statism watch

Flashback: US justice department to investigate CIA over interrogation methods | Obama approves new interrogation unit | Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions” | Guantanamo’s closure window dressing – overseas CIA ‘black sites’ to stay | Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | After Obama praises torture ruling, civil liberties group appalled | Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ | Obama requests Guantánamo Bay tribunals suspension | Inauguration triggers joy, jubilation around world

Anthony Gregory, Campaign for Liberty
August 25, 2009

About two years ago, candidate Obama, writing in Foreign Affairs, strongly criticized Bush’s practice of “extraordinary renditioning.” Under this policy, terror suspects were apprehended, transferred, sometimes through secret prisons and black cites, and handed over to foreign regimes like Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes this involved torture. Maher Arar, for example, was a Canadian citizen later determined to be innocent, captured in New York and sent to Syria where he was tortured in brutal ways. See this piece in the New Yorker chroniciling other such horror stories.

Obama’s criticism of renditioning, along with his general criticism of the Bush administration’s violations of habeas corpus, was one of his most serious indictments of the war on terrorism as managed by the Republicans.

Now the New York Times reports that “[t]he Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured.”

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Get ready for a big hike in your internet usage bill as Bell introduces bandwidth cap price tiers and restricts its wholesale reseller’s ability to offer generous bandwidth to customers. The penalty for overage? Excess fees and the threat of disconnection at Bell’s whim.

CBC News
August 24, 2009

The CRTC wants Bell Canada to explain the prices it plans to charge wholesale internet customers when it rolls out a new billing model based on monthly usage later this year.

In a letter dated Aug. 20, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said it wants Bell to explain how it has calculated the prices wholesale customers such as MTS Allstream and Teksavvy will be charged, and how the new usage-based billing model will reduce internet traffic during peak times.

The CRTC two weeks ago provisionally granted Bell’s request to impose usage-based billing on wholesale customers, which are companies that rent parts of its network through a process known as Gateway Access Service (GAS) to provide their own retail internet products.

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BBC News
August 24, 2009

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”

He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

“It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

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Flashback: Obama approves new interrogation unit | Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions” | Guantanamo’s closure window dressing – overseas CIA ‘black sites’ to stay | Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | After Obama praises torture ruling, civil liberties group appalled | Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ | Obama requests Guantánamo Bay tribunals suspension | Inauguration triggers joy, jubilation around world

Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian
August 24, 2009

US attorney general pushes ahead with investigation as CIA releases previously hidden documents

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, is poised to order a special criminal investigation into CIA agents who may have gone too far in the interrogation of al-Qaida and other suspects taken after the 9/11 attacks, it emerged today.

Holder’s intention to push ahead with an investigation came on the day that the CIA was ordered by the court to release hundreds of pages of previously hidden documents detailing how interrogations were conducted.

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Unbelievable. It’s Orwell’s ‘ Ministry of Love‘. Has it really come to this? Is the creation of a centralized state interrogation squad reporting to the executive branch a good thing? No – that is a fascist thing. And, no, it doesn’t make it any better if it’s Obama that does it.

Flashback: Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions” | Guantanamo’s closure window dressing – overseas CIA ‘black sites’ to stay | Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | After Obama praises torture ruling, civil liberties group appalled | Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ | Obama requests Guantánamo Bay tribunals suspension | Inauguration triggers joy, jubilation around world

Devlin Barrett and Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press
August 24, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama has approved creation of a new, special terrorism-era interrogation unit to be supervised by the White House, a top aide said today, further distancing his administration from Bush-era detainee policies.

The new unit does not mean the CIA is out of the interrogation business, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters covering the vacationing Mr. Obama in Massachusetts. Mr. Burton said the unit will include “all these different elements under one group,” and it said that it will be situated at the FBI headquarters in Washington. The unit would be led by an FBI official, with a deputy director from somewhere in the government’s vast intelligence apparatus, and members from across agencies.

It will be directly supervised by the White House.

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Flashback: Has Karzai overstayed his welcome? | Britain and US prepared to open talks with the Taliban | Afghan President Karzai registers for re-election, picks warlord as running mate | Afghanistan needs 4,000 extra soldiers for elections: NATO | Canadian troops could soon target Afghan drug trade: top soldier | Reports reveal concerns over drug use among Canadian military | Afghan government sacks Kandahar governor | US faces downward spiral in Afghan war, says leaked intelligence report | NATO to let troops fight Afghan drug lords | Karzai’s kin linked to heroin trafficking | Afghani Narco-state Continues to Blossom under Puppet President

Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star
August 24, 2009

KABUL–A polling station located right in the home of a district police chief: not smart.

A district police chief who happened to be appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai: really not smart.

A polling station in the home of a district police chief appointed by Karzai, in a province, Kandahar, where the president’s half-brother – widely accused of breathtaking corruption – is the de facto governor: really really not smart.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah – main rival to the incumbent in Afghanistan’s presidential elections – made the accusation yesterday, claiming the police official in question had stuffed ballot boxes in favour of Karzai and wouldn’t let his campaign observers into that polling site.

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