Torture, Continued contains many good insights into the torture issue, but I particularly liked this one:

Blogger Digby writes: "I am still stunned that we are talking about the United States of America issuing dry legal opinions about how much torture you are allowed to inflict on prisoners. Stories like this one are the very definition of the banality of evil - a bunch of ideologues and bureaucrats blithely committing morally reprehensible acts apparently without conscience or regret."

"The banality of evil" is a famous phrase coined by Hannah Arendt, who as a key member of the Council for Cultural Freedom (search www.LaRouchePub.com for related articles), should know a little about the subject.

The article closes with another good insight:

Glenn Greenwald blogs for Salon: "Congress could aggressively investigate. Criminal prosecutions could be commenced. Our opinion-making elite could sound the alarm. New laws could be passed, reversing the prior endorsements and imposing new restrictions, along with the will to enforce those laws. We still have the ability to vindicate the rule of law and enforce our basic constitutional framework.

    "But does anyone actually believe any of that will be the result of these new revelations? We always possess the choice - still - to take a stand for the rule of law and our basic national values, but with every new day that we choose not to, those Bush policies become increasingly normalized, increasingly the symbol not only of 'Bushism' but of America."

Indeed, there is still time for the real leaders of this country, instead of soulless puppets like Bush, to face the fact that LaRouche is the man with the plan to get this country, and the world, out of the mess deliberately created by the ancient enemies of mankind.  

Posted by fakeapoc at 8:17 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, October 13, 2007 12:51 PM EDT

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From Secrecy defense prevails in torture case:
 

"The Supreme Court refuses to hear a lawsuit from an alleged victim of brutality by the CIA. The decision is seen as a setback for civil libertarians."

In my opinion, one of the purposes for such abductions is to provoke the Islamic world against the US.  By refusing to hold the US government accountable for what is in fact one of the lowest possible crimes (Satanism/SRA), the Supreme Court has done its part to provoke the Islamic world, by helping to give Muslims the impression that any of them can be abducted anytime, anywhere, "disappeared" into some secret dungeon, and abused/tormented/tortured until they go insane or die.  Another possibility is that, although a lot is already known about this case, and the victim's attorneys claim that this makes the state-secrecy argument moot, it is possible that information or perspectives might come out of such a trial which Dark Dick and his New Dark Agers would rather keep in the dark.

Posted by fakeapoc at 12:30 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, October 11, 2007 5:59 PM EDT

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from
Widespread abuse alleged at 'boot camps' for troubled US teens: report

"WASHINGTON (AFP) — Allegations of abuse are legion at high-discipline, hard-hitting programs for troubled US youth, and have sometimes led to teens' deaths, a report by a government watchdog warned Wednesday."

Posted by fakeapoc at 8:55 PM EDT

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In a previous entry, I registered disappointment with the media because it continues to subtly push the line that "enhanced interrogation" is an effective means of interrogation, even though it has acknowledged evidence that it isn't.  As an example of how they do this, I cite the following passages from a recent NY Times article,  Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations :

"The debate over how terrorist suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive INTERROGATION...."

"With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet INTERROGATION methods...."

"That experience shook the Qaeda INTERROGATION team...."

"Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the C.I.A. caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, INTERROGATORS were again haunted by uncertainty [over the legality of EI techniques]. Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough INTERROGATION tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mr. Mohammed."  [Which produced the false intelligence which "justified" the Iraq "war."]

The article also quotes CIA spokesman George Little, who recited the usual carefully-worded misleading statements about "enhanced interrogation" being lawful and effective, and that the secret memo was intended to protect the brave "interrogators" who go face to face with pure evil, or some such twaddle.  Another such defender of EI, Paul C. Kelbaugh, was quoted as claiming that good information on Al Qaeda had been obtained, but if so, where are the results?  Oh, but things would have been much worse otherwise, of course, and there's no way to disprove his assertion.  I think this is known as the liar's prerogative - just say anything, and let everyone try to disprove it.  So, the liar's main concern is to make claims that can't be disproved easily.

The following passage from the Times article is part of the fairy-tale about the origins of "enhanced interrogation":

"With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods...."

Compare it with the following passages from A Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy (recommended to anyone who is interested in the history of EI), which prove that the CIA has developed EI over decades, knowing all along that it is not an effective interrogation technique:

"In the global dissemination of its new interrogation doctrine during the Cold War, the CIA moved through two distinct phase, first operating undercover through police-training programs in Asia and Latin America and later collaborating with Army teams that advises local counterinsurgency forces, largely in Central America.   Throughout this thirty-year effort, the CIA's torture training grew increasingly brutal, moving by degrees beyond the original psychological techniques to harsh physical methods through its experience in the Vietnam War."  p 60

As noted, FBI interrogators found the military's techniques produced little real information and interfered with their own bureau's proven methods of building rapport through long, noncoercive questioning.  [But EI, which is supposed to be quick and effective, goes on for years, so "long questioning" is not only more effective, but quicker, and it doesn't make the world hate us.]  "The torture of subjects did not lead to any useful intelligence information being extracted," reports James Corum, a professor at the Army Command and General Staff College.  "The abusers couldn't even use the old 'ends justify the means' argument, because in the end there was nothing to show but a tremendous propaganda defeat for the United States."  p 196

Posted by fakeapoc at 10:13 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, October 7, 2007 10:35 PM EDT

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In the course of Amy Goodman's interview of Col. Ann Wright on the 10/5/07 edition of Democracy Now, a segment of the October 4th White House press briefing was played, and I couldn't resist the temptation to point out a few of its absurdities:

REPORTER: Well, just generally, does the administration -- does the President believe that head-slapping and simulated drowning are necessary tactics to use against suspected terrorists to keep America safe?

DANA PERINO: I am not going to comment on any specific alleged techniques. It is not appropriate for me to do so. And to do so would provide the enemy with more information for how to train against these techniques.  [Think about it for a while - how would anyone condition themselves to resist these techniques?  This is just a transparent excuse for glossing over what is actually done, which if revealed would prove what the Red Cross has said - that it is tantamount to torture.]  And so, I am going to decline to comment on those, but I will reiterate to you once again that we do not torture.  [What about all those "death squads" running amok around Baghdad, passing through American checkpoints with their captives who later turn up in heaps with signs of torture?]  We want to make sure that we keep this country safe [by behaving like rabid dogs and turning the rest of the world into our enemies].

REPORTER: In September of last year, the President told the country about what had been a classified program of CIA prisons in other countries around the world. At that time, he said all the terrorists who were held -- or alleged terrorists -- who were held in those sites were no longer there. Today, do those prisons still exist? And are there alleged terrorists being held?

DANA PERINO: I'm not going to comment on that. If the CIA decides to comment, I'll let them. What I can tell is that any procedures that they use are tough, safe, necessary and lawful.  [In fact, they have been proven to be ineffective at obtaining reliable information, so how could they be necessary?  Neither are they lawful, according to international standards.  Safe?  Tell that to Jose Padilla, whose mind has been destroyed.  "Tough" is a cynical euphemism for "sadistic."]

REPORTER: Is it reasonable to assume if those prisons were closed, that the President would have deemed that something to tell the country, and, in the absence of that, we should assume they are still working?

DANA PERINO: No, no, that’s a nice -- I'm not going to comment.

REPORTER: In a conference call in July, a senior administration official said that they would no longer -- or wouldn't use extreme temperatures of heat and cold. Is that true?

DANA PERINO: I don't know. I don't -- I wasn't on the -- I don't recall.  ["It's not that I'm out of the loop.  I just remembered that I don't recall such things."]

REPORTER: I guess the point is that if the senior administration official told us on a conference call that these methods wouldn't be used, why won't you say whether or not head-slapping, waterboarding, would be used?

DANA PERINO: I don't believe that I -- I'm not in a position to be able to do that. I am not going to comment on specific techniques. […]

Now, if there were an attack on this country, all of the questions in here would be very different. You would be asking me, “How did you allow this to happen?”  And what I am telling you is that, within the law [their interpretation, based on their own dictionary], we are making sure that we are doing everything we can [i.e. that they can get away with in their secret dungeons] to prevent it from happening again.  [To keep Cheney satisfied, so that his gang in the military doesn't nuke us.]

REPORTER: But what's to stop another country from then taking their own definition and interpretation based on the administration's --

DANA PERINO: As I understand it, under the Geneva Conventions, every country was supposed to interpret it for themselves, and now we have.  [As long we agree with the Geneva Conventions, we'll use them.]

As I understand it, I believe that the Geneva Conventions, that every country could interpret for themselves what those -- what that language meant. I'm recalling that from the debate that we had in this country from a year and a half ago.

REPORTER: Paraphrasing what the Geneva Conventions said, it said that --

DANA PERINO: Not paraphrasing, but --

REPORTER: No, I'm --

DANA PERINO: You're going to paraphrase?

REPORTER: Yes.

DANA PERINO: OK.

REPORTER: Paraphrasing what it said, it basically says that if there is some kind of a problem with clarity, it is supposed to be taken to an international crimes court. So --  [you're wrong!]

DANA PERINO: Which we are not going to do.  [This is an admission of an intention to violate a treaty.  But then, the only law that really applies to the Cheney gang is that of the jungle.]

REPORTER: Why not?

DANA PERINO: I don't think it's necessary.  [Oh, so we can dismiss provisions of international treaties because a PRESS SECRETARY doesn't consider it necessary to adhere to them?  And we thought that Cheney was overstepping HIS bounds!]

Posted by fakeapoc at 9:37 PM EDT

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Speaking emphatically, the president noted that "highly trained professionals" conduct any questioning. "And by the way," he said, "we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you."

from Bush defends US interrogation methods

I don't know whether Bush's pathological lying is disgusting, or just pathetic.   One of the excuses for starting to use abusive "interrogation" techniques was that there weren't enough trained interrogators to do the job at the time.  Well, here we are, a few years later, and we've just learned that Cheney's henchman Gonzales approved what amounts to torture in a SECRET DoJ memo (as Scott Horton pointed out, "Department of Justice" is an Orwellian title if ever there were) just months after publicly declaring similar if not identical methods to be "abhorrent."   Now, Bush claims that we have "highly trained professionals" who use the techniques that were adopted because we didn't have any skilled interrogators!  Barf!

Such secret memos are necessary when conducting "enhanced interrogation" (Satanic Ritual Abuse) in secret, against all laws and the will of the American people, not to mention the rest of the actual people on the planet.  Otherwise, those conducting the "interrogations" would fear being charged with a crime, as they should be.  (Despite what Gonzo believes, there are higher authorities, and he and his buddies will face justice, eventually.)

What bothers me about the media is that it continues to subtly repeat the idea that "enhanced interrogation" is an effective form of interrogation, even though it has acknowledged that it is not effective, and is actually counterproductive.  It's as if it's hinting that it really does work, but that it's necessary to use techniques that aren't mentioned in polite company.

Posted by fakeapoc at 9:29 PM EDT

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Thankfully, LPAC re-ran Saudis Identified as Patrons of "Al Qaeda II", originally published in July, because I missed it and it pretty much puts to rest any question about a major source of terrorism in Iraq.  Condoleeza Rice recently called former AQI leader Zarqawi "diabolically brilliant," but I think his success was at least partly due to his connections.

Posted by fakeapoc at 8:29 PM EDT

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It looks like Apopalyptic Dick is up to his old tricks again.  He's chomping at the bit to unleash an attack on Iran on the basis of fabricated "intelligence," as indicated by the following excerpt from The Iran War Is on The Front Burner:

Iranian sources told EIR that the clashes had been instigated by outside forces, not by any of the rival Shi'ite groups, as the press had claimed. Then, on Sept. 13, the Tehran Times came out with a report indicating that the force behind the massacres in Karbala was none other than the Mujaheddin el-Khalq (MKO/MEK), the Iranian terrorist organization which, after having been protected in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, is now protected by the U.S. occupying forces there. The Tehran Times political desk reported that three months prior to the massacre, "closed-circuit cameras captured a 23-year-old woman and 13-year-old youth who were gathering information about the various entrances to the Imam Hussein (AS) shrine. After their arrest, it became clear that they had been sent by the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) to locate ways to sneak into the shrine for terrorist operations."

The paper described how the attack was planned. Members of Moqtada Sadr's al-Mahdi militia, trying to enter the shrine, were prevented by security forces. Then, clashes began which led to 52 dead and 300 injured. "At first glance, it seemed to be a clash between rival Shia groups seeking to monopolize power and another indication of the extreme insecurity in Iraq, especially in Shia areas," the paper commented. But, this is not the case. According to witnesses, large amounts of weapons were distributed to people near the Sadr group's position, giving the impression that that group had been handing out arms. Among the weapons were some made in Iran—to leave a clear lead. The Iraqi Interior Ministry has conducted investigations into the event, concluding that the MKO was behind the incident.

This incident, attributed by the Chenyacs to "Iranian-backed Shi'ite factions inside Iraq," is being pushed into the stove pipe of disinformation, to motivate a military attack against Iran. [end of excerpt]

So, the terrorist has been unmasked.  There's never a hood around when you really need one.

The determining factor on the timing of this attack will be the collapse of Greenspan's Great Bubble (which some estimates put at 800 TRILLION dollars which have no backing, such as nuclear power/desalination plants pumping peace into SW Asia, a Bering Strait tunnel, or a global maglev transportation system), and not anything that the Iranians are supposedly doing.  The purpose, as LaRouche has reported, is to prevent desperate, drowning leaders (actual leaders, not vicious, lying s---heads like Dubya) from grabbing the lifeline which he has offered them in the form of FDR-style economic-recovery policies, including a "firewall" between the aforementioned bubble and the real economy which generates value when allowed to do so.  

Posted by fakeapoc at 9:04 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, October 2, 2007 9:08 PM EDT

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I haven't been able to find any definitive statement by Rudolf Steiner to the effect that hallucinations facilitate the transfer of free will and/or brain matter into the Eighth Sphere.  However, I have found additional indications that they MIGHT have this effect.  Some of the best indications are contained in the following passages (the first of which I've cited previously):

But the endeavour of Lucifer and Ahriman is to drag the free will of man, and whatever stems from it, into the Eighth Sphere. This means that man is perpetually exposed to the danger of having his free will wrested from him and dragged by Lucifer and Ahriman into the Eighth Sphere.

This happens if the element of free will is transformed, for example, into visionary clairvoyance. When this is the case, a man is already in the Eighth Sphere. This is a matter of which occultists are so reluctant to speak, because it is an awful, terrible truth. The moment the free will is transformed into visionary clairvoyance, what unfolds in the human being becomes the booty of Lucifer and Ahriman. It is immediately captured by them and thereby spirited away from the Earth. You can see from this how, through the shackling of free will, the spectres of the Eighth Sphere are created. [This "shackling" is apparently a matter of convincing people that they don't have a choice when in fact they do.  Since specters of the Eighth Sphere are spiritual forces which have been infused with matter stolen from the Earth realm, this also implies that the process described facilitates the theft of brain matter.]  Lucifer and Ahriman are engaged perpetually in shackling man's free will and in conjuring all sorts of things before him [which I gather means that they seek to stimulate certain states of mind - probably visions with no relation to reality] in order to tear away what he makes out of these things and let it disappear in the Eighth Sphere.

When clairvoyance in all kinds of different forms develops in naive, credulous, superstitious people, it is often the case that their free will has been sacrificed. Then Lucifer instantly seizes hold of it, and whereas these people imagine they have had an experience of immortality, the truth is that in their visions they see a part, or a product, of their souls being wrested away and prepared for the Eighth Sphere. [1]

A search of the Rudolf Steiner Archive turned up the following passages:

Only one who has no personal knowledge of such experience could here interpose the question: How are we to know, when we think we have spiritual perceptions, that we are facing realities and not the mere creations of our fancy — visions, hallucinations and the like? [2]

This seems to equate hallucinations and visions in that both reflect a subjective state mind, as opposed to an objective perception of the spiritual world.  The following passage reinforces this conclusion:

I'd like to mention a radical difference between visionary or hallucinatory experiences and what the spiritual researcher perceives. Why is it that so many people believe themselves to be already in the spiritual world, when they are only having hallucinations and visions? How unwilling people are to learn anything really new! They cling to the old and familiar. These sick soul-figments appear to us in hallucinations and visions in basically the same way as external sensory reality. They are simply there, confronting us; we do nothing to make them appear. The spiritual researcher is not in the same situation with regard to his new spiritual surroundings. I've told you how he has to concentrate and refine all the forces of his soul that are usually asleep. This requires him to exert a strength and energy of soul not present in external life. He must constantly hold on to this strength when he enters the spiritual world. It is characteristic of hallucinations and visions that a person remains passive; he doesn't need to exert himself. [3]

If hallucinations do have this effect, it might explain why, for example, Jose Padilla emerged from three years in isolation as "a piece of furniture."  (The context in which this analogy was applied to Padilla was specifically related to his apparent lack of free will.)  Americans should wonder how the "compassionate," "born again" Bush expects to extract useful information about terrorist plots from someone whose mind has been destroyed, and whose only exposure to "Al Qaeda" was to its recruitment division, i.e. Cheney's patsy-manufacturing process.  This process is designed to give someone the appearance of being a terrorist so that Cheney's goons can dub them "illegal enemy combatant" (a.k.a. David Addington's term designed to give the impression that there are certain criminals which even before conviction have no rights, including those conferred by the Geneva Conventions), and do to them what they did to Padilla, which the CIA has admitted is intended to remove free will. This also allows Cheney to use such kidnapping/torture victims as evidence that there is such a thing as "Islamic terrorism" and that he's protecting us from it.  Never mind the fact that the majority of his "terrorists" in Guantanamo were innocent bystanders who were handed over to US forces in exchange for a lucrative reward.

The more I think about Guantanamo and the secrecy surrounding it, the more likely it seems that the "guards" might be Satanists who have "advanced" to that level of SRA, and who are then sent to Gitmo and given a uniform.  There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to indicate that this is a possibility. 

One of the initial excuses for "enhanced interrogation" was that we had no cadre of trained interrogators at the start of the war.  So, what have they been doing at Ft. Huachuca, where interrogators are supposedly trained, all these years?  They should at least try to get their story straight.

Sources

[1] The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, p 91.
[2] Occult Science - An Outline, Chapter V:  Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (Concerning Initiation), Part 2
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA013/English/RSP1969/GA013_c05-02.html;mark=897,39,53#WN_mark
[3] from Anthroposophy and Christianity
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/AntChr_index.html

Posted by fakeapoc at 3:10 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, September 29, 2007 3:44 PM EDT

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 “As I’ve said before, the terrorists win when we abandon our civil liberties. The way we win is to show them that we can fight this war without changing our character as a nation. I hope the Senate reconsiders this issue once again.”
[...]
“The position urged by the Administration, that we must choose between Constitutional rights and fighting terrorism effectively, is simply wrong. Our strength as a nation, and our status as a world leader, is based in part on the fact that Americans do not choose between national security and liberty; we demand both,” said Sen. Biden.

from Biden Issues Statement After Senate Fails to Restore Habeas Corpus Rights of Detainees
http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=283631&

A sample of the quality of excuse used for consigning hundreds of innocent people to unimaginable torment ("enhanced interrogation"/SRA) for years:

Added Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: "Never has such an unprecedented legal right been granted to a prisoner of war or detainee."

from Senate Rejects Habeas Corpus For Terror Suspects
http://kdka.com/national/topstories_story_263085454.html

(Sen. Kyle has apparently forgotten that in the course of their captivity, most of these kidnapping and torture victims have been found innocent of any connections to terrorists.  Many were turned over to American forces in exchange for a lucrative bounty.)

"September 24, 2007 (LPAC)--While California's Governator postures on his proposed "bipartisan" health care proposal mooting a special session of the California Legislature, the Los Angeles Times of Sept. 23 in a continuing series of articles reporting on the crisis in health care infrastructure in Los Angeles County area...."

Nearly Two Dozen Private Hospitals in L.A. Area in Danger of Bankruptcy or Closure
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/7901/print

Posted by fakeapoc at 6:25 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, September 24, 2007 6:39 PM EDT

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