There's more to it than posturing and looking tough.  These people plan and commit crimes against humanity.  They will be sweeping up dissidents with these lovely new powers and floating prisons.  Let's not forget about all those disused army camps either. 

"I'm willing to wager that someone in the organisation has copied a couple for their own private enjoyment".

Odd, isn't it, that looking at kiddy porn pics can send you to prison for a long, long time. But looking at waterboarding pics earns you the respect of a grateful nation.

But then of course the end justifies the means. Doesn't it?

"the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists"

Just some thoughts on Diego Garcia blackest of black sites.

Amnesty International has received persistent reports that the USA operates, or has operated, secret detention centres in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and other unknown locations in Europe and elsewhere, including on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. The US State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA have all declined to comment on these reports. The UK government has denied allegations of such detention centres on Diego Garcia.
[article]

Analysts say there are at least a score of unacknowledged facilities around the world. Among them, several in Afghanistan (one known as "the pit") and Iraq, in Pakistan, Jordan, in a restricted unit at Guantanamo, and one, they suspect, on Diego Garcia, where two navy prison ships ferry prisoners in and out.

This week, the United Nations said it will investigate a number of allegations from reliable sources that the U.S. is detaining terrorist suspects in undeclared holding facilities, including on board ships believed to be in the Indian Ocean.

"Diego Garcia is an obvious place for a secret facility," says American defence analyst John Pike. "They want somewhere that's difficult to escape from, difficult to attack, not visible to prying eyes and where a lot of other activity is going on. Diego Garcia is ideal."

The British government has flatly denied detainees are being held covertly on the island. When asked last year, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state Lawrence DiRita didn't deny it outright, saying only, "I don't know. I simply don't know."
[article]

The UK government continues to turn a blind eye to breaches of the rule of law. Extraordinary rendition, whereby people have been kidnapped around the world and taken to places where they may be maltreated or tortured, demands its attention. It is high time our government took its head out of the sand and looked into these allegations for itself.

Should Britain be found to have played a complicit role in the use of torture or other breaches of human rights undertaken by American forces in Diego Garcia, then ministers could be held to account in a UK court of law or even face charges at the International Criminal Court.
[article]

Perhaps even more shameful we have this by John Pilger - Stealing a Nation (Youtube)

"US justice officials announced on Saturday a preliminary inquiry into the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda operatives."

"The move came one day after furious Democrats in Congress demanded an immediate investigation after the spy agency admitted to disposing of the videotapes in 2005 to protect the identities of CIA agents."
[here]

'furious Democrats' whatever next? Also this piece "The Central Bank; Silent partner in the bloodletting" was so well written I read it twice :)

"US justice officials announced on Saturday a preliminary inquiry into the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda operatives."

The right wing try to make it out to be OK to try and give it some kind of  justification in peoples minds simply by missing out one word from the above paragraph  "alleged" Al-Qaeda operatives.

touché George.

I was trying to remember what the threatened penalty for non completion of the last census was, about £40? Can you imagine what it would be under the supervision of Lockheed Martin? I reckon Jebs probably got a lock on the general election, which is nice.

tio click on my Homepage and welcome. I blog under Red Dawn on the site...

" "The Central Bank; Silent partner in the bloodletting" was so well written I read it twice :)"

My comment on the above to Mike Whitney...

"Military funding will slow to a dribble. The killing will stop. Finally."

Mike Whitney

If you think this lot are going to go quietly and democratically you are naive. They will employ any reason and do anything to stay in power and they still have the biggest military machine the world has ever seen and they are pure EVIL what else do I need to tell you?.

"CIA destroyed torture tapes"

"There may be fall-out from the destruction of the videos. Some lower-level individuals may be made fall guys for the White House and the CIA. But the Bush administration is counting with good reason on the Democrats to keep things under control"...

http://tinyurl.com/38nedo

The Poodle nation told to pack its bags.

Russia orders British Council to close all regional offices

I don't mean to be pedantic, but shouldn't the title be CIA Film Collection Shrinks Slightly, or have we too been culturally colonized? 

From Legofesto

http://legofesto.blogspot.com/

"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

One thing that I am suprised that no one has made a bigger deal about is that the US has medical doctors presiding over torture. Where do they find doctors with loose enough morals? - probably this same place that they find doctors to preside over their state lynchings.

"One of the tapes is believed to have shown CIA agents waterboarding the al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah as retired Central Intelligence Agency field officer, John Kiriakou, told the US network ABC"...

http://tinyurl.com/2o73av

"What does the interrogator Maimon tell his children when he goes home? What do Eldad and Sagiv tell their wives about their daily labors before they turn in?"...

http://tinyurl.com/3yalkm

"Hard Evidence of US Torturing Prisoners to Death Ignored by Corporate Media"

"Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church"...

http://tinyurl.com/2fn7m8

Three videos

Scroll down page to see...

http://tinyurl.com/ywkjx5

http://www.truthemergency.us/

"A Gulfstream II jet that crash landed in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in late September bearing a load of nearly four tons of cocaine. This particular Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA), was used between 2003 and 2005 by the CIA for at least three trips between the U.S. east coast and Guantanamo Bay — home to the infamous "terrorist" prison camp — according to a number of press reports"...

http://tinyurl.com/38omkx

"Poppy harvest at a record level"...

http://tinyurl.com/2lfdqc

"President Reagan declared a while ago something like "we know that the Sandinistas are very deep into drug dealing". This was front page of the New York Times and Washington Post. A few days later you could have spied, if you looked at the back page, a couple of paragraphs saying that the assertion that the Sandinistas were in high-level drug dealing was unsupported. The President lied, blatantly, nakedly, unashamedly. The drug dealing as is now known from every angle and authority was done by the CIA, who gave the money from drugs to the Contras"...

http://tinyurl.com/2t6g25

How about some good news...

Italians Block Construction of U.S. Base

"The people of the northern Italian city of Vicenza, with help from activists around Italy, the rest of Europe, and even in the United States, are continuing to block the proposed construction of a new U.S. military base on their soil. When a company laid underground fiber-optic cables at the site of the proposed base, activists filled a junction box with cement......"

Italiani Meravigliosi

"Overstock.com's CEO Patrick Byrne is interviewd on CNBC business on overstock.com's performance. Unexpectidly he turns the conversation and starts talking of his beliefs that we are on the verge of a 1929 style disastor. Watch as he gets cut off in the middle of his conversation!"...

http://tinyurl.com/yq5229

Bush Reich Has Globalized CIA's Formerly Latin-American Torture Practices. This expresses nicely what I've been thinking for a while.

"December 19, 2007 - Human rights advocates have learned that the U.S. is
training members of Kopassus, the notorious Indonesian Special Forces
unit with a long record of human rights violations. The similarly-brutal
Brimob, the para-military mobile police brigade, is receiving training
as well."

Beijing-based AIDS-Activist Hu Jia Arrested Why does mr clegg not talk about this. It would be a liberal issue. He has been picked on by the china government for numerous liberal type issues. I am spamming on this issue.