Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY [LINK | Article]
Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
Today, the war and military occupation in Afghanistan continues onwards for its tenth year, marking the ninth anniversary of the invasion on October 7th, 2001. The so-called “Global War on Terror” has escalated into a full-scale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the bombing and terrorization of Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries. Since then, the financial costs of the Afghanistan War have trampled that of the Iraq War. In February 2010, the monthly cost for Afghanistan was $6.7 billion, while the Iraq War was $5.5 billion. Costs aside, let us take a look at where the Afghan War has taken the Afghan population nine years down the line. “Operation Enduring Freedom” (OEF) has brought nothing but destruction, a military dictatorship, legalized rape and the re-opening of Afghanistan’s poppy and opium fields to fuel the global drug trade. [comment: I thought the figure in the billions per month was a typo, but a check indicates monthly figures in the BILLIONS is correct & the figures given in this 2010 article are correct - here]
In addition, NATO airstrikes and ground operationshave not ceased for a moment. Even pro-US Afghan President Hamid Karzai is calling on the US to withdraw. The death tolls for both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have independently claimed thousands of lives. Some civilian death estimates for Afghanistan say between 11,443 and 14,240 deaths have been recorded total as “direct deaths,” with 6982 since 2007. Some estimates go as high as over a million dead in Iraq alone. The recent escalation of the war inAfghanistan by the US imperialists is the beginning of President Barack Obama’s plan to send 30,000 more troops in the coming months before a supposed gradual drawdown of troops (much like the recent Iraq “drawdown” no doubt) in 2011. The CIA remains poised and ready to borrow armed bomber drones from the US military in order to expand their covert assassination campaign, which has been known to violate the borders of Pakistan in North Waziristan and commit political assassinations.
Current State of Afghanistan [at 2010]
A global public opinion survey involving 47 nations conducted in 2007 found that only 2 out of the 47 countries possessed a majority that supported the continued US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan. These two were Israel (59%) and Kenya (60%) (1). More breaking news included that “The Taliban issued a statement marking the invasion anniversary, claiming 75 percent of Afghanistan was now under its control. ‘The strongholds of jihad and resistance against the invading Americans and their allies are as strong as ever,’ it said. ‘The invading Americans spent hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue this illegitimate war, lost thousands of soldiers — with tens of thousands of them being injured — and faced heavy losses in terms of military hardware.’ The Taliban urged the U.S. and its allies to immediately leave the country” (2). A report by the Open Society Foundations, a think-tank, said that “Afghans are increasingly angry and resentful about the international presence in Afghanistan and do not believe insurgents are responsible for most attacks and civilian deaths” (2).
Just to give our readers an idea of just how bad the drug trade in Afghanistan has gotten since the US occupation, on Wednesday a “joint patrol […] seized a vehicle with 1,700 pounds (760 kilograms) of heroin, 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of hashish, 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of wet opium,five anti-personal mines, and bomb-making materialsin Kandahar […]” (2).
As Afghanistan was getting ravaged with bombs, the U.S. government enlisted the help of the Northern Alliance led by warlord Rashid Dostum to do their bidding on the ground. In a U.S. orchestrated operation, the Northern Alliancecaptured the Taliban stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif. Thousands of Taliban fighters were taken prisoner in the nearby town of Kunduz. Kunduz fell in November of that year, and in December, New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall reported, “dozens…of prisoners asphyxiated in shipping containers used to transport them to [the] prison in Shibarghan, a journey that took two or three days” (3). The NA needed to transport thousands of “potentially dangerous men” and as such they were stuffed into sealed containers that often line the roads of Afghanistan and are used to transport prisoners. This figure of “dozens” comes from the prison commander who admitted that 43 had died during the journey, most from combat injuries. However, inquiry with inmates held in Shibarghan lead Gall to believe that the actual number of deaths may be much higher.
The following May, Gall offered a follow-up report, offering the news, “A tangle of abandoned clothes, half-covered in sand, lies just off the desert track. Pieces of white bone are strewn among the mess and the smell of decaying bodies drifts over the site” (4). She then went on to offer some background information on what she had discovered: The desert outside Shibarghan “hides what are suspected to be large-scale killings committed five months ago by Afghan allies of the US” (3).
“Kill Team” in Afghanistan Exposed for War Crimes
As for a more recent event, rogue members of a platoon from the fifth Stryker Combat Brigade, second infantry division were charged with killing civilians for sport and for dismembering and photographing corpses. According to the army’s own charge documents, an Afghan man approached the platoon in the small village of La Mohammed Kalay. One soldier, falling back on the excuse that they were under attack, threw a fragmentary grenade and ordered others to open fire. This unprovoked attack, taking place on January 15th, was the beginning of a wide-reaching shooting spree against civilians. The subsequent investigation has pressured the belief that the military ignored warnings of the rouge soldiers and what they were doing.
One of the soldiers facing charges, Spc. Adam Winfield, wrote home to his parents after he was notified of the killings done by his fellow soldiers, “I’m not sure what to do about something that happened out here, but I need to be secretive about this” (5). He wrote this on a Facebook message to his parents, dated January 15th, 2009. About a month later, he was able to present his family with the details. Soldiers in his unit were on patrol and killed, “some innocent guy about my age, just farming” (5). He then added that those who had committed the murder suggested that he “get one of his own.” The soldier’s father, Christopher Winfield, went to contact the Army through a hotline in order to prompt an investigation. However, his efforts were all for none.Months later, two more Afghan civilians were killed.
Spc. Winfield later told his parents that he had “proof that they [the soldiers in his unit] are planning another one in the form of an AK-47 they want to drop on a guy” (6). He added that he felt a strong concern for his personal safety if he made the decision to report the killings to the authorities. “Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger for it? Or just shut up and deal with it,” adding, “There are no more good men left here. It eats away at my conscience every day” (7). Winfield had good reason to worry. Another soldier in the same unit, Pfc. Justin Stoner, who told superiors about hashish-smoking among soldiers, was savagely beaten by several members of the platoon. Staff Sgt. Gibbsand another soldier further intimidated Stoner by displaying on the floor a set of severed fingers, telling Stoner that “if I don’t want to end up like that guy…shut the hell up” (6). This led Stoner to tell investigators about the murders of the three Afghan civilians.
Spec. Jeremy N. Morlock, 22, and a member of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigadeadmitted to taking place in the killings, which took place in the Kandahar province between January and May 2009. He attempted to shift the blame entirely on Gibbs, claiming that he was the one that planted the ideawith their unit to kill innocent Afghans. “Gibbs had pure hatred for all Afghanis and constantly referred to them as savages,” Morlock said in one statement, details of which were first reported by the Associated Press (8).
Morlock, Gibbs and three other U.S. soldiers have been charged with murder in the deaths of the three Afghan civilians. In some of the most gruesome allegations against American military personnel since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they and other soldiers from their platoon also face charges of using hashish, dismembering and photographing corpses, and possessing human bones. Morlock’s defense attorney sought to toss out his client’s statements by arguing that he was on heavy medication at the time of his discussion with Army investigators in May of that year.
The Guardian - 2011 'Kill team' US platoon commander guilty of Afghan murders
Calvin Gibbs, who made soldiers help him kill civilians and take body part 'trophies', could be out in less than 10 years
Chris McGreal in Washington
Friday 11 November 2011 14.36 AEDT
A US military court has convicted an army squad commander of leading a "kill team" in Afghanistan that murdered unarmed civilians and collected body parts as war trophies.
But Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 26, could be freed in less than 10 years after receiving a life sentence with the possibility of early parole for murder, assault and conspiracy over the killings of three Afghans in separate incidents staged to look as if the victims were combatants.
In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, Gibbs recruited other soldiers to murder civilians he called "savages" after he took over command of a US army squad in Afghanistan's Kandahar province in November 2009. Prosecutors described Gibbs as hunting innocent Afghans "for sport", a view reinforced by the staff sergeant's statement likening the amputation of body parts as trophies to collecting antlers from a deer.
The military prosecutor, Major Rob Stelle, told the court: "Sergeant Gibbs had a charisma, he had a 'follow me' personality. But it was all a bunch of crap, he had his own mission: murder and depravity. No one died before Sergeant Gibbs showed up."
Gibbs was convicted of murder for inciting two soldiers to kill 15-year-old Gul Mudin as he worked in a field. The platoon commander gave a grenade to one of the soldiers, Jeremy Morlock, who threw it at Mudin. A second soldier, Andrew Holmes, then shot the boy. Gibbs played with the corpse of the teenager "as if it was a puppet", Morlock told the trial.
The staff sergeant was also convicted of shooting dead Marach Agha, a man sleeping by a roadside, and then planting a Kalashnikov next to the corpse to make it look as if he was a fighter. He kept part of the victim's skull as a trophy.
Gibbs was convicted on a third count of murder for killing a Muslim cleric, Mullah Adahdad, with a grenade and then shooting him. Two other soldiers, Morlock and Adam Winfield, have already pleaded guilty over their roles in the killing.
Gibbs and other soldiers collected fingers, teeth and other body parts as trophies. They also took photographs of themselves posing next to their dead victims. In one of the pictures Morlock is seen lifting Mudin's [teenager's] head by its hair for the camera and smiling. The soldiers also took ghoulish pictures of themselves with dead combatants.
The jury of five soldiers was shown pages of Facebook messages sent by Winfield to his parents in which he described how Gibbs led the killings. In one exchange with his father Winfield recounted Mudin's killing.
"An innocent dude. They planned and went through with it. I knew about it. Didn't believe they were going to do it. Then it happened. Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It's OK with all of them pretty much. Except me. I want to do something about it. The only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone. The guy who did it is the golden boy in the company who can never do anything wrong and it's my word against theirs," Winfield wrote.
Winfield later told investigators: "[Gibbs] likes to kill things. He is pretty much evil incarnate. I mean, I have never met a man who can go from one minute joking around, then mindless killings."
The court martial was told that Gibbs had six skull tattoos on his leg to mark up each of his "kills" from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In his testimony Gibbsdenied responsibility for the killings, saying the victims all died in legitimate combat. But he did admit slicing off body parts from Afghans, including the fingers of a man, and keeping them or giving them to other soldiers as trophies.
"In my mind I was there to take the antlers off the deer. You have to come to terms with what you're doing. Shooting people is not an easy thing to do," said Gibbs.
The prosecution witnesses against Gibbs included members of his army unit who were also involved in the atrocities. Morlock and Holmes have pleaded guilty to murder and received prison sentences of 24 years and seven years respectively.Winfield pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for failing to prevent other soldiers from attacking Afghan civilians. He was jailed for three years.
Another soldier, Michael Wagnon, is awaiting trial over the killings and collecting human body parts.
The killings came to light in May after the army began investigating an assault on a soldier, Justin Stoner, after he reported to superiors that members of his unit were smoking hashish. Gibbs, Morlock and other members of the platoon are alleged to have beaten Stoner and told him to keep his mouth shut. Stoner reported the beating and told investigators what he knew of the "kill team".
Prosecutors called Gibbs "monstrous" and "savage" and told the military jury he should never be released from prison. But the jurors acceded to the convicted soldier's plea to have the hope of being reunited with his son and sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole after less than 10 years.
take town of: Mazar-i-Sharif 1,000s Taliban fighters taken prisoner (Kunduz) transport to prison in Shibarghan 3-day journey ➭ dozens captives suffocated in sealed shipping containers
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COMMENT
Checking some old stories, as I was having a look at some old photos to get a feel for 2010 wars. I missed out on what was going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, because I wasn't interested at the time.
On reading of the random killings of civilians and body parts collection, the initial feeling was horror and disgust.
It makes no sense to kill civilians for nothing and it's sick to play around with dead things, glorifying the slaughter and glorifying one's role in committing the slaughter.
While you want people in the military (esp. the army) that can kill and aren't at all squeamish, you don't want sickos targeting civilians or killing unjustly and randomly, and certainly not sickos with a fetish for body parts.
But I'm not sure why that's so offensive. As in, when people are dead, they're dead.
I guess because it goes beyond maybe taking a photograph of someone killed in combat (but this wasn't even combat, it was civilians randomly targeted), and it's taking disgusting trophies -- which is a lot like playing around with and treasuring decay. [I'm eating toast at the moment & my stomach's sort of unhappy with that imagery.]
It's sick to be that hung up on dead things, and the entire thing was staged to pump up this guy's ego and self-image as 'killer.'
It didn't even matter to him that the whole thing was a fraud (in the sense that his victims weren't even combatants) and that he was therefore no great combatant.
Odds are that the Staff Sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, is a psychopath.
That it was a US military commander, that it was planned in advance, and that the platoon (15-30 soldiers) were OK with this, is damning of the US military.
The Winfield guy getting 3 years prison seems harsh, seeing he wasn't involved and wasn't into what his unit was doing, and seeing he expressed fear about speaking up about what was going on.
*I can't believe they're going to free the sicko commander & let him loose in US society.
Middle East Eye British news website 'independently funded' David Hearst, editor (formerly at The Guardian) wholly owned by MEE Ltd sole director: Jamal Bassasso fmr director at Qatari-funded al-Jazeera
MIDDLE EAST EYE
Revealed: The mercenaries commanding UAE forces in Yemen The UAE has brought in experienced foreign military officers to command an elite force reporting to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed
Rori Donaghy
Wednesday 23 December 2015 09:30 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 26 December 2015 12:25 UTC
An Australian citizen is the commander of an elite UAE military force deployed inYemen as part of theSaudi-led coalition, which human rights groups accuse of war crimes.
Mike Hindmarsh, 59, is a former senior Australian army officer who is publicly listed as commander of the UAE’s Presidential Guard.
The Presidential Guard is a unit of marines, reconnaissance, aviation, special forces and mechanised brigades, according to the US State Department website.
Hindmarshoversaw the guard’s formation in early 2010 shortly after he took up his estimated $500,000-a-year, tax-free job in Abu Dhabi, where he reports directly toCrown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
The Presidential Guard has been lauded for playing a key role in the Saudi-led coalition seeking to reinstall the exiled Yemeni government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
The coalition was formed in Marchto push back the rebel Houthi movement, which Arab Gulf states view as being backed by regional rival Iran.
Presidential Guard troops have been in Yemen since 4 May, and were reported to have played a key role in the recapturing of port city Aden by local Hadi-allied forces on 17 July.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International have called for a suspension of arms exports to members of the Saudi-led coalition after reporting what they described as “damning evidence” of war crimes in Yemen. There is no evidence to suggest that Hindmarsh is responsible for the alleged war crimes claimed by rights groups.
At least 5,700 people – about half of them civilians – have been killed since the coalition launched its campaign. Yemen was already suffering a serious humanitarian crisis before the coalition's entry into the war; however, the country’s situation has since grown increasingly grave, with more than 80 percent of the population of 24.5 million needing humanitarian assistance.
The Australian connection
While the Arab coalition fighting in Yemen is widely described as being led by Saudi Arabia, one Gulf official told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity that the external ground forces were in reality being steered by the UAE.
More than 10,000 coalition troops have been sent to Yemen and, while no official numbers have been released, it is believed that at least 1,500 Emirati troops are taking part in ground operations.
The best trained and equipped coalition troops are likely to be those from the UAE Presidential Guard, which was the only Arab force to undertake full military operations in Afghanistan, where they fought alongside American soldiers.
A defence website has estimated that there are around 5,000 soldiers in the Presidential Guard.
It was announced in 2014 that the UAE was to pay the US Marines$150mn to train the guards. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed was reported to have ordered the force to be instilled with a “warrior ethos”.
Overseeing the development of this elite force has been Hindmarsh, who had a distinguished career in the Australian army before moving to Abu Dhabi.
Hindmarsh served in his home country’s military between 1976 and 2009, during which time he received 11 awards and took part in tours that included deployments to the Middle East.
Mike Hindmarsh (UAE Armed Forces)
After first heading up the Australian SAS between January 1997 and January 1999, he moved on to command Australian Special Forces between October 2004 and January 2008, before leadingAustralian forces in the Middle East from March 2008 until January 2009.
Hindmarsh was based in Baghdad and oversaw the moving of Australia’s regional base to the UAE after their withdrawal from Iraq. Local media reported that during this time Hindmarsh had “dealings at the highest security levels with senior officials and the UAE military”.
Since then Australian troops have been based at the Minhad Air base, and earlier this year then Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that 600 Australian troops would be sent to the UAE as part of the wider fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
After moving back to Australia from the Middle East, Hindmarsh took up a new role in March 2009 heading up the Army Training Command at Victoria Barracks in Sydney for a salary of $230,000 a year.
However, in October 2009 it was announced that the Australian government had approvedHindmarshretirement from the army to take up a new role commanding the UAE Presidential Guard.
Military expertMichael Knights said Hindmarsh's role in the guard, reported on Twitter, was a “smart” move by the UAE.
“All GCC (Gulf) states should be doing this. Don’t just buy the best equipment, buy talent too,” he wrote, referring to the Gulf state's huge investment in military hardware.
It would appear that the UAE has followed the principle of bringing in experience to develop the Presidential Guard, as a quick search through LinkedIn throws up numerous results of experienced soldiers - mainly from Australia - who occupy senior roles in the elite force.
Among those working in Abu Dhabi is Peter Butson, a former Australian soldier and intelligence corps officer who since February 2014 has been an adviser to the Presidential Guard.
Scott Corrigan, a former special operations commander in the Australian army, has been a specialist adviser to the Presidential Guard since January 2013. Kevin Dolan is an evaluator for the guard and was previously a warrant officer in both the Australian and British armies. Steve Nichols is another former senior commander in the Australian army who is now in his fifth year as a senior adviser to the guards.
It is not known how many Australians work for the UAE army; however, local media reported at the time of Hindmarsh's appointment that there were "dozens" working in "leadership, training and mentoring roles".
While Australians appear to dominate the foreign contingent of commanders in the Presidential Guard, there are other nationalities who are advising and training the force.
Dizzy Dawson, a former manager at the UK’s Ministry of Defence and an ex-Royal Marine officer, is a senior security adviser to the guard; and AmericanRobert B Cross Srheaded up the UAE Presidential Guard Institute aspart of the US Marine Corps training programme.
Responding to critical comments about the UAE employing mercenaries, military expert Knights tweeted: “It is the same business whether for your original state or a new one. A good general can end a war faster, save lives.”
Knights added that employing foreign mercenaries “was a fairly traditional part of conflict before the age of nationalism”.
Mike Hindmarsh speaks to a room of Emiratis (UAE Armed Forces)
Mercenaries killed in Yemen
Some mercenaries have been killed in Yemen. The Houthi-run Saba News reported on 8 December that six Colombians and their Australian commander were killed in fighting around the flashpoint southeast province of Taiz.
Saba News updated their report on 9 December to say 14 foreign mercenaries had been killed – including two Britons and one French citizen on top of the Australian and Colombians – although this claim is unconfirmed.
Colombian mercenaries were first reported to have been fighting in Yemen in October, when about 100 former Colombian soldiers were said to have joined coalition troops, with about 800 in total planned to be sent in to back up pro-Hadi forces.
TheColombians are believed to have been recruited to fight in Yemen by the UAE. The New York Times reported in 2011 that experienced Colombian troops had been offered high salaries to join a secretive UAE force established in response to the Arab Spring uprisings.
It is not known if the Colombians fighting in Yemen are linked to the Presidential Guard; however, both the secretive force established in 2011 and the guard report directly to Mohammed bin Zayed.
Many reports have referred to the Colombians as being employees of Blackwater – a controversial American military company whose guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. However, as former Guardian Middle East editorBrian Whitaker has written, the contractor who set up the UAE force is a company called Reflex Responses.
Reflex Responses, which is also known as R2, has denied that Erik Prince, the former Blackwater chief, is behind their company.
Presidential Guard recruitment
While the Colombian and Australian mercenaries remain largely behind the scenes, the UAE Presidential Guard is far from secretive, at least in its recruitment strategies.
The guard has been promoted as a symbol of national strength, rooted in pride at how strong the UAE has become since its establishment in 1971.
The UAE has engaged in military action across the region, including in the Saudi-led coalition and the US-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria.
Abu Dhabi has independently launched air strikes in Libya – to the surprise of American officials – and been described as a “potent ally” for the US.
This developing sense of military strength is on full display in a 2011 promotional video for the Presidential Guard. Men in military fatigues singing nationalistic songs are interspersed with images of the country’s rulers and shots of the UAE’s military hardware.
A recruitment presentation posted online in October 2013 said the guard is at the “heart of the nation”. The presentation said recruitment should be targeted at men and women between the ages of 16 and 29 who are at a “crossroads” in their lives.
The guard has a Facebook page and Twitter account. Recruitment has been publicly advertised, projecting Emirati members as proud citizens protecting their country.
The Presidential Guard has not only sought to expand its numbers but its members experience has also been used to train young men completing their national service.
Mandatory national service was introduced by the UAE in June 2014. All men aged between 18 and 30 who completed secondary education must serve nine months, while those who did not must serve for two years. National service is voluntary for women, and those who sign up are trained for nine months.
A way of completing national service is to train with the Presidential Guard, according to the LinkedIn profile of one Emirati.
Some national service conscripts have been sent to fight in Yemen. However, this was stopped in September after 45 Emirati troops were killed in a Houthi attack.
Emirati families told MEE in August that they were shocked their sons had been sent to Yemen, as they had no conflict experience.
At the time, military expert Knights said the rationale behind sending national service conscripts to Yemen was likely to bring untrained troops experience as part of a nation-building exercise.
There is no official death toll of the number of UAE troops killed in Yemen.
'Ally with the Muslim Brotherhood'
There is no sign of the war in Yemen coming to an end.Peace talks between opposing sides ended in Switzerland at the weekend with little progress, while fighting continues on the ground.
According to one Gulf official, the UAE should build more pragmatic alliances on the ground in Yemen if they want the war to end soon.
The official, who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity, said that the war could be over “in two to three weeks” if the Emiratis agreed to ally with Islah, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Yemen.
“But they won’t because they have this problem with the Muslim Brotherhood,” the official said.
The UAE has led a region-wide assault on the Muslim Brotherhood, including labelling the group as terrorists domestically and supporting the Egyptian army in overthrowing Egypt's first elected president Mohamed Morsi, who is a Brotherhood leader.
Abu Dhabi has refused to work withIslah, and Emirati officials have blamed the Brotherhoodfor the failure to drive Houthi rebels out of areas including Taiz province.
Emirati disdain for the Brotherhood has gone so far that Abu Dhabi is said to have aided and abetted the Houthis' takeover of Yemeni capital Sanaa in September last year, in order to undermine the role played byIslah in the country's governance, senior sources told Middle East Eye at the time. Now, 15 months later, the Emiratis are mired in a battle to push back the Houthis, but are wary of empowering their Brotherhood foe.
The Gulf official said: “It is time for the UAE to prioritise the lives of Yemenis and ally with Islah. Their men are being killed by the Houthis and there is a clear way to end this.”
Australia's basing its $87m secret on sensitive absurdity
Date November 8, 2009
DON'T tell anyone, but the Federal Government is spending $87.5 million of your money on a new Middle East military base.
Not that it uses the word ''base''. Instead, budget papers say that the money is being spent on ''command and control enhancements'' which will ''consolidate ADF supporting assets to one location''.
Nor will it say where the base is because under a deal with the host country, Australia agrees not to reveal it. Nor does it give the location of the old bases the new one is replacing.
An ADF spokesman told The Sunday Age that Defence did not say where the bases are because of security considerations and ''host national sensitivities''.
The coyness has less to do with security and more to do with the ''sensitivities'' of the the Arab hosts, who don't want to advertise that they accommodate foreign troops and their hardware, including big, noisy aircraft with red kangaroos stencilled on the fuselage.
The secrecy leads to a curious absurdity: details and images of most of the bases are on the internet, in the Middle East press and even on ADF websites. Australian ambassadors have openly said where they are. They are mentioned in Hansard.
The Sunday Age is also a party to the subterfuge. On an ADF-escorted trip to the Middle East and Afghanistan, we undertook not to reveal ''operationally sensitive information'' - including ''the country in which ADF support bases are located outside ofIraq and Afghanistan''.
Without breaching that undertaking, we can reveal - drawing on what spies call ''open sources'' and Sunday Age readers call Google - where these bases are.
One of them has a big sign out the front, adorned with red kangaroos and the words ''Billabong Flats''. Drawing on the public record, we can reveal that bases have been or are being closed in Kuwait and Qatar.
The new one is at Al Minhad Air Base in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Australia's Middle East bases have mushroomed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Now their focus is supporting the war in Afghanistan. Australian troops going to Afghanistan acclimatise in Kuwait, at a compound attached to a US base notorious for its fast food outlets on a stretch of sand and gravel known as Fat Alley.
The base is alongsideKuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base. You can find more than you need to know about the base at globalsecurity.org, including its precise location: 29°20'48"N 47°31'15"E.
Liberal senator David Bushby visited the base on an ADF-escorted trip and told the Senate all about it on June 18. ''The ADF conducts a training course for all personnel arriving in the Middle East theatre at Billabong Flats, a base Australia maintains in Kuwait,'' he said.
The community information page on the website of the army's 3rd Brigade also mentions the Kuwait base and its fast food outlets, including one that boasts ''the world's best cheesesteak''.
About 110 soldiers at Billabong Flats form what is called the force support unit. Their presence in the emirate has been reported in newsletters issued by the Australian embassy in Kuwait.
Billabong Flats is due to close at the end of the year, in a phased consolidation of Australian bases. While its Kuwait location was handy for invading Iraq, it's not convenient for Afghanistan.
Moving it will slash flying time, saving fuel bills and offsetting the cost of the new base. When the force support unit moves to Dubai, it will join Defence's regional headquarters and the RAAF.
The Government has not announced this but Australia's ambassador to the UAE has, in an interview with Abu Dhabi's The National newspaper last month.
The paper revealed that 250 ADF personnel have been stationed at Dubai's Al Minhad Air Base since December. Air force Hercules and crews completed their move fromQatar to Dubai last Thursday, joining an Orion detachment that has been there since 2003.
By the end of the year, 500 Australians will be permanently based there, the numbers boosted by hundreds more as troops transit to and from Afghanistan.
The fact that the locations are widely known does not prevent media groups on ADF trips from spicing their stories with references to ''secret'' installations they can't identify ''for security reasons''.
Townsville radio host Steve ''Pricey'' Price revealed in a report last month, presumably filed from Billabong Flats, that: ''I'm with another wonderful bunch of Aussies in a secret spot that James Bond, Frodo Baggins or even Lawrence of Arabia could never find.''
There's a serious side to all this, said academic Richard Tanter, director of the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, which maintains an online database on Australian forces abroad. ''Governments ought to be as transparent as possible, and secrecy should only be justified in serious cases of potential danger to persons,'' Professor Tanter said.
''The double standard imposed by the UAE Government corrodes trust in co-operation between allies.
''They are fooling no one, certainly not their own people. Forcing Australia to collude in what's a fairly destructive process is a hypocritical basis for public policy.'' http://www.smh.com.au/national/australias-basing-its-87m-secret-on-sensitive-absurdity-20091107-i2vy.html
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COMMENT
Who knew Australia was such buddies with the United Arab Emirates, and who knew Australia has a base in Iraq?
It sounds like the Emirates is some kind of proxy for Western interests in the region.
The Houthis don't deserve to be attacked by Columbian mercenaries (and the rest of them) in their own country, irrespective of the military expert's history lesson.
Foreign powers are interfering with the Yemen's right to self-determination.
Might have to come back to look at this. Trouble taking it all in.
While WikiLeaks continues to make strong interventions into the global news cycle, important debates have been simmering betweeneditor Julian Assange and international relations scholars about whether or not the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department recordsWikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 (2,325,961 to be exact) are relevant to understanding how the world’s super-power operates and if Anglo-American academic institutions in the international relations discipline are biased toward the interests of US empire.
The debate raises difficult questions. Do the cables provide insight into full-spectrumdiplomacy, foreign relations, and concepts of sovereignty? If so, how can the indifference of certain prestigious associations and journals in the international relations discipline to WikiLeaks’ material be explained? Do these powerful institutions prefer to turn a blind eye to evidence that shows their theories wanting?Do they operate to provide a distorted view of the world and help prepare international studies graduates for jobs serving questionable US government interests?
Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assangecharged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material.
Professor of international politicsDaniel W. Dreznerhit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”.
For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market,self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.
Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper“WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”.
Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications.Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material.
However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.
To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeakshas produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015.
The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts — across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”.
Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world.
Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porterexamine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.
Writing in the book’s introduction, Assange proposes that the diplomatic cables provide “the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance flowed from which state organ and when”. Assange notes in his introduction that academic disciplines outside international relations, and where career aspirations do not go hand in hand with patronage by government institutions, have voluminous coverage of the cables.But the ISA does not accept submissions citing WikiLeaks’ material. Although ISA executive director Mark Boyerdenies that the association has a formal policy against publishing WikiLeaks’ material, he says that journal editors have discussed the implications of publishing material that is legally prohibited by the US government.
According to Gabriel J. Michael, author of the Yale Law School paperWho’s Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research, the ISQ has adopted a “provisional policy” against handling manuscripts that make use of leaked documents if such use could be interpreted as mishandling “classified” material. According to an ISQ editor quoted in Michael’s paper, this policy prohibits direct quotations as well as data mining, and was developed in consultation with legal counsel. Stating that editors are currently “in an untenable position”. According to the editor, ISQ’s policy will remain in place pending broader action from the ISA, which publishes several other disciplinary journals.
The ISA and ISQ concerns about handling material that the US government forbids — which include WikiLeaks’ cables — amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cables go into the heart of an empire, and reflect on matters that affect everyone.
Without WikiLeaks, the public would still be in the dark about the Trans-Pacific Partnership “agreement” currently being negotiated. The treaty aims to rewrite the global rules on intellectual property rights and would create spheres of trade which would be protected from judicial oversight.Such agreements have the potential to change the fabric of how states operate, and the leaked cables shed light on how states negotiate significant treaties, aiming to keep citizenship participation in politics out.Where academia bans the use of important leaked documents the public loses out.
Did a summary, which I'll post and link to, once I edit.
I'm sure everyone out there can read for themselves ... but it's my way of trying to remember.
Don't know how much of this I'll remember. It all makes sense now, but my retention isn't all that great. I've read an article recently on this topic, but I forgot all about it.
In a weird way, I even forget how serious the US are about targeting WikiLeaks. I knew about an 'investigation' but documents released under US freedom of information provisions refer to FBI and Dept. of Justice 'proceedings', which would mean US law enforcement is (and has been) officially mounting a case.
In turn, this means that Ecuador's decision to grant political asylum is vindicated.
And shows how the British have done away with justice and democracy, to politically persecute Australian journalist, Julian Assange, who has:
been detained for 5 years by the British, without charge; and
has been subjected to a 3-year Ecuador embassy siege, at over $19-million (American dollars);
in an effort to block his rightfully granted political asylum.
In the article, this was a huge stand-out for me:
paraphrasing
American efforts (bribes & threats) to dodge being held to account for war crimes.
Resorting to bribes and threats means there's not one, but two, wrongs committed.
WikiLeaks, having exposed the American war crimes, has also exposed US efforts to escape accountability for war crimes.
That puts the American efforts to prosecute WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange (and WikiLeaks personnel/associates) into perspective: and it's not a pretty one.
Below is confirmation in US court documents that the FBI and US Department of Justice are officially conducting a 'proceeding' against WikiLeaks.
How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war
By Ian Cobain
Published: 09:34 EST, 27 October 2012 | Updated: 09:35 EST, 27 October 2012
The German SS officer was fighting to save himself from the gallows for a terrible war crime and might say anything to escape the noose. But Fritz Knöchleinwas not lying in 1946 when he claimed that, in captivity in London, he had been tortured by British soldiers to force a confession out of him.
Tortured by British soldiers? In captivity? In London? The idea seems incredible. Britain has a reputation as a nation that prides itself on its love of fair play and respect for the rule of law. We claim the moral high ground when it comes to human rights. We were among the first to sign the 1929 Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.
Surely, you would think, the British avoid torture? But you would be wrong, as my research into what has gone on behind closed doors for decades shows.
It was in 2005 during my work as an investigative reporter that I came across a veiled mention of a World War II detention centre known as the London Cage. It took a number of Freedom Of Information requests to the Foreign Office before government files were reluctantly handed over.
From these, a sinister world unfolded — of a torture centre that the British military operated throughout the Forties, in complete secrecy, in the heart of one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the capital.
Thousands of Germans passed through the unit that became known as the London Cage, where they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to assume stress positions for days at a time.
Some were told they were to be murdered and their bodies quietly buried. Others were threatened with unnecessary surgery carried out by people with no medical qualifications. Guards boasted that they were ‘the English Gestapo’.
The London Cage was part of a network of nine ‘cages’ around Britain run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence.
Three, at Doncaster, Kempton Park and Lingfield, were at hastily converted racecourses. Another was at the ground of Preston North End Football Club. Most were benignly run.
But prisoners thought to possess valuable information were whisked off to a top-secret unit in a row of grandiose Victorian villas in Kensington Palace Gardens, then (as now) one of the smartest locations in London.
Today, the tree-lined street a stone’s throw from Kensington Palace is home to ambassadors and billionaires, sultans and princes. Houses change hands for £50 million and more.
Yet it was here, seven decades ago, in five interrogation rooms, in cells and in the guardroom in numbers six, seven and eight Kensington Palace Gardens, that nine officers, assisted by a dozen NCOs, used whatever methods they thought necessary to squeeze information from suspects.
Of course, it is crucial to put these events into context. When the gloves first came off at Britain’s interrogation centres — the summer of 1940 — German forces were racing across France and the Low Countries, and Britain was fighting for its very survival. The stakes could not have been higher. [see: Dresden fire-bombings war crime for comparison -- "well over 250,000 -- possibly as many as a half a million -- persons" killed "within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000" -- here]
In the following years, large parts of Britain’s cities were left in ruins, hundreds of thousands of service personnel and civilians died, and barely a day passed without evidence emerging of a new Nazi atrocity. Little wonder, perhaps, that it was felt acceptable for German prisoners to suffer in British interrogation centres. [I'm going to guess that the 'new Nazi atrocity' referred to, as if to justify allied war crimes, is a production of British and allied wartime propaganda, as well as the product of illegitimate 'confessions' obtained under torture.]
And it should also be said that whatever went on within their walls, it paled into insignificance compared with the horrors the Nazis visited on millions of prisoners. [And what of the Dresden genocide and what of the post-war atrocities visited upon millions of starved German civilians and German POWs deliberately murdered? Elements of this article sound like an apology for those that were much the same as their vilified German enemy, based articles and videos I've seen so far on the subject of allied crimes and atrocities.]
So, how can we be sure about the methods used at the London Cage? Because the man who ran it admitted as much — and was hushed up for half-a-century by an establishment fearful of the shame his story would bring on a Britain that had been fighting for honesty, decency and the rule of law.
That man was Colonel Alexander Scotland, an accepted master in techniques of interrogation. After the war, he wrote a candid account of his activities in his memoirs, in which he recalled how he would muse, on arriving at the Cage each morning: ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’
Because, he said, before going into detail: ‘If any German had any information we wanted, it was invariably extracted from him in the long run.’
As was customary, before publication Scotland submitted his manuscript to the War Office for clearance in 1954. Pandemonium erupted. All four copies were seized. All those who knew of its contents were silenced with threats of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.
What caused the greatest consternation was his admission that the horrors had continued after the war, when interrogators switched from extracting military intelligence to securing convictions for war crimes.
Of 3,573 prisoners who passed through Kensington Palace Gardens, more than 1,000 were persuaded to sign a confession or give a witness statement for use in war crimes prosecutions.
Fritz Knöchlein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, was one such case. He was suspected of ordering the machine-gunning of 124 British soldiers who surrendered at Le Paradis in northern France during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. His defence was that he was not even there.
At his trial, he claimed he had been tortured in the London Cage after the war. He was deprived of sleep for four days and nights after arriving in October 1946 and forced to walk in a tight circle for four hours while being kicked by a guard at each turn.
He was made to clean stairs and lavatories with a tiny rag, for days at a time, while buckets of water were poured over him. If he dared to rest, he was cudgelled. He was also forced to run in circles in the grounds of the house while carrying heavy logs and barrels. When he complained, the treatment simply got worse.
Nor was he the only one. He said men were repeatedly beaten about the face and had hair ripped from their heads. A fellow inmate begged to be killed because he couldn’t take any more brutality.
All Knöchlein’s accusations were ignored, however. He was found guilty and hanged.
Suspects in another high-profile war crime — the shooting of 50 RAF officers who broke out from a prison camp, Stalag Luft III, in what became known as the Great Escape — also passed through the Cage.
Of the 21 accused, 14 were hanged after a war-crimes trial in Hamburg. Many confessed only after being interrogated by Scotland and his men. In court, they protested that they had been starved, whipped and systematically beaten. Some said they had been menaced with red-hot pokers and ‘threatened with electrical devices’.
Scotland, of course, denied allegations of torture, going into the witness box at one trial after another to say his accusers were lying.
It was all the more surprising, then, that a few years later he was willing to come clean about the techniques he employed at the London Cage.
In his memoirs, he disclosed that a number of men were forced to incriminate themselves. A general was sentenced to death in 1946 after signing a confession at the Cage while, in Scotland’s words, ‘acutely depressed after the various examinations’.
A naval officer was convicted on the basis of a confession that Scotland said he had signed only after being‘subject to certain degrading duties’.
Scotland also acknowledged that one of the men accused of the ‘Great Escape’ murders went to the gallows even though he had confessed after he had — in Scotland’s own words — been ‘worked on psychologically’. At his trial, the man insisted he had been ‘worked on’ physically as well.
Others did not share Scotland’s eagerness to boast about what had gone on in Kensington Park Gardens. An MI5 legal adviser who read his manuscript concluded that Scotland and fellow interrogators had been guilty of a ‘clear breach’ of the Geneva Convention.
They could have faced war-crimes charges themselves for forcing prisoners to stand to attention for more than 24 hours at a time; forcing them to kneel while they were beaten about the head; threatening to have them shot; threatening one prisoner with an unnecessary appendix operation to be performed on him by another inmate with no medical qualifications.
Appalled by the embarrassment his manuscript would cause if it ever came out, the War Office and the Foreign Office both declared that it would never see the light of day.
Two years later, however, they were forced to strike a deal with him after he threatened to publish his book abroad. He was told he would never be allowed to recover his original manuscript, but agreement was given to a rewritten version in which every line of incriminating material had been expunged.
A heavily censored version of The London Cage duly appeared in the bookshops in 1957.
But officials at the War Office, and their successors at the Ministry of Defence, remained troubled.
Years later, in September 1979, Scotland’s publishers wrote to the Ministry of Defence out of the blue asking for a copy of the original manuscript by the now dead colonel for their archives.
The request triggered fresh panic as civil servants sought reasons to deny the request. But in the end they quietly deposited a copy in what is now the National Archives at Kew, where it went unnoticed — until I found it a quarter of a century later.
Is there more to tell about the London Cage? Almost certainly. Even now, some of the MoD’s files on it remain beyond reach.
Scotland, his interrogators, technicians and typists, and the towering guardsmen left the building in January 1949. The villas were unoccupied for several years.
Eventually, numbers six and seven were leased to the Soviet Union, which was looking for a new embassy building. Today, they house the chancery of the Russian embassy.
Number eight — where it is thought the worst excesses were carried out — remained empty. It was too large to be a family home in the post-war years and in too poor a state of repair to be converted to offices. By 1955, the building had fallen into such disrepair it was sold to a developer, who knocked it down and built a block of three luxury flats. One that went on the market in 2006 was valued at £13.5 million.
The Cage was not, however, Britain’s only secret interrogation centre during and after World War II. MI5 also operated an interrogation centre, code-named Camp 020, at Latchmere House, a Victorian mansion near Ham Common in South-West London, whose 30 rooms were turned into cells with hidden microphones.
The first of the German spies who arrived in Britain in September 1940 were taken there. Vital information about a coming German invasion was extracted at great speed. This indicates the use of extreme methods, but these were desperate days demanding desperate measures. In charge was Colonel Robin Stephens, known as ‘Tin Eye’, because of the monocle fixed to his right eye.
It was not a term of affection. The object of interrogation, Stephens told his officers, was simple: ‘Truth in the shortest possible time.’ A top secret memo spoke of ‘special methods’, but did not elaborate.
He arranged for an additional 92-cell block to be added to Latchmere House, plus a punishment room — known chillingly as Cell 13 — which was completely bare, with smooth walls and a linoleum floor.
Close to 500 people passed through the gates of Camp 020. Principal among them were German spies, many of whom were ‘turned’ and persuaded — or maybe forced — to work for MI5.
Its first inmates were members of the British Union of Fascists. Some were held in cells brightly lit 24 hours a day, others in cells kept in total darkness.
Several prisoners were subjected to mock executions and were knocked about by the guards. Some were apparently left naked for months at a time.
Camp 020 had a resident medical officer, Harold Dearden, a psychiatrist who dreamed up regimes of starvation and of sleep and sensory deprivation intended to break the will of its inmates. He experimented in techniques of torment that left few marks — methods that could be denied by the torturers and that civil servants and government ministers could disown.
These techniques surfaced again after the war in a British interrogation facility at Bad Nenndorf, a German spa town, in one of the internment camps for those considered a threat to the Allied occupation.
In the four years after the war, 95,000 people were interned in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Some were interrogated by what was now termed the Intelligence Division.
In charge of Bad Nenndorf was ‘Tin Eye’ Stephens,on attachment from MI5, and drawing on his Camp 020 experiences. An inmate recalled him yelling questions at prisoners and then punching them.
Over the next two years, 372 men and 44 women would pass through his hands. One German inmate recalled being told by a British intelligence officer: ‘We are not bound by any rules or regulations. We do not care a damn whether you leave this place on a stretcher or in a hearse.’
He was made to sleep on a wet floor in a temperature of minus 20 degrees for three days. Four of his toes had to be amputated due to frostbite.
A doctor in a nearby hospital complained about the number of detainees brought to him filthy, confused and suffering from multiple injuries and frostbite. Many were painfully emaciated after months of starvation. A number died.
The regime was intended to weaken, humiliate and intimidate prisoners.
With complaints soaring, a British court of inquiry was convened to investigate what had been going at Bad Nenndorf. It concluded that former inmates’ allegations of physical assault were substantially correct. Stephens and four other officers were arrested while Bad Nenndorf was abruptly closed.
But there was a quandary for the Labour government. The political fallout could be deeply damaging. There were other similar interrogation centres in Germany.
From the very top, there were urgent moves to hush things up.
Stephens’ court martial for ill-treatment of prisoners was heard behind closed doors. He did not deny any of the horrors. His defence was that he had no idea the prisoners for whom he was responsible were being beaten, whipped, frozen, deprived of sleep and starved to death.
This was the very defence that had been offered — unsuccessfully — by Nazi concentration camp commandants at war-crimes trials. But he was acquitted.
When it comes to propaganda, lies, corruption, cruelty, murder, war crimes, and evil, it looks like it's a level playing field: there's no distinction between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'.
Everything is a lie.
The account in this article is a drop in the ocean of injustices and crimes committed by the 'good guys' before, during and after world wars, and in the 70 years since.
Seventy years since the WWII torture of Germans and various other war crimes committed by the British and the Americans, the corrupt, lying, lawless and morally bankrupt British authorities hold an Australian journalist hostage of political persecution and detention without charge, following WikiLeaks exposure of modern day corruption and war crimes of Western governments.
Assange is denied medical access and deprived of liberty, under threat of extradition to the convicted in absentia, war criminal, torturing, kidnapping and assassinating Americans, while the bustling modern world stands by and lets these long-time bad actors and geopolitical villains get away with this crime, day after day for 5 years.
Does anybody else feel sick knowing there's no limit to the depths of Western state depravity, lies and hypocrisy?
How odd that the Russians have been allocated the British torture chamber interrogation suites in London as embassy premises.
Is this some kind of attempt at modern-day psychological warfare on the Russian ambassadors in London, I'm wondering?
Although I'm appalled by disclosures in the article, I'm also kind of drawn to the creepiness of the torture chamber and imagine a visit to the back end of the Russian embassy in London could be an interesting and eerie experience.
The British were torturing German prisoners 4 years after the end of war, but it's unclear to me why, when the war was a long time over.
First inmates of the London torture chambers were members of the British Union of Fascists.
As the torturing war criminal Western governments are just totalitarian fronts for elites and their corporate interests, the first round targeting of fascists with state torture is probably based more on the existing political and economic elite's determination to maintain its power, than on the objective merits of proposals by fascists:
"British fascist corporatism planned to replace the House of Lords with elected executives drawn from major industries, the clergy, and colonies. The House of Commons was to be reduced to allow for a faster, "less factionist" democracy." [wikipedia]
Replacement of the House of Lords sounds like a sensible idea, but replacing the overlords with industrialists and clergy is just allocating power to more of the same types of elites, isn't it?
Don't know enough about political fascism to judge these ideas as a whole.
Hey, I've just realised that the CAGE support for victims of 'war on terror' UK NGO is probably styled after the original British Cage torture history name.
As torture and war, disguised as 'national security' and 'humanitarianism', has continued unabated the last 70 years, the warmonger elite serving Western puppet state fronts for what poses as 'democracy' and representative government, really ought to drop the entirely unconvincing 'peace' and 'humanitarian' propaganda: the financial and social costs of serial US-led military interventions, resulting in blow-back invasion by refugee immigration that inundates the Western austerity-punished underprivileged, Western working classes and Western taxpayers, is evident to those bearing the brunt of blow-back, whose societies are being wilfully destroyed by treasonous, lying, elite and foreign interest serving politicians.
EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 
