Thursday, May 30, 2013

Jahar Tsarnaev tells mother he's innocent

Mother: Boston Marathon Bombings Suspect Now Walking, Claims Innocence

So ... what's all this crap about a "boat note" confession? Am I going nuts or is this entire story coming apart at the seams?

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) — The remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has recovered enough to walk and assured his parents in a phone conversation that he and his slain brother were innocent, their mother told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to the slain brother maintained that the U.S. agents killed his son “execution-style.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, walked without a wheelchair to speak to his mother last week for the first and only phone conversation they have had since he has been in custody, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the AP.

‘WHAT’S HAPPENING?’

In a rare glimpse at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s state of mind, he told her he was getting better and that he had a very good doctor, but was struggling to understand what happened, she said.

“He didn’t hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What’s happening?,” she said.

The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260. Elder brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar remains in a prison hospital after being badly wounded.

“I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan,” their mother said, standing by the family’s insistent belief that their children are innocent.

Unarmed Todashev shot 7 times by FBI

[Remember this guy?]


Kill shot? Photos show Boston bombing suspect’s friend took FBI bullet to top of head

Friend of Boston Marathon bomber was UNARMED when he was killed by FBI agent as he was about to confess to a triple murder

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

John McCain visits al-Qaeda on Memorial Day???

That's what it sounds like Mr. McGrath is saying here ...



McCain visits rebels in Syria

Total Media Blackout on Monsanto Protests in the USA

I don't know how they covered this in other countries, but I can confirm to my non-US readers that in my country, there was absolutely no comment from any MSM that anyone, let alone two million people world-wide, had a peep to say against the most evil corporation on the planet. Gee, I wonder if hiring their own private mercenary company might have anything to do with that? :/

Saturday, May 25, 2013

London Soldier Killing Hoax Plus Sandy Hoax News (video repost)

This video from Max Malone pretty much cinches it.

The Matrix - How to Know that You're Living in the Matrix

This guy has an interesting channel. I watched these two videos yesterday, almost posted them, decided they weren't noteworthy enough, and got distracted by other things (yeah, the same old depressing conspiracy stuff ... someone has to stay on top of the endless stream of lies they keep pumping at us). But I found myself actually using some of his advice this morning, so I guess I'll post them after all.



Friday, May 24, 2013

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Beware the cover-up

I have long thought the most blatant evidence exposing an evil conspiracy comes from the cover-up rather than the crime itself. The minute Ruby shot Oswald everyone should have understood there was way more to this than one crazy guy. Not long after, all sorts of people with apparent ties to the Kennedy assassination started dying. So now, what do we have here?



Betcha anything this guy was innocent. How did they let him get close to a knife while they were interrogating him, anyway?

"'My husband—he does not do drugs, he does not smoke, he doesn't do anything like that,' Ms. Manukyan said. 'He doesn't even drink alcohol.'"
"Abdulbaki Todashev, said his son was a 'very calm' person who would never hurt anyone."
Wife of Chechen Man Killed in FBI Probe Speaks Out

Monday, May 20, 2013

US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Two disturbing developments have occurred in the last couple of days that have gone relatively unnoticed compared to the recent IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals.

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan. Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

Senator Angus King said this interpretation of the AUMF is a "nullity" to the Constitution because it ignores Congress' role to declare war. King called it the "most astoundingly disturbing hearing" he's been to in the Senate.



Read the rest of the article here.

Friday, May 17, 2013

WHO in Boston: Bombing Story Mysteries

By Russ Baker on May 14, 2013

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/14/who-in-boston-bombing-story-mysteries/

Most of the national and international media have left Boston—and essentially moved on from the Marathon bombing story. But at WhoWhatWhy, we’re just getting started.

Why? Because we see a lot of problems with what we’ve been told so far. We’ve been disappointed that the media have failed to demonstrate healthy skepticism while passing along, unchallenged, the (self-serving) assertions of “the authorities.”

It is the job of journalism not only to report what authorities say, but also to confirm their claims, and address anomalies, errors, inconsistencies, outright lies, and cover-ups, large and small.

When it comes to falsehoods of all types, we’ve seen plenty of doozies, and you don’t have to go all the way back to the Tonkin Gulf incident—which helped pave the way for the escalation of the Vietnam conflict. Most people now understand that circa 2002-2003, the George W. Bush Administration knowingly exaggerated and deceived in order to justify a desired invasion of Iraq.

Things have not markedly improved with the Obama Administration. The 2011 “raid that killed Bin Laden” at Abbottabad, Pakistan, went a long way toward bolstering Obama’s “toughness cred,” and was probably a factor in his being re-elected. Yet staggering inconsistencies in official accounts of the raid have never been properly reconciled. The current scandal du jour is over the Obama Administration’s putting out fake story lines on Benghazi to divert attention from how it handled facility security in that troubled location.

Yet even partisans on the attack in each of these cases typically fail to get at the real story – which, in the case of Benghazi, has to do with how the entire “humanitarian intervention” in Libya was, as we reported, a cover for a deadly geo-strategic gamble that has opened a can of worms from which have sprung untold Al Qaeda types.

***

So what about the Boston Marathon bombing, in which innocent people died seemingly at the hands of anti-American monsters?  While some insist that under these circumstances everyone, including the media, should prove their patriotism by shutting their eyes and ears, we hope you agree that especially at such times it’s important to ask the tough, even unpopular questions. The Boston story, as we previously noted, is full of question marks and high-stakes implications—all the more reason to dig beneath the screen of official handouts. And, in the coming weeks, that’s just what WhoWhatWhy plans to do.

For now, here are some examples of the things we wish to better understand:

Race Security

 We have been told—and see evidence—of a security presence unprecedented at such athletic events. This includes the claims by Alastair Stevenson, a college cross-country coach and frequent marathoner, that he heard announcements of security drills that day and saw beefed up security. It also includes the presence of personnel from the private contractor Craft International, first in the crowd watching the runners, then, after the bombs went off, actively involved in the crime scene investigation. Is there an explanation for this? What exactly were these security people deployed against?

The JFK Library Fire

We’re told that a fire broke out at almost exactly the same time as the Marathon bombing, a short distance away at the JFK library. Although initial reports indicated a possible explosion, we have since been told that it was just an “accident.” We’ve had very few details since then, though the museum did reopen after a number of days.

MIT Cop

We originally heard from reporters that a police officer from MIT was killed during a confrontation with the Tsarnaev brothers. Later, around the time of a highly publicized funeral for the “hero cop,” the authorities quietly revised their story; in the new account, the officer was shot while sitting in his car, perhaps during an attempt to take his gun, though we’ve seen no evidence of this. No explanation of why the Tsarnaev brothers would even have been on the campus, or wanted or needed his gun, nor has hard proof been produced that the brothers were in fact the cop killers.

7-11

In the midst of the manhunt, we were told that the suspects robbed a 7-11 convenience store to obtain cash for a getaway. But later, that scenario vaporized. How did the initial wrong story come about?

How Tamerlan Died

On the night Tamerlan Tsarnaev was reportedly shot by police, then accidentally run over by his fleeing younger brother, CNN broadcast a video showing a crime scene teeming with police, in which a handcuffed man who looks quite a bit like Tamerlan—having been made to strip naked—is being hustled into a patrol car. The reporters speculated at the time that it might indeed be the bombing suspect.

Later on, the police issued a statement saying it was someone else, a case of mistaken identity. Fine. But who was it? Surely by now we can be told the name of that person—and presumably that person would have no problem recounting his harrowing evening. Perhaps the police are withholding his identity at his request—but given all the wild online speculation that the man in the video might have been Tamerlan himself, why not make more of an effort to clear up the matter? (While the original CNN video does not appear to be available online, numerous people copied and posted versions onto YouTube—and can be found there with a search on “naked man Watertown CNN.”)

Missing the Crucial Block

Somehow, the police managed to comb many blocks in Watertown, but not the block on which Dzhokhar was eventually found. As a result, police did not find him. A homeowner, David Henneberry, did—and that story is rather strange. As soon as the governor relaxed the order that everyone stay indoors (why would the police do that if a deadly terrorist was still on the loose?), Henneberry came out to his driveway, took a look at his boat and noticed, according to the Boston Globe, that

something was amiss. The straps weren’t quite right. The pads seemed somehow askew…. Henneberry, a former telephone company technician, climbed a ladder and peeked inside. There was blood. A lot of blood. And on the other side of the boat’s engine box there was a body.

The Dzhokhar Capture Story

Originally, we were told that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev held police at bay during a lengthy and formidable gun battle from the boat where he had taken shelter. We later learned that he was unarmed, and the hail of gunfire had all come from police. We did not learn what the basis for this deadly torrent was—especially because there’s no evidence that police even knew that the body Henneberry glimpsed on the floor of the boat was Tsarnaev’s, or that this bloodied body, which put up no resistance, was an imminent threat.

From NoBos to Rambos

 We were told that the brothers demonstrated great bravado and confidence with firearms, yet there’s no evidence that they possessed either the experience or skills for such a hypercharged performance. Ordinary people usually only turn into Rambo types in the movies. (Early stories that the brothers practiced at a firing range appear to have fizzled.)

FBI Monitoring

We were originally told that the FBI had no awareness of the brothers. Later, after reports surfaced that the Russians had warned the Americans about the brothers, the FBI admitted it had monitored them. Why the delay in admitting this? And if the FBI knew the brothers were potential problems, why did the bureau dismiss them as of no interest? The FBI has shown the capacity to be interested in, and a willingness to monitor, almost anyone, including peaceful anti-war protesters—so why the purported lack of interest in these two brothers, given the Russian concern?

How Radicalized Were They?

 It was widely reported that in 2010, Tamerlan declared that “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.” But in a call to local radio station WEEI shortly after Tamerlan’s death, a good friend of his since 2005—an American—disputed this: “It’s not true—all of his friends were American.” Describing Tamerlan as “happy go lucky,” this American friend said he was “completely shocked” by the turn of events. He said there were no indications of anything amiss or afoot. In fact, he said, Tamerlan had called him just two months ago, and asked him to go skiing, and had been at his house in the past month.

Also, we are told that Tamerlan became more active and radical after the Russians and FBI took an interest in him. What’s this about? Blowback in response to what he felt was bullying by the feds?

Equally dubious is the evidence of his purported conversion. To wit, an article in which the New York Times interviewed some friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and concluded that during a trip last year, as the headline put it, “Suspect in Boston Bombing Talked Jihad in Russia.”

But if you read the report carefully, and think about it contextually, it’s pretty thin gruel. Imagine that you were looking into most any young person who went back to the “homeland”—where the homeland was the scene of war and unrest. Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland, Kurdistan, etc. How shocking would it be that the young person might discuss his enthusiasm for the “cause” or even professions of interest to “suit up”? Would that be so unusual? Would it point to a probability of someone wanting to kill and maim a large number of innocent people in his adopted country—especially when the adopted country was not the enemy of the people in the homeland?

 Brothers in Arms?

For two brothers to become accomplices in this astonishing crime requires enormous bonds of trust, loyalty, and shared values. Yet friends of the brothers indicate no great closeness between the two. The younger one was apparently not influenced by his brother, and had virtually no interest in Islam or Chechen nationalism. Friends of the older brother barely knew his sibling. And when the older brother was in Russia being ”radicalized,” the younger brother was back here, doing normal kid stuff. How did Tamerlan bring Dzhokhar into this dastardly plot?

Burial

The whole story of Tamerlan’s burial is odd. First, police announced that the body was being entombed in an undisclosed location thanks to a “courageous and compassionate individual” who had come forward to cover the costs. What was courageous about that? Courageous to buck public sentiment? Why was it even necessary for a private individual to do this?

Another thing: We later learned that it was the Tsarnaev’s “Uncle Ruslan” who had claimed the body.

This was surprising because of the uncle’s poor relationship with his nephews, and his crucial early role in incriminating them. Within days of the bombing, the uncle had declared Tamerlan “a loser,” implying that he found it totally believable that his flesh and blood would commit this astonishing atrocity. We later learned that he hadn’t had contact with them for years. We also later learned (although not from mainstream news sources) that Uncle Ruslan worked in the oil and gas business and had intriguing connections—and that his ex-father-in-law was a high CIA official with ties to Chechen operations.

Will the burial of Tsarnaev near Richmond, Virginia, 550 miles from the scene of the crime, hinder any potential efforts to exhume his body and learn more about how he died?

Dead (and Almost Dead) Men Tell No Tales

 We have a case where one of the suspects was killed, and the other was nearly killed and literally silenced up to this point. Obviously, the key to this case would be to get Dzhokhar into a place where he could speak freely and without fear or coercion. What is happening on that front? There’s been a near blackout of information.

Anonymous Sourcing

 This story has seen constant leaks by “sources close to the investigation.” Assuming those leaks are authorized, what is the purpose? Assuming everyone is entitled to a fair trial, these leaks make it harder for Dzhokhar to get one—and consistently advance a hostile narrative.

 Kids with Cars

 There’s an awful lot of money and fancy cars around this story. Tamerlan had a Mercedes; Dzhokhar’s foreign friends had expensive cars. And the unnamed “carjacking victim”?  A 26-year-old engineer who had recently gotten his Masters, he had a brand new $50,000 Mercedes SUV and was “out for a spin” at the time of the alleged carjacking. Remember the classic journalistic advice: “Follow the money?” Maybe it should be Follow the Mercedes.

Qui Bono?

What motivations could anyone have to manipulate this tragedy in which three innocents were killed and hundreds were injured and maimed? What role does international jockeying for access to the tremendous mineral wealth in the republics on Russia’s southern flank play in the actions of terrorists at an iconic American sporting event? As we are reminded time and again, with Iraq (see this and this) with Libya, with Afghanistan, with just about any deep and complex story with global ramifications, you probe a little and pretty soon you’ve struck oil—or some other precious resource. Find a big story that doesn’t have money at its root, and it will be an unusual story, to say the least.

Also, in a time when our civil liberties are eroded and the security state expanded every time terrorists strike, we’d do well to always take a closer look.


-----------------------

[BTW, I recently learned something a bit disturbing. Check out the White House's twitter account ... notice anything a bit "off" about the background wallpaper (scroll down the stuff on the left hand side so you can see it)? Now why do you suppose they would depict the eagle that way? Does this have anything to do with why they flipped the stars on the Republican Party's logo? -- Jody]

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Gitmo hunger strike reaches 100th day amid calls for its shutdown


Guantanamo captives during a morning prayer (file photo)

[From PressTV. Original link here: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/16/303828/gitmo-hunger-strike-reaches-100th-day/]

As the hunger strike protest by captives at the notorious American military camp in Guantanamo reaches its 100th day, there are growing calls inside of the US and across the world to shut down the facility.

Nearly 130 of the 166 inmates in the military detention and torture center remain on hunger strike, which began in February to protest persisting mistreatment by prison guards, who also started intimidating the detainees by searching their personal belongings and deliberately mishandling their copies of the holy Qur’an.

Some of the captives further told their lawyers that the continuing hunger strike is are intended to protest their indefinite captivity by the US military without charges and with no opportunity to defend themselves or be legally represented in a court of law.

Prison authorities, however, have officially claimed that only 100 of the inmates are on hunger strike, after initially attempting to ignore and discount the drastic protest effort.

The US military has further been forced to admit that at least 30 of the hunger strikers are being force-fed after some of the protesting inmates described the extremely painful procedure to their attorneys and suggested that prison guards actually take the measure to punish inmates who refuse to eat.

During the force-feeding procedures, hunger strikers are shackled and strapped to a so-called feeding chair and then a long tube is forced into their stomach through the inmates’ nose to inject liquid nutrients.

This how one of the Guantanamo captives described his experience with force feeding: “I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the ERF (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed.”

The account is that of 35-year-old Yemeni inmate Samir Naji al-Hassan Moqbel, who share the experience in a New York Times article on April 14 with assistance from an Arabic translator and his attorney.

“I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way,” added Moqbel, who has been held captive at the infamous military camp for 11 years after he was picked up by US mercenaries in Pakistan.

What is even more disturbing about the extremely painful practice, condemned by the UN as torture, is that the final decision regarding who will be force-fed is left up to the Guantanamo Commander and not a medical specialist, a recent news report said.

Most of the Guantanamo inmates have been picked up by American military forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the aftermath of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan under the pretext of removing the Saudi- and Pakistani-backed Taliban regime and bringing stability to the country.

MFB/MFB

Monday, May 13, 2013

Is Boston Bombing victim Krystle Campbell still alive?

You've got to look at these photos!
http://anywho.simplesite.com/201858941



***Update***

I just found this page (lots of info, check it out!). Am I hallucinating, or doesn't Krystle's mother look a lot like this woman here, who appears to be an eyewitness to both the Boston Bombing and the Watertown shooting? This just gets weirder and weirder, folks ...





***Another Update***

Here's a video that links the above two women with a character from Sandy Hook. Someone from the comments section at nodisinfo.com speculated that these "characters" were played by Barabara Starr, CNN correspondent to the Pentagon. Who knows? I wouldn't put it past CNN, that's for sure!



Saturday, May 11, 2013

Was Israel involved in the Boston Bombings?

Hell, their security firms seem to be involved in pretty much every other global disaster. Check this out: Israel Hi-Tech Firm Helped Capture Boston Bomber Terrorists. And what were these CST guys doing there?

Source: London Guardian


Anyway, I got all this info from havf8's great youtube channel, he's been doing a great job investigating the Boston Bombings. Check it out!

And BTW, happy Mother's Day, everyone! :)

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Indefinite Enemies in the Hell of Indefinite Detention



ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

You’re strapped to a metal table, unable to move. They stick a two-foot plastic tube up your nose, then down the back of your throat into your stomach. They squirt in the liquid protein. You gag, bleed, vomit. It’s unbearably painful.

The practice of involuntary force-feeding is condemned by most medical organizations, including the AMA. It’s banned by most governments. It’s torture.

When I read about the process by which authorities are breaking the hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay detention center — a process that’s also used regularly in U.S. federal prisons, by the way — I was struck by the utter efficiency of it. The “food” is transmitted directly from bureaucracy to digestive system, bypassing the consciousness of the individual hunger striker. The human being inhabiting this body is completely irrelevant; he only dies when we say so.

Just think about how powerful we are. Just think about how secure we are.

In the overall context of the war on terror and the harm it has unleashed on the world, the Guantanamo hunger strike, involving 100 of the 166 detainees still being held at the facility — about two dozen of whom are now being force-fed — is a fairly small matter, perhaps. But the symbolic significance of it is beyond description, not only because of the hatred it foments against the United States and the combatants it recruits, but also because of the obvious common decency and common sense it flaunts.

Could anything be plainer? The ruling consensus of the United States is desperate for an enemy, any enemy. There is not the least bit of self-reflection involved.

“There’s no reason to bring these terrorists into the United States. No reason to increase the threat level here,” House Minority Leader John Boehner proclaimed in response to one of President Obama’s tepid attempts to close Gitmo, several years ago. The words ooze cringing contempt for these caged human beings — so many of whom, it turns out, had no involvement with terrorist activity whatsoever. They were turned in for bounty money, arrested out of mistaken identity. No matter. These broken men, caught in the hell of indefinite detention, are America’s enemies and therefore dangerous beyond comprehension, at least in the minds of those who preside over the security state.

People “create enemies in order to maintain a stable, coherent, clear view of the world,” Nathan A. Heflick wrote in a 2011 Psychology Today article. “This is because they can attribute the negatives of the world (which are inevitable) to these enemies. . . . Having enemies even appears to make people feel, ironically, safer.”

And large institutions, as far as I can tell, have the self-awareness of immature children. Tom Engelhardt, for instance, in a recent essay for TomDispatch, ponders the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the sudden end to the Cold War, which left the world with a single, dominant superpower: “And here was the curious thing after centuries of arms races,” he writes. “When there was no one left to race, the U.S. continued an arms race of one.”

And trillions of dollars later, it’s still going on. We can destroy the world a hundred times over but, as Engelhardt writes, we can’t “win a war against minimally armed guerillas.”

We can, however, raid their homes, take out their leaders with drone strikes, rattle our symbolic sabers at defiant heads of state and maintain a gulag of bad, bad people, who have virtually zero rights. The Guantanamo facility gouges the national treasury for about a million dollars per detainee annually, and Americans may have more to fear, in the real world, from 5-year-olds with guns than they do from alleged terrorists, but that’s not the point. We need enemies. Homeland Security is psychological.

Thus the guilt or innocence of the Gitmo prisoners and all our other detainees is irrelevant. It doesn’t even matter that most Americans would probably prefer to see the facility closed, and by large margins elected a president who once promised to do so. In the minds of the ruling consensus and a compliant media, terrorists are not only “out there,” planning the overthrow of our way of life just as the Soviet generals once did, but they are also “in here,” caged, contained, their evil under our absolute control. They can’t even starve themselves to death as a final act of protest against their detention. They have no right to act as human beings, because we have proclaimed them terrorists.

In a world of “what goes around comes around,” we are, of course, not secure at all — not when we abandon our highest values and dehumanize a vast portion of the world. Most of us get this, at least as individuals. But how do we make a nation grow up, especially when its principle shareholders have so much money invested in its continuing immaturity?

The best I can do is echo James Carroll, who wrote this week in the Boston Globe that “the way to respond to the threat of their dying from self-imposed starvation is not to torture them with feeding tubes forced into their nostrils, but to address the legitimacy of their demands.”

In other words, look at their humanity. Once we do, we’ll never be the same.

(Photo: Department of Defense)

---

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Truthseeker: Boston Bombing - What You Aren't Told (video)



Here's an interesting article on Tamerlan's body (I sure hope they get a second autopsy!):
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/tszopjidbw02may13.shtml

I'm not a twitter fan but there's a growing movement on #FreeJahar.

This morning I turned on the TV and heard about the Israeli bombings of Syria, and my immediate thought was: this is the beginning of the end of Israel. I honestly think her fate is sealed at this point. I've been wrong before, but frankly my intuition has outpaced conventional wisdom for some time now. If you have friends or relatives in that part of the globe I'd advise them to take a permanent vacation.

Friday, May 3, 2013

'We need this hunger strike stopped before somebody dies' – Gitmo detainee’s attorney

[reposted from RT]

The US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AFP Photo / Peter Muhly)

Despite reassuring reports in the mainstream media, nothing has been done to resolve the hunger strike in Guantanamo, military attorney Barry Wingard told RT. A third party is needed to negotiate between the camp officials and the men suffering, he said.

Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline on Gitmo hunger strike

“We need to get a neutral third person to negotiate between the camp officials and the men who are hunger striking,” Wingard said.

As many as 23 prisoners are now being forced to eat through nasal tubes, as a mass hunger strike in Guantanamo nears the unprecedented three-month benchmark. Lawyers for the detainees say that as many as 130 of the 166 inmates are taking part, while the US military insists it's ‘merely’ a hundred.

“I’m always amazed when I come to Guantanamo Bay, I read in the mainstream media that there’s an effort to try to resolve the hunger strike. When I’m here, I see no evidence of it in any way performed. In fact, the prisoners report to me that nothing is happening and no effort whatsoever is being made on behalf of the men who are suffering which we found out is 23 and more than a hundred hunger strikers,” Wingard said.

One of the prisoners earlier described the force-feeding procedure as one of the most-painful he's ever experienced. Wingard told RT his client is also among those in “a very bad condition.”

“He’s been force-fed for about two weeks. The force feeding is more and more painful every time. The longer this goes on, the worse he’s becoming. The situation is getting dire...”

Meanwhile, some 40 additional US Navy medical forces arrived in Guantanamo over the weekend as the facility struggles to cope with force-feedings and ailing prisoners.

“Nobody’s intention here is to die per se, but these men, you’ve got to either charge them or you’ve got to release them. It’s been 11-and-a-half years - you’re not going to force them into submission. They’ve been mistreated for many years. We need to get some negotiations going and we need this hunger strike stop before somebody dies,” the attorney added.

Earlier this week the UN human rights office has slammed force-feeding the hunger strikers protesting their indefinite incarceration without being presented charges.

"If it's perceived as torture or inhuman treatment -- and it's the case, it's painful -- then it is prohibited by international law," AFP has quoted spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Rupert Coville, as saying.

“My client said it best to me today: ‘Hey, I’ve been here for 11-and-a-half years, I’m not charged with a crime, I’m never going to get a trial, you wanna hold me forever. You won’t let me leave in peace, you won’t let me die in peace, and the funniest thing of all is, you blame ME for that! What kind of country do you come from and how naĂ¯ve are the people where you live?!’” Wingard related.

On May 1, President Barack Obama said he is considering hiring a new State Department official to oversee options for a future transfer of the prison’s detainees once it closes.

“One of the options available to us that we're examining is reappointing a senior official at the State Department to renew our focus again on repatriating or transferring detainees that we determine can be returned to their home countries or third countries," White House spokesman Jay Carney was quoted as saying. He also admitted that the president’s hands are tied without congressional support.

“If the president’s and his administration’s goal is to go through Congress, then I’d summit to you that there’s many people in the American Congress that don’t care whether these men have committed a crime or not. Only five percent of the men have any charges against them. That’s 5 per cent of the 166. So no, I don’t think you are going to find anything in Congress that’s going to be satisfactory if that’s the route you choose to take. We need leadership from Washington and that’s the answer,” Wingard explained.

It has been revealed earlier this week that a US lawyer, Andy P. Hart, representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, was found dead in an apparent suicide. According to court documents, 38-year-old Hart had previously represented Kahlid Saad Mohammed, a 39-year-old Guantanamo detainee from Saudi Arabia who was transferred back to his home country in 2009 after being identified as having only ‘low-level’ terrorist affiliation. He was also assigned to defend Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, one of 16 detainees at Guantanamo which the US government labeled as ‘high-value’. Al-Afghani, thought to be Osama Bin Laden’s translator, was detained by the CIA and allegedly tortured prior to his arrival in Cuba in 2008.

The Guantanamo Bay facility was set up by former president George W. Bush to hold those allegedly responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. However, the detainees accused of terrorism still remain in prison without trial. Only nine have been formally charged or convicted of a criminal offense.

[In other disturbing news about Gitmo, "An attorney who represented prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay was found dead last week in what sources said was a suicide." Read more at http://truth-out.org/news/item/16119-guantanamo-attorney-found-dead-in-apparent-suicide ]

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Interesting tweets from Jahar

I decided to start calling the guy the MSM wants to hang with the very foreign sounding, alphabet soup name "Dzhokhar" the name he used for his twitter account, "Jahar." I perused the account a few days ago, and I was interested to find Jahar was not only a 9-11 truther like myself ("Idk why it's hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess fuck the facts y'all are some real #patriots #gethip" -- 9/1/12) but also that he was a lifeguard ("i didn't become a lifeguard to just chill and get paid, i do it for the people, saving lives brings me joy #lifeguardoftheyear" -- 5/29/12). I mean, really? A guy who was a *lifeguard* and an athlete, blowing up random people at an international sporting event???

I missed this tweet, though, which I find particularly interesting: on Feb. 13th Jahar wrote, "I killed Abe Lincoln during my two hour nap #intensedream"

As pointed out by Verge on this post, April 15th is the day Lincoln died. Weird or what???

When you need a respite from all the craziness ...

You can always watch this video:



I found this recent post by Visible to be a particularly good tonic against the mainstreamed insanity as well: Sailing through the Cloud of Unknowing to Serendipity.

It's getting harder and harder for me to stomach watching television these days. That's probably a very good thing.