source: Associated Press (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has refused to allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue lawsuits against Saudi Arabia and four of its princes over charitable donations that were allegedly funneled to al-Qaida.

The court, in an order Monday, is leaving in place the ruling of a federal appeals court that the country and the princes are protected by sovereign immunity, which generally means that foreign countries can’t be sued in American courts.

The Obama administration had angered some victims and families by urging the justices to pass up the case.

In their appeal, the more than 6,000 plaintiffs said the government’s court brief filed in early June was an “apparent effort to appease a sometime ally” just before President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

At issue were obstacles in American law to suing foreign governments and their officials as well as the extent to which people can be held financially responsible for acts of terrorism committed by others.

The appeal was filed by relatives of victims killed in the attacks and thousands of people who were injured, as well as businesses and governments that sustained property damage and other losses.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York previously upheld a federal judge’s ruling throwing out the lawsuits. The appeals court said the defendants were protected by sovereign immunity and the plaintiffs would need to prove that the princes engaged in intentional actions aimed at U.S. residents.

In their appeal to the high court, both sides cited the report of the Sept. 11 Commission. The victims noted that the report said Saudi Arabia had long been considered the primary source of al-Qaida funding. The Saudis’ court filing, however, pointed out that the commission “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.”

The victims’ lawsuits claim that the defendants gave money to charities in order to funnel it to terrorist organizations that were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The appeal also stressed that federal appeals courts have reached conflicting decisions about when foreign governments and their officials can be sued.

The case is Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 08-640.

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source: History Commons

The US military conducted a training exercise in the five days before the September 11 attacks that included simulated aircraft hijackings by terrorists, according to a 9/11 Commission document recently found in the US National Archives. In one of the scenarios, implemented on September 9, terrorists hijacked a London to New York flight, planning to blow it up with explosives over New York.

The undated document, entitled “NORAD EXERCISES Hijack Summary,” was part of a series of 9/11 Commission records moved to the National Archives at the start of the year. It was found there, and posted to the History Commons site at Scribd, by History Commons contributor paxvector, in the files of the commission’s Team 8, which focused on the failed emergency response on the day of the attacks. The summary appears to have been drafted by one of the commission’s staffers, possibly Miles Kara, based on documents submitted by NORAD.

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source: Democracy Now

Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal.

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source: Raw Story

by Stephen C. Webster

Six members of London’s metropolitan police force are the focus of a criminal investigation after a corruption probe revealed allegations by a serving officer that detectives waterboarded suspects allegedly caught with a “large amount” of marijuana.

“The officers under investigation were among 10 based in Enfield, north London, who were suspended in February in one of the worst allegations of corruption to hit the Metropolitan police in recent years,” reported The Telegraph.

“The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC),” reported the Times Online. “It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested in Enfield and Tottenham.

The British publication added: “Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said ‘it would not have been in the public interest to proceed.’ It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.”

“The officers, who include a detective sergeant, were originally suspended over allegations they stole property during the drugs raids,” noted Sky News. “The officers are members of the Enfield crime squad based at Edmonton police station.”

“[British] papers gave varying accounts of the exact technique used by police, with the Times saying that officers poured water on a cloth and placed it over a suspect’s face to simulate the experience of drowning,” reported the Associated Press. “The Daily Mail said police officers repeatedly dunked the suspects’ heads in buckets of water. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.”

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source: Bloomberg
dateline: June 6, 2009

IMF Says New Reserve Currency to Replace Dollar Is Possible

By Alexander Nicholson

June 6 (Bloomberg) — The International Monetary Fund said it’s possible to take the “revolutionary” step of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar over time.

The IMF’s so-called special drawing rights could be used as the basis for a new currency, First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today.

“There are many, many attractions in the long run to such an outcome,” Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today. “But this is not a quick, short or easy decision,” he said, adding that it would be “quite revolutionary.”

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source: simuvac’s blog, 911Blogger.com

President Obama’s speech in Egypt echoes Bush’s speech to the UN, in its warning not to challenge the 9/11 story.

Obama’s remarks (June 4, 2009): “But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with,” he said.

Bush’s remarks (November 10, 2001): “We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror.”

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source: Raw Story

by Muriel Kane

A federal district court judge in San Francisco has dismissed more than three dozen lawsuits filed against the nation’s telecommunications companies for their role in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Judge Vaughn Walker ruled on Wednesday to uphold legislation passed by Congress last summer that retroactively protected the companies against liability for their participation in what was then an illegal activity.

That legislation overruled Walker’s previous decision that a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) against AT&T in 2006 could go forward. “Congress has manifested its unequivocal intention to create an immunity that will shield the telecommunications company defendants from liability in these actions,” Walker wrote in his latest ruling.

The judge also ordered state officials to halt their investigations of telecom participation in the surveillance program. If the decisions is upheld, Americans may never know how the telecoms were induced to participate. However, the EFF plans to appeal the decision to the next level, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A few other wiretapping cases that were brought against the government rather than the telecoms are still pending. Describing government officials as “the primary actors in the alleged wiretapping actities,” Judge Walker deferred his decision on those.

Walso also deferred his decision concerning the Obama administration’s refusal on national security grounds to turn over a log of telephone calls which an Islamic charity says show it was targeted by illegal wiretaps.

According to AllGov.com, “Twice since the beginning of this year Walker has told the Department of Justice to work out a way so the plaintiffs of a lawsuit can access secret evidence for their case against the U.S. government’s warrantless wiretapping program during the Bush administration. And twice Obama’s Justice Department has refused to comply with Walker’s demand.”

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source: Raw Story

Comic by Dan Wasserman (Boston Globe)

A lawsuit against two Bush officials, FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, filed by a former Sept. 11 detainee cannot go forward because top US officials can’t be blamed for abuse that occurred during his imprisonment, the Associated Press reports.

The court on Monday overturned a lower court decision that let Javaid Iqbal’s (Ick-ball) lawsuit against the high-ranking officials proceed.

Iqbal is a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. He had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race.

But the government argued that there was nothing linking Mueller and Ashcroft to the abuses that happened to Iqbal.

Reuters reports, “Iqbal, a Muslim, said in the lawsuit that he had suffered verbal and physical abuse, including unnecessary strip searches and brutal beatings by guards. He said he had been singled out because of unlawful ethnic and religious discrimination.”

NBC News correspondent Pete Williams explained the significance of the case and the court’s decision.

“This is a case we’ve been watching carefully because if this Pakistani Muslim had succeeded with this lawsuit, there certainly would have been hundreds more,” Williams said. “He was one of those who was sort of rounded up in the weeks after 9/11 when the FBI and law enforcement were generally looking for people who might have conceivably had any terror connections, and as a result of that, a lot of Muslim men were put in holding cells in New York and the Justice Department has since said that many of them were mistreated.”

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source: New York Times

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by Jennifer Steinhauer

IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

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source: Raw Story

Detainee whose tortured tales were used as justification for Iraq war ‘committed suicide’ in Libyan prison

by Stephen C. Webster

The chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the Bush Administration authorized torture of detainees before even rendering a legal opinion on the practice — and that they sought to torture detainees in an effort to produce intelligence tying Iraq to al Qaeda.

“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida,” former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson wrote Wednesday evening.

“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods,” Wilkerson added. “The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.”

“There in fact were no such contacts,” he continued. “(Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”

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