Sibel Edmonds re-emerges - finally - with a book

i've posted a great deal in the past about sibel edmonds (see here) but it's been nearly three years since my last post... the constraints of her gag order coupled with personal threats have been severely detrimental in getting her story out... now i see that she has a book which lays out everything and i can only hope that her re-emergence and renewed visibility will be sufficient to shield her from any unexplained, coincidental "accidents"...
 
first this from rt and the alyona show...

Sibel Edmonds has called the most classified woman in US history. But now, after a long battle with government secrecy, the full story has finally been written. She faced a nearly yearlong FBI campaign to prevent its publication. She joins the show to tell us about her memoir, "Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story".

here's david swanson...

Sibel Edmonds' new book, "Classified Woman," is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell.  This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11.  She considered it her duty.  Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks.  That's where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically.  It's rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security.  The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves.  The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to "say something if you see something" is the rarest commodity.  Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

[N]o branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, which Edmonds argues has grown far worse under President Obama.  That's why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary.  This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C.  Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all -- not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.

now, if our brain-dead media could just manage to sit up and take notice of what sibel is exposing, we just might be able to shed some light on all the creepy-crawlies that infest even the highest reaches of our government...  

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The behavior of the United States violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for

an excellent report of an interview of afghan women judges conducted by david swanson for truthout...

The first judge to reply spoke of the horrors of the Taliban, and of the initial gratitude for the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago. But, she said, the mission changed to one of fighting terrorism, and through that "we lost all of our civil rights." She described U.S. troops kicking in doors of houses at night with women and girls asleep in their beds. She described disappearances and accounts of torture. What the United States and NATO are doing, seizing people, locking them up, disappearing them, and torturing them is clearly illegal and against international law, she said. According to international treaties, she went on, when one country occupies another, the host country does not lose its sovereignty, and yet all decisions are now being made by the occupying country without any say by the Afghan government.

A second judge spoke up. "Your Constitution speaks of freedom and a people's government," she said, "but the United States is running secret prisons, torturing, disappearing people, and locking people up for years with no due process." The behavior of the United States, she said, violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for. "It may seem trivial," she continued, "but it effects our daily lives." If a member of the international occupying forces gets into a hit and run with their car, and you go to the base to complain, you are threatened. They have total immunity from any rule of law, she explained.

[...]

The first judge to have spoken then joined back in, remarking that "the United States tells other countries how to be democratic and operate within a rule of law, but the United States as role model breaks every one of those things."

as i sit here in kabul behind my laptop, i can give first-hand validation to every one of the perspectives expressed in this article... the depth and breadth of american hypocrisy is beyond belief and it is one of my most significant daily challenges to keep myself from absolutely drowning in it and staying focused on relating to the afghans as fellow human beings and assisting them in whatever ways i can...

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Sigh... Yeah, it DOES feel like Bush's third term, doesn't it...?

argue with this if you dare...

dave swanson in tomdispatch via information clearing house...

[The] dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.

Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even -- in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice -- presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.

If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.

double sigh...

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