Back Towards The Locus

Anna Shapiro has a weirdly unimaginative article in the Grauniad today, considering her emotional turmoil over how her poor wittle President is feeling. How on earth can he cope with all of this aggressive journalism? “Hasn’t he got enough troubles? Must he part the Red Sea?” He’s a strong man, she admits, but she must help nonetheless; help to “shield the forces of truth“.

When people derided those who instinctively supported America and its President, did they realise how bizarre it was or did they just not like Bush? As a few have pointed out, horrific policies are still continuing…

“Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Lawsuit

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.”

Let’s remember what the Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. case involves. Jeppesen Dataplan, a private corporation and subsiduary of Boeing, became “the CIA’s torture travel agents”…

“They were the one who arranged all the overflight rights for the CIA civilian planes to be able to fly from country to country. They handled the security and the logistics. They filed dummy flight plans to try to trick air traffic controllers into not being able to track where the actual flights were going. And we know they knew what they were doing because we have a witness in our case, someone who’s given us a sworn declaration, who was an employee of Jeppesen DataPlan, and who was present when senior officials of the company were openly boasting about their role in the torture flights, and about how much money they made from them because the CIA spared no expense.

We were able, with the help of an investigative journalist and other documentary evidence, to link Jeppesen to an number of very specific CIA rendition flights, involving these five torture victims who were flown to countries like Egypt, Morocco, to CIA sites in Afghanistan and eastern Europe.

…

Ahmed Agiza is an Egyptian national who was living in Sweden, and seeking asylum there because he legitimately feared that if he was returned to Egypt, he would be tortured, because he was suspected of having been involved in the Muslim Brotherhood there. He was picked up off the streets of Stockholm and then he was taken to an airport where a CIA rendition team–this is a bunch of men dressed all in black, with their faces covered–sliced off all of his clothes, put a suppository into him, chained him to the floor of an airplane, flew him to Egypt, where he was exposed to absolutely brutal torture, including shock treatment, all kinds of beatings. He was then given a show trial in an Egyptian military court and sentenced to 15 years for involvement in a banned organization.”

Greenwald’s conclusion is devastating…

“…the new President — who repeatedly condemned the extreme secrecy of the Bush administration and vowed greater transparency — has now acted to protect, purely on secrecy grounds, the government and company that did this…”

Indeed, Obama has A-OK’d Bush’s rendition policies. The details of them are so important to him – or so likely to cause a fuss – that he’d rather smother them than let savagely treated, innocent men find justice. We’re left with the same secrets, the same duplicity, and, crucially, the same wielding of executive privilige to deny accountability.

To use a wearisomely pungent metaphor, Obama isn’t changing government any more than a slob who turns his boxers inside and replaces them is changing his underwear.