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POPSRendition suit by innocent man to be re-heard Is there justice in the USA? Canadian citizen, detained in error for two weeks at JFK, then flown by US to Jordan for interrogation, held for 10 months. Restitution paid by Canadians, but court in US held it had no jurisdiction, saying that while at JFK, Arar was not technically in the USA. Totally innocent man - all now agree - abducted by the USA, probably tortured in Jordan. Can the USA say "Oops" and not be held responsible for the abduction and torture of an innocent man? Are we different than Stalin only by degree?
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POPSChristianity Today on torture David Gushee for the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today on five theological grounds for the unequivocal and universal condemnation of torture by Christians, and why, from a Christian perspective, no exceptional circumstances can ever justify the use of torture. From February 2006.
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POPS"Could we bring in nuclear material... pretend [it's] Iraqi?" Wow! Along the lines of the forged letter claiming WMD were in Iraq: Former Marine Intel specialist and chief weapons inspector for the UN in Iraq Scott Ritter, tells a story from a trusted Iraqi insider about an interrogation shortly after the US invasion. Spirited into the Green Zone, "Mohammed" is interviewed by a Army LTC identified only as "Dave."
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POPSPlaying with drugs for "Mind Control" LSD, radiation, and electroshock all ended up as dead ends in the MKULTRA program's quest for mind control. Still, the search for ways to penetrate minds continues. Recent studies suggest that noninvasive brain scans, taken with a functional MRI (fMRI), make the mind more transparent. Private companies tout fMRI as an improved lie detector, and the government has taken notice. Programs funded by the Department of Defense have looked into the feasibility of fMRI research.
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POPSBritish Territory Used for US Torture Cont... "TIME discussed the allegation with Richard Clarke, who served as a Special Advisor to President George W. Bush on the National Security Council dealing with counter-terrorism until 2003 but is not the source for this story. "In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed," says Clarke. Clarke did not witness a final resolution of the issue, but adds, "Given everything that we know about the Administration's approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the U.S. did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible."
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POPSMy Country, Tis Of Thee, Sweet Land Of Liberty Long before the Hamdan trial, we already knew that we were offered bin Laden in transit from Sudan to Afghanistan. But we did not want him. Our lawyers had no battle, our leaders no mettle. Most of us, though not all, have learned nothing. After thousands smote and seven years of war, we are back to our superior ways, demanding Habeas Corpus and noting in the very first trial that bin Laden’s deputy was read no Miranda rights upon his capture - or was it arrest? They say history repeats itself. Never before has it applied so swiftly, within the same generation and within the same conflict. A selfish society incapable of sacrifice is equally incapable of self-defense. Our greatest concern is not the pursuit of madmen or the states which feed them. It is not even the cost of oil and its affect on our economy and future.
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POPSVoyance Par Flash Une interrogation, un doute, un conseil, Bienvenue sur le cabinet Zora Voyance. Vous cherchez des réponses précises à vos questions d’ordre professionnelles, sentimentales ou financières.
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POPS"Good Faith" Torture Deemed OK Interesting that they set a subjective standard for torture: viz., if the interrogator thought in "good faith" that the method wouldn't cause long-term mental harm. Note that it didn't require that the method would probably cause long-term mental harm, only that the interrogator didn't believe it would. By defining torture subjectively, the Bush administration: 1. Consigned the definition of torture to belief, thereby making it impossible to adjudicate by objective measures. 2. Totally marginalized the detainee's likely reaction to the method and, thereby, nullified the detainee's humanness and recognition as a rights-bearing being. This kind of sophistry one would expect of a brutal dictatorship.
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POPSUK House of Commons: U.S. Goverment Lied to us. Cont... "Britain's denials that its territories have been used for "extraordinary rendition" were dramatically undermined last night after the United Nations claimed that Diego Garcia has been used as a detention centre to hold US suspects. . . . The revelations raise fresh questions about the island's role in the process of extraordinary rendition -- moving suspects to interrogation centres in third-party countries where they are held outside the law -- and why the UK government was apparently unaware that its ally was operating a prison on Diego Garcia to house so-called "high-value detainees"."
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POPSimpeachment This should go ahead. We cannot have one country's leader being impeached by the International Court and another getting away with high crimes and misdemeanors.
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POPSAshcroft Still In Favor of Torture Re-writing history and the laws that govern conduct. This conduct is " unbecoming" and this man and many others should be arrested. Even World War II veterans, most, will not support any form of torture.
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POPSAshcroft defends waterboarding before House panel Since Ashcroft doesn't believe waterboarding is torture, I guess it's just another way to ask a question in his mind, maybe the House committee should use it on him to get better responses. Wouldn't that be just! Of course, that's a tongue-in-cheek remark, we all KNOW it is TORTURE.
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POPSSilent No More: Iranian Student Sentenced To Death
The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not. He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog,* with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.” http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-KjyoxDgwc6uQN8Q8PTn1n8dj8oA-?cq=1
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POPSObama and McCain Both Changing Now The Maverick is not and the "Change" candidate is shifting. Politicians are like Chameleons, changing color depending their context to fit in. Trustworthiness and forthrightness are not to be found, and considered detrimental to obtaining power, ironically, when most Americans want to reverse the present course without question, instead of simply tailoring and amending it. Don't think the BBC article is correct about McCain however, he is shifting left, distancing from Bush, since republicans are left without an alternative (except for increasing third party candidates).
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POPS3,800 Piece LEGO Star Wars Death Star
Theis includes 25 heroes, villains, droids & creatures, 6 of which are new and exclusive to this set (Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper outfit, Han Solo in Stormtrooper outfit, Assassin Droid, Interrogation Droid, Death Star Droid and 2 Death Star Troopers). It also includes Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, R2-D2, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker in Jedi Knight garbs, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Emperor Palpatine, 2 Stormtroopers, 2 Emperor’s Royal Guards, R2-Q5, and a mouse droid! It features Movie-authentic Death Star environments which includes the Superlaser control room and target monitor, Imperial conference chamber, TIE Advanced hangar bay with moving launch rack, Emperor’s throne room, droid maintenance room, detention block, trash compactor, and much more. You can rescue Leia from the detention block cell, escape through a secret hatch to the trash compactor below or re-enact the final duel between Luke and Vader in the Emperor’s Throne Room.
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POPS"My Guantanamo Diary" All About Naive
And this is how Mahvish Rukhsana Kahn,assesses every one of her clients. She accepts without question detainee stories of widespread torture, brutal interrogation, commonplace Quran desecration and illegal confinement. But she never bothers to reference al Qaeda's "Manchester Manual," that instructs its members to allege torture and abuse as part of their defense against Western legal systems. Besides her sympathies for the "innocent" Afghans, Kahn grew openly contemptuous of the American military men and women serving there. She describes mocking a posted "Soldier's Creed" to a guard and how she had to learn "the military's sneaky speak" - her description of terms commonly used in the detention process. She refers to one female guard repeatedly as "Rodent Face," and repeats one detainee's story about how he found the guards "androgynous" and that "we can find no sign of manhood in this army." If she was bothered by these attitudes, she doesn't mention it.
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POPSChina Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo Swell, just swell, borrowing techniques from communist dictatorships. Well done! Plus: "In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." Brilliant!
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POPSHeath's Joker Is The Thrill Of The "Knight" Spoiler alert: This is not a review of the latest Batman installment, "The Dark Knight," but don't read on if you want to be totally surprised at the theater! Director Chris Nolan's latest installment of Batman, shown to a packed IMAX house Saturday in LA, made good on many of the amped-up promises touted in its trailers: cooler new toys, groundbreaking cinematography, a darker tone and the genesis of a villain named Two-Face. In this flick, Ledger showed us what a masterful actor he was - certainly deserving of a posthumous Oscar nomination. Ledger developed a whole new body language for the character. His Joker's tendency to lick his lips and blink extra slowly gives him, at times, the appearance of a demonic lizard.
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