Bush aide Karl Rove insists 'waterboarding is not torture'

George W Bush's former top adviser has said he is "proud" of the use of harsh interrogation techniques - including waterboarding - during the War on Terror.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist widely known as "Bush's Brain", said in a BBC interview that he did not believe waterboarding, or simulated drowning, amounted to torture.

"I'm proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots such as flying aeroplanes into Heathrow and into London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, flying an aeroplane into the tallest building in Los Angeles and other plots," Mr Rove told the BBC.

"Yes, I'm proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with US law."

Mr Rove gave the interview to mark the publication of a memoir - Courage and Consequence - in which he argues that history will look favourably on Mr Bush’s two-term presidency, particularly his decision to invade Iraq.

In the book he calls the 2003 invasion the most consequential act of the Bush presidency and a justifiable response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 - even though al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, were responsible.

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Global human rights report sees little change

The Obama administration's first global report on human rights differed little from the reports issued during President George W. Bush's second term, with the most notable exception being stepped-up criticism of the Iraqi government.

In the latest example of similarities between President Obama and Mr. Bush on foreign policy, Iran and China topped a list of 25 countries chided in the State Department's annual human rights report for imposing "draconian" new restrictions on free expression and political rights in 2009.

"In a significant number of countries, governments have imposed new and often draconian restrictions on" nongovernmental organizations, the department said in its "Year in Review" section, highlighting global human rights trends and highlighting China, Russia, Venezuela and others.

The report, released Thursday, is the first to have been worked on exclusively since the election of Mr. Obama, who criticized the Bush administration during the 2008 campaign as arrogant and high-handed in dealing with foreign governments and said he'd repair the U.S. image abroad. After eight often testy years dealing with Mr. Bush, European officials thought Mr. Obama would change the world to their liking, but now realize that any American president will act in his country's interests first.

Although he has changed some features of U.S. foreign policy, such as missile defense, Mr. Obama has not met his vow of closing the detention facility for terrorism suspects at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year, plans to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for several more years, has ramped up the war in Afghanistan, and has overseen "continuity" in several other foreign-policy areas, such as North Korea, Latin America and NATO expansion, diplomats and analysts said.

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New round of foreclosures threatens housing market

WASHINGTON POST

The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize.

About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can't obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete.

As these foreclosed properties add to the supply of homes for sale, they could undercut housing prices, which have increased modestly through December, according to the most recent figures in the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index. That rise partly reflected a slowdown in the flow of foreclosed homes onto the market.

The rate at which J.P. Morgan Chase seized properties, for example, peaked in the middle of 2008 and fell steadily last year, according to a February investor report. But the bank expects repossessions to increase this year, nearly doubling to 45,000 by the fourth quarter.

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Barack Obama, I want a divorce!

Anyone who has ever gone through a divorce or marital separation knows how traumatic it can be. Marriages are supposed to be forever, but then life intrudes. First, the blissful honeymoon when it's unthinkable to be apart from the loved one. Then the middle doldrums when spine-tingling doubts arise followed by flimsy excuses to oneself, self-rationalisations, for the other's bad behaviour. Love weakens but loyalty remains. (For some of us, constancy is stronger than lust.) We soon grow accustomed to abuse, insults, betrayals and infidelity to the marriage vows. After all, where would we go, what would we do, if we freed ourselves from the bondage of a bad relationship? It's too terrifying to think about, so we don't.

That's pretty much where my liberal friends and I are today with the Democrats and Obama administration spiralling out of control and showing every sign of wanting to do us harm before it flames out. We, like battered husbands and bruised wives, feebly grab at straws of hope. The straws are real, too. There may be only an inch of difference between Republicans and Democrats but real people in a real world live by that inch. For example, north of Los Angeles, where I live, an Obama-reinvigorated Environmental Protection Agency is seriously probing a toxic scandal in the mainly Latino hamlet of Kettleman where carelessly dumped corporate chemicals may have led to babies being born with facial disfigurements. The Republicans wouldn't have bothered. That's no small thing for the people concerned. And Obama appointed a known workers' friend in Hilda Solis as secretary of labour in place of Bush's Elaine Chao who never saw a union she didn't despise. In other words, our Harvard professor in the White House has done something.

But the fact remains he is a war president with blood on his hands like Lyndon Johnson – only without LBJ's guts and arm-twisting talent. Obama leads a dysfunctional, cowardly and bribable Democratic party establishment, personified by his mean-minded economic gurus Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, and his frazzled secretary of state the war-loving Hillary Clinton.

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Israelis Block Palestinians From Holy Site

Updated | 10:24 a.m. On Friday, Israeli police prevented young Palestinian men from praying at a holy site in Jerusalem, and Israel’s military imposed a temporary ban on travel by Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel. The security crackdown comes after recent clashes following Friday prayers in Jerusalem.

The Associated Press reported that police would only allow Palestinian women and Palestinian men over 50 years of age to pray on Friday at the Jerusalem holy site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The temporary closings did not ensure calm though. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, “Palestinian youths on Friday hurled stones at Israeli security forces near the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem and tried to breach a barrier to gain entry to the area.”

Haaretz explained:

The move was made in anticipation of renewed Jerusalem riots in response to a recent government decision to expand settlements in East Jerusalem. The West Bank will be sealed off for 48 hours, and the closure will be lifted on Saturday at midnight.

The attempts by Israel’s security forces to tamp down violence come as tensions are rising in part because of Israel’s decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites.

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French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead."

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Rep. Kennedy rips the main stream media and the Afghan war

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy has a withering assessment of news media coverage: 'despicable.' The Democrat says reporters are focusing '24/7' on sexual harassment allegations against a New York lawmaker while ignoring the war in Afghanistan.

House rejects call for withdrawal from Afghanistan

The House on Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by anti-war lawmakers to force a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

The outcome of the vote, 356-65 against the resolution, was never in doubt. But the 3 1/2 hours of debate did give those who oppose President Barack Obama's war policies a platform to vent their frustrations.

Opposing the resolution was easy for almost all Republicans, who have been solidly behind Obama's decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 70,000 to 100,000. Only five Republicans supported the measure.

It was a harder vote for some Democrats, particularly in an election year where opposing the war can be equated with opposing the troops. Several expressed discomfort with a war that has lasted 8 1/2 years and cost the nation more than 930 American lives and the treasury more than $200 billion, but said they were voting against the resolution because it was ill-timed and unrealistic.

Among the 'no' voters was Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., who gave an impassioned speech. The U.S. policy of needlessly sending troops into harm's way was "shameful," Kennedy said. He also lambasted the national media, calling their lack of attention to the loss of life in Afghanistan "despicable."

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U.S. Taxpayers on Hook for $5 Trillion of Fannie, Freddie Debt ... No Matter What Barney Frank Says

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank caused a bit of an uproar Friday when he suggested the U.S. government does not guarantee the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Rep. Frank later recanted and backed a Treasury Department statement reassuring investors that, yes, Fannie and Freddie Mae debt is guaranteed by the U.S. government. "Going forward," he said in a statement, we "will make sure that there are no implicit guarantees, hints, suggestions, or winks and nods...we will be explicit about what is and is not an obligation of the federal government."

But after years of winks and nods, there's no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. The U.S. government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship in September 2008: "This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt," according to the Congressional Research Service.

The problem is that $5 trillion of so-called agency paper is not treated as if it is a debt of Uncle Sam for accounting purposes, says Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at Niagara International Capital and ValueEngine.com.

"Get it on the balance sheet - that's where it belongs," Suttmeier says. "Add it to the $14.2 trillion in [federal] debt and let's move on."

Another Time Bomb Ticking

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National Biometric Identification Card For All American Workers

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it."

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

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Treasury Plans to Take Social Security from Elderly for Unpaid Loans

A little–noticed law could soon result in smaller Social Security checks for hundreds of thousands of the elderly and disabled who owe the U.S. money from defaulted loans and other debts more than a decade old.

Social Security benefits are off–limits to creditors, such as credit–card companies and banks. But the U.S. can collect debts to federal agencies by "offsetting," or withholding Social Security and disability payments.

The Treasury currently withholds benefits of 3.1 million Social Security recipients to recover defaulted student–, farm– and small–business loans, unpaid income taxes, amounts veterans owe for health care, and other debts to the government.

Previously, the U.S. hasn't been able to withhold Social Security payments to recover most debts delinquent for more than ten years.

But a provision in the 2008 Farm Bill lifted the ten–year statute of limitations on the government's ability to withhold Social Security benefits in collecting debts other than student loans—for which the statute of limitations was lifted in 1997—and income taxes, where the limit remains 10 years.

This means that a person who defaulted on a small–business loan in 1995, for example, and who is receiving Social Security could be notified that his benefits may be reduced each month until the debt, with interest, fees, and penalties, is paid.

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Internal report issues black eye for U.S. Embassy in Kabul

The State Department is failing to properly oversee nearly $2 billion in contracts to battle the drug trade, build infrastructure and train police in Afghanistan, according to a bluntly worded internal assessment.

The report by the department's inspector general questions whether the U.S. will be able to stabilize the country in time to meet President Obama's goal of withdrawing some troops by June 2011.

"Embassy oversight of contracts and grants is seriously inhibited by the dangerous security conditions … as well as by the shortage of qualified contract officer representatives in Kabul," says the report, released last week. The embassy "faces serious challenges in meeting the administration's deadline for 'success' in Afghanistan," it adds.

The embassy, which reports to special representative Richard Holbrooke, says the report is generally "accurate in its assessments," spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail from Kabul. "We are already implementing a great majority of the report's recommendations."

That includes better contract oversight, said Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew. "We're very much aware of the problems that developed in Iraq and are working to avoid outcomes that would be problematic," he said.

In a January cable reported by The New York Times, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who runs the embassy, questioned whether the military could meet its timeline for turning over the country to Afghan forces.

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Evidence of murder at 383 Madison Ave.

Hedge Funds and the Global Economic Meltdown from Judd Bagley on Vimeo.

www.DeepCapture.com

Nearly one year after its original date of publication, my video, Hedge funds and the global economic meltdown has finally received its first bit of serious criticism, and I can’t express how pleased I am about it.

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IMF proposes climate change fund

The head of the International Monetary Fund has proposed a plan for the world's governments to pool together to raise money needed to adapt to climate change, a rare step for an organisation that normally does not develop environmental policies.

The IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said the fund is concerned by the huge amount of money needed and the effect this will have on the global economy. He added that the proposal may help efforts to reach a binding agreement on climate change this year.

Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the organisation will release a paper this week with full details. It is unclear how the proposal will be received.

The IMF raises funds from its 185 members mainly through a quota system that is based broadly on each country's economic size. The United States is currently the largest shareholder.

"We all know that [carbon taxes and other fundraising methods] will take time and we don't have this time. So we need something which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough to solve the problem," Strauss-Kahn said. "And that is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with."

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US drone strikes in Pakistan tribal areas boost support for Taleban

London Times

The deafening explosion rent the calm of the winter night. A house disappeared in a cloud of flame and dust, its thick earthen walls splaying into the street.

“We ran from our house to help but it was after curfew, and soldiers in a nearby post began to fire on us,” Amir Shah Jehn, 25, said. “So it wasn’t until morning that the bodies were pulled from the rubble and laid at the roadside. There were five dead: a three-month-old baby, the woman of the house, two young men and an Arab.”

It was November 2005. The strike on a house sheltering an Egyptian al-Qaeda commander, Abu Hamza Rabia, in the village of Hamzoni five miles (8km) outside Miran Shah, the capital of North Waziristan, was one of the first carried out by a Predator drone in Pakistani tribal areas.

“We didn’t know what happened back then,” said Amir, an alias he uses for security reasons. “But now it’s routine. There is the constant sound of drones. Sometimes up to seven are flying over us. We call them jasoos — spies.”

Drones are the Obama Administration’s weapon of choice for killing militants in the tribal areas. The pilotless Reapers and Predators have chalked up a long list of insurgent deaths, accounting for scores of leaders from al-Qaeda and the Taleban since their deployment in 2004.

The effects of the campaign, however, are beginning to veer dramatically off course as the strikes intensify, according to tribesmen.

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Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

"It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community".

"It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.

Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marja as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marja has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers' markets," Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.

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Hundreds held in pre-emptive Tibet crackdown

Hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in Lhasa and armed paramilitaries are patrolling the streets in the run-up to the anniversary of a bloody riot in 2008.

The authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks that left about 20 people dead when Tibetans rampaged through the streets of the Himalayan city setting fire to shops, offices and banks.

March 10 is regarded by Tibetans as the anniversary of the start of an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 that resulted in the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India.

The armed police patrols that have become routine in the Tibetan heart of Lhasa since the anti-Beijing unrest that spilled over into violence in March 14, 2008, have been expanded to include cavalcades of trucks packed with paramilitaries.

One convoy comprised 14 trucks, each containing 14 helmeted men armed with semi-automatic rifles as well as two officers and a driver. The trucks drove slowly through the streets of the city in a show of force clearly intended to intimidate any Tibetans planning to mark the anniversary with renewed protests against Chinese rule.

Patrols of special police – the Chinese equivalent of Swat teams – also roamed the streets. Their distinctive black trucks and armoured vehicles then proceeded towards the Drepung monastery on the edge of the city where the unrest began on March 10, 2008 with a peaceful march by monks towards the city.

In the narrow alleys around the Jokhang temple, the holiest site in Tibetan Buddhism, in central Lhasa, additional police patrols were checking the identity cards of all Tibetans.

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Taskforce to investigate Iraqi civilians' 'torture'

One of the country's former top policemen is to head a team of investigators who will travel to Iraq to interview witnesses of the alleged murder and torture of civilians by the British Army. 

The taskforce will report to a retired High Court judge who is chairing the inquiry into the events which took place in Iraq in 2004.

Inquiry chairman Sir Thayne Forbes, who presided in the murder trial of Harold Shipman, said defence officials will be forced to disclose documents and provide witnesses if they do not co-operate with the new public inquiry into Iraqi abuse claims.

The Al-Sweady Inquiry is looking into allegations that British soldiers murdered and tortured Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of the "Battle of Danny Boy" in southern Iraq in 2004.

It will report on claims that 20 or more Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others ill-treated at a UK base in Maysan Province called Camp Abu Naji.

The Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth announced the inquiry after admitting that there had been "failures" in the Ministry of Defence's disclosure of documents to lawyers for some of the alleged victims.

The team of four investigators, all retired police officers, appointed to help the inquiry is headed by former detective chief superintendent Stephen Condon.

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Ex-MI5 head: US hid torture tactics from UK

A former head of MI5 has accused intelligence services in the US of deliberately hiding the mistreatment of terror suspects from their British allies. 

Baroness Manningham-Buller, giving a lecture in London last night, said the US was "very keen" to prevent Britain discovering how they were getting vital intelligence. She cited the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, who was held at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks and provided his captors with useful intelligence which was passed on the the UK security services. She was unaware until 2007, she said, that he had been subjected to waterboarding.

She was surprised at the extent of the information coming from Mr Mohamed as Britain's previous experience of questioning terrorism suspects during the Troubles in Northern Ireland was that they remained silent. "I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything," she said. "They said, well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times."

Her comments follow the insistence of ministers and Jonathan Evans, the current head of MI5, that there was no collusion by British security services in the torture of suspects. Lady Manningham-Buller added at the event, organised by the Mile End Group, a political and historical research body, that allegations Britain was complicit in the torture of suspects could damage MI5's ability to carry out its work.

Army contractor's use of a cover name for Blackwater angers Sen. McCaskill

"The American people have a right to be outraged that we're playing this kind of game with contracting. It's wrong. It's flat wrong."

With those words, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voiced her exasperation near the end of a three-hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about a contract to train Afghan National Army troops last year to use American weapons. One issue at the Feb. 24. hearing was that the $25 million contract, awarded in September 2008, was to a company called Paravant -- well known to those involved as a cover name for Blackwater (now Xe Services).

Another issue was that while the U.S. Army was paying for it, the contract was awarded to Paravant (Blackwater) by a Raytheon subsidiary called Raytheon Technical Services Co. RTSC holds a multibillion-dollar War Fighter Focus contract, primarily to train U.S. troops, but in this case the Army decided to use the company, through a separate task order under the War Fighter Focus contract, to hire Paravant.

Why didn't the Army contract directly with Paravant? That was not explored at the hearing. But the use of a cover name, Paravant, to bid on a contract when the attached qualifications were essentially those of Blackwater has been referred to the Justice Department by the committee's chairman, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

Another major issue examined at the hearing was the lack of oversight of the Paravant contract by Raytheon and the Army. The military unit responsible for overseeing this odd contracting was the Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, referred to as PEO-STRI.

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