(DemocracyNow) – Four years after vowing to close Guantánamo and 11 years after it opened, President Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act, barring the use of federal funds to transfer detainees from the notorious prison to U.S. soil. Read the rest of this entry »
(CagePrisoners) – Murders at Guantánamo: The Cover-Up Continues
Sometimes the truth is so sickening that no one in a position of authority — senior government officials, lawmakers, the mainstream media — wants to go anywhere near it. Read More Here
(StrategicCultureFoundation) – Iran and the Balkans: Russia Risks Making the Same Mistakes
UN Security Council Resolution Slapping Sanctions on Iran: Defeat for Russian Diplomacy Read More Here
(CounterPunch) – Obama’s Doublespeak on Iran – Extending Hands or Clenching Fists? – Read More Here
(PressTV) – 50 ships may join Freedom Flotilla II
The next Freedom Flotilla will be much bigger than the first one, the head of a non-governmental organization says.
Yasser Qashlaq, the director of the Free Palestine Movement, said on Thursday that up to 50 ships could join the Freedom Flotilla II, the International Middle East Media Center reported. Read More Here
(FutureOfFreedomFoundation) – Terrorism: Made in the U.S.A. – Sheldon Richman
It’s a perilous world, as our so-called leaders love to remind us. And for a change they’re right. It is a perilous world. But guess who is most responsible for the peril to Americans? Those very same “leaders” and a long line of predecessors.
Moreover, they — along with anyone else who takes time to examine the matter — know that they create the greatest dangers Americans face. They just don’t care. They have bigger fish to fry than keeping Americans safe. Besides, the dangers they create provide excuses for more power. Read More Here
As Israel ordered a slight easing of its blockade of the Gaza Strip Wednesday, McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as “economic warfare” against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory. Read More Here
(LondonTimes) – Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal. Read More Here
(PressTV) – US accepts Israeli probe of Flotilla – Read More Here
(AP) – NKorea vows to blow up South propaganda facilities
North Korea says it will attack South Korean loudspeakers and other propaganda facilities along its border, warning it can even turn Seoul into a “sea of flame.” Read More Here
(MSNBC) – Video: Saudi Arabia Approves Israeli Jets To Use Saudi Airspace To Bomb Iran!
FLASHBACK – 2007 – Video: Interview – Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – John Perkins – Read the rest of this entry »
(PoliticalTheatrics) – Those of us who have been studying the recent career of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson were not surprised when, last week, he submitted a declaration (PDF) in a lawsuit seeking compensation from the U.S. government that was filed by former Guantánamo prisoner Adel Hassan Hamad. A Sudanese hospital worker, Hamad was sold to U.S. forces by their unscrupulous Pakistani allies in the summer of 2002, but was only released from Guantánamo in December 2007.
In the declaration, Col. Wilkerson, who served in the U.S. military for 31 years and was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from August 2002 until January 2005, stated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld all knew — and didn’t care — that “the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent.” Read the rest of this entry »
(Reuters) – Iraq anti-US cleric Sadr urges unity vs Americans
Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, likely to be a key player in forming a new Iraqi government following elections last month, urged Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims on Friday to unite to oust American troops. Read More Here
(PressTV) – US may retain 90 nukes on Iran border
As Washington and Moscow sign a new arms reduction treaty, skepticism arises in Turkey as to whether those cuts will include US atomic warheads stored in the country. Read More Here
(Uruknet) – U.S. Pushes for Somalia Offensive, But Settles for Starving Somali Civilians
The American-backed offensive in Somalia was supposed to be underway by now, based on months of Pentagon-planted stories in the corporate press. But there is, as yet, no offensive, because the puppet regime doesn’t even have enough soldiers to hang on to its little corner of Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu. This is a big problem for the Obama administration, which is anxious to expand its imperial offensive from Yemen across the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa. Unfortunately for Washington, its Somali puppets have far too few troops to launch an offensive against anyone. Read More Here
(Independent) – US Moves From Nuclear Arms to Conventional Missiles With Global Reach
While President Barack Obama speaks overseas of his vision of a world without nuclear weapons, his military commanders at home are quietly accelerating a programme to develop and deploy a new class of conventional intercontinental ballistic missiles which will have the capacity to strike targets anywhere in the world within an hour. Read More Here
(Audio) – Obama is the Closest Thing to a Dictator We’ve Ever Had – Mark Levin – Audio Link Here
(TheTimes) – George W. Bush ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times. Read More Here
(InfoClearingHouse) – PTSD, Infertility and other Consequences of War
PTSD and its effects on U.S. soldiers and their families is a ghastly story with no end. PTSD is, in large part, though, an entirely Pentagon, or American war machine, inflicted wound. Read More Here
(Guardian) – Kyrgyzstan: The not so great game
America’s collusion with corruption and Russia’s cheerleading have played out in the unravelling chaos of Kyrgyzstan Read More Here
(SantiagoTimes) – Bolivia’s Morales Invites Greater Russian Presence In Latin America
Bolivian President Evo Morales on Sunday confirmed that during a recent meeting with Russian Prime Minister Putin in Venezuela he asked for a “greater Russian presence in Latin America” and especially in Bolivia. Read More Here
(PressTV) – Ahmadinejad: Iran world’s most powerful country – Read More Here
(Uruknet) – Many people in this country are aware of the atrocious conditions and treatment of adult prisoners in the U.S. war of terror. These prisoners have been held at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and other hellholes run by the U.S. But few are aware that thousands of children have also been taken by the U.S. and its allies in this war of terror. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to detain 47 of the just-under 200 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo without trial indefinitely is drawing scorn from legal experts and human rights advocates, who charge that the government simply does not have enough evidence to convict the detainees it says cannot be tried but are “too dangerous to release.” Read the rest of this entry »
(PressTV) – The former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has warned that the US is preparing to launch an attack on Iran with the help of Israel.” Obama is preparing for a (military) offensive on Iran with the help of his ally, the Israeli regime,” IRNA quoted Mohamad as writing on his weblog. Read the rest of this entry »
(TruthDig) – Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak. Read the rest of this entry »
While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty. Read the rest of this entry »
Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises—the closing of the Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit. Read the rest of this entry »
(GlobalResearch) – It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s. Read the rest of this entry »
(CampaignForLiberty) – On Friday, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the release from Guantánamo of Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, a 48-year-old Algerian, after granting his habeas corpus petition. Her ruling has not yet been declassified, so the reasons for her decision are not yet clear, but it is significant that the ruling now brings to 31 the number of prisoners who have successfully challenged the basis of their detention in U.S. courts. In contrast, just eight prisoners have lost their habeas petitions, meaning that the success rate in the prisoners’ legal challenges now stands at 80 percent. Read the rest of this entry »
She’s back and this time, she’s here to stay. Cindy Sheehan says she is moving to Washington. The anti-war activist was outside the White House for the second day in a row, with a bullhorn and a handful of protestors, shouting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo and calling for “health care not warfare.” Read the rest of this entry »
We Have met The Nazis, And They Are Us
Godwin’s Law be damned–it’s impossible to read the newly-released CIA report on the torture of Muslim prisoners without thinking of the Third Reich. Read the rest of this entry »
According to a Psychology Today hit piece written by psychologist John Gartner, people prone to thinking that powerful men might actually get together and plan to maintain and advance their power are borderline psychotics who are a danger to society. In reality, hundreds of years of history has taught us that psychologists routinely aid authoritarian regimes in enforcing tyrannical and inhumane policies while helping them crush political opposition by defining suspicion of authorities as a mental illness. Read the rest of this entry »
At an Amnesty International conference a few years ago, I had the honor of attending a talk by Clive Stafford Smith, a British attorney who represents some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison,” the Associated Press is reporting. Read the rest of this entry »
However ambitious President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. Read the rest of this entry »
Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners. Read the rest of this entry »
Attacks by US warplanes this week killed up to six Afghan civilians, including a four-year-old girl, and left another 16 wounded. The incidents in Afghanistans southern Kandahar province have again underscored the grim human cost of the military escalation ordered by the Obama administration. Read the rest of this entry »
The definition of a Czar in Merriam Webster’s dictionary is the following: “One having great power and authority.” [18]. According to Wikipedia, the title Czar (derived from Caesar) meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, that is, a ruler who claims the same rank as a Roman emperor, with the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch). [13]. Read the rest of this entry »
(WTimes) – Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Read the rest of this entry »
In March of 2002 Dick Cheney appointed his own daughter Elizabeth to head a shadow operation (ISOG) whose covert purpose was to fund dissident groups in Iran ~ money which may have been used to fund and arm terrorists. Obama has now evidently picked up where the Cheney’s left off: Read the rest of this entry »
(Guardian) – The foreign secretary, David Miliband, told MPs today that he will not allow the public to see the secret interrogation policy that is at the heart of allegations that MI5 has been colluding in the torture of British citizens. Read the rest of this entry »
(AFP) – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an accused top Al-Qaeda operative and self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, claimed to have lied under torture by the CIA, according to government transcripts released Monday. Read the rest of this entry »
With Dick Cheney and the infamous torture memos making headlines, President Obama and our nation face a choice. Should they prosecute or protect those responsible for the torture of detainees in secret CIA detention centers? If our leaders wish to steer our country back to the right side of the law, they must act immediately and unequivocally to prosecute. Read the rest of this entry »
(Reuters) – CIA director Leon Panetta says it’s almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the “harsh interrogation” of terrorism suspects. Read the rest of this entry »
Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor who now hosts a news magazine on cable channel HDNet, has done a documentary on a former Guantanamo prisoner who says he was tortured for years before being released two weeks ago. Read the rest of this entry »
I wonder how many of you have woken up to the fact that America’s latest leader is really a political Houdini … an illusionist on a presidential scale. Read the rest of this entry »
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. Read the rest of this entry »
(CNN) – The U.S. government cannot collectively seal its records in more than 100 cases involving the indefinite detention of suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, a federal judge ruled Monday. Read the rest of this entry »
The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, said Friday that the US had violated the Geneva Conventions in a stunning admission from President Bush’s onetime top general in Iraq that the US may have violated international law. Read the rest of this entry »
The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers. Read the rest of this entry »
While Congress is sidetracked by who said what to whom and when, our nation finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of torture. We are at a point where we must decide if torture is something that is now going to be considered justifiable and reasonable under certain circumstances, or is America better than that? Read the rest of this entry »
After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the “Great Black Hope” in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government. Read the rest of this entry »
Maddow continues to impress in her sharp critique of the Obama administration for continuing and expanding upon Bush’s violations of civil liberties. Read the rest of this entry »
(Noam Chomsky) – Historical amnesia is a dangerous social phenomenon because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead. Read the rest of this entry »
not surprised when, last week, he submitted a declaration (