Another night-time raid on a housing compound in Afghanistan. Another bunch of innocent Afghans killed. Another round of lies by the US-led forces of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Only this time, among the dead are two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl. And once again the US media remain mute, accepting the official story, which was of ISAF forces responding to an attack which in reality appears never to have happened.
March 14, 2010 | Filed under
World |
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For months, the various government departments dealing with things economic–Treasury, Commerce, Labor and of course the Council of Economic Advisers and the Federal Reserve, have been issuing soothing words that the nation’s economy is headed back up from the Great Recession that allegedly began in December 2007. But now comes word from the Department of Labor that, whoops, we minsunderestimated, as former President George W. Bush would say, the number of jobs lost.
February 4, 2010 | Filed under
Nation |
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You had to love the headline the Philadelphia Inquirer put on the jump page of columnist Trudy Rubin’s Sunday commentary about word that the Obama administration is hoping to talk with at least some mid-level Taliban leaders about giving up the fight and “coming over” to the “government” side. “Relax–No deal with Taliban is Imminent,” the headline read. “I suggest everyone take a deep breath,” Rubin wrote. “The US position toward talks with the Taliban has shifted somewhat, but no deal with top Taliban leaders is imminent, or even likely.”
January 31, 2010 | Filed under
Commentary |
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The Obama administration has signaled that it wants the Justice Department to relocate the 9/11 terror trials, according to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The Senator’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said Schumer spoke “with high-level members of the administration and urged them to find alternatives.” The move comes a little more than a day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the Justice Department to change the venue of the trial.
January 29, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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After years of stonewalling, the U.S. Defense Department has released the names of people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Made available in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram as of September [...]
January 22, 2010 | Filed under
World |
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Pursuant to a settlement reached between the National Security Archive and the White House Executive Office of the President (EOP), the White House today issued a letter describing critical aspects of the EOP unclassified network e-mail preservation and archiving system now used in the White House. Among other specifics, the letter describes:
January 18, 2010 | Filed under
Politics |
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With all the debate and controversy over the Obama administration’s policies on torture, no one had asked the military, and in particular those running America’s “terror” prisons, if they had been using the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M. But recently the Guantanamo’s Public Affairs Officer, Lt. Commander Brook DeWalt, confirmed Appendix M interrogations were taking place at Guantanamo.
January 8, 2010 | Filed under
Torture |
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Up through 2008, it was extremely unusual for questions from the audience to consist of pure defeatism. In 2009, it was rare to get through a Q&A session without being asked what the point was of trying. And the defeatism is so contagious that it will be hard for me to make it through 2010 if people don’t shut up about how doomed we are.
If current trends continue, by 2011 the only people showing up at forums on peace and justice will all be old enough to tell my grandparents they’re too young to understand how pointless it is to try.
December 31, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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So much for the First Amendment.
Morris Davis, the retired Air Force Colonel who served as the Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantánamo from September 2005 until his resignation in October 2007, has just lost his job at the Congressional Research Service (a branch of the Library of Congress) for writing, in his personal [...]
December 7, 2009 | Filed under
Politics |
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Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights asked the Supreme Court Friday to allow seven men who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay despite being cleared for release to be released into the United States when there is no other remedy available. This will be the first time the Court hears a Guantánamo case since it decided the landmark cases brought by CCR and co-counsel, Boumediene v. Bush, in June 2008, and the first time the Obama administration will defend a Guantánamo case before the high court.
December 7, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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