– Henry Kissinger;

– Shimon Peres;

– Yitzhak Rabin;

– Menachem Begin;

– FW de Klerk;

– Al Gore;

– The Dalai Lama, a covert CIA asset;

– Kofi Annan, a reliable imperial war supporter;

– UN Peacekeeping (Paramilitary) Forces that foster more conflicts than they resolve;

– Elie Wiesel, a hawkish Islamophobe;

– Norman Borlaug, whose “green revolution” wheat strains killed millions;

– Medecins Sans Frontieres, co-founded by rabid war hawk Bernard Kouchner, now France’s Minister of Foreign and European Affairs;

– Woodrow Wilson who broke his pledge to keep “us out of war,”

– Jimmy Carter who backed an array of tyrants and drew the Soviets into its Afghan quagmire that took a million or more lives;

– George C. Marshall, instrumental in creating NATO and waging war against North Korea;

– Theodore Roosevelt who once said “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one;” and

– other undeserving winners….”War is peace,” what Orwell understood and why the award legitimizes wars and the leaders who wage them.

After the October 9 announcement, The New York Times quoted 2007 winner Al Gore saying it was “thrilling” without explaining it was as undeserved as his own. Writers Steven Erlanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg called it a “surprise.” For others it shocked and betrayed.

Palestinian Muhammad al-Sharif asked: “Has Israel stopped building settlements? Has Obama achieved a Palestinian state yet?”

Iyad Burnat, one of the West Bank’s non-violent protest leaders, “started to go crazy” after hearing about the award. “I asked myself why. The Americans are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Palestine is still occupied….Why didn’t (they) give the prize to (George Bush. He) worked very hard (for) eight years killing children, starting wars and supporting the occupation, and they gave the prize to (other choices). I think (the) prize makes the people more violent. Do you think that Obama can make peace….why didn’t (they) wait until he actually made” it.

Straddling both sides, The Times said that the “unexpected honor….elicited praise and puzzlement around the globe.”

It called it a rebuke of Bush’s foreign policies instead of explaining it legitimizes wars and conflicts, the same ones Obama’s pursuing more aggressively in Afghanistan and Pakistan under a general (Stanley McChrystal) James Petras calls a “notorious psychopath” – responsible for committing war crime atrocities when he headed the Pentagon’s infamous Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). No matter, according to Erlanger and Stolberg’s Times-speak:

“Mr. Obama has generated considerable goodwill overseas (and) has made a series of speeches with arching ambition. He has vowed to pursue a world without nuclear weapons; reached out to the Muslim world (and) sought to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, at the expense of offending some of his Jewish supporters.”

In fact, his speeches are disingenuous and lie-filled. He disdains peace. The renamed “Global War on Terror” is now the “Overseas Contingency Operation.” Torture remains official US policy. His administration reeks of Islamophobes. The Israeli Lobby remains comfortably dominant. Muslims are still target one. His ambition is global dominance. His method – imperial wars with a first-strike nuclear option.

The Nobel Committee’s Twisted Logic in Announcing the Award

It reflects Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Fact Check:

In less than nine months in office, Obama has been confrontational through destabilizing belligerence towards numerous countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, China, Occupied Palestine, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Somalia, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Honduras by deposing a democratically elected president and obstructing efforts to reinstate him.

“Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Fact Check:

America has the world’s largest, most threatening arsenal and global delivery systems. Besides Israel, it’s the only major power with a first-strike nuclear policy against any country called a threat. Its drawdown plans will replace old weapons with better new ones, and so-called “missile defense” is solely for offense.

“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multinational diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions play.”

Fact Check:

Obama is pursuing the same policies as George Bush:

– permanent wars and occupations;

– record amounts of military spending at a time America has no enemies;

– supplying arms and munitions to rogue state allies;

– confronting independent ones with sanctions, belligerent threats, and more war;

– subverting the rule of law;

– pursuing a global jihad against human rights and civil liberties;

– using Security Council pressure and intimidation to enforce policy and block constructive measures through vetoes; and

– overall continuing America’s hegemonic pursuit of “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.

Under Obama, “the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climate challenges the world is confronting.”

Fact Check:

Obama’s House-passed “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″ is environmentally destructive, lets corporate polluters reap huge windfall profits by charging consumers more for energy and fuel, and creates new Wall Street bubble potential through carbon trading derivatives speculation.

According to Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the “US stance retards progress at Bangkok climate talks” the way it’s obstructed earlier efforts.

“Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.”

Fact Check:

Obama’s polices have weakened them at home and abroad. Torture remains official US policy. Muslims, Latino immigrants, and environmental and animal rights activists are repeated victims. So are peaceful protestors. Police state measures are still law and tough new ones are planned. Civil and human rights issues are nonstarters. Warrantless illegal spying continues. Health care reform schemes will ration a human right, and the new Swine Flu vaccines are covert bioweapons.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Fact Check:

Under Obama, growing millions in America face poverty, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, despair, ill health, and early deaths at a time of permanent wars.

“For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely the international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.”

Fact Check:

Skirting the truth, the Committee’s twisted logic picks honorees who should face prosecutions for their crimes.

A 110-Year Tradition

Alfred Nobel (1833 – 1896) began it in 1901. Swedish- born, he was a wealthy 19th century chemist, engineer, dynamite inventor, armaments manufacturer, and war profiteer, later reinventing himself as a peacemaker.

Past nominees included Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Tony Blair, Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush. Mahatma Gandhi got four nominations but never won. Nor did three-time nominee Kathy Kelly and other deserving choices, passed over for war hawks like Henry Kissenger whose credentials include:

– three – four million Southeast Asian deaths;

– many tens of thousands more worldwide;

– backing coups and despots;

– stoking global conflict and violence; and

– compiling an overall breathtaking criminal record.

Others like:

– Israeli leaders Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin matched him against Palestinian civilians;

– Kofi Annan backed Western imperialism, years of genocidal Iraqi sanctions, the 2003 invasion and occupation, and the same lawlessness against Afghanistan; and

– Al Gore, the 2007 choice, was infamous for putting politics above principles and made a career out of being pro-war, pro-business, anti-union, and no friend of the earth – credentials descriptive of Obama and his national security team, ideologically stacked with hawks.

As a result, American war making continues, sanctified and legitimized under Obama’s peacemaker mantle. Or as CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn put it in his October 10 “War and Peace” article:

The award is “a twist on the Alger myth, inspiring to youth (and future Nobel hopefuls): you too can get to murder Filipinos, or Palestinians, or Vietnamese or Afghans and still win a Peace Prize. That’s the audacity of hope at full stretch.” Nobel hypocrisy also by scorning peace in favor of war. The tradition continues.

Besides detailed information on torture and abusive treatment, they obtained damning, consistent detainee accounts of medical personnel involvement, including:

– their monitoring of and direct participation in torture procedures;

– instructing interrogators to continue, adjust, or stop certain ones;

– informing detainees that medical treatment depended on their cooperation;

– performing medical checks before and after each transfer; and

– treating the effects of torture as well as ailments and injuries during incarceration.

Condoning or participating in torture grievously breaches medical ethics and the 1975 World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Tokyo “Guidelines for Physicians Concerning Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Relation to Detention and Imprisonment.” It states:

– in all cases at all times, “physician(s) shall not countenance, condone or participate in” torture or any other form of abuse;

– they “shall not use nor allow to be used (their) medical knowledge or skills, or health information” to aid interrogation in any way;

– they “shall not be present during any procedure during which torture or any other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is used or threatened;”

– they “must have complete clinical independence” in treating persons for whom they’re medically responsible; and

– WMA encourages the international community and fellow physicians to support medical professionals who face “threats or reprisals resulting from a refusal to condone” all forms of torture and abuse.

Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Conventions states:

“Persons engaged in medical activities shall neither be compelled to perform acts or to carry out work contrary to, nor be compelled to refrain from acts required by, the rules of medical ethics or other rules designed for the benefit of the wounded and sick, or this Protocol.”

On July 7, 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan Marks published an article titled, “Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay” in which they cited evidence that “Health information (was) routinely available to behavioral science consultants and others” engaged in interrogations, in violation of strict medical ethics.

In early 2003, detainee medical records were readily available, and since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists were involved in crafting extreme stress techniques “combined with behavior-shaping rewards to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives.”

“Wholesale disregard for clinical confidentiality” seriously breaches medical ethics “since it makes every caregiver into an accessory to intelligence gathering.” It also “puts prisoners at greater risk for serious abuse.”

In July 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) published a report titled, “Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” that included evidence of medical personnel involvement in torture.

Detainee Othman Abdulraheem Mohammad was told that medical treatment would depend on his cooperation. Lakhdar Boumediene said every time he requested care he was told to ask permission from his interrogators. They “controlled his access, (and it) was granted or denied based on the interrogator’s assessment of his level of cooperation.”

Bosnian prisoner medical records confirmed that medical staff were present during their interrogations “and authorized (them) to proceed.”

Medical personnel monitored Mohammed al Qahtani’s interrogation during nearly two months of “severe sleep deprivation and physical stress.” At one point, they rushed him to the base hospital when his heart rate dropped dangerously low. After stabilization, they returned him the next day for more interrogation.

Other prisoners described doctors performing unnecessary and abusive procedures, including forced amputations, after which they were denied proper treatment.

Psychiatrists and psychologists designed “extreme interrogation techniques as part of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT).” In late 2002, it was tasked “to torment detainees in interrogations….”

International and US Laws Prohibiting Torture

Numerous international and US laws unequivocally ban torture under all conditions at all times with no allowed exceptions ever, for any reasons, including in times of war.

The Third Geneva Convention covers war prisoners and detainees. It prohibits torture and protects their right to be treated humanely against “violence to life and person (and) humiliating and degrading treatment” as well as to judicial fairness and proper medical treatment. The Fourth Geneva Convention affords the same rights to civilians in times of war.

The federal anti-torture statute (18 USC, 2340A) prohibits its use outside the US and defines it as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering….upon another person within his custody or physical control.”

The 1991 Torture Victims Protection Act authorizes civil suits in America against individuals, acting in an official capacity for a foreign state, who committed torture and/or extrajudicial killing.

The 1984 UN Convention Against Torture bans all forms of torture, cruel and degrading treatment in all circumstances at all times with no exceptions ever allowed.

The US Constitution’s Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

The US Army’s Field Manual 27-10 states that military or civilian persons may be punished for committing war crimes (that include abusive interrogations) under international law. Army Field Manual 34-52 outlines interrogation procedures and specifically prohibits force, mental torture, threats, and inhumane treatment.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) bans cruelty, oppression, actions intended to degrade or humiliate, and physical, menacing, and threatening assaults. Army Regulation (AR) 190-8 protects detainees from violence, assaults, and insults, and directs that they be treated humanely with respect.

The 1996 US War Crimes Act prohibits grave Geneva Convention breaches, including (as stipulated under Common Article III) “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture (as well as) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Other binding international laws also prohibit torture, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1992 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights with no exceptions or justifications allowed, such as orders by field commanders, Pentagon officials, or the President of the United States.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)

Founded in 1986, PHR “mobilizes health professionals to advance health, dignity, and justice and promotes the right to health for all.” It also “investigates human rights abuses and works to stop them” in conflict zones, US prisons, and offshore detention facilities where torture is routinely practiced.

In 2005, it published a report titled, “Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces,” which it called the first comprehensive examination of “the use of psychological torture by US personnel in the so-called ‘war on terror,’ ” including sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, using fierce dogs to instill fear, cultural and sexual humiliation, mock executions, and threatened violence against loved ones.

It called the effects devastating and longer-lasting than physical torture, and said psychological abuse is morally reprehensible and illegal under international and US law.

In August 2009, PHR published a new report titled, “Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Revealed in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report,” including ethical misconduct not previously known. It revealed the role of health professionals involved “at every stage in the development, implementation and legitimization of this torture program.”

It explained that doctors and psychologists actively participated in abusive interrogations and contributed to the physical and mental suffering of detainees. It called their actions “an unconscionable affront to the profession of medicine,” made worse by experimenting on inmates, then “aggregat(ing) data on (their) reaction to interrogation methods.”

PHR’s Steven Reisner said “They were experimenting and keeping records of the results,” a war crime under Geneva and the Nuremberg Code that requires “voluntary consent” of human subjects and prohibits experiments:

– that inflict “unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury;”

– if there’s “an a priori reason to believe death or disabling injury will occur;” and

– from being implemented if there’s reason to believe they’ll cause “injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.”

PHR’s report detailed the psychological and medical effects:

– forced shaving inflicts psychological harm “by means of humiliation, both personal and religious;”

– hooding disorients and causes acute anxiety depression, depersonalization, and abnormal behavior;

– dietary manipulation inflicts discomfort and psychological stress;

– prolonged diapering causes physical and psychological stress and harm;

– walling inflicts physical injuries as well as psychological stress, rage, and helplessness;

– confinement in a box in extreme stress positions causes extreme physical and psychological pain and trauma; and

– other abuses, including waterboarding that simulates drowning and the feeling of helplessness to prevent it.

Involvement of Medical Professionals

They help develop, implement, provide cover for, and justify torture and abusive practices. They’re actively involved in designing harmful interrogation techniques in clear violation of the law and medical ethics. They’re “complicit in selecting and then rationalizing (methods) whose safety and efficacy in eliciting accurate information have no valid basis in science.” Their actions constitute “a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation.”

CIA guidelines require health professionals, including a doctor and psychologist, to be present during enhanced interrogations, “thereby placing (them) in the untenable position of calibrating harm rather than serving as protectors and healers as” their ethical code demands.

They also participate in initial physical and psychological assessments, then monitor all subsequent interrogations. They know their actions are harmful, unethical, and illegal, yet they serve willingly.

PHR believes they should be investigated on charges of “alleged criminal conduct.” Those proved guilty should be prosecuted, lose their license, professional society memberships, and any standing in the medical community henceforth.

Referring to a heavily redacted December 2004 report (originally commissioned by CIA director George Tenet) detailing torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, it “describes the use of abusive interrogation techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and stress positions.” Far worse ones were understated or redacted entirely.

According to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

The report “is a profoundly disturbing document that illustrates, as well as anything could, how far the CIA strayed from the law and from values that are integral to our democracy. That the barbaric methods outlined in the paper were approved by the country’s senior-most officials is particularly appalling.”

Bush’s Justice Department office of legal counsel head, now a federal appeals court judge, Jay Bybee, advised the CIA that torture and threats of imminent death were legal if they didn’t cause mental harm even though US and international law forbid all forms at all times with no exceptions allowed for any reason.

Given America’s tortured past, none of this should surprise. More on that below.

On August 25 in The New York Times, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti headlined: “Report Shows Tight CIA Control on Interrogations.” Claiming it “focused on aberrations in the field,” the writers said “by no means (did it represent) gung-ho operatives running wild. It is a portrait of overwhelming control exercised from CIA headquarters and the Department of Justice – control Bush administration officials say was intended to ensure that the program was safe and legal.”

These same officials said:

– federal courts have no jurisdiction and can’t review detainee mistreatment or mistaken arrests;

– US and international laws don’t apply in the “war on terror;” and

– the President as Commander-in-Chief enjoys “the fullest range of power to protect the nation….(that he has) complete discretion in the exercise of his authority in conducting operations against hostile forces.”

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture, created the lawless category of “unlawful enemy combatants,” denied them judicial fairness, claimed they can be disappeared, indefinitely detained with no right to counsel, then tried by kangaroo tribunals with no right of appeal and executed.

To protect national security, they may be subjected to all forms of abuse, innocent or guilty, and the right of “military necessity” justifies the most extreme mistreatment.

Any form of intense and prolonged physical and psychological torture may be inflicted short of causing injuries resulting in death, organ failure, or permanent damage – continuing America’s long tradition of inflicting abusive barbaric treatment.

The Times gave examples, but omitted prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, painful shackling, severe beatings, electric shocks, induced hypothermia, exposure to bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day, denial of medical care, proper food or enough of it, excruciating force-feeding to hunger-strikers, induced psychological trauma, forced sodomy, threats and bites by attack dogs, being blindfolded and hung from the ceiling by their wrists, and subjected to repeated humiliations, indignities and barbarism for months, even years, although most Guantanamo detainees (and others) committed no crime and were turned in for bounties that snared children as young as 13.

Deaths resulted from asphyxiation, extreme beatings, and deprivation prolonged enough to cause organ failure. Yet Attorney General Eric Holder plans no more than prosecutorial investigations (by a career Justice Department insider) of “rogue” agents, not top officials who authorized their crimes and bear main responsibility for them.

At the same time, Obama’s Interrogation and Transfer Policy Task Force will continue the Bush administration’s policy of extraordinary renditions to countries with disturbing histories of torture, provoking outcries from human rights activists. It assures continuation of abusive practices despite hollow assurances of closer monitoring, more humane treatment, and greater access for diplomats – the same never honored Bush administration pledges suggesting a similar betrayal by Obama.

Revealed CIA Report Abuses

On August 28, the Washington Post headlined, “CIA Releases Its Instructions For Breaking a Detainee’s Will,” then continued:

“As the session begins, the detainee stands naked, except for a hood covering his head. Guards shackle his arms and legs, then slip a small collar around his neck. The collar will be used later; according to CIA guidelines for interrogations, it will serve as a handle for slamming the detainee’s head against a wall.”

“After removing the hood, the interrogator opens with a slap across the face (followed by more slaps). Next comes head-slamming, or ‘walling’….’twenty or thirty times consecutively’ is permissible (and) if that fails, there are far harsher techniques to be tried.”

The New York Times said the Bush administration’s Justice Department knew about two dozen abuse cases years ago but declined to pursue prosecutions despite detainee deaths and other extreme examples of torture.

Manadel al-Jamadi was a victim. Captured by Navy Seals in October 2003, he was beaten and tortured, then suspended from a barred window with his arms tied behind his back. He died in November. Army reservist Charles Graner was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth military prison. Eight Navy Seals received light administrative punishment for torturing al-Jamadi and other prisoners. Higher-ups at Abu Ghraib remained free to abuse others.

Redacting the worst crimes and omitting all committed at secret “black sites,” the CIA report revealed the following:

– one or more detainees were told their mothers would be raped in their presence;

– CIA operatives conducted mock executions by firing guns in adjoining rooms even though a federal law expressly forbids threatening detainees with imminent death;

– Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was told his children would be killed if America experienced another terrorist attack;

– a detainee was repeatedly knocked out from pressure to his carotid artery;

– inmates were threatened with guns;

– Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the accused mastermind of the October 2000 US Cole bombing, was terrorized with a power drill, nearly drowned by waterboarding, and according to a 2006 ICRC report was threatened with sodomy and the arrest and rape of his family;

– other evidence from an internal Justice Department investigation revealed reports of prisoners abused in US military custody as early as 2002; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was informed and did nothing to stop them;

– a December 2004-initiated Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation revealed that top White House, Defense Department and CIA officials turned a blind eye to repeated acts of torture and abuse; in addition, the FBI knew about them, failed to act, and only belatedly reported them after Abu Ghraib photographs became public.

CIA officials knew they faced “potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the program, particularly (their) use of (extreme interrogation practices) and the inability of the US Government to decide what it will ultimately do with terrorists detained by the agency.” They also feared public knowledge could “seriously damage….the reputation and effectiveness of the agency itself.” Yet they continued the most abusive practices and still do given the cover afforded them by the Obama administration.

America’s Tortured Past

Many, perhaps most or all countries have used torture at times in their past, so it shouldn’t surprise that America did as far back as before the republic’s birth. Accused 17th century Salem witches faced abusive interrogations, a less extreme form of waterboarding, grueling trials, death by hanging for those convicted, and at least one victim was crushed to death under heavy boulders. None so far as known was burned alive.

Native Americans were (and still are) victims of genocide through mass slaughter, starvation, neglect, and by exposing them to deadly pathogens like smallpox and other diseases, including influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, plague, cholera, and scarlet fever.

Entire tribes were annihilated. Columbus exterminated the whole Hispaniola population by torture, mass-murder, forced labor, starvation, disease, despair, stabbing natives for sport, dashing babies’ heads on rocks, letting children be eaten by dogs, beheadings, and burning people at the stake among other atrocities, including especially brutal treatment of women.

In the antebellum South, slaves were tortured by whipping, painful restraint, prolonged isolation in a sealed shed with choking tobacco smoke, and by other punishments. Theodore Roosevelt defended water torture (today’s waterboarding) called the “water cure” to extract confessions from Filipinos because “nobody was seriously damaged.”

In 1995, Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 39 (PDD-39) authorizing extraordinary rendition to other countries for interrogations and torture.

Torture As A Weapon of War

In his book, “War Without Mercy,” John Dower documented atrocities by both sides in the Pacific war. American forces “mutilat(ed) Japanese war dead for souvenirs, attack(ed) and (sank) hospital ships, sho(t) sailers who had abandoned ship and pilots who had bailed out, kill(ed) wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and tortur(ed) and execut(ed) prisoners.”

Japanese ones aside, American atrocities included civilian abuse, burying combatants alive, and routinely using torture against a race called so vile and subhuman that all forms of barbarism were justified to exterminate them.

In the Korean War, mass indiscriminate killing of civilians was commonplace. It got General Curtis LeMay to boast that US planes “burned down every town in North Korea,” killing 20% or more of the population. Both sides committed barbaric acts, including massacres and torture.

Korean expert Bruce Cumings explained the “extraordinary destructiveness of the United States air campaigns, from the widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons,” to the use of biological weapons, to incinerating whole towns and villages, turning the entire North to rubble, and slaughtering millions of its people, mainly civilians.

In Hwangjoo County, US forces designated one area a hand-grenade field, killing 500 civilians. Prisoners and civilians were buried alive, burned, drowned, shot, stabbed, and beaten to death. In Hwemun Village in Erang County, one woman, after arrest, was forcibly mutilated. Her breasts, legs, and arms were cut off. Then her eyes were gouged out before she was stabbed to death. Others were beheaded. Thousands of civilians were brutally tortured. One family of six was hanged upside down from a tree and burned alive. Another civilian was skinned alive, then burned to death.

Still others were murdered with bats, spears, stones, sticks, clubs, flails, and pickaxes. Women were assaulted and raped. In all, US forces massacred tens of thousands of civilians systematically, ruthlessly, and brutally, including by disemboweling them while alive.

Barbarity in Vietnam was even worse. Atrocities were widespread and commonplace, including massacres, rape, torture, mutilations, wanton mass destruction, use of chemical and biological weapons, and as Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger: “We’re gonna level that goddam country. We’re gonna hit ‘em, bomb the livin’ bejusus out of ‘em.” Kissinger concurred in replying: “Mr. President, I will enthusiastically support that, and I think it’s the right thing to do.”

US forces got carte blanche to carpet bomb, incinerate entire villages, burn people alive, fire freely on civilians, murder wounded prisoners or beat them to death, throw people out of helicopters, torture sadistically, gang rape young girls, and commit every imaginable atrocity to people called gooks, vermin, or as General William Westmoreland described them, “worthless termites.” Against them, as in the Middle East and Central Asia, inflicting any form of human suffering is permissible.

Torture by US Police

For decades to the present, police have used torture to intimidate, extract confessions, treat people of color especially sadistically, especially black men. In Chicago, the practice has been scandalous according to the Human Rights at Home Chicago Police Torture Archive. Below is the timeline of one of the most egregious examples:

– in May 1972, the notorious Jon Burge (trained in torture techniques in Vietnam) was assigned to the Area Two detective division on the city’s South Side, a predominantly black community;

– in August 1972, allegations of torture against him and other detectives surfaced;

– in May, 1973, Anthony Jones was tortured by electric shock and suffocation with a plastic bag;

– in 1977, Burge was promoted to sergeant;

– from 1973 – 1981, torture allegations were made against him and his men; Russian roulette, brutal beatings, and other abuses were cited;

– in 1981, Burge was promoted to lieutenant in charge of the Violent Crimes Unit at Area 2;

– from 1981 – 1993, dozens of victims made torture accusations, suits were filed, but through 1990, the administration and City Council took no action; Mayor Daley made “no comment whatever;”

– after torturing detainees for 21 years, the Chicago Police Board fired Burge;

– in March 1993, the Fraternal Order of Police planned to honor him with a float in the annual St. Patrick Day’s parade; community outrage stopped it;

– in 1993 and 1994, torture allegations against other officers were investigated; through 1998, no action was taken;

– in November 1999, torture expert Dr. Robert Kirschner testified that abuses by Chicago police followed a pattern found in nations where the military and other security forces practice it;

– in 2004, several former black detectives under Burge admitted in sworn statements that they saw or heard evidence of torture, saw implements used (including Burge’s “shock box”), and that abusive practices were an “open secret” at Area 2;

– Burge was never charged with a crime, is retired, and now lives in Florida; and

– the Burge case was notorious in Chicago, but is just the tip of the iceberg there and throughout the country; rarely are abusers held accountable; often they’re rewarded and promoted.

Torture in US Prisons

Imprisonments are to punish, not rehabilitate, as those confined can attest, and what’s experienced inside is shocking and lawless, but prisoners are powerless to resist:

– savage beatings by prison guards and other inmates;

– psychological intimidation and abuse;

– attacks by fierce dogs;

– arbitrary abusive shakedowns;

– lengthy solitary confinement for minor infractions;

– abusive strip searches;

– extended lockdowns during which prisoners are confined to their cells;

– electroshocks with cattle prods and 50,000 volt emitting Tasers that leave victims shaking for hours and are potent enough to kill;

– assaults by toxic chemicals like pepper spray or mace that cause severe pain, second degree burns, temporary blindness, and occasionally death; and

– sodomy by guards and other inmates.

Supermax confinement is much worse:

– the above abuses and extreme deprivation are common;

– inmates have little contact with staff and none with other prisoners;

– they’re confined alone in small windowless cells for 23 hours a day;

– they have no work, social contact, education, recreation, rehabilitation, or privacy;

– when outside their cells, they’re painfully shackled and escorted by four-man teams; and

– over time, the toll is devastating: severe anxiety and panic attacks; lethargy; insomnia, nightmares; dizziness; irrational anger, at times uncontrollable; confusion; social withdrawal; loss of memory and appetite; delusions and hallucinations; self-mutilation; profound despair and hopelessness; suicidal thoughts; and paranoia and schizophrenia.

Many are too scarred psychologically to ever adjust normally again in society. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. In US prisons, it’s brutally inflicted. At around 2.4 million, America has the world’s largest prison population, more than China and India combined. Poor blacks and Latinos comprise two-thirds of it. Most prisoners committed non-violent crimes (commonly elicit drugs possession) yet are victims of violence inside against which they have no redress or ability to avoid.

The CIA’s Tortured Past

Since the 1950s, the CIA conducted torture experiments, including very harsh mind control forms. At McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute, the agency funded Dr. Ewen Cameron’s work with psychiatric patients, keeping them asleep and isolated for weeks, administering LSD and PCP angel dust cocktails, then monitoring the results. They showed that sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs disrupt clear thinking enough to make subjects receptive to suggestion. The CIA developed a new interrogation technique that University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy called “the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries.”

In his book, “A Question of Torture,” McCoy explained how techniques were developed, refined, codified in manuals, used extensively in Southeast Asia, Central America, and now everywhere, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at secret black sites globally. A worldwide gulag exists with no oversight or legal compliance – on US bases, torture ships, and in prisons of complicit countries. Nothing is banned, including the most inhumanely harmful abuses.

At Fort Benning, Georgia’s School of the Americas, SOA (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC), hemispheric security force students are taught the latest ways to torture, repress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrow democratically elected governments, assassinate targeted leaders, and suppress popular resistance when it erupts. They practice techniques of sensory deprivation and overload, mind control, forced nudity and other humiliations, sleep and food manipulation, how to inflict physical and psychological pain, and commit virtually any atrocity imaginable, designed for maximum impact.

In making a case for “torture warrants,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz asked “should law enforcement be authorized to torture suspects who are thought to have information about a ticking bomb,” then claimed that “scenario had long been a staple of legal and political philosophers” to justify the most extreme forms of abuse.

Torture, he claims, “can sometimes produce truthful information” despite its prohibition at all times for any purpose. In addition, experts say it doesn’t work and non-abusive practices are much more effective. The US Army Field Manual 34-52, Chapter 1 says:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

A declassified May 10, 2004 FBI document said the agency “has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” A former FBI interrogator said torture turns people into terrorists, and top CIA and military experts categorically say torture doesn’t work.

Yet apologists like Dershowitz and others claim it does and in ticking bomb cases is justified. He and at least four other Harvard Law School professors agree, leading international human rights expert and University of Illinois Law School Professor Francis Boyle to call “Harvard’s Gitmo Kangaroo Law School” the “School for Torturers” and advises parents not to “send your children (there) where they will grow up to become racist war criminals!….Harvard is to Law School as Torture is to Law….Harvard Law School is a Neo-Con cesspool….no longer fit to educate Lawyers, Members of the Bar, and Officers of the Court.”

George Bush’s Secret Torture Memorandum

Dated February 7, 2002, it directed the Vice-President, Secretaries of State and Defense, Attorney General, White House Chief of Staff, CIA Director, National Security Affairs Assistant, and Joint Chiefs Chairman regarding “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees.”

It states:

Regarding the treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, “Geneva applies to conflicts involving ‘High Contracting Parties,’ which can only be states. However, the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm, one in which groups with broad, international reach commit horrific acts against innocent civilians, sometimes with the direct support of states. (This) requires new thinking in the law of war (thus) I hereby determine as follows:

– “….none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Queda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world….”

– “….I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva between the United States and Afghanistan (but) I determine that the provisions of Geneva will apply to our present conflict with the Taliban;”

– however, “I….determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees….; (Therefore, these detainees) are unlawful combatants and….do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva….”

“I hereby direct the secretary of state to communicate my determinations in an appropriate manner to our allies, and other countries and international organizations cooperating in the war against terrorism of global reach.”

Signed,

George W. Bush

On July 9 in Common Dreams, former CIA officer Ray McGovern wrote: “Seldom does a crime scene have so clear a smoking gun” that exposes the president authorizing torture as official US policy and commanding his top officials to implement it.

Barack Obama’s January 22 Executive Orders banned torture, directed the closure of CIA black sites and Guantanamo, and the “immediate review of all” its detainees. They also halted Military Commission proceedings, and assured that “humane standards of confinement” will be observed in accordance with international humanitarian laws, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It prohibits:

– “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

– outrages of personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;”

– carrying out sentences or execution “without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples;” and

– caring for the wounded and sick, including by an impartial body like the ICRC “offer(ing) its services to the Parties to the conflict.”

He ordered the rule of law restored, but never followed through. Detainees are still at Guantanamo. Conditions and practices there are unchanged. Torture and other indignities remain official US policy. Inmate lawyers report a ramping up of abuses, including beatings, dislocation of limbs, pepper spraying in closed cells, force-feeding of hunger strikers, and other violations of US and international laws.

In addition, CIA black sites remain open. Extraordinary renditions were reauthorized. Restoring the rule of law was abandoned. The Global War on Terror was rebranded the “Overseas Contingency Operation” to include the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and enemies throughout the world.

Policies are unchanged under an administration as lawless as its predecessor and with an “absolute (commitment) to eliminat(e) the threat of terrorism (with) the full force of our power,” including by using torture.

In a March 2008 campaign speech, Obama said the following:

“I believe that we must reject torture without equivocation because it does not make us safe, it results in unreliable intelligence, it puts our troops at risk, and it contradicts core American values. When I am president, the American people and the world will be able to trust that I will outlaw torture.”

In office, Obama abandoned his promise to end America’s sordid, tortured past in violation of the rule of law, ethical and moral standards, and everything he swore he’d change.

On May 20, the FBI arrested four New York men, claiming they planned to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center and shoot down Newburgh, New York-based Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles.

The same day Justice Department press release said:

The charges against James Cromite (aka Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rehman), David Williams (aka Daoud and DL), Onta Williams (aka Hamza), and Laguerre Payen (aka Amin and Almondo) include “plot(ting) to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York, and to shoot military planes….with Stinger surface-to-air missiles. In their efforts to obtain weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, and the FBI and other agencies monitor(ing) the defendants’ actions up to the time of arrest, including providing an inactive missile and inert explosives to the informant for the defendants.”

It’s a familiar scheme involving an FBI sting using an informant to entrap unwitting victims, in this case four poor black Newburgh, New York men who’d converted to Islam, two while in prison for unrelated charges. Cromite was called the ringleader. A Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain (aka Malik) was a paid FBI informant facing prison and/or deportation on dozens of fraud counts. He was enlisted to cooperate in return for leniency.

He’s the same man used earlier for four separate stings, Yassin Aref among them, an innocent man, entrapped and victimized, now serving a 15 year prison term, and a valued friend of this writer. In post-9/11 America, he’s one of many Muslim victims of police state justice. They’ve been targeted, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, kept in isolation, denied bail, tried on secret evidence on trumped-up charges, convicted by juries too intimidated to acquit, and sentenced to long prison terms for being Muslims at the wrong time in America. Others for being environmental and/or animal rights activists. It went on under George Bush and continues under Obama. When the Newburgh 4 are tried in late 2009, they’ll face 25 year to life sentences if convicted on one or more charges.

They’re petty felons, not terrorists, with criminal records on drug-related charges, assault, and Payen’s unrelated weapons charge for firing a BB gun hitting two people in the head, then snatching purses from two women the same day. He’s a Haitian citizen. The others are Americans, and both Williams men aren’t related. They apparently met in prison where two of them were introduced to Islam.

Background on Informant Malik

On FBI instructions, he looked for targets at a Newburgh mosque and found them in four convicted felons, prime candidates to be framed on bogus charges if he could lure them into the trap. He befriended them with offers to pay medical bills, but never did because arrests came first after months of entrapment. His victims were poor, in need of cash, and induced to go along by small gifts and offers of more.

The Justice Department called them “radicalized Muslims,” acting out of hatred for Jews and wanting revenge on behalf of Muslims against America.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) uses anti-Semitism for moral cover, but is notoriously Islamophobic in its ideology. Its web site highlighted “Muslim extremists motivated by hatred for Jews and Israel have targeted Jews in the US for many years, an alarming number of post-9/11 plots and conspiracies have involved or been led by” American Muslims “arrested on various terror-related charges (related to) ideologies of extreme intolerance propagated by terrorist movements overseas (and in some cases) jihadist materials on the Internet.” The ADL cited alleged quotes about wanting “to get a synagogue” and willingness to die and go to “paradise” as a martyr.

New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly said the men planned to bomb two Bronx synagogues by detonating explosives from a cell phone. After supposedly planting phony devices, given Malik by the FBI, police surrounded their car and arrested them in a carefully planned operation. It involved an 18-wheel police vehicle and armored personnel carrier using NYPD Emergency Service Unit personnel. It came off with military precision and why not. It was a setup.

“It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” said Assistant US Attorney Eric Snyder. “These are extremely violent men.” In fact, they’re innocent victims of police state justice facing an uphill struggle for vindication against a Justice Department determined to convict with dozens of easily manipulated and/or doctored audio and video DVD recordings of supposedly terror-plotting meetings and conversations.

On June 2, a federal grand jury indicted the four men on eight bogus counts:

– “Conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States”

– Three counts of “Attempt to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States

– Conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles

– Attempt to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles

– Conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States (and)

– Attempt to kill officers and employees of the United States”

On May 20, The New York Times described “a painstaking investigation that began in June 2008 involving an FBI agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America.” No explanation was given about entrapment. Instead The Times highlighted “some of the most significant allegations of domestic terrorism in some time” and expressions of relief by local political leaders, including Charles Schumer, the senator from AIPAC, saying:

“If there can be any good news from this terror scare it’s that this group was relatively unsophisticated, infiltrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group. This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism – foreign or domestic.” The senator said nothing about four innocent men, targeted and framed for a supposed terror plot.

If convicted on all charges, the men face possible life sentences. No trial date so far has been set. All four are in Westchester County Jail without bail.

The North Carolina 7

On July 27, dozens of heavily armed Swat and hostage rescue team members arrested seven North Carolina men on terrorist-related charges, six US citizens and one permanent resident.

The same day Justice Department press release cited Daniel Patrick Boyd, his two sons, Zakariya and Dylan, Hysen Sherifi, Anes Subasic, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, and Ziyad Yaghi on charges of “conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, main and injure persons abroad.” Allegations only were provided. Precise details were omitted.

Earlier on July 22, the federal grand jury indictment listed seven counts:

– “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists;

– conspiracy to murder, kidnap, main, and injure persons in a foreign country;

– receiving a firearm through interstate commerce;

– possession of a firearm to be used for a crime of violence;

– selling or otherwise disposing of a firearm and ammunition to a person knowing and having reasonable cause to believe was convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;” and

– two counts of false statements.

The DOJ also alleged that “Daniel Boyd is a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who, over the past three years, has conspired with others in this country to recruit and help young men travel overseas in order to kill.” Again, no evidence was cited, just supposition-based accusations.

The indictment claimed that from 1989 – 1992, Boyd got “violent jihad” training abroad and “allegedly fought in Afghanistan” against the Soviets. Then from November 2006 through July 2009, he and the other defendants “conspired to provide material support and resources to terrorists, including currency, training, transportation and personnel” along with the other charges in the indictment. As part of the “conspiracy,” they “believe(d) that violent jihad was a personal religious obligation,” and they “were willing to die as martyrs.” An eighth unnamed suspect is also being sought, a man believed to have traveled to Pakistan last year, for what purpose wasn’t indicated.

According to US Attorney George EB Holding:

“These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right her at home. Terrorists and their supporters are relentless and constant in their efforts to hurt and kill innocent people across the globe. We must be equally relentless and constant in our efforts to stop them.”

Six of the seven men are being held at a Farmville, VA detention facility. When brought to trial, they’ll face life sentences if convicted on the most serious charges. Yet according to The New York Times:

DOJ officials “said that the men charged on (July 22) were not seen as serious terrorist threats to the United States or American interests abroad, and that there were no indications of ties to Al Qaeda or other militant groups.”

The claimed evidence relates solely to concern that they were “amassing a sizable number of automatic weapons, (the fact that Boyd had) foreign fighter experience, (and has) a network of contacts overseas, intending to recruit others who were on the fence.”

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano cited the arrests as proof of increased “homegrown terrorism.”

On August 5, AP reported that:

“Federal authorities said Tuesday (August 4) the accused ringleader of a group of North Carolina terrorism suspects talked about loving jihad, fighting for Allah and loathing a US military presence at Muslim holy sites.”

Writer Mike Baker said FBI Special Agent Michael Sutton claimed Boyd wanted the defendants “to engage in jihad, train on firearms and travel overseas. Sutton said Boyd repeatedly spoke of armor-piercing ammunition and a year ago told a witness about his dislike of the US military in some Middle Eastern lands.” According to Boyd, “They’re over there killing our brothers.”

In an August 5 Jewish World Review article, self-styled anti-terrorism expert and notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson played up the prosecution charges of another homegrown terrorist plot using secretly (and perhaps illegally) FBI taped conversations and comments “reported by witnesses,” including a voice identified as Boyd saying:

“If I don’t leave this country soon, I am going to make jihad right here in America (and) Allah knows I love jihad.”

Emerson said the FBI “found a fatwa, or religious edict, in Boyd’s house saying Muslims have ‘an individual duty to kill Americans and their allies.”

Both Emerson and the Justice Department are notorious for manipulating, doctoring, or inventing evidence to incite fear and intimidate juries to convict.

Yet this entire case appears as bogus as others, and this one is even stranger. Throughout the 1980s, the CIA and Pakistani ISI spent billions recruiting and training Afghan mujahedeen (including Osama bin Laden) to wage jihad against the Soviets. Ronald Reagan called them “freedom fighters.” Today, they’re “homegrown terrorists” with no apparent proof they plan crimes, just suspicions based on the flimsiest suppositions.

As for Daniel Patrick Boyd, the so-called ringleader, he arrived in Pakistan after the Soviets’ February 1989 withdrawal. Yet the CIA continued to support a civil war against the Kabul government, and beginning in 1977 began working with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a man “responsible for murdering hundreds of dedicated resistance fighters, political workers, and intellectuals (as well as being) a leading figure in the heroin trade,” according to Ralph McGehee, a former CIA veteran (from 1952 – 1977) and critic.

In 1977, Hekmatyar founded the Hezb-e-Islami Party of Islam. The CIA backed it with material support and weapons. Boyd arrived in Peshwar, Pakistan in 1989, apparently to work for a Muslim relief organization connected to the movement, not to train and fight as a mujahedeen. But in any event, Washington and the CIA backed the party and his activities.

Now he and the others are called jihadists, the DOJ citing Boyd, his son Zakariya, Yaghi, and Sherifi’s overseas travels as more proof. In March 2006, Boyd and his sons went to Gaza, then to Israel in June 2007 to visit Muslim holy sites. The DOJ claims the first trip was to meet with Palestinians who “believed that violent jihad was a personal religious obligation,” and the second to wage “violent jihad,” yet no evidence of specific crimes were mentioned or intent to commit them.

In October 2006, Yaghi, it was alleged, went to Jordan for the same reason, and so did Sherifi in July 2008 on a trip to Kosovo after which he “returned to North Carolina in April 2009, for the purpose of soliciting funds and personnel to support the mujahedeen” – the same fighters America backed in Afghanistan, then did again with KLA extremists in NATO/America’s war against Milovesic and Serbia.

Overall, the indictment is as bogus as others. It’s based on suppositions and unfounded claims but no clear evidence of intent to commit or support violent crimes. The defendants are being used to instill fear, justify the Iraq occupation, the escalated offensive in Afghanistan and spillover into Pakistan, and expanded US military presence globally, including on US streets if ordered. It’s happening at a time when we’re all as vulnerable as the Newburgh 4 and North Carolina 7.

At least three US federal laws should concern all Americans and suggest what may be coming – mandatory vaccinations for hyped, non-existant threats, like H1N1 (Swine Flu). Vaccines and drugs like Tamiflu endanger human health but are hugely profitable to drug company manufacturers.

The Project BioShield Act of 2004 (S. 15) became law on July 21, 2004 “to provide protections and countermeasures against chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that may be used in a terrorist attack against the United States by giving the National Institutes of Health contracting flexibility, infrastructure improvements, and expediting the scientific peer review process, and streamlining the Food and Drug Administration approval process of countermeasures.”

In other words, the FDA may now recklessly approve inadequately tested, potentially dangerous vaccines and other drugs if ever the Secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) or Defense (DOD) declare a national emergency, whether or not one exists and regardless of whether treatments available are safe and effective. Around $6 billion or more will be spent to develop, produce, and stockpile vaccines and other drugs to counteract claimed bioterror agents.

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act slipped under the radar when George Bush signed it into law as part of the 2006 Defense Appropriations Act (HR 2863). It lets the HHS Secretary declare any disease an epidemic or national emergency requiring mandatory vaccinations. Nothing in the Act lists criteria that warrant a threat. Also potential penalties aren’t specified for those who balk, but very likely they’d include quarantine and possible fines.

The HHS web site also says the Secretary may “issue a declaration….that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of (vaccine or other pharmaceutical) countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency….”

The industry-run US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notoriously rushes inadequately tested drugs to market, putting their efficacy and safety into question, and turning those who use them into lab rats. It includes everyone if a mass vaccination is ordered on the mere claim of a public emergency – no proof required.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (S. 3678) is the other worrisome law, effective December 19, 2006. It amended “the Public Health Service Act with respect to public health security and all-hazards preparedness and response, and for other purposes.” Even its supporters worry about issues of privacy, liability, and putting profits over public health. Critics express greater concerns about dangerous remedies for exaggerated or non-existant threats as well as mass hysteria created for political purposes.

At least one other measure is also worrisome – The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA). So far it’s just a proposal by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health – “A Collaborative at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities (as) a primary, international, national, state, and local resource on public health law (and) policy for public health practitioners, judges, academics, policymakers, and others.”

MSEHPA is now “track(ing) legal responses to the emerging international response to the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak, including declarations of public health emergency at the international, national, state, and local levels….” even though forensic evidence can’t confirm any H1N1 deaths. No emergency exists anywhere, and reporting one is all hype to sell dangerous drugs to unsuspecting people globally.

On its web site, the ACLU says this about MSEHPA:

It’s “written in a way that doesn’t adequately protect citizens against the misuse of the tremendous powers that it would grant in an emergency. (It’s) replete with civil liberties problems. Its three top flaws are that:

(1) It fails to include basic checks and balances (by) grant(ing) extraordinary emergency powers (that) should never go unchecked. (It) could have serious consequences for individuals’ freedom, privacy, and equality.”

(2) “It goes well beyond bioterrorism (with) an overbroad definition of ‘public health emergency” that may be anything a local or national authority declares for any reason with no conclusive evidence for proof.

(3) “It lacks privacy protections (and) undercut(s) existing protections for sensitive medical information.”

MSEHPA worries other organizations besides the ACLU, both conservative and progressive – including the Free Congress Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council, conservative association of state legislators, Human Rights Campaign, and Health Privacy Project.

The Real Threat of Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations

In the wake of the hyped Swine Flu scare, media reports suggest mass vaccinations are coming. The May 6 Kimberly Kindy – Ceci Connolly Washington Post one, for example, headlined “US May Add Shots for Swine Flu to Fall Regimen” without saying they’ll be mandatory but reading between the lines suggests the possibility this year or later.

The writers report that “The Obama administration is considering an unprecedented fall vaccination campaign” to include regular and Swine Flu shots, the latter because it’s “spreading across the globe.”

HHS’ Dr. Robin Robinson said “We are moving forward with making a vaccine,” and if the government proceeds with a national program, enough supply will be produced to provide two doses for all Americans with spokespersons like National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, claiming adverse reactions aren’t to be expected and adding another shot for Swine Flu “should not present a problem.”

The New York Times also hypes the scare with reports of city schools closed after unconfirmed Swine Flu cases, a few adult deaths blamed on H1N1 bringing the claimed total in the city to seven, and the World Health Organization (WHO) saying on June 3 that it’s moving closer to declaring a worldwide (Level 6) Swine Flu pandemic – even though none exists.

With all the hype, misinformation, and willful lies WHO’s Dr. Keiji Fukuda, in charge of flu, said only 117 deaths globally have been “blamed” on Swine Flu and any warning may include the caveat that the virus isn’t very lethal. A more accurate statement would explain that no forensic evidence links any deaths to H1N1, and influenza annually kills about 30,000 people in America alone – something the major media never report or that scattered accounts of any type flu deaths worldwide are no cause for alarm or reason for scary headlines.

It’s also unconscionable for the WHO, US and other nations’ officials to spread lies, deception, and hysteria so major pharmaceutical companies can foist dangerous vaccines and other drugs on unsuspecting people, harming their health and making them vulnerable to later diseases and possible early deaths.

Massachusetts May Be A Forerunner of What’s to Come

On April 28, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed a pandemic flu preparation bill that rises to the level of martial law. If approved by the House and signed into law, it will mandate among other measures:

– “vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of” all individuals involved in providing health care – as perhaps step one before ordering the same process for all state residents;

– owners or occupiers of all premises “to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;”

– closure, evacuation, and decontamination of all suspected facilities; and

– restricting or prohibiting “assemblages of persons.”

Other states may be planning similar measures as precursors to mandatory nationwide vaccinations and overall suspension of civil liberty protections.

Adverse Vaccination Effects on Gulf War Troops

Before deploying to the Persian Gulf in 1990 – 91 (and thereafter to the present), all US troops got a standard series of inoculations against infectious diseases – the same ones given to all US citizens traveling to the region. After arriving, 150,000 also got anthrax vaccinations and 8000 botulinum toxoid ones even though concerns were raised about adverse long-term health consequences.

A National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) study was conducted to assess them with results released in September 2000. In December 1997, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced that all US military forces would receive anthrax vaccinations. The Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) began in March 1998 even though IOM found little published peer-reviewed scientific information on its safety.

In its study, IOM reported evidence of an association between vaccinations studied and transient acute common health effects, including redness, swelling, and fever commonly associated with other vaccinations. However, conclusive proof of long-term problems wasn’t determined – likely because study findings were skewed not to find them. More on that below.

IOM also studied botulinum toxoid vaccines and found evidence of an association between the vaccine and transient acute local and systemic effects similar to anthrax vaccinations. Again, conclusive proof of long-term adverse health effects wasn’t found – another very dubious conclusion as evidence below explains.

Military personnel usually get multiple vaccinations. IOM studied their effects but didn’t prove or disprove any long-term adverse effects. However several independent studies of British Gulf War veterans found some link between multiple vaccinations and later health problems.

Gary Matsumoto is a New York-based award-winning investigative journalist. His 2004 book, “Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That’s Killing Our Soldiers and Why GIs are Only the First Victims” took sharp issue with IOM results and the Pentagon’s denial of Gulf War syndrome.

Investigating the shadowy vaccination development world, he discovered US military-employed doctors and scientists conducted secret medical experiments on US citizens in violation of the Nuremberg Code and fundamental medical ethics.

For its part, Nuremberg established legal medical experimental standards now incorporated into ethical medical codes, including:

– requiring voluntary consent of human subjects without coercion, fraud, deceit, and with full disclosure of known risks;

– experiments should avoid “all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury;”

– experiments should never be conducted if there’s “an a priori reason to believe death or disabling injury will occur;”

– risk “should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved..;” and

– experiments should be terminated if there’s reason to believe they’ll cause “injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.”

According to Matsumoto, the Pentagon violated these and other standards, betrayed the troops, and the fundamental duty of military and civilian leaders to protect them. Since at least 1987, biowarfare development trumped the welfare of tens of thousands of GIs used as human guinea pigs for inoculation with experimental unlicensed anthrax vaccines containing squalene – an oil-based adjuvant (to enhance immunity) known for decades to cause severe autoimmune diseases in lab animals, yet administered involuntarily without disclosure of its harmful effects to human health. Matsumoto wrote:

“The unethical experiments detailed in this book are ongoing, with little prospect of being self-limiting because they have been shielded from scrutiny and public accountability by national security concerns.” He suggested the “writing (was) on the wall” of what’s to come with prospects now it may be soon.

“When UCLA Medical School’s Michael Whitehouse and Frances Beck injected squalene combined with other materials into rats and guinea pigs back in the 1970s, few oils were more effective at causing the animal versions of arthritis and multiple sclerosis.” In 1999, immunologist Dr. Johnny Lorentzen at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that on injection, an “otherwise benign molecule like squalene can stimulate a self-destructive immune response,” even though it occurs naturally in the body.

Other research shows that squalene is the experimental anthrax vaccine ingredient that caused devastating autoimmune diseases and deaths for many Gulf War veterans from the US, UK, and Australia, yet it continues in use today and for new vaccines development in labs. There’s a “close match between the squalene-induced diseases in animals and those observed in humans injected with this oil: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus.”

Other autoimmune diseases are also linked to humans injected with squalene. “There are now data in more than two dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers, from ten different laboratories in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia, documenting that squalene-based adjuvants can induce autoimmune diseases in animals…observed in mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. Sweden’s Karolinska Institute has demonstrated that squalene alone can induce the animal version of rheumatoid arthritis. The Polish Academy of Sciences has shown that in animals, squalene alone can produce catastrophic injury to the nervous system and the brain. The University of Florida Medical School has shown that in animals, squalene alone can induce production of antibodies specifically associated with systemic lupus erythematosus.”

Micropaleontologist Dr. Viera Scheibner conducted research into the adverse effects of adjuvants in vaccines and wrote:

Squalene “contributed to the cascade of reactions called “Gulf War syndrome. (GIs developed) arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS, Raynaud’s phenomenon, Sjorgren’s syndrome, chronic diarrhea, night sweats and low-grade fever.”

Matsumoto’s book includes numerous case studies of GIs afflicted with one or more of the above syndromes, their devastating effects, and the outlandish US government reaction – failing to acknowledge their existence or a connection between them and administered vaccines. Also denying the effects of other toxic Gulf theater exposures (like depleted uranium) as well as withholding meaningful treatments or protocols.

US Army Captain George L. Skypeck spoke eloquently for many when he said:

“Was the character of my valor less intense than those at Lexington? Was the pain of my wounds any less severe than those at Normandy? And was my loneliness any less sorrowful than those at Inchon? Then why am I forgotten amonst those remembered as ‘heros?’ ”

If mass vaccinations are ordered, millions of Americans may ask: Why do you keep using unsafe vaccines and other drugs when clear evidence shows their dangers? Why do you jeopardize all Americans by unleashing a future plague of serious illnesses, diseases, and disabilities? Why have you willfully and maliciously ruined my health?

Immunologist Dr. Pamela Asa first recognized autoimmune diseases showing up in GIs that mirrored those in lab animals injected with oil formulated squalene adjuvants. By 1997, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent testing vaccines containing them, in animal studies since 1988 and human clinical trials since 1991 – by leading research institutes like NIH, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

According to Matsumoto, today, “Squalene adjuvants are a key ingredient in a whole new generation of vaccines intended for mass immunization around the globe” even though researchers at Tulane Medical School and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research proved “that the immune system responds specifically to the squalene molecule.”

The immune system “see(s) and recognizes it as an oil molecule native to the body. Squalene is not just a molecule found in a knee or elbow – it is found throughout the nervous system and the brain.” When injected in the body, the immune system attacks it as an enemy to be eliminated. Eating and digesting squalene isn’t a problem. But injecting it “galvanize(s) the immune system into attacking it, which can produce self-destructive cross reactions against the same molecule in the places where it occurs naturally in the body – and where it is critical to the health of the nervous system.”

Once self-destruction begins, it doesn’t stop as the body keeps making the molecule that the immune system is trained to attack and destroy.

Immunologist Dr. Bonnie Dunbar also did extensive research on hepatitis B-inflicted illnesses and found similar autoimmune processes involved in molecular mimicry in people with devastating neuroimmune syndromes after getting vaccine injections.

Matsumoto says “Squalene is a kind of trigger for (a) real biological weapon,” what Soviet researchers called “a biological time bomb!!” and Matsumoto says is “the immune system.” When its “full repertoire of cells and antibodies (attack) tissues they are supposed to protect, the results can be catastrophic.” He and Dr. Pam Asa conclude that “Oil adjuvants are the most insidious chemical weapon ever devised,” including ones with squalene – something the Soviets knew could be used as a weapon in the 1980s.

Matsumoto says that “the real problem with using squalene (isn’t) that it mimics a molecule found in the body; it is the same molecule. So what American scientists conceived as a vaccine booster (or what’s now being developed in labs) was another ‘nano-bomb,’ instigating chronic, unpredictable and debilitating disease. When the NIH….argued that squalene would be safe because it is native to the body, just the opposite was true,” and, of course, still is. “Squalene’s natural presence in the body made it one of the most dangerous molecules ever injected into man” and using it in vaccines is outlandish and criminal.

So why does Washington sanction its use? According to Matsumoto: “scientists in the United States are now literally invested in squalene. Army scientists who developed the second generation anthrax vaccine have reputations to protect and licensing fees to reap (as well as) worldwide rights to develop and commercialize the new recombinant vaccine for anthrax” and ones for other health threats.

Disturbingly, “Many of the cutting-edge vaccines currently in development by the NIH and its corporate partners contain squalene in one formulation or another. There is squalene in the prototype recombinant vaccines for HIV, malaria, herpes, influenza (including the swine strain), cytomegalovirus and human papillomavirus.” Some of these “are intended for mass immunization(s) around the globe” and that possibility should terrify everyone enough to refuse any mandate or doctor’s prescription to take them.

Another problem is that “Autoimmunity (takes) years to diagnose” because early symptoms (headaches, joint pain, etc.) are so vague they can easily be from other causes.

From inception, vaccines have always been dangerous enough for some experts to call them biological weapons undermining health, manipulating and crippling the immune system, and creating the possibility of future debilitating diseases. So Big Pharma’s solution is new, more potent genetically engineered vaccines and drugs that may end up harming or killing many who take them, especially people with weakened immune systems.

Matsumoto and others sounded the alarm to alert everyone to avoid these poisons masquerading as protective drugs. In fact, they benefit only the bottom lines of companies that manufacture them and scientists reaping generous royalties.

This is the first of several articles on Ellen Brown’s superb 2007 book titled “Web of Debt,” now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells “the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free.” Given today’s global economic crisis, it’s an appropriate time to review it and urge readers to digest the entire work, easily gotten through Amazon or Brown’s webofdebt.com site. Her book is a remarkable achievement – in its scope, depth, and importance.

In the forward, banker/developer Reed Simpson said:

“I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers (don’t know) what goes on behind (top echelon) closed doors….I am more familiar than most with the issues (Brown covered, and) still found it an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on….(Although many banks follow high ethical practices), corruption is also rampant, (especially) in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked.” FULL ARTICLE