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Revealing News For a Better World

Government Corruption News Articles
Excerpts of key news articles on


Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.


Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


'Zero Dark Thirty': Why the fabrication?
2012-12-23, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/23/opinion/la-oe-1223-mcdermott-torture-...

The new Kathryn Bigelow movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has renewed the debate on the efficacy of torture. The film obliquely credits the discovery of the key piece of information in the search for [Osama] Bin Laden to the torture of an Al Qaeda prisoner held by the CIA. This is at odds with the facts as they have been recounted by journalists reporting on the manhunt, by Obama administration intelligence officials and by legislative leaders. Bigelow and her writing partner, Mark Boal, are promoting "Zero Dark Thirty" in part by stressing its basis in fact. It's curious that they could have gotten this central, contentious point wrong. And because they originally set out to make a movie about the frustrating failure to find Bin Laden, it's hard to believe their aim was to celebrate torture. But that's in effect what they've done. It was Dick Cheney's idea that the United States could solve complicated problems just by being brave enough, or tough enough, or both. Despite the fact that the world doesn't seem to work that way, Cheney's argument had a force and a tenor that fits with our national narrative of exceptionalism. It's satisfying. We are willing to believe there is something heroic, justifiable about torture. There is not. The moral objection ought to be obvious. We've had laws against torture for decades. We've had these laws for the simplest of reasons — we decided it was wrong. In almost no contemporary culture is it presumed to be not wrong.

Note: There have been numerous reports of bin Laden's death before the "official" killing. Click here and here for two intriguing BBC reports on this. WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available here.


Homeland Security grant spending questioned
2012-12-05, Seattle Times/Associated Press
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019840659_spending06.html

The Homeland Security Department paid for an underwater robot in a Midwest city with no major rivers or lakes nearby, a hog catcher in rural Texas and a fish tank in a Texas town, according to a new congressional report highlighting what it described as wasteful spending of tax money. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in his report that while much of the spending for the department's Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) appeared to be allowed under the program's rules, it was inappropriate in an age of budget austerity and as the federal government faces a $16 trillion national debt. Since 2003, the Homeland Security program has ballooned from 12 major metropolitan areas to 31 jurisdictions. The study found that some cities and towns had created implausible attack scenarios to win federal grants, and had scrambled at the end of each fiscal year to buy extra, unnecessary gadgets to spend excess cash. The Homeland Security Department has pumped billions to states in the past decade under the program that puts states in control of how the money is spent. The department has no way of tracking how the money is spent and has not produced adequate measures to gauge what states and communities need, Coburn said.

Note: Could it be that the "war on terror", even domestically, is really just a ruse to allow corrupt government and corporate profiteering? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on war profiteering, click here.


Former Fla. GOP leaders: New election law meant to suppress vote
2012-11-26, Seattle Times (One of Seattle's leading newspapers)
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019771284_floridavoting28.html

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post. Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law's main purpose: GOP victory. Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours. "The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates," Greer told The Post. "It's done for one reason and one reason only. ... 'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,"' Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants. "They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue," Greer said. "It's all a marketing ploy." Greer's statements about the motivations for the party's legislative efforts, implemented by a GOP-majority House and Senate in Tallahassee in 2011, are backed by Crist — also now on the outs with the party — and two veteran GOP campaign consultants.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption of the US electoral system, click here.


Bradley Manning deserves Americans' support for military whistleblowing
2012-11-16, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/16/bradley-manning-americans...

Last week, PFC Bradley Manning offered to accept responsibility for releasing classified documents as an act of conscience – not as charged by the US military. The military under the Obama administration has displayed a desire to over-prosecute whistleblowing with life-in-prison charges including espionage and "aiding the enemy", a disturbing decision which is no doubt intended to set an example. With today's advanced military technology and the continued ability of business and political elites to filter what information is made public, there exists a great barrier to many citizens being fully aware of the realities and consequences of conflicts in which their country is engaged. Responsible governance requires fully informed citizens who can question their leadership. For those citizens worldwide who do not have direct, intimate knowledge of war, yet are still affected by rising international tensions and failing economies, WikiLeaks releases attributed to Bradley Manning have provided unparalleled access to important facts. Revealing covert crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and corporations' pervasive influence in governance, this window into the realities of modern international relations has changed the world for the better. Bradley Manning ... went through a profound moral struggle between the time he enlisted and when he became a whistleblower. Through his experience in Iraq, witnessing suffering of innocent civilians and soldiers alike, he became disturbed by top-level policy that undervalued human life. Like other courageous whistleblowers, he was driven foremost by a desire to reveal the truth.

Note: For further information, visit the Bradley Manning Support Network. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on military corruption, click here.


Mystery surrounds graves at boys' reform school
2012-10-13, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/13/us/florida-graves-mystery/index.html

This Florida panhandle town is the home of a mystery that has been lost to time. A small cemetery buried deep into the grounds of a now-defunct boys reform school dates back to the early 1900s. Rusting white steel crosses mark the graves of 31 unidentified former students. Former students said the deaths were at the hands of abusive administrators. A 2009 state investigation determined there was no evidence of criminal activity connected with any of the deaths. But the investigation did not clear up the mystery over the fate of 50 other students who died at the school and whose bodies have not been accounted for. In the wake of that investigation, more former students -- who are now senior citizens -- have come forward with stories of abuse at the school, including alleged beatings, killings and the disappearance of students, during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. "These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods," said Dr. Erin Kimmerle, an anthropologist from the University of South Florida who is leading a scientific search on the grounds of what used to be the Florida Industrial School for Boys. Using ground-penetrating radar, Kimmerle's team has located what she says appear to be 18 more remains than previously thought to have been buried there. After clearing the area, her team has determined that a total of 49 graves exist. All are unidentified. "We found burials within the current marked cemetery, and then we found burials that extend beyond that," Kimmerle said.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional abuse of children, click here.


The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free
2012-08-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/27/pacific-free-trade-deal

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a pact that the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region ... is packaged as a "free trade" agreement. This label will force all of the respectable types in Washington to support it. The TPP is an effort ... to impose conditions and override domestic laws in a way that would be almost impossible if the proposed measures had to go through the normal legislative process. The expectation is that by lining up powerful corporate interests, the governments will be able to ram this new "free trade" pact through legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. At this point, it's not really possible to discuss the merits of the TPP since the governments are keeping the proposed text a secret from the public. Only the negotiators themselves and a select group of corporate partners have access to the actual document. One major focus ... will be stronger protection for intellectual property. In the case of recorded music and movies, we might see provisions similar to those that were in the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa). Since these measures were hugely unpopular, Sopa could probably never pass as a standalone piece of legislation. But tied into a larger pact and blessed with "free trade" holy water, the entertainment industry may be able to get what it wants. The pharmaceutical industry is also likely to be a big gainer from this pact. It has decided that the stronger patent rules that it inserted in the 1995 WTO agreement don't go far enough. It wants stronger and longer patent protection and also increased use of "data exclusivity".

Note: For more information and a petition against the TPP, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


Don't lose sight of why the US is out to get Julian Assange
2012-08-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/21/why-us-is-out-to-get-assange

Considering he made his name with the biggest leak of secret government documents in history, you might imagine there would be at least some residual concern for Julian Assange among those trading in the freedom of information business. But the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting. This is a man, after all, who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything. The ostensible reason for this venom is of course Assange's attempt to resist extradition to Sweden (and onward extradition to the US) over sexual assault allegations. But as the row over his embassy refuge has escalated into a major diplomatic stand-off, with the whole of South America piling in behind Ecuador, such posturing looks increasingly specious. Can anyone seriously believe the ... British government would have made its asinine threat to suspend the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and enter it by force, or that scores of police would have surrounded the building, swarming up and down the fire escape and guarding every window, if it was all about one man wanted for questioning over sex crime allegations in Stockholm? To get a grip on what is actually going on, rewind to WikiLeaks' explosive release of secret US military reports and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables two years ago. They disgorged devastating evidence of US war crimes and collusion with death squads in Iraq on an industrial scale, the machinations and lies of America's wars and allies, its illegal US spying on UN officials – as well as a compendium of official corruption and deceit across the world.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government secrecy, click here.


Company once known as Blackwater settles arms case
2012-08-08, Boston Globe
http://articles.boston.com/2012-08-08/nation/33081023_1_blackwater-arms-case-...

The international security contractor formerly known as Blackwater [and now called Academi LLC] has agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to settle federal criminal charges related to arms smuggling and other crimes. The list of 17 violations includes possessing automatic weapons in the United States without registration, lying to federal firearms regulators about weapons provided to the king of Jordan, passing secret plans for armored personnel carriers to Sweden and Denmark without US government approval, and illegally shipping body armor overseas. Federal prosecutors said the company, which has held billions in US security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, repeatedly flouted US laws. ‘‘Compliance with these laws is critical to the proper conduct of our defense efforts and to international diplomatic relations,’’ said Thomas G. Walker, the US attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. ‘‘This prosecution is an important step to ensuring that our corporate citizens comply with these rules in every circumstance.’’ Blackwater was founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince. The company rose to national attention after winning massive no-bid security contracts from the US government at the Iraq War’s start. In 2010, after several high-profile controversies, the company reached a $42 million settlement with the Department of State over repeated violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.


A Decade and $451M Later, FBI Computers Just Now Working Together
2012-08-01, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/sentinel-decade-451m-fbi-computers-now-working/...

After years of frustration and hundreds of millions of dollars lost on a system that didn't work, the FBI has finally deployed a new $451 million computer system called Sentinel. The web-based interface allows agents to widely search all FBI case files and data as they work investigations and track down leads, effectively moving FBI agents and analysts away from paper based files to a streamlined computer program. The system allows agents to conduct searches of related case information to "connect the dots." The FBI was sharply criticized after the 9/11 attacks for failing to piece together information about suspected terrorists obtaining flight training in the United States. The FBI was first warned in July 2001 by FBI Agent Ken Williams, who was assigned to the Phoenix Field Office, that individuals associated with Osama Bin Laden were undertaking a coordinated effort to obtain flight training in Arizona. The memo he wrote recommending that the FBI have liaison with flight schools in their areas was not widely read or acted upon. In August 2001 officials at FBI headquarters did not realize the significance of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui who was seeking flight training in Minnesota and had financial connections to the 9/11 hijackers.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the hidden realities of intelligence agencies, click here.


Up to $2.3 billion in California public funds hiding in plain sight
2012-07-26, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose's leading newspaper)
http://www.mercurynews.com/california-budget/ci_21168552/up-2-3-billion-calif...

A week after uncovering a hidden-funds scandal at the state parks department, finance officials are now trying to piece together why the balance sheets for similar "special funds" are off by $2.3 billion -- money that appeared to be right under their noses amid California's financial meltdown. An analysis by this newspaper of California's little-known 500-plus special funds -- like the ones that included $54 million in parks money shielded from the Department of Finance -- shows tens of millions of dollars in discrepancies in numerous accounts. The fund that gives restitution to violent crime victims was off by $29 million. The one that provides children with low-cost health insurance was $30 million out of balance. The fund that rewards people for recycling bottles and cans was $113 million off. "Where are these dollars?" asked state Senate budget chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who said it was a "big problem" that the special funds "clearly have not been getting enough attention." The newspaper's review found at least 17 accounts that appeared to have significantly more reserve cash than what individual departments reported to the finance department, though it's unclear why. The problem could date back decades and is only now coming to light after discrepancies were discovered in the parks funds, costing longtime parks director Ruth Coleman and deputy director Michael Harris their jobs.

Note: Could these funds be related to the CAFR reports which have gone so underreported? For more, see this link.


Frackers Fund University Research That Proves Their Case
2012-07-23, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-23/frackers-fund-university-research...

Pennsylvania remains the largest U.S. state without a tax on natural gas production, thanks in part to a study released under the banner of the Pennsylvania State University. The 2009 report predicted drillers would shun Pennsylvania if new taxes were imposed, and lawmakers cited it the following year when they rejected a 5 percent tax proposed by then-Governor Ed Rendell. What the study didn’t do was note that it was sponsored by gas drillers and led by an economist with a history of producing industry-friendly research on economic and energy issues. As the U.S. enjoys a natural-gas boom from a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, producers are taking a page from the tobacco industry playbook: funding research at established universities that arrives at conclusions that counter concerns raised by critics. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, who made the tobacco analogy, said companies and their trade associations are “buying the prestige” of universities that are sometimes not transparent about funding nor vigilant enough to prevent financial interests from shaping research findings. The Penn State report is not the only example. A professor at the University of Texas at Austin led a February study that found no evidence of ground-water contamination from fracking. He did not reveal that he is a member of the board of a gas producer. Company filings examined by Bloomberg indicate that in 2011, he received more than $400,000 in compensation from the company, which has fracking operations in Texas.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.


The rotten heart of finance
2012-07-07, The Economist Magazine
http://www.economist.com/node/21558281

The rapidly spreading scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) ... is beginning to assume global significance. The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed. Over the past week damning evidence has emerged, in documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in America and Britain, that employees at the bank and at several other unnamed banks tried to rig the number time and again over a period of at least five years. And worse is likely to emerge. Investigations by regulators in several countries, including Canada, America, Japan, the EU, Switzerland and Britain, are looking into allegations that LIBOR and similar rates were rigged by large numbers of banks. As many as 20 big banks have been named in various investigations or lawsuits alleging that LIBOR was rigged. The scandal also corrodes further what little remains of public trust in banks and those who run them.

Note: For key investigative reports on the criminality and corruption in the financial industry and biggest banks, click here.


Lawmakers press for open Trans-Pacific trade talks
2012-06-27, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47985609/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/lawmake...

A California congressman at the center of a legal battle with the White House ... asked U.S. trade officials to let him sit in on negotiations in San Diego next week between the United States and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. "Given the immense impact that this agreement will have on many areas of the American economy, including intellectual property, I respectfully request that you allow me and certain members of my staff to be present as observers for this round of negotiations," Republican lawmaker Darrell Issa said in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. The unusual request to join the San Diego talks on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, and a separate letter on Wednesday from about 130 congressional Democrats, reflect the anxiety many lawmakers are feeling about trade agreements, even though Congress last year overwhelmingly approved three such pacts -- with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The roughly 130 Democratic lawmakers, in their letter, urged U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to release draft texts under negotiation and "to engage in broader and deeper consultations" with members of Congress on U.S. laws and regulations they said he could be affected by the pact. Those include areas such as labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture, natural resources, the environment, state-owned enterprises, government procurement and regulations for financial services, healthcare, energy and telecommunications, the lawmakers said.

Note: For more information and a petition against the TPP, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


Police shootings rise as crime falls
2012-06-17, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/15/INLN1MO222.DTL

It's a curious paradox: Crime rates continue to fall in California, but the number of people killed by the police keeps rising. In Los Angeles County, for example, the number of 2011 homicides was a historic low of 612 people. But the number of fatal police shootings skyrocketed by nearly 70 percent that same year, to 54. That number of fatal shootings by officers was almost equal to 10 percent of the county's homicides last year. Los Angeles is not alone. Nationwide, officer-involved shootings are on the rise, with cities as disparate as Dallas and Albuquerque registering sharp spikes in fatal police shootings. What's going on? It's too soon to know whether 2011 was just an unusual year or the start of a trend. In 2011, 72 officers across the country were killed by perpetrators - a 75 percent increase from 2008. This rough equation makes some sense - if the police are encountering suspects who are more likely to fire on them, they're going to fire back. California is struggling with decades-old budget decisions that have left far too many mentally ill people out on the street, where they can be a danger to themselves and others. Police officers, not caseworkers, are all too often first responders to the mentally unstable. [And] California's ... draconian sentencing laws - followed by prison overcrowding and early release programs - haven't made anyone safer. Legislators and governors have tinkered around the edges of these issues without attempting a full overhaul, but a full overhaul is what the state needs.

Note: For more on corruption within the judicial system and "prison-industrial complex," click here.


Expert Panel Reports False Accounts of U.S. Political and Military Leaders on 9/11
2012-06-05, MarketWatch (Part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/expert-panel-reports-false-accounts-of-us-po...

New evidence shows that the September 11th activities of former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were falsely reported by official sources. The 20-member 9/11 Consensus Panel analyzed evidence from press reports, FOIA requests, and archived 9/11 Commission file documents to produce eight new studies, released today. The international panel also [determined] that four massive aerial practice exercises traditionally held in October were in full operation on 9/11. The largest, Global Guardian, held annually by NORAD and the U.S. Strategic and Space Commands, had originally been scheduled for October 22-31 but was moved, along with Vigilant Guardian, to early September. Although senior officials claimed no one could have predicted [the use of] hijacked planes as weapons, the military had been practicing similar exercises on 9/11 itself -- and for years before it. Official sources claimed neither Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Acting Chairman General Richard Myers (filling in for General Hugh Shelton), nor war-room chief General Montague Winfield were available to take command until well after the Pentagon was struck about 9:37. Yet emerging documents and memoirs show that top leaders were engaged earlier -- and later discussed a shootdown of [United Airlines] Flight 93 before debris was scattered widely around its alleged Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash site. Most intriguing is the mystery of who was running the Pentagon's war-room during the critical early hours.

Note: To examine the evidence presented by the 9/11 Consensus Panel which refutes the questionable accounts of the whereabouts and activities of key political and military leaders provided by The 9/11 Commission Report, as well as the best evidence concerning other claims of the official story of 9/11, click here.


Time for America to revisit its nuclear policy
2012-06-01, Dallas Morning News (leading newspaper of Dallas, TX)
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20120601-ronnie-dugger-ti...

Could we be overlooking profound questions and truths about the again-rising likelihood of the decimation or the end of life on Earth in an H-bomb holocaust? The actual and prospective nuclear policy and practice of the United States, Israel and Britain has moved from the nuclear disarmament promised in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty into attacking nations that ... insist on getting the same weapons we have. More nations keep getting the H-bomb and the systems to deliver it wherever they want to. There is still no international control of these weapons that can end life on Earth. Jonathan Schell reports in The Seventh Decade that 50 more nations know how to make H-bombs. It’s a secret no more. Why are possibly apocalyptic facts about them blocked from us by nine systems of military secrecy? For just one example, does Israel, as indicated in Ron Rosenbaum’s recent well-sourced book How the End Begins, have five German-made nuclear-armed submarines in the Mediterranean poised to fire H-bombs in retaliation even if Israel’s leadership has been “decapitated”? The U.S. should be leading the world toward “near zero” or the abolition of these weapons. We should be challenging our officials and military for risking our deaths, the lives of our fellow human beings and our national honor by keeping, maintaining and implicitly threatening to use our own weapons of mass murder.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the nuclear power and weapons industries, click here.


Q & A With Bulger Biographer
2012-05-30, WBUR-FM (Boston's NPR news station)
http://www.wbur.org/2012/05/30/dick-lehr

Dick Lehr is the co-author of the book Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal. First published in 2001, the book has undergone a number of revisions as the story of Bulger and the FBI has unfolded. Its latest revision has been published this month. Lehr and his co-author Gerry O’Neill are former reporters for the Boston Globe, whose ... report in September 1988 on the tale of the two Bulger brothers first raised the issue in public of Bulger’s “special relationship” to the FBI. Dick Lehr: [Whitey Bulger] goes down into history as one of the 20th century’s most notorious gangsters. He did something no other gangster that we know of has ever done and that’s compromise the FBI, bring it to its knees, not just in a single case, but as a way of life. He had sold everybody a story that would explain why someone might see him and [FBI agent John] Connolly. And that was that Connolly was their source, that it was one-way, and that Connolly was a corrupted agent, which was true, but it didn’t tell the whole story. But it did become Whitey’s cover. So if anybody ever saw him with Connolly and asked, ‘Hey what are you doing with that FBI guy?’ Whitey could say, ‘Hey, that’s my guy — he’s my rat.’ Throughout a lifetime he’s strategically always been able to anticipate and plant seeds in the event something happens down the road and he’s already a step ahead in terms of everyone, strategy and analysis.

Note: To go much deeper into this bizarre story of FBI strangeness, read the interview in the Boston Globe at this link. And for additional reliable information on intense corruption in intelligence agencies, click here.


9/11 defense attorneys call Guantánamo detention, trial rules ‘unjust’
2012-05-06, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/06/2786539/911-defense-attorneys-call-guan...

The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances to stage “peaceful resistance to an unjust system” being used for political reasons, defense lawyers said Sunday — a day after the 9/11-accused turned the judge’s plans to hold a simple arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest. “The system is a rigged game to prevent us from doing our jobs,” argued criminal defense attorney David Nevin, accusing the prison camp commander of making it impossible to learn from alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed how the CIA waterboarded him 183 times and used other since-outlawed techniques to break him. “The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed,” Nevin said, “to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture.” Each of the accused steadfastly refused to answer basic questions posed to them by Army Col. James L. Pohl, the war court’s chief judge, on whether they accepted their Pentagon-appointed attorneys. Instead, they periodically disrupted the proceedings with demonstrations of Muslim prayer and protests of prison conditions. “These men have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture” that will “infect every aspect of this military commission tribunal,” attorney James Connell III warned.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the destruction of civil liberties in the name of the "global war on terror," click here.


Where drones in Pakistan undermine U.S. interests
2012-04-15, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/13/INLN1MNVED.DTL

The CIA's use of unmanned aircraft to kill ... began under President George W. Bush in 2004. The covert operations became more frequent under the Obama administration, which viewed them as a way ... to hit Taliban fighters headed to the Afghanistan battlefield from sanctuaries in Pakistan's remote tribal areas. To Pakistanis, the drone strikes represent a brazen breach of their nation's sovereignty and a callous disregard for the lives of civilians who are in the vicinity of the so-called smart missiles. There is no precise count of casualties, but Pakistani officials suggest the deaths have numbered in the hundreds, with thousands more wounded. Opposition to the drone strikes is one of the rare issues that unites a country that is riven with divisions of geography, class, culture and tribal affiliations. Because the drone operations are covert, the Obama administration refuses to answer substantive questions about their necessity or results. In a recent meeting with U.S. journalists, diplomats at the American Embassy in Islamabad refused to discuss the program even on a background basis. Unlike the Bush team, the Obama administration has refused to keep Pakistani military leaders in the loop.

Note: For lots more on the illegal methods employed by the CIA and Pentagon in its "endless war", click here.


Feinstein detainee bill for citizens, residents
2012-03-01, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/29/MN701NDUR3.DTL

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said [on February 29] that her legislation to roll back an antiterror law, which allows the military to indefinitely detain people in the United States suspected of ties to al Qaeda or "associated forces," would have to be limited to citizens and permanent legal residents. Her bill, the Due Process Guarantee Act, ... would ensure that the detainee portions of last year's National Defense Authorization Act, or any declaration of war or congressional authorization to use military force, would not allow the military to imprison without trial citizens and green card holders living in the United States. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County) has introduced a companion bill in the House. The detainee provisions of the law ... have generated a rare combination of outrage from liberals and conservatives who say it violates constitutional liberties and habeas corpus rights that provide an individual redress to unlawful imprisonment by the state. Civil liberties groups have argued that the Constitution's Bill of Rights extends to all people, regardless of their citizenship. Noncitizens include tourists, students and business travelers as well as illegal immigrants. Feinstein said including noncitizens in her bill is not politically feasible. Feinstein described her bill as a follow-on to the 1971 Non-Detention Act, a response to the Japanese internment that was signed by former President Richard Nixon. The act bars imprisonment of citizens suspected of sabotage without explicit congressional approval.

Note: The NDAA clearly violates the U.S. Bill of Rights, which clearly states in the fifth amendment that no person shall be held to answer for a crime "without due process of law," and in the sixth amendment which states that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." It is simply amazing that the American public is not loudly protesting this breach of the constitution.


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