How Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney want to believe that they are a part of the James Bond world and are accomplishing good on behalf of God, mother and country!

How Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney want to believe that they are a part of the James Bond world and are accomplishing good on behalf of God, mother and country!

It is time to get down to basics and call these actions what they really are.  You grab somebody and dump that individual in a friendly (for interrogators) outpost.

You then begin to "interrogate."  

For those who believe that any threshold will ever be reached in the realm of abject neoconservatism hypocrisy then cease your erroneous thought pattern.  At the very point when you are convinced that the very bottom has been reached you will be proven wrong.

Here is George W. Bush chasing around the world on another one of his global missions amid protests, with a robust effort occurring this time in Rome amid his continuing calls for globalization, which an informed world populace knows refers to enslavement of the many by and for the privileged few, such as the Bush family and their friends at Halliburton and Bechtel.

It is one thing for Bush to chase, but he does so much more.  The pious platitudes fall from his lips as he seeks to lecture the world on why it is essential to follow the pattern of ideal democracy that he champions.  Before Bush pulled into the G8 summit in Germany he gratuitously lectured President Vladimir Putin of Russia for not carrying out democratic reforms in that country fast enough.

A story yesterday in London's Daily Telegraph from correspondent Henry Samuel in Paris under the headline "CIA's `secret prisons in Europe'" contained the latest chapter in the Cheney-Bush "democratization" process that the neocon American administration hopes to help install throughout the world.

Chrs Floyd - Empire Burlesque

When I read the passage below from Moazzam Begg's account of his years in Bush's Terror War prisons, I had a strange feeling of dislocation: it was as if 30 years had suddenly fallen away and I was back in high school, reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in stunned disbelief at the hideous cruelty inflicted on the prisoners -- deliberately, as a carefully calculated instrument of state policy. And all of it done in the name of national security, of course, to protect the nation against "terrorists" and "traitors."

Solzhenitsyn's books -- not just the factual Gulag but also the deep-delving fiction of his middle years, the powerful First Circle and Cancer Ward -- were enormous influences on my own understanding of politics, power and morality. Years later, I was in Moscow when he returned to Russia from his long exile, having outlasted the system of state terror that had consumed so many of his compatriots. However much I had come to disagree with some of his political positions on certain issues, it was a still a moment of triumph for the deeper truths and moral courage that he continued -- and continues -- to represent.

From Jurist Paperchase @ Pitt.edu:

Thursday, January 12, 2006
European Parliament opens CIA secret prisons inquiry
Joshua Pantesco at 4:23 PM ET

The European Parliament Thursday opened an official investigation into allegations that several European countries allowed the CIA to secretly detain prisoners within their borders and airspace as part of the US "war on terror".

Background, more information in story.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

by Chris Floyd,

The only defense for the indefensible is to be offensive, it seems. The Bush Faction has obviously decided to stop refuting allegations about torture and just openly embrace the heinous practice instead. You've got Bush vowing to veto torture restrictions, you've got Cheney twisting arms on Capitol Hill to preserve the Faction's inalienable right to beat people to death -- and now you've got Condi Rice traipsing off to Europe to tell America's allies to stop all their whining about extraordinary rendition, secret prisons and the CIA kidnapping people in their countries.

In a remarkable display of brass, Rice tried to have it both ways, both denying that the U.S. tortures anyone then saying that American "interrogation techniques" have saved European lives by thwarting terrorist plots.

Being reporting on JURIST, the ever-watchful folk @ U. Pitt Law School:

Secret CIA flights landed in Germany, magazine reports  

Jaime Jansen at 4:04 PM ET

[JURIST] German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that the German government has a list of at least 437 flights [Der Speigel report, in German] it suspects the US CIA [official website; JURIST news archive] operated in German airspace, landing in Berlin, Frankfurt, and US Air Base at Ramstein. The list, however, does not indicate what the CIA-operated planes carried.

Bad CIA.  Go to your room.

Via Jurist, legal news from U. Pittsburgh:

Monday, November 21, 2005

Canada investigates report of CIA prisoner flights  
Tom Henry at 3:03 PM ET

[JURIST] The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs [official website] revealed Monday that it is investigating reports that a plane allegedly used by the CIA to transport terror detainees landed at a Canadian airport last week. Montreal newspaper La Presse [media website; in French] said the plane departed from Iceland heading towards Canada, landed in St. John's in Newfoundland on Friday, then returned to a military base in North Carolina. The US embassy in Ottawa would not comment. Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons Monday, Canadian Public Security Minister Anne McClellan nonetheless told MPs that "We have no absolutely no information nor any reason to believe that such an aircraft was involved in such a matter." In recent weeks Sweden [JURIST report], Spain [JURIST report] and Romania and the UK [JURIST report] have begun their own investigated incidents of alleged CIA plane landings that involved detainee transfers to alleged secret US prisons [JURIST report] in Europe or other facilities. Reuters has more.

Links in the original.  Worth a quick click.

Via Jurist, legal news from U. Pittsburgh:

Monday, November 21, 2005

Canada investigates report of CIA prisoner flights  
Tom Henry at 3:03 PM ET

[JURIST] The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs [official website] revealed Monday that it is investigating reports that a plane allegedly used by the CIA to transport terror detainees landed at a Canadian airport last week. Montreal newspaper La Presse [media website; in French] said the plane departed from Iceland heading towards Canada, landed in St. John's in Newfoundland on Friday, then returned to a military base in North Carolina. The US embassy in Ottawa would not comment. Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons Monday, Canadian Public Security Minister Anne McClellan nonetheless told MPs that "We have no absolutely no information nor any reason to believe that such an aircraft was involved in such a matter." In recent weeks Sweden [JURIST report], Spain [JURIST report] and Romania and the UK [JURIST report] have begun their own investigated incidents of alleged CIA plane landings that involved detainee transfers to alleged secret US prisons [JURIST report] in Europe or other facilities. Reuters has more.

Links in the original.  Worth a quick click.