CIA destroyed torture evidence

This video from the USA, 19 December 2007, is called Dan Abrams – Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes.

From the BBC:

The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) [of the USA] has destroyed 92 tapes of interviews conducted with terror suspects, a US government lawyer has admitted.

The agency had previously said that it had destroyed only two tapes.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a lawsuit against the CIA to seek details of the interrogations of terror suspects.

Techniques involved are understood to have included water-boarding, which the Obama administration says is torture.

What next? The CIA admitting it was not 92 tapes, but 9292 tapes?

In a long-anticipated action, the Justice Department, at the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, finally released today [2 March 2009] the controversial memos used by the Bush Administration to support its erosion of constitutional rights [by torture]: here.

US Justice Department memos: the specter of military dictatorship: here.

The controversy generated by Senator Patrick Leahy’s effort to organize a “truth commission” underscores the fragility of social relations in the US and the real threat of police-state dictatorship: here.

GOP senator would support probe of ‘shocking’ anti-terror memos: here.

The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center acknowledged this week that there are more than 1 million names on its official terrorist watch list, a number that suggests the vast scale of the police-state measures undertaken by the US government on the pretext of waging a “war on terror”: here.

CIA reveals it has 3,000 pages of documents relating to destroyed interrogation tapes: here.

Suriname, 14th day, to Brownsberg

This is a video about the Van Blommestein lake in Suriname. The lake is a reservoir, made for the smelters of Alcoa corporation in Paranam. Villages got flooded and over 5,000 people had to leave their ancestral ground. The smelters at Paranam are closed down now.

Suriname, 16 February.

Today, to Brownsberg nature reserve.

But first, looking for birds in the Leonsberg morning.

Little blue heron standing in a ditch.

Tropical mockingbird. Great kiskadee on a wire.

White-lined tanager.

Silver-beaked tanager.

Yellow-headed caracara.

Striated heron. Two wattled jacanas.

A male variable seedeater on a wire. Cattle egret. House wren.

Black vultures.

Smooth-billed ani and bananaquit on a wire.

Buff-throated saltator in a reedbed.

A male roadside hawk in a tree.

A pied water-tyrant.

A female blue-black grassquit.

Near a ditch: a black-capped donacobius. A little egret. A tricolored heron.

The bus goes south.

South of Paramaribo: cattle egret.

9:45: many black vultures.

In Paranam, there is a wetland boardwalk.

Yellow oriole. Coraya wren sound.

Cecropia obtusa trees.

Many fungi, also on the boardwalk.

The bus continues to the south. The road gets worse and worse. Damaged by rain, heavier than usual; and heavy logging trucks.

The bus gets stuck in the mud north of Brownsweg village. Like school buses and many other vehicles.

After a long time, Chinese road workers with big equipment manage to make the road more even and haul the vehicles out of the mud. Our bus manages to just pass through two traffic jams of trucks on both sides of the road.

After Brownsweg, the bus begins to climb to Brownsberg mountain. Just for a short time. The motor is over-heated and the bus has to stop.

Some of our group start walking the 9 kilometer uphill to Brownsberg. Screaming piha sounds. Others wait, and get picked up by a pickup truck. They see black curassows. Also, a yellow foot tortoise is seen.

Later, another bus picks up us walkers, about halfway to the top.

We manage to arrive on Brownsberg just before sunset. In the fading light, a blue-throated piping guan in a tree.

And a fine panoramic view of the Van Blommestein lake.

Bigi Poika American Indian village

This video says about itself:

In the face of global development, Indigenous people in Suriname speak out about human rights. This was created for the Organization of Indigenous People in Suriname and taken to the United Nations Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), April 2008.

Suriname, 15 February.

After the Hannover savanna, to Bigi Poika village.

It is a Carib Native American village; on the border between the marshy coastal region and the savanna belt.

We meet the village council, consisting of the young male chief, two other men and one woman.

Every five years, there are council elections. Last year, there were two competing slates, of which the electorate chose the younger people.

The village has now about 365 inhabitants; with about half of the original bigger number now working in Paramaribo. Or gone to Paramaribo for education: there is no high school in the village. The people staying in the village make a meagre living from scall-scale agriculture and a bit of hunting and fishing. Mainly subsistence: if they catch a fish, they usually eat it themselves.

The chief says education should be improved. Health care should improve as well.

So should communication and tourism.

He himself had only three years of post-primary school, and things should become better for the next generation. The language at the village primary school is Dutch. However, the chief would like the Carib language to play a role there as well. Later, in the Marowijne district, other Indians, speakers of (another dialect of) Carib, say the same.

Biology lessons are included in the primary school: in the final year, twice a week.

A great kiskadee in the village. A swallow-tailed kite flying above it.

An older villager tells about the history of Bigi Poika. Bigi Poika (Sranan Tongo language) is a name given by city people; the original American Indian name is Akarani.

The village was founded about 1708, by Indian refugees from the coastal region who did not want to become slaves. It was founded around two then very young trees at close distance from each other. Today, these are stil there, now as very big trees of the same size.

Before 1968, if people wanted to go to Paramaribo, they had to row for three days before reaching the nearest bus stop. In 1968, a road to the village was made. It is in bad condition, much to the discontent of the inhabitants.

Most of the people are Roman Catholic, a minority being Pentacostalist. In the Roman Catholic church, songs are sung both in Dutch and Carib.

There are two shops in the village.

Among the animals living around the village are bushmaster snake, teju lizard, green iguana, tapir, jaguar, and opossum.

Suriname, 13th day, savanna

This is a Brown-throated parakeet; a species which occurs in Suriname, including Hannoversavanne.

15 February, from Paramaribo to the south, to the Hannoversavanne.

The first birds we see there are crested oropendola, yellow-headed caracara, and tropical kingbird.

A rusty-margined flycatcher.

A solitary sandpiper flying overhead.

A grey-breasted martin.

A white-eyed parakeet.

A chestnut-fronted macaw.

A tropical kingbird chasing away a yellow-headed caracara.

A ringed kingfisher. There has been sand quarrying here in the past. It has stopped now, leaving many ponds.

A southern rough-winged swallow on a pole near a pond. A blue-grey tanager.

A paradise jackamar.

Golden-winged parakeets.

A male pompadour cotinga on a distant tree.

Footprints of a crab-eating raccoon in the wet sandy path.

A tropical mockingbird. A red-billed toucan.

More footprints, this time tailprints as well: of a green iguana.

A little frog in a puddle.

Together on a shrub, swallow-winged puffbird, yellow-bellied elaenia, and brown-throated parakeet.

A brown-crested flycatcher joins a grey kingbird on another shrub.

Then, a special bird. A fork-tailed flycatcher, on a shrub not far away. This North American winter migrant prefers open space to rainforests. So, this is one of few places in Suriname where one may see it.

At Zanderij airport, we search for another North American migrant, the eastern meadowlark. Sometimes, a few wintering ones can be seen here. Sometimes they cannot be seen. Today it is not.

Dynamics of the Leaf-Litter Arthropod Fauna Following Fire in a Neotropical Woodland Savanna: here.

January 2011. The rich grasslands in South America, home to one of the world’s most valuable ecosystems is fast disappearing and migratory grassland birds, which play an important role by dispersing seeds and controlling insects, are also rapidly declining in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay: here.

Waterboarding ban by US Obama administration

This is a video about the United States Bush’s administration’s torture policy; especially about waterboarding.

From Reuters:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ruled out the use of “waterboarding” as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects on Monday, calling it a form of torture that the Obama administration could never condone.

“Waterboarding is torture … My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it,” Holder, who his heading a review of the treatment of terrorism suspects, said in a speech to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs in Washington.

Javanese-Surinamese culture

Suriname, 14 February.

After the walk in Leonsberg, there was a cultural night, where several hundred people of the Javanese-Surinamese community were present.

I sat a table with a couple, now living in Rotterdam, but back in Suriname for a short time. Half of their family living in the Netherlands, the other half in Suriname. Typical for many Surinamese.

First on stage were three men: two electric guitarists, one singer. They started playing English language love songs. Not particularly Javanese or Surinamese, and not causing really much reaction from the audience.

However, that changed drastically with the first notes of their third song.

It was Bob Marley‘s No Woman No Cry. People applauded just after the first notes; in the middle of the song; and at the end of the song.

Then came traditional Javanese dancing, performed by Javanese-Surinamese ladies working at the Indonesian embassy, to recorded gamelan music.

Javanese-Surinamese gamelan: here.

Third on stage were an angklung orchestra with scores of male and female angklung players and a woman organ player. An angklung is a bamboo instrument, originally from West Java. This orchestra was founded five years ago, in the Evangelische Broedergemeente, the biggest Protestant church in Suriname. They played songs like Edelweiss from the Sound of Music, and Spanish Eyes.

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Suriname, Leonsberg birds

Suriname, 14 February.

After arriving back from Marienburg, a walk in Leonsberg.

A dead cane toad: roadkill. Here, that toad was in its native environment. Contrary to Australia, where cane toads were introduced and now cause much trouble; which scientists try to resolve.

Two pale-breasted thrushes.

In a tree near the Suriname river sits a rufous crab-hawk.

A flower petal falls in a spider’s web. The spider runs to it, but then decides not to make a cocoon around it.

A smooth-billed ani on the road.

A white-lined tanager on a wire.

Brown-throated parakeets flying overhead.

Two ringed kingfishers flying overhead, calling.

A buff-throated saltator on a wire.

A pied water-tyrant near a ditch.

The Surinam toad is a very unusual-looking toad with a flat body and head. As well as distinctive webbed feet, it has a unique mating and breeding behavior: here.

Panorama Mesdag painting on the Internet

From Dutch NOS TV:

The painting Panorama Mesdag in The Hague will be shown on the Internet from 2010 on. 10,000 digital detail photos have been made of the 120 meter long and 14 meter high work. Panorama Mesdag shows Scheveningen and The Hague in 1881; it was made by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and his wife Sientje.

See also here.

Economic crisis in Britain

This video from England says about itself:

Demonstration from the Bank of England, late afternoon on “Black Friday”, 10th October, 2008… on the day that a further 8.8% was wiped off FTSE 100 shares, in the City of London.

The economic crisis continues. Also in Britain.

Britain facing unprecedented crisis, warns leading left-wing economist: <a href="“>here.

BRITAIN’S greedy rich are leaving taxpayers to plug a £4 billion hole in the public purse by squirreling cash away in offshore tax havens: here.

Britain: ROYAL MAIL workers hit back at Business Secretary Peter Mandelson on Sunday after he accused them of using scare tactics in the fight against privatisation: here.

The astonishing revelation that Sir Allen Stanford is being investigated for an alleged $8 billion fraud has sent a shiver around the counties, not only because of the effect on the image of English cricket, but because they each stand in possession of £50,000 of Stanford’s cash: here.

See also this animation by Mark Fiore in the USA.

Guantanamo Bay update

This video is a documentary about Guantanamo Bay.

HONOUR COURTS’ DECISION TO FREE GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEES – Reprieve urges Obama: here.

In a cynical bid to quash a Supreme Court ruling on the Bush administration’s detention of “enemy combatants,” the Obama Justice Department has brought criminal charges against the last individual held in the US on this basis, Saleh Kahla al-Marri: here. See also here.

FORMER Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg said on Sunday that torture victim Binyam Mohamed was “eager to pursue justice”: here.

Binyam Mohamed free after years of imprisonment and torture: here.

THE government came under increasing pressure on Sunday to launch judicial and police inquiries into allegations by former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed that British intelligence was complicit in his torture: here.

Former Guantánamo guard details prisoner abuse: here.

And how about Bagram? Here.