Evidence of medical complicity in torture at Guantanamo Bay

Inspection of medical records, case files, and legal affidavits provides compelling evidence that medical personnel who treated detainees at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) failed to inquire and/or document causes of physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed in the detainees, according to a paper published this week in PLoS Medicine. Vincent Iacopino, Senior Medical Advisor for Physician for Human Rights, and Brigadier General (Ret) Stephen Xenakis, U.S. Army, reviewed GTMO medical records and relevant case files of nine individuals, looking for evidence of torture and ill treatment and its documentation by medical personnel.

In each of the nine cases, GTMO detainees reported abusive interrogation methods that are consistent with torture as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture, as well as the more restrictive US definition of torture (known as "enhanced interrogation techniques") that was operational at the time. Examples of torture the detainees endured included severe beatings resulting in bone fractures, sexual assault and/or the threat of rape, mock execution, mock disappearance, and near asphyxiation from water. Detainees were also subject to enhanced interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, exposure to temperature extremes, serious threats, forced positions, beatings, and forced nudity.

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'Bin Laden busiest corpse in show business for last 10 years'

With elation over Bin Laden's death subsiding, there are questions over what his fate might mean for the world. For more on that, RT talks to Patrick Heninngsen, journalist and editor at 21st Century Wire.

Bad News from NASA

This is going to be the most extraordinary communication so fasten your seatbelts; we are in for a rough ride. I have known in my heart for months that I would have to make a communication like this but had no idea it would be this soon. Back in January, while investigating the underground city that is alleged to have been built under the new Denver Airport, reported on by the former governor Jesse Ventura, I put the puzzle together and came to the conclusion that a planetary event was in store for us in 2012.

Today I am presenting rock solid information; it does not get any better when NASA is your source. What you are about to read and see is happening. Last night, looking at a NASA mathematical model of comet Elenin, I found out that a large celestial body has already penetrated the solar system and is on course for a near and possibly horrific encounter with the earth in the fall of 2011. What we do not know is the size and mass of comet Elenin though I have no doubt that it is known by the authorities.

Elenin is presently being tracked as it goes through the asteroid belt on its way into the inner solar system. I am truly sorry to have to be the bearer of such grave and threatening news but the source, NASA, is impeccable. We have an incoming mass (what might possibly be a neutron star) coming in and it will do a hard turn around the sun like any comet would, crossing and coming in between Mercury and Venus before starting its journey back out. On its way out it will cross our bow, meaning it will pass very close to the earth and the earth will pass behind it, plowing into its tail.

In the video below you will see this explained graphically. What you will see with mathematical precision is thatevery time this celestial body comes into alignment with the earth and sun we have a huge earthquake. The last three alignments produced the Japanese 9.0 quake, the one in New Zealand and before that the one in Chile. On March 11th Elenin was much further out. When the next alignment happens it will be devastatingly close. The main point to understand is that if Elenin was just a normal comet it would not have the mass to generate a gravity pull that would affect the earth when the earth swings around into alignment.

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William S Burroughs on trial for corrupting Turkish morality

The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into a book written by internationally renowned author William S. Burroughs. It was translated and published by Sel Publishing House in January.

The court referred to a report written by the Prime Ministry’s Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications that accused the novel, “The Soft Machine,” of “incompliance with moral norms” and “hurting people’s moral feelings.” Sel Publishing issued a press release that included parts of their testimony in the court.

“It is impossible to understand the insistence in sending books written and published for adults to councils that specialize in minors. If we consider things from this perspective, then dozens of such reports could be written about TV channels, newscasts and thousands of books,” read the testimony given by the publishing house.

The testimony also argued that the Prime Ministry’s council had no credentials in literature, aesthetics or translation, thus causing what the representatives of the publishing house called a “freakish” decision by the council.

The council also accused the novel of “lacking unity in its subject matter,” “incompliance with narrative unity,” for “using slang and colloquial terms” and “the application of a fragmented narrative style,” while claiming that Burroughs’s book contained unrealistic interpretations that were neither personal nor objective by giving examples from the lifestyles of historical and mythological figures. None of the above, argued the publishing house, constitutes a criminal act.

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Thom Hartmann: Which Shall Rule - Wealth or Man?

Russia's Crime of the Century

If there remains any pretense that justice and rule of law exist in Moscow today, that notion should now be counted as pure fantasy. The case of Sergei Magnitsky -- a senior partner at my law firm who was imprisoned, tortured, and murdered after his efforts to shed light on a massive governmental fraud by Interior Ministry officials stealing subsidiaries of my client's company, the Hermitage Fund, and the $230 million of taxes they had paid -- has illuminated the cruelty and criminality of Russian legal enforcement. And new evidence released last week on YouTube as part of the broad campaign seeking justice for Sergei, goes even further -- exposing the blatant theft, impunity, and ill-gotten gains of senior Russian tax officials who were complicit in the fraud and subsequent murder of my colleague.

The very bureaucrats -- government tax officials on modest salaries in Moscow Tax Office 28 -- exposed by Sergei three years ago of perpetrating the massive fraud stashed millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts, created offshore companies, and purchased luxury villas in Dubai, Montenegro, and Moscow. Worse still, the Kremlin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in particular, have refused -- out of embarrassment, inability, culpability, or incompetence -- to review and prosecute what is now overwhelming evidence of this clear crime.

When I opened my law firm, Firestone Duncan, in Moscow in 1993, I was aware of the dangers of doing business in Russia. The stories about "mafia" groups of tracksuited thugs extorting businesses were well known to me. What I never expected was that the Russian mafia would merge with the government; its members are now the same officials who are supposed to be protecting the public.

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