Kidnapping, Torture, and Reflections on Alleged “American Values”
by ilene - May 6th, 2011 2:34 pm
Mish is on fire today with excellent posts. Here, Mish reports on the horrifying story of what the CIA did in kidnapping the wrong man, a German citizen Khalid El-Masri, and the CIA’s subsequent torture and abuse of him. Our court system failed too, citing "national security" grounds to throw out Khalid El-Masri’s case against the CIA. (Sounds like a specious excuse to me as sensitive information wouldn’t have to be made public.) – Ilene
Kidnapping, Torture, and Reflections on Alleged "American Values"
Courtesy of Mish
I do not agree with using torture, nor do I believe the end justifies the means. The problem with both is that others can act the same way.
If the US can torture to extract vital information, then why can’t Iran and every other country on the planet?
It is pure hypocrisy to think that the US has a monopoly on "justified torture". Indeed, there is no such thing as "justified torture".
This has been my position forever. I bring it up because of a post Barry Ritholtz made yesterday stipulating “Torture didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information”
“Torture [at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information. Everyone [at the CIA] was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.” – Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002
“The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003. It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case that enabled us to identify this compound, and reach a judgment that Bin Laden was likely to be living there.” – Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled interrogators about the courier’s identity. …
Barry Ritholtz went on to say "Thinking that torture is wrong is not a liberal or conservative value — it is an American value."
I sure wish Barry was correct. Sadly he is not, at least right now. Both president Bush and president Obama have condoned torture.
Moreover, President Obama had a campaign pledge to shut Guantanamo Bay. Sadly, I report Guantanamo Bay is still in operation. On March 8, 2011, the Irish Times noted Guantánamo trials freeze lifted
Hina Shamsi,
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20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010
by ilene - January 18th, 2011 4:21 pm
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse
2010 was quite a year, wasn’t it? 2010 will be remembered for a lot of things, but for those living in the United States, one of the main things that last year will be remembered for is economic decline. The number of foreclosure filings set a new record, the number of home repossessions set a new record, the number of bankruptcies went up again, the number of Americans that became so discouraged that they simply quit looking for work reached a new all-time high and the number of Americans on food stamps kept setting a brand new record every single month. Meanwhile, U.S. government debt reached record highs, state government debt reached record highs and local government debt reached record highs. What a mess! In fact, even many of the "good" economic records that were set during 2010 were indications of underlying economic weakness. For example, the price of gold set an all-time record during 2010, but one of the primary reasons for the increase in the price of gold was that the U.S. dollar was rapidly losing value. Most Americans had been hoping that 2010 would be the beginning of better times, but unfortunately economic conditions just kept getting worse.
So will things improve in 2011? That would be nice, but at this point there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about the economy. The truth is that we are trapped in a period of long-term economic decline and we are now paying the price for decades of horrible decisions.
Amazingly, many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media have declared that "the recession is over" and that the U.S. economy is steadily improving now.
Well, if anyone tries to tell you that the economy got better in 2010, just show them the statistics below. That should shut them up for a while.
The following are 20 new economic records that were set during 2010….
#1 An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010.
#2 The number of homes that were actually repossessed reached the 1 million mark for the first time ever during 2010.
#3 The price of gold moved above $1400 an ounce for the first time ever during 2010.
#4 According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, approximately 1.53 million consumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, which was up 9 percent…
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IS QE2 THE ROAD TO ZIMBABWE-STYLE HYPERINFLATION? NOT LIKELY.
by ilene - December 2nd, 2010 1:19 pm
Ellen Brown asks and answers, IS QE2 THE ROAD TO ZIMBABWE-STYLE HYPERINFLATION? NOT LIKELY. Her views of the Fed’s activities, debt and the risk of hyperinflation are different than many we’ve been presenting here. Further discussion is welcome. – Ilene
Courtesy of Unlike Zimbabwe, the U.S. can easily get the currency it needs without being beholden to anyone. But wouldn’t that dilute the value of the currency? No.
A month ago, the bond vigilantes were screaming that the Fed’s QE2 would be the first step on the road to Zimbabwe-style hundred trillion dollar notes. Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) is the poster example of what can go wrong when a government pays its bills by printing money. Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed in 2008, when its currency hyperinflated to the point that it was trading with the U.S. dollar at an exchange rate of 10 trillion to 1. On November 29, Cullen Roche wrote in the Pragmatic Capitalist:
Back in October the economic buzzwords had become “money printing” and “debt monetization”. . . . [T]he Fed was initiating their policy of QE2 and you’d have been hard pressed to find someone in this country (and around the world for that matter) who wasn’t entirely convinced that the USA was about to send the dollar into some sort of death spiral. QE2 was about to set off a round of inflation that would make Zimbabwe look like a cakewalk. And then something odd happened – the dollar rallied as QE2 set sail and hasn’t looked back since.
What really happened in Zimbabwe? And why does QE2 seem to be making the dollar stronger rather than weaker, as the inflationistas predicted?
Anatomy of a Hyperinflation
Professor Michael Hudson has studied hyperinflation extensively. He maintains that “every hyperinflation in history stems from the foreign exchange markets. It stems from governments trying to throw enough of their currency on the market to pay their foreign debts.”
It is in the foreign exchange markets that a national currency becomes vulnerable to manipulation by speculators.
The Zimbabwe economic crisis dated back to 2001, when the government defaulted on its loans and the IMF refused to make the usual accommodations, including refinancing and loan forgiveness. Zimbabwe’s credit was ruined and it could not get loans elsewhere, so the government resorted to issuing its
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site