Secret US Prison Revealed

A former horse riding school in Lithuania was turned into a secret prison for al-Qaeda operatives. It had been suggested for years that the CIA operated secret prisons for the illegal torture of suspected enemy agents. In investigations by ABC News, Lithuanian government officials and unnamed former intelligence operatives, the CIA built the secret jail in 2004 and used it for more than a year, flying in at least eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan.

CIA ‘ran secret prison for al-Qaeda’ in Lithuanian riding school (Telegraph UK)

Lithuanian officials open new inquiry into secret CIA prisons (Boston Globe)

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US Government Experiments on Children

During my regular web digging today I came across a series of rather disturbing videos. These videos purport to show actual testimony before a US government panel, The President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experimentation, March 15, 1995.

The videos show witness after witness recounting acts of torturous experimentation they experienced as children. Torture including, electrical shock, radiation exposure and attempted mind control are consistent themes in testimony.

Never doubt that men in high places will do whatever they need to do to stay in power!

Read US Government Experiments on Children, An excerpt from “During The Cold War” by Carol Rutz

The testimony:

Inside Scientology

 

After reading My Twisted Life as a Scientologist (New York Post 11/15/2009),  I thought it would be fun to do a little looking into Scientology’s closet.  I gotta tell you, the closet is full.

L. Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer, created a self-help system he called Dianetics. First published in 1950, it developed into doctrines and rituals as part of a new religion he dubbed Scientology.

Scientology is legally recognized as a tax-exempt church in the United States. Many countries, however, refuse to grant Scientology the status of a church. Canada, UK, Germany, France Belgium, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg and Mexico do not recognize Scientology as a religion. In Greece, Scientology was banned in 1997, and the Greek government upheld the ban in 2003, rejecting an application for Scientology to be recognized as a religion.

Scientology is often referred to as a cult often accused of financially defrauding members. The teachings of The Church of Scientology are cloaked in secrecy. Most of what is known about the teachings of the church comes to us from ex-members.

An ex-member takes you on a behind the curtain tour.

Charles Manson Turns 75

CNN 75th birthday video

On November 12th Charles Manson, charismatic leader of the “Manson Family,” turned 75. Manson has been a resident of the California Department of Prisons since being convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Murder in 1971.

It seems that Manson still has quite a following despite his years of incarceration. The CNN video shows a 21 year old Manson follower who sounds just like the girls he brainwashed back in the Manson Family/Spahn Ranch days.

After watching the CNN clip and giving his newest webpage a look, I was amazed that his current rants seem to be about the environment, but after viewing the 1976 “Manson Follower” video below, I realized he had been saying this all along. Just not saying it in a very
coherent fashion.

D is for Dowsing (and Also for Dumbass)

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless (New York Times)

The Iraqi government  has purchased more than 1500 ADE 651’s. The ADE 651 (Advanced Detection of Explosives Model651)  is marketed by ATSC (UK) Ltd.  It consists of a thin rod mounted on a swivel held by pistol grip, and is said to point to explosives. That’s all it is, there are no sensors.  According to Rod Nordland who wrote the article, a retired USAF officer said the device is nothing more than an explosives divining rod,.  The devices range in price from $16,500-$60,000 each.

I understand that similar devices are being used by local police around the US in order to justify “probable cause” requirements for unlawful search and seizure.

The manufacturer also  offers a narcotic detector. Exactly the same device, but with a different model number.

You May Already Be An Anarchist

Excerpted from:

It’s true. If your idea of healthy human relations is a dinner with friends, where everyone enjoys everyone else’s company, responsibilities are divided up voluntarily and informally, and no one gives orders or sells anything, then you are an anarchist, plain and simple. The only question that remains is how you can arrange for more of your interactions to resemble this model.

Whenever you act without waiting for instructions or official permission, you are an anarchist. Any time you bypass a ridiculous regulation when no one’s looking, you are an anarchist. If you don’t trust the government, the school system, Hollywood, or the management to know better than you when it comes to things that affect your life, that’s anarchism, too. And you are especially an anarchist when you come up with your own ideas and initiatives and solutions.

As you can see, it’s anarchism that keeps things working and life interesting. If we waited for authorities and specialists and technicians to take care of everything, we would not only be in a world of trouble, but dreadfully bored—and boring—to boot. Today we live in that world of (dreadfully boring!) trouble precisely to the extent that we abdicate responsibility and control.

Anarchism is naturally present in every healthy human being. It isn’t necessarily about throwing bombs or wearing black masks, though you may have seen that on television (Do you believe everything you see on television? That’s not anarchist!). The root of anarchism is the simple impulse to do it yourself: everything else follows from this.

Click here for the entire Anarchist Primer in pdf (13 pages)

Confessions

We dropped out of school, got divorced, broke with our families and ourselves and everything we’d known.

We quit our jobs, violated our leases, threw all our furniture out on the sidewalk, and hit the road.

We sat on the swings of children’s playgrounds until our toes were frostbitten, admiring the moonlight on the dewy grass, writing poetry on the wind for each other.

We went to bed early and lay awake until well past dawn recounting all the awful things we’d done to others and they to us—and laughing, blessing and absolving each other and this crazy cosmos.

We stole into museums showing reruns of old Guy Debord films to write fight foul and faster, my friend, the old world is behind you on the backs of theater seats.

The scent of gasoline still fresh on our hands, we watched the new sun rise, and spoke in hushed voices about what we should do next, thrilling in the budding consciousness of our own limitless power.

We used stolen calling card numbers to talk our teenage lovers through phone sex from telephones in the lobbies of police stations.

Ship of Fools – A Modern Parable

Once upon a time, the captain and the mates of a ship grew so vain of their seamanship, so full of hubris and so impressed with themselves, that they went mad. They turned the ship north and sailed until they met with icebergs and dangerous floes, and they kept sailing north into more and more perilous waters, solely in order to give themselves opportunities to perform ever-more-brilliant feats of seamanship.

As the ship reached higher and higher latitudes, the passengers and crew became increasingly uncomfortable. They began quarreling among themselves and complaining of the conditions under which they lived.

Granada: Rescued from Rape and Slavery – A CIA Comic Book

In 1984 the CIA produced a comic book that told the story they would like to become history. They airdropped these comics by the thousands. This was a ploy by the US to have the people of Granada see the United States as liberators as opposed to invaders.

The Zen of Fight Club

In a 1996 Chuck Palahniuk published a novel. The book follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor’s exasperated remark that sleeplessness is not suffering, he finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. An encounter with a fellow “tourist”, Marla, drives him back into insomnia until he meets a mysterious liberator named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as a form of radical psychotherapy^.

In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into a film of the same name, which received positive critical response and generated  a cult following, despite lower than expected box-office results.

Fight Club, while fictional, contained several tidbits of wisdom.  Most of the “liberation dialog” was spoken by the imaginary character of Tyler Durden.  While many saw the value of the novel and the movie as entertainment,  some of us relished its revolutionary vision.

CIA Sabotage Manual

In the early 1980s, the right-wing Reagan U.S. Government was determined to undermine or overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua.

As part of this campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a small illustrated booklet in both Spanish and English designed to destabilise the Nicaraguan Government and economic system.
It instructed dissaffected individuals on acts of sabotage they could carry out to this end.

MK ULTRA – US Government Mind Control Expiriments

Project MK-ULTRA was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, building on the Nazi mind control programs and continuing at least through the late 1960s, that used United States citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.

Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed in 1973. The Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms’ destruction order.

US Government Torture Manuals

The first manual is the “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,” dated July 1963. This is the oldest and most abusive manual and  is the source of much of the material in the second manual. (KUBARK was a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cryptonym for the CIA itself.)

The second manual, “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983,” was used in at least seven U.S. training courses conducted in Latin American countries, including Honduras, between 1982 and 1987. According to a declassified 1989 report prepared for the Senate intelligence committee, the 1983 manual was developed from notes of a CIA interrogation course in Honduras.

Both manuals deal exclusively with interrogation.  Both manuals have an entire chapter devoted to “coercive techniques.” These manuals recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets.

The manuals advise that torture techniques can backfire and that the threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself. The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used “to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist.” These techniques include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disrupting routines, solitary confinement, threats of pain, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos.

Italian Court Convicts 23 Americans in CIA Rendition Case

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions (New York Times)

Italy Convicts Former CIA Agents In Rendition Trial (Reuters)

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

By Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is “endemic” to the country’s justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a “totalitarian” state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.

Marriage and Love

-Emma Goldman

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The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.

No Gods – No Masters

from Days of War Nights of Love – a CrimethInc book No Gods Once, flipping through a book on child psychology, I came across a chapter about adolescent rebellion. It suggested that in the first phase of a child’s youthful rebellion against her parents, she may attempt to distinguish herself from them by accusing them of not living up to their own values.For example, if they taught her that kindness and consideration are important, she will accuse them of not being compassionate enough. In this case the child has not yet defined herself or her own values; she still accepts the values and ideas that her parents passed on to her, and she is only able to assert her identity inside of that framework. It is only later, when she questions the very beliefs and morals that were presented to her as gospel, that she can become a free-standing individual. I often think that we have not gotten beyond that first stage of rebellion. We criticize the actions of those in the mainstream and the effects of their society upon people and animals, we attack the ignorance and cruelty of their system, but we rarely stop to question the nature of what we all accept as “morality.” Could it be that this “morality,” by which we think we can judge their actions, is itself something that should be criticized? When we claim that the exploitation of animals is “morally wrong,” what does that mean? Are we perhaps just accepting their values and turning these values against them, rather than creating moral standards of our own? Maybe right now you’re saying to yourself “what do you mean, create moral standards of our own? Something is either morally right or it isn’t-morality isn’t something you can make up, it’s not a matter of mere opinion.” Right there, you’re accepting one of the most basic tenets of the society that raised you: that right and wrong are not individual valuations, but fundamental laws of the world. This idea, a holdover from a deceased Christianity, is at the center of our civilization. If you are going to question the establishment, you should question it first! There is no such thing as good or evil. There is no universal right or wrong. There is only you… and the values you choose for yourself.