Torturers R Us: The Continuity Kid Does Cairo

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

Below is a piece that never got posted in all the hackfoonery that was going with the site recently. It was written in the first heat of Egypt's uprising, but in some ways, it is even more pertinent today, as the Obama Administration rallies around the suave and vicious torturer they have installed in Cairo, in a desperate attempt to produce the kind of "continuity" of militarist-elitist corruption in Egypt that Barack Obama has achieved so magnificently at home in his takeover from the Bush Regime.

This is when you know a regime is in on the ropes: when its security apparatchiks start the panicked, wholesale destruction of the evidence of their crimes. From the Economist:

I KNEW it was truly over when I came home to find a neighbour in a panic. He had smelled a fire nearby. We traced its source soon enough, after climbing to the roof of my building. Smoke drifted from the garden of the villa next door, where workers had recently been digging a peculiarly deep hole, as if for a swimming pool. In a far corner of the garden stood rows of cardboard boxes spilling over with freshly shredded paper, and next to them a smouldering fire. [...] More intriguingly, a group of ordinary looking young men sat on the lawn, next to the hole. More boxes surrounded them, and from these the men extracted, one by one, what looked like cassette tapes and compact discs. After carefully smashing each of these with hammers, they tossed them into the pit. Down at its bottom another man shovelled wet cement onto the broken bits of plastic. More boxes kept appearing, and their labours continued all afternoon. [...] The villa, surrounded by high walls, is always silent. Cars, mostly unobtrusive Fiats and Ladas, slip in and out of its automatic security gates at odd hours, and fluorescent light peeps through shuttered windows late in the night. This happens to be an unmarked branch office of one of the Mubarak regime's top security agencies. It seems that someone had given the order to destroy their records. Whatever secrets were on those tapes and in those papers are now gone forever.

There were of course no such scenes in the leafy suburbs surrounding Washington in the days after Barack Obama's election. Naturally, during the Bush years there had been the judicious destruction of particular pieces of evidence -- tapes of torture sessions, for instance -- that might have proved briefly embarrassing. (And embarrassment was really all that the Bushists had to worry about when they were still in power; they had seen that even the horrors of Abu Ghraib had scarcely troubled the public waters for more than a couple of news cycles.)

But there were no worries at all about the coming of Obama. No need for those involved in the torture of thousands and the custodial killing of dozens of captives to start digging deep holes and sealing their tapes and papers beneath concrete. They knew well how Obama would treat them: like heroes. Indeed, one of his earliest acts was to appear at CIA headquarters and assure the assembled covert operators that they would never be held accountable under the law for their atrocities.


Julian Assange legal team makes devastating critique of Swedish extradition attempt

Robert Stevens
WSWS


Julian Assange speaks to the press after the hearing at Belmarsh
Magistrates’ Court

I can hardly imagine how, on suspicion of a sexual offence, you can do more harm to a person than has been done in this case. He is famous all over the world as a rapist and he has not even been charged.” ~ Swedish appeal court judge Brita Sundberg-Weitman

The attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange to Sweden on trumped-up sex charges was stepped up yesterday in the Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in London.

Assange was appearing at the court on the first day of a two-day extradition hearing. Swedish Director of Prosecutions Marianne Ny is demanding Assange’s extradition on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Two women in Sweden allege rape, molestation and unlawful coercion in August of last year. Assange denies the claims.

On the morning of the hearing, Assange’s legal team published their “Skeleton Argument on behalf of Mr. Assange“ online, as one of 42 documents outlining the arguments and testimony they intend to present in court.


Mubarak's Thirty-Year Dictatorship

Stephen Lendman

"Since the 1970s, Egypt shifted from defying Western imperialism to becoming a reliable strategic partner."

Throughout decades of brutal rule, Mubarak remained a steadfast US ally. As a result, Washington rewarded him generously. US administrations also ignored his crimes, corruption, and lawlessness, as late January released WikiLeaks cables reveal, showing Obama knew he kept power through ruthless state terror.

On January 15, 2009, ambassador Margaret Scobey called security force brutality "routine and pervasive," saying:

"(P)olice using force to extract confessions from criminals (is) a daily event. (US informants) estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone."

Political activists and opponents are also targeted, Scobey adding:

"(T)he GOE [Government Of Egypt] is probably torturing (an April 6 activist) to scare other....members into abandoning their political activities." It also referred to the "sexual molestation of a female 'April 6 activist,' " and that another victim's torture only stopped "when he began cooperating."

Moreover,

"standing orders from the Interior Ministry between 2000 and 2006 (instructed) the police to shoot, beat and humiliate judges in order to undermine judicial independence."


Briana Waters: Victimized by Green Scare State Terrorism

Stephen Lendman

An earlier article discussed her case, accessed through this link.

Content from it is repeated below before updating her status. An innocent woman, she's one of many victims of US state terrorism, in her case for courageous environmental activism. Her web site provides more information, accessed through this link.

Her Case

On March 30, 2006, she was arrested, then falsely accused of being a lookout in connection with a 2001 arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.

In fact, she's a California resident, a professional musician, violin teacher, and mother of a young child. Yet, she was bogusly indicted, then reindicted with other defendants on May 10, 2006, including charges of using a destructive device, carrying a mandatory 30 year sentence if convicted.

On December 26, 2007, her lawyers filed a motion, accusing the Justice Department of concealing vital exculpatory information as well as producing a fraudulent FBI report. The agency commonly uses bogus evidence, getting manipulated/paid informants to affirm it. Nonetheless, a hostile federal judge denied defense's motion. Moreover, he ruled against letting his expert rebut government "evidence," claiming a delayed incendiary device was a bomb.

Expressing outrage, one Waters attorney said:

"The government hand-pick(ed the) judge (and) manipulat(ed) court procedures. This is a classic case of a corrupt prosecution, and a judge who apparently (chose) to look the other way."

It's unsurprising at a time two-thirds of all federal judges are from or affiliated with the extremist Federalist Society. It advocates rolling back civil liberties; ending New Deal social policies; opposing reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights and environmental protections; as well as subverting justice in defense of privilege.


Israeli Economy For Beginners

Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

We learn from the press and political analysts that, against all odds and in spite of the global financial turmoil, Israel’s economy is booming. Some even suggest that Israel is one of the strongest economies around.

‘How come?’ you may ask; besides maybe avocado, oranges, and some Dead Sea beauty products, none of us has actually ever seen an Israeli product on the shelves. They don’t make cars; nor do they make electric or electronic appliances, and they hardly manufacture any consumer goods. Israel claims to be advanced in high-tech technologies but somehow, the only Israeli advanced software ever to settle within our computers have been their Sabra Trojan Horses. In the land they grabbed by force from the indigenous Palestinians, they are yet to find any lucrative minerals or oil.

So what is it? How is it that Israel is impervious to the global financial disaster? How can Israel be so rich?

Israel may be rich because, according to the Guardian,

“out of the seven oligarchs who controlled 50% of Russia’s economy during the 1990s, six were Jewish.” During the last two decades, many Russian oligarchs have acquired Israeli citizenship. They also secured their dirty money by investing in the kosher financial haven; Wikileaks has revealed lately that “sources in the (Israeli) police estimate that Russian organised crime (Russian Mafia) has laundered as much as US $10 billion through Israeli holdings."[1]

Israel's economy is booming because mega swindlers such as Bernie Madoff have been channeling their money via Zionists and Israeli institutions for decades.[2]

Israel is ‘doing well’ because it is the leading trader in blood diamonds. Far from being surprising, Israel is also the fourth biggest weapon dealer on this planet. Clearly, blood diamonds and guns are proving to be a great match.

As if this is not enough, Israel is also prosperous because, every so often, it is caught engaged in organ trafficking and organ harvesting.

In short, Israel is doing better than other countries because it runs one of the dirtiest- non -ethical economies in the world.


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