Information about the CIA black sites continues to trickle in

i've posted extensively on the cia black sites, particularly the ones in poland, lithuania and diego garcia... here's some fresh information on the site in romania, dug up, no surprise, by a non-u.s. news organization, in this case, the german network ard...

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.

Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

here it is, "hidden in plain sight"...


The National Registry Office for Classified Information, also known
as ORNISS, sits in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from
the center of Romania’s capital city of Bucharest in this recent photo.
Between 2003 and 2006, the CIA operated a secret prison from the
building's basement, bringing in high-value terror suspects for
interrogation and detention. A joint AP-ARD Panorama investigation
revealed the exact location of the prison. (AP Photo)

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Aw, fer corn's sake...

it was only a little over a month ago that i visited auschwitz, took these photos and put up this post...

Poland: Auschwitz 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign stolen

The Nazis' infamous iron sign declaring "Arbeit Macht Frei" — German for "Work Sets You Free" — was stolen Friday from the entrance of the former Auschwitz death camp, Polish police said.

The 5-meter-long (16-foot-long), 40-kilogram (90-pound) iron sign at the Holocaust memorial site in southern Poland was unscrewed on one side and torn off on the other, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said.

The theft from the entrance to the camp — where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died during World War II — brought condemnation worldwide.

i don't know what goes on in some people's heads...

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Auschwitz-Birkenau: the incredible banality of pure evil

today i visited the auschwitz-birkenau extermination camp... i had visited dachau a number of years ago but the scale and number of the deaths at auschwitz-birkenau were beyond imaginable...



the staggering number of victims...

Auschwitz Concentration Camp was set up for Poles, and Poles were the first political prisoners there. The number of prisoners grew steadily as a result of the constant arrival of new transports. In 1940, nearly 8 thousand people were registered in the camp. Almost all of them were Poles. There were also small numbers of Jews and Germans in the camp. At that time, the latter usually held supervisory functions as capos and block supervisors.

In 1941, over 26 thousand people were registered in Auschwitz (about 15 thousand Poles, 10 thousand Soviet POWs, and more than 1 thousand Jews).

As a result of the inclusion of Auschwitz in the process of the mass extermination of the Jews, the number of deportees began to soar. About 197 thousand Jews were deported there in 1942, about 270 thousand the following year, and over 600 thousand in 1944, for a total of almost 1.1 million. Among them, about 200 thousand people were selected as capable of labor and registered as prisoners in the camp.

In this same period, from 1942 to 1944, about 160 thousand Poles, Gypsies, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, French, and others were registered as prisoners and given numbers. There were also more than 10 thousand people, mostly Poles, Soviet POWs, and Gypsies, not entered in the camp records or given numbers.

The mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz that began in 1942 radically changed the makeup of the prisoner population. After three months of deportation, in mid-1942, Jews already made up the most numerous ethnic group, and their share of the population rose steadily from about 46% in June 1942 to about 68% at the peak of the camp’s population, in August 1944. A total of about 400 thousand prisoners were registered: 195 thousand non-Jews and 205 thousand Jews.

Ethnicity/category	number
Jews	1.1 million
Poles	140-150 thousand
Gypsies	23 thousand
Soviet POWs	15 thousand
Others	25 thousand
Total	Approx. 1.3 million

Year	Men	Women	total
1940	8,000	-	8,000
1941	26,500	-	26,500
1942	61,500	28,000	89,500
1943	96,000	56,000	152,000
1944/1945	67,500	47,000	114,500
1941-1945	9,000*	2,000*	11,000*
Razem	268,500	133,000	Approx. 400,000

here's a video clip i took today at auschwitz...

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All Saints' Day by Night at Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw

we took a walk through warsaw's powązki cemetery this evening and, i must say, it was quite a sight... it was ablaze with candles and packed with people... some of the graves of the famous were literally aflame... i've never seen anything quite like it... here's a link to an article and some photos of this unusual all saint's day celebration...

Poles celebrate the All Saints' Day in unusually solemn way. The cemeteries and graveyards are decorated with candles, flowers and wreaths through the day and they shine through the night.

here's my video of the scene taken earlier this evening...

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Promoting fear of (choose one: biological, nuclear, terrorist, conventional weapons) attack - it's good for business

a friend sent me this article with the following question...

the question...

What's your read on this having spent time near the country mentioned?

the article...

The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.

[...]

Al-Qaida remains the only terrorist group judged to be actively intent on conducting a nuclear attack against the United States, the report notes. It is not yet capable of building such a weapon and has yet to obtain one. But that could change if a nuclear weapons engineer or scientist were recruited to al-Qaida's cause, the report warns.

The report says the potential nexus of terrorism, nuclear and biological weapons is especially acute in Pakistan.

"Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan," the report states.

my response...

i think 90+ percent of these stories are designed as fear-mongering, pure and simple... a population living in fear is, by definition, easier to control...

however, if sophisticated biological attacks become part of the arsenal of ANY group, it will because the technology and skill required for their development became available in some manner, intended or otherwise, through the incessant research on same being done by countries like the u.s., in precisely the same way that nuclear weapons technology became available to pakistan and, now, india...

don't think for a moment that a new weapons race such as that announced today by russia in response to the u.s. plans to position missiles in poland and the czech republic isn't planned as a means to increase defense research and weapons systems spending... likewise, nuclear and biological weapons systems proliferation is equally good for business... as always, follow the money...

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a-HA! Secret prisons in Poland and Romania CONFIRMED!

yeah, like we ever doubted it...

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

i'm going to give myself some kudos here... i've been blogging about this since december 2005 (here, here, and here, among others), and also posted last december on the location of the prison site in poland along with the very airport the cia used when delivering or retrieving the prisoners (here and here)... in fact, here's a photo of the airport in poland where the cia flights landed and took off...



Szymany airport, Poland

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As long as we're on the subject of Condi

Condoleezza Rice...........Ferragamo shoe

she's back in europe, lying her ass off...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday dismissed as "ludicrous" Russian concerns that Washington's plans to deploy anti-missile defenses in Europe would endanger Moscow's nuclear arsenal.

A flurry of high-level talks in recent weeks has failed to soften Russia's public opposition to the U.S. plan to install radar scanners in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland.

Washington says the deployment is aimed at protecting Europe and North America from a growing threat of missile strike by North Korea, Iran or others in the Middle East. Moscow says those countries do not pose an immediate threat, and claims the U.S. plan aims to target Russia's strategic missile arsenal.

understandably, putin's pissed...

Putin ... warned that Moscow could halt compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, a landmark 1990 agreement between NATO and former Warsaw Pact countries.

"I propose we declare a moratorium on fulfillment by Russia of the CFE treaty," Putin said.

The Russian leader complained that Western powers have failed to ratify the agreement. However, the threat appeared to be linked to growing tensions over security, especially the US military's plan to deploy anti-missile defences in eastern Europe.

let's just imagine that russia wanted to put missiles in cuba... i know that's "ludicrous" and would never, ever happen, but let's just suppose for a moment that it did... what do you think would be the u.s. reaction...

The "Cuban Missile Crisis" was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States in Cuba. The missiles were ostensibly placed to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, and were rationalized by the Soviets as equivalent to the U.S. placing deployable nuclear warheads in the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and most significantly, Turkey

The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and ended fourteen days later on October 28, 1962, when Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled. The Crisis is often regarded as the moment when the Cold War came closest to escalating into a nuclear war. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."

oops... i had an emily litella moment... never mind...

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More on CIA "black sites"

so, the rest of it is coming out... i was wondering when we would hear more...

The CIA operated an interrogation and short-term detention facility for suspected terrorists within a Polish intelligence training school with the explicit approval of British and US authorities, according to British and Polish intelligence officials familiar with the arrangements.

Intelligence officials identify the site as a component of a Polish intelligence training school outside the northern Polish village of Stare Kiejkuty. While previously suspected, the facility has never been conclusively identified as being part of the CIA's secret rendition and detention program.

[...]

Authorities singled out a remote and infrequently used airfield in the Northern Polish town of Szymany for transit flights; a near-by Polish intelligence training school at Stare Kiejkuty would be used as an eventual detention-interrogation center for temporary detention and short-term interrogations.

i might as well pat myself on the back...i posted on this shortly after christmas...



Szymany airport, Poland

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1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace or stopped over at airports in Europe after 9/11

i posted the other day on marie brenner's vanity fair article about charles swift in which he said that the purpose of guantánamo is torture... i think it's abundantly clear that is also the purpose of extraordinary rendition...

European Union lawmakers on Wednesday approved a final report which slams EU governments for tolerating or assisting the United States' practice of secret detentions of terrorist suspects.

More than 10 European states, including Britain, Poland, Italy and Germany aided or knew about the US secret service CIA's clandestine programme of taking terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation, Euro MPs said in their report.

At least 1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace or stopped over at airports in Europe after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, Euro MPs concluded.

i'm not surprised about the uk or poland... and, even tho' we've know about it for a while, i'm still surprised about germany and italy...

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