This ain’t gonna be pretty……

Pakistan’s opposition parties were poised to win parliamentary elections as voters sought an end to President Pervez Musharraf’s eight years of military rule.

“It seems, according to predictions, that the opposition has won,” Tariq Azeem, a spokesman for the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam, said by telephone from the capital, Islamabad.

Early results from the 64,000 polling booths showed gains for the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and former prime minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. A two-thirds majority would give the opposition the power to press Musharraf to reverse constitutional changes that have kept him in power since a 1999 military coup.

More at Bloomberg

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A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people’s heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.

A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled “Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons,” under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.

The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of “microwave hearing” - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.

More at Physorg.com

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The Temptations
“The Girl’s Alright With Me”

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Foreign Secretary David Miliband has published an early draft of the UK’s infamous dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The document, by Foreign Office press chief John Williams, was an unpublished draft of the dossier which was unveiled by Tony Blair on 24 September 2002.

The Foreign Office failed in its appeal against the Information Commissioner’s order that it should release the draft.

It had said publishing it could inhibit the “effective conduct of government”.

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was found dead shortly after being named as the source of a BBC report suggesting the dossier was “sexed up” shortly before publication.

Balance of disclosure

Dr Kelly cited the example of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be used within 45 minutes of him giving an order.

The report led to a high profile dispute between the BBC and Downing Street which culminated in Dr Kelly’s death.

More at BBC

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An anonymous man wearing a US Special Forces T’shirt is a war criminal, if his three-minute YouTube interview is to be believed. In it, he claims to have taken part in routine torture of Iraqis - Hajji’s in soldier slang - in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and to have been part of a scheme with other guards to prostitute a 15-year-old Iraqi girl who later hung herself.

YouTube continues to be the worst nightmare of a White House that has practiced infowar - the militarization of information - since 9/11. I heartily encourage each of my readers to view the clip, then make his or her own decision as to whether or not to believe that Soldier X is in earnest, as my military contacts and I believe, or is part of a well-acted hoax, as Bush apologists are arguing.

If Soldier X is telling the truth, he isn-t telling us anything new. In April 2004, American journalist Seymour Hersh was writing in articles and saying in interviews that the shocking treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, proved by photographs, was systemic, encouraged and enabled by the CIA, and was expressly okay-ed by the Bush administration.

More at DissidentVoice.org

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This from a nation who has the U.S. on it’s torture watch list. Not that that makes it ok. Two wrongs don’t make a right. None of it is ok.

After more than a year, the criminal probe into whether Canadian soldiers beat and abused Afghan detainees while military police turned a blind eye remains incomplete and critics say it is being deliberately dragged out.

No charges have been laid, there’s no hint when the investigation might end and one person is dead: An Afghan intermediary sent by investigators to try to make contact with the alleged victims was killed by the Taliban.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, the special military police unit conducting the investigation, rejects accusations that it is running out the clock. “It’s absolutely a top priority,” said Captain Cindy Tessier, referring to Operation Camel Spider, as the probe has been dubbed. Capt. Tessier said five investigators have been working on the case full-time for a year; more than 70 people have been questioned in three countries and huge piles of documents have been sifted and read.

But she could offer no estimate as to when the investigation might wrap up.

Amir Attaran, the University of Ottawa law professor who uncovered the suspicious and unexplained pattern of injuries among detainees, is not convinced the military is serious in its belated and long-running efforts to investigate.

“When the military is investigating the military, which is inconvenient for the military, is it any wonder that the military rags the puck?” he said.

More at Globeandmail.com

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