Category: White House

Time for UK Government to Come Clean on Ties to U.S. Torture Program

UK government shamefully cooperated with U.S. in torture of al-Qaeda suspects

We Americans have had a painful and difficult national debate over the past 20 years relative to torture. Torture was official U.S. government policy from 2002 until at least 2005, and that iteration was not formally outlawed until passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment in 2015. (The torture program was a highly-classified secret from 2002 until I revealed it in a nationally-televised interview in December 2007.)

In truth, torture has been illegal in the U.S. since at least the end of World War II. In 1946, the U.S. Government executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. In January 1968, the Washington Post ran a front-page photograph showing an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner.

On the day the photo ran, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an investigation. The soldier was arrested, tried, convicted of torture, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Torture was clearly a crime in 1946 and in 1968. But somehow, due to the legalistic gymnastics of the Bush Administration, torture was somehow magically legal in 2002. The law hadn’t changed; Americans had. It took us until 2015 to come to our collective senses again.

Read More

US distorts China’s neutral stance, ‘uses Ukraine crisis to sow discord between China, Russia’

Click here to stay tuned with our live updates on Ukraine tensions.

The US has tried very hard to distort China’s neutral stance of calling for dialogue on the Ukraine crisis, with the US State Department asking China to “pressure Russia” to respect the principle of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and even accusing China of “using Russia to create a new world order.”

China on Thursday said the US, a country which launched a series of wars and military interventions that trample on other countries’ sovereignty, has no qualification to accuse others on the matter.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at Thursday’s routine press conference as she had received many questions on Russia’s latest military operations and the China-Russia ties from the media due to the US continually raising odd questions to target China.

Read More

Europe, US Preparing To Impose Sanctions On Russia

Now that Putin has officially recognized the separatists regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent, sovereign states, warning that from this moment onward, Ukraine must halt all military actions against Donbas, or whatever happens next will be on them and the West, it was only a matter of time before Europe (and the West) retaliated with progressively escalating sanctions.

Sure enough, the ink wasn’t quite dry yet on Putin’s signature, when the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles tweeted that “the recognition of the two separatist territories in Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the Minsk agreements” adding that “The EU and its partners will react with unity, firmness and with determination in solidarity with Ukraine.”

Read More

Littlest intruder: Toddler crawls through White House fence

U.S. Secret Service uniformed division police officers carry a young child who crawled through the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, Tuesday, April 18, 2023. The toddler earned the title of one of the tiniest White House intruders after he squeezed through the metal fencing on the north side of the executive mansion. Officers walked across the North Lawn to retrieve the child and reunite him with his parents on Pennsylvania Avenue. (AP Photo/Nancy Benac)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A curious toddler on Tuesday earned the title of one of the tiniest White House intruders after he squeezed through the metal fencing on the north side of the executive mansion.

U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division officers, who are responsible for security at the White House, walked across the North Lawn to retrieve the tot and reunite him with his parents on Pennsylvania Avenue. Access to the complex was briefly restricted while officers conducted the reunification. Officers briefly questioned the parents before allowing them to continue on their way.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said officers “encountered a curious young visitor along the White House north fence line who briefly entered White House grounds.”

“The White House security systems instantly triggered Secret Service officers and the toddler and parents were quickly reunited,” he said in a statement.

It may be the first successful intrusion onto the complex since the White House fence was doubled in height to roughly 13 feet (3.96-meters) in recent years after a series of security breaches. While taller, the new fence has an additional inch of space between pickets, for a total of 5½ inches (12.7 centimeters) between posts.

Older children have sometimes become stuck in the iconic barrier, which has also been the scene of demonstrations, with protesters chaining themselves to the fence.

Read More

US Judge Strikes Down Biden Climate Damage Cost Estimate

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to put greater emphasis on the potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for polluting industries.

U.S. District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general who said the administration’s raising the cost estimate of carbon dioxide emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production. The judge issued an injunction that bars the administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Read More