Human Rights

There are two names that must be remembered in relation to Sweden's extradition request against Julian Assange: Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed al-Zery. In 2001, they were both in Sweden seeking political asylum from their native Egypt. On December 18th 2001, Agiza and al-Zery were picked up by Swedish police, handed over to masked American CIA and Egyptian agents at the airport in Stockholm and flown to Egypt on a Gulfstream V plane registered to Premier Executive Transport of Massachusetts. They were tortured in Egypt using extreme cold, severe beatings and electric shocks.

By Dave Lindorff

With word that Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of being the source of most of the WikiLeaks documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the State Department cables, has been held in intensive solitary confinement at the Marine Base brig in Quantico, VA for five months, under conditions that most of the world considers torture, it seems increasingly clear what the Obama administration's strategy is in going after WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Assange's lawyers have said they have learned that the Obama Justice (sic) Department has impaneled a secret federal Grand Jury in Virginia to develop charges against Assange, most likely under the hoary and antiquated 1917 Espionage Act.

By Dave Lindorff

With word that Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of being the source of most of the WikiLeaks documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the State Department cables, has been held in intensive solitary confinement at the Marine Base brig in Quantico, VA for five months, under conditions that most of the world considers torture, it seems increasingly clear what the Obama administration's strategy is in going after WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Assange's lawyers have said they have learned that the Obama Justice (sic) Department has impaneled a secret federal Grand Jury in Virginia to develop charges against Assange, most likely under the hoary and antiquated 1917 Espionage Act.

By John Grant

Washington--Defense Secretary Robert Gates may be the consummate insider bureaucrat and a nice man, but his calling our war in the Pashtun homeland “the meat in the sandwich” begins to get at the real problem of the Afghanistan/Pakistan War.

Besides being a preposterously flippant and insensitive metaphor presumably uttered for clueless middle American consumption, his sandwich image is as misleading as all the war-selling PR coming out of the Pentagon and the Obama White House.

Here’s how he described his sandwich: “The Pakistanis come in behind the insurgents from the Pakistani side and, coordinating with us and the Afghans, we’re on the other side.” Of course, he's referring to what is informally dubbed Pashtunistan, down the middle of which Sir Mortimer Durand drew the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in 1893 to divide and conquer the Pashtun people. The border is a Western illusion. And, of course, the Taliban are largely Pashtun.

Taxpayers Paying Torture Contractors' Legal Bills

Dec. 17, 2010 - Taxpayers are currently paying the legal bills for Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two CIA contractors who reportedly helped plan and execute the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program, the Associated Press' Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo reported Thursday night. The CIA agreed to pay up to $5 million to cover legal fees for the two men—far more than the standard amount that would be covered for employees of the agency (during the Bush administration, it was standard practice for CIA officers to pay half of the cost of insuring themselves against possible legal action).

By Linn Washington

Philadelphia--When historians started digging into the facts about the first "White House," where President George Washington lived when Philadelphia was the nation's capital, they dredged up more than just mundane data. They also dredged up the seamy saga of the first president's slave legacy here in the "Cradle of Liberty," where the hero of America’s Revolution brought nine of his house slaves, only to see them embarrass him by trying desperately to escape from bondage.

At high noon on December 15, 2010, hundreds of people, including Philadelphia’s Mayor Michael Nutter and other dignitaries, brushed off bone-chilling cold to participate in a controversial yet truly historic event – the grand opening the first monument to slavery ever erected on federal property.

Italy adds to Americans' sentences in CIA grab

December 16 2010 - An Italian appeals court Wednesday increased the sentences against 23 Americans convicted in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

In upholding the convictions, the court added one year to the eight-year term handed down to former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady and two years onto the five-year terms given to 22 other Americans convicted along with him, defense lawyers said.

They were never in Italian custody and were tried and convicted in absentia. But they risk arrest if they travel to Europe as long as the convictions stand. {continued}

AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian situation likely to worsen in 2011 – aid agencies

Photo: Akmal Dawi/ IRIN Wounded in conflict at an ICRC hospital in Kabul

KABUL, 15 December 2010 (IRIN) - The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.

“We are growing increasingly concerned about the conflict, which is into its ninth year. It’s spreading and intensifying and we’re [likely] to see another year of conflict with dramatic consequences for civilians,” Reto Stocker, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Afghanistan, said on 15 December.

By John Grant

It is the climactic scene. Dorothy and her friends stand before the great Wizard of Oz. Toto wanders off and yanks back a curtain to reveal a man busy manipulating levers. Whistles and smoke bombs go off, and the great Oz thunders: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
____________

The federal government, the military and the Library of Congress have all ordered those under their power not to look at the material published on the WikiLeaks website because it is illegal and looking would make them criminals. Meanwhile, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, is still jailed in Britain because his condom allegedly "malfunctioned" while having sex in Sweden with a woman with shady connections to anti-Castro Cubans and US intelligence.

WikiLeaks Headquarters — Cold War Bunker in Sweden, Supporters in UK, Servers inside the Bunker, Inside the Bunker and Inside Bunker 2 {for bigger view click photo}"This legislation springs from one of our most successful principles. Democracy works best when people have access to all information that the security of the nation permits.

Close Allies Hold Journalist While U.S. Comes Up With Charges and Plans Extradition

People Organizing and Acting to Support WikiLeaks

Julian Assange has entered the firm embrace of the U.S. Empire after publishing diplomatic cables that embarrassed the United States and many countries around the world. Great Britain and Sweden are close U.S. allies who have started a Kabuki False Justice Dance that will deliver him to the U.S. war on terror courts which will treat him like an enemy combatant who committed espionage, when in fact he is an independent journalist and what he did was done by newspapers around the world.

Tony Blair To Appear Before Iraq War Inquiry Commission

12/8/2010 - The independent commission probing the reasons for Britain joining the Iraq war announced Wednesday that it has asked former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to appear before the panel for a second time to give additional evidence.

Blair, who was the Prime Minister when Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, is one among several witnesses summoned to reappear before the Chilcot committee. Those recalled include former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former chief of defense staff Admiral Michael Boyce.

By Linn Washington Jr.

Given the sensationalism in mainstream US news media coverage of alleged sexual impropriety charges filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sweden, it’s no surprise that other significant news about America involving that Scandinavian nation is being left uncovered.

In early November, Sweden called on the US to end the death penalty and to improve conditions in maximum security prisons, as the United States went through its first-ever Universal Periodic Review by the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.

Sweden joined nearly two dozen countries in calling upon the US to end its pariah-like status as the only western industrialized nation to engage in executions. The US has over 3,200 people facing death sentences, a sharp rise from 1968, when America’s death row population numbered just 517, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

It's too bad all this didn't start during the previous administration, there are so many questions and just think of the added proof as to the War Crimes and much more we would have!! Though in this country we don't do Accountability and allow our extremely wealthy walk around free with the blood wealth they gained, and we don't even tax them nor their corporations!!

Dec. 03, 2010 - Recently, a lot has been happening in Washington around the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. Check out our interactive timeline to get the history and the latest, including what’s been said by key politicians and military leaders. For the Posted Timeline

In the muddy of my mind, the Minutemen are singing “Warfare” lyrics:

Falling down the road
Steeper as it goes
Friend or foe
Nobody knows

In the muddy of my mind the Minutemen are singing “The Big Stick” lyrics: “We learn and believe there is justice for us all and we lie to ourselves with a big stick up our ass.”

On Monday, six US troops, serving in Afghanistan, died after receiving friend-foe fire from an Afghan police officer during a training exercise. Friend or foe (?) must be among the many complexities servicemen, women, and their families ponder.

This wasn’t unique, isn’t an aberration. Similar incidents have occurred. Last December, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer.

And how is the now not secret use of by the U.S. and other countries, especially those during the past decade and the CIA rendition program, any different then the charges pointed at Iran or any country we and others condemn! And how are the so called leaders of Nations who ordered the policies and than walk around freely bragging about the use of any less guilty then those other so called leaders widely condemned for doing same though not bragging about!

By John Grant

“The problem here is to define ... a form of life that would not depend on an unsustainable relation of domination over the rest of the world.” 
Jean Bricmont

We live in a time of incredible change, and to have any say at all in the direction that change will take requires a respect for reality. Right now, the United States is losing this battle as it tries mightily – and wastefully -- to sustain its post-WWII legacy as the world’s undisputed Top Dog.

The key to this disaster here in the US is a greater and greater restriction of information in conjunction with what can only be called a top down enforced blindness among the population.
If you think this is only the view of a disgruntled leftist, read Thomas Friedman’s latest column in The New York Times, where he imagines WikiLeaks revealing a gleeful cable from the Chinese ambassador in Washington to his bosses in Beijing:

By Dede Miller

Photo by Linda Milazzo

On Monday, November 29th, I attended an event at Saddleback Church, or, as I now call it, Sodom and Gomorrah, in Lake Forest California. George Bush was the guest Philistine. Sodom and Gomorrah is located deep in the heart of VERY conservative Orange county California. I, and my fellow defenders of good and justice, were literally in the belly of the beast..

By Charles M. Young

Howard Zinn, probably the most influential American historian ever, had an amazing sense of humor when he lectured or met people in person. He could make fun of himself and the audience in a way that exploded the guilt and ambivalence that so often paralyzes liberals, progressives, greens, socialists, anarchists, communists and everyone else on the more-or-less left. Only occasionally, however, did Zinn use his sense of humor in print. His masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, had no humor at all, as he himself pointed out, because he didn’t find anything funny about the Trail of Tears and all the other ghastly episodes he wove into a narrative that convinced millions of citizens the United States was something less than what they had believed.

Nov 25 2010 - DOXA Documentary Film Festival launches its 2010/2011 Film Series Motion Pictures by introducing Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez’s documentary You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo.

Based on seven hours of recently declassified security camera footage from the Guantanamo prison, the film captures a series of interrogations of Omar Khadr by CSIS agents. What is revealed is the personal story of a child caught up in the larger forces of political action and the global war on terrorism. {read rest}

 

* 3 million documents set to go online

* Bombshell leak thought to include U.S. assessments of Gordon Brown

* Secret talks on return of Lockerbie bomber to Libya may also be leaked

* Allegations 'include U.S. backing of Kurdish terrorists'

* U.S. diplomats face being kicked out of countries in backlash

* Corrupt politicians expected to be named and shamed

27th November 2010 - David Cameron was warned last night by America that damaging secrets of the ‘special relationship’ are about to be laid bare.

The TSA, the Right, and My Busted Watch

26 November 2010 - For the last several days, I have been trying to locate what would appear to be the appropriate and necessary level of angst and fury over the issue of heavy-handed TSA searches at American airports. I say "appropriate and necessary" because, well, all the noise surrounding the matter seems to suggest I have no alternative other than outrage, and if I fail to react that way, I am some sort of dupe, a fool who doesn't understand the Constitutional issues at hand or the dangers represented by what has been described as a glaring governmental over-reach.

By James Ridgeway

Are you one of the millions of Americans flying this Thanksgiving weekend? Are you thinking about joining the national protest to opt-out of being run through an airport X-ray scanner?
If you’re worried about the alternative--getting groped by TSA screeners at the checkpoint--you might consider this: The government insists those back-scatter X-ray machines are perfectly safe, but many scientists disagree.

It’s not just a matter of some puerile TSA screeners giggling at your naked body. In a letter to John Pistole, administrator of TSA, New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, a physicist and the Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, raises the possibility that the machines might be carcinogenic. He writes:

By John Grant

It was the fifteenth time I’d trekked to Columbus, Georgia, to the gate of Fort Benning, for the annual November demonstration to close the School of the Americas.

Since 1989, following the murder of six Jesuit priests in San Salvador by graduates of the SOA, the effort to close it down has been led by Mary Knoll priest Father Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran and a priest who served in Bolivia during a very violent period hostile to priests sympathetic to the plight of the poor. The school is used to train foreign soldiers.

Bourgeois is a legend for a famous and clever act of civil disobedience. Dressed as an Army colonel, he went on post, climbed a tree and chained himself and a large boom box to the tree outside the barracks where Salvadoran soldiers were sleeping.

Racial Profiling to Limit Terror Attacks Is Fundamentally Flawed, Expert Says

ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2010) — Stop using racial profiling, says Professor William Press from the University of Texas at Austin. He claims that as well as being politically and ethically questionable, racial profiling does no better in helping law enforcement officials in their task of catching terrorists than standard uniform random sampling techniques.

This is the topic of a paper publishing in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association.

Gonzales once again implicates self in Bush torture program

November 22nd, 2010 - Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has implicated himself - yet again - in the Bush administration's torture program.

Gonzales told Talking Points Memo that he knew "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used against suspected terrorists.

26 People Arrested and Held in County Jail on Multiple Charges

21 November 2010 - Thousands Converge at the gates of Fort Benning for 20th Anniversary of November Vigil to Close the SOA

Nonviolent civil disobedience action followed by indiscriminate arrests and targeting of journalists. Among those arrested by Columbus police were three journalists, including a TV news crew from RT America and unrelated bystanders.