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    Authoritarianism is putting everything we value in danger

    Authoritarianism is putting everything we value in danger

    The future of all that we cherish is on the line and we—all of us—have to fight like hell to protect democracy, human decency, and a livable planet. Our reporters are working overtime to cover the onslaught of horrors as well as the resistance movements rising up to fight back. We must be prepared to do battle over the long haul. Will you donate to our Mid-Year Campaign to keep the progressive, nonprofit journalism of Common Dreams alive?

    Everything we care about is in danger, and Common Dreams is fighting back by exposing their lies and corruption and lifting up the voices of those working to stop them. If you believe in our work, we need you now more than ever. Your gift of any amount helps support our independent and fiercely unafraid journalism.

    Authoritarianism is putting everything we value in danger

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    CIA Torture Unredacted: Four-Year Investigation Reveals What Was Hidden in US Senate Torture Report

    CIA Torture Unredacted: Four-Year Investigation Reveals What Was Hidden in US Senate Torture Report

    New report is the most comprehensive public account of one of the most disturbing elements of America's so-called 'War on Terror’

    Crofton Black
    Jul 10, 2019

    One night in October 2001, shortly after al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, a private jet touched down in Karachi. Masood Anwar, a prominent Pakistani journalist, received an unexpected tip from a friend in the airport: "There were men in masks. They took a hooded man onboard in the early hours. Someone videotaped the entire thing. No one was allowed near the site."

    Anwar's story, although no one knew it at the time, would be the start of a thread which led to the heart of the Central Intelligence Agency's most secret "War on Terror" operation: the "rendition, detention, interrogation" (RDI) programme, a nine-year covert effort which had scores of prisoners flown around the globe to be tortured in undisclosed sites.

    We've brought to light further details of how deeply implicated the UK was in the overall running of the CIA's torture network

    The Senate report did offer a crucial insight, however: the first complete list of prisoners held in the CIA's black sites. 119 names, each with a date of custody (redacted) and a record of how many days they were held (also partly redacted).

    In the days after the publication of the Senate report, we set to work reconstructing this list to reveal the hidden dates. Figuring out a date often meant that we could match it to a flight record; matching to a flight record meant that we could determine where a prisoner was brought from or sent to. As we cross-correlated thousands of data points -- from declassified government documents, footnotes in the Senate report, aviation data, records of corporate outsourcing of rendition flights, legal cases, media reporting and NGO investigations -- the contours of the CIA's programme of secret detention and torture began to emerge more clearly. Rather than just understanding certain individual histories, we could begin to discern the entire scope of the programme's development.

    More than four years later, we're publishing the results of our investigation in a 400-page report entitled CIA Torture Unredacted. It is the first time that the entirety of the CIA's detention programme has been systematically revealed.

    When the Senate Committee released their report, fewer than half the names on the list of prisoners were known. We reported in 2015 that only 36 of those held by the CIA had been taken on to Guantanamo Bay, while the fate of many of the others remained a mystery. Seized in secret, held in secret, they were then disposed of in secret -- some back to their homes, some into continued custody in other countries, again often in secret

    Since then, we've been able to establish the histories -- at least to some extent -- of around 100 prisoners. We've traced over 60 operations to transport them to and from prison sites. We've uncovered who was held in Afghanistan, and revealed more fully than before who was sent to the European black sites, in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. We've also brought to light further details of how deeply implicated the UK was in the overall running of the CIA's torture network.

    Last year, some of our findings were cited in two judgments at the European Court of Human Rights, which held that Romania and Lithuania had assisted the US in illegally holding prisoners incommunicado on their territory. Elsewhere, our work has assisted legal teams, police inquiries and citizen accountability projects.

    CIA Torture Unredacted is the most comprehensive public account of one of the most disturbing elements of the 'War on Terror': a global programme of systematic disappearance and torture, carried out by the world's most powerful liberal democratic states in contravention of laws which they purport to uphold. In the face of continued obstruction and denial by the governments involved, we hope that it will stand as a central reference point for all those interested in accountability, truth and the rule of law.

    Download the full report here or chapter by chapter here.

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    For Obama's Secret Wars, the Public Record Suggests a Far Worse Reality

    For Obama's Secret Wars, the Public Record Suggests a Far Worse Reality

    Targeted killings or assassinations beyond the battlefield remain a highly charged subject. Most controversial of all is the number of civilians killed in US covert and clandestine drone strikes since 2002.

    The new White House data relates only to Obama's first seven years in office - during which it says 473 covert and clandestine airstrikes and drone attacks were carried out in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

    Chris Woods
    Jul 03, 2016

    Targeted killings or assassinations beyond the battlefield remain a highly charged subject. Most controversial of all is the number of civilians killed in US covert and clandestine drone strikes since 2002.

    The new White House data relates only to Obama's first seven years in office - during which it says 473 covert and clandestine airstrikes and drone attacks were carried out in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
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    A US Air Force drone

    US Military Prepares Drastic Escalation of Global Drone Program

    New reporting reveals plans to expand drone program by 50 percent, including broader use of mercenaries

    Lauren McCauley
    Aug 17, 2015

    The U.S. Pentagon is poised to dramatically increase the deployment of surveillance drones over "global hot spots" such as Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, the South China Sea, and North Africa, as well as expand its capacity for lethal drone strikes, the Wall Street Journalrevealed on Monday.

    The WSJ's Gordon Lubold reports, citing exclusive interviews with senior U.S. officials, that the number of daily flights by aircraft such as MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones will surge by an estimated 50 percent. Further, the expanded drone program will "draw on the Army, as well as Special Operations Command and government contractors," in addition to the U.S. Air Force, which currently carries out most of the operations for the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
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