I am grateful to Mr. Don Harkins the editor of THE IDAHO OBSERVER, (USA) and her associates Ms. Anne Wilder Chamberlain to help me prepare my story.
The following short note comes from them:-
KHALID
When we first began corresponding with Khalid Awan in 2007, we had no idea why he was serving time in U.S federal prison.We soon discovered Awan was one of the first of thousands of Muslims taken prisoner in the post-9/11 U.S "terror War". As the story began unfolding in our letters, we began to realize that this honest, humble and sincere man was not only innocent, but the ongoing injustice being done to him provides critical insight into the mindless, mean-spirited, bureaucratic-yes-men idiocy fueling the illegal U.S. "War on Terror" (and just about everything else that is going wrong in this country). At our insistence, Awan wrote his story and supplied us with whatever documents we requested. And now, after three months of cooperative efforts, the story of Khalid Awan can be told. We have come to know Awan as a peaceful man engaged in peaceful work, who has been wrongfully accused, detained and repeatedly convicted of crimes he did not commit because he was a Muslim with international connections and an office in New York on 9/11. Anyone who might of the Muslim belief, especially a person raised overseas who has difficulty understanding our language and our corrupt judicial system, can be arrested and detained indefinitely in this country, certainly without a trial before a jury of his peers. Khalid is one of these Muslims.
We present this to you in faith that you will realize a deeper understanding of the levels of complicity necessary for the "land of free" to tolerate the phony war on terror year after year and in hope that Awan --- and all the other million or more political prisoners being held by this country---will one day be reunited with their families.
(Thanks from the bottom of my heart to you, Mr. Don Harkin and Ms. Anne W. Chaimberlain for your devoted, caring attention in helping me expose my plight and injustices being suffered by myself and others. Your humanitarian devotion, on-going help and attitude truly an inspiration to me in my life!)
CIA interrogators at Guantanamo Bay subjected dozens of detainees to sleep deprivation, shackling the prisoners in a standing position for up to 11 days at a time. Recently released Justice Department memorandums claim sleep deprivation studies show that "surprisingly, little seem[s] to go wrong with the subjects physically." Wait, is it really safe to go without sleep?
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No—extended bouts of sleeplessness can cause an array of physical symptoms and might eventually kill you. The effects begin within the first 24 hours of sleep deprivation. First, the body undergoes subtle hormonal changes—cortisol and TSH levels increase, leading to a rise in blood pressure. A day or two later, it stops metabolizing glucose properly, creating carbohydrate cravings. (This phenomenon may have gone unnoticed among the detainees, who were already on a calorie-restricted diet.) A person's body temperature will also drop, and his or her immune response becomes somewhat suppressed. All of these physiological changes are reversible, though—take a nap, and you'll be on the road back to normal.
Related in Slate
Amanda Schaffer discussed why people sleep. William Saletan reported on the military's sleep-reduction program. David Plotz tried a drug for the chronically sleep-deprived. Seth Stevenson tested over-the-counter sleep aids.
It's possible that given enough time, sleep deprivation can kill you. While no human being is known to have died from staying awake, animal research strongly suggests it could happen. In the 1980s, a University of Chicago researcher named Allan Rechtschaffen conducted a series of groundbreaking experiments on rats. After 32 days of total sleep deprivation, all the rats were dead. Curiously, researchers still do not agree on the cause of death. It's possible that the rats' body temperature dropped so much that they succumbed to hypothermia. Another theory posits that the rats' immune systems became so depressed that bacteria normally sequestered in their intestines spread throughout their bodies—though Rechtschaffen counters that his rats perished even when they were administered antibiotics. A third explanation points to some evidence of brain damage among the sleep-deprived rats. It's also possible that extreme levels of stress contributed to the rats' demise.CIA interrogators at Guantanamo Bay subjected dozens of detainees to sleep... more
Military Responsibility and law against torture Act MRLAT
By: Brian Hill
House Bill # 1
A BILL
TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT
PURPOSE: To create a ban on torture, secret renditions, and to preserve the reputation of our Military and put our soldiers less at risk
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
Sec. 1. This order of law will create a ban, considering it a criminal offense, and lead to a punishment of any United States Citizen, Represenative, Congressmen, Congresswomen, Senator, Political personell, Military personell, generals, and anyone else serving our country from engaging in criminal offenses against this Act.
Sec. 2. This order has been created for the sake of human rights everywhere, the punishment of real terrorists and lead to fair trials on all suspected terrrorists and so if enough evidence as provided by the Constitution of the United States, and will by this law all forfeiture of torture rights, all rights to secretly abduct United States citizens and non Citzens alike will also be enforced with this law, on any institution funded by the United States, under any governmental control by anyone working for the United States government
Sec. 3. Definitions:
(a)Torture includes any abuse, unwillingful sexual conduct, unwillingful strriping of any clothing from any Citizen and non Citizen accused of any type of crime or midconduct, slandering against any person detained whether a citizen or non citizen of our country, taking away the rights of citizens and non United States citizens of talking to a lawyer, friends, family if there is any case of being accused of wrong doing such as terrorism, drug dealing, and any other crimes under U.S amd international law, taking away the rights of any human being from being allowed to show up at a court hearing as mentioned in the Constitution, denying the rights to be treated like a innocent human being just because of that persons belief, religious status, viewpoints, and even who that person works for. Torture is denying the persons rights to challenge their accusations whether it be terrorism, whether it be drug dealing, or whether it be any crime commited in or outside the United States. Torture is hurting somebody until the torturer gets a confession out of the tortured. In fact torture is a unrealiable method and will produce false terrrorism confessions and lead to innocent men getting the death penalty or even worse torture and abuse.
(b)Secret Renditions is any type of secret police, or government kidnapping and also forbiddon under the United States Constitution of having the right to be secured in your houses, and keeping your posessions may not be infringed unless you were convicted of a crime but there is also a Constitutional Amendment of not being allowed to conduct cruel and unusal punishment which including sexual and non sexual abuse, the electrocution of any prisoner, citizen, and non citizens alike of our Country, any method that may lead to permanent damage, humilation of the human body. Exceptions to bodily harm includes tranquilizing an out of control prisoner or citizen. Renditions are kidnapping anybody who is a Citizen or non US Citizen covertly without any court trials, without any responsiability, or any public alerts on the kidnapping, also includes government agents and personel commiting any deletion of data of the person being kidnapped.
(c)A proper hearing is the right to endure the same type of court trial that is given to regular criminals and law breakers, the right to have a witness, evidence, and even words held against the accused. This court trial must have at least a judge, jury, witnesses supoenoaed, and even people suaponoed by the government, and courts.Military Responsibility and law against torture Act MRLAT
By: Brian Hill
House Bill... more
Where has the spirit of Watergate gone? The US broadsheet (and scourge of former president Richard Nixon) appears to have gone soft in the face of imagined threats from members of former president George W. Bush's administration.
The Post will not call waterboarding torture because it fears being sued for libel.Where has the spirit of Watergate gone? The US broadsheet (and scourge of former... more
It was during this period that CIA interrogators water-boarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.
It's like the old adage about how far you have to go to cover a lie... the topic has been prominent in the mainstream media so I wanted to address the "why" behind the "what" and "who".It was during this period that CIA interrogators water-boarded two alleged top al... more
A prominent Iraqi human rights activist says that Iraqi militia have deployed a painful form of torture against homosexuals by closing their anuses using "Iranian gum.” … Yanar Mohammad told Alarabiya.net that, “Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus.”
According to her, the new substance 'is known as the American hum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq.' According to this human rights activist, for the past 3 weeks a crackdown on homosexuals has been going on based on a religious decree that demands their death; dozens have been targeted. She says that the persecution of homosexuals is not confined to the Shiite clerics. Some Sunni leaders have also declared the death penalty for sodomy on satellite channels."From the translated Al Arabiya article:
A prominent Iraqi human rights activist... more
Torture: Holding America to account
To read the four newly released Bush-era memos on America's so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" for terror suspects is to enter a very dark moral world indeed. It is the Orwellian world of the concealed global detention network set up by the CIA on President Bush's authority after 9/11 in which suspected terrorists - many of whom may have had a lot of blood on their hands - were secretly held in US bases from Afghanistan to Romania and systematically tortured. A world in which Britain is implicated too, do not forget.
The memos do not admit torture, of course. The United States, Mr Bush famously claimed in 2006, "does not torture". The memos embody a cynical bureaucratic attempt to align what went on in the secret prisons with that claim. Yet no one who reads their argument that the threat of imminent drowning caused by waterboarding does not reach the level of "prolonged mental harm" which the Bush lawyers argue is necessary to constitute torture, can doubt that torture is precisely what the CIA had been permitted and encouraged to carry out. The truth, as the new US attorney general Eric Holder has said, is clear: "Waterboarding is torture."
Jaw-dropping though they are, the memos are not the only evidence of the Bush administration's embrace of torture. Two years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was given access to 14 Guantánamo detainees who had been through the "alternative procedures". Their experiences, retold in two recent essays by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books (one of which we republish inside our own Review today), tell of the relentless abuse of detainees who were kept naked in low temperatures for weeks, forced to live in permanent bright light (or total darkness), required to wear nappies, deprived of solid food, blindfolded, shackled, forcibly shaved, and compelled to wear earphones through which loud music was repeatedly played.Editorial
The Guardian, Saturday 18 April 2009
Torture: Holding America to... more
Top U.N. Official Accuses U.S. of Inhuman Atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan
By Fox News
"The aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations," said U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann
================================
A top U.N. official accused the United States of committing inhuman "atrocities" in Iraq and Afghanistan during a speech Wednesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"The aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations," said U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann.
• Click here to see the speech.
D'Escoto claimed that U.S. actions have directly led to more than a million Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003, a vastly inflated figure that does not correspond with the U.N.'s own estimates.
The U.N.'s health and medical agency, the World Health Organization, says 151,000 Iraqis have died since the 2003 invasion. IraqBodyCount.org puts the death toll between 90,000- 99,245.
D'Escoto's fiery speech came on the day the Obama administration decided to take up observer status on the Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration had boycotted because it was unable to crack down on despots and human rights abuses.
D'Escoto urged the Council to put the human rights situation in Iraq on its agenda, accusing the U.S. of war crimes and a series of human rights violations. "These must be addressed to bring an end to the scandalous present impunity," he said.
He also called on the U.S. to free five Cuban nationals being held in U.S. prisons. The group was convicted in a Miami court in 2001 on a range of charges including lying about their identities, trying to obtain U.S. military secrets and spying on Cuban exile groups.
D'Escoto, once the foreign minister for the Communist Sandinista government of Nicaragua, called the five "heroes" being held in "preposterous conditions."
D'Escoto said he was hopeful that the Obama administration would address his concerns and bring change to American policies concerning the imprisoned Cubans.
"The immediate ex-incarceration of the five Cuban heroes would help strengthen our confidence that the promised change is for real," he said.
==================================Top U.N. Official Accuses U.S. of Inhuman Atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan
By Fox... more
The United States has engaged in more than 200 new cases of extraordinary rendition since President Bush vowed to end the practice in 2006 and has operated more than a dozen secretive "floating prisons" aboard military ships at sea, according to a soon-to-be released report from an international human rights organization.
The secret capture, transportation and detention of suspected terrorists in foreign prisons has not abated, despite the uproar over its probable violation of international law, according to the report from human rights group Reprieve, which was noted in The Guardian Monday. The detention of prisoners aboard military ships "is raising fresh concern and demand for inquiries" in the US and Great Britain, according to the paper.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A fifth human foot in a year has washed ashore off the coast of British Columbia, and this time it's a left one.
The origin on any of the remains is still unknown.
"This might take a long time," Brooks said. "This is not CSI." She said in order to identify the foot, other remains from the body or identifying material such as a DNA would be needed. "It's going to be pretty difficult."
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has said there's no evidence the feet were severed or removed from the victims' legs by force.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer based in Seattle, Wash., said when a human body is submerged in the ocean, the main parts like arms, legs, hands, feet and the head are usually what come off the body.
He said his theory is that the feet came along as a result of an accident that might have happened up along the Fraser River, that washed down and spread out along the Straight of Georgia.
Ebbesmeyer said when the third foot was found the feet could have drifted from as far as 1,000 miles away. Ebbesmeyer said the feet could have been severed or detached from their bodies on their own.http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Report_US_continuing_rendition_secretly_holding_0602.html... more
It is truly a sad day when America has less ethics than communist China.http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0631915420080606
It is truly a... more
eyewitness accounts of the occupations - Winter Soldiers testify
From March 13th-16th 2008 nearly 300 Veterans assembled outside Washington DC to share searing accounts of the occupations.Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the soldiers
testified to the brutality, torture, murder, and widespread mistreatment of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the U.S. military.
They call it Winter Soldier - Iraq and Afghanistan - eyewitness accounts of the occupations
Featured interview: Dahr Jamail , author of Beyond the Green Zone and an UNEMBEDDED journalist in Iraq.at the Winter Soldier hearings, March 15, 2008.
Iraq Veterans Against the War has over 1000 members in 49 states, Washington DC, Canada, and on military bases abroad.
Filmed by Paul Hubbard and Robert Malin eyewitness accounts of the occupations - Winter Soldiers testify
From March... more
A film the CIA doesn't want you to see. Amnesty's The Stuff of Life shows the disgusting reality of half-drowning a person then calling it 'enhanced interrogation'.
'Waterboarding' - the practice of torturing prisoners by partially drowning them - is used by the CIA to extract information from detainees in the ‘war on terror’. President George Bush thinks it's a 'necessary tool'. We think it's torture.
Unsubscribe from human rights abuses in the 'war on terror' - www.unsubscribe-me.orgA film the CIA doesn't want you to see. Amnesty's The Stuff of Life shows the... more
In this CBS News video, a German citizen describes how he was tortured and held for five years at various secret prisons as well as Guantanamo Bay. Is he lying? Well, you decide from his testimony as well as evidence from the source itself.In this CBS News video, a German citizen describes how he was tortured and held for... more
WASHINGTON - The White House says President Bush will veto legislation on Saturday that would have barred the CIA from using waterboarding — a technique that simulates drowning — and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.
Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States' right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country's moral standing abroad.
"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.
~~~
So tell me again why impeachment is off the table? This is SHAMEFUL. WASHINGTON - The White House says President Bush will veto legislation on Saturday... more
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Charleen Touchette
I am a mother of four. My children see the pictures of our young Americans torturing Iraqis. They hear our President say, "America does not torture." The Ten Commandments teach, "Thou shalt not kill," and "Thou shalt not lie." Yet my children see President Bush kill and lie everyday. A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Charleen Touchette
I am a mother of four. My... more
