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A U.N. torture expert said Saturday that the United States has an obligation to prosecute CIA officers who used harsh interrogation tactics to question detainees in the War on Terror. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, told the AP that the U.S. had to abide by the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture illegal and seek justice against those who used it. Nowak criticized President Obama's logic in the decision announced Thursday not to prosecute CIA officers who used the tactics -- including waterboarding. "The fact that you carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility," Nowak said. (AP)
For more than twenty years, officials of Crestwood, a small suburban town in Illinois, pumped water contaminated by carcinogenic toxins to the town's 11,000 residents to cut costs, a Chicago Tribune investigation found. Even after state environmental officials warned town officials that the water was contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals and twice cited the town for violating environmental laws, officials continued to use the poisoned source. The officials said in 1986 that they would get all of their tap water from Lake Michigan but continued using the poisoned well for as much as twenty percent of the town's drinking water, until state environmental officials shut down the well in 2007 after testing it for the first time in twenty years. The state's environmental protection agency and Attorney General are investigating the matter. (Chicago Tribune)
One of the country's largest labor unions is calling for Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to be fired for poor performance. The 2-million strong Service Employees International Union released a video Thursday alleging that Lewis promotes unsustainable business practices and fails to provide adequate employee services. Among other complaints, a spokesman for SEIU said that B of A pressures employees to cross-sell credit cards to customers, which they say pushes clients further into debt. Lewis became a Wall Street villain earlier this year when B of A approved massive bonuses to top executives at Merrill Lynch after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars. (Financial Times)
Ezra Merkin was warned on multiple occasions that the profits claimed by Bernard Madoff's accounts were not possible, according to court documents released Friday by a New York State judge. The documents show that Merkin received e-mail messages from Victor Teicher, who managed Merkin's funds in the late 1990s after being convicted of securities fraud in 1992, warning that Madoff's claims were likely false. New York University is suing Merkin -- who has also been charged by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo -- for shirking his fiduciary duty by concealing that he invested $24 million of the school's endowment with Madoff. (New York Times)
If at first you don't succeed... ask again. In court documents filed on Sunday, Sir Allen Stanford asked a judge to release $10 million in assets so that he can hire criminal defense lawyers. Stanford's civil lawyer Jack Nickens -- who was hired last week -- said that keeping the assets frozen makes it impossible for Stanford to defend himself against "an avalanche of allegations in civil actions not just across the country, but around the world, not to mention a possible criminal indictment." Stanford, who has been charged with running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, has spoken to high-profile criminal attorney Dick DeGuerin about possible representation. (Reuters)
Former Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom was indicted Friday by a state grand jury. Sansom is charged with sending government funds to campaign donors, including the president of of a state college in northwest Florida. After Sansom diverted $6 million to the college, it funded a $1 million private airport hanger for another Sansom donor in an apparent direct quid pro quo. (examiner.com)
Josh
Zachary
Is it correct that the entire US Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of our 'We the People' Government fully fund these illegal Renditions, Torture(s) ecetra?
Is it correct that all our Main Stream Media has not heard and/or reported from one detanee that things are better than from the so-called previous Administration?
Is it correct that all main Stream Media have reported from former detaniees that things are worse than from the previous
so-called Administration?
Attached are from the Globalresearch.ca website, some transcribed with additions and some
as original.
-----------attached-------------------------------
Is it correct that the signing statement is related to Defense and/or Military Spending and would therefore would also include the seemingly and as print media reported 60,000 thousand plus people that continue to this day to be tortured on our US Ships and/other Ships and elswhere and including illegal and/or secret detentions and renditions and including the continued legal and/or illegal secrecy, etcetra and other equally hideous and heinous programs etcetra and including the enactment of the death penalty etcetra and without the seemingly US Constitutional mandated False Claims Act, Habeas Corpus and without the seemingly US Constitutional 'FEDERAL EMPLOYEE WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION RESTORATION ENHANCEMENT ACT'?
Prosecuting Bush Administration Officials for War Crimes
Preliminary Memorandum of Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference on Federal prosecution of War Criminals
Global Research, February 21, 2009
afterdowningstreet.org
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Propelling prisoners' heads into concrete walls by means of towels wrapped around their necks, savage beatings with fists and rifles that left prisoners crippled, hanging prisoners by the arms with their arms strung up behind them, depriving prisoners of sleep for weeks on end, which has been thought the worst torture possible for 500 years, causing prisoners to freeze -- sometimes to death, and waterboarding are but a partial list of the torture methods ordered by America's highest officials. In the "Preliminary Memorandum of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference on Federal Prosecutions of War Criminals," law school Dean Lawrence Velvel, the founder of the Jackson Conference, details the full spectrum of tortures performed in wholesale combinations -- not one torture by itself -- on detainees around the world. His Preliminary Memorandum is a precursor to a formal legal complaint to be filed with the Justice Department this spring.
The Preliminary Memorandum identifies 31 culprits and details the war crimes they committed, the laws they broke, and the many fulsome warnings they received regarding their actions from numerous governmental lawyers and officials high and low, including the Judge Advocate Generals of all the armed services. The culprits who should be prosecuted include Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Addington, Tenet, Bybee, Yoo, Haynes, Chertoff and others.
The Preliminary Memorandum calls the Bush administration's illegal acts "an attempted constitutional revolution that succeeded for years." It began six days after 9/11, when Bush secretly gave the CIA permission to "murder . . . people all over the world." It continued in a series of secret, wholly specious legal memos authorizing torture, electronic eavesdropping, wholesale violations of law, and Presidential usurpation of the role of Congress.
Public pressure eventually forced the administration to declassify a few of the memos. These purported to authorize war crimes outlawed by the Geneva Conventions and U.S. anti-torture laws. Among them was John Yoo's infamous "torture memo" defining torture as "requiring the pain associated with organ failure or death," saying torture supposedly couldn't exist if the torturer wanted information, and urging that the President could do anything he wanted, including paying no attention whatever to Congressional laws. Meanwhile, Bush administration officials and lawyers ignored extensive warnings given them by government officials that they were engaging in criminal acts; the warnings were given both orally and in extensive memos.
http://afterdowningstreet.org/robertjackson
Posted by: RE: Torture memo's | February 21, 2009 at 03:07 PM
If it should be of further assistance the attached is a partial exerpt from the above mentioned afterdowningstreet.org/robertjackson link.
--------------------attached afterdowningstreet.org/robertjackson (partial exerpt)------------------
The Robert Jackson Steering Committee
-----------------------
Criminal Prosecution and Accountability Evidence
The Robert Jackson Steering Committee was formed at a September 2008 conference in Andover, Mass. Watch video.
Lawrence Velvel is chairman of the Steering Committee of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference On Planning For The Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals, or the Robert Jackson Steering Committee for short.
Other members:
Ben Davis, a law Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law, where he teaches Public International Law and International Business Transactions. He is the author of numerous articles on international and related domestic law.
Marjorie Cohn, a law Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, Calif., and President of the National Lawyers Guild.
Chris Pyle, a Professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches Constitutional law, Civil Liberties, Rights of Privacy, American Politics and American Political Thought, and is the author of many books and articles.
Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, and winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center For Constitutional Rights, of New York City, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and Japan against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.
David Swanson, author, activist and founder of AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, of Charlottesville, Va.
Kristina Borjesson, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist for more than twenty years and editor of two recent books on the media.
Colleen Costello, Staff Attorney of Human Rights, USA, of Washington, D.C., and coordinator of its efforts involving torture by the American government.
Valeria Gheorghiu, attorney for Workers’ Rights Law Center.
Andy Worthington, a British historian and journalist and author of books dealing with human rights violations.
April 20, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
A couple of things: Congress wasn't "usurped" in that it could have stopped the practices years ago and didn't. (The dim-wits 'reasoned' that if there was another 9/11 they'd get 'blamed' because they'd outlawed torture.)
The CIA may be legally off-the-hook. According to an article that came out about 4 years ago, the spooks, knowing that torture was illegal had its lawyers draw up some papers to be signed by Justice and/or the Pres/Vice to the effect that even if their agents tortured prisoners, the agents could not be held legally responsible (for the crime.)
April 20, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please note that I am highly proud and honored to be able to post blog comment replies on this TPM Muckracker website, as within these recent years of this new media format of blogs and with accepted blog comment replies.
Also, I am also highly proud and honored for the continued abundance of the due-dillegent concern and responses from most all within the recent years of blog comment replies of which some I have read.
Briefly in response to your comment of which I am highy appreciative,
1) I continue to concur with my blog comment replies to this TPM Article and re-affirm my reply to re-mention the need for the full reinstatment of Habeas Corpus, False Claims Act ecetra and the full and complete immediate implementation of the 'Federal Employee Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Restoration Act'. I would assume that your mention and concerns could be resolved with the forthright and proper 'Oversight and Accountability'.
2) Please note that I suggest and recommend that should I and/or I would assume that I have the necessary full support of the Government Accountability Project, GAP, Mr. Tom Devine and the National Whistleblower Center, NWC, Mr. Stephen M. Kohn and should you and those interested in these concerns please contact these Organizations as I expect that these Organizations will be able to hopefully more eploquently and/or proficiently accomodate your and others concerns within these and many other important matters of concern(s).
Again my appreciation and gratitude for your reply comment and hopefully I have been of some further and/or additional assistance.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
April 20, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please recall a previous exasperated, frustrated impromptu, in part (one paragraph), blog comment reply to a POGO.org 2/26/2009 Article entitled ' POGO Testifies in Congress Today'.
---attached pogo.org paragraph--------------------
Please note: In an effort to only keep within a certain view and more harsh than I would prefer view, and not excluding other concerns although including(derivatives, futures, Company Stock Options, Public Company Share Underwriting, 10+ years of seemingly and/or to some extent a negligent suppression of seemingly relevant evidence and/or allegations of fraud, waste, abuse and/or mis-management from US Treasury, FDIC, IRS?, Rating Agencies etcetra and many other Insurers and Agency's, Governmental and non-Governmental and off shore Financing etcetra, repeal of Glass Stegal, Gramm/Billings Act, 2000 Commodity Futures Act, Commodity Currencies etcetra) that there is NO!! 'Oversight and Accountability' within this, another seemingly corrupt so-called bail-out Stimulus Bill and my continued allegations that these are the seemingly to some extent same 'pack of lies' and/or seemingly same corrupt, despotic, deranged, dishonest and/or disingenuous with the same
people, policies and/or principles in our US Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of our Democratic Government and that has not yet abolished the enactment of the Death Penalty and also (torture, illegal rendition, has not allowed for illegal war discussions, there has been seemingly no progression in the John Conyers '8/2008 'Executive Powers and its Limitations and Abuses Hearing' and Impeachment endeavors illegal secrecy etcetra both Internationally and Domestically and in our US Prisons and so-called Mental Health Institutions etcetra and as mentioned in part in the President Obama Transition Team request BriefingBook.gov blog comment Education replies for Whistleblower Advocacy) and in my view the deliberate, intentional and willful subversion and if not seemingly viable for a Executive, Legislative and/or Judicial investigation,review and/or resignation and/or impeachment with the removal of the 'Federal Employee Whistleblower Protection Restoration Enhancement Act and/or for all.
April 20, 2009 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
tpmreader: Dude, brevity is a virtue. Get to the freakin' point!
April 20, 2009 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
To the point, it appears absolutely necessary and imperative in suggestion and recommendation for the immediate US Legislative full floor, up or down, vote on the Platts//Van Hollins HR985//(S1385 year 2003) 'FEDERAL EMPLOYEE WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION ENHANCEMENT RESTORATION ACT'.
April 20, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Much better, thank you.
April 21, 2009 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
We disavowed the Geneva conventions when we rescinded the Nuremburg principle that humans are responsible for their own behavior. Just following orders is now a great excuse. By the way, I was following Uncle Cheney's orders on everything. Heh, heh!
April 20, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink