It’s rare that I offer a subject without a real good idea where it will eventually lead. That’s not the case here. Something seems very wrong and it falls into place with other adverse policies we’ve come to know recently. I’m following a path of intuition on this to ultimately lead to answers for just cause.
This is complicated and convoluted so much of what I have to offer will be done as edits here over time. Some coincidences have aligned and cast more doubt on official versions than I had before.
The recent stories of secret detentions around the world is old news for some of us that have followed this in news and blogs. It was dismissed as conspiracy theory up until now.
Milan – A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van. He hasn’t been seen since.
Milan investigators, however, now appear to be close to identifying his kidnappers. Last month, officials showed up at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy and demanded records of any American planes that had flown into or out of the joint U.S.-Italian military installation around the time of the abduction. They also asked for logs of vehicles that had entered the base.
Italian authorities suspect the Egyptian was the target of a CIA-sponsored operation known as rendition, in which terrorism suspects are forcibly taken for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.
The Italian probe is one of three official investigations that have surfaced in the past year into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment.
Europeans Investigate CIA Role in Abductions
Sunday 13 March 2005
More background on theories of how this came about
Why the CIA Went Astray over Italy’s Abu Omar
The Italian authorities eventually issued arrest warrants in the case.
The circumstances of another individual,
OTTAWA – When memos surfaced recently showing top Justice Department lawyers trying to justify torture, Attorney General John Ashcroft moved quickly to stake out the moral high ground.
“This administration rejects torture,” Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I condemn torture.”
Maher Arar, 34, however, doesn’t buy it.
Maher Arar
Maher Arar, a 34-year old Syrian born Canadian citizen, was arrested and deported to Syria while transiting through New York in 2002. (KRT Photo/Patrick Doyle)
For 10 months and 10 days, Arar was in a Syrian prison, beaten and confined to a cell not much bigger than a coffin. He thanks the United States for his time in hell.Arar was picked up by U.S. authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, accused of being a terrorist and then shipped on Justice Department orders to Syria under a highly secret policy known as rendition. Arar’s story reveals much about the Bush administration’s hidden war on terror.
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In addition to going public with his story, he’s filing a lawsuit against top officials in the U.S. government – including Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller – over his detention, saying officials should have known that he would be tortured if he was sent to Syria.Canadian Sent to Syrian Prison Disputes US Claims Against Torture
In court documents, it has been learned that Arar was a Canadian citizen at the time. He was born in Syria but his parents emigrated when he was a teenager.
He evetually gave in to the torture and confessed to acts of participation or knowledge he didn’t do. He just wanted the torture to stop.
Ashcroft claimed national security protection as not being able to disclose any evidence to charge Arar. The strongest they had was that he was on a watchlist because of a coworker’s relative or similar circumstance. He had been on vacation with his family when he received a call from work asking him to return to tend to an important matter.
Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial
During a brief layover he was detained and the ordeal began.
The New Yorker: Fact
Maher Arar complete statement to media
The curious mention of work and doubts about previous claims by Ashcroft prompted some digging. I believe we need to know who to trust when it comes to the GWoT and sadly, much of it doesn’t pass the credibility test.
If Arar was on a watchlist by such an obscure connection but Ashcroft was sure of his guilt in serious national security terms, what evidence could he have? The connection of a call to return from vacation in Tunisia to a convenient changeover in US on his way to Canada and being caught on the watchlist here was a nice coincidence.
Is there more to his place of employment?
Who is Maher Arar? He doesn�t fit the mold of public hero. A man of slight build, unassuming character and average looks, Arar is strident yet soft-spoken. Before his detention at J.F.K., he was an apolitical workaholic who was obsessed only with making ends meet and spending free time with his family. �Engineers by nature are machines,� he says. �They work 9 to 9. They do what they�re told to do.� But it wasn�t a bad life. The Damascus native, now 34, immigrated to Canada with his family in 1987 and became a citizen four years later. By 1997, he was making a decent living in Ottawa amid the city�s high-tech boom. Two years later, while his wife Monia Mazigh was completing a Ph.D. in finance at McGill, Arar took a job at the MathWorks, a Boston-area computer company. In 2001, wanting to be near family and friends, he returned full-time to Ottawa and started a consultancy specializing in wireless technology.
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TIME canada.comMore great information from Obsidian Wings
Arar #8: Guilt and Innocence, part A
I had to wonder since the terrorist link seemed flimsy if this was another media blitz or if there could have been some unseen history here. Turns out to be the latter.
DOJ Settles Antitrust Suit Against MathWorks
8/15. The Department of Justice (DOJ)
announced that it filed a proposed settlement with the U.S. District Court (EDVa) in its
action against The MathWorks Inc. Wind
River Systems. The DOJ filed a complaint on June 21, 2002, alleging
violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.The complaint alleged that MathWorks and Wind River were competitors in the
development and sale of dynamic control system design software tools, and that
they entered into an agreement that gave MathWorks the exclusive right to sell
Wind River’s MATRIXx products and required Wind River to stop its own
development and marketing. See, DOJ June 21
release.The DOJ announced in an August 15 release
that the DOJ had “sought a judicially enforced sale of the MATRIXx product
line. The proposed settlement ensures that an independent trustee will direct
the attempted sale under court supervision.”The DOJ previously settled with Wind River Systems.
Now, this isn’t the first time that government entanglements have come up but could this be the reason that Ashcroft wanted to keep Arar quiet or is it just another coincidence? How important could any of this software be to want to control it?
Software analyses human biomechanical movement
This is actually an example of prewar planning when it’s cosidered how the seed market was managed in Iraq after the war.
Biotech companies are threatening our food supply. These agro-giants are plundering our public research programs and the nation’s land-grant universities, which were established to promote science in the public interest. All of this in the name of short-term profit.
The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be backing this trend, with its recent decision to protect the patent rights of agriculture giants like Monsanto and Dupont over new varieties of seed the companies develop. The decision weakened farmers’ rights to save seeds from their own harvest for future crops, forcing farmers to buy new seeds from the companies each year.
Taking power away from farmers and giving it to corporations is dangerous. Industry experts claim biotechnology will save the world, that it will end starvation and cure malnutrition. They say it will save the environment by reducing the chemicals required to grow our food. But that’s not really what biotech is about.
Biotech is about ownership. It’s about who has the rights to profit from the ideas and techniques that emerge from a shared public scientific heritage. It’s also about profiting from the genes and genetic makeup of living beings. And these corporations are using our public universities to do their research, to increase their profits, and to diminish farmer and consumer rights.
Issues and Concerns: Profits Over People
There are plenty more connections and examples as to the profitability in controlling this software. These are just a few I’ve mentioned to begin. What else did the Wind River – Mathworks companies work on? What other absorbed companies could be gained with them?
List of press releases for 2001
Wind River – 2001 Press Releases
…and then this, too
Last summer, the Division sued The MathWorks Inc. and Wind River Systems Inc. to stop them from illegally allocating the markets for software used to design dynamic control systems. Dynamic control system design software enables engineers to develop the computerized control systems of sophisticated devices, such as anti-lock braking systems for automobiles, guidance and navigation control systems for unmanned spacecraft, and flight control systems for aircraft. High-technology products like these work behind the scenes to help build some of the most sophisticated products in our economy. We concluded that the “licensing” arrangement between the parties operated primarily to force the exit of the Wind River product from the market and to prevent it from re-emerging in the hands of some other party. The parties settled the case with a consent decree requiring The MathWorks to divest Wind River’s design control software assets.
Now, if I were a true conspiracy theoris I might just be giving more thought to those crazy claims of the airliners being remotely controlled and flown into the towers. It would make more sense that any of this is what Ashcroft and Co. want to hide and stir up a false fear of terrorism simultaneously.
I think it’s at least enough to ask further questions of Mr Ashcroft.
…a work in progress
