on the team profoundly affected.. .some to the point of tears and choking up. [Page 473]

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Posted in American History, Government, Hypocrisy, Politics, Society, Uncategorized, United States | Tagged , | 9 Comments

John McCain’s Senate Speech on the CIA Torture Report

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

Posted by Elaine Magliaro

I was impressed with John McCain’s reaction to the release of the CIA torture report on the floor of the Senate today. I believe it was his shining hour.

John McCain CIA Torture Report Senate Speech. Torture Was Ineffective, Stained Our National Honor

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Posted in Government, Politics, Propaganda, Society, Uncategorized, United States | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

In 1946, Albert Einstein Addressed the “Negro Question” in His Writings

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

By Elaine Magliaro

On December 2nd, Dennis Overbye (New York Times) reported that Digital Einstein would soon be introduced–and that anyone with an Internet connection would “be able to share in the letters, papers, postcards, notebooks and diaries that Einstein left scattered in Princeton and in other archives, attics and shoeboxes around the world when he died in 1955.”

On the same day, Scott Kaufman wrote an article for Raw Story titled Albert Einstein: American ‘sense of equality and human dignity limited to men of white skins’. In his piece, Kaufman wrote that Albert Einstein had addressed “what was called, in 1946, ‘the Negro question’ in another document belonging to the so-called ‘Dead Sea Scrolls of physics.’”

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Posted in American History, Society, Uncategorized, United States | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Former Communications Chief for George W. Bush and Torture Apologist Nicole Wallace Says She Doesn’t Care What the CIA Did to Detainees

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Nicolle Wallace Former Communications Chief for President George W. Bush

Nicolle Wallace
Former Communications Chief for President George W. Bush

By Elaine Magliaro

Former communications chief for George W. Bush and torture apologist Nicole Wallace got incensed during a discussion of the recently released CIA torture report on Morning Joe today. A frequent guest on Scarborough’s show, Wallace vehemently defended the agency’s use of waterboarding on three al-Qaeda suspects. A current host of The View, she argued that she didn’t “care” what officials did because it was in order to protect Americans.

Wallace said, “In the history of this country, I think months after 9/11 there were three people who we thought knew about imminent attacks and we did whatever we had to do. And I pray to god that until the end of time, we do whatever we have to do to find out what’s happening.” She added, “The notion that somehow this makes America less great is asinine and dangerous.”

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Posted in American History, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Society, United States | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

“The Echo Chamber”: Reuters Investigation Finds That a Small Group of Lawyers Dominates the Docket at the Supreme Court

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

By Elaine Magliaro

This morning, Reuters published the first part of a three-part investigative series, Part 1: A cadre of well-connected attorneys has honed the art of getting the Supreme Court to take up cases – and business is capitalizing on their expertise. Written by Joan Biskupic, Janet Roberts, and John Shiffman, the series tells how “a handful of lawyers now dominates the docket” at “America’s court of last resort.”

In the first paragraph of the initial report in the series, the authors note that the marble façade of the Supreme Court building proclaims a high ideal: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

The authors report, however, that there is an elite cadre of lawyers who have emerged “as first among equals, giving their clients a disproportionate chance to influence the law of the land.”

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Posted in Government, Politics, United States | Tagged , , , | 186 Comments