cia

Dancing with the Devil

Britain’s Iron Lady is dead:

WS – Ding Dong the Witch is dead…  Hey! Your forgot GHW Bush. Come back…

Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher passes away aged 87 after suffering a massive stroke

Iron Lady had suffered from poor health over the past decade
British Prime Minister David Cameron: ‘We’ve lost a great leader and a great Briton’
Mrs. Thatcher likely to have full ceremonial funeral – similar to the service afforded Queen Elizabeth II’s mother in 2002

Margaret Thatcher, the first female British Prime Minister who gained worldwide renown as the Iron Lady has died today aged 87.

Developing a formidable partnership with President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, Mrs. Thatcher stood up to the ‘Evil Empire’ of the Soviet Union, eventually witnessing its collapse. More…

Today is  ”Zoo Lovers Day”   Take time to stop and look around you. And Don’t feed the animals.

Mass protests hit Chicago over school closures

WS – Rahm Emanuel. – Corrupt Corporate Jester, hates poor people.

The Chicago Teachers Union is rallying support against closures that will disproportionately affect black, Latino kids
On Wednesday Chicago will see a mass rally, led by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), to protest the planned shuttering of 54 elementary and middle schools before the next school year. Critics of the closures have pointed out that the vast majority of schools targeted (50 are on the West and South Sides of Chicago) provide for black and Latino children. While only around 40 percent of children in Chicago are black are Latino, 90 percent of children whose schools will be shuttered are black or Latino.

“The only thing that’s like it is Hurricane Katrina,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey of the potential devastation, “except this is being done on purpose.” The closures will affect 30,000 students and around 1,000 teachers. Labor Notes’ Samantha Winslow explained that “the union opposes what leaders call a ‘manufactured crisis’: a series of intentional policy decisions to underfund public schools while boosting charter schools. Once public school enrollment drops, the board can close public schools and justify charters.” Winslow reported on the mass rally planned for Wednesday afternoon:

UN demands prosecution of Bush-era CIA crimes

WS - Guillotine, guilotiiiine, guillotiiiiiine …

United Nations investigator has demanded that the US publish classified documents regarding the CIA’s human rights violations under former President George W. Bush, with hopes that the documents will lead to the prosecution of public officials.

Documents about the CIA’s program of rendition and secret detention of suspected terrorists have remained classified, even though President Obama’s administration has publicly condemned the use of these “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The US has not prosecuted any of its agents for human rights violations.

UN investigator Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, said that the classified documents protect the names of individuals who are responsible for serious human rights violations.

“Despite this clear repudiation of the unlawful actions carried out by the Bush-era CIA, many of the facts remain classified, and no public official has so far been brought to justice in the United States,” Emmerson said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, according to Reuters.

Kept in secret prisons around the world, the CIA’s detainees were subjected to torture including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and various other interrogation techniques that violate human rights. The detainees were often subjected to clandestine transfers to secret prisons known as CIA ‘black sites’.More…

Today is “Multiple Personalities Day” – Take yourselves to lunch.

Coleen Rowley, one of three whistleblowers chosen as persons of the year for 2002 by Time Magazine, will speak about her experiences in the FBI and broader issues of official surveillance and massive data collection. When Coleen Rowley was an FBI agent in Minneapolis, her office got a lead just three weeks before 9/11 that a known extremist had paid $8.000 for lessons to fly a Boeing 747. Her office arrested him, but, her superiors would not allow a full investigation. In a May, 2002 memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Rowley brought some of the pre 9-11 lapses to light, calling his defense of the agency a "rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs." Several weeks later Rowley testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about problems facing the FBI and the intelligence community, and her memo to Mueller in connection with the Joint Intelligence Committee's Inquiry led to a two-year Department of Justice Inspector General investigation. This event is a benefit for Under the Hood Outreach Center and Café - http://underthehoodcafe.org Location: 5604 Manor, 5604 Manor Road, Austin, Texas http://5604manor.org A ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org Produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. http://austin.indymedia.org