TV News LIES

The Obama administration will tell a U.N. anti-torture committee today that the U.S. has reversed a Bush administration rule that had said the ban on torture did not extend beyond America's borders.

A U.S. delegation will appear in Geneva today before the Committee Against Torture, the U.N. body that monitors Geneva Conventions anti-torture compliance. The American delegation will state that the U.S. ban on torture now does apply to U.S. facilities overseas, at places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The White House confirmed Monday that it has received a letter from 12 Nobel Peace Laureates calling on the U.S. to disclose torture methods allegedly used by American forces following the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council Spokesperson, told CNN "The President believes that the former rendition, detention, and interrogation program was inconsistent with our values as a nation and that public scrutiny, debate, and transparency will help to inform the public's understanding of the program to ensure that such a program will never be used again."

“Safe, Humane, Legal, Transparent”: so goes the slogan of the world’s most famous offshore prison. It’s an Obama-era rebrand, a bid by Gitmo’s PR people to persuade Americans that today’s is a kinder, gentler Guantánamo Bay. There’s just one wrinkle: Gitmo is stilldangerous, nasty, lawless and secretive – and the evidence just keeps piling up.

At the forefront of this war over the truth is the first-ever trial concerning the practice of force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike, due to start Monday. My client, Abu Wa’el Dhiab – a Syrian man who has never been charged, and indeed has been cleared to leave Guantánamo by the US government for more than five years – has been fighting for over a year to reform the way he and other hunger-strikers have been treated. He’s finally about to have his day in court.

A U.N. representative urged Israel to lift a blockade around Gaza so humanitarian aid and construction materials can reach the region.

Robert Turner, United Nations Relief and Works Agency director of operations in Gaza, visited the region Thursday and said the strip has been left destitute by Israeli shelling over the course of a two-month conflict.

"We need resources. We need funding to rebuild for both the refugees and the non-refugee families in Gaza," he told Voice of America.

Abou Elkassim Britel can’t sleep, or he sleeps too much; it varies. He backs out of commitments. The Islamic website he wants to publish from his Italian home remains unfinished.

“I would add,” he said through translation, “that I cannot think of the future.”

The doctors tell Britel that he has post-traumatic stress disorder, after a decade-long ordeal of imprisonment without charge or transfer and abuse. It began in 2002, when the United States packed him onto a contractor’s Gulfstream V in Pakistan and flew him to Morocco.

Palestinian rights activists in the Seattle area picketed the Port of Tacoma on Monday in an attempt to block a commercial Israeli cargo ship from unloading its merchandise.

The action follows a similar protest last week that managed to prevent the delivery of goods for days from a vessel seeking to dock in Oakland, California.

Block the Boat organizers said the ship, which is owned by Israel's Zim Shipping Services Ltd., one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, was schedule to arrive in the Port of Tacoma on Monday afternoon.