WikiLeaks founder to appear in British court

AFP – The homepage of Wikileaks.ch with a picture of its founder Julian Assange is seen on a computer screen …

LONDON (AFP) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will appear in a British court on Tuesday in a second attempt to win bail after he was arrested over allegations of sex crimes in Sweden.

The 39-year-old Australian makes his second appearance at court in London since his detention one week ago under an international warrant sent out by Sweden.

His arrest came shortly after his whistle-blowing website started releasing tens of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables, in a move that has infuriated Washington.

Supporters of Assange and his site are expected to protest outside the City of Westminster Magistrates Court, amid a growing backlash against his arrest.

Swedish authorities want to question Assange over allegations of rape and molestation made against him by two women in relation to incidents during his visit there in August.

Assange denies the allegations and his lawyers have condemned them as politically motivated. Swedish officials however have retorted that the allegations have nothing to do with WikiLeaks.

At a hearing last week, Assange was refused jailed as he was deemed a flight risk.

His legal team are to reapply for bail at Tuesday's hearing, where he will be represented by high-profile human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.

Assange's British attorney, Mark Stephens, said a secret US grand jury had been set up in Virginia to work on charges that could be filed against the WikiLeaks founder.

Stephens said in an interview with Al Jazeera, citing unnamed Swedish authorities, that "there has been a secretly impaneled grand jury in Alexandria," Virginia, just outside Washington.

If the report proves true, it could mean an indictment of Assange is possible.

There has been a groundswell of support for Assange since his arrest.

A petition on campaigning website Avaaz, which condemns what it terms as the crackdown on WikiLeaks, had attracted more than 600,000 signatories by 0100 GMT Tuesday.

Computer hackers meanwhile have targeted companies that have withdrawn their commercial services from WikiLeaks, such as Amazon and PayPal.

The Stop The War Coalition, which is organising the protest outside court, claims the US government and its allies have built up a campaign against Assange which culminated in his detention "on dubious charges".

WikiLeaks began releasing the leaked US cables at the end of last month in a move that has infuriated Washington and which US President Barack Obama has denouncing it as "deplorable".

Various countries have also tried to close down the site, sending it jumping from server to server in a bid to stay online.

Assange's British lawyer, Mark Stephens, said Monday a secret US grand jury had been set up in Virginia to work on charges that could be filed against the WikiLeaks founder, in comments to broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

Shocking New Report: The CIA Performed Human Experiments on Prisoners Under Bush

A new report details how the effects of torture on detainees were closely studied in order to perfect 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'

A US military trooper standing in front of an old airplane hangar used for media activities at Camp Justice, site of the US war crimes tribunal compound at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, Cuba, in 2009. President Barack Obama appears near a compromise to allow military tribunals to move forward for the alleged September 11 plotters in exchange for a deal to close Guantanamo Bay.Photo Credit: AFP/Pool/File - Brennan Linsley

AlterNet / By Stephen Soldz

Over the last year there have been an increasing number of accounts suggesting that, along with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture program, there was a related program experimenting with and researching the application of the torture.

For example, in the seven paragraphs released by a British court summarizing observations by British counterintelligence agents of the treatment of Binyan Mohamed by the CIA, the first two of these paragraphs stated:

It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer….

BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation. The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed. [emphasis added]

The suggestion was that a new strategy was being tested and the results carefully examined. Several detainees have provided similar accounts, expressing their belief that their interrogations were being carefully studied, apparently so that the techniques could be modified based on the results. Such research would violate established laws and ethical rules governing research.

Since Nazi doctors who experimented upon prisoners in the concentration camps were put on trial at Nuremberg, the U.S. and other countries have moved toward a high ethical standard for research on people. All but the most innocuous research requires the informed consent of those studied. Further, all research on people is subject to review by independent research ethics committees, known as Institutional Review Boards or IRBs.

In the U.S., there was a major push toward more stringent research ethics when the existence of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was publicly revealed in the early 1970s. In that study nearly 400 poor rural African-American men were denied existing treatment for their syphilis, and indeed, were never told they had syphilis by participating doctors. The study by the U.S. Public Health Service was intended to continue until the last of these men died of syphilis. When the study became public the resulting outcry helped cement evolving ethical standards mandating informed consent for any research with even a possibility of causing harm. These rules were codified in what has become known as the Common Rule, which applies to nearly all federally-funded research, including all research by the CIA.

Experiments in Torture

A new report of which I am a coauthor, Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program, just released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) confirms previous suspicions and provides the first strong evidence that the CIA was indeed engaged in illegal and unethical research on detainees in its custody. The report, the result of six months of detailed work, analyzes now-public documents, including the "torture memos" from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the CIA's Inspector General Report and the accompanying CIA Office of Medical Services (OMS) guidelines for monitoring of detainees.

To read the article HERE.

FELIZ AÑO 2010 and remember "You can do magic" always!

LA LUCHA SIGUE, HASTA LA VICTORIA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxUGR8vc8NE

I never believed in things that I couldn’t see
I said if I cant feel it then how can it be
No, no magic could happen to me
And then I saw you

I couldn’t believe it, you took my heart
I couldn’t retrieve it, said to myself
What’s it all about
Now I know there can be no doubt

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You’re the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay

And when the rain is beatin upon the window pane
And when the night it gets so cold, when I can’t sleep
Again you come to me
I hold you tight, and the rain disappears
Who would believe it
With a word you dry my tears

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You’re the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay

Do, Do, Do, Do…

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You’re the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay

(Doo, Doo, Doo…)
You can do magic (3x)
Do magic
You can do magic (2x)

El pilon....

The Cure - Just like heaven

The Cure - Just Like Heaven- Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.