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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Wall Street and our government are one and the same and are destroying the rest of us

robert scheer talking with amy goodman at democracy now about how the unfettered greed of our super-rich, elite overlords is destroying the very fabric of our society, particularly among those who have worked the hardest to carve their place in it and are the most vulnerable to economic shenanigans...

This is not a game. It’s not a political game. It’s not a mathematics game. They’re real human beings who invest their whole life putting shelter over their family, caring about their family. And when you go out in these communities—and I’ve done some of that—you know, it’s so depressing. You know, I mean, I talked to people in Riverside who cleaned office buildings, you know, in Long Beach and commuted to Riverside so their kids could live in a better neighborhood. And they bought this house, and they made the payments. They made the payments. They did everything they were supposed to do. And the neighborhood went into the toilet, and they lose everything. They lose everything. And that story is repeated millions of times in America.

And the guys who did it to us, they weren’t those vicious right-wingers. And, you know, it wasn’t all the people that we liberals like to attack. It was our friends. Let’s get that straight, you know? When I call this the Clinton bubble, you know, I mean it very seriously. It was our friends. It was people, you know, like the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who claim to be liberal Democrats. But they were being rewarded with enormous bonuses. You know, enormous bonuses. They made out just as well as the people running Citigroup. These were not government agencies. These were actually traded on the stock market, but posing as government-supported agencies. And the fact of the matter is that the damage that was done to us was done by people who talk a very good game. You know, Robert Rubin contributed money to the Harlem dance group, you know? Jesse Jackson even supported the reversal of Glass-Steagall. There’s a whole chapter in my book, you know? The people who acted in a very bad way, in this book, were people who we would probably be more comfortable talking to, you know, over a drink somewhere than the others. So, you know, my book, you know, it’s called "How Reagan Democrats—Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street and Mugged Main Street." And the Clinton Democrats, who now control the Obama administration, are—you know, this is turning the henhouse over to the foxes. And I would say the record of Obama on this has been abysmal. He has been a frontman for Wall Street, and it is shocking.

my heart has always been solidly connected to issues of social justice and it pains me beyond words to see common, ordinary, decent, hard-working folks screwed over by those who are only interested in accumulating more money and power for themselves... but, sad to say, i see it everywhere... regardless of the country or the culture, billions of decent people are being used and manipulated by those who only want to enrich themselves and don't give a flying shit for the common good...

i visited a friend in macedonia this past weekend and he was showing me photos of the trip he and his wife took to bucharest, romania, to visit his wife's sister... among the photos were several of the palace built by former dictator nicolae ceauşescu... now, i knew ceauşescu was an ego-maniacal despot, but, even with that knowledge, the size and grandiosity of the palace was stunning, only the pentagon in the u.s. is larger... the palace was built with forced labor... all the premier artisans and craftsmen from around the country were rounded up and moved to bucharest and put to work on the project - without pay - just so dear leader could look around and say, "look how great i am and how much power i have"...


Ceauşescu Palace, Bucharest, Romania


View from Ceauşescu Palace, Bucharest, Romania

we tut-tut and cluck-cluck over that kind of person and that kind of excess but it's going on right under our noses in our very own country... but when it's one of our own, we just choose to look the other way...

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Pathetic irony

read this and weep...

A 20-year-old Romanian looking for work hid in the wheel well of a jet in Vienna and survived a 90-minute flight to London, police said Wednesday.

The man told British authorities that he crawled "under the wire" of the Vienna airport's perimeter fence and climbed into the undercarriage of a private Boeing 747 parked near a construction site for a new terminal, Schwechat police chief Leo Lauber said.

Lauber said the jet belonged to a high-ranking sheik from the United Arab Emirates and took off from the Austrian capital Sunday night without any passengers on board.

[...]

Britain has restrictions on the number of Romanians working in the U.K., even though both nations are in the European Union.

think about it... a poor romanian, a guy who's just looking for a job, a romanian the uk won't let in even though both countries are eu nations, stows away in a 747, fercryinoutloud, an unimaginably expensive flying machine, owned by a obscenely rich uae sheik, that then flies to the uk WITHOUT passengers... how sad is that...? at least he survived...

it reminds me when i was working at dulles airport in d.c., an arab sheik's unmarked A-340 would regularly show up at the private aviation terminal... i knew when it was getting ready to leave when i would see all sorts of the sheik's recent purchases being loaded into the cargo bay...

there's evidently no limit to the humiliations the super-rich elites can inflict on the masses...

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EU suspends aid to Bulgaria

the last time i was in bulgaria was in october 2006, about three months before its accession to the eu... i thought at the time that accession was premature, that there was simply too much corruption and that the eu might regret opening the door to both bulgaria and romania, although i don't have any direct experience with romania... looks like my hunch was well-founded...

The European Commission has suspended EU aid to Bulgaria worth hundreds of millions of euros because of concerns about corruption and organised crime.

Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the EU was also withdrawing the right of two Bulgarian agencies to manage EU funds.

He said Bulgaria needed a new penal code to ensure more effective justice.

Romania was also criticised for shortcomings in its judiciary, including politicisation of cases.

Romania will escape penalties for now, but the report says reforms there are "fragile".

About 500m euros (£400m; $800m) of aid to Bulgaria is being frozen by the commission.

Both countries have been under close supervision since they joined the European Union in January 2007.

In Bulgaria, "the fight against high-level corruption and organised crime is not producing enough results," Mr Laitenberger said, presenting the reports on Wednesday.

the article goes on to say that, under intense bulgarian lobbying, the report was "toned down"... imho, that's a mistake... as much as i like the people of bulgaria, and also with due respect to my friends there who are decent, honorable people, bulgaria is a mess... i fully suspect the same hammer needs to fall on romania...

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The drums pushing war with Iran continue to thunder

the madmen who dare to call themselves our "leaders" will stop at nothing to achieve their dark aims... reality and truth play no part... meanwhile, we are purposefully distracted by the staged dramas of the presidential campaign and transsexuals having babies... what a world...!

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.

“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.

these people are certifiably insane...

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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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"This thing that has happened to America was planned for a long time."

i remember back last september sharing a post that maccabee had put up on daily kos about a romanian immigrant he had a long conversation with... it was as chilling it its way as this one...

from joey picador at justice for none...

One of our neighbors is moving. I've been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn't really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he's like 85 years old - I don't know exactly, but he's old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, "Back to Germany."

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.

"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because I've seen this before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and your country." He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

it sure reminds me of the bulgarian immigrant...

It starts with fixed elections. First the 2000 election was fixed and then the 2004 election was fixed. It happened in Communist elections just like it happened here. The people who count the votes are all in the government that's in power. And even when it seems like people have had enough, the tyrant will always somehow come out winning just enough to make your conspiracy theories seem ridiculous. Just like in Romania and Bulgaria of the sixties and seventies, the press may even report problems with elections, but Bush knows that Americans are lazy.

[...]

It may take about ten years. But it will be very much like the old Soviet Union. Incompetent government. Walls will appear around you. On the borders. Your internet sites will be scrubbed or monitored or may suddenly disappear. A government will control everything from one branch, businesses too will be in bed with the government. One day you will see your boss have the power to go through your bags. One day your corporation will have more rights than you have. Just like in Romania, we had conspiracy theories. One nuttier than the next. It turned out to be mostly true these things. This thing that has happened to America was planned for a long time.

yep, it's been a long time in the works... a long time... and we either put a halt to it soon or it will no longer be possible...

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