A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.
The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.
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Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.
“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”
After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.
This is outrageous. The blocking of a trial with spurious claims of "state secrets" is, in my opinion, tantamount to an admission of guilt. This crime is even more blatant by the fact that this German citizen was flown to Kabul — an occupied territory of the United States. Does anyone really doubt who's in charge in Afghanistan or Iraq? The crimes of puppet governments are crimes of the puppeteer. It is a further crime that Khaled el-Masri cannot peruse justice in an American court and it is likely that neither those who kidnapped and tortured him nor those that ordered the kidnapping and torture will ever be extradited to stand trial in Germany.
I've been on the side of the police in the recent bomb scare incidents in Boston. The police were unfairly blamed for doing their jobs and doing their jobs well in those instances. That does not mean, however, that I believe the police can do no wrong.
In fact, there are many recent incidents that show there are real and significant problems with the police, including (but far from limited to) the Jena Six, the tasering of the student at John Kerry's speech, campus police breaking a high school student's wrists over crumbs, racial profiling, overuse of heavily armed SWAT teams for what used to be considered relatively minor drug offences, and police outright threatening to make up crimes.
We have secret prisons and the right to habeas corpus has been revoked. The police believe they can behave with impunity, because much like the soldiers responsible for the massacre at Haditha or the Blackwater employees slaughtering civilians in Iraq, the police within the United States are generally allowed to act with impunity when dealing with those outside the power structure &mdash they know they will not be held accountable for their actions.
That is why I get so upset about the whining that occurs in Boston whenever the police do what they are actually supposed to be doing — it draws too much attention away from the real problems.
A 27-year-old man from Ethiopia was arraigned today at East Boston District Court on a charge that he made a false threat to "blow things up" at Logan International Airport.
Ermiyaf A. Asfaw, a taxi driver who lives in Washington, D.C., walked up to an AirTran check-in counter Saturday night and was asked by an agent why he had stickers on his luggage from Dubai. Asfaw responded that he had been there.
The agent asked, "Were you there on business or pleasure?"
According to prosecutors, Asfaw responded: "No. I'm Al Qaeda. I'm with them, and I'm here to blow things up."
The agent responded that his statement was not funny and was against the law. Asfaw laughed, prosecutors said, and walked away from the counter. The ticket agent alerted a supervisor, who notified State Police.
What is it about Boston that attracts this special brand of idiocy? Sure, maybe the agent's questions were invasive, but I knew when I was 6 not to joke about bombs at an airport. They take these things very seriously. This is not some new post-911 thing, this is the way it's been as long as there has been high traffic commercial airports.
I just have to wonder "What the hell was she thinking?" She was asked by an airport employee about the strange device she was wearing and walked away. What did she expect to happen? People who are already blaming the police for this should put themselves in their shoes: they didn't know what the device or the putty she was carrying was and she refused to answer questions about it. What were they supposed to do? She's lucky be alive after a stunt like that. Use some common sense.
The bank at the end of my block was robbed today. I stopped by on to meet porcelaingirl and although I ended up using the ATM, I did notice that the tellers looked uncharacteristically dour. It seemed odd, but I didn't think much of it until I returned home and read that they had been robbed only a 2 hours before I was there. Police haven't identified the robber, but say he is likely the same person responsible for a string of bank robberies in the last two weeks.
Gun ownership is akin to being sex offender? That's the assertion of Christian Trejbal and is the attempted justification for the printing of the names and home addresses of concealed carry permit holders, including police officers and VICTIMS of domestic violence, in the Roanoke Times . The CNN piece exposing the fallout from the Roanoke Times article features a domestic violence victim now has her name and address listed publicly while her ex-husband who almost killed her won't have his information listed publicly when he gets out of prison. Who's lives are being put in danger here?
As to the assertions that public records should be public information, following that logic wouldn't the databases of holders of driver's licences need to be made public? Cars are potentially dangerous weapons, and I would like to know which of my neighbors might be driving one. That actually may not be too far off, for better or worse we are rapidly heading to a state of near-total information awareness.
Neighbors noted that the house was unkempt and the parents were seldom seen. Teachers told investigators that Rebecca Riley came to school in clothes that were too big or not warm enough. The 4-year-old was so lethargic, they said, they sometimes had to help her up the steps in school.
Pharmacists questioned the refills of clonidine, one of three psychotropic drugs the little girl was taking, two of which contributed to her death, according to the state medical examiner.
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The affidavit submitted by State Trooper Anna C. Brookes, one of three lead investigators of Rebecca’s death, paints a picture of a family in extreme crisis despite having access to social services and medical treatment. Rebecca, her 11-year-old brother, her 6-year-old sister and mother were all on medication for mental illness, and their father told investigators he had intermittent rage disorder but was not on medication.
Denise Monteiro, a spokes-woman for the Department of Social Services, confirmed that the agency has had an open case on the family since 2005, when Michael Riley, Rebecca’s father, was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He had been ordered to leave the family’s house, then in Weymouth, and was allowed to have only supervised visits with his children.
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An unidentified social worker from South Bay Mental Health in Weymouth began visiting the family in May. Her concerns about the amount of medication the children were receiving prompted her to contact their psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts-New England Medical Center.
The social worker told Kifuji that the amount of medication Rebecca was receiving was unusual and that she saw no evidence of the diagnosis of hyperactivity for which the girl was being treated. Rebecca was also diagnosed as bipolar when she was 28 months old.
I'd really like to know how you diagnose a 2 year old with bipolar disorder. No child should be on these drugs. None, zero, zip, zilch. There is absolutely no excuse for drugging a child. The psychiatrist should be criminally charged as well.
It's amazing that the only one in the whole family who wasn't drugged was the sexually abusive father.
One of the men criminally charged after placing blinking cartoon advertisements around the city and causing a terrorism scare videotaped a police bomb squad removing one of the devices, but did not tell the officers the object was harmless.
Surveillance cameras caught 27-year-old Peter Berdovsky videotaping officers removing what they thought was a possible bomb last week.
"Mr. Berdovsky didn't do anything inappropriate," his lawyer, Walter Prince, said Tuesday.
Turner Broadcasting System has accepted full responsibility for the guerrilla marketing campaign that caused a security scare across Boston Wednesday.
WBZ-TV's Dan Rea spoke with Mayor Thomas Menino Friday morning and Menino said that the company had agreed to pay about $250,000 for the costs created by the scare.
Phil Kent, Turner's C-E-O, issued an apology in full-page ads in Boston newspapers Friday for "the confusion and inconvenience" caused as highways, bridges and river traffic were shut down.
Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were released Thursday on $2,500 bail each after pleading not guilty pleas to charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct.
If this is accurate, it changes my mind about the situation. Turner should not get off with a bribe. I still believe Berdovsky and Stevens deserve to face charges, but many others deserve to face charges as well. If the city of Boston is not going to prosecute the people at Turner and Interference who orchestrated the stunt, the city has no business persecuting the bottom-level guys who did their employer's dirty work.
I would like to note that this does not change my conviction that the police did a fine job. This is on Menino, not the police.
Berdovsky sent an e-mail to friends at 1:25 p.m. telling them not to talk about the marketing scheme to promote the animated television show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" on the Cartoon Network.
"My boss from the Cartoon Network’s ad agency just called -- she is asking that we pretty please keep everything on the DL," or down low, wrote Berdovsky, according to a copy of the e-mail provided to the Globe.
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Moments after facing the felony charges, Berdovsky and Stevens mocked reporters at press conference outside court, deflecting questions about their culpability with non sequiter quips about haircuts in the 1970s.
Does anyone else find it odd that Turner-owned CNN continued to hype the suspicious devices story even as Turner executives were aware of the situation and what exactly the devices were? If anyone was intentionally spreading fear it was Turner, not Boston Police Department.
A lot of people seem to think the response to the Mooninite devices was overblown and paranoid. While I certainly agree that a lot of the post-9/11 security in the United States has been based on paranoia, I find it completely reasonable to treat strange unknown electronic devices attached to supports for overhanging highways with a high degree of suspicion.
I've found out more about what went on back in Saint Louis. Apparently the security check we went through which I thought was ridiculous, because they had you walk through the line and then go back to the end of the line after you'd gone through the security check. It seemed relatively easy to just get into the line without going through the security check. I thought it was rather stupid at the time because of that.
But, realize it was actually pretty sneaky. What they did was when you went through the check, they put a small orange sticker on your ticket. Getting on the bus, they flagged anyone who didn't have that orange sticker. The two people who got busted didn't go through the security check and when they got of the bus [security] subjected their bags to an extra-intense screening and, i guess, found the drugs on them.
I still don't know if I'm going to be too late getting into Chicago. But, it looks like since we were only 15 minutes late and I was scheduled for a 30 minute layover, we should be able to make it.
“I'm waiting on the bus at the bus terminal in Saint Louis. They pulled someone off the bus, actually two people, and apparently they were trying to transport something illegal (not sure what it was). I guess they discovered that their checked baggage wasn't checked correctly, and checked their baggage. So, they got busted.
I'm hoping that this doesn't screw up my transfer in Chicago, because that would have a domino effect and screw up my transfer in Detroit as well. This would make the trip a very long trip. It's already long, but it would be extremely long. But, I know that kind of thing happens on Greyhound sometimes. So, if it happens I'll just deal with it. I guess I'll know more when I get to Chicago.”
The holocaust did not begin with the Jews or gays or the Roma peoples or even the political dissidents. The holocaust began in the psychiatric institutions. The first gas chambers installed by the Nazis were in the "hospitals". The skills that would in later years be used against other groups were developed in those institutions. It was under the auspices of psychiatry that it began.
The politics of psychiatry are dangerous, and recent history shows the appetite for forced psychiatry has not abated. Mental patients are one of the most vulnerable groups. "Normal" people fear the mad. They feel they need to be protected from us. We need to be controlled. And of course - they always know best for us.
I've heard people who would cringe at the oppression of any other group casually declare "Why would I care about a bunch of crazy people?". When people take the attitude that something needs to be done to "help" the mentally ill, they usually take the NAMI/TAC approach of forced drugging/electroconvulsive therapy/imprisonment. These approaches are not really about helping the mad, only about shutting us up. The website of the NAMI affiliated Treatment Advocacy Center , which purports to be about helping mental patients, instead relies almost entirely on fearmongering — the evil crazy people are coming to kill your cops and throw you under a train. They must be controlled.
In my more optimistic moments I hope that "sane" people figure out that what is now done to us may effect them also. The realm of psychiatry is expanding, more and more of who were once considered "sane" are being given the label "insane". The expansion of who is insane is aimed at anyone who isn't happy and productive and non-questioning of the standard paradigm. No one is "safe" from being redefined, and if you find yourself in mourning for longer than two weeks when you most dear loved one dies, you may be joining the rest of crazies who may have at one time been called human.
For each person or category of person, please indicate how ethical they are (on average) in you opinion. 0 indicates completely unethical scumbags, 10 indicates saintly perfections of ethics. For the purposes of this poll, "ethical" means whatever you view as ethical.
Poll #892485
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
pissed off
melancholy
awake
sick![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
porcelaingirl and although I ended up using the ATM, I did notice that the tellers looked uncharacteristically dour. It seemed odd, but I didn't think much of it until I returned home and read that they had been robbed only a 2 hours before I was there. Police haven't identified the robber, but say he is likely the same person responsible for a string of bank robberies in the last two weeks.
cynical
0 (0.0%)