MoD admits use of controversial ‘enhanced blast’ weapons in Afghanistan –The missile’s warhead is made with a mixture of chemicals rather than a simple blast mechanism. 28 May 2009 British pilots in Afghanistan are firing an increasing number of “enhanced blast” thermobaric weapons, designed to kill everyone in buildings they strike, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. Since the start of this year more than 20 of the US-designed [What a surprise!] missiles, which have what is officially described as a “blast fragmentation warhead”, have been fired by pilots of British Apache attack helicopters. A total of 20 were also fired last year after they were bought by the MoD from the Americans last May. ['Enhanced blast' -- 'enhanced interrogation.' It's time for 'enhanced social uprising.' --LRP]
Pakistan: Number of displaced persons exceeds 3 million 30 May 2009 The number of internally displaced persons (IDP) has crossed the three million mark, according to the NWFP government. Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said at a press conference at the Officers’ Mess here on Friday that the number of IDPs now stood at 3.4 million — 2.8 million of them from Malakand division alone.
Israel to hold massive military exercise 29 May 2009 Surrounded by enemies on every side as well as inside their country, Israel will Sunday launch a massive military exercise to help ready the nation for a full-scale war. Operation ‘Turning Point 3′ is set to last for five days, and will simulate a simultaneous war against the Hamas in Gaza, the Hizb’allah in Lebanon, the Syrian army, the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria and Israel’s Arab citizens, who are expected to riot and in other ways assist Israel’s enemies in the case of such a war.
Germany: West Bank settlement expansion is ‘not acceptable’ 30 May 2009 German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has demanded that Israel put an end to all settlement building in the Palestinian territories, in a newspaper interview published Saturday. It is “not acceptable” to found new settlements or expand existing ones in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, Steinmeier said in a joint interview with the German Press Agency dpa and German daily Sueddeutsche.
US senator rejects Cheney torture claim as ‘lie’ 30 May 2009 A US senator says claims by former Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney that enhanced interrogation techniques — torture — saved countless American lives are wrong. The powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, said an investigation into detainee abuse charges over the use of the tactics “gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims,” CNN reported.
Levin: Memos don’t show what Cheney says they do 29 May 2009 Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney’s claims — that classified CIA memos show enhanced interrogation techniques torture like waterboarding worked — are wrong. Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association’s annual dinner in New York on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse charges over the use of the techniques — now deemed torture by the Obama administration — “gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims.”
Censorship we can believe in: Obama to ban PoW photos exposing rape, torture30 May 2009 The US administration asks an appeals court to stop the release of prisoner abuse images, showing that Obama has fully backtracked on his promise of transparency. In a motion filed Thursday in a New York federal appeals court, the Obama administration said that it did not want the photos to be available to the public, arguing that they could lead to violence against US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Pakistan.
Torture photos: US soldiers raped, sodomized Iraqi prisoners By Tom Eley 29 May 2009 In an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph published Wednesday, former US General Antonio Taguba said that photographs the Obama administration is seeking to suppress show images of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi prisoners. Taguba, who conducted the military inquiry of prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 after some photos of US soldiers torturing prisoners became public, said that among the photos are images of soldiers raping a female prisoner, raping a male detainee, and committing “sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and phosphorescent tube,” according to theTelegraph. Gen. Taguba said even the description of the photos is explosive.
After Waterboarding: How to Make Terrorists Talk? 29 May 2009 The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or “walling” and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies… “There is nothing intelligent about torture,” says Army staff sergeant Eric Maddox. “If you have to inflict pain, then you’ve lost control of the situation, the subject and yourself.”
Do-It-Yourself Waterboarding 29 May 2009 Demonstrators protest the use of water torture by creating frighteningly realistic simulations (Photos)
Speaking of terrorists: KBR faults media in coverage of electrocution issue 30 May 2009 Former [Cheney] Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc. on Friday accused media outlets of using electrocution death statistics to fuel a “politically-driven campaign” against the company. A statement released by KBR’s interim president of government and infrastructure, William Bodie [], objected to “false reports and innuendo” in a New York-based newspaper and other media outlets concerning electrical issues in Iraq, where the Houston-based firm holds more than $16 billion in government contracts for services at thousands of U.S.-controlled facilities.
US Army base shuts down after rise in suicides 29 May 2009 The commander of Fort Campbell army base in Kentucky has ordered a three-day suspension of regular duties to focus on a spike in suicides among his troops amid concern over a wider trend across the armed services. The “stand-down” on Friday entered its third day at Fort Campbell, which is home to the famed 101st Airborne Division and has recorded the highest rate of suicide in the army, with at least 11 confirmed or suspected suicides.
CIA Announces Push to Improve Agency’s Language Proficiency 30 May 2009 Five years after it was faulted by the 9/11 Commission for inadequate language skills among its employees, the CIA yesterday launched an ambitious program to double the number of analysts proficient in languages deemed critical in the fight against America’s [so many] enemies. The new initiative, announced by CIA Director Leon Panetta, was an acknowledgment of the agency’s slow progress in adding employees fluent in languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.
Apologise for terror arrests Labour MP tells Govt 29 May 2009 Labour MP for Glasgow Central, Mohammad Sarwar, has asked the Government to apologise for its part in the recent high-profile arrests of innocent Muslim students under anti-terror laws on April 8. The case against 12 men involved in what Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, called a “major terrorist plot” amounted to no more than an email and a few telephone conversations, it emerged; all the men were subsequently released without charge on April 22.
Darpa’s Simple Plan to Track Targets Everywhere By Nathan Hodge 21 May 2009 Most confusing briefing ever? Not just. It’s also a sketch of Pentagon far-out research arm Darpa’s plan to track down and tag “elusive targets” –adversaries who can move, hide and blend in with cluttered environments. And that means more than just next-generation sensors that can penetrate foliage or peer inside “urban canyons.” It means stitching together information collected by different sensors to track a moving object. Darpa’s 2009 strategic plan offers a fascinating overview of the different approaches the agency is taking to better track and identify these elusive targets.
US plans to press FBI into counter-terror ops 28 May 2009 The US plans to push the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department into global counter-terrorism operations in a shift away from the Bush administration’s policy that relied largely on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a media report said Thursday… Under the ‘global justice’ initiative, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases.
