Update 1
On today’s show I was going to interview Ted Lewis with Global Exchange. Unfortunately Mr. Lewis rescheduled to November 21st (11/21/2009).
I will leave you with this excerpt from the Global Exchange book Mr. Lewis wrote an introduction for, The Right to Stay Home:
In 1982, when the peso crashed, the Mexican government bought Banamex as a way of rescuing the bank and its Mexican owners from bankruptcy. In 1991, Mexican president Carlos Salinas resold it for $4.6 billion to a business group headed by a close ally, Roberto Hernandez. Two years later, Salinas signed NAFTA, which–although it was scarcely mentioned–included a timetable for dismantling Mexico’s law against foreign ownership of its commercial banks.
Robert Rubin, a former co-chair of Goldman-Sachs, who had helped finance Carlos Salinas’ privatization program, was the foremost champion of NAFTA in the Clinton White House. When another peso crisis hit Mexico in the winter of 1994-95, Rubin, then U.S. Treasury secretary, engineered a bailout with government subsidies of the Wall Street holders of Mexican bonds. As part of the complex deal, Salinas’s successor, Ernesto Zedillo, accelerated the opening of Mexican banks to foreigners. At the same time, Zedillo subsidized a rescue of Mexican banks by having his government buying the banks’ largely worthless portfolios of uncollectible loans on credit.
In 1999 Rubin resigned as treasury secretary to become chair of the executive committee of Citigroup. Two years later, shortly after the date on which foreigners could buy controlling interests in Mexican banks, Citigroup bought Banamex for $12.5 billion plus a seat on the Citigroup board for Hernandez. Recently Hernandez masterminded the Citigroup tax-exempt purchase of Aero Mexico from the Mexican government in part with the money from that government’s continued subsidy of Citigroup/Banamex.
Ironically, as even Carlos Salinas has admitted, the almost 100 percent foreign-owned Mexican banking system has been even less responsive to the needs for local business credit than it was under the old, inefficient Mexican ownership. The bankers from New York and Madrid are more interested in taking deposits out of Mexico and investing abroad, and in making high-interest-rate loans to consumers to buy Chinese imports, than making loans to develop Mexican businesses.
Going on, for Halloween I will read this most gruesome article. It’s written by the former United Kingdom ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray. Craig Murray recounts how one woman brought him pictures of her son who had been boiled to death in an Uzbekistan prison called Jaslyk. According to Craig Murray, Jaslyk is used as a CIA/MI6 rendition site.
Mr. Murray also has this to say:
I have hundreds and hundreds of Uzbek friends now. Every single one of them drinks vodka. It is not a good place for al-Qaeda. They were inventing the threat in order to cover up the fact that their real motive was Enron’s gas contract and that was the plain and honest truth of the matter.
Just as almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion, which they want to bring over Afghanistan and down to the Arabian Sea to make it available for export.
To read the full article, see How a Torture Protest Killed a Career By Craig Murray October 24, 2009
For this reason I predict Obama will give General McCrystal the 45,000 troops he’s requesting. If you checked out my September 5th broadcast, you heard John Pilger state Obama is a corporate creation. He’s not a communist, he’s a corporate creation. Obama is a man who voted for the Reauth of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama stated all along the US “War on Terror” should be based in Afghanistan, and he received more corporate money than John McCain.
Here’s a great example of the US media helping out with the occupation of Afghanistan. MSNBC reported girls in Afghanistan are burning themselves alive to escape arranged marriages. Do we really believe these girls would pick the most painful and dramatic way possible to die? Arranged marriages happen in much of the Middle East, and in other countries like China. Where are the suicide reports for these countries?
The psychology here is this is so horrible surely the US occupation of Afghanistan is justified. This is aimed at Neoliberals in particular, who believe war and occupation will protect gay rights and woman’s rights somehow, when in fact they do no such thing.
Update 1:
While reading this article, I covered a section that states:
Mutilation of the genitals was common. Suffocation was common, usually by putting a gas mask on people and blocking the air vents until they suffocated. Rape was common, rape with objects, rape with bottles, anal rape, homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and mutilation of children in front of their parents.
This backs up the claims of Binyam Mohamed who stated he was tortured by his genitals being sliced by a scalpel. Below are a collection of articles on this man’s torture. It should be noted the Obama administration has threatens the UK government if they allow his lawsuit to go forward. Naomi Wolf also states his lawyer was threatened with legal prosecution for writing to the United States government in relation to this mans charges. I will include some of the most critical excerpts from these articles with the links below:
Obama administration threatens Britain to keep torture evidence concealed by Glenn Greenwald
The Washington Times‘ Eli Lake reported this morning that “the Obama administration [said] it may curtail Anglo-American intelligence sharing if the British High Court discloses new details of the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee.” Last month, when I interviewed Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he made clear just how grave of an act — a crime — such threats are, but nonetheless expressed hope that the Obama administration would repudiate those threats
Glenn Greenwald has actual scanned copies of threats from the Obama administration on page two. You must click “Continue Reading” on the Salon page in order to see the rest of the article.
UPDATE II: Knowing that exposure of its actions would prove its severe criminality, it was just recently revealed the Bush administration also tried to induce Mohamed to accept a gag order similar to the one Hicks accepted, whereby Mohamed would have been freed from Guantanamo last year if he agreed (a) not to talk publicly about the treatment he received and (b) cease all efforts to prove in court that he was tortured and/or to obtain documents proving that he was mistreated (h/t Jim White). He refused.
Britain responds to the “rule of law” nuisance by Glenn Greenwald
UPDATE II: Knowing that exposure of its actions would prove its severe criminality, it was just recently revealed the Bush administration also tried to induce Mohamed to accept a gag order similar to the one Hicks accepted, whereby Mohamed would have been freed from Guantanamo last year if he agreed (a) not to talk publicly about the treatment he received and (b) cease all efforts to prove in court that he was tortured and/or to obtain documents proving that he was mistreated (h/t Jim White). He refused.
So: we put people into cages for years with no charges and tortured them, and then told them that we would release them only if they agreed to keep silent about what we did to them and renounce all claims for judicial accountability and disclosure. If they refused the vow of silence — as Mohamed did — they would stay in their cage.
“Friending” Binyam Mohamed by Naomi Wolf
The UK government is appealing the ruling, so we still can’t know what happened to him; but officials have told reporters that one action that the paragraphs describe is the cutting of genitals with a razor; waterboarding, this official said dryly, is well down on the list of atrocities Mr. Mohamed suffered.
President Obama has sought to keep these seven paragraphs under seal. Hillary Clinton has also. Joe Lieberman drafted an amendment to a bill to conceal photographs relating to this abuse.
Why are our leaders still trying so desperately to cover up what Mr. Mohamed’s record will show?
In a Kafkaesque situation that applies to many detainees and their lawyers, Mr. Mohamed can get into legal trouble now if he repeats the narrative of his own abuse. His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the UK rights organization Reprieve, was threatened with six months in prison by the US — Obama’s team — for writing a letter to President Obama describing what had happened to his client.
President Obama wants to try some remaining prisoners in real trials; to release some; and he wants a third category, the devil’s own category — of people who will be held forever because of `problems with evidence.’ What are the problems with evidence? The problems are political: it will be problematic that what was done to these men will emerge into light and will be so horrific — say, like the seven paragraphs about the cutting of a prisoner’s genitals — that a continued cover-up and legal impunity will be unsustainable.
In this last paragraph, Naomi is referring to Barack Obama’s preventive detention proposal.
UK government suppressed evidence on Binyam Mohamed torture because MI6 helped his interrogators
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.
Robert Bennett’s 
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