Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?

http://www.counterpunch.org/hanrahan07092010.html

Quote :

"'Officials of the Bush Administration used North Carolina as a key part of their secret off-shore torture program.' The 'torture taxi planes were based in Johnston and Lenoir counties. Their pilots and crews work for Aero Contractors, a CIA linked company headquartered at the Johnston County airport in Smithfield, a town of less than 12,000 persons situated in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina about 30 miles east of Raleigh... North Carolina law requires anyone in charge of a state agency, such as the Global TransPark where Aero maintained a hangar in Kinston, to report possible criminal violations to the State Bureau of Investigation... Aero Contractors was founded in 1979 in the wake of the dismantling of Air America, the CIA airline that participated heavily in the Indo-China wars... According to Cowger, UK journalist Stephen Grey used flight logs from the FAA and Eurocontrol (the FAA’s counterpart in Europe) to piece together the itineraries of the two main rendition planes, the Kinston-based N313P and the smaller Gulfstream, N379P, which was based at the Johnston County airport. Tail numbers have since been changed. A Montana-registered Gulfstream IV aircraft, with tail number N478GS, operated by Centurian Aviation, was based at the Fayetteville Airport, and is suspected of facilitating the extraordinary rendition program, according to Cowger, as an arm of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), based at Fort Bragg... Aero Contractors was the aviation 'hub' of the CIA’s rendition program, which 'flew dozens of people to horrific jails around the globe, using 'civilian' aircraft,' according to NC Stop Torture Now. The group has compiled a partial list of twenty-four detainees secretly transported by Aero Contractors for torture by or for the CIA, citing as a primary source the book Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey. The pickup methodology for the CIA’s torture rendition flights was 'alarmingly systematized,' said Simpson, who has followed the gruesome trail of so-called 'extraordinary rendition' throughout Europe... 'Aero Contractors personnel on the aircraft were the ones who actually operated the rendition circuits. Without their personal participation, none of this would have been possible. They were the pilots in command. They were the support crew. They were the persons who held the controls of the aircraft and navigated them to landings at the black sites air [fields] with detainees bound and shackled in the back. Aero personnel were part of the systematic cover-up. For example, the pilots in command knowingly deviated from registered flight plans, willfully therefore violating the regulations of international aviation law and assuring that their operations could not be traced contemporaneously and have been mighty hard to track retrospectively,' Simpson said. Aero Contractors employed about 80 persons toward the start of the Bush war on terror. Now it’s up to about 130 employees. 'We are under no illusion that people like these are the authors of the policy. They are the foot soldiers,' Cowger asserted. 'These people live and work in Johnston County in comfortable middle class houses.'..."

7/13/2010 2:35:33 PM

Confronting it? Fuck, I'd PROMOTE it.

7/13/2010 2:40:38 PM

http://www.ncstoptorturenow.net/resourcesplanespotting.html
http://www.ncstoptorturenow.org/PDF_Archives/Partial_List_Detainees.pdf



[Edited on July 13, 2010 at 2:44 PM. Reason : ]

7/13/2010 2:42:43 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide

Quote :

"Xe Services LLC (pronounced /'zi?/ zee) is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[2][3] The company has a wide array of business divisions, subsidiaries, and spin-off corporations but the organization as a whole has aroused significant controversy.[4][5][6][7][8] Based in North Carolina, Xe operates a tactical training facility (36°27'N 76°12'W? / ?36.45°N 76.2°W? / 36.45; -76.2) the company claims is the world's largest, at which it trains more than 40,000 people a year, mostly from U.S. and other military and police services. The training consists of military offensive and defensive operations, as well as smaller scale personal security. Xe is currently the largest of the U.S. State Department's three private security contractors. Of the 987 contractors Xe provides, 744 are U.S. citizens.[9][10] At least 90% of the company's revenue comes from government contracts, of which two-thirds are no-bid contracts.[11] Xe provided security services in Iraq to the United States federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency[1] on a contractual basis. They no longer have a license to operate in Iraq: the new Iraqi government made multiple attempts to expel them from their country,[12] and denied their application for an operating license in January 2009.[13] However, the company is still under contract with the State Department and some Xe personnel were working legally in Iraq at least until September 2009.[14] In October 2007, the company, Blackwater USA, was renamed Blackwater Worldwide. It announced on February 13, 2009 that it would operate under the new name "Xe." "

We certainly have the right background/culture to support something like this.

7/13/2010 2:44:04 PM

Things wrong with NC:

This military-friendly bullshit: 95%
Bible-thumpers: 2%
Development/Sprawl: 1%
Racism/Sexism: 1%
NASCAR: 1%

7/13/2010 2:53:41 PM

What is groubreaking about this information? Weren't these rendition flights out of Smithfield and Kinston made public a few years ago? What am I missing?

7/13/2010 3:36:11 PM

Things wrong with NC:

This military-friendly bullshit: 95%
Bible-thumpers: 2% 50%
Development/Sprawl: 1%
Racism/Sexism: 1%
NASCAR: 1% 48%

FTFY

7/13/2010 3:37:57 PM

Apparently, it's more well-known than I thought.

Guess I'm just out of the loop.

7/14/2010 12:25:59 AM

Yeah, they made a big deal about the smithfield and kinston flights a few years back when there was a lot of scrutiny over extraordinary rendition.

And the Fayettville flights should come as no surprise to anyone given the proximity to JSOC/CAG/etc. Hell, those flights quite possibly had nothing to do with rendition flights

7/14/2010 8:23:45 AM

I really don't care about the rights of terrorists.

7/14/2010 9:14:04 AM

Quote :

"I really don't care about the rights of terrorists."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpc5_3B5xdk

7/14/2010 9:55:19 AM

^^

7/14/2010 9:59:10 AM

Quote :

"I really don't care about the rights of alleged terrorists."

If there were a god, you'd be accused of terrorism, detained and tortured.

7/14/2010 10:45:25 AM

^I think that is a key point.

Also, has anyone else seen Predators? There was totally a blackwater type guy as one of the protagonists.

7/16/2010 9:13:18 AM

ok, i'll add the "alleged" to my statement.

so to rephrase it's now:

I really don't care about the rights of alleged or confirmed terrorists.

Quote :

"If there were a god, you'd be accused of terrorism, detained and tortured."

and if there was a god, you would have been aborted. (see how irrelevant it is to throw down insults?)

7/16/2010 11:56:17 AM

^
Why do you not care about the rights of alleged terrorists?

7/16/2010 2:53:28 PM

Apparently he hates America.

7/16/2010 2:56:13 PM

^^^
My insult specifically addresses the irony of your failure to empathize with the accused, were you to be accused.
(If you were accused, we should wonder if you'd change your opinion on the rights of the accused...)
Your insult was just a random irrelevant insult. Mine was a relevant point in itself.

7/16/2010 5:02:10 PM