You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today, but under the new guidelines experts say half of us will be diagnosed with a psychiatric condition in the future. … Read More
‘Guantanamo guards shot my client 5 times for no reason’
A reported 103 of Guantanamo’s 166 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike, which has lasted for more than 100 days.Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike. Over the weekend, hacktivist group Anonymous marked the 100th day of the protest with “twitterstorms, email bombs and fax bombs” aimed at drawing worldwide attention to the hunger strikers. The US Military responded to ‘Operation Guantanamo’ by restricting wireless internet access at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. RT’s Marina Portnaya spoke with Ramzi Kassem, who represents Moath al Alawi, a prisoner held at Guantanamo without charge for 11 years.RT: Thank you for your time. When was you client shot and what were the circumstances of the shooting?Ramzi Kassem: On Saturday, April 13, 2013 the Guantanamo military prisoner administration decided to raid Camp 6, which is a prison facility at Guantanamo, where my client Mr. Alawi is being imprisoned. They conducted that raid in order to move all of the prisoners into solitary confinement. And that was just one additional way that the prison administration wanted to try to break the hunger strike. What happened on that day according to Mr. Alawi is that in that process he was shot without any warning for absolutely no good reason by one of the US Army guards at dangerously close range using rubber-coated steel bullets that are only safely used outside of a certain range. He was shot in five places: One shot was around the heart, another shot was in his elbow, another was in his shoulder, and there were a couple of impacts on his thighs. Particularly, the shot that went to his heart at that close of a range, even a rubber-coated steel bullet, can penetrate skin and can be fatal. The authorities of Guantanamo endangered Mr. Alawi’s life for no reason. They gave him no warning, fired at him repeatedly and then, following that fact, they delayed medical treatment that he should have received immediately.RT: Has the US government acknowledged that this shooting did take place?RK:Absolutely. I have received confirmation in writing by an email from the Department of Justice that Mr. Alawi sustained what they described as minor injuries. But when I heard the description from Mr. Alawi himself, it was very different from what I saw on the government’s email. We also received confirmation in writing from the US government via email that Mr. Alawi was force-fed. This is also a violation of international law.The fact that it is done in an unnecessarily painful and brutal way – prisoners are strapped down to these restraining chairs, that they have tubes forced down through their noses into their stomach. There are many other ways to tube-feed prisoners, even if these prisoners wished to be tube-fed, and the US government is again doing this in a deliberately violent way in order to break the hunger strikers.RT: Correct me if I am wrong: He is being held in Guantanamo without charges against him?RK:That’s correct. Mr. Alawi has never been charged with any crime. We have no reason to believe that the US government has any interest in charging him with an actual crime be it at a real court or at the military commission. The reality is that Mr. Alawi has been at Guantanamo for over 11 years without fair process and that is a reason he is on hunger strike today.RT: US President Barack Obama is expected to address the nation on Thursday speaking about Guantanamo detention center, and I assume he would address this hunger strike. What would you like to hear?RK:I can tell what I would not like to hear. I don’t want to hear the repetition of the promises that President Obama has been making for years. I don’t want to hear that he is going to appoint some official who will be responsible for closing Guantanamo. We’ve had an official like that for years, and Guantanamo was not closed. I don’t want to hear about the administrative review mechanisms, because we had many before that and they did not lead to any meaningful progress.The only official who is responsible for the existence of Guantanamo today as far as I am concerned and my client is concerned is President Obama himself. He need to take concrete steps towards closing that prison and I don’t believe the men in Guantanamo will interrupt their hunger strike unless President Obama take such concrete steps. One very obvious concrete step he can take is to begin by releasing some prisoners, who are approved for transfer, who can be repatriated or resettled in another country like another one of my clients Shaker Aamer, who has been approved for transfer for years. The UK has been asking for his release, that’s the US oldest and most trustful allies. He is a very natural first step if the president is about closing the Guantanamo. We need actions, deeds, not words. … Read More
Big Pharma Conquest: US drugstore monsters drive out neighbor shops
http://www.youtube.com/v/vRTh5jH4roA?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Original source: Big Pharma Conquest: US drugstore monsters drive out neighbor shops
‘We could end this strike in a week’ – Gitmo attorney
It remains unclear when any concrete steps would be taken to address the prisoners’ grievances, when over half of them have already been declared innocent. The situation continues to be dire with regard to the prisoners’ health, and yet there is still no clarity on just how severe things really are. On top of that, allegations of inhumane and cruel treatment continue.There are also disagreements within the White House, with President Barack Obama having long expressed his desire to shut the prison down (since his presidential victory back in 2008), but alleging that the US Congress is standing in his way. Similarly, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found to have sent a January memo to the White House asking for the start of the transfer of the 86 prisoners that have been cleared for release, but her request was shot down, according to sources speaking to Newsweek.Nonetheless, some semblance of progress on the issue is being made, as US attorney general Eric Holder gave an indication on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that the Obama administration may indeed be readying a transfer of Guantanamo’s Yemeni population, which is a large portion of the 86 prisoners who have been found innocent on lack of evidence. Those prisoner transfers remain one of the biggest reasons for the continuing hunger strike.And yet, there are wildly differing versions as to what actually goes on inside the prison.RT interviewed Guantanamo’s spokesman Robert Durand, who denied any and all allegations leveled at the prison’s authorities by the many lawyers and human rights advocates over the 11 years of its operation.“They’ve been leveling these allegations for 11 years. We get visited by the ICRC [the International Committee of the Red Cross]. None of these allegations have ever been substantiated. We welcome the oversight of our commander, of the ICRC. We couldn’t operate this place as we do for 11 years with the kind of incredible allegations that they keep replaying over and over. It’s just not true.”He also described a dilemma the prison has been facing with choosing to view the strike as a group or an individual action, alluding to religious and peer pressure as the main components. Therefore, according to Durand it would be difficult to avoid the duty of sustaining someone’s life under the circumstances.“There is tremendous peer pressure, tremendous religious and military pressure that you will hunger strike to the death and the matter of autonomy, unlike someone who was by themselves and wanted to commit suicide or hunger strike on their own for a means of protest, we don’t know that they’re making that decision on their own, so our policy is to preserve life.”Durand went on to recount the much debated procedures of force-feeding and cavity searches, which he claimed were not as severe and thorough as has been described by opponents of the prison. His bottom line on the issue was that the policy of the United States is to sustain life by lawful means, at all costs. Durand maintained that the strike is an entirely drummed-up event and that the real reasons the prisoners have acted are nothing to do with inhuman conditions, but a pursuit of media attention in light of the government’s and media silence on the issue.“I believe they acted together, chose an event to say ‘this is what we’ll create outrage over’. They started in mid-February saying they were 100 hunger strikers, when there were only six. The number’s built up over time and they’re 100 today, so they’ve accomplished their media goal. But they haven’t asked us to correct any conditions in the camp. Al they want is media attention, to restart the process of transferring out. And to an extent they’ve achieved that mission: the president is talking about it; the Congress is talking about it; diplomats are talking about it.” It remains to be seen if the prisoners will be successful on any of their pleas. And of course, the question of prison conditions hangs in the air, as no one has yet been able to completely ascertain whose version of the story is true and which one is exaggerated.‘All of them are without charge. All of them are innocent.’Carlos Warner, who is a US Federal Public Defender, has a total of 11 clients at Guantanamo, 10 of them currently on hunger strike. He outlined their reasons for striking as follows:“It was sparked by the military and it was sparked by a change of command, and the military continues to do all the wrong things. But the reason is the hopelessness and the fact that President Obama still has not made any moves to close Guantanamo.”Perhaps the most pertinent point Warner makes in the case against Guantanamo are that a vast majority of its prisoners remain in a state of suspension, without charge, and that to this day there is no evidence to implicate them in anything.“All of them are without charge. First of all, all of them are innocent. Certainly there isn’t evidence that could put all of them on trial, but we know that 86 of 166 our government has admitted are innocent and should be immediately released and are not a danger and they have places to go. So it remains on the President’s shoulders to do what’s right here and release these men.”Warner points to the strained relationship that exists within the government as well, alluding to the recent news of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s memo that pleads with the government to get the transfers of innocent prisoners underway. But the request was shot down.RT asked Warner if there was any truth to the claims of Guantanamo spokesman Robert Durand about comfortable prison conditions and the “non-invasive” methods they have of getting the prisoners to comply with certain procedures. Warner denied all this, asking us to remember past statements and actions of the prison’s administration.“Remember this is the same military that denied a strike was going on for a long time. It’s the same military that yesterday said if you’re extracted from your cell, a tube shoved down your nose, that’s not force-feeding. So you have innocent men in solitary confinement and the military has begun new procedures, like searching the men’s genital areas before they come to talk to lawyers. They’ve never done this before. They’ve employed this tactic to try to keep the men away from the lawyers.”The big question is always whether the military has any real choice in the matter. After all, they have sworn to preserve life at any cost, according to Robert Durand of the prison administration. Warner makes a case for the detainees’ actions by asserting that it is firstly a peaceful strike, and explaining that the men imprisoned in Guantanamo simply believe they have no other choice than to either die quietly or not, and they have chosen the latter.Warner, Obama’s supporter, continued by remembering the president’s words: “’We have two bad choices – either they die or we force-feed them.’ Well, I believe there’s a third choice”, Warner says. “Releasing the innocent men – which Obama has the power to do. That would end the strike. The military has another choice too. They can negotiate with the men and with people like me. If they did that, we could end this strike in a week…but instead of de-escalating, they escalate over and over. It makes you wonder if the military wants this to continue!”And finally, Warner directs attention to the fact that it was the military themselves who had said that the strike was “not a sustainable situation”, which puts in question just how long the Guantanamo ordeal is to last. The prisoners simply cannot survive on the tube-feeding formula. Furthermore, the question of Congress is seen as a non-issue: President Obama does have the power to start prisoner transfers, according to Warner. It is unclear why he hasn’t done so until now.“He likes to blame Congress, because it satisfies people on the left. The bottom line is – he has the authority…and he stated that Guantanamo is not in the interests of national security… it’s not a matter of Congress, but of whether he has the political courage to release them.”‘They did invite me, but I couldn’t talk to the inmates’Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, told RT that he had been pressing the US government to let him in for inspections. But in the end he simply couldn’t accept the Department of Defense’s invitation, because it was too limited and would prevent him from carrying out his duties to the full – one of them being allowed the unrestricted ability to talk to any prisoner without supervision.“I was invited after insisting, but under my mandate I couldn’t accept. Everywhere I go, in every country, I have to be able to visit every part of the facility and have private conversations with inmates of my choosing without there being any repercussions. The DOD did invite me to come…but they told me I could not visit and have private conversations with inmates.”Mendez has not backed down and is continuing to insist on a visit to the facility in a way that would satisfy the UN’s concerns for international standards.“For us the most important thing is: 1) to allow unfettered visits to Guantanamo – which they [the US government] are not doing; 2) to solve the problem of those inmates that have been cleared for release and release them; 3) to try those who have to be tried under due process and fair trial guarantees, and finally – close Guantanamo. That’s basically the agenda of our engagement with the United States government on that.”Although Mendez did stress the UN “never said that force-feeding was torture”, he concludes that it amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which is also an offense, and something that requires prompt action on the part of the United States. … Read More
IRA mole fights secret court hearing in case against MI5
McGartland, a former petty criminal from west Belfast, is credited with saving the lives of 50 police officers and soldiers in Northern Ireland, when he worked as a British mole in the IRA, providing crucial intelligence to the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.There were two attempts on his life, which left him with severe injuries, and he says the British security services failed in their duty of care to him, refusing to pay for his medical treatment.He even says they knew of one of the IRA attempts to kill him in advance but failed to do anything to prevent it.McGartland, who calls himself “the disposable agent”, alleges solicitors acting for the Home Office, the UK government department responsible for the security services, have applied to have the matter dealt with by a Closed Material Procedure (CMP) hearing, it was reported by the Independent newspaper.A CMP is a special kind of court hearing where claimants are represented before a judge not in person or by their solicitors but by special advocates who have been cleared for security. This would mean that both McGartland and his lawyers would be unable to attend.CMP’s are used by the British government as a way of conducting a hearing before a judge where the information, for reasons of national security, cannot be revealed in open court.But the Labour Party has called for the use of such closed proceedings to be limited to cases where a judge agrees that a fair verdict cannot be reached by any other means, and says that they deviate from the “tradition of open and fair justice”.The President of the Law Society, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, has also raised concerns that CMP’s undermine the essential principle of English justice, where all parties are entitled to see and challenge all evidence placed before the court, it was reported in the Law Society Gazette, earlier this year.The case brought by McGartland against MI5 is the first of its kind between an agent and his former employers in the UK’s domestic security services.After infiltrating the IRA in 1989, his cover was blown in 1991, after a clumsy interception of guns by the Royal Ulster Constabulary exposed him as an informer.In an interview at a secret location last year with the Guardian newspaper has said he hoped the case would raise the issue of why, when the security services had him under surveillance in August 1991, the day the IRA abducted him at a Sinn Fein advice center, they failed to intervene.The IRA then took him to flat and interrogated him for eight hours. Believing he was about to be killed by the IRA interrogation squad he hurled himself out of a third-floor window. He suffered serious head injuries, but was rescued by locals who called an ambulance.According to McGartland, the standard IRA procedure against informers is to use torture and violence until a victim signs either a true or false confession and they are shot with two bullets in the back of the head.MacGartland was given a new identity and a £100,000 home in North Tyneside, in England, paid for by MI5, but these proved insufficient and an IRA hit team managed to track him down to his new home in 1999.During the confrontation with the gunmen, McGartland put his hands over the gun barrel and sustained serious injuries to his hands which prevented his assassin firing into his upper body and head. Despite being shot seven times in the attack McGartland says MI5 withdrew his medical treatment between 2001 and 2009. He claims this led to a deterioration in his condition, which now means he needs round the clock medical support.“At 42 years of age I am on the scrapheap. I can’t get a job. I can’t even go to the supermarket without getting panic attacks. Even when I am driving my car if I see another car behind me for a while I suspect they are up to something,” he said.“The total lack of care of duty by MI5 has caused me very serious and permanent psychological damage,” he continued.McGartland believes that the decision to withdraw medical care was a deliberate decision to punish him for speaking out about the 1991 kidnapping and the 1999 shooting, and the police and security services failures. He has written two books Fifty Dead Men Walking and Dead Man Running about his experiences and in 2009 Fifty Dead Men Walking was released as a film.A senior Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch officer, Ian Phoenix, who was killed in a helicopter crash in 1994, confirmed before his death that security teams knew beforehand that McGartland was about to be kidnapped by the IRA, who planned to kill him.Even now McGartland believes he is still a target. In 2008 the Real IRA issued a death threat, stating that they would take up where the Provisional IRA left off, and named McGartland as one of their prime targets. “I lost my home, my family, my friends. My brother was badly beaten by the Provos [Provisional IRA] just because he was by brother. I continue to be punished by MI5 because I would not be silenced,” he said.McGartland rejects that MI5’s request for a CMP is for reasons of national security, but believes it is out of embarrassment to cover up their own failures and wrongdoing. … Read More
UN calls force-feeding at Guantanamo ‘torture’
Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.”If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment — and it’s the case, it’s painful — then it is prohibited by international law,” said Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, AFP reported.The UN bases its position on that of the World Medical Association, which consists of 102 nations including the United States, Coville explained. The international organization, a watchdog for ethics in healthcare, said back in 1991 that forcible feeding is “a form of inhuman treatment” and “never ethnically acceptable.””Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting,” it said.According to the WMA’s 1975 declaration, artificial feeding methods should never be used without a prisoner’s permission.The prisoner has the right to refuse food if a physician considered the person able to rationally take the decision, being aware of the consequences. If the person is unable to take the decision or agrees to the feeding then it can be used, says the WMA.A lawyer representing one of the detainees at Guantanamo detention camp, a Kuwaiti Fayiz al-Kandari, 35, claims that his client has been tube-fed against his will for a week, accusing US military personnel of using an “unnecessarily large feeding tube.”Another prisoner described the process as extremely painful in a New York Times op-ed on Monday.”There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach,” Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel wrote.”I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.”The hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay jail, US naval base in southeastern Cuba, is now into its 12th week, with 100 inmates officially out of 166 refusing all food. Lawyers for several of the detainees say that the number of hunger strikers is actually higher than official estimates, raising the number to 130.Twenty-one of the detainees fasting are being force fed through nasal tube due to their deteriorating health and five hospitalized, according to official estimates as of April 29.On Tuesday, President Barack Obama, during his first public response to the ongoing strike, pledged to engage all efforts to close the prison urging the Congress to help him. He renewed the pledge given during his 2008 presidential campaign, promising to close down the prison in 2009.While the inmates are protesting their indefinite incarceration without being presented charges, Obama said that the prosecution of terrorists should be getting“wiser.”The Guantanamo Bay facility was set up by former president George W. Bush to hold those allegedly responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. However, the detainees accused of terrorism still remain in prison without trial. Only nine have been formally charged or convicted of a criminal offense. … Read More
Hurricane Sandy dumped 11 billion gallons of sewage into New York water
study released Tuesday from Climate Central revealed that some 11 billion gallons of raw and partially treated sewage were introduced into the water surrounding New York and New Jersey as a result of Sandy-induced damage. There were also six sewage spills larger than 100 million gallons in Gotham alone. Almost all of the damage – 94 per cent – in New York was blamed on overflow in area sewage plants, located in low-lying areas so gravity is able to pump and treat wastewater. Some facilities were shut down by power outages while others were completely swamped by floodwater. New York City will have to spend roughly $2 billion to repair the plants, according to the New York Observer. “Our sewage infrastructure isn’t built to withstand such surges, and we are putting our property, safety and lives at risk if we don’t adequately plan for these challenges,” report author Alyson Kenward told the Village Voice. “Sandy showed the extreme vulnerability of the region’s sewage treatment plants to rising seas and intense coastal storms.” Hurricane Sandy killed 159 people and caused $70 billion in damage across eight states, each of which was affected by sewage overflow. Kenward told the New York Daily News that residents should have little to fear regarding long-term health effects because the sewage becomes less threatening as it dissipates through the water. The environmental effects, however, are yet to be seen. Enough sewage leaked to completely cover Manhattan’s Central Park and fill it eleven feet high, the report noted. One of the worst affected stations was Bay Park Treatment Plant on Long Island. “The storm left this coastal plant completely out of operation for at least 42 hours after the storm,” the authors wrote. “Since the tidal flooding was so severe, operators were unable to provide even conservative estimates to the amount of non-salt water that escaped the plant. However, based on average daily flows through the plant, we estimate that at least 104 million gallons of untreated sewage overflowed into Rockaway Channel.” Last year, six months before Hurricane Sandy ravaged the eastern coast of the United States, Climate Central’s Dr. Ben Strauss testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee that because sea levels have risen nearly a foot since 1880, only a small bit of water – or sewage – could doom someone’s home. “Just a few extra inches could mean the difference to flood a family’s basement, or New York City’s subway system, disabling it for months,” he said. … Read More
