Today, in New York City, the US is torturing a Muslim detainee with no prior criminal record who has not even gone to trial.

For the last almost three years, Syed Fahad Hashmi has been kept in total pretrial isolation inside in a small cell under 24-hour video and audio surveillance. He is forced to use the bathroom and shower in full view of the video. He has not seen the sun in years. He takes his meals alone in his cell. He cannot see any other detainees and he is not allowed to communicate in any way with any prisoners. He cannot write letters to friends and he cannot make calls to anyone but his lawyer. He is prohibited from participating in group prayer. He gets newspapers that are 30 days old with sections cut out by the government. One hour a day, he is taken into another confined room where he is also kept in total isolation.

Children are taught that the US Constitution protects people accused of crimes. No one is to be punished unless their guilt or innocence has been decided in a fair trial. Until trial, people are entitled to the presumption of innocence. They are entitled to be defended by an attorney of their choice. And the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

The punishment of Hashmi has been going on for years while he has been waiting for trial. In addition to the punitive isolation he is subjected to today, he was denied the attorney of his choice. He was allowed only counsel investigated and preapproved by the government. He is not allowed to look at any translated documents unless the translator is preapproved by the government. He is not allowed any contact with the media at all. One member of his family can visit through the heavy screen for one hour every other week unless the government takes away those visits to further punish him. The government took away his family visits for 90 days when he was observed shadow boxing in his cell and talked back to the guard who asked what he was doing.

In anticipation of a final announcement as to the trial venue for the 9/11 plotters, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is warning the president against "buckling to political pressure," calling the use of military tribunals the "wrong thing to do."

In a nearly four-minute long video, Donna Marsh O'Connor -- a Peaceful Tomorrows member who lost her pregnant daughter when the Twin Towers collapsed -- speaks both to the broad notion that America has a "historic commitment to justice" and, more narrowly, to the horse-trading politics that now surround terrorist trials. Reflecting disappointment with recent signals from the White House, O'Connor calls specifically for the president to reject a reported compromise proposal with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in which the administration would drop plans for civilian trials in exchange for Republican support for the closure of Gitmo.

"As 9/11 families, we have suffered greatly and waited almost nine years to see justice done with our own eyes," O'Connor says. "We understand that you face political pressure to back down. We ask that you do not allow fear and prejudice to govern your decision as we are not afraid. We know our country is strong enough to hold on to our values in the face of terrorism."

The video follows other efforts from Peaceful Tomorrows to advocate for civilian trials for the 9/11 suspects.

DOJ Bush wiretapping program takes hit in Calif rulingIn a repudiation of the Bush administration's now-defunct terrorist surveillance effort, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that government investigators illegally wiretapped the phone conversations of an Islamic charity and two American lawyers without a search warrant.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker said the plaintiffs provided enough evidence to show "they were subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance" by the National Security Agency.

The judge's 45-page ruling focused narrowly on the case involving the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, touching vaguely on the larger question of the program's legality.

Nonetheless, Al-Haramain lawyer Jon Eisenberg said the ruling had larger implications.

"By virtue of finding what the Bush administration did to our clients was illegal, he found that the Terrorist Surveillance Program was unlawful," Eisenberg said.

The Justice Department has quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration had made about "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo prisoner who at one time was said to have planned the 9/11 attacks and was the No. 2 and 3 person in al-Qaeda.

Additionally, Justice has backed away from claims intelligence officials working in the Clinton administration had also leveled against Zubaydah, specifically, that he was directly involved in the planning of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.

Zubaydah's name is redacted throughout the 109-page court document, but he is identified on the first page of the filing by his real name, Zayn Al Abidin Muhammad Husayn. He was the first detainee captured after 9/11 who was subjected to nearly a dozen brutal torture techniques, which included waterboarding, and was the catalyst, the public has been told, behind the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly admitted that personally approved of Zubaydah's waterboarding.

His torture was videotaped and the tapes later destroyed. The destruction of 90 videotapes of his interrogations is the focus of a high-level criminal investigation being conducted by John Durham, a federal prosecutor appointed special counsel in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

‘Secret’ CIA documents withheld in FOIA suit raise more questions than they answer

Questions about foreign complicity in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in downtown Oklahoma City for which Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted, were disclosed Friday in a ruling by US District court judge Clark Waddoups on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for the CIA s refusal to completely declassify records it has acknowledged it possesses that pertain to the case.

It is the first indication that the CIA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) worked together in the bombing investigations and prosecutions.

The classified materials also were never made available to McVeigh s defense team, led by attorney Stephen Jones, who has publicly expressed his concern that the federal government knows more about the bombing than it has admitted.

by Philip Giraldi
April 1, 2010 edition of American Conservative

Even in World War II, the United States did not attempt to assassinate U.S. citizens who went over to the enemy, but that has now changed with President Obama’s overseas contingency operations. On Feb. 3, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the United States government has developed procedures for killing American citizens abroad who are “involved” with groups threatening to carry out terrorist acts directed against other Americans. Three U.S. citizens have already been approved by the White House for summary execution as soon as actionable intelligence is developed to enable a pilotless drone’s hellfire missiles to do the killing. One is Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi; the second is American al-Qaeda member Adam Perlman, who goes under the name Adam Yahiye Gadahn; and the third is believed to be a Somali from Minnesota who has joined the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa. Anwar al-Aulaqi, linked in the media to the Christmas underwear bombing and with Major Malik Nadal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, has denied any involvement in either incident. Perlman, a propagandist for al-Qaeda, is in Waziristan. Killing these men would involve using military drones to attack targets in three countries with which the United States is not at war.

With Speakers: Cynthia McKinney, David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, Ellen Brown, Ian Crane, Annie Machon, Jim Marrs, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips, and Barrie Zwicker

In one packed weekend, Understanding Deep Politics will bring together ten distinguished speakers and hundreds of concerned citizens for the purpose of challenging the mainstream perceptions of political reality - revealing the hidden forces behind many widely accepted historical and current events.

In an extraordinary editorial, the whistleblower site WikiLeaks has demanded that the United States "stop spying" on its operations.

"Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations," founder Julian Assange writes. "We've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest. But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive."

On Tuesday evening, followers of the WikiLeaks Twitter feed were startled to read, "WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation." This was followed a few minutes later by "If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible." A succeeding message warned, "We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of "Turkish Activities" in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:

There were a number of very serious FBI investigations into "Turkish activity in Chicago" involving a number of targets, including TACA

These investigations were related to "National Security" among other things.

read more

 

War Protest Arrests: Eight Put Their Bodies on the Gears of the War Machine

March 20, 2010, thousands of people gathered across from the White House in D.C. and thousands more gathered around the U.S. to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the illegal U.S. attack on Iraq, and to protest Obama’s continuation of the violent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and other abuses of power. Eight people- Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux, Jon Gold, Leflora Cunningham-Walsh, Dennis Frostbutter, Alex MacDonald and James Veeder- engaged in civil disobedience and were arrested.

Many people spoke at the D.C. rally, including peace activist Cindy Sheehan, organizer of the Peace Of The Action campaign and Camp OUT NOW. Cindy called for people to physically disrupt the activities of the war machine, and quoted from Mario Savio’s 1964 statement at Berkeley:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers and all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop; and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

9/11 Truth Activist Jon Gold Arrested at White House War Protest

March 22, 2010

For Bobby!
For only when we put our bodies to the gears will the machine stop.

A terror war prisoner, once considered of such high value by the Bush administration that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered he be tortured, has taken his first step toward freedom thanks to a federal district court judge, who ordered the government to free him after nearly 10 years of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.

Though 39-year-old Mohamedou Slahi, an alleged 9/11 conspirator, won his habeas corpus appeal before U.S. District Judge James Robertson on Monday, he likely does not know it yet. That's because the judge's decision was classified, according to published reports.

"After the [9/11] attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower," The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007.

After being captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, he was repeatedly subjected to torture by his American captors, with Rumsfeld himself ordering "special" interrogation tactics be set aside for Slahi.

March 21, 2010

March 19, 2010
CBSNews.com

A federal judge on Friday rejected a legal settlement of more than a half-billion dollars for people sickened by ash and dust from the World Trade Center, saying the deal to compensate 10,000 police officers, firefighters and other laborers didn't contain enough money for the workers.

"In my judgment, this settlement is not enough," said U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

The judge also said he was concerned too much of the deal would be eaten up by legal fees and that ground zero responders were going to be pressured into signing on before they knew how much they stood to receive.

Racist bigots with the "Tea Party Movement" aren't the only ones in the streets, as we proved today with coast to coast protests against the wars and torture the U.S. is still carrying out.

There were thousands marching in DC today. Read AP report. Watch the AP video. Watch the local video coverage:

You can read my speech here. After the march, several protesters were arrested in front of the White House, including Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, and Matthis Chiroux. They are sitting in jail tonight and we are told they won't be arraigned until Tuesday.

Listen here

In this motivating interview I talk to organiser, activist and philanthropist Betsy Metz. We ask Betsy about the highly successful conference she organised and facilitated this month. The March 2010 "Treason in America: 9/11, the Wars & Our Broken Constitution" Conference was a milestone in the history of the 9/11 Truth Movement. For the first time in America, Peace Activists, Government Whistleblowers, Journalists and 9/11 Truth Activists explored recent American history together with open minds and hearts, searching for the shocking truth. See: www.treasoninamericaconference.com

So who is Betsy Metz?

Betsy Metz is the quintessential all-American gal! She is a well-educated and fiercely patriotic mother of four and a devoted and loving wife of her husband for 26 happy years. Her husband is also the all-American, being a college quarterback and a former Marine Corps Officer. Together as a family they want for nothing and by any standard have had an excellent and prosperous life. This life would be impossible in nearly any other country in the world and it is fair to say they are living the "American Dream"!