The Reagan administration was very much aware of a scheme to murder mothers in Argentina and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings. And to think so many Americans idolize this man.
An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation’s former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime.
Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies’ identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.
Abrams said the Reagan administration “knew that it wasn’t just one or two children,” indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level “plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed.” Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims “disappeared,” buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.
A human rights group, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, says as many as 500 babies were stolen by the military during the repression from 1976 to 1983. Some of the pregnant mothers were kept alive long enough to give birth and then were chained together with other prisoners and pushed out of the planes into the ocean to drown.
Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.
When President Jimmy Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, berated the Argentine junta for its brutality, Reagan used his newspaper column to chide her, suggesting that Derian should “walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
Reagan understood that the Argentine generals played a central role in the anti-communist crusade that was turning Latin America into a nightmare of unspeakable repression. The leaders of the Argentine junta saw themselves as something of pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships.
What is the duty of It is NOT the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect THE CORPORATION and arrest code breakers.According to the US Supreme Court, a corporation is a person when it wants to buy an election - Citizens United ruling - but when it wants to torture and murder people - unanimous ruling on Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority- it's not a person; therefore, cannot be held accountable.
The United States Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a law on the books since 1991 precludes organizations, both political and corporate, from being sued for torture or murder outside of the U.S.
In a unanimous ruling on Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority (PDF), Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the careful text of the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991, the way it is written "convinces us that Congress did not extend liability to organizations, sovereign or not."
Do you need any more proof that the United States is, indeed, a corporation? Because it most certainly is. Not only that, despite what you were taught in school about the Revolutionary War, that we won our independence from the Brits, the United States is still, and always has been subject to the British Crown.
Keep in mind, the use of "Esquire" which declares anyone who uses that title, British subjection and loyalty to the crown.
Using his money and resources, King James I sent his subjects to America with the expectation of gain from his commercial venture. In the Virginia Charter he declares his sovereignty over the land and his subjects and declared the amount of gold, silver and copper he was to receive. Moreover, the king declared the right to regulate every aspect of commerce in his new colony.
This treaty contradicts what we've been taught about the Revolutionary war. We did not win our total independence. Ben Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams - all Esquires - merely negotiated further granted privileges from the King of England. Quite a few, in fact, except one: his claim to continue receiving gold, silver and copper as gain (see Virginia Charter, 1606) for his commercial venture.
So, why is the King granting us privileges if we won the war? Why was the King dictating the terms for surrender if we won the war? To this very day, the US is still paying millions of dollars per day to the Crown. Every time you pay a tax you are transferring your labor to the king, and his heirs and successors are still receiving interest from the original American Charters.
Financial servitude
Every taxpayer has an Individual Master File (IMF). Document 6209, about 467 pages, is used to decode the computer codes on the IMF records. If you retrieve your IMF, you will find that you are being held liable for a tax payable to the Crown.
Act of 1871 "An Act To Provide A Government for the District of Columbia."
The 41st Congress, under no constitutional authority to do so, created a separate form of government for the District of Columbia, which is a ten mile square parcel of land. This Act created a new constitution for the District of Columbia, the corporation.
Here, you will find much more information on the purpose of the War of 1812, the forgotten amendment (#13),
Queen Elizabeth controls and has amended U.S. Social Security (S.I. 1997 No:1778 The Social Security. A 1040 form is for tribute (tax - A contribution which is raised by a prince or sovereign from his subjects to sustain the expenses of the state. A sum of money paid by an inferior sovereign or state to a superior potentate, to secure the friendship or protection of the latter." Blacks Law Dictionary forth ed. p. 1677) paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209).
Read this section from Title 26 (at this link, you will find lots more info on this subject) you will see just one situation where the king is still collecting a tax from those that receive a benefit from him, on property which is purchased with the money the king supplies, at almost the same percentage:
-CITE- 26 USC Sec. 1491
HEAD- Sec. 1491. Imposition of tax
-STATUTE-
There is hereby imposed on the transfer of property by a citizen or resident of the United States, or by a domestic corporation or partnership, or by an estate or trust which is not a foreign estate or trust, to a foreign corporation as paid-in surplus or as a contribution to capital, or to a foreign estate or trust, or to a foreign partnership, an excise tax equal to 35 percent of the excess of -
(1) the fair market value of the property so transferred, over
(2) the sum of -
(A) the adjusted basis (for determining gain) of such property in the hands of the transferor, plus
(B) the amount of the gain recognized to the transferor at the time of the transfer.
-SOURCE-
(Aug. 16, 1954, ch. 736, 68A Stat. 365; Oct. 4, 1976, Pub. L. 94-455, title X, Sec. 1015(a), 90 Stat. 1617; Nov. 6, 1978, Pub. L. 95-600, title VII, Sec. 701(u)(14)(A), 92 Stat. 2919.)
-MISC1-
AMENDMENTS
1978 - Pub. L. 95-600 substituted 'estate or trust' for 'trust' wherever appearing.
1976 - Pub. L. 94-455 substituted in provisions preceding par.
(1) 'property' for 'stocks and securities' and '35 percent' for '27 1/2 percent' and in par.
(1) 'fair market value' for 'value' and 'property' for 'stocks and securities' and in par.
(2) designated existing provisions as subpar. (A) and added subpar.
(B). EFFECTIVE DATE OF 1978 AMENDMENT
Section 701(u)(14)(C) of Pub. L. 95-600 provided that: 'The amendments made by this paragraph (amending this section and section 1492 of this title) shall apply to transfers after
October 2, 1975.'
EFFECTIVE DATE OF 1976 AMENDMENT
Section 1015(d) of Pub. L. 94-455 provided that: 'The amendments made by this section (enacting section 1057 of this title, amending this section and section 1492 of this title, and renumbering former section 1057 as 1058 of this title) shall apply to transfers of property after October 2, 1975.'
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou wasindicted on four counts for allegedly leaking classified information to journalists and lying to the CIA's Publications Review Board. Two of those counts fall under the Espionage Act of 1917, by characterizing disclosures about America’s wrongdoing as “aiding the enemy”.
Kiriakou is one of the counterterrorism officials who led the team that captured Abu Zubaydah in March 2002 in Pakistan. In 2007, Kiriakou told ABC news that Zubaydah had been water-boarded (83 times).
This is the 6th time, under the Obama administration, that someone has been charged with Espionage for leaking to a journalist. As Charlie Savage wrote, Obama has brought “more such cases than all previous presidents combined.”
At the same time, the legal immunity enjoyed by corporate/government continues as the Jose Padilla lawsuit brought against Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush officials was dismissed. Padilla was imprisoned for almost three years without charges, and systematically tortured.
“Today is a sad day for the rule of law and for those who believe that the courts should protect American citizens from torture by their own government. By dismissing this lawsuit, the appeals court handed the government a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil. This impunity is not only anathema to a democracy governed by laws, but contrary to history’s lesson that in times of fear our values are a strength, not a hindrance.”
Retaliation against whistleblowers seems to be first priority for the US government. They are not so much concerned about keeping secrets which are deleterious to national security as they are with keeping secrets in order to prevent the embarrassment of being caught committing war crimes.
Consider the damage Kiriakou is alleged to have done:
Some lawyers with Top Secret clearance submitted a sealed filing naming a covert officer involved in the torture of 9/11 defendants. The lawyers pointedly did not photograph this officer in an effort to shield his identity. And his name was never made public.
Using information gained from Kiriakou and around 23 other sources (including former CIA Executive Director Buzzy Krongard), Scott Shane wrote an article detailing Deuce Martinez’ role in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others. And while Martinez’ association with the torture program was classified, his identity was not. Furthermore, by the time of the article, Martinez was working for Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell’s contracting firm, making it a pretty safe bet that he was involved in interrogation, even interrogations involving torture.
Subsequent to this article based on information from Kiriakou and 23 other people, the 9/11 detainees saw pictures of Martinez; assuming Shane’s article is accurate, they had already interacted with Martinez personally.
In that article, Shane included details about the “magic box” technology used to locate Abu Zubaydah. Information on that “magic box” technology and similar ones has been publicly available for decades, meaning the only secret here is that CIA uses it (!) and called it something as stupid as “magic box.”
That’s it. That’s the reported outcome of John Kiriakou’s leaks. And for that he faces prison time of up to 20 years.
Meanwhile, tomorrow the above clip will be shown on 60 Minutes, showing Panetta confirmingthat the Pakistani doctor who conducted fake vaccinations in Abbottabad, Pakistan in order to get a glimpse into Osama bin Laden’s compound was, in fact, working for the CIA.
On the Dark Side in Al Doura - A Soldier in the Shadows:
While poorly paid, hard working Americans face relatively severe consequences should they engage in any type of misconduct no matter how small, government officials, bankers, CEOs, oil executives, in other words, the power elite, who are responsible for catastrophic damage, not only escape consequences of their misconduct, they often reap rewards for their egregious behavior.
Consider, for example, the bank teller, who is lucky to make $10/hour. If she inadvertently violates bank policy she can face relatively severe consequences. However, if she is a little more deliberate, and let's say adds a penny to balance out her cash drawer at the end of the day, she could possibly face jail time. That's right...jail time! For contributing her own money!
So, what are the latest reports of "misconduct" regarding the teflon coated, crème de la crème?
Well, it appears the Physicians For Human Rights author of "The Torture Papers" discovered evidence indicating that the Bush Administration conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. Experiments in Tortureis the first report to reveal such information.
This evidence, of course, could possibly open the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush officials. Nothing, as of yet, has materialized indicating that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.
Escaping accountability for wrongdoing just because you're wealthy and powerful defies the rule of law. And it appears the current administration has no intention of preserving the equality of all its citizens before the law, as it is clear that those who reside at the lofty peak of American society are exempt.
"Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush said of the terrorist who master-minded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. He said that event shaped his presidency and convinced him the nation was in a war against terror. "I'd do it again to save lives."
Interview with the lead medical author of the report, Dr. Scott Allen.
"Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.
SPC Bradley Manning, 22, (left) of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged."
Read more...
There are two ways to think about the Bush administration's willingness to torture prisoners in the wake of 9/11. One is the story we were sold after we learned about Abu Ghraib: A few "bad apples" at the lowest levels of the military went a little crazy and tortured some prisoners on their own initiative, for which (some) were duly punished. The second is confirmed in a new and devastating piece of investigating by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer: A systematic and rigorous program of highly abusive interrogation was approved at the highest levels of government at so-called "black sites" around the world. This second version of the national torture story reveals not so much the bad apples as a profoundly diseased tree.
In 1863 a general order issued by Abraham Lincoln prohibited the use of “physical or mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.”
One-hundred and thirty-nine years later, a three-tiered method of interrogation that defines "humane treatment" with “outrages upon personal dignity” permitted, amongst many other modifications to the concept of "humane treatment" was insidiously legislated under the radar and signed into "law" or lawlessness, undermining any moral authority we, the people had. This process progresses from yelling and deception -----> humiliation and sensory deprivation -----> the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences were imminent for him or his family.
In November of 2006, "Congress passes the Military Commissions Act, which makes illegal several broadly defined abuses of detainees, while leaving it to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques."
The ACLU obtained documents from the Department of Defense confirming the military’s use of unlawful interrogation methods on detainees held in U.S. custody in Gardez, Afghanistan, a region near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
“These documents make it clear that the military was using unlawful interrogation techniques in Afghanistan,” “Rather than putting a stop to these systemic abuses, senior officials appear to have turned a blind eye to them.” - Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU.
Special Operations officers in Gardez admitted to using what are known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) techniques American service members experienced as training to prepare for the brutal treatment they might face if captured.
These documents show that the Special Forces beat, burned, and doused eight prisoners with cold water before sending them into freezing weather conditions. One of the eight prisoners, Jamal Naseer, died in U.S. custody in March 2003. In late 2004, the military opened a criminal investigation into charges of torture at Gardez. Despite numerous witness statements describing the evidence of torture, the military’s investigation concluded that the charges of torture were unsupported. It also concluded that Naseer’s death was the result of a “stomach ailment,” even though no autopsy had been conducted in his case. Documents uncovered also refer to sodomy committed by prison guards; the victims’ identities are redacted.
The 25-year-old commander of the group of soldiers, Pare, told prosecutors, "It felt like they were hitting us with a cable or something made of rubber." (All detainees were hooded or blindfolded during interrogation.) "This beating went on for seventeen or eighteen days." In another interview he said he was "seriously beaten by karate, cables, and sticks, and subjected to electric shocks." Gul Karim, another of those arrested, told prosecutors, "I was taken to the compound and they immersed me in cold water...while we were in the compound we were beaten a lot." A third detainee, Momin, said, "I was beaten very hard with punches and kicks. I was seriously injured from the beatings."
"They poured water on us and threw us in the snow and beat us up," recounted another of the soldiers, Noor Mohammad. "They were throwing us against the wall. We were beaten with sticks." According to the statement of a fifth, Hazarat Wali, "They poured water on us. They were continuously beating us. And our hands and feet were shackled."
The ACLU also obtained a file related to the death of Muhammad Al Kanan, a prisoner held at Camp Bucca in Iraq. The file reveals that British doctors refused to issue a death certificate for fear of being sued for malpractice.
Read more...
In June of 2005, federal courts prohibited the Bush administration from disposing of evidence of detainee torture and abuse five months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some its abusive interrogation tactics.
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush Administration to safeguard,
''all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
President Bush conveniently said he "has no recollection" of videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of plans to destroy the tapes, a White House spokeswoman said.
[...]"Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan."[...]
If the United States ever had the authority to judge the quality of human action and character arising from an innate sense of right and wrong, it has all but disappeared thanks to who "we the people" decided should lead "us"...lead us astray, that is.
CIA renditions, torture memos, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, "Black sites", "enhanced interrogation techniques", military commissions, indefinite detentions, 600,000 dead Iraqis, over 4,000 dead American soldiers (including contractors), countless life-changing injuries to Americans and Iraqis, millions of Americans without health insurance, tax-cuts for the rich etc. pretty much says it all.
Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil confirmed my belief that the wrong people were punished for the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. The people punished were set-up to take the fall while the truly guilty people will never face the consequences of their actions.
There is no doubt in my mind that a certain section of our government understood the psychology of the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” Zimbardo started in 1971. They knew that "powerful situational forces" could make people behave in ways they would not ordinarily. Especially when those people are very young soldiers trained to "fall in" and not question authority.
On top of the training many of these soldiers received, the part of the brain, called the pre-frontal cortex, is not fully developed until a person reaches their early 20s. This section of the brain responsible for "executive functions" allows us to prioritize our thinking, imagine, think in the abstract, plan, anticipate consequences, and control impulses. Combine the aforementioned with the process of group dynamics, which can overwhelm any individual, forcing them to compromise their values, morals and beliefs for the sake of the group...it's a formula guaranteed to produce torture-ready soldiers. How can we expect young men and women to fight against this powerful psychological force when most adults with fully developed brains will succumb?
It is true that all our soldiers "volunteered" for military service; and while a few signed up only to hurt or kill others, most signed up after being deceived by recruiters or because their parents and school thought that the military would straighten them out, or because this is their chance to become the "GI Joe" they played with just a few short years ago.
The people that should be held fully accountable -- unlike our young soldiers -- have brains that are fully mature, have the life experience to draw from, are highly educated, and lead the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth. There is no excuse for these people because they know exactly what they are doing.
Read more...
Ever since the world learned of the lawless state of American military prisons in Iraq, the administration has hidden behind the claim that only a few bad apples were brutalizing prisoners. President Bush also has dodged the full force of public outrage because the victims were foreigners, mostly Muslims, captured in what he has painted as a war against Islamic terrorists bent on destroying America.
This week, The Times published two articles that reminded us again that the American military prisons are profoundly and systemically broken and that no one is safe from the summary judgment and harsh treatment institutionalized by the White House and the Pentagon after 9/11.
On Monday, Michael Moss wrote about a U.S. contractor who was swept up in a military raid and dumped into a system where everyone is presumed guilty and denied any chance to prove otherwise.
Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago, was a whistle-blower who prompted the raid by tipping off the F.B.I. to suspicious activity at the company where he worked, including possible weapons trafficking. He was arrested and held for 97 days — shackled and blindfolded, prevented from sleeping by blaring music and round-the-clock lights. In other words, he was subjected to the same mistreatment that thousands of non-Americans have been subjected to since the 2003 invasion.
Even after the military learned who Mr. Vance was, they continued to hold him in these abusive conditions for weeks more. He was not allowed to defend himself at the Potemkin hearing held to justify his detention. And that was special treatment. As an American citizen, he was at least allowed to attend his hearing. An Iraqi, or an Afghani, or any other foreigner, would have been barred from the room.
This is not the handiwork of a few out-of-control sadists at Abu Ghraib. This is a system that was created and operated outside American law and American standards of decency. Except for the few low-ranking soldiers periodically punished for abusing prisoners, it is a system without any accountability.
Yesterday, David Johnston reported that nearly 20 cases in which civilian contractors were accused of abusing detainees have been sent to the Justice Department. So far, the record is perfect: not a single indictment.
Administration officials said that prosecutors were hobbled by a lack of evidence and witnesses, or that the military’s cases were simply shoddy. This sounds like another excuse from an administration that has papered over prisoner abuse and denied there is any connection between Mr. Bush’s decision to flout the Geneva Conventions and the repeated cases of abuse and torture. We hope the new Congress will be more aggressive on this issue than the last one, which was more bent on preserving the Republican majority than preserving American values and rights. The lawless nature of Mr. Bush’s war on terror has already cost the nation dearly in terms of global prestige, while increasing the risks facing every American serving in the military.
