AMERICAN POLITICS:

CIA TORTURE REPORT-DEEPER INVESTIGATION NEEDED:

The long awaited- and I do mean long awaited; it was written in 2004 under the Bush Administration and kept under wraps- CIA Inspector General's report on US interrogation techniques (aka torture) was released today. You can read more about this report and the American government's co-announcement of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate HERE at the BBC and HERE at the English news section of Al Jazeera. Many are already criticizing both the report and the US Administration's actions as being insufficient. Amongst these is the Human Rights First organization. Here is their story and appeal.

APAPAPAPAPAPAP
New evidence on torture: call for an investigation:‏
From:
Devon Chaffee,

Human Rights First

(Communications@HumanRightsFirst.org )
New report on torture: there are still unanswered questions.
Sign our petition supporting an independent inquiry to get the full truth.
The wheels of justice...are creaking.

Today the Obama Administration released new excerpts from a report that expose more evidence of torture. How many more reports do we need before we make one clean, thorough, and independent investigation that gets to the bottom of not just what happened – but how it happened, and who is responsible?
Join our efforts to demand answers. Sign our petition.

The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report released today details harsh interrogation techniques used from September 2001 to October 2003. This document underlines the need to conduct both a criminal investigation – as part of the preliminary review announced today by Attorney General Eric Holder – and an independent review of how torture and abuse were authorized and implemented.

The release of these documents is good news, but it leaves many questions unanswered. We need those questions answered.

Sign our petition supporting an independent commission empowered to get to the bottom of how torture happened.
Sincerely,

Devon Chaffee

Advocacy Counsel

APAPAPAPAPAPAP

THE PETITION:

Please go to THIS LINK to sign the following petition.

APAPAPAPAPAPAP

We call on the President of the United States to establish an independent, non-partisan commission to examine and report publicly on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in the period since September 11, 2001. The commission, comparable in stature to the 9/11 Commission, should look into the facts and circumstances of such abuses, report on lessons learned, and recommend measures that would prevent any future abuses. We believe that the commission is necessary to reaffirm America's commitment to the Constitution, international treaty obligations, and human rights. The report issued by the commission will strengthen U.S. national security and help to re-establish America's standing in the world.

AN INTERESTING NEW LINK:

Molly has been gradually saving up the "new links" that she has been adding to this site for one incredibly long and boring post, but one of the new ones under 'Other Interesting Links' deserves mention before I finally get to the big task. Molly has added the website of Al Jazeera's English language service to her set of links. Not that I have any truck with their ideology. In sheer kookiness it may surpass that of the Bush Administration's supporters despite their best efforts to present a rational take on things, something that the right wing media in the USA often doesn't attempt. Why Molly has added this item is to counterbalance one ideology with another. Aside from flights of fancy what is interesting is that Al Jazeera will report on factual matters that get little or no coverage in Canada, let alone the more censored US media. One of the headlines today, for instance is 'US Troops Kill Afghan Police'. This "oops" may be reported tomorrow in the Globe and Mail, but it is doubtful if it will be reported anywhere in the USA. Their report on the recent condemnation of certain US allies in the Middle East by a department of the US government is another case in point. The matter was for not doing enough to stop human trafficking and modern slavery. Al Jazeera hardly had to get on an ideological high horse in this case. They merely reported the facts, and the facts were damning enough. The US list of states implicated in slavery is weighted towards enemies of the USA, sometimes dramatically so. North Korea, for instance, certainly engages in state slavery in its prison camps, but "human trafficking"...come on now. Molly suspects that a lot of starving North Koreans in this "workers' paradise" would be quite happy to be "trafficked". It's better than eating dried grass. Some items are even more egregious. Cuba is mentioned. Molly doubts that Cuba is engaged in "human trafficking " at all and hasn't been for decades. It's prison population is certainly coerced to supply slave labour but probably at a rate 1/10th of that of the USA per capita,let alone in absolute numbers. Once more Molly has NO admiration for the Cuban dictatorship, but for the USA (the homeland of the prison industrial complex) to harp on about Cuban slavery is more than slightly bizarre. Then there's the inclusion of Venezuela, a regime that Molly has less admiration for than a lot of her anarchist comrades do. But including this regime as implicated in "modern slavery" is really a joke of cosmic proportions. So on and so forth.

Anyways, feel free to drop in at Al Jazeera now and then to see exactly how some of the nonsense propagated by the American press is viewed in the Muslim world. The discovery of truth is not exactly the same as an adversarial contest, but seeing an opposite opinion always helps.

Besides...Molly wants to open a contest here. One of the stranger aspects of Al Jazeera is that they give the time of their editions in two versions, Greenwich Mean Time and 'Mecca Time'. Now if any of Molly's readers can remember the C&W song 'Living on Tulsa Time' she invites them to add verses to the song that begins:

"Living on Mecca Time,

Living on Mecca Time..."

Molly has a brain cramp tonight so she can't work it up herself. Any takers ?