Szymany airport is said to be where CIA interrogations took place
Polish intelligence sources have for the first time confirmed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran a secret prison facility on Polish soil.
The admission comes after a report found the CIA had operated prisons for terror suspects in Poland and Romania.
Polish and Romanian officials denied the claims, but last month Warsaw launched a new inquiry into the matter.
In 2006, US President George W Bush admitted the CIA had held suspects in secret jails but he did not say where.
Two anonymous intelligence officers made the claims about facilities being located in Poland in the daily Dziennik.
One of them states that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty in north-eastern Poland.
The officer says only the CIA had access to the isolated zone, which was used because it was a secure site far from major towns and was close to a former military airport.
‘High-value detainees’
Both the then Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, and President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, knew about the base, the newspaper reports.
However the officer says it was unlikely either man knew if the prisoners were being tortured because the Poles had no control over the Americans’ activities.
Both leaders have always denied the existence of any such base.
Last year a Council of Europe report quoted unnamed CIA sources as saying that “high-value detainees”, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001 - had been interrogated in Poland.
The current Polish government says it has no knowledge of the base but it has sanctioned a new investigation into the claims.
The piece of crap O’Reilly had the nerve to request from Obama that he apologize about statements related to the Iraq conflict. That said, Obama is totally for this bulls*t war on terror and going to get us into a war with more nations, no question about it!
Like him or not, you have to give Barack Obama credit for waging a smart, focused campaign. Destroying the Clinton machine was a major achievement and so was putting together a successful convention in Denver. Obama is now firmly a part of U.S. history, no matter what happens in the presidential election.
The problem some Americans continue to have with the Senator is that he is long on charisma but short on detail. This frightens some voters. Who the heck is this guy, anyway? So when Obama finally agreed to speak to me this week, specifics were on my mind.
First, the man. The Barack Obama I witnessed is self-confident, determined and driven. He was acutely aware of his surroundings from the moment he entered the room. He looks you in the eye and touches your shoulder. He understands how to connect one-on-one.
As far as philosophy goes, Senator Obama is convinced that the federal government should be in control of income distribution and, to some extent, should regulate the free marketplace. That is a classic liberal position, and Obama promotes it well.
The Senator also believes that poor Americans have a basic right to free health care and monetary supplements from the government with no strings attached. The American substance abuser, for example, would derive the same benefit as a hard working, laid off worker would. Again, classic liberalism. No judgments made regarding entitlements.
So, if Barack Obama does become president, there will definitely be change. His left-wing base will demand it, and he will come through. You can decide if that’s change we should believe in, but keep in mind that the unintended consequences of government interference in the marketplace are impossible to predict. Free markets have a way of chafing under government imposition.
On the foreign policy front, Obama has convinced me that he is tough but cautious. He rose up quickly because he vehemently opposed the Iraq war. But now I see a man who understands the victory that has taken place in Iraq. I don’t believe he wants to screw that up.
After going mano-a-mano with Obama on television, I am also persuaded that he is a sincere guy—that he wants the best for all Americans. He’s an ideologue, but not a blind one. He understands that his story is incredible, and, I have come to believe, he is grateful to the American system for allowing it happen.
It is true that we don’t know whether Senator Obama has the ability to solve complex problems, but you can say that about all presidential contenders.
We can’t know for sure what it’s about, but Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin both say they’ll be at the important Ron Paul press conference at the National Press Club in DC on September 10th at 10:30am, to discuss the election. Anyone else?
I am happy to report that Fabled Enemies, went from number 2 on September 1st to number 1 on September 2nd. Of course it was mysteriously gone from the top 100 all together by the 3rd, and comments and views seemed to freeze. Here is your chance to see it in high quality at www.prisonplanet.tv, or buy the DVD here and make copies to pass out.
Oh well I guess its Loose Change Final Cut’s turn to be number 1 today. I wonder when they will freeze this one again.
 Biden denies report: ‘No one’s talking about pursuing Bush criminally’
David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Thursday September 4, 2008
The possibility that Barack Obama might seek to bring criminal charges against President Bush or members of his administration has been a recurring theme during the presidential campaign, especially since the Obama campaign has attempted to stress themes of bipartisanship. For that reason, Democrats have been quick to downplay any hints of possible criminal prosecutions.
Sen. Joe Biden aroused fresh speculations on Wednesday, when he suggested, “If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”
Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends raised that issue with Biden on Thursday morning, asking about “a report that if you guys are elected … you’re actually going to pursue criminal charges against President Bush’s administration and different people that served there.”
“That’s not true,” Biden immediately replied. “I don’t know where that report’s coming from. What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone. Anybody should be doing that.”
Biden emphasized that “no one’s talking about President Bush. … I’ve never heard anybody mention President Bush in that context.” He noted that “there’s been an awful lot of unsavory stuff that’s gone on … but I have no evidence of any of that. No one’s talking about pursuing President Bush criminally.”
Biden concluded his comments by explaining that possible misdeeds are
“being looked into now, just so it never happens again in any other administration. … The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, ‘God, let’s go take a look at what this –.’ The American people want to know what we’re going to do, not what happened.”
Biden was also lavish in his praise for Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, saying, “The governor was impressive. She was strong, she was tough, and she delivered that speech extremely well. … I think it’s going to be a tough debate. I think she’s going to be an incredibly skillful debater. I was impressed.”
“I’m not going to attack her,” Biden emphasized. “You look at that family that she brought out last night. It was a beautiful family. … Every family has difficulty as they’re raising their children. … I think she has a fine family.”
Asked if some of the criticism aimed at Palin has been sexist, Biden said, “Yes, by you guys in the media.” He then went on to insist that it “is sexist to imply a woman is incapable of being a mother and being a great leader.”
Obama might pursue criminal charges against Bush administration
· Biden says criminal violations will be pursued
· Democrats have issued subpoenas to Bush aides
· 3 staffers have been held in contempt of Congress
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said earlier this week that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
Biden’s comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
But his statements represent the Democrats’ strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.
When asked during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, whether he would “pursue the violations that have been made against our Constitution by the present administration”, Biden answered in the affirmative.
“We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offence that’s occurred,” he continued, going on to praise congressional committees for the deliberate pace of their inquiries into alleged Bush administration misdeeds.
Members of Congress are “doing the right thing, they’re not making false accusations about anything … they’re collecting data, subpoenaing records, they’re building a file”, Biden said.
“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued – not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”
Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible “genuine crimes” and “really bad policies”.
“[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. “You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”
When asked about his comments by Fox news today, Biden said he has no evidence that criminal charges would be warranted and no intention of pursuing action against the current president.
“What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone,” Biden said, adding: “But, you know, there’s been an awful lot of unsavoury stuff that’s gone on. And the mere fact … that it occurred in a previous administration doesn’t mean [a subsequent] Justice Department, if, in fact, there’s evidence, shouldn’t pursue them. “But I have no evidence of any of that. No one’s talking about pursuing President Bush criminally.”
Congressional Democrats have issued a flurry of subpoenas this year to senior Bush administration aides as part of a broad inquiry into the authorisation of torturous interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Three Bush White House veterans have been held in criminal contempt of congressional committees for refusing to respond to subpoenas in an inquiry on the firing of federal prosecutors: former counsel Harriet Miers, former political adviser Karl Rove, and current chief of staff Josh Bolten. The battle over Miers’s and Bolten’s testimony is currently before a federal court.
The breakaway province of South Ossetia is claimed by Georgia, a former Soviet republic that cast its lot with the United States and the West to the eternal irritation of Moscow. But South Ossetia has resisted Georgia’s rule and has been under Russia’s sway for years. A U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.
The pipeline that crosses Georgia can pump slightly more than 1 million barrels of crude oil per day, or more than 1 percent of the world’s daily crude output. The 1,100-mile pipeline carries oil from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world’s third-largest reserves. Its potential vulnerability was already in the spotlight after it was sabotaged this week, apparently by Kurdish separatists.
Most of the oil is bound for Western Europe, where gas prices are even higher than the $4 and more a gallon that U.S. consumers are now paying. With only so much oil to go around, what the pipeline carries affects prices elsewhere. The United States also hopes it will be a model for other development projects that could have a more direct effect on the U.S. market.
The current dispute makes the Bush administration the middleman between a promising ally it wants to help and the powerful former adversary next door whose help it needs. It took over 30 years to calm the cold war, which in reality never ended in the first place for those who really pay attention to the CIA and its politics in the global environment. After all this hard work, the Bush administration is reigniting the once sleeping bear of the former Soviet powerhouse.
Russia has thousands of nuclear missiles, most of which are aimed at Western Europe and the United States ready to fire. That network has never been disarmed or put to rest. Of the missile aimed at the United States, most of them are aimed between Texas and Colorado. Colorado is home to the “back-up” or shadow government facilitations, most of which are in underground facilities classified for years. The Eastern Seaboard is so condensed that is doesn’t take very many missiles to wipe out the key targets, for they are so close together.
We now face the brink of World War III, and with the Armada of ships blocking Iran shipments, the flag is momentarily dropping. This will signal the beginning of a conflict Obama can not exit out of easily.
The United States has Blackwater in Georgia illegally interfering with South Ossetia’s right to independence. Georgia has launched a genocide campaign against South Ossetia and Russia defended the people of South Ossetia. Why is the establishment media falsely reporting on the issue?
A 12 year old girl describes how Russia defended here and South Ossetians from the genocidal attack by Georgia:
Here is an interview in which the President of Georgia, Saakashvili, has called for a New World Order:
Here you can see a Blackwater soldier’s passport was discovered in Georgia:
PARIS – Pipsqueak Georgia’s harebrained and disastrous attack on tiny South Ossetia has produced a full-blown crisis pitting the US and NATO against Russia.
In an act fraught with danger, US and NATO warships are delivering supplies to Georgia, watched by Russian men of war. The US Congress may soon vote $1 billion for America’s embattled Georgian satellite.
The western powers have resorted to fierce Cold War rhetoric. They are playing with fire. Russia has some 6,600 strategic nuclear weapons, mostly aimed at North America and Europe. Besides, the US, which invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose air force just killed 90 Afghan civilians, 60 of them children, is in no position to lecture Moscow about aggression.
France’s conservative president, Nicholas Sarkozy, blasted Russia and will shortly hold a European summit over Georgia in Brussels. As usual, the Harper government faithfully echoed Washington’s words.
Poland agreed to emplace a US antiballistic missile system only 184 km from Russia’s border, provoking Moscow’s fury. Ukraine and Poland are loudly backing Georgia.
Russia’s chief of staff, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, warns his nation has the right to launch a “preemptive nuclear strike” against enemies, in line, he tartly noted, with the Bush administration’s own policies.
Topping off this war of words, two of Sen. John McCain’s closet rightwing allies, senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, went to Georgia and called for “tough” measures against Moscow. They urged isolating Russia for “aggression” and admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.
McCain’s allies give a good preview of what his foreign policy would look like. Lieberman and Graham, leading proponents of the US occupation of Iraq, had the chutzpah to insist, “Russia must not be allowed to control energy supplies.”
This ugly mess recalls how the great powers blundered into both World War I and II over obscure locales like Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Danzig Corridor. The obvious lesson: act with extreme caution. But few are listening as rhetoric sharpens.
The Bush administration – most likely VP Dick Cheney – almost certainly planned or knew about Georgia’s attack on Russian-backed South Ossetia launched under cover of the Beijing Olympics. Whether the White House was trying to inflict a quick little military victory over Moscow, or whipping up war fever at home to boost John McCain’s prospects, is uncertain.
This crisis over a mere 70,000 South Ossetians and 18,000 Abkhazians could have been quietly resolved by diplomacy. Instead, the Bush administration turned it into a major confrontation by accusing Russia of aggression. Washington, which rightly recognized the independence of Kosovo’s Albanians from Serb repression, denounced Russia’s recognition of Abkhaz and South Ossetian independence from Georgian repression. Meanwhile, Moscow, which crushed the life out of Chechnya’s independence movement, piously claimed to be defending Ossetian independence.
Things may get worse. The US is pressing Ukraine to join NATO, though half of its 48 million citizens oppose doing so. Ukraine’s constitution mandates a neutral state. Russia allowed Ukraine to decamp from the Soviet Union with the understanding it would never join NATO, and allow Russia’s Black Sea Fleet operate from Crimea.
Russian political expert Sergei Markov rightly notes that Washington and NATO see Ukraine as a rich new source of troops for Iraq and Afghanistan, wars from which he says NATO leaders cannot withdraw their soldiers without committing “political suicide.”
“Old Europe” is trying to avoid a clash with Moscow, while “new Europe” – Georgia, Poland, the Czechs, and Balts – frightened of Russia’s growing power, eggs on the US-Russia confrontation.
Not only did the clumsy US attempt to expand its influence into Moscow’s backyard backfire badly, Washington’s childish, petulant response is as inflammatory as it is powerless. The Georgian crisis and empty threats against Russia have aroused strong nationalist passions in Russia, which sees itself increasingly isolated and surrounded by the US and NATO.
Nationalist hysteria, jingoism, and fevered rhetoric are coming from both sides. We saw such lunacy before: in August 1914, and September 1939.
Please help We Are Change NYC promote the 2008 Now Or Never event by putting this banner on all We Are Change websites, blogs etc. We need to get the word out, this is between life and death. The 9/11 First Responders need help and it’s up to us to fulfill that goal.
Bureaucrats at the American Physical Society (APS) have issued a curious warning to their members about an article in one of their own publications. Don’t read this, they say - we don’t agree with it. But what is it about the piece that is so terrible, that like Medusa, it could make men go blind?
It’s an article that examines the calculation central to climate models. As the editor of the APS’s newsletter American Physics Jeffrey Marque explains, the global warming debate must be re-opened.
“There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion,” he wrote.
American Physics invited both believers and sceptics to submit articles, and has published a submission by Viscount Monckton questioning the core calculation of the greenhouse gas theory: climate sensitivity. The believers are represented by two physicists from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who state that:
“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
But within a few days, Monckton’s piece carried a health warning: in bright red ink.
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
Not so much Medusa, then, as Nanny telling the children what not to think.
“The first sentence is nothing more or less than a deliberate lie,” writes Professor John Brignell on his Numberwatch blog. “The second is, to say the least, contentious; while the third is an outrageous example of ultra vires interference by a committee in the proper conduct of scientific debate.”
Monckton has asked for an apology. In a letter to the APS President Arthur Bienenstock, he writes:
“If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?”
Believers and sceptics have spent the past few days examining the value of “peer review”, and the weight of validity that should be placed on “publication”. Monckton is a classics scholar and former journalist, which believers maintain is enough to disqualify him from holding an opinion.
(Whether it’s science is not in question - whether it’s “good science” or “bad science” is the question. An earlier presentation by Monckton examining questioning climate sensitivity received was examined by NASA’s Gavin Schmidt on the believers’ blog, RealClimate.org.)
But for anyone without a dog in this race, and perhaps not familiar with the “state of the science” there may be a couple of surprises in Monckton’s paper.
One is how small the field of “experts” really is. The UN’s IPCC is tasked with producing a summary of the “scientific consensus” and claims to process the contributions of some 2,500 scientists. But as Monckton writes:
“It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter Îş depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted.” [our emphasis]
Another eye-opener is his explanation of how the believers’ climate models are verified:
“Since we cannot measure any individual forcing directly in the atmosphere, the models draw upon results of laboratory experiments in passing sunlight through chambers in which atmospheric constituents are artificially varied,” writes Monckton. “Such experiments are, however, of limited value when translated into the real atmosphere, where radiative transfers and non-radiative transports (convection and evaporation up, advection along, subsidence and precipitation down), as well as altitudinal and latitudinal asymmetries, greatly complicate the picture.”
In other words, an unproven hypothesis is fed into a computer (so far so good), but it can only be verified against experiments that have no resemblance to the chaotic system of the Earth’s climate. It is not hard to see how the scientists could produce an immaculate “model” that’s theoretically perfect in every respect (all the equations balance, and it may even be programmed to offer perfect “hind-casting”), but which has no practical predictive value at all. It’s safe from the rude intrusion of empirical evidence drawn from atmospheric observation.
The great British-born physicist Freeman Dyson offered an impertinent dose of reality which illustrates the dangers of relying on theory for both your hypothesis and the evidence you need to support it. Since 8 per cent of atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the planet’s biomass every year, notes Dyson, the average lifespan of a carbon molecule in the atmosphere is about 12 years. His observation leaves the “climate scientists” models as immaculate as they were before, but suggests a very different course of policy action. It suggests our stewardship of land should be at the forefront of CO2 mitigation strategies. That’s not something we hear from politicians, pressure groups and, yes … climate scientists.
Not only did the clumsy US attempt to expand its influence into Moscow’s backyard backfire badly, Washington’s childish, petulant response is as inflammatory as it is powerless. The Georgian crisis and empty threats against Russia have aroused strong nationalist passions in Russia, which sees itself increasingly isolated and surrounded by the US and NATO.
