Skip to main content

Don't hold your breath waiting to see this in our media


Denmark has officially asked the Bush administration to explain possibly illegal CIA flights staged through Greenland's Narsarsuaq airport to move Al Qaeda suspects into secret detention centers in Egypt, Jordan, Romania and Afghanistan, among other countries.

The legal concern arises from the use of private as opposed to official flights to transfer prisoners acquired through rendition, as required by international aviation law. The issue was raised by a recent Danish documentary, The CIA's Danish Connections, which has caused an uproar in that nation's politics:

Per Stig Moeller, Denmark's foreign minister, said: "There is evidence in this film which I had not seen before which shows that the Americans are using private airplanes as government airplanes."

Lars Emil Johansen, one of Greenland's two representatives in the Danish parliament, demanded an in-depth investigation, saying he did not have confidence in the Danish government, a long-time ally of the United States, to shed any light on the affair.

Moeller said: "It is clear that that is unacceptable, and we are going to talk to the Americans about this.

"We can say to the Americans that they have made commitments [to respect international aviation conventions] which they are not apparently keeping. And we would dearly like explanations on this point.

"Neither Danish airspace nor the airspace of Greenland can be used in violation of these conventions."

Last year the centrist and left-wing parties in parliament demanded an independent inquiry into the CIA's use of Danish airspace.

However, the liberal-conservative government and its far-right ally, the Danish People's Party, refused the request.

Figures from the civil aviation authority in Greenland show that a third of 35 private planes operated on a CIA account and suspected of being involved in illegal rendition flights, landed at the Narsarsuaq airport in southern Greenland.


The worst consequence of an interventionist, overtly imperialist foreign policy may well be the damage it does to our long-term relationships with some of our closest allies.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
18 comments
Read more

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
Post a Comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more