STATE SANCTIONED TORTURE

Prisoner gives Guantanamo court first account of CIA abuse
 

This 2018 photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights shows Majid Khan. The much-criticized war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station reached a milestone on Oct. 28, 2021, with the sentencing of Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who pleaded guilty to terrorism and other offenses and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities prosecuting five men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Center for Constitutional Rights via AP)

This photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights shows Majid Khan during his high school years in the late 1990's when he was in Baltimore. The much-criticized war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station reached a milestone Oct. 28, 2021, with the sentencing of Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who pleaded guilty to terrorism and other offenses and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities prosecuting five men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Center for Constitutional Rights via AP)

This 2018 photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights shows Majid Khan. The much-criticized war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station reached a milestone on Oct. 28, 2021, with the sentencing of Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who pleaded guilty to terrorism and other offenses and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities prosecuting five men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Center for Constitutional Rights via AP)

BEN FOX
Thu, October 28, 2021,


FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went through the brutal U.S. government interrogation program after the 9/11 attacks described it openly for the first time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from techniques that the CIA long sought to keep secret.

Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an al-Qaida courier, told jurors considering his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse in the clandestine CIA facilities known as “black sites,” as interrogators pressed him for information.

It was the first time any of the so-called high value detainees held at the U.S. base in Cuba have been able to testify about what the U.S has euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation" but has been widely condemned as torture.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said.

Khan spoke of being suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed.

“I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn’t know anything," he said. "If I had intelligence to give I would have given it already but I didn’t have anything to give.”

Khan, reading from a 39-page statement, spoke on the first day in what is expected to be a two-day sentencing hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba.

A panel of military officers selected by a Pentagon legal official known as a convening authority can sentence Khan to between 25 and 40 years in prison, but he will serve far less because of his extensive cooperation with U.S. authorities.

Under a plea deal, which the jurors were not told about, Khan's sentence by the jury will be reduced to no more than 11 years by the convening authority, and he will get credit for his time in custody since his February 2012 guilty plea.

That means he should be released early next year, resettled in a third, as yet unknown country because he can't return to Pakistan, where he has citizenship.

Some of Khan’s treatment is detailed in a Senate Intelligence Committee report, released in 2014, that accused the CIA of inflicting pain and suffering on al-Qaida prisoners far beyond its legal boundaries and deceiving the nation with narratives of useful interrogations unsubstantiated by its own records.

Khan agreed with that assessment. “The more I cooperated and told them, the more I was tortured," he said.

He spent about three years in CIA black sites before he was taken to Guantanamo in September 2006. He said he never saw the light of day in the black sites and had no contact with anyone other than guards and interrogators from his capture until his sixth year at the detention center on the base in Cuba.

Khan, 41, has admitted to being a courier for al-Qaida and taking part in the planning of several plots there were never carried out. He pleaded guilty in February 2012 to charges that include conspiracy, murder and providing material support to terrorism in a deal that capped his sentence in exchange for cooperating with authorities in other investigations, including the case against the five men held at Guantanamo who are charged with planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11 attack.

A citizen of Pakistan who was born in Saudi Arabia, Khan came to the U.S. with his family in the 1990s and they were granted asylum. He graduated from high school in the Baltimore suburbs and held a technology job in the D.C. area at an office where he could see the smoke billowing from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

He says he turned to radical ideology following the death earlier that year of his mother, whom he described as the most important person in his life.

Khan apologized for his actions and said he takes full responsibility. He said he now just wants to reunite with his wife and the daughter who was born while he was in captivity. He said he has forgiven his captors, and his torturers.

“I have also tried to make up for the bad things I have done,” he said. "That’s why I pleaded guilty and cooperated with the USA government”

Khan is the first of the high-value detainees, those who went through the interrogation program, to be convicted and sentenced at the military tribunals held on the base.

The five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who has portrayed himself as the architect of the plot. That case remains in the pretrial stage and a judge has said it will start no sooner than next year.

The U.S. holds 39 men at the detention center on Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

——

Editor's note: The Associated Press viewed proceedings from a video feed at Fort Meade, Maryland.

THE STATE TORTURES AND EXECUTES PRISONER
Oklahoma puts first inmate to death since 2015, but witness reports he convulsed and vomited during execution

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY

By Raja Razek, CNN
Thu October 28, 2021


John Marion Grant killed a cafeteria worker while in an Oklahoma prison for robbery.

(CNN)Hours after the US Supreme Court vacated a ruling that granted a stay of execution for death row inmate John Grant, a witness to the execution on Thursday said Grant convulsed and vomited after the first drug, Midazolam, was administered.

Midazolam was also used in Oklahoma's 2014 controversial execution of Clayton Lockett. Instead of becoming unconscious, Lockett twitched, convulsed and spoke.

According to CNN affiliate KOKH reporter Dan Snyder, who attended the execution at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, Grant began convulsing almost immediately after the first drug was administered.

"His entire upper back repeatedly lifted off the gurney," Snyder said. "As the convulsions continued, Grant then began to vomit."

For the next few minutes, medical staff entered the room multiple times to wipe away and remove vomit from the still-breathing Grant, according to Snyder. Grant was declared unconscious by medical staff at about 4:15 pm.

The doses of the second and third drugs used were administered a minute later, according to Snyder.
The time of death was 4:21 p.m., local time, according to Oklahoma Corrections Communications Director Justin Wolf.

Grant was convicted in 2000 for first-degree murder of prison worker Gay Adams in the kitchen of the Dick Conner Correctional Facility in 1998.


Death Penalty Fast Facts

"Inmate Grant's execution was carried out in accordance with Oklahoma Department of Corrections' protocols and without complication," Wolf said.

Oklahoma hasn't executed a death row inmate since January 2015, when Charles Warner was put to death by lethal injection. Another inmate, Richard Glossip, was scheduled to be executed in September of that year but then-Gov. Mary Fallin called for it to be postponed.

Earlier this week, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said in a news release, "After investing significant hours into reviewing policies and practices to ensure that executions are handled humanely, efficiently, and in accordance with state statute and court rulings, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections is prepared to resume executions in the state of Oklahoma."


Garland suspends federal executions and orders review of Trump-era rules

"ODOC continues to use the approved three drug protocol which has proven humane and effective. The agency has confirmed a source to supply the drugs needed for all currently scheduled executions. Extensive validations and redundancies have been implemented since the last execution in order to ensure that the process works as intended," added the release.

An attorney for Grant, Sarah Jernigan, said in a statement to CNN on Thursday, "John Grant took full responsibility for the murder of Gay Carter, and he spent his years on death row trying to understand and atone for his actions, more than any other client I have worked with.

"Through all of this, John never received the mental health care he needed or deserved in prison. And when he eventually committed a violent crime, the murder of a prison worker, Oklahoma provided him with incompetent lawyers who had no business handling a case with the ultimate punishment at stake," Jernigan wrote.

Timothée Chalamet Compares Manchin to Dune Villain Harkonnen

Lexi McMenamin

Thu, October 28, 2021, 

In a sentence I did not expect to type today, Timothée Chalamet is asking some pressing questions about President Joe Biden’s battered Build Back Better Agenda. For example: What exactly is the difference between Rep. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and an evil, blockbuster, sci-fi movie villain?

A meme that started circulating on Twitter early this week comparing Manchin — referred to as “Coal Baron,” which… not wrong! — to Dune villain Baron Vladimir Harkonnen made its way to Chalamet’s Instagram Story on October 27.

What they have in common, according to the joke: Both “[use] the government to enrich themselves via their family mining company, [ignore] the overwhelming will of the people out of naked greed,” and both are “actively destroying the climate, dooming millions.” A tweet with a screenshot from Chalamet’s story has over 15,000 likes on Twitter as of this writing.

Dune, which was released in theaters on October 22 and a day earlier on HBO Max, stars Chalamet and Zendaya facing off against House Harkonnen, a family of bads that exploits the indigenous population of planet Arrakis to control access to the drug spice. So a family business built around making a profit at the expense of the marginalized, and driving humanity to disaster in the process… Sounds familiar. This brings us back to the current kerfuffle in Congress.

Thanks to Manchin and fellow obstructionist Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), the new plan for Biden’s Build Back Better bill cut provisions including two years of free community college, guaranteed paid parental leave, lowering prescription drug prices, and a proposal to add dental coverage to Medicare.

But the climate issue is especially concerning when it comes to Manchin. Recent reports say Manchin’s made $4.5 million over his 11 years in the Senate from his son’s coal companies, and he met weekly throughout last summer with ExxonMobil lobbyists pushing him to weaken Biden’s climate plan. Five youth climate activists are on day nine of a hunger strike to try to push Biden to maintain his commitment to climate policy as advocated by the Sunrise Movement and other groups.

“Does the fossil fuel industry money you’ve taken have anything to do with you blocking vital climate legislation right now?” hunger striker Abby Leedy, 20, asked Manchin on October 26. “Joe Manchin, I’m going to grow up in a catastrophic climate emergency if you continue to block the Civilian Climate Corps.”

By choosing fossil fuels, Manchin isn’t just ignoring progressives' “overwhelming will,” he’s ignoring his own constituents. The original Build Back Better plan was “immensely popular” among West Virginians, according to a recent survey.

This TikTok user infiltrated 'white lives matter' groups – and uncovered a wellspring of racism

Travis Gettys
October 28, 2021

A Black TikTok user who goes by "Aunt Karen" is exposing the blatant racism in "white lives matter" social media groups -- and they hate it.

auntkaren0

TikTok’s Favorite Karen · 10-10

#greenscreen I’m watching you! #racist #karen #awareness #conservative #blacklivesmatter #trump #biden #StudentSectionSauce

original sound - TikTok’s Favorite Karen

00:25/00:44

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Denise Bradley infiltrated the groups, sometimes with friends who she says spam the boards with messages of "unity and positivity," and found a barrage or racist messages stereotyping Black people as "lazy" and other white supremacist content, reported Daily Dot.

"We have to take this group down," Bradley says in an Oct. 10 video that went viral.

She shared screenshots of posts from the White Lives Matter 2.0 group showing members saying they're "terrified" of Superman being Black, alongside a photo of actor Michael B. Jordan in the comic book superhero's costume, and Facebook ended up deleting the page after reviewing the racist commentary.

"I want them to feel uncomfortable," Bradley said. "They shouldn't be able to display so much hate and bigotry. They don't deserve a space on any platform."

Facebook Is Changing Its Name To Meta, And People Have Some Strong — And Hilarious — Feelings About It



Thu, October 28, 2021, 6:30 PM·2 min read

Facebook just announced that they'll be changing their name to "Meta." In a virtual meeting about the corporation's future, Mark Zuckerberg said he hopes they can eventually be seen as a "metaverse company."

According to Investopedia (a website I never thought I'd find myself perusing), a metaverse is "a digital reality that combines aspects of social media, online gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and cryptocurrencies to allow users to interact virtually."

This rebranding comes after a wave of scrutiny towards the company for its alleged spread of hate speech and misinformation. So as you can probably imagine, the internet has some thoughts. Here are 15 tweets that sum up people's reactions:

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What do you think about the name change? Let us know in the comments

Journalists roast Facebook's 'Meta' rebranding: 'A virtual reality where Mark Zuckerberg has a black friend'
Brad Reed
October 28, 2021

Screen cap

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced that his company would be rebranding as "Meta" and would have more focus on virtual reality in which people could connect more directly in a simulated digital space.

In a video released to demonstrate the concept, a virtual Zuckerberg walks onto a simulation of a space station in which he plays cards with some of his friends, who also appear as cartoon avatars.

Many journalists were not impressed, however, as they believe it's just as likely that the toxic experiences that have consumed Facebook for years would soon come to infect the company's giant virtual reality platform.

"If you hate 'Facebook,' you'll love 'Meta,' an immersive, unceasing universe of Facebook," wrote the New York Times' Amanda Hess.

Elaborating on this, journalist Justin Ling predicted that Meta would come to consist of getting "accosted by a group of neo-Nazi anti-vaxxers in the metaverse."

The Columbia Journalism Review's Mathew Ingram, meanwhile, predicted that the execution of Meta would face the same pitfalls that befell virtual reality platform Second Life.

"I assume Facebook -- er, Meta -- has already licensed the code from Second Life that tried to stop people from using giant penises as their virtual avatars," he wrote.

Freelance writer Neri Zilber took issue with the video demonstration of Meta and said that he was "recovering from food poisoning and this is just what my fever dreams were like."

Other journalists simply took the Meta announcement as an opportunity to post jokes at Mark Zuckerberg's expense.

"They had to spend billions to create a virtual reality where Mark Zuckerberg has a black friend," wrote Nation columnist Jeet Heer.

"I never thought I'd be physically pained with embarrassment for a billionaire, but here we are," wrote Discourse Blog's Rafi Schwartz.

Facebook Name Change Is Example Of Marketing Tactic Used By Companies Under Fire

Edward Segal
Senior Contributor
FORBES


This illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on October 28, 2021,

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement today that the company has changed its name to Meta — Greek for “beyond” —is an example of a marketing tactic that has been used to divert attention from an organization that has received negative publicity and is confronting a crisis situation.

Zuckerberg said the name change was made to “reflect who we are and what we hope to build...Building our social media apps will always be an important focus for us. But right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future.

“Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company. I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” he said.

Michael Grimm is vice president of national strategic communications firm Reputation Partners, “Conveniently, in the wake of intense scrutiny from Congress, whistleblowers, the media and public at large for the negative impact Facebook, Instagram, and its other social media websites may have on its billions of users, Facebook announced it is planning to rebrand the company with a new name,” he said.


“This is interesting because it is an apt example of an often-used marketing tactic to divert attention away from negative publicity by rebranding or introducing a new identity for the company.

‘Can Help Divert Negative Publicity’

Grimm noted that, “Introducing a new name that can act as a parent company overseeing subsidiary groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and of course, Facebook, can help divert negative publicity to each business unit while trying to keep the overarching new brand name clean from blame and 

“We’ve seen other companies like Google do this with the creation of Alphabet. It will be up to “Meta” and Mark Zuckerberg to prove that this switch wasn’t an obvious crisis communication strategy to divert from the crises plaguing Facebook, and that it backs up its rebranding explanations for the switch with real value for consumers and shareholders,” he concluded.

‘Facebook Will Still Be Facebook’

Elie Jacobs, president of EJ Strategies, said, “The ‘meta-answer’ is that a name change will have no bearing whatsoever on the crisis situations Facebook is facing.

“Think of how few people refer to Google as Alphabet or how many people still call Altria Phillip Morris. Facebook will still be Facebook and each week will uncover yet another scandalous thing Zuckerberg & Co. have tried to cover up,” he said.

Jacobs observed that, Meanwhile the stock is likely going to continue to rise until the government takes real action. While there is a long-standing Jewish tradition to rename a person going through life-threatening medical challenges, I don't think Zuckerberg had that in mind. I don't think the lesson for business leaders here is renaming equals rebirth...”

‘Timing Feels Strange’

Business consultant Jeff Pedowitz said, “I think the timing feels strange given the recent scrutiny the company is under. Name change aside, the company has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust and confidence in consumers and demonstrate that it can really protect privacy while maintaining balanced and fair standards that are applied to everyone, not just select individuals.

“They need to take tangible steps to reaffirm the brand promise. Demonstrate real transparency and accountability. Right now they are papering over the issues and everyone sees right through it. They should consider replacing some of their key executives and invest in outside agencies to review and provide oversight of their changes. That would go a long way to demonstrating they are serious about improving their image and what they really stand for,”he predicted.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Facebook as 'a cancer to democracy' after Meta rebrand

Tim Levin
Thu, October 28, 2021,

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photo by TOM WILLIAMS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Facebook a "cancer to democracy."

She made the comments after Facebook announced it would change its name to Meta.

The name change came after numerous negative reports about Facebook's business practices.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had some harsh words for Facebook after its name change to Meta on Thursday.

"Meta as in 'we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society...for profit,'" Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the news.

Facebook on Thursday said it would change its name to Meta, which underscores its efforts to build a virtual space populated by digital avatars that Mark Zuckerberg calls the metaverse. The company's services, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will now exist under the Meta umbrella, but the company said it corporate structure wasn't changing.

Facebook will start trading under the new stock ticker MVRS in December.

The name change came amid a firestorm of revelations about Facebook's business practices detailed in thousands of pages of documents leaked to the press. The documents, provided to the media and US government by the former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, paint a picture of a company that struggles to stem misinformation and illegal and dangerous activity on its platform, especially outside the US.

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, has been critical of Facebook and other tech giants in the past. Following Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' journey to space in July, she blasted the online retailer's low wages and "inhumane workplace." Earlier in October, she criticized Facebook's "monopolistic mission" as having "incredibly destructive effects on free society and democracy."

Seven-foot bronze Harambe statue stares down Zuckerberg's Facebook

Luke Gentile

Wed, October 27, 2021

A 7-foot bronze statue of Harambe, the gorilla shot and killed in 2016 at the Cincinnati Zoo, appeared outside Facebook's California headquarters Tuesday to reportedly protest the power the social networking giant wields.

The gorilla, which appeared with about 10,000 bananas, was placed at the base of the company's blue logo to "stare down the Facebook-Zuckerberg machine," according to a Twitter post from the Sapien Tribe, the group that installed the statue.

The group defines itself as "the first sovereign digital nation dedicated to putting the needs of human beings/our planet first."

The effigy of the fallen primate was last seen earlier in October facing down the Charging Bull statue on Wall Street in New York City, according to a report.

The Harambe statue is a temporary piece whose presence works to "show that the dominant power structures created by financial institutions like Wall Street and technology empires like Facebook have become wholly out of touch with the needs of everyday people," according to a press release by the Sapien Tribe.

The statue, which was taken down outside Facebook's headquarters, is a form of peaceful protest, the group said.

Despite its installation in New York City not being permitted by the city, the police there were "supportive" of the effort and "made accommodations," according to the report.

A statue of Harambe, the gorilla from the Cincinnati Zoo, faces Arturo Di Modica's "Charging Bull," surrounded by bananas, in New York's Financial District, Monday, Oct. 18, 2021. The gorilla statue and bananas were part of a protest against wealth disparity by Sapien.Network, who says that the fruit will later be distributed to local food banks. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) Richard Drew/AP

The Harambe statue is likely to appear in other cities across the nation, the group said.

Minnesota-based companies Outshaped and Wood + Metal Fabrications constructed the 7-foot statue, and the bananas have reportedly been provided by food banks.