U.S. Bill H.R. 6166

[Supracentral]

Nice to see nothing has changed around here..:biglaugh:

I was actually agreeing with you and you say I am a crazy nutcase.. LMAO.

That cracks me up... :icon_razz

I actually haven't gotten to the point of classifying you as a nutcase or crazy...

Yet....

But the maker of that film certainly is.. :icon_razz

 

[Joel W.]

I actually haven't gotten to the point of classifying you as a nutcase or crazy...

Yet....

But the maker of that film certainly is.. :icon_razz

Ohh, so I still have some time then.. coool.. :biglaugh:

Anytime someone sane brings up some of these things as something we really need to address, the nutcases pile on the bandwagon.

Who were you referring to then? LOL

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

Both of you??

 

[SupraDerk]

The Cookie Monster

 

[Aaron J Williams]

These two for sure!!!

On every issue, there are big differences between Democrats and Republicans, but the biggest difference is the disregard for our constitutional democracy...

Cigarette smoking is a significant contributor to global warming!

Glad to see you back Joel! I was afraid that GOPAC had silenced you.

 

[Supra Blues]

I find that statement disturbingly naive.

Call it what you will, but it's true.

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

September 19, 2006
Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case
By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA, Sept. 18 — A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.

“I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,” Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.

The report’s findings could reverberate heavily through the leadership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which handled the initial intelligence on Mr. Arar that led security officials in both Canada and the United States to assume he was a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist.

The report’s criticisms and recommendations are aimed primarily at Canada’s own government and activities, rather than the United States government, which refused to cooperate in the inquiry.

But its conclusions about a case that had emerged as one of the most infamous examples of rendition — the transfer of terrorism suspects to other nations for interrogation — draw new attention to the Bush administration’s handling of detainees. And it comes as the White House and Congress are contesting legislation that would set standards for the treatment and interrogation of prisoners.

“The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. “They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less than forthcoming manner.”

A spokesman for the United States Justice Department, Charles Miller, and a White House spokesman traveling with President Bush in New York said officials had not seen the report and could not comment.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada planned to act on the report but offered no details. “Probably in the few weeks to come we’ll be able to give you more details on that,’’ he told reporters.

The Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan in an American government plane and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable. He was freed in October 2003, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no connection to terrorism and returned him to Canada.

Mr. Arar’s case attracted considerable attention in Canada, where critics viewed it as an example of the excesses of the campaign against terror that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The practice of rendition has caused an outcry from human rights organizations as “outsourcing torture,” because suspects often have been taken to countries where brutal treatment of prisoners is routine.

The commission supports that view, describing a Mounted Police force that was ill-prepared to assume the intelligence duties assigned to it after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Arar, speaking at a news conference, praised the findings. “Today Justice O’Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation,” he said. “I call on the government of Canada to accept the findings of this report and hold these people responsible.”

His lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, said the report affirmed that Mr. Arar, who has been unemployed since his return to Canada, was deported and tortured because of “a breathtakingly incompetent investigation.”

The commission found that Mr. Arar first came to police attention on Oct. 12, 2001, when he met with Abdullah Almalki, a man already under surveillance by a newly established Mounted Police intelligence unit known as Project A-O Canada. Mr. Arar has said in interviews that the meeting at Mango’s Cafe in Ottawa, and a subsequent 20-minute conversation outside the restaurant, was mostly about finding inexpensive ink jet printer cartridges.

The meeting set off a chain of actions by the police. Investigators obtained a copy of Mr. Arar’s rental lease. After finding Mr. Almalki listed as an emergency contact, they stepped up their investigation of Mr. Arar. At the end of that month, the police asked customs officials to include Mr. Arar and his wife on a “terrorist lookout” list, which would subject them to more intensive question when re-entering Canada.

However, the commission found that the designation should have only been applied to people who are members or associates of terrorist networks. Neither the police nor customs had any such evidence of that concerning Mr. Arar or his wife, an economist.

From there, the Mounted Police asked that the couple be included in a database that alerts United States border officers to suspect individuals. The police described Mr. Arar and his wife as, the report said, “Islamic extremists suspected of being linked to the al Qaeda movement.”

The commission said that all who testified before it accepted that the description was false.

According to the inquiry’s finding, the Mounted Police gave the F.B.I. and other American authorities material from Project A-O Canada, which included suggestions that Mr. Arar had visited Washington around Sept. 11 and had refused to cooperate with the Canadian police. The handover of the data violated the force’s own guidelines, but was justified on the basis that such rules no longer applied after 2001.

In July 2002, the Mounted Police learned that Mr. Arar and his family were in Tunisia, and incorrectly concluded that they had left Canada permanently.

On Sept. 26, 2002, the F.B.I. called Project A-O and told the Canadian police that Mr. Arar was scheduled to arrive in about one hour from Zurich. The F.B.I. also said it planned to question Mr. Arar and then send him back to Switzerland. Responding to a fax from the F.B.I., the Mounted Police provided the American investigators with a list of questions for Mr. Arar. Like the other information, it included many false claims about Mr. Arar, the commission found.

The Canadian police “had no idea of what would eventually transpire,’’ the commission said. “It did not occur to them that the American authorities were contemplating sending Mr. Arar to Syria.”

While the F.B.I. and the Mounted Police kept up their communications about Mr. Arar, Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs was not told about his detention for almost three days. Its officials, acting on calls from worried relatives, had been trying to find him. Similarly, American officials denied Mr. Arar’s requests to speak with the Canadian Consulate in New York, a violation of international agreements.

Evidence presented to the commission, said Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, its lead counsel, showed that the F.B.I. continued to keep its Canadian counterparts in the dark even while an American jet was carrying Mr. Arar to Jordan. The panel found that American officials “believed — quite correctly — that, if informed, the Canadians would have serious concerns about the plan to remove Mr. Arar to Syria.”

Mr. Arar arrived in Syria on Oct. 9, 2002, and was imprisoned there until Oct. 5, 2003. It took Canadian officials, however, until Oct. 21 to locate him in Syria. The commission concludes that Syrian officials at first denied knowing Mr. Arar’s whereabouts to hide the fact that he was being tortured. It says that, among other things, he was beaten with a shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented.

American officials have not discussed the case publicly. But in an interview last year, a former official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to send Mr. Arar to Syria had been based chiefly on the desire to get more information about him and the threat he might pose. The official said Canada did not intend to hold him if he returned home.

Mr. Arar said he appealed a recent decision by a federal judge in New York dismissing the suit he brought against the United States. The report recommends that the Canadian government, which is also being sued by Mr. Arar, offer him compensation and possibly a job.

Mr. Arar recently moved to Kamloops, British Columbia, where his wife found a teaching position.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington Times

Sure it is....

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

Another one only took me a few seconds of searching.

Today: The men who were wrongfully charged

They were childhood friends who studied together, played together, dreamt together -- and together, pursued the American Dream.

"We wanted to make money," recalls an angry Mohammad Azmath. "But instead, we lost all our savings. We lost our dignity, we lost our lives.

"We became terrorists."

On 9/11, Azmath and his friend Syed Gul Mohammad Shah were on a San Antonio, Texas-bound plane out of Newark in New Jersey. It was one of thousands of planes that were grounded across the country in the aftermath of the terrorist strikes.

A day later, the two friends transferred to an Amtrak line train and continued their journey -- until they were abruptly arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting terrorist acts.

Authorities initially labeled Azmath 'hijacker number 20' -- a title later accorded to Zacarias Moussaoui -- and played Gul one rung lower on the ladder.

The 'proof' of their culpability consisted of box cutters, hair dye and approximately Rs 3.2 lakhs ($7,000) found in their luggage. The box cutters were tools of their trade as operators of a newsstand; the dye was a symbol of Azmath's vanity, and used to conceal his prematurely greying hair; the money was intended to help them start afresh in San Antonio.

In the climate of the times, such explanations didn't wash. Their arrests were trumpeted as symbolic of swift action by the authorities; they were held in solitary at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York from September 14, 2001 until December that year, when they were for the first time permitted access to a lawyer thanks to the intervention of civil rights groups.

"I was put in a cage for three months," Azmath recalls, of that time. "They would bang on the door once every thirty minutes -- I never slept a wink for all that time.

"I could not contact anyone, I could not make phone calls. They kicked me, abused me, they told me I would never see my family again, that I would be put to death."

It took another 17 months, and much heartburn, before the two friends were finally cleared of terrorism charges. They pleaded guilty to the relatively inconsequential charge of credit card fraud.

"I committed no fraud," says Azmath, pointing out that he accepted the charge merely as a way out of jail. "Yes, I owed some money on my cards, but that is not fraud, that is part of the system.

"They said it was a conspiracy, but delaying payment on your card is not a conspiracy."

The authorities threw every charge they could think of at him, Azmath recalls. "They said I had a pilot's license, that I was a pilot in India. I never had a license, it was a joke. They said I worked in Saudi Arabia, but I have never even been there.

"They wanted me to confess that I was an Al Qaeda man. I repeatedly said I am an Indian; I told them I am an honourable Indian.

"I thought, often, that I would die in prison."

Finally, the authorities had to downgrade 'hijacker number 20' to credit card fraud, and US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin let him off with time served. The two friends were deported to India.

They had gone to the US with dreams in their eyes; they returned broke, with nothing to declare but undeserved stigma.

"I had Rs 1.64 lakhs $3,500 with me when I was arrested," Azmath recalls. "They never even gave me back that money."

He has heard that two others who were similarly falsely arrested were since paid compensation. He, however, has not seen a cent -- nor does he have plans to fight for it. "I don't have the money to fight against such a big country," Azmath says.

There is much residual bitterness, and some wisdom. There is, they say today, truly no place like home.

"In fact," says Azmath, "my life has changed for the better because of that incident. I have realized that I can work and earn money in India without losing my self-respect."

He is happy today, he says; he lives in Hyderabad with his wife, his child, and his father and brother. "Here in India, I get respect and peace of mind. Nobody treats me like a terrorist here," he says.

He has set up a small trucking operation and frequently travels between Hyderabad, Gujarat and Mumbai to coordinate his business. "I am not making great money," he confesses. "But I am hard-working � this is something I have learnt, that if you work hard in India, you can earn good money here also. I think I went to the US because I was a lazy young man in those days and wanted to make quick money."

His friend Shah has similarly settled down into a career in stock and commodity broking. Necessity is the mother of competence, he has discovered. "In the last two years, I have become a good trader," Shah says. "I try to be a consistent player in the stock market, even when the markets are down."

It is the antithesis of their lives in the US. The two friends had gone to America in the mid-1990s, and chased the get rich quick dream through a succession of jobs in grocery stores, department stores and, finally, a newspaper stand in a New Jersey train station where they earned Rs 18,800 ($400) a week.

They shared an apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey, scrimped, saved, and regularly sent money back home to their families.

On September 1, 2001, the newsstand changed owners, and the two lost their jobs. A friend promised them similar jobs in San Antonio, and that is where they were headed when they were swept up in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's widespread fishing net.

Today, the two men say they their abiding feeling is one of relief that the ordeal is finally over; that they are back home where they now know they belong.

Azmath's father Jahangir, who runs a motor spare parts shop at Afzarganj, some six kilometres away from their home in Doodhbouuli in Hyderabad, says the only good that came of his son's ill-fated sojourn in the US was the family home that was built on his earnings.

"I could never make enough money to build a decent house," Jahangir recalls. "So Azmath went to the US to make some money, because he did not want us to live all our lives in a rented home.

"He wanted me to die in a house of our own."

Today, Jahangir hates America. "They called my son a terrorist," he says. "How can they do this to innocent people? America is doomed forever, I tell you."

Tasleem, who had married Azmath, a Pakistani national, on March 11, 2001 during his brief vacation in Hyderabad, cannot recall the immediate past without giving way to grief. "I delivered our first child, a boy named Mohammad Bilal, while he was in jail," she recalls. "Every day I cried, thinking of my husband's fate, not knowing what would happen to him."

Her plight was no better. When Azmath was jailed in the US, Indian authorities came knocking on their doors; Tasleem, they said, would be deported to Pakistan.

Asaduddin Owaisi, then a member of the state assembly, intervened and got her permission to stay on, on humanitarian grounds. She then approached the Andhra Pradesh high court and was granted a year's extension on her visa.

When Azmath returned from the US, he found his wife embroiled in a legal battle. "We applied for Tasleem's citizenship in May this year," Azmath says. Under Indian law, a foreign national married to an Indian can apply for citizenship after five years in India.

Perhaps because the future is yet uncertain, Tasleem focuses on the simple pleasures today has on offer. "It is so nice to see him (Azmath) taking our son to school every morning," she smiles. "He always does that before he goes to work."

Azmath had at one point dreamt of taking Tasleem, and his child to the US. Memories of that dream now evoke a shudder. "Me, go to the US again? Are you crazy? I hate that country," he says. "Here I have dignity; I will not go abroad ever again.

"I am convinced India, my mother country, is the best place to live and die in this world."

The two childhood friends remain in touch, their already strong bonds reinforced by the memory of shared troubles.

Shah and his family live half a kilometre away from the Azmath home in Doodhbouuli.

Like Azmath, Shah had seen the US as a means to break out of the crippling poverty his family � mother Gul Begum, five brothers and two sisters � were mired in.

"I was the only educated man in my family," says Shah, who during a visit home in 2000 married local girl Fathima Rayees. "So I went to make money for my family's survival."

"I worked hard in the US. I sent all my savings here, and built this two bedroom house," he says. "But now I feel ashamed that I am living in a house that we built with US dollars."

The bitterness of the past, though, is overlaid with hope for tomorrow. "The stock market in India is booming," he says. "I have made some money. I am trying to be a wise player.

"In India, if you are honest and work hard, you can live peacefully. There is no honesty and truth in the US. America is home to all evil in the world."

 

[Joel W.]

Thanks Aaron, Not yet anyways..lol :icon_bigg

Here is another one..

Arrest over Cheney barb triggers lawsuit

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
October 3, 2006
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5039230,00.html

A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.

Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.

According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.

Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

The lawsuit states that the Secret Service agent instructed that Howards should be issued a summons for harassment, but that on July 6 the Eagle County District Attorney's Office dismissed all charges against Howards.

The lawsuit filed today alleges that Howards was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment right of free speech, and that his arrest violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful seizure

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

That is some bullshit.
I'm gonna find Cheney and ask him why he shoots his friends.
You'll never hear from me again...lol

 

[Joel W.]

I want to ask him why he (Halliburton) charged the USA for 20k meals a day when they only served 10k meals to our soldiers a day and these were expired, out of date meals at that...

These are OUR soldiers and they deserve fresh food in my opinion..

Halliburton had overcharged the USA 200 million dollars in meals before they were caught. :3d_frown:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton

The recorded interviewer asked, "Are you saying that Halliburton deliberately falsified the number of meals they prepared and then submitted false claims for reimbursement and that they did this to make up for past amounts auditors had disallowed?" Mayberry firmly answered "yes." He said that serving expired food rations was "an everyday occurrence, sometimes every meal." He also explained that Halliburton systematically overcharged for the number of meals as well, saying, "they were charging for 20,000 meals and they were only serving 10,000 meals." Dorgan later commented, "obviously there's no honor here, by a company that would serve outdated food to our troops in Iraq."

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

Cheney should be arrested.

 

[Joel W.]

Cheney should be arrested.

Ask yourself now, Why is Hallibrton (an oil company) building prisons here in the USA and referring to them as "free speech zones" so that when people protest against them, they have a "safe place" to protest without getting hit by cars on the street??

http://www.wnymedia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2103

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/170806declarewar.htm

At a Florida Bush rally in 2001, three demonstrators – including two elderly women – were arrested for holding up small protest placards outside the “free speech zone.” In 2003, also in Florida, seven protesters were arrested when they refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from a Bush rally at USF Sun Dome.

In general, these demonstrators have been arrested by local police at the behest of the Secret Service, but this could change with the new powers granted to the Secret Service by the Patriot Act reauthorization of 2006.

Not only does the law grant the Secret Service new powers of arrest, but it also increases fines and penalties for individuals who “willfully and knowingly … enter or remain in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President … will be temporarily visiting.”

 

[outofstep]

Haliburton is not an oil company.

 

[Joel W.]

Haliburton is not an oil company.

Who are they then? I know they do many things but they are best known for oil? No?

http://www.halliburton.com/

Halliburton Energy Services (NYSE: HAL) is a multinational corporation with operations in over 120 countries. It is based in Houston, Texas. Halliburton operates two major business segments: The Energy Services Group provides technical products and services for oil and gas exploration and production, and the KBR subsidiary is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. Company 2005 revenues were US$20.99 billion. The company employs more than 106,000 people worldwide.

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

Punked.

 

[Joel W.]

Punked.

I was not trying to punk anyone here. I was just wondering who they (Halliburton) really was?

Maybe I am mistaken...:dunno:

 

[JustAnotherVictim]

That may not have been your intention but you did it anyways, lol.
Everything I've ever seen Haliburton mess with was energy.

 

[Joel W.]

My bad.. The Wiki page on Halliburtons subsidiary company KBR is an interesting read... "private millitary company" on the stock exchange???? wow....:aigo: I know KBR builds 100 year concrete military bases and prisons, but i did not know they were a private army also.. Those guys know how to diversify for sure...LMAO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg,_Brown_and_Root

KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) is an American engineering and construction company, a private military company and a subsidiary of Halliburton, based in Houston. After Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, Dresser's engineering subsidiary, M.W. Kellogg, an engineering contractor begun as a pipe fabrication business by Morris W. Kellogg in 1900 and acquired by Dresser in 1988, was merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown and Root, to form Kellogg, Brown, and Root. The legacy of Brown and Root is many contracts with the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as during World War II and the Vietnam War.

KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States.[citation needed]

On April 15, 2006, Halliburton filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 20 percent of its KBR stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Halliburton will still own at least 80 percent of KBR should the statement be approved. Halliburton has stated in its SEC filings its intent to eventually dispose of its KBR holdings, believing the two companies would best be served by being separate from the other.

Read some of these.. wow..
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...sons+kbr&btnmeta=search=search=Search+the+Web


Here is a vid about your post JAV..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_-cbW68TgI