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The NSA's New Partner In Spying: Saudi Arabia's Brutal State Police
Advocatus Diaboli sends this news from The Intercept: The National Security Agency last year significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world's most repressive and abusive government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency's plans "to provide direct analytic and technical support" to the Saudis on "internal security" matters. The Saudi Ministry of Interior—referred to in the document as MOI— has been condemned for years as one of the most brutal human rights violators in the world. In 2013, the U.S. State Department reported that "Ministry of Interior officials sometimes subjected prisoners and detainees to torture and other physical abuse," specifically mentioning a 2011 episode in which MOI agents allegedly "poured an antiseptic cleaning liquid down [the] throat" of one human rights activist. The report also notes the MOI's use of invasive surveillance targeted at political and religious dissidents.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the US didn't set this agency up in the first place. At the very least, we probably provided the initial training.
At least a country in middle east that have nothing to do with 911, of course...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks
I seriously doubt the NSA will be reigned in any time soon; unless we have a coup but don't hold your breath whilst we have a docile population with a severe celebrity fetish.
AQ/ISIS is a great deal more brutal than is Saudi Arabia.
I'm not sure about that. ISIS has a "big mouth." We don't hear much about what goes on in Saudia Arabia.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Had to go somewhere. http://www.thoughtcrime.org/bl...
Seriously. Bradley/Chelsea Manning was tortured to the point of having severe psychological problems (I am not saying being transgendered is a psychological problem, but I strongly question any psychiatrist who would not wait several years until after Manning had access to therapy to get over the trauma of isolation and torture to determine that Manning is indeed transgendered and not just showing signs of having been tortured). America is 100% on the hook for that. One of our own.
Pretty much.
This is why I kinda miss realpolitik, yeah it was cynical and calculating, but at least it was honest about it. The problem with a population focused on morality is ethics are a lot easier to twist and tug on emotions then pragmatism.
"The report also notes the MOI's use of invasive surveillance targeted at political and religious dissidents."
So, arguably less evil than western governments, who use invasive surveillance targeted at absolutely everyone.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
If you think freedom is just about insults, you have completely taken it for granted. Which is probably why you haven't noticed now that's gone.
When that way to handle "dissidents" comes to your shores, won't be disclosed that it is happening, wannabe whisteblowers will be the first victims.
Seriously. Bradley/Chelsea Manning was tortured to the point of having severe psychological problems (I am not saying being transgendered is a psychological problem, but I strongly question any psychiatrist who would not wait several years until after Manning had access to therapy to get over the trauma of isolation and torture to determine that Manning is indeed transgendered and not just showing signs of having been tortured). America is 100% on the hook for that. One of our own.
Sorry, but your view is total nonsense that isn't connected to the facts. Bradley Manning apparently had mental health and temperament issues long before he was arrested, and I doubt they are resolved. They seem to have played a role in the actions that put him in prison.
WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning 'had history of suicidal thoughts'
...Manning had contemplated suicide six to eight months earlier after his arrest in Iraq. The evidence included a noose Manning had fashioned from a bedsheet while confined in Kuwait, and a written statement he made upon arrival at Quantico in July 2010 that he was "always planning and never acting" on suicidal impulses. .... Blenis, who spent more time with Manning, said Manning chose not to speak most of the time except for short, yes-or-no answers. He said Manning spurned his offers to play chess or work brain teasers by arrogantly responding, "They're a little below my level."
WikiLeaks: Private Bradley Manning sent superiors picture of himself dressed as a woman
Bradley Manning told his military superiors that he was emotionally unstable and sent them a picture of himself dressed as a woman but his warnings were never passed up a chaotic chain-of-command, a court heard on Friday. ...
Pte Manning's civilian defence lawyer, David Coombs, told the court martial hearing that his client had sent a distressed email to his immediate supervisor, Master Sergeant Paul Watkins. "He told [Watkins] he was suffering a gender identity disorder and in that email even had a picture of himself dressed as a woman."
In the email Pte Manning warned that his ability to work as an analyst of attacks by Shia militants in Iraq was being impaired by his emotional problems. .....
On December 12, the defendant apparently became enraged during a meeting and knocked over a chair while screaming at more senior soldiers.
Then on December 20, he allegedly flipped over a table during a counselling session, destroying the computer monitor that was sitting on top of it. Comrades had restrain him because they believed he was "going for a weapon rack", Mr Coombs told the court.
Bradley Manning, suspected source of Wikileaks documents, raged on his Facebook page
Mr Manning, who is openly homosexual, began his gloomy postings on January 12, saying: "Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast."
At the beginning of May, when he was serving at a US military base near Baghdad, he changed his status to: "Bradley Manning is now left with the sinking feeling that he doesn't have anything left."
Five days later he said he was "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend", then later the same day said he was "not a piece of equipment" and was "beyond frustrated with people and society at large".
His tagline on his personal page reads: "Take me for who I am, or face the consequences!"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Why does the US government get along so swimmingly well with Saudia Arabia? The place is a human rights disaster. They support, directly or indirectly, various terrorist organizations. It's a lovely place...as long as you are a muslim male. Then you are free to preach strict abstinence and sexual fidelity - ok, sure, you drive over to Bahrain every Thursday to get drunk and get laid - but you make up for this by going home and oppressing your wives and daughters. What's not to like?
Of course, the US support has nothing to do with the fact that there is lots of oil money floating around. Lots of Saudi purchases from US companies, which just happen to have certain politicians on their boards, or which happen to make lots of contributions to campaign funds.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I hope these pages get released soon.. (not holding my breath) http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/i...
Dallas Real Estate
It's called "Blowback". In order to prevent another 9/11/2001 or worse, it seems important to understand the motivations behind the first one (I'm using the year to distinguish from the US-supported 9/11/1973 coup in Chile). Like you, I also doubt the Saudi government had anything to do directly with funding that 9/11. In fact, that 9/11 seems more a protest against the Saudi government by Saudi citizens, but with the protest directed at the perceived source of funding for the Saudi government by the USA. Let's turn the political situation around hypothetically to try to understand the emotional aspect of it better, imagining what it might be like if the Saudi government was meddling directly in US affairs.
Here is a first cut at trying to understand the social/psychological dynamics of the situation from a different perspective. Imagine Saudi Arabia somehow was sending billions of dollars of campaign donations annually to the USA to keep in power an oppressive administration in the USA (passing laws forcing all US women to wear burkas, only allowing males with brown eyes to hold public office or get university degrees, and with capital punishment on suspicion of premarital sex or homosexuality). Also, imagine that there were millions of Saudi soldiers stationed in US states to ensure a flow of manufactured goods to Saudi Arabia despite strikes and other unrest in the USA and nearby countries. Also imagine that the Saudis were also funding Japanese people who, from fear of earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, had moved to Canada, bought a lot of the land, claimed a right to govern all of Canada because some Japanese people had moved to Canada 10,000 years ago across the land bridge from Siberia, and then forced most non-Japanese Canadian citizens in all of Canada to flee to the USA and were killing non-Japanese Canadians who remained and resisted the Japanese occupation. If you are a US citizen in such a hypothetical world, would you be at all upset by such a situation whatever your eye color? Imagine that some very upset and frustrated young US citizens decide to protest this situation by attacking some big buildings in Saudi Arabia by hijacking airliners to show how unhappy they are with Saudi government foreign policy and to show how they felt their hopes and dreams for a good life in the USA had been thwarted by Saudi meddling in US government. Imagine this attack is then used by Saudi Arabia to justify invading Mexico (where some of the hypothetical American hijackers trained) and Brazil (because it is claimed by the Saudis to have WMDs that hypothetical young Americans might use against Saudis). Imagine the Saudis then start supplying "intelligence" to the US government from listening to all US telephone calls about specific US citizens who might be unhappy about the situation and perhaps plotting unrest in the USA or planning more blowback against the Saudis.
Now flip this scenario around and back to reality (US funding Saudis and Israel and US troops in the Middle East) and does the fact the almost all of the 9/11 hijackers were frustrated young Saudi men make more sense?
Soon after 9/11 I saw an analysis in a magazine (maybe the Atlantic or New Yorker) of why the hijackers did what they did. I have not seen many such articles since. The point made there was that these were mostly young men whose hopes for significant advancement in Saudi society had seemed thwarted and they were led to blame the USA for that, because the USA was propping up the Saudi regime and otherwise meddling in the Middle East. Of course, being promised eternal bliss in "paradise" for becoming murderers can not be ignored as a related aspect of religious fundamentalism (including outrage about the occupation of Palestine), so there are layers of complexity here for that and other reasons. The motivations of the hijackers themselves may also be somewhat different than the motivations of the organizers at higher levels.
See also:
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A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.