How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights

The Village Voice has an excerpt from the book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, which is fascinating reading. The hobby of planespotting--watching and recording information about planes that take off and land--led a few individuals to deduce that planes spotted at "Base Camp" in Nevada were being used by the CIA to transport prisoners to locations in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Individuals correlating data with each other over the Internet and comparing to flight logs and testimony from released prisoners yielded very specific results. Civil Air Landing Permit data was used to identify obscure companies with clearance to land anywhere they want, including restricted military bases--such as One Leasing, Richmor Aviation, Stevens Express Leasing, Tepper Aviation, Path Corporation, Rapid Air Trans, Aviation Specialties, Devon Holding and Leasing, Crowell Aviation, and Premier Executive Transport Services. The planes owned by some of these companies were found to be visiting military bases, Guantanamo Bay, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Jon Sifton of Human Rights Watch has conducted analysis of the resulting flight data to determine which stops were merely for refueling and which were for destinations--acute angles for inbound and outbound flights from a stop are indicative of a destination rather than a refueling stop, for example.

Bush campaigns for a racist and an violent adulterer

George W. Bush is on the campaign trail for racist Virginia Senator George Allen and for Pennsylvania Representative Don Sherwood--just in case you had any doubts about where Bush stands on moral issues.

Allen is the Senator who referred to an Indian representative of his opponent's campaign as a "macaca," a racial slur common in French North Africa, where his mother grew up. He also used to keep a noose hanging in his office, and several people who knew him in his college days have reported that he used to make common use of the epithet "nigger" (but not the word "epithet"), and two sources say that he once put the severed head of a deer in the mailbox of a black family.

Sherwood has admitted to having a lengthy (five-year) adulterous affair, and he settled a lawsuit which accused him of choking his mistress. His wife has referred to his affair as "a mistake."

Bush's press secretary Tony Snow addressed the president's support of Sherwood by observing that we are all sinners and deserve forgiveness. Forgiveness, perhaps. A seat in Congress, no.

UPDATE (October 20, 2006): Bush chose to campaign for these people of poor character during the same week that he has proclaimed "National Character Counts Week, 2006," a proclamation which begins:

America's strength is found in the spirit and character of our people. During National Character Counts Week, we renew our commitment to instilling values in our young people and to encouraging all Americans to remember the importance of good character.

UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Don Sherwood lost, and it looks like George Allen will also lose.

Innocent torture victim still on no-fly list

Maher Arar, a Canadian (born in Syria) who was arrested by the U.S. and sent to Syria where he was tortured as a result of the RCMP's erroneous labeling of him as someone associated with al Qaeda, was unable to receive a human rights award in Washington, D.C. because his name is still on the TSA no-fly list. Arar currently has a lawsuit pending in Canada against the RCMP.
(Also see the Wikipedia entry on Arar.)

This is further evidence of the TSA's failure to competently maintain the no-fly list.

UPDATE (October 20, 2006): Ed Brayton has discussed this story today.

UPDATE (January 23, 2007): The U.S. Attorney General and head of Homeland Security are both insisting that Arar remain on the no-fly list for reasons which they have disclosed only to officials in Canada. The Canadians don't think those reasons make any sense. My guess is that they think somebody they sent off to be tortured might have a beef with the people who did it to him.

The Worst Congress Ever

There's an excellent article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi called "The Worst Congress Ever."

When the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress, I hope they will not be following the Republican rulebook for payback, but will try to return some dignity, honesty, integrity, and accountability to the legislative branch of our government.

One exception, though--they should follow the Republican lead from 1995 and not require minority party approval for issuing subpoenas to the White House as they clean house. It's high time that Congress started actually providing some oversight of the executive branch again.

The Bridge: Attacked by Scientology

Independent filmmaker Brett Hanover made a very nice little one-hour film called "The Bridge," about the Church of Scientology, which he put out on Google Video and YouTube about a month ago. Scientology came after him, and he buckled, withdrawing the film and saying that he no longer supports it. Google and YouTube took it down.

But it's still out there. Watch it, it's pretty well done.

The Five Stages of Republican Scandal

From "PT," a reader of Talking Points Memo:

5 stages of Republican scandal:

1. “I have not been informed of any investigation or that I am a target”
2. “I am cooperating fully, but this whole thing is a political ploy by the Democrats”
3. “I’m SHOCKED by the mistakes made by my subordinates”
4. “I’m deeply sorry for letting down my friends and family. I now recognize that I am an alcoholic. I will be entering rehab immediately, so I have no time for questions”
5. “Can I serve my time at Eglin Federal Penitentiary (aka Club Fed)?”

I'm sure these work just as well in a bipartisan manner (with minor rewording), but today it is most fitting as written.

Poston internment camp film

An archivist at the Arizona Historical Foundation, Linda Whitaker, found a 25-min 16mm film canister last fall while preparing an exhibition on World War II Japanese internment camps. The film can was labeled "Poston Color Dupe." The film turned out to be footage of Arizona's Poston internment camp, which was located in La Paz county, 12 miles south of Parker. The film had a magnetic strip for sound, but it had deteriorated, so what is left is a color silent film. It has been converted to DVD format and is for sale for $40 from the Arizona Historical Foundation.

Poston was one of two sets of Japanese internment camps in Arizona, and was also known as the Colorado River Relocation Center. It was composed of three camps, called Poston I, II, and III, on reservation land of the Colorado Indians. It operated from April 1942 to March 1946, and at its peak housed 18,000 people. The other was the Gila River Relocation Center about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, which housed 13,000 people at its peak, and operated from May 1942 to February 1946. It was composed of two camps, Butte Camp and Canal Camp, which were built over the objections of the Gila River Indian tribe, on whose land they were built.

The Japanese-Americans who were taken from their homes in California and Arizona and forced to live in these prison camps were mostly U.S. citizens (about 2/3). The Poston and Gila River camps were, at the time, the third and fourth largest "cities" in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson.

The Poston camp was built by Del Webb, best known as a homebuilder of planned communities in the southwest (such as Sun City and Anthem).

The discovery of this film serves to remind us how a country can get so caught up in wartime fear that it disregards its own Constitution and tramples the rights of individuals.

Kolbe river trip with former pages under investigation, press secretary resigns

Rep. Jim Kolbe is under investigation by the Justice Department regarding a 1996 Colorado river rafting trip he took with two 17-year-old former pages (as well as several staffers and National Park Service employees). His press secretary, Korenna Cline, "abruptly resigned" yesterday in order "to pursue another job opportunity."

ADF lies about "marriage protection" amendments

Recent amendments and proposed amendments to state constitutions like Arizona's Proposition 107, which "preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage," have been backed by the Alliance Defense Fund. These constitutional amendments will not just be used to block same-sex marriage (already prohibited by multiple Arizona statutes, as I've pointed out here), but to prevent things like domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners. In response to these claims, the ADF denies it, calling this a "false argument" used to "confuse":

Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex "marriage" argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people...

Same-sex "marriage" advocates argue that eliminating domestic partnerships or other counterfeit marital institutions is hateful and mean spirited, because it will undermine benefits granted to unmarried people. Unfortunately, many people (including some so-called "conservative" politicians) have bought into this fallacious argument.

But the ADF is just lying. They themselves, once such amendments have been passed, have been leading the legal efforts to do exactly that, as they have in Wisconsin (and other similar groups have done in Michigan and Ohio):

Conservative lawmakers in Wisconsin also are seeking to block gay state employees from winning the right to employee partnership benefits. That state's Legislature last month approved sending a constitutional amendment to a statewide vote in November that says "a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state."...

The Wisconsin amendment passed partly in response to a lawsuit filed by several gay state university employees seeking health insurance for their partners. The Legislature also has retained the services of a conservative evangelical law firm, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), in an attempt to intervene in the workers' lawsuit...

I suspect what the ADF really meant to say in their blog entry quoted above is that they are OK with domestic partnership benefits for unmarried persons of the opposite sex, but not if they are the same sex.

Hastert meets with religious kook, says he was duped

On Tuesday of this week (October 10), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert met with evangelist K.A. Paul, without first consulting with his advisors. He now says that he was "duped" into the meeting, in which Paul performed a "laying on of hands" on Hastert and asked him to resign. Paul says Hastert said that he would.

Paul is a full-blown kook, whose record includes (according to a June 2006 Houston Press story):

- claiming another minister's leper colony as his own, and videotaping said lepers for a promotional video

- transporting children in an airplane one former crew member called a "flying death trap"

- leaving a trail of unpaid bills for the plane's fuel and maintenance

- interfering with a murder investigation in India, earning the wrath of that country's National Council of Churches

- fleeing to the United States from India after nine of his American volunteers were arrested and thrown in prison

- abandoning an 11-year-old girl after checking her into a hospital

Hastert should resign simply for showing such bad judgment.

UPDATE: I should say kook and con artist, after reading the full Houston Press article.

Mr. Anand Kilari (K.A. Paul) has defrauded a lot of people, and been supported by Evander Holyfield, PromiseKeepers founder Bill McCartney, Carl Lindner, Jr., Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others. Of those mentioned in the article, the only ones with enough integrity to publicly warn others rather than remaining silent and refusing to comment were Houston millionaire Jim McIngvale and Colorado Springs businessman Ted Beckett and his wife Audrey. Those Christians who have supported this fraudster and remained silent are as guilty of deception as Paul is, and should be ashamed of themselves. As the Houston Press article points out:

From the start, his ministry has depended solely on the wealthiest evangelicals in America. With such a tenuous infrastructure, it would have shattered Kilari's ministry if any one of these Christian men had publicly criticized him.

Fortunately for Kilari, none ever has, which is why the unairworthy Global Peace One is still in Kilari's possession, patiently awaiting the day when it can carry another group of orphans across the ocean.