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Rendition

  
 
Tryphena Absent
11:04 / 19.01.06
Anyone interested might want to look at this document (I think this will show up but let me know if it doesn't and I'll quote instead). It basically confirms that our airspace and airports have been used to transport potential terrorists. It's relevant with regard to a stream of articles like this today.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
17:54 / 07.06.06
Here's an update on this supremely icky topic.

Some choice bits:

The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons said Wednesday that 14 European nations colluded with U.S. intelligence in a "spider's web" of human rights abuses, singling out Romania and Poland as likely dropping-off points for detainees.

several countries let the CIA abduct their residents, while others allowed the agency to use their airspace or simply turned a blind eye to questionable activities of foreign intelligence on their territory.

He listed 14 European countries - Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland - as being complicit in "unlawful inter-state transfers" of people.

I wonder if this will get any play on the major news outlets in the USA? Conventional wisdom says "no fucking way," but one can only hope. This should be scandal-of-the-century material, but it seems like the Bush administration would have to nuke San Francisco or something before the big news sources got out the torches and pitchforks. Fucking depressing is what it is.
 
 
*
18:09 / 07.06.06
Most of middle America would probably only be angry about San Francisco being nuked because it would mean those fags would stay in their hometowns instead of moving out West.

I'd like to think that some middle-of-the-road Americans will hear about this and think "Hey wait... other countries are being investigated for the crime of cooperating with us. That makes it sound like the USA has done something wrong! I wonder if... maybe we have?"
 
 
Ticker
18:52 / 07.06.06
Entity, that's what I hope happens. Our media doesn't really beat on the pots'n pans about the continued heinous crimes of our administration, but if they even snidely remark on other countries being that concerned maybe some head scratching will happen.

...but knowing my middle of the road Americans, they'll just think other countries are 'crazy'. Sigh. Propaganda makes reality difficult.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
19:11 / 07.06.06
The current executive administration is secretly turning over prisoners to other countries for torture.

How is this not the presidential scandal to end all presidential scandals? The right-wing loonies still see Clinton as execrable because he was getting blow jobs from his intern, and Nixon is the reigning symbol of presidential corruption, but Bush's misdeeds make the to-do over Nixon and Clinton seem ridiculous (okay, the hoopla over Clinton always was ridiculous). This motherfucker should be on the impeachment train. These human rights abuses, blatant lies and corporate pandering are all matters of public record, and no one's doing a fucking damn thing. It's un-fucking-real.

I've been thinking about this all day, and the more I think about it the more furious I get. The only thing I can do is write my congresspeople, but I don't even really want to do that, because I'm scared (possibly unreasonably) that writing my Republican Senators (Olympia Snowe's pretty good people for the most part, though) a letter saying "impeach the President, would you?" would put me on some secret evil Bush administration blacklist. These people are scary. They fucking torture people and lock up teenagers in Guantanamo Bay with no due process. They listen to our phone calls. Cheney shoots a guy in the face, and the guy apologises to him. They may very well have stolen both presidential elections. They may have been complicit in 9/11 for fucksake. All of the protections that keep people without power (me) safe from abuse by people with power (them) seem to mean absolutely nothing to these fucking evil shitheads. Call me a coward, but I'm fucking terrified, and I'm going to start drinking early today.
 
 
*
19:27 / 07.06.06
You're not without power, and neither am I. But the administration is good at making it appear as if we are without power. Why are they bothering to lock people up and torture them and spy on us? Because they are afraid of us. Fortunately for them, most of us prefer not to pay attention to their atrocities. I know I would rather get schoolwork done than think about my government illegally dropping people off in other countries to be tortured. The hard part is getting people to realize that it is in our self-interest to pay attention to this and make some noise about it.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
20:10 / 07.06.06
But when people make noise, the major media outlets tend to marginalise (CNN, MSNBC, the Times, the Glob, etc...) or ridicule (FOX, Washington Post, any rag like the NY Post or Boston Herald) them. We've had some enormous protests against the war in Iraq, and all the coverage seemed to boil down to "don't these silly hippies realize that the sixties are over?"

People who read Harper's and The Nation already know the score. It's up to those big media outlets to shake peoples' perceptions, but they seem like an arm of the Bush administration most of the time. God forbid they ever cover the evil shit these people do. Because I really give a fuck about the latest development in the Natalie Holloway case. The fact that I know her name is absurd enough. With all the hideous shit that our "elected" officials are pulling, the cable news networks paid more attention to a pretty white girl's murder.

I'm just feeling very pessimistic, I suppose, but not without good reason. As far as I know, a significant portion of this country is pissed off, but it seems to make no difference. Ugh. I'm so depressed.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
20:47 / 07.06.06
The salient question for me is are political questions being asked? The impression that I gather is that the opposition that should have gathered against the Bush administration and its actions has failed to emerge (primarily the Democrats have a lot to jump on but just seem to be sitting around gazing into their dinners) and I don't understand that. I'd like to know if my perception is correct or if it's there but the media aren't willing to touch it?

Generally I don't get a sense of strong opposition to what's happening. For a while I got the sense that there was political satire in the woodwork really getting to it and then I watched that satire and found it really out of touch with the sheer enormity of the actions perpetrated by the US government. I suppose that's why Colbert's dogged criticism at the dinner was so welcome because he pressed on and it was very overdue. It's not so much that opposition doesn't exist but that there seems to be no rallying around that opposition and that can only be a result of fear-mongering but then... why isn't it a challenge?

I work in the political media and even though I know that a lot of political journalists are suck-arses I can't see any of them leaving this kind of systematic bastardisation of politics, law and human rights alone because they were scared. That leads me to thinking that a lot of people have been suppressed/shut out of the industry?
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
22:58 / 07.06.06
The salient question for me is are political questions being asked? The impression that I gather is that the opposition that should have gathered against the Bush administration and its actions has failed to emerge... and I don't understand that. I'd like to know if my perception is correct or if it's there but the media aren't willing to touch it?

There's plenty of opposition, but it's not represented by the mass media as a whole. Lots of "average Joes" seem to have plenty of questions about Bush & Co., if the approval ratings are to be believed, but their concerns are not reflected in the media by the majority of journalists. Reporters just aren't asking the hard questions, for the most part; those who are seem to be relegated to the journalistic ghetto of "preaching to the choir," i.e. magazines like The Nation.

Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass here, but it seems that way.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
04:26 / 08.06.06
Erm, from this:

the UK, named as a CIA stopover, said the report contained nothing new

Does this seem to be Blair's modus operandi now? I know I've seen that line trotted out for at least one thing equally damning. Possibly the Abu Ghraib affair or the "we're happy to help invade Iraq regardless of anything" memo...
 
 
sleazenation
09:48 / 08.06.06
I believe the UK government position can be paraphrased as 'we have allowed the US to operate rendition flights through our airspace. these have both been with pre-9/11 suspects. The US asked us before hand and they would have to ask us again if they wanted to use UK airspace again. Thus far, they haven't asked. There are all sorts of other allegations but no substantial evidence that proves any more rendition has taken place through our airspace and until there is we continue to believe that we are not collaborating with any fresh cases of rendition'...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:42 / 08.06.06
Very good Ken MacLeod piece on rendition.
 
 
grant
19:00 / 17.10.06
Interesting piece in the Village Voice, excerpting a book called Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, that's all about how planespotters were the ones who figured out what was going on.

Aviation geeks & obsessive hobbyists.

Planespotters like Ray know that airplanes can be identified by their tail numbers (which can change) and also by serial numbers (which do not). They also know that a civilian aircraft moving around the world leaves evidence of where it has been. There are geographical facts about where the plane was, and temporal facts about when it was in a particular place. Taken together, some of these seemingly inconsequential facts about airplane movements have gone a long way in documenting the activities of the CIA.

and

Ray is somewhat unusual among planespotters because, much more than others with the same hobby, he tends to move beyond the "How does it work?" questions and venture into "What does it all mean?" When he logs new aircraft or sees suspicious movements, he's quick to check newspapers and, when necessary, file Freedom of Information Act requests to develop a deeper understanding of what he's logged. Because he follows up his planespotting with intensive database and Internet searches, phone calls to journalists and public-affairs officers at military bases and airports, he's made some discoveries about the workings of the U.S. military and other government agencies that add up to much more than a sum of collected data. That's how he inadvertently discovered the CIA's fleet of "torture planes." He became aware of the network of unmarked airplanes, front companies, and unexplained incidents involving American "civilians" around the world after noticing a collection of unusual aircraft at a remote airstrip in central Nevada called Base Camp.
 
 
grant
16:53 / 31.01.07
Aaaand, a year after this thread started, Germany orders arrest of 13 CIA agents for extraordinary rendition... carried out on a German citizen.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:23 / 31.01.07
Well, I dare to hope those agents will be arrested. It's possible.
 
 
sleazenation
07:32 / 01.02.07
On a quantum level, anything is possible. I'm just not sure that the laws of physics, nor many other laws would have much traction against the CIA under the current circumstances.

But I doubt that arrest and trial is the sole, or even the primary aim of these arrest warrants. This is as much, or perhaps even more of, a political move, an attempt by Germany to assert its soverignty.
 
 
Slim
09:43 / 01.02.07
I believe sleazenation is right. Didn't the Italians do the same thing? And a couple years ago Spain put a warrant out for U.S. soldiers as well. The action is more like a shot across the bow than a serious attempt to arrest U.S. personnel.
 
 
diz
07:14 / 02.02.07
Jake:

The current executive administration is secretly turning over prisoners to other countries for torture.

How is this not the presidential scandal to end all presidential scandals?

Because, very simply, in general, the American public approves of torture.

It's not a scandal because the people approve of what he's doing.

Jake:

There's plenty of opposition, but it's not represented by the mass media as a whole. Lots of "average Joes" seem to have plenty of questions about Bush & Co., if the approval ratings are to be believed, but their concerns are not reflected in the media by the majority of journalists.

The problem is that opposition to Bush is not strong on this issue. In general, his approval ratings are down because of Katrina and because he's not winning the war, not because of wiretaps and not because of extraordinary rendition. The American public doesn't care about any of that.

The sad fact is that the voters aren't disillusioned with Bush because he's fighting dirty, but rather because he isn't winning. They wouldn't care what he did to whom as long as they perceived him to be winning.

The other sad fact is that Washington is significantly more progressive on the whole than the rest of America on this particular issue. It's not that fear of popular outrage is holding back the politicians from committing worse excesses. It's that knowledge of international law, consciousness of world opinion, and common fucking decency are stopping the politicians from giving into the bloodlust of their constituents.

XK:

Entity, that's what I hope happens. Our media doesn't really beat on the pots'n pans about the continued heinous crimes of our administration, but if they even snidely remark on other countries being that concerned maybe some head scratching will happen.

Umm, no. That will never happen.

...but knowing my middle of the road Americans, they'll just think other countries are 'crazy'.

Ding ding ding!

As if it wasn't obvious by now, Americans give not the tiniest shit for world popular opinion, except when it validates us. We are always the good guys in our own minds. Even in Vietnam, we meant well, it's just that those crazy damn Asianses didn't understand that we were just trying to help, and their heads were all messed up with propaganda.

If someone abroad agrees with us, they're good guys, too. If someone abroad criticizes us, they're jealous or crazy twisted by propaganda or allied with our enemies.
 
  
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