Human Rights Law
Never In Our Names 
Promotes human rights and individual dignity by opposing torture, rendition, illegal imprisonment and indefinite detention without due process.
Post Frequency: 2.5/day Last Entry: May 28, 2009 at 10:15:52 Recent Entries: 445
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Economic Collapse Promotes a Human Rights Crisis
Posted on May 28, 2009A recent report from Amnesty International highlights the increased human rights abuses resulting from the current global economic distress.Billions of people are suffering from insecurity, injustice and indignity. This is a human rights crisis. The crisis is about the shortages of food, jobs, clean water, land and housing and also about growing inequality and insecurity, xenophobia and racism, violence and repression...
Tuesday Guantanamo Roundup
Posted on May 26, 2009The complex situation represented by Guantanamo Bay and the detainees there along with other detention centers around the world continues to attract the attention of news outlets across the globe. Some reports repeat themselves, while others are new to the scene...
The Children Suffer in Pakistan War
Posted on May 25, 2009In Pakistan's Swat Valley, many are being displaced by the ravages of ongoing war. Among the refugees are many children who may have been separated and reunited with their parents or who may remain separated. The trauma of war and post-traumatic syndrome may be seen in many of their faces...
Cineman: Crashing The Gates
Posted on May 23, 2009("Cineman" was the head for several film-review columns I wrote for several different publications over the years. Am reviving it here for occasional forays into the world of film.) A friend of mine is currently embroiled in a conflict with Authority...
This Mortal Coil
Posted on May 20, 2009"Hard cases," observed Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "make bad law." And Holmes should know, having held that Eugene Debs should rot ten years in prison for opposing World War I, and having hallucinated that the clear command of the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law ...
Hateler Youth - Homeland Security's Jegund
Posted on May 19, 2009Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left. "The children are our Future." Never has a sweet sentimental adage been more abused by its utterers by adults with visions of their own dangerous and demented futures, than when Hitler's Youth was in existence from 1922 t0 1945...
This Is Us
Posted on May 19, 2009for alexa The photographs which the Obama administration resists releasing, documenting the torture of prisoners by American citizens at seven separate facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, are my responsibility. As they are yours. For we paid the people who took those photographs, and we paid those who inflicted the suffering...
Sunday Morning Guantanamo News Roundup
Posted on May 17, 2009More news from Guantanamo as the discussions continue about the future of the prisoners. Some will be released. Some will be subject to trial. But of the others who knows? The recent decision by President Obama to continue the military commissions raised the ire of various groups...
Guantanamo Poetry--I Shall Not Complain
Posted on May 17, 2009Poems written by the Guantanamo prisoners have been posted here at NION in the past. Tonight we have one more poem. These are posted in hope of keeping alive the dreams and ambitions of the men who write. We must not let them be forgotten...
Professor Possum's Science Friday
Posted on May 08, 2009Once again the week has passed and the world of science news continues to grow. The time has come to take a science break and escape the politics of the day for a bit. Pull up that comfy chair, rest yourself, and prepare for some exciting and tantalizing news in the realm of science...
Silent Spring
Posted on May 07, 2009"But remember it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy." --Atticus Finch Pakistani singer and poetess Ayman Udas was shot and killed by two of her brothers, who entered her Peshawar flat and fired three bullets into her chest while her husband was out fetching milk...
Wednesday Guantanamo News Roundup
Posted on May 06, 2009The days continue to pass while the prisoners at Guantanamo languish in detention as the world debates their future. The political wranglings continue day by day as do the judicial proceedings. Every day brings new news to the scene. From Spain comes the question, "Will the U...
Europe's First Police State
Posted on May 03, 2009So I know you were just sitting around wondering, "What are the origins of the modern police state?," and maybe, "Can an effort at genocide, if sustained long enough, actually work?," or possibly, "What would happen if a bunch of religious zealots were in a position to exercise spiritual, temporal, political, and military authority over all they survey?" Well, Pope Innocent III, the same guy who launched the Fourth Crusade, certainly asked himself these questions, and he sought to answer them through direct action...
Guantanamo Poetry--Prison Darkness
Posted on May 02, 2009Poems written by the Guantanamo prisoners have been posted here at NION in the past. Tonight we have one more poem. These are posted in hope of keeping alive the dreams and ambitions of the men who write. We must not let them be forgotten...
Professor Possum's Science Friday
Posted on May 01, 2009One more week is passed and the world of science news is online again. The time has come to take a science break and escape the politics of the day for a bit. Pull up that comfy chair for some exciting and tantalizing news in the realm of science...
Tuesday Night at the Book Club--Terry Pratchett Edition
Posted on April 28, 2009Last week's edition of Monday Night Book Club by blueness brought forth a discussion about Terry Pratchett (Sir Terence David John Pratchett) that deserves a bit of expansion and more consideration. Pratchett is an English author of fantasy tales that often present a comical twist...
Monday Torture News Roundup
Posted on April 27, 2009Every day these days brings new discussions and new revelations about the state of torture around the world. Today's news finds a focus on the U.S. and continues the debate about if or not to investigate the Bush administration. The facts become more and more clear as the days pass...
Paralyzed Nation 2: The Sequel - The View Of A Paralysis Victim
Posted on April 27, 2009And yes I do mean victim. Not in the "Oh woe is me, I am helpless" sense (though I will admit to sometimes feeling that way - even non-paralyzed people feel that way, and the paralyzed have much reason to), but in the sense that I have been truly and actually victimized by the substandard health care, laughable rehabilitation services, and lack of access to real treatments like stem cell research, in this country...
Bybee: "The Spirit Of Liberty Has Left The Republic"
Posted on April 26, 2009According to stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, it is not just the editorial board of the New York Times and people in the lefty blogosphere who are pissed at Jay Bybee. Bybee is the federal judge who, while serving as Assistant Attorney General in George II's Office of Legal Counsel, penned a legal memorandum that provided the CIA with legal cover for the torture of the War on Terra prisoner Abu Zubaydah...
The Nika Riots
Posted on April 26, 2009The truly beautiful thing about history is the way it informs on such a multitude of levels. Depending on the way one reads things, the same story can be anything from a simple, cautionary tale, to an eerily-similar depiction of current events, to a cause for awe and celebration of human achievement, to an inspiration for future generations - and all manner of interpretations in between...
Dozens of CIA Prisoners Remain Hidden
Posted on April 23, 2009During the time of the Bush administration the CIA operated a series of secret detention centers. To date the exact number and location of those centers remains unknown. In addition the number of prisoners held is not known nor is their disposition...
Thursday Night Weekly Health Care Series: What difference? A day, A year, A lifetime, PART 2
Posted on April 23, 2009cross-posted at ePluribus and dKos Please note: This is Part 2 of a 2-part diary series. [snip] It was, after all, the one truism that I knew to be absolutely true, namely that everything good goes bad, everything alive dies and everything gained will be lost...
Guantanamo/Torture News Roundup Wednesday
Posted on April 22, 2009Every day there are new and different stories from the world of darkness we call Guantanamo. Analysis arrives from around the globe as the facts continue to come to light. Concern about words not matching actions is in the forefront. ImageBased on legal precedence, there is plenty of evidence that interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay and other US run facilities, such as Abu Ghraib, constituted torture in violation of US and international laws...
Paralyzed Nation
Posted on April 21, 2009For the first time, apparently, somebody decided to do a count, and so discovered that far more Americans suffer from some sort of paralysis than previously realized. One in fifty Americans, or some 5.6 million people, live with paralysis. And many of these people are very poor...
Monday Night Book Club: They're Shuttering The Libraries, Again
Posted on April 20, 2009In the "Donkey Bookmobile" edition of Monday Night Book Club, I noted that the libraries around here had only recently recovered from decades of drastically reduced hours and skeletal staffs. I spoke too soon. With Governor Terminator and the clown-car known as the California State Legislature having once again thoroughly wrecked the state budget, the asphyxiating county here has determined that the way to give itself some financial air is to basically strangle all the libraries...
Bush's Willing Torturers
Posted on April 19, 2009From Cage Prisoners comes an analysis piece by David Cole of the Guardian.The newly-published Bush administration memos show a chilling, Orwellian abuse of language to justify torture Dennis Blair, President Obama's director of national intelligence, minimized the contents of the most recent set of torture memos to be released sayingThose methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing...
Guantanamo News Saturday
Posted on April 18, 2009The detention center at Guantanamo Bay remains open and functional as of this day. Resolution is farther away each day as the stories of mistreatment and of judicial meanderings continue to be heard. Follow along for a collection of Guantanamo news of the day...
Torture Memo August 1, 2002 Excerpts
Posted on April 16, 2009The promised torture memos are released at last. The ACLU has full links to the .pdf forms of all four new memos here. The reading is tough going and frightening beyond words to describe. Some excerpts follow. More to come as time allows for sifting through this horror...
Tuesday Guantanamo Roundup
Posted on April 14, 2009Some detainees headed for Alexandria, VA?If the government chooses the Alexandria court to try any of the 250 remaining detainees, who include five 9/11 plotters, "the prisoners may be housed at the Alexandria Detention CenterThe issue is controversial in the local community, but the detainees must be transferred for judicial proceedings in accordance with Obama's promise to close Guantanamo...
Obama and human rights. Shame on me.
Posted on April 11, 2009Locking people up indefinitely, possibly forever, just on the President's say-so. With no right to appeal to a court. Please explain again why that isn't the behavior of an autocrat. Or is thinking that way so last administration? If a Democrat does it, is it just fine, like when Lyndon Johnson sen t the FBI to infiltrate and neutralize protest groups in Cointelpro, murdering dozens of Black Panthers in the process? Obama said all kinds of things we wanted to hear about Guantanamo...
Surviving Torture in Iran
Posted on April 06, 2009In an interview with 60 Minutes Ahmad Batebi tells his tale of woe in Iran. The story begins with Batebi's holding the bloody shirt of his friend who was shot during 1999 demonstrations against the government.After helping his friend, Batebi returned to the protest, and waved the bloody shirt to show what police had done...
Guantanamo News Sunday
Posted on April 05, 2009Guantanamo Bay and the detention of various persons held there by the Bush administration continue to bring news reports of varying sorts. The recent visit to the facility of Crystle Stewart, Miss USA, and Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza, of Venezuela brought varying reviews...
This One Goes Out To The One I Love
Posted on April 04, 2009For more than 400 years, the people of the nations of Western Europe, and their far-scattered children, have cleaved to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as the archetypal expression of "star-cross'd lovers" cruelly dealt by the triple doofi of family, culture, and fate...
Splitting the Sky Tried Arresting "The Decider"
Posted on March 29, 2009The United States of America gave its president the power to decide if anyone, including US citizens, were enemies of the state or "enemy combatants" during the Bush Administration. Henceforth, the CIA kidnapped people from their homes or off streets...
Amnesty International: U.S. immigrant detentions violate human rights
Posted on March 26, 2009A new report from Amnesty International offers harsh criticism of U.S. immigration detentions. The report contains several case studies with interviews of both families and of detained immigrants.The detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year in the United States represents a violation of human rights On an average day, the rights group said, more than 30,000 immigrants are in detention facilities...
Leaked! International Red Cross Report on CIA Torture
Posted on March 19, 2009Mark Danner has scooped the NY Times, the Washington Post and other papers by publishing in the current New York Review of Books an essay quoting long excerpts of a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on "high-value" prisoners held in CIA black site prisons...
The Drug Wars Continue
Posted on March 18, 2009Lax laws in the U.S. allow Mexican drug dealers to drive across the border, buy whatever numbers and types of weapons they desire, and return to Mexico to continue the violence currently rocking the nation.Last year, no less than 20,000 weapons were seized in drug-related actions, raids, arrests, and shoot-outs; nearly all of them were sold in the U...
Science Tidbits
Posted on March 13, 2009Once again the time has come to gather around for exciting and tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
Return of the Blackshirts
Posted on March 08, 2009It's something out of a twisted wingnut fantasy: 25,000 identically-dressed, tough-looking men and a charismatic leader with a simple, strong motto (in this case, "Believe! Obey! Fight!") barge into the capital city and bully their way into a leadership role in the government...
The Legacy of Bagram Lives On
Posted on March 07, 2009Bagram Air Base has for some time now housed a detention center in which people captured outside the U.S. soil are held under conditions of secrecy. Recent news told the story of expansion of the detention center under the Obama administration. The planned expansion will allow the continuing detention of as many as 1100...
Report Calls Guantanamo Conditions a Violation of Law
Posted on February 25, 2009In direct disagreement with the recent Pentagon giving a green light to conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released a report (.PDF) with an opposite conclusion.After over seven years of unlawful executive detention, the approximately 240 men who remain imprisoned at the U...
Open Thread and News: Wednesday
Posted on February 25, 2009The day is filled with various bits of news today. Much is happening in our world as the Obama administration continues to work to reverse the failures of the Bush administration. Not all the news is good, but much is worthy of note today...
Obama to Support Bagram Expansion
Posted on February 23, 2009In news of the weekend comes the story of a late Friday Justice Department announcement about Bagram Air Base and the detainees at the site.In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital...
Minutes from a Torturers' Meeting at Guantanamo (w/Update)
Posted on February 22, 2009Crossposted from Daily Kos What follows below was transcribed from a PDF of the original document (or a copy of same), posted on the website of Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It, along with a wealth of other documentation, was used in preparing the SASC's highly critical report late last year on interrogations and detainee treatment, which concluded that high officials bore responsibility for the mistreatment and torture of prisoners under U...
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus
Posted on February 21, 2009The resurrection of Jesus following his death by crucifixion is central to Christian belief today.Christianity is the name given to that definite system of religious belief and practice which was taught by Jesus Christ in the country of Palestine, during the reign of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, and was promulgated, after its Founder's death, for the acceptance of the whole world, by certain chosen men among His followers...
Apocalypse Redux
Posted on February 21, 2009The war in Afghanistan is being waged long-distance, by remote control:From their cockpit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, the pilot and co-pilot are flying a pilotless Predator on a bombing mission over Afghanistan, 8,000 miles away. A forward air controller in another unmanned drone spots the target and the Predator bomber takes off under local control from Kandahar in Afghanistan...
Petition: Stop Land Run Re - Enactments
Posted on February 21, 2009Stop Land Run Re - Enactments in Oklahoma Public Schools WHEREAS, S.P.I.R.I.T is working for the rights of Oklahoma Indians, all American Indians, Indigenous people and the peaceful solution to all differences; and WHEREAS, the Oklahoma History and US History does not provide the whole and true history of Oklahoma Indians or American Indians (Native Americans), and WHEREAS, re-enacting the Land Run in public schools and in communities in Oklahoma is demeaning and humiliating to Oklahoma Indians, and - snip - NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the undersigned and S...
Science Tidbits
Posted on February 20, 2009Once again the time has come to gather around for a day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
Guantanamo: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Posted on February 19, 2009Andy Worthington is always a worthy read at his website but this week at least one of his postings is superlative. Read the whole article. Worthington begins with reminders of Obama's January 22 signing of a Presidential order closing Guantanamo within a year...
Republicans Attempting to Block Detainee Transfer to Their Districts
Posted on February 18, 2009Several Republican Party members in Congress have introduced legislation intended to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees into their legislative districts.Congressional Republicans have introduced bills that would bar the government from moving any of the 250 inmates to some of the most prominent military and civilian detention centres in the US, including a "supermax" high-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado, which holds at least 16 convicted international terrorists, and a South Carolina naval brig that holds the only enemy combatant jailed in America...
Anti-terror tactics 'weaken law'
Posted on February 17, 2009The International Commission of Jurists has released the findings of their three year study of international action to combat terrorism.It concluded that many measures introduced to fight terrorism were illegal and counter-productive.The panel of eminent lawyers and judges concluded that the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks on the US was robust and effective...
Guantanamo Guard: "The Stuff I Did And The Stuff I Saw Was Just Wrong"
Posted on February 15, 2009Army Specialist Brandon Neely arrived in Guantanamo on January 7, 2002, "while the cages of Camp X-Ray were still being welded." For the next six months, Neely witnessed "the arrival of the detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, possible isolation regime of the first six children in GTMO, [and] utter lack of preparation for guarding individuals detained during the War on Terror...
Documents Confirm DOD and CIA Cooperation on Secret Prisons
Posted on February 14, 2009As a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing by three human rights groups, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), nearly a thousand pages of documents were gathered and then released to the public...
Previously Classified Reports Confirm Prisoners Tortured To Death In War On Terra
Posted on February 13, 2009Previously classified government documents newly released to the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that official investigators have determined that prisoners have been tortured to death by American agents in the War on Terra. While proposing a truth and reconciliation commission for exposure of BushCo crimes, Alexa wrote here last December 27 of the many witnesses:to the ongoing crimes of the Torture Administration, including murder...
NION Guide To Paganism: Imbolc Edition
Posted on February 12, 2009In this Pagan exploration, I, your Resident Witch, will attempt to explain the Pagan holiday of Imbolc, which falls on February 2nd, and just what it has to do with cross-dressing children, crepes, the patron saint of abortion providers, voodoo angels with a hankering for hot peppers - and, of course, Groundhog Day...
Leahy Proposes Truth And Reconciliation Commission
Posted on February 11, 2009In a speech Monday at Georgetown University, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed a truth and reconciliation commission for exposure of BushCo misdeeds, similar to the one proposed here December 27 by Alexa, and for similar reasons. Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, from which such a commission could be expected to spring...
Open Thread and News of the Day
Posted on February 11, 2009Sometimes there is too much news to warrant lots of diaries, but which needs to be shared. Today is one of those times. Much is happening in our world today. This thread is being established to highlight a few stories and offer others a chance to share their own findings...
The Lessons of U.S. Detention Policy
Posted on February 10, 2009In a commentary for the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Jonathan Horowitz speaks of his trips to Afghanistan to investigate the circumstance of several detainees, Abdul Wahab, Ghulam Sadeeq, and Mohammad Zahir. Horowitz was hired by attorneys for Zahirto do what the U...
The Graveyard Of Empires
Posted on February 09, 2009General David Petraeus, the dude John McCain said during the 2008 presidential campaign we should all regard as a sure-as-shootin' infallible oracle on all things military, has, according to the Washington Post, pronounced Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires," and more or less counseled the Obama administration that it cannot hope to "win" in that region...
US-UK Torture Cover-up, While Conditions Worsen at Guantanamo
Posted on February 08, 2009Controversy continues to mount over the suppression of key evidence of U.S. torture in the case of Ethiopian national, Binyam Mohamed, at the suspected behest of the Obama administration. UK High Court judges in the case wanted to release the evidence, but Foreign Secretary David Miliband prevented this, saying it would harm UK intelligence cooperation with the United States...
A Message from History: Democrats, Attack!
Posted on February 08, 2009I'm not normally one to rant - among the scores of diaries I've posted over the course of the past three years, only a handful are of the "screed" variety. The sort of diaries I usually do don't lend themselves to soapbox-style indignation - there's not much to be gained, legislatively or electorally speaking, from a knock-down, drag-out flame war over, say, assigning blame for the outbreak of the First World War...
Democracy Now! Debate: Horton vs Ratner on Renditions, Appendix M
Posted on February 07, 2009A fascinating debate took place at Democracy Now! yesterday. With Amy Goodman as host, Harpers Magazine's Scott Horton, and President of Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, went at it on the subject of Obama's renditions and interrogation policies, including the existence of coercive interrogation instructions in the Army Field Manual...
French, Germans Balk At Increasing Afghan Commitment; McGovern Warns "Military Power No Solution"
Posted on February 07, 2009Vice President Joe Biden traveled this weekend to Munich to cajole Europeans into committing more troops to Afghanistan, while NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer Saturday complained: "I'm frankly concerned when I hear the United States is planning a major commitment for Afghanistan but other allies are already ruling out doing more...
Science Tidbits
Posted on February 06, 2009One more time the chance is here to gather around for another day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
Apocalypse Don: The Final Briefing
Posted on February 05, 2009(Note: As the unlamented Donald Rumsfeld has recently re-entered NION discourse, I thought now to be as good a time as any to repost this piece, first published November 26, 2006 on dkos. No one then read it, not least because it's longer than the Bible...
The Twisted Tales of Torture Continue
Posted on February 05, 2009The British news is all atwitter these days with accusations of torture or at least cooperation in torture by British personnel. The latest problem for the British legal system comes from a judgement in the trial of Binyam Mohamed. Given the man's story and evidence of his torture at the hands of various people, the court opinion was harsh...
Retaining Rendition
Posted on February 04, 2009The Los Angeles Times reports that the Obama administration "appears" to have decided to retain the practice of "rendition," in which United States intelligence agents kidnap and hijack to other countries for interrogation purposes people suspected of participation in the War on Terra...
Saving 49 Lives (Part 2), The First Action Step
Posted on February 02, 2009cross-posted from The Dream Antilles Yesterday I wrote about the 49 people facing the death penalty in the federal courts because of decisions made by previous, Bushco AGs, and that these were lives we could save. This essay continues that discussion...
Reflecting on the Early Days of Guantanamo
Posted on February 02, 2009The full story of Guantanamo may never be known with real certainty, but by bits and pieces the tales are being told. In an opinion piece yesterday, Karen Greenberg relates the story she found over the years by interviewing dozens of involved people...
Remembering The Federal Death Penalty, Saving 49 Lives
Posted on February 01, 2009cross-posted from The Dream Antilles and docuDharma It might be easy to forget the Federal Death Penalty. We might not want to think about it. It wasn't an issue in the past election. For eight years the Bush DoJ used its muscle to expand federal use of capital punishment by overruling local United States Attorneys' decisions not to seek death...
Guantanamo Poetry
Posted on February 01, 2009The poetry of Guantanamo has been excerpted here at NION before. The 72-page book edited by Mark Falkoff is now available for all to read. The collection is writings produced by the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. These words were written on paper, scratched on styrofoam cups, and etched into napkins...
BushCo's Guantanamo Recordkeeping: Literally Kafkaesque
Posted on January 30, 2009"I fear your case will end badly. You are held to be guilty. Your case will perhaps never get beyond a lower Court. Your guilt is supposed, for the present, at least, to be proved." --Franz Kafka, The Trial Reading the report in Sunday's Washington Post about the sloppy, negligent, even contemptuous record-keeping in the BushCo White House involving the cases of those interned in Guantanamo, I was struck by the feeling I had encountered such surreal legal dishevelment somewhere before...
Court Rules Proposition 8 Crusaders Must Reveal Donor Names
Posted on January 30, 2009Federal District Court Judge Morrison England refused Thursday to shield the names of financial donors to the campaign in favor of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that amended the state constitution to recognize marriage only between one man and one woman...
US General, NATO Commander Orders War Crimes Be Carried Out
Posted on January 30, 2009You thought with Bush gone that we would no longer see headlines like this didn't you ? You were wrong. US General John Craddock, NATO's top comaander in Afghanistan has issued orders to kill Afghani Drug Dealers even without any evidence "that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops...
Intelligence Professionals: Al-Marri Internment "Powerful Recruitment Tool" For Al-Qaeda
Posted on January 29, 2009On Wednesday a group of 16 intelligence professionals signed off on a brief filed with the United States Supreme Court asserting that George II's decision to snatch Ali Sareh Kahlah al-Marri from his home in Peoria, Illinois, designate him an "enemy combatant," and intern him indefinitely in a Navy brig without charges, is "far outside the traditions of this nation," "undermines" the rule of law, and has served as "a powerful recruitment tool for violent extremists...
Ghaleb al-Bihani Loses In Court
Posted on January 29, 2009On January 28, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled the government may continue to hold Ghaleb al-Bihani as an "enemy combatant."Bihani's attorneys argued that their client was only a cook for the Taliban and never fired a weapon at U.S. forces. But Leon said such allegations were enough to justify Bihani's continued detention...
Cosinas Americanas: Chinese Peasant Cuisine
Posted on January 28, 2009In this edition of Our Alexa's "Cosinas Americanas," your humble sub, in honor of Chinese New Year, celebrated January 26 as "The Year of the Ox," presents three recipes from Chinese peasant cuisine. Please feel free to add your own favored, or feared, Chinese dishes in the comments, below the fold...
"Prevent Hate Crimes, Destruction and Desecration On The Schaghticoke Reservation"
Posted on January 26, 2009Prevent Hate Crimes, Destruction and Desecration On The Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, CT We, the undersigned, call upon the Connecticut State Governor Jodi Rell to investigate and order an immediate halt to the hate crimes, destruction, desecration of sacred lands and encroachment that started after Federal Recognition and allowed to occur on the Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, CT from 2004, to date...
Canadian PM "The Only Guy Now In The World Who Seems To Believe In Guantanamo"
Posted on January 26, 2009President Obama having Thursday issued executive orders commanding the closure of the prison at Guantanamo "as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order," and suspending the facility's "military tribunals" for 120 days, Canadian politicians and pundits are becoming increasingly exasperated with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who persists in his years-long refusal to request repatriation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who at age 15 was shot by American combatants in Afghanistan, tortured, imprisoned, and eventually charged with the "murder" of a US soldier, and whose show trial was shut down Thursday by Obama's orders...
How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us Army Field Manual that Tortures
Posted on January 25, 2009Originally published at AlterNet A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation's interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented "a good start...
France Reportedly Urging EU Nations To Accept Guantanamo Prisoners
Posted on January 24, 2009The German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday that France has drafted a plan for European Union countries to accept 60 of the remaining 245 prisoners confined in the soon-to-be-shuttered prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. President Obama issued an executive order Thursday directing that "[t]he detention facilities at Guant?namo ...
New Administration Re-Examining Divine Right Of Kings
Posted on January 23, 2009A month or so ago I confidently predicted in this diary that some time this spring the United States Supreme Court would rule in the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri that a president may not scoop people off US soil and imprison them indefinitely Because He Feels Like It...
Look On Ozymandias
Posted on January 23, 2009(A companion piece to Unitary Moonbat's "The Akhenaton Treatment." Originally posted on Daily Kos, summer solstice 2006, anniversary of my daughter's fall. Nobody round these NION parts (ceptin Julia) seems to have recommended or commented in it then, so maybe no one round here has seen it...
Science Tidbits Friday
Posted on January 23, 2009Once again the time has come to gather around for another day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
Obama's Executive Orders on Guantanamo and the Question of Prosecutions
Posted on January 22, 2009+++ Update: Here's a link to the draft executive order's text +++ Like attacking a hydra with many heads, the new administration is planning to take its first whacks at the torture regime set up by the Bush Administration. It's most infamous manifestation lies 90 miles off the U...
Thinking Like a Hybrid
Posted on January 20, 2009This morning a friend e-mailed me a link to this essay, written shortly after the election but recirculating on this bi-racial inauguration day. It made me realize that if I were as much black as I am Hawaiian, I'd have experienced many of the things she writes about...
Change Has Come
Posted on January 20, 2009copyright ? 2009 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org It was but a minute after the newly elected President took the "Oath of Office." At 12:01 Post Meridian, on January 20, 2009, the White House web page was changed. In the spirit of a new dawn, the Oval Office gave birth to its baby...
For Just One Day
Posted on January 19, 2009"And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, the whole world is doomed." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I've Been To The Mountaintop." For just one day, let there be no progress. Let us not find a new way to convert seemingly worthless pieces of earth into technological slaves that fulfill our every whim...
My Best Friend Voted For Prop 8
Posted on January 19, 2009This is in no way a defense of her vote, merely an explanation. I certainly don't agree with her decision, but I thought it might be good for people to understand what went into the thinking of one person who voted for prop 8. You may remember my best friend...
Monday Night Book Club: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Posted on January 19, 2009Good evening, and welcome to Monday Night Book Club. Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise; For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven; From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection; Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan...
Shalom FAQ on Gaza Conflict
Posted on January 18, 2009Stephen Shalom has an indispensable Question and Answer on Gaza over at ZNet. It is too long to post here (it prints out at 36 pages), so make sure to go and read it. As with anything written by Stephen, it is impeccably documented with 138 references...
The Continuing Whitewash of the Bush/Cheney Torture Legacy
Posted on January 18, 2009In a lengthy post at Democratic Underground on Saturday night blogger Time for change examines the ongoing coverup and whitewash of the Bush/Cheney torture regime.Even as the convening authority of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Susan Crawford, finally comes forward with revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay against suspected terrorist Mohammed al-Qahtani, our corporate media and others continue to whitewash the Bush/Cheney torture legacy...
The Akhenaton Treatment
Posted on January 18, 2009He thought he knew better than his people; thought he could, through sheer force of will, change a public mindset centuries in the making. He was an iconoclast (literally) 2000 years before the term would be coined by medieval Byzantines, but within a couple of decades after his rule, he was a victim of iconoclasm himself: the enemies he'd created had obliterated nearly every trace of his reign, as well as the monotheistic religion he had promulgated as a state faith...
Binyam Mohamed To Be Free At Last
Posted on January 17, 2009Following four years in U.S. detention and a series of transfers around the world, Binyam Mohamed has been notified of his impending release to England.He is one of three remaining detainees who claim British residency and whose return to this country would bring to an end the UK's association with (Guantanamo Bay)...
Petition: Obama Free Leonard Peltier
Posted on January 17, 2009Crossposted at Native American Netroots Petition: Obama Free Leonard Peltier! Therefore Be It Resolved, that we require the new incoming President Barack Obama immediately offer a Presidential Pardon to Mr. Leonard Peltier so that Leonard may join his children and grandchildren and continue the fight for Indigenous freedom...
Science Tidbits Friday
Posted on January 16, 2009Come gather around one and all for another day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
The Continuing Saga of Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al-Ginco
Posted on January 16, 2009Seven years ago this week 26-year-old Syrian Kurd Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al-Ginco was taken into custody by U.S. forces in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.He claims that after being taken into US custody he was subjected to stress positions, sleep deprivation and threatened with dogs...
Mohammed El Gharani Ordered Released from Guantanamo
Posted on January 15, 2009News of the day includes the second ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon that the U.S. must release a detainee.In today's ruling, Leon said the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, was an enemy combatant because it relied almost exclusively on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility has been called into question by government personnel...
Torture Confirmed by Bush Official
Posted on January 14, 2009Judge Susan Crawford is the senior official in the Bush administration charged with reviewing administration policies and actions toward detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Crawford refused to refer al-Qahtani's case for prosecution sayingHis treatment met the legal definition of torture...
Salim Hamdan: Free at Last
Posted on January 12, 2009Salim Hamdan, the ex-driver for Osama Bin Laden has been set free in Yemen at the end of his sentence served. The tribulations of Hamdan's 7 long years in U.S. custody has been chronicled here at NION in a series of diaries. habacuc, Flickr, Creative Commons After being detained in 2001, Hamdan arrived at Guantanamo in 2002...
Forgive Not
Posted on January 12, 2009On the opinion page of the New York Times today is a piece by Dahlia Lithwick entitled Forgive Not in which an argument is made for accountability in government. Lithwick argues for a full investigation of recent administration activities....it's clear that the first step will be a thorough determination of what has occurred...
Monday Night Book Club: Donkey Bookmobile Edition
Posted on January 12, 2009Anybody else remember bookmobiles? When I was a child, back there in the last millennium, I lived in a modest California Central Valley town of about 10,000 people. Though we had a perfectly fine public library just off downtown, a bookmobile daily crawled through the streets delivering books to those who were too old, sick, young, automobile-impaired, or Boo Radley-like to frequent the place...
Unhappy Anniversary Guantanamo
Posted on January 11, 2009Today, January 11, 2009, marks the seventh anniversary of the transfer of the first 20 detainees to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.Today, about 250 men remain, most of whom have been there for nearly seven years, in a detention system that has significantly damaged America's reputation around the world...
Barney Frank And "The Gay Agenda"
Posted on January 10, 2009Wingers often bruit about the phrase "the gay agenda," which, like a related phrase, "the gay lifestyle," they are usually careful not to precisely define. For when they do, we learn that such phrases most often reflect a silly and unreasoning fear among wingers that Nefarious Forces are plotting to somehow force them, the wingers, to engage in sodomy from dusk till dawn, then don chaps of leather and ride loud motorcycles in parades...
Cheney: "We Don't Need No Stinking Pardons"
Posted on January 08, 2009Vice President Darth Cheney, in the latest stop on his "Everything I Did Was Right, Legal, And Just" tour, has informed Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press that there exists no reason for George II to issue pre-emptive pardons to save the bacon of those who authorized and/or inflicted torture in the War on Terra...
How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does
Posted on January 07, 2009Originally posted at AlterNet, and reposted here with additional links and some minor format changes In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310...
Psychologists for Social Responsibility Action Alert on Gaza
Posted on January 07, 2009Psychologists for Social Responsibility(PsySR) has issued the following statement on the crisis in Gaza: ACTION ALERT: PsySR Urges Action for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza Dear PsySR Members and Friends, Psychologists for Social Responsibility urges you to join us in strongly advocating that the U...
To A Blind, Blind World
Posted on January 06, 2009An Iranian court has determined that a man who blinded a woman by pouring acid over her head should himself be blinded by the forced appplication to his eyes of five drops to each orb of the same chemical with which he blinded and disfigured his victim...
The Ordeal of Muhammad Saad Iqbal
Posted on January 06, 2009The stories of detainees held by America in the past few years are beginning to come to light little by little. The front page of our local edition of the New York Times has another in the ongoing series of these articles just this morning.When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants...
How GOP Plans to Defend BushCo on Torture
Posted on January 05, 2009I don't have any special source within inner Republican Party circles. Nor do I have any particular new insight into the dynamics of how the GOP works out their policy. What I do have is the statement of the Republican minority opinion on the Senate Armed Services Committee's "supposedly bipartisan" report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U...
Dirt
Posted on January 05, 2009Early last Monday morning, KGO-San Francisco's Ray Taliaferro, dean of the Left Coast lefty AM-radio talk-show hosts, signed on with an impassioned sermon both poxing, and pleading with, all parties in Israel's current assault on Gaza. A brief account of that jeremiad can be found here...
The Lizard People!
Posted on January 04, 2009My work as an historioranter occasionally leads me to visit some of the loonier extremes of the Internet - the chat rooms with the padded walls and such - but one ballot cast in Minnesota during the latest election sent me further into the weirdness than did even Apocalypse 2012! I have no idea if the guy who voted for "Lizard People" knew what he was favoring, but if even a smidgen of the stuff I've learned about historical Lizard People is for real, then casting a ballot on their behalf is no joke...
Aafia Siddiqui, The Most Dangerous Woman In The World
Posted on January 04, 2009After more than five years of imprisonment at Bagram Air Force Base, years of physical abuse, repeated rapes, years of surgeries without anesthesia, years of starvation and isolation, years of psychological torture in the form of not knowing the whereabouts of two of her young children and having the third imprisoned with her, starved and abused and seeing everything that was done to her, Fox News-watching "patriots" can rest easily...
Cosinas Americanas / American Kitchens
Posted on January 04, 2009Welcome to Cosinas Americanas, a new weekly series at NION about flavor and sazon in American kitchens and in our culture. Now, what you read here most likely won't be tradition brought over from The Mayflower, but then, neither were we, entiendes? Even if you don't like to cook or bake, pull up a chair, have a cafecito and know you are welcome...
Science Tidbits Friday
Posted on January 02, 2009Here we are again gathering for a day of new and exciting tantalizing news in the realm of science. New discoveries. New takes on old knowledge. The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...
Torture From The Taproot: Why The Truth Matters
Posted on January 02, 2009It is said that the taproot of violence is hatred of truth. This supernatural soliciting ... cannot be good; ... If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is But what is not...
If They're Going To Denounce Us As "Pagan"
Posted on December 30, 2008...we might as well know as thing or two about Pagans. To this end I, your resident Witch (Pagan) shall offer a few tidbits of explanation. The vast majority of Pagans do not worship the devil. Witches, the practitioners of Wicca, do not believe in the devil at all, let alone worship him...
Monday Night Book Club and Open Thread
Posted on December 30, 2008Good evening, and welcome to Monday Night Book Club. Tonight, I'm curious about what books you're reading, or what books you may have received as holiday gifts (asked for or . . . maybe not asked for, entiendes?) For most of my family and friends, books are the gifts I really love giving, but there's always a little guesswork involved here unless it's my daughter, who sends her wish list to Santa Claus in Calle Ocho, and grandpa sends the list back to me...
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Prisoner of Conscience
Posted on December 29, 2008The story of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi is a long and involved tale.Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi known as Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi was born in 1958 in Nablus, today (06/2007) in the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority and then a part of Jordan. When al-Maqdisi was still a child his family moved to Iraq where he later studied at Mosul's university...
Lives In The Balance
Posted on December 27, 2008By way of disclaimer, I understand the desire for prosecution of war crimes. I want justice as much as the next cowgirl. With nothing but admiration, for initiative is always worthy of respect, I can't agree with The Citizens Petition: Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes...
Ex Nihilo: X Marks The Spot
Posted on December 27, 2008("Ex Nihilo" is a running head I'll be using from time to time for oddments that upbubble in the wee hours. Too fagged at present to offer oddments of my own, I've instead stitched together some of Ken Kesey's, from three separate talks: one delivered at St...
Harold Pinter 1930-2008: "What happened to our moral sensibility?"
Posted on December 25, 2008Harold Pinter died yesterday of cancer at age 78. He was one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century. In his plays, like The Homecoming, The Birthday Party, and Old Times, he caught the ambivalent and restless conflict, the striving for significant personal connection and the intricate by-play of emotion and memory, that lay at the heart of the human dilemma...
Happy Holidays
Posted on December 24, 2008Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa . . . . whatever you celebrate, much joy to you and yours. Feliz navidad y paz . . . --Alexa
One More Torture Testimony
Posted on December 23, 2008Cage Prisoners as a site works to keep stories of the detainees around the world in the public eye. Testimony [the personal stories of detainees] from Zeeshan Siddiqui was released in the past few days. Once again the tale is one of horror in detention...
First British Citizen Convicted of Terrorism
Posted on December 22, 2008From the UK comes an a href=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5365911.eceannouncement/a of the conviction this week of the first British citizen to be found guilty of terrorism.blockquoteRangzieb Ahmed, 33, was part of a three-man cell on an unknown terrorist operation in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in December 2005 that was aborted/blockquoteThe conviction came after an 11 week trial...
A Pagan Christmas to All!
Posted on December 21, 2008Among the mouth-breathingest of mouth-breathing Republicans, it's a well-known fact that every November or so, we libruls gather in our covens and plot the paganization of Christmas. nbsp;In their iLeft Behind/i-style fantasies, we are the legions of Satan, come upon the Earth to foist secular ideas and iGodless/i traditions upon the flock of the Lamb...
Army Teaching Kids Killing is Fun
Posted on December 20, 2008Growing up in the South, my brothers and I learned to respect weapons and to handle rifles and shotguns from the time we were little persons. nbsp;Today's kids get a different set of lessons thanks to our military establishment. nbsp;The Army Experience Center (AEC), located in the Franklin Mills Mall just north of Philadelphia is a state of the art video game and entertainment center a href=http://www...
Ongoing Guantanamo News
Posted on December 18, 2008Delays, delays, and obfuscation continue to rule in the Guantanamo Bay detention center these days. nbsp;According to a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7789005.stmBBC News/ablockquoteBarack Obama has said he aims to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and put a clear end to torture in the US within two years of becoming president...
The Plight of Afghani Women
Posted on December 18, 2008For years women in Afghanistan have been subject to restrictions a href="http://www.rawa.org/wom-view.htm"imposed/a by a society steeped in fundamentalist Islamic beliefs.blockquoteIslamic fundamentalism of any kind in essence looks upon women as sub-humans, fit only for household slavery and as a means of procreation...
Rwanda: A Small Measure Of Justice
Posted on December 18, 2008pThe most anonymous victims of murder are the victims of genocide. We count the victims in numbers - one in a hundred thousand, one in eight hundred thousand, one in three million, or one in six million. The scale of the crime is so vast that it dehumanizes those of us who live to bear witness to its aftermath...
Colonial Injustice Is Alive and Well Today
Posted on December 18, 2008a href=http://www.hrw.org/Human Rights Watch/a has a new report, a href=http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/17/alien-legacy-0This Alien Legacy: nbsp;The Origins of "Sodomy" Laws in British Colonialism/a detailing the ongoing influence of British colonial laws criminalizing consensual homosexual conduct...
One Small Step for Justice in Iraq
Posted on December 17, 2008The U.S-Iraqi a href=http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=468909security agreement/a set to take effect in January will for the first time bring U.S. troops under the rule of law. nbsp;Warrants will be a href=http://wire.antiwar.com/2008/12/16/us-worried-about-need-for-warrants-in-iraq/required/a before searches of Iraqi property...
The Supreme Court Revives A Torture Case
Posted on December 16, 2008The Supreme Court issued an order on Monday in Rasul v Myers, a case involving a suit by four ex- Guantanamo detainees who alleged they had been tortured. The plaintiffs are British citizens and they are seeking monetary damages against Rumsfeld, Myers and other high ranking officials...
Case Against Omar Khadr Unravels
Posted on December 15, 2008A key witness in the prosecution of Omar Khadr for war crimes has been withdrawn, on the basis that a self-incriminating "statement" made in 2004 by Omar was in fact a confession made under torture. Omar Khadr, the youngest person in history to have been charged with war crimes, was tortured and used as a human mop since his capture at age 14 and subsequent indefinite detention at Bush's Caribbean gulag...
269-269: The Nightmare Scenarios
Posted on December 13, 2008The Scenario: 269-269 It COULD happen here! And you REALLY, REALLY don't want it to! Want proof? Just take a look at some of the Worst-Case scenarios that could come to pass if something goes screwy in the Electoral College this year, and Obama and McCain both end up with 269 votes...
Supreme Court To Consider Divine Right Of Kings
Posted on December 12, 2008The United States Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the president enjoys the right to scoop people off US soil and imprison them indefinitely Because He Says So. This most recent case involving George II's invocation of The Divine Right Of Kings--discredited in Anglo-American jurisprudence for some 793 years--concerns Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a native of Qatar and Illinois graduate student who has been held in a Navy brig without charges for more than five years...
Senate Report Nails Rumsfeld, Sets Up War Crimes Trial
Posted on December 12, 2008They may not have meant to do it, but the Senate Armed Services' Committee released a report by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain that gives us the best timeline to date on administration decisions to begin torturing detainees. The report, an Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U...
PHR to Obama on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Posted on December 11, 2008Physicians for Human Rights has written a powerful letter to President-elect Obama, calling on "the incoming Obama administration to commit to fulfilling the promise of the entire Declaration and its expansive understanding of universal human rights." The letter notes that Obama's election represented a "triumph over prejudice and...
60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Posted on December 10, 2008On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first articles follow. The full text may be found here. Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights...
Monday Night Book Club: Captain Trips Edition
Posted on December 08, 2008Tonight's regularly scheduled episode of Monday Night Book Club has been cancelled, as the show's hostess, Alexa, has been felled by a rude and abusive virus, known hereabouts as Captain Trips. Your humble sub will attempt to fill the void with a wambling walkabout that will, among other things, discuss several home remedies designed to extinguish or at least arrest such viral outrages...
Cuba Stifles Blog Freedom. Again.
Posted on December 07, 2008cross posted from The Dream Antilles La Bloguera Yoani Sanchez Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez, the 2008 Gasset y Ortega Prize winner for digital journalism, and her husband, Reynaldo Escobar, have been forbidden by the Cuban government from attending a blogger conference in Cuba...
Whence Torture? An Early SERE Critic, Circa 1956
Posted on December 04, 2008Joost Meerloo was a Dutch psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who, having fled German-occupied Holland in 1942, and survived torture by the Gestapo in Belgium, made a name for himself in British and U.S. medical establishments. By the early 1950s, he had undertaken an examination of the supposedly new phenomena of "brainwashing...
The Maddening Equivocation of Dianne Feinstein
Posted on December 03, 2008Anyone else confused (again) by DiFi? She's not my Senator, but in January, she'll become the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Feinstein's ambiguity on torture is puzzling, to say the least. On November 26: Feinstein stated: [..] that she wants to see the closure of Guantanamo Bay within one year and to outlaw "once and for all" the nation's use of torture...
News From The Torture-Endangered Society
Posted on December 02, 2008The torture-endangered society is no invention of mine; rather, it's a description by medical ethicist Dr. Steven Miles from an interview in 2006. A torturing society is a society that is abraded by the process of dehumanization. In that process, we essentially create our own mirrored netherworlds...
Another View of the Blowback of War
Posted on December 02, 2008In an earlier diary the effect of detention on the detainees was discussed. Today a review of the effect on an interrogator is the issue at hand. In case you missed the article in Sunday's Washington Post, this is worth a read. The author, Matthew Alexander, is a 14-year Air Force veteran who writes about his experience in Iraq as an interrogator...
Message from Sami al-Hajj / AI
Posted on December 02, 2008I know some of you have probably received this message from Amnesty International, but we can use all the good news we can get . . . and Sami al-Hajj is a testament to the fact that together, we can make a difference. By writing letters, signing petitions, participating in Action Appeals, and most of all, keeping the names of the detainees in search engines, making sure that their names and stories aren't forgotten, small things add up...
World AIDS Day
Posted on December 01, 2008I don't know about y'all, but when someone tells me what a great communicator Ronald Reagan was, I have a different take on his "legacy." My name is Ryan White. I am sixteen years old. I have Hemophilia, and I have AIDS. When I was three days old, the doctors told my parents I was a severe Hemophiliac, meaning my blood does not clot...
Honor Killing, $100
Posted on December 01, 2008Every time anyone begins to think the situation in Iraq cannot get any worse, another new news item comes along. Today is the story of honor killings for sale.Authorities in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have admitted they are powerless to prevent 'honour killings' in the city following a 70 per cent increase in religious murders during the past year...
Monday Night Book Club: Fear Up Harsh by Tony Lagouranis
Posted on December 01, 2008Death crosses the line, but you know, torture doesn't. -- Spc. Tony Lagouranis (Ret.) in Fear Up Harsh Tony Lagouranis never expected to become a torturer. He didn't even really want to be a soldier. But at 30, he had a facility with languages and wanted to learn Arabic...
Let's ask Obama to have New Orleans musicians play at the Inaugural
Posted on November 29, 2008(NOTE: This diary was originally posted on Daily Kos by azureblue, a musician who got his start in New Orleans. Per a request he made to readers in a comment under that diary, I am crossposting it here--because he and I feel this is an idea that needs as much attention and exposure as possible so hopefully Obama will pick up on it...
After Mumbai, Neighbors With Nukes
Posted on November 29, 2008This was not terror - not as Indians understood it. This was war. -- Anand Girihadaras, The New York Times This week's terror attacks in Mumbai have been characterized as India's 9/11. With the siege over, the death toll at 200 and counting, all eyes on Pakistan and the near-certainty of Indian retribution: Terrible things, we think, always happen to other people...
Friday After No Thanksgiving
Posted on November 28, 2008Whereas Thanksgiving isn't a holiday I observe, and whereas I have almost no microexpression control; rather, the kind of "open book" face that all the polite, soft-spoken excuses and apologies can't front for the contempt and shame I feel about The Massacre For Which Thanksgiving Is Named (many thanks to Winter Rabbit), I was the Grinchette who worked all day and evening on Thanksgiving...
Help APA Anti-Torture Candidate Win Election
Posted on November 28, 2008Monday, December 1, will be the last day members of the American Psychological Association can vote for president of the organization. Members can vote online at this link. They should cast their vote for the only progressive candidate standing for election, Steven J...
Updates on Hamdan, Jawad, & the Army Field Manual Controversy
Posted on November 26, 2008[I apologize for posting some material that is repetitive of other recent posts. But the material on the Army Field Manual is the raison d'etre of the piece, so please bear with me...] While the drama over the assemblage of Obama's so-called "team of rivals" continues, pressed on by the near-total collapse of the U...
They write letters by night
Posted on November 26, 2008Kevin Hayden posts another in his series of interviews with attorneys representing Guantanamo prisoners, this time with Buz Eisenberg. Like the others, it's a must read for all who'd like to know what's actually involved in George Bush's detention and interrogation policies...
Prisoner Abuse Continues in Iraqi Jail
Posted on November 26, 2008For the first time since the American invasion of Iraq, foreign journalists were given access to an Iraqi prison. Two BBC News reports (here and here) tell the tale of their reporter's findings in Rusafa Prison, Baghdad, Iraq.Inside a small dimly lit room, the first sight was the iron-framed double bunks, packed together and hung with plastic bags, clothes and towels...
Hamdan Released- Even Bush Knows The Gig Is Up
Posted on November 25, 2008As first reported last night and confirmed this morning Salim Hamdan has been flown back to Yemen. There was considerable concern that Bush would continue to hod him in Guantanamo even after he served his sentence but it seems that even Bush understands there are limits to his outrageous conduct...
Capitalist Follies: Rancheros Visitadores, Citigroup, and the CIA
Posted on November 24, 2008A posting the other day, quoting Chris Floyd on the machinations of the U.S. power elite, prompted a regular reader of mine to send a very interesting link to a story a friend of his worked on over the past few years. As reported by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connolly, Alejandro Tomas, a senior faculty member at Seattle Central Community College, has assembled a startling photo essay on one of the conclaves where the rich and privileged meet...
Algerian Detainee Release Rejected by Bush Administration
Posted on November 23, 2008In spite of their being ruled not "enemy combatants" the Algerian detainees, Mustapha Ait Iidr, Boudelaa El Hadj, Lakhdar Boumedien, Nechla Ahmed, and Ahmed Saber are not up for release any time soon according to an administration spokesman. An unconfirmed report in the Arabic press tells the tale...
Kenya
Posted on November 23, 2008When future historioranters analyze the data from this past election, at least one thing will be abundantly clear: of all the nations in Africa, Kenya played the largest role in America's 2008 electoral process. It hadn't been expected to be so - the odds were on perennial favorites like Egypt, South Africa, the still un-interdicted Sudanese Genocide, or that nutjob in Zimbabwe - but there Kenya was, looming like Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti...
Judge Rejects Forced Confession of Mohammed Jawad
Posted on November 22, 2008The ACLU reports that a U.S. military judge at Guantanamo has rejected the confession of Mohammed Jawad, age 22 or 23, because the confession was obtained under coercion. A representative for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who was present at the hearing at the tribunal at the US military base in Cuba, revealed that Jawad's confession had been rejected as evidence in the case...
How Guantanamo Can Be Closed
Posted on November 22, 2008Have I told you lately that when Andy Worthington has something to say, I'm gonna listen? Mr. Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, an extraordinary compendium of biographies of 774 illegally detained individuals of Bush's War on Terra, is a journalist and historian, whose work is often featured at Huffington Post, FireDogLake and CagePrisoners, to name a just a few...
Federal judge rejects enemy combatant charges against Guantanamo prisoners
Posted on November 21, 2008Today the Bush administration suffered its fourth major defeat since June in litigation over detentions at Guantanamo. This ruling by US District Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee, is the most devastating yet. He'd been expected to favor the government, not least because in 2005 Leon had ruled that the detainees have no habeas rights...
Sitting Bull Was Right
Posted on November 21, 2008http://digilander.libero.it/Bo... Historical revisionists of American Indian history portray indigenous people being as violent as white Europeans were before they arrived on this continent and after settlement. Consequently, HBO's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was no exception in the scene with Sitting Bull and Col Nelson Miles on the Buffalo Robe, as Miles justified the genocide he was committing as "You were as violent as we are, we're doing the same thing to you that you did to them (paraphrasing)...
The Guantanamo Decision-A Stark Truth Revealed
Posted on November 21, 2008(With apologies to Smintheus, whose excellent post on the same case has already appeared, here is my take on one aspect of why the Boumediene case is significant moving forward.) November 20, 2008 was a long awaited but still historic day. For the first time, a US Court has heard and decided on Habeas Corpus petitions of Guantanamo prisoners...
Michael Mukasey is unhappy
Posted on November 21, 2008Attorney General Michael Mukasey is unhappy about losing the first two Guantanamo habeas corpus reviews. Yesterday's defeat was especially galling because the judge responsible for saying that the government's evidence against the prisoners was garbage, Richard Leon, is himself a reliable Republican partisan...
A Woman Buried Alive: Update on the Siddiqui Case
Posted on November 20, 2008More details are emerging on the news that purported Al Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Arrested last summer, and wounded after supposedly grabbing for a U.S. soldier's rifle, Siddiqui was given a Forensic Evaluation Report at FMC Carsville Texas Hospital, where she is currently held...
The Forgotten Men: New UC Report on "Guantanamo and its Aftermath"
Posted on November 17, 2008Last summer, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First released Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the U.S.. The study looked at medical and psychological evidence of the costs of torture by eleven men who endured such abuse by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay...
Monday Night Book Club: The Kite Runner
Posted on November 17, 2008I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it...
The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
Posted on November 17, 2008"Whatever the truth, it is immaterial. Nothing justifies the depths of sadism that the US government and its lackeys routinely descend to." --Najma Sadeque, Pakistan-based rights activist and senior journalist, referring to the treatment meted out to Dr...
This is the End of the Arrogance
Posted on November 15, 2008Will he or won't he? Mad speculation, rumor and "sources close to the President-Elect" nonwithstanding, only Barack Obama knows the content and order of his priorities. ("Sources close to" may well know, but they aren't yacking it up on the teevee talk panels or writing Op-Eds...
Guantánamo Bay was bad enough - Bagram is worse
Posted on November 14, 2008Bagram Air Base is an American facility 47 kilometers (27 miles) north of Kabul. The base was built by the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan. Today the base is the busiest facility of its type in Afghanistan as well as a detention center housing more than 600 prisoners...
Influential Talk-Show Host Shifts Position: Cheney To The Hague
Posted on November 13, 2008For 30 straight years KGO has been the most listened-to AM radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. From dusk till dawn, it can also be heard throughout the entirety of the west coast, from Canada to Mexico. KGO pioneered the talk-radio format, long before it was seized and exploited by the rightwing noise machine...
British Teen Allowed Right to Die
Posted on November 13, 2008Where does the responsibility of society end and the right of an individual take over? The argument continues day by day, but at least one young person has been given the right to make her own decisions as to some parts of the end of her life. The youngster is refusing a lifesaving heart transplant against the wishes of local doctors and hospital personnel...
Cautionary letter to American Psychological Association President Kazdin
Posted on November 13, 2008Jean Maria Arrigo and Mike Wessells, two members of the American Psychological Association's infamous PENS task force (Psychological Ethics and National Security), have written to letter to APA President Kazdin warning of the dangers of repeating PENS flaws in the process of the Implementation Committee for the recently passed APA referendum banning psychologists working in detention centers operating outside of or in violation of international law or the Constitution...
Influencing People, Losing Friends
Posted on November 13, 2008Where I come from in Kentucky, folk wisdom says you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Payanda Muhammad is an example of mistreatment of human beings leading to their turning to a new cause. On the outskirts of Kabul is Pul-i-Charkhi prison...
NO to Proposal for New Terrorist Courts
Posted on November 11, 2008It's with a great deal of hope that Barack Obama will be inaugurated President next January. In regards to the Bush Administration's policy on torture and indefinite detention, as represented by the ongoing incarceration of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base, Obama announced in August 2007: "As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions...
Monday Night Book Club: Poems from Guantánamo
Posted on November 10, 2008This is a modified version of a previous story, with some added content. Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life. Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free, but they are slaves...
Monday Open Thread and Science News
Posted on November 10, 2008From the no kidding department comes the ideaChildren of immigrants who enter school with low math and reading skills have a better chance of catching up with their peers if they attend a school with high-performing students, well-supported teachers and services to families of English as a second language (ESL) childrenNow who in their right mind would have thought any less...
Communities of Rumor and the American Electorate
Posted on November 08, 2008I really can't understand people who look at Sarah Palin, who listen to her obvious incompetence, and see an inspiring leader and future President. Or people who felt the same way about George W. Bush in 2000. Or people who not only hate gay marriage, but honestly believe that it's the greatest threat that faces America today...
Voting To End Torture
Posted on November 08, 2008"Instead of allowing this President--or any President--to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered...
With Government MIA, Pakistani Quake Victims Obtain Aid From "Terrorists"
Posted on November 08, 2008With government aid sporadic or non-existent, survivors of the October 29 6.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked the impoverished Pakistani province of Baluchistan are receiving assistance from local Islamist groups, some of which the US has condemned as "terrorist organizations...
Renewal of Hope
Posted on November 06, 2008President-Elect Obama on human rights, torture and Guantanamo. 91 pages of emails and documents produced through FOIA request have shed new light on the treatment of two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident in military jails within the United States...
Close Down Those Black Holes Of Human Rights And Decency, Mr. Obama!
Posted on November 06, 2008Dear Mr. President-elect Barack H. Obama; My heartfelt congratulations on your election to the office of the President of the United States of America. I understand that you must be quite busy in these hectic days following election night, and consequently I shall be brief and to the point...
Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul Gets Life in Prison
Posted on November 05, 2008In a post earlier this week, Valtin reported a verdict had been reached in the trial of Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul. In the excitement of yesterday's election his sentencing passed almost without note. al-Bahlul has been sentenced to life in prison...
Barack Hussein Obama: President Of The United States
Posted on November 04, 2008Pennsylvania has been called by MSNBC for Obama. So I'm going to say it. Retaining all the 2004 Kerry states, and picking up (at least) Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, Barack Hussein Obama becomes the next president of the United States. There's a new sheriff in town...
Polls Close In Six States
Posted on November 04, 2008The polls have closed in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, and Vermont. Vermont has been called for Obama. Kentucky for McCain. No surprises there. If Obama carries Virginia, he wins. Markos claims he has done just that. If he carries Indiana, it will signal a rout--349-390 EVs for Obama...
What The Wingnuts Are Saying
Posted on November 04, 2008Tracking in real time the bloviations of rightist radio gasbags and their tube-looney cronies, on election day 2008, as their world--finally--falls apart.
Curious timing
Posted on November 03, 2008On the very eve of the presidential election, George Bush & Co. finally got to unveil a conviction of somebody accused of having at least some role in the September 11, 2001 attack. They've spent years paying little attention to bin Laden himself and doing nothing to charge the hundreds of alleged terrorists they've locked up without trial at Guantanamo Bay - and in who knows how many other secret prisons around the world...
Monday Open Thread and News
Posted on November 03, 2008Do you feel it yet? The end of the Reagan Era is almost at hand. There is an almost palpable excitement and sense of joy, with no small degree of relief all about us. But don't rest just yet. Don't be complacent. We need to do whatever we can over the next 30 hours to GOTV...
An Educator Hears A Dog Whistle in the Obamamercial
Posted on November 02, 2008Senator Obama didn't spend a whole to of time during last night's infomercial on education policy, but in the few seconds he did talk about it, he managed to send a chill down the spine of at least one Denver-area teacher when he held up as an example of positive change the Mapleton School District in Thornton, Colorado...
Sami al Haj: From Guantanamo Bay to Al Jazeera
Posted on November 01, 2008Sami Al Haj was was working as a cameraman for al-Jazeera in December 2001. As a Sudanese citizen he was covering the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. The tale begins with his transit into Afghanistan through Pakistan.Pakistani authorities arrested him at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in December 2001 and turned him over to American authorities in January 2002, to make a little cash...
Saturday Open Thread and News of the Day
Posted on November 01, 2008Saturday morning and all is well in Possum Valley. The news of the day is mixed this morning. There is much of note for pondering today. Beginning with an op-ed by Audrey Macklin of the University of Toronto School of Law, we get an analysis of the Omar Khadr trial at Guantanamo...
Halloween/Guavaween Blogging
Posted on October 31, 2008I had planned to write about the legendary witch-hunts brought from Europe and England to this country by the Puritans, and the culture of witch-hunting still prevalent today, but some work got in the way and most of mi amigos are GOTV with only 4 days until the election...
"Because Every Detainee Is Important . . . . "
Posted on October 30, 2008A civilian CIA contractor accused of beating an Afghan detainee who later died in custody was found guilty of assault. David Passaro is the first person affiliated with the spy agency to be convicted in a post-September 11 abuse case. As we have so often read of other murderers, he "looked just like the guy next door...
Mohammed Jawad Confession Tossed by Judge
Posted on October 29, 2008Army Col. Stephen Henley said Mohammed Jawad's statementswere obtained by physical intimidation and threats of death which, under the circumstances, constitute torture. The judge went even further sayingThe relevant inquiry is whether the threat was specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering upon another person within the interrogator's custody or control...
My Nominee for the NION Video Awards 2008
Posted on October 29, 2008So I was sitting around, bemoaning the fact that Jackson Browne is coming to my city this Saturday (just a regular ole' concert, not a Barack thing) and that since I'd only heard about it today, the prices of the remaining seats are well out of a teacher's entertainment budget...
. . . And Justice For Whom?
Posted on October 28, 2008What will be the legacy of George W. Bush? I can't imagine a single volume of history will ever fully answer that question, but the word "justice" will likely be absent from the historical record. Our self-described "war president" has never shown an interest in that which is fair or just...
Monday Night Book Club: Oath Betrayed
Posted on October 27, 2008Soldiers are trained to kill and doctors to heal. At least that's how we usually understand those two professions. --Dr. Steven Miles of Physicians For Human Rights. There are literally tens of thousands of FOIA requests on the ACLU website, categorized as Government Documents on Torture Freedom of Information Act...
Remembering Paul Wellstone
Posted on October 26, 2008On October 25, 2002, Senator Paul Wellstone diedin a charter jet crash that also took the lives of his wife, Sheila, daughter Marcia, three political aides and the plane's two pilots. Wellstone was 58. Wellstone's time in the Senate was marked by devotion to liberal causes, including work on affordable health care, family leave, and a new farm bill...
RedSKINS & HATE CRIMES
Posted on October 26, 2008Source The Indian removals which destroyed one quarter of the Cherokee tribe, were actually conceptualized by Jefferson and then extended and carried out by Jackson. There were great debates about whether the "redskins" were human and whether they had souls...
Unit 731: Biological Warfare & Human Medical Experimentation
Posted on October 25, 2008The story of United States research into and use of biological weapons remains a huge blank spot in the known history of this country. There have been attempts to document this history, but much remains classified or has been destroyed. The use of biological weapons dovetails with U...
Open Thread and Science Friday
Posted on October 24, 2008Science never fails to offer new and exciting news on a regular basis. Today I have a few offerings. For more see the website, e! Science News. Next time you see your physician for a chronic illness, be sure you are getting real medicine and not a placebo...
Hu Jia Wins EU Sakharov Prize
Posted on October 23, 2008Named for the physicist, Andrei Sakharov, the EU awardsthe annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in order to honour individuals or organisations for their efforts on behalf of human rights and fundamental freedoms and against oppression and injusticeThis year the prize is awared to Hu Jia, the Chinese dissident jailed in the Spring of this year for his actions in China...
"These Three Men Were Sacrificed To Show The United States That Canada Was Doing Something"
Posted on October 22, 2008A Canadian inquiry has determined that false and inflammatory information passed by Canadian officials to the United States contributed to the detention and torture of three Canadian men in Syria. Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati, and Muayyed Nureddin, Canadian citizens all, were arrested while visiting Syria, then imprisoned and tortured there as suspected "Islamic extremists," "terrorists," "Al Qaeda procurement officers," and the like...
"Interrogation Psychologists" and the Allure of "National Security Psychology"
Posted on October 22, 2008Martha Davis Ph.D., a Clinical Psychologist and a Visiting Scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, has produced an important new documentary, Interrogation Psychologists: The Making of a Professional Crisis". The film premiered at a conference entitled "The Interrogation and Torture Controversy: Crisis in Psychology," held at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Center on Terrorism in New York City on September 12, 2008...
Evening Open Thread
Posted on October 21, 2008You remember the War on Terror, don't you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here? Surely, you recall...
U.S. Drops Charges (Sorta, Kinda) Against Binyam Mohamed, 4 Others
Posted on October 21, 2008The Pentagon announced Tuesday it has dropped war crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor for all cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense. The five detainees are Noor Uthman Muhammed, Binyam Mohamed, Sufyiam Barhoumi, Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi and Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani...
Bush to Keep Guantanamo Open
Posted on October 20, 2008In spite of past statements supporting closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, this will not happen under the current administration.President George W. Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials...
Monday Night Book Club: October 20, 2008
Posted on October 20, 2008Good evening, and welcome to the grand opening of NION's Monday Night Book Club. I'll be your hostess. I want to thank you all and encourage you to be comfortable, have a tea or coffee or adult beverage of your choice (or a virtual tall hazelnut cappuccino with a shot of vanilla) and join me in a discussion of books which I plan to start every Monday night, but due to this marvels of the 'tubes, we can continue at our leisure throughout the week...
New Details on BSCT-led Torture of Mohammad Jawad
Posted on October 19, 2008Newsweek has a new article out giving more information on the role of a Guantanamo military psychologist working for the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) that interrogated "child prisoner" Mohammad Jawad. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Diane M...
Alexa Foresees New Powell Doctine: "His Name Was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, And He Was An American"
Posted on October 19, 2008Back in July, amid the fuss over Barry Blitt's New Yorker cover--the one that portrayed Barack and Michelle Obama as gun-toting, flag-burning, Osama-respecting Muslims--Alexa posted here a diary that asked: Is there something wrong with being Muslim? What message do the heated denials and debates send out to Arab Americans, and to our own children, when Barack Obama is challenged about being "as far as I know" (not Muslim)? ...
Weekend Open Thread and Book Club Info
Posted on October 18, 2008Hola, mis amigos. Are you lovin' the change of seasons as much as I am? (We don't really have seasons per se in Florida, but the slightly cooler weather and the autumn and Halloween decorations are rockin' in my 'hood.) I want to start a new feature here at NION, the Monday Night Book Club...
Marching Straight Towards Authoritarianism
Posted on October 17, 2008Whenever a civilian government either outsources its responsibilities in matters domestic and/or foreign affairs, whether to corporations, security agencies and/or the military, then it is safe to say that it is the beginning of the end of democratic governance - ultimately leading to authoritarian corporatocracy, security state and/or military junta ...
Guantanamo Interpreters' Accuracy Questioned
Posted on October 16, 2008As if there were not enough problems with the ongoing military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, now comes word the interpreters may not be as accurate as one may hope or assume. In his recent pre-trial hearing Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national, was speaking in Arabic while Marine Col...
Bush Approved Torture in Secret Memos
Posted on October 15, 2008As many have long suspected we get news today that what we thought is confirmed.The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspectsThe memos were signed to protect the interests of people worried about future prosecution for their actions...
The New (Old) Solution Of Neocons: More Nukes!
Posted on October 14, 2008Neocons prove once again that they just can't live without an "all fearful enemy" to contend with. They've missed the USSR so much, they've kept trying to make Russia the same at its former monolithic "Iron Curtain" incarnation (hence their predictable, wrongheaded and misinforming reaction with regards to the latest Georgia crisis)...
Things Keep Their Secrets
Posted on October 14, 2008for alexa I live in the high foothills of northern California, along the Cascade-Sierra divide, on land where Ishi once lived. Ishi, "the last of the Yahi." The marooned American Indian famously portrayed, with no little sympathy, by Theodora Kroeber in Ishi In Two Worlds...
The Trail of Tears
Posted on October 13, 2008In Hopkinsville, KY, near the place of my birth where my brother lives still is a campground and park located on the grounds of an encampment on the fabled "Trail of Tears." Used in 1838 and 1839 the ground includes the graves of two Cherokee chiefs, White Path and Fly Smith, who died during the time of the encampment...
Anacaona, Taino Princess
Posted on October 13, 2008The story of Anacaona is one of both courage and tragedy, a story that lends itself to considerable reworking in the historical imagination. In reading various online resources, some of which provide references to published works, I have tried to keep in mind that everything we know about Anacaona comes to us not from indigenous sources, we receive what we know from Spanish colonial chronicles, which means that, at best, our knowledge will always be secondhand, incomplete, and a product of colonialism itself...
Columbus: Religious Fanatic and Holy Warrior
Posted on October 13, 2008I thought I'd excerpt a passage or two from David Stannard's book, American Holocaust, a book published in 1992 - five centuries after Columbus began his reign of terror in the Americas. There are numerous passages I could quote, but this one caught my eye due to its placement of Columbus in the context, the Zeitgeist, of Renaissance-era Europe...
The First Americans
Posted on October 12, 2008The First People were here long before a Spanish admiral set sail to please his queen and set his place in history as an explorer who "discovered" their homeland. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last Ice Age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago, through a land-bridge across the Bering Sound, from northeastern Siberia into Alaska...
A Brief History of Guantanamo Bay
Posted on October 12, 2008This diary was originally posted at NION in celebration of the site's opening, but No Columbus Day seemed like an appropriate time to revisit an extraterritorial hellhole whose history was touched by the hand of Cristofo Colon himself. Indeed, it was Christopher Columbus himself who first rendered the name Guantanamo in a European language, and the British once held the bay as a trophy from the War of Jenkin's Ear...
The National Disgrace Of Columbus Day
Posted on October 12, 2008For Winter Rabbit. We've all been lied to about Christopher Columbus. Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, he was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Columbus initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade...
The Borders of Hispaniola
Posted on October 12, 2008A Spaniard I was born yesterday In the afternoon I became French And an Ethiopian during the night Today they say I am British What shall I be tomorrow? --from Haiti, c. 1900; author unknown. In The Farming of the Bones, Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat vividly detailed the 1937 mass murder of at least 30,000 Haitians at the behest of the Dominican Republic's el maximo jefe Rafael Trujillo...
Saturday "No Columbus Day" News and Open Thread
Posted on October 11, 2008To say that the world is becoming more aware is to damn technology with faint praise. The world is learning. As everyone but the Republican Presidential nominee knows "how to Google," the instant information decried by some as leading to short attention spans and decreased concentration still, to me, is a marvel...
Baracoa, A Beginning
Posted on October 11, 2008cross-posted and updated from The Dream Antilles Across the Caribbean from desde Desdemona is Baracoa, a small town inaccessible by land from before 1500 (when Colombus first landed there) until the 1960's. In 1512 Baracoa was the first Spanish settlement in Cuba...
Christopher Columbus & His Crimes Against Humanity
Posted on October 11, 2008Christopher Columbus: The Christian Crusades had ended in 1291, the Black Death had been deliberately blamed on innocent Jews who said what their Christian torturers forced them to, that they poisoned water wells, causing the Black Death. Of course, the real cause was in the stomachs of fleas, not planetary alignment, earthquakes, or God's Judgment...
Debut Today: New Website Streams Torture Documentary
Posted on October 10, 2008From the press release from the people who are bringing us the new documentary, Torturing Democracy: Award-winning producer Sherry Jones presents a comprehensive documentary - more than 18 months in the making - that examines America's detention and interrogation practices in the "war on terror" in Torturing Democracy, premiering Thursday, October 16 at 9 p...
From Ignorance To Fear, From Fear To Hate ...
Posted on October 10, 2008The current smearing "strategy" of the McCain-Palin campaign is, simply put, criminal. Here are a few samples of those "good Americans" attending McCain-Palin rallies: (h/t) (h/t) Obama's a terrorist. Look at his name and bloodline. Obama hangs out with terrorists...
Whistleblowers Claim US Eavesdropping on Americans
Posted on October 10, 2008An ABC News account today tells the tale of US monitoring of calls made by Americans.hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia...
Domestic Spying Abuse: You Were Warned
Posted on October 10, 2008What was that I wrote a while back about Security Agencies? Ah, yes: It is a given, demonstrated fact that governmental security agencies are not seekers of truth, but seekers of guilt. Whenever they are given any powers to spy on their own citizens, they will do so - for reasons frivolous, paranoid or (apparently very rarely as shown so far) actually justified...
Battle Over Habeas -- Torture Inc. Comes to America
Posted on October 09, 2008The decision today by the D.C. Court of Appeals to reverse Judge Ricardo Urbina's decision yesterday to release 17 Uighur Muslim prisoners held indefinitely at Guantanamo Naval Base prison can best be understood in the light of an important related news story...
Open Thread: 2,464 Days of Illegal Imprisonment
Posted on October 09, 2008An excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation...
No Columbus Day: Saturday - Monday
Posted on October 09, 2008Amigos: At Never In Our Names we plan to have a blog celebration and tribute to First People (tribal, indigenous and migrant individuals) to protest the national holiday for Columbus. Beginning Saturday, October 11 and through Monday, October 13, we invite stories and essays, music, video, art, culture, anything related to First People, in English, Spanish or both languages...
Justice Delayed ... Then Denied
Posted on October 09, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about those 17 unfortunate Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) being detained in Gitmo for over seven years even if they have been deemed as not being enemy combatants and not security risks. The good news was a Federal Court judge ordered their immediate release...
Gitmo INSIDE the U.S. - Documents Detail Detainee Being Held Was Near Insanity
Posted on October 08, 2008(I'm not good with this type of thing, but I thought it needed to be noticed.) Pentagon officials were warned in 2002 that an American detainee was on the brink of insanity due to months of isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by the AP...
So-Called Sins Of The Mother and Father (Children in Detention)
Posted on October 08, 2008After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father's activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States...
Sami al-Hajj: 'Thank you, Guantanamo'
Posted on October 08, 2008The headline seems too good to be true. Sami al-Haji was detained at Guantanamo Bay for more than 6 years during which time he was questioned many times. A cameraman for al-Jazeera, al-Haji was released at last without charges. al-Hajihas decided, with the collaboration of Al-Jazeera, to establish a department to defend human rights and freedoms in the world, to be a basket for news and reports about abuses and to present them to the public...
Federal judge rules that prisoners' detention at Guantanamo is unconstitutional
Posted on October 07, 2008A federal court has for the second time in a little over three months delivered a stunning rebuke of the US government's justification for detaining suspects without trial at Guantanamo Bay prison. The first case concerned a single Uighur prisoner, Huzaifa Parhat, who brought suit under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 for a habeas-like court review of his own detention at Gitmo...
Support No Troops
Posted on October 07, 2008"Zarqawi felt my son's breath on his hand as held the knife against his throat. Zarqawi had to look in his eyes when he did it. George Bush sits there glassy-eyed in his office with pieces of paper and condemns people to death." --Michael Berg Those who oppose the War On Terra but who nonetheless feel compelled to express "support" for "our troops" might reflect that, without those troops, there would be no war...
Afghanistan: Could It Be True? Peace On The Horizon?
Posted on October 06, 2008It is high time that the ludicrous war, that FUBAR, in Afghanistan ended by putting aside incompetence and finally acting competently in the matter: Sources: Taliban split with al Qaeda, seek peace Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with the Afghan government to end the country's bloody conflict -- and are severing their ties with al Qaeda, sources close to the historic discussions have told CNN...
Listen To You, Listen To Her
Posted on October 05, 2008This is a follow-up to Nezua's 'Born Under A Blood Red Moon,' and the second installment in a series about violence against women. -- a. So you think you're a good listener? Maybe you are. But I'll ask you this: Do you listen to yourself? This, I know, isn't always the easiest thing to do...
The McCain Relocation
Posted on October 05, 2008John McCain was out of the torturous grip of the North Vietnamese for approximately one year when Congress passed Public Law 93-531 in 1974. Public Law 93-531 was called the Relocation Act, and was falsely justified by what "Peabody Coal Company's public relations and lobbying firms" falsely constructed as the "Hopi-Navajo land dispute...
Poem Against Land Theft, McCain, & Hate Crimes
Posted on October 05, 2008Esoteric spiritual madness has accompanied me as I have watched the continuing web of land theft spreading, still, from the Arctic to across the United States. I know why, but I don't know why. I have watched Manifest Destiny pair with Climate Change on what is a repetition of land theft from the gun to the gavel...
Nezua's 'Born Under A Blood Red Moon'
Posted on October 04, 2008You know, I have often asked here: "What is wrong with women?" I ask this question as a woman who deplores our cultural bias against women, which is often exploited and glorified by the media in films. In last year's Captivity (which is, after the first 30 minutes, torture porn, plain and simple), we saw the beautiful female actress kidnapped, raped, beaten, tortured so horrifically I couldn't finish watching, and what did she say? What were the first words she spoke after being brutalized? "I'm sorry...
No Countries. No Religion, Too.
Posted on October 04, 2008Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace. . . -- John Lennon, Imagine Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W...
Open Thread: Jackson Browne's 'Going Down To Cuba'
Posted on October 04, 2008Some smoove for your Monday listening pleasure. This is from Jackson Browne's new Time The Conqueror. Sometimes I get to feeling low Wish I could just pick up and go somewhere new Change my point of view Maybe somewhere I don't know Toss the idea to and fro Not sure what makes it come and go There it is again: sweet music on the wind Over the Gulf of Mexico I'm going to down to Cuba someday soon Following that Caribbean moon It's been too long since I've been there I'm going down to Cuba with my friends Down where the rhythm never ends Where women wear gardenias in their hair People will tell you it's not easy You're not supposed to go, they say They say that Cuba is the enemy I'm going down there anyway I'm going down to Cuba to see my friends Down where the rhythm never ends No problem is too difficult to solve Yeah times are tough down there it's true But you know they're going to make it through They make such continuous use of the verb to resolve They've got to deal with that embargo Enough to drive any country insane They might not know the things you and I know They do know what to do in a hurricane Maybe I'll go through Mexico Old Jesse Helms don't have to know Anyway all the allies of the USA Travel to Cuba everyday I'm going down to Cuba to see my friends Down where the rhythm never ends Where by comparison my trouble will just unravel I'm North American, you know Don't like to hear where I can't go Free people will insist on the freedom to travel I'm going to drink the rum mojito And walk out on the Malecon In one hand a Monte Cristo And in the other an ice cream cone I'm going down to Cuba with my band We're going to formulate a plan Whereby we obtain that cultural permission If I told you once I told you thrice It'll put a smile on your face to see a Chevrolet with a Soviet transmission I bet the country cast a spell And there are things I think of still Like the beauty of that woman that spoke to me In the Hotel Nacional I'm gonna book my flight today I'm definitely on my way Just hold my place and I'll get back in the race And I'm back in the USA
Big Victory: APA Informs Bush -- No Psychologists at Military Interrogations
Posted on October 03, 2008Readers of this blog know that dissident psychologists, along with human rights and anti-torture organizations and individuals have been working for years now to get the American Psychological Association to change its policy of supporting the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, CIA black-site prisons, and other governmental sites involved in Bush's Global War on Terror...
Operation Enduring Fiefdom "Doomed"; We "Have Assumed The Place Of The Soviets"
Posted on October 02, 2008French officials mortified by President Nikolas Sarkozy's suicidal embrace of Operation Enduring Fiefdom--George II's adventure in Afghanistan--have leaked to the uppity French weekly Le Canard Enchaine a classified cable relating that the British envoy to Afghanistan has concluded that "American strategy is doomed to fail...
Jefferson's Wall Of Separation
Posted on October 01, 2008An article in the Boston Globe documents how Bush has claimed the right to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.) Accomplices in this assault on our democracy include the religious right which would intrude into our personal lives to determine our rights and freedoms...
What Is The "Cancer On The Body Democratic"?
Posted on October 01, 2008Considering that the McSame-Obama race remains statistically close, despite eight years of Bush-Cheney lies, abuse of power and incompetence and despite all the McSame-Palin lies, gaffes and outright goofyness, and considering that things are not much better nowadays in my country Canada, I thought that it would be quite ŕ propos to dust off an old post of mine from last year - one which I reference all-too-often in my current posts - and therefore repost it here (along with updated/refreshed links) at NION: ************************* A Cancer On The Body Democratic (Updated below) (Update II) Alternative title: The Root Of All Our Problems - In Real Life And In The Blogosphere...
Further Blurring of the First Amendment
Posted on September 30, 2008The First Amendment statesCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances...
A Colonel Takes on the Torturers: More on SERE Torture Details
Posted on September 29, 2008At the center of the bottom of the lowest circle of hell, one finds the souls abandoned to torture. They are placed so far from heaven and earth because they are totally forgotten. The witnessing of their torture is almost unnoticed, trivial, when matched against the "great" issues of the day...
Politics and the English Language
Posted on September 28, 2008In 1946 George Orwell published an essay entitled Politics and the English Language. Orwell's words ring true today as they did more than 60 years ago.Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad wayWe hear our leaders misuse and abuse the language on a daily basis...
Action: Protest burial of women in Pakistan? Get buried.
Posted on September 28, 2008Please join me in protest: Three more women allegedly buried in same way as five women buried in Balochistan. Source: ICAHK The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is shocked to learn that three more women have been buried alive in Balochistan province, a few days after they protested against the live burial of five women taking place in the same province...
Muslim Children Gassed At Ramadan Prayer in Ohio
Posted on September 28, 2008Tuesday marks the final day of this year's Ramadan, the month-long observance by Muslims of fasting and prayer. The observance of Laylatul Qadr, the Night of Degrees or Night of Measures designates the Angel Jilal bringing the Book of Allah, the last book of the Qur'an to the world, and is always observed on the 27th day of Ramadan...
Detention and Immigration in the Closing Society
Posted on September 27, 2008What do these terms mean, a "closed society" or "closing society?" The most obvious example of a present day closed society I can think of is Burma. The violent crackdown in September 2007 was first reported with images from cell phone cameras. Bloggers posted photographs while their internet connections were alive...
Action: Support Ban on Chinese Food Imports
Posted on September 27, 2008Tip of the sombrera to Asinus Asinum Fricat at Daily Kos for alerting us to the European ban on food products from China. It started as thus: all the sick babies were fed a formula produced by the San Lu group, which is based at Shijiazhuang in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing...
Water Music
Posted on September 26, 2008The New York Times is reporting that Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft participated in meetings convened to discuss which methods of torture should be inflicted on Abu Zubaydah, the "insane, certifiable" Al Qaeda "gofer" who has, in our names, been imprisoned and abused for more than six years...
SASC Hits Paydirt: Full Story on SERE Torture Timeline Emerges
Posted on September 26, 2008I have not had enough time to digest the wealth of new documents recently declassified by the Senate Armed Services Committee, in conjunction with their hearings today constituting Part II of an investigation into the organization of torture and abuse of detainees in Bush's "war on terror...
Aunt Sarah
Posted on September 26, 2008There's more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underestimate it. -- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale The Christian Heritage Week Sarah Palin signed into law in Alaska sounds like a far milder version of a state-sanctioned Prayvaganza...
GITMO Prosecutor Quits
Posted on September 25, 2008Defense attorneys for Mohammed Jawad say a Guantanamo prosecutor has resigned in the face of exculpatory evidence being withheld by the Justice Department. If there ever were any hope of justice being the outcome in these military tribunals the wee small glimmer that once was that hope continues to fail as more evidence comes to light...
Genius at Work: Maya Lin and the Confluence Project
Posted on September 24, 2008I wonder why there isn't more buzz about Maya Lin's current project. Maybe because it treads so lightly on the earth, even though it is her most monumental to date, its seven component sites scattered across 465 miles of river and two states. So many things to love, like the perfectly functional fish cleaning table and sink at the completed Cape Disappointment site...
Hurricane Ike, Eight Days Later
Posted on September 24, 2008Cuba, devastated by 4 hurricanes, could unleash a mass migration in weeks In fact, Cuba sustained damage from four hurricanes: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Gustav hit the western end of Cuba as a Category 4 storm. Ike entered the east of Cuba as a strong Category 3, then shredded the full length of the island for three days...
More Cover-up? Senate Committee Renews Hearings on SERE Torture
Posted on September 22, 2008There will be a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee [SASC] this Thursday, September 25, 9:30 AM in Room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building. The meeting represents "Part II of the Committee's inquiry into the treatment of detainees in U...
Scratching my head
Posted on September 22, 2008Maybe it is the nearness of the event we've been anticipating all year - yes, the annual Ig Nobel Awards will be given out on October 2nd - or maybe it's just something in the air - and it turns out there are some unpleasant possibilities there - but for the last few days there seem to be odd science stories - headscratchers - on every side...
269-269: The Nightmare Scenarios
Posted on September 21, 2008All right, Chicken Littles. You wanna play "the sky is falling?" Okay, I'll bite. How 'bout these possible outcomes?: Cheney becomes Temporary President in January, 2009...or... casts a tie-breaking vote in Senate balloting to determine who will be Succeeder to the Decider...
Executive Power Grab in Bank Bail-Out Bill
Posted on September 20, 2008(propinas to Larry Madill at Daily Kos) Though I can't pretend to understand the ongoing financial meltdown of the last week, two items seem apparent. As a disclaimer, I don't know if these events signal a Second Depression or not. If you know, please comment...
We Stand For Nothing
Posted on September 19, 2008As a nation, as a people, what exactly do we stand for now? I'm not talking about the very commendable work done every day by individuals, activists, groups working for change as opposed to waiting for change. Let's be honest. If Obama is elected and inaugurated, change won't happen on "day one...
Center for Biological Diversity gives Palin the Bird
Posted on September 18, 2008Award season is upon us already. Kicking it off, the Center for Biological Diversity has given Alaska governor Sarah Palin its coveted Dodo Award for 2008 for her denial of human-caused global warming and her extraordinary efforts to fight off any legal protection for the polar bear...
USGS: Freshwater biodiversity collapsing in North America
Posted on September 18, 2008(Also posted at Truth & Progress.} Nearly 40 percent of fish species in North American streams, rivers and lakes are now in jeopardy . . . The 700 fishes now listed represent a staggering 92 percent increase over the 364 listed as "imperiled" in the previous 1989 study ...
Insurgent Psychologists Win Key Anti-Torture Vote
Posted on September 17, 2008The Election Committee of the American Psychological Association announced today that the referendum of APA members, in regards to prohibiting psychologist participation in settings where human rights violations take place, has passed with almost 60% of the vote...
Bad Moon Rising
Posted on September 17, 2008I see a bad moon rising, I see trouble on the way. The good news is that U.S. President George W. Bush is not going to invade Iran before he leaves office. The bad news is that he is attacking Pakistan instead. Pakistan is a U.S. ally, even though the great majority of Pakistanis wish that it wasn't...
Aafia Siddiqui Update
Posted on September 15, 2008Some background here on the strange and horrifying story of imprisoned Dr. Aafia, but the disappearance of her husband and three children is still very much a developing story. Cage Prisoners has much more information. What do I mean by "developing" story? The facts are in dispute and involve the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan...
Sarah Palin; Science or Survival of the Fittest
Posted on September 15, 2008Brutal copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund asks each of us to consider our values and the ethics of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Environmental experts also join these protectors of the natural world when they inquire, would we rather have science survive or the ideology of a singular prominent person, Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin...
Sand and Fog and Cupcakes
Posted on September 14, 2008So, gente, think you would eat a cupcake with chili peppers, cinnamon and bitter dark chocolate? Banana and guava cupcakes with plantains? Pretty zesty, no? I think there's an unspoken competition among tween mamis and Lawd haf mursy on the pobrecito who brings chocolate cupcakes, even with sprinkles or anything made from a quick mix to play/study dates...
Healthcare is a Human Right, Too
Posted on September 14, 2008Our nation today has millions of people without health insurance of any sort. Millions more find themselves underinsured under our current system of private health insurance. Martin Luther King said it very wellOf all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane...
"It's A Man's World, And These Things Will Never Stop"
Posted on September 13, 2008On July 14, three young Pakistani women en route to marriage to the young men of their choice were abducted, beaten, tortured, and buried alive by their male relatives. Two female relatives--the mother of one, the aunt of another--begged for the young women's lives...
Monkey Business on APA Anti-Torture Referendum?
Posted on September 12, 2008Stephen Soldz has a story up at Psyche, Science and Society questioning whether there has been undue interference by staff at the American Psychological Association, "rallying sentiment against the Referendum." The Referendum's key passage reads: Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e...
Deception Mixed In With Peanut-Butter
Posted on September 12, 2008One of my best friends, who moved to America a year after September 11, 2001 has never been someone to talk about what happened in that year, those first few months. But a week ago, she told me her story, and I listened. It's amazing how two sides of the story can be so different...
Privacy In Today's Electronic World
Posted on September 12, 2008In recent months there has been much discussion about the telecommunication industry and its involvement in warrantless wiretapping in response to orders from the Bush administration. What is less newsworthy in our mainstream media is the far reaching effect of legal searches brought about by the power of a subpoena...
9-11 Means Different Things to Different People
Posted on September 11, 2008I've been doing a variation of the following since September 11, 2003, which at the time marked the 30th anniversary of the US-assisted overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile, and the beginning of Pinochet's reign of terror against his own people...
11 September, 2001: "Everything Has Changed"
Posted on September 10, 2008Confessions of a skeptic follow . . . Seven years ago, after the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda in the United States, George W. Bush stated that "everything has changed" - a phrase often reiterated by him, his advisors and staff, his supporters to the present day...
Guerre Mener N'est Que Dampnacion
Posted on September 10, 2008With two-thirds of his people opposing him, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is stubbornly increasing his commitment to George II's War on Terra, dispatching additional French troops to Afghanistan to participate in Operation Enduring Fiefdom. In late August, France buried ten paratroopers ambushed and killed in Kabul province...
Your Help Is Needed To Save Lives In Haiti
Posted on September 09, 2008The floodwaters are rising as I write this, and people are dying in Haiti. Your help is urgently needed. It's impossible to overstate the crisis that back-to-back hurricanes have created in the most impoverished country in the Americas. A couple of things to consider...
Eros In Gaza
Posted on September 09, 2008Islam, like the other major religion to crib its god from Judaism, Christianity, has been shaped by its potentates to require of believers an unnatural and unhealthy sexuality. To remain true to the tenets of the faith, Muslims, like Christians, must continuously repress or redirect sexual impulses...
Bombing Civilians in Afghanistan
Posted on September 08, 2008On 8 September 2008 Human Rights Watch issued a 43 page report which shows that civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and NATO air-strikes had nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007, and that recent deadly air-strikes are "exacerbating the problem and fueling a public backlash" and that they have dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan Government and for the presence of US and NATO troops...
Life After Birth
Posted on September 08, 2008So today we must confront the fact that the American people seem at present prepared to elevate to the apex of the executive a couple of faith-addled embryo-embracers. It is right, therefore, to consider a country constrained by the sort of abortion and contraception policies condoned by the dynamic duo of John McCain and Sarah Palin, who would place the egg upon an altar...
I Need Your Help: My Letter to Guantanamo's Convening Authority
Posted on September 07, 2008The following letter has been faxed to the defense counsel of Mohammad Jawad, currently due to stand trial as part of the military tribunal process at Guantanamo. A juvenile when arrested in Afghanistan, Jawad's likely innocence, and his abuse at the hands of both Afghan and U...
Hell in Haiti - Ike Updated
Posted on September 06, 2008Update Bolded. The lower green mass at the storms edge is Haiti. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl... Already, angry seas and high winds are again hampering relief in Haiti.... the link above tells more about relief efforts. http://www.voanews.com/english...
8/29/05 And 8/29/08
Posted on September 05, 2008Following is a poem I've written to commemorate the third anniversary of Katrina and the federal flood. It is in the voice of the mother of 8-year-old and 9-year-old boys who have a disabled grandmother. While it is fiction, it's based on things people actually went through during Katrina and flood and in the aftermath...
Going Home To New Orleans
Posted on September 05, 2008How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -- Annie Dillard To lose the place where you were born and raised, went to school, learned to fly a kite, throw a softball, dance the merengue, prep for final exams, drive a car, a million small composite images that make up most of your life, and remain your touchstone to the powerful imagery of all the word "home" conjures is to spend your days haunted...
Cobalt 6
Posted on September 05, 2008Please welcome Cobalt 6, que chevere, to our blogroll. Cobalt 6 has local Virginia and national politics, continuously updated with fresh new content. Also the home of incisive political analyst (and muy funny) Kestrel9000. I want to thank Kestrel9000 also for helping me out yesterday with some coding that I had struggled with for nearly 3 weeks...
McCain, Bennet Freeze & Forced Removal of Navajo: '74 - '96
Posted on September 04, 2008Just what was one method of forced removal McCain used to bring about this? ACSA study reveals that after assembling a team of "pro-Peabody Western Coal" Indians and obtaining a false "Hopi-Navajo" Tribal Counsel designation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for these paid Tribal representatives, in the period 1974-1996, Senator McCain was able to get large bands of the Dineh-Navajo relocated off their lands, so that Peabody Western could mine the coal under their farms at nominal expense...
Why The Obsession With Palin With Louisiana Is Hurting (With Donation Info)
Posted on September 04, 2008As duplicative, repetitive diaries keep being posted about Sarah Palin on other sites, the agonizing aftermath of Gustav in Louisiana is being ignored, if it hasn't been forgotten already. Don't get me wrong--but there's plenty of time to go into Palin's issues between now and the election (though as Obama has said, we shouldn't go into Bristol's pregnancy because that's a family problem of the Palins...
How An Illinois Gal Got "Katrina Brain"
Posted on September 04, 2008I've often imagined many on NION and the various other blogs I'm a member of have been wondering why I care so much and have been so passionate in my support of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region from afar, after having been to New Orleans but once, over 30 years ago...
Louisiana Environmental Disaster: Where Are The MSM?
Posted on September 04, 2008Back in 1988 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, I can recall at least a few weeks of steady coverage by both the three major networks and cable news (just CNN at the time) of the disaster, its environmental impact, and efforts to clean it up. But the fuel oil spill that happened in Louisiana towards the end of July proves to be a much larger disaster with farther-reaching consequences--yet for some news briefs I've seen on NBC Nightly News and a couple of cable channels, there hasn't been the major coverage it should be getting...
Western hunters, fishermen cry out for responsible management of public land
Posted on September 04, 2008: Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development has issued its Recommendations for Responsible Oil and Gas Development (16-page pdf), a set of thirty-two specific policy recommendations. This document is quoted at length below with permission from SfRED, which wishes to see more public discussion of these issues...
Robert Jay Lifton on APA, Torture, & "Socialization to Evil"
Posted on September 03, 2008Google Video has a fascinating new posting, a work of an independent Boston documentary film maker Hermine Muskat. From the site description: Robert Jay Lifton, psychiatrist and social activist, applies psychology and psychoanalysis to an understanding of psychologists' involvement in atrocity-producing situations and the interrogation of detainees at places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib...
Katrina and Gustav An Early Assessment
Posted on September 03, 2008Well, we're working our way through clean-up and repair in the wake of a storm that reached Category 2 on the Saffer-Simpson scale here in New Orleans. Even though I firmly believe that Michael Moore is an idiot for thinking a hurricane making landfall in any populated area is a good thing for anyone, Hurricane Gustav was important for New Orleans in a number of ways...
Judge Orders Secret Torture Memos Released
Posted on September 03, 2008Written by SmileySam and posted to NION with permission - gracias, Sam. A Federal Judge has told the Feds to release the 3 Torture Memos we know some about or make their case why they shouldn't be released. NEW YORK – A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to turn over three memos that authorized the extremely harsh treatment of prisoners in CIA custody or explain by October 3 why these memos can lawfully be withheld...
Haiti After Gustav: Your Help Is Needed w/Update
Posted on September 03, 2008From Kyle at Citizen Orange, more news on the urgent need for help in Haiti. Haiti is suffering from it's very own Katrina and barely a peep can be heard about it from the U.S. Reports from the Associated Press doesn't paint a much rosier picture: "They are screaming for help," Norsil said as a U...
Afghanistan: Black Sites Up For Super WalMartification
Posted on September 02, 2008Here's a little somethin'-somethin' you won't see or hear about from the RNCC this week. "I wish someone could take the baby. It's cold here at night." -- Shakeba, 17 years old, prisoner of Bagram AFB. Behind these crumbling prison walls, in series of cold, crude cells where women sleep eight to a room, lies a medieval reality that sits just across the street from Kabul's bustling downtown district...
Security, Hallowed Be Thy Name And Dominion
Posted on September 01, 2008Now, that was quite expected:FISA court rejects ACLU request for transparency A court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act denied an ACLU motion Thursday that would have increased public scrutiny of how the Bush administration's new spying law is reviewed, according to a statement released Friday...
Undressed
Posted on August 31, 2008love The Mayor didn't speak again before they reached Orense; an idea quite strange to him had lodged in his brain. Why is it that the hate of a man--even of a man like Franco--dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence--for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end? -Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote suffering All stories resemble one another, and sorrow lies at the heart of every one...
Bush and McCain's Greatest New Orleans Hits
Posted on August 31, 2008cross posted from The Dream Antilles Hurricanes aren't the only things that spiral out of control. Rethuglican politics spiral too. They go round and round and round, reprising their greatest hits, trying to revise and rewrite and edit out their greatest failures...
On The Final Steps In "Crossing The Rubicon"
Posted on August 31, 2008Last year, I wrote the following concerning President G.W. Bush and his seeming never-ending quest for absolute dictatorial powers (emphasis added): Let us fast-forward to today and focus on the following recent news items: A) President G.W. Bush considers himself not just the Commander-in-Chief , the Decider and the Decision-Maker anymore, but also simply the Commander Guy; B) The Bush administration has stipulated that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants and therefore does not need the consent of Congress to do so; C) This is in line with the fact that President G...
Letters for Mohamad Jawad
Posted on August 29, 2008I know y'all can write some letters. Letters that in a better world would wring the salt from the reader's eyes with sorrow for the injustice of the plight of Guantanamo's Child Mohamad Jawad. Letters that reflect your passion and intelligence and resolve...
Because It Is Bitter;
Posted on August 29, 2008. . . and because it is my heart. -- Stephen Crane I don't know about y'all, but the images and voices from Hurricane Katrina haunt me. Although I was "lucky" in having moved from my hometown, New Orleans, four years before Katrina, it's still impossible to come to terms with the anger (well ...
Show this picture everywhere
Posted on August 28, 2008Tomorrow, the whole world will watch as John McCain introduces and appears with his running mate as the Republican ticket in public for the first time. The timing of the announcement is meant to achieve four key goals for the McCain campaign: 1) Keep Obama/Biden from getting the kajillion point bounce they need for the Democratic National Convention to be considered a success...
Gitmo Attorneys Extraordinary Appeal to Help Mohammad Jawad w/ Update
Posted on August 27, 2008[There's an important update at end of this article, so please don't forget to read all the way, or go ahead and skip ahead! I won't tell anyone.] Defense attorneys for Mohammad Jawad, currently on trial in Bush's crooked military tribunal system at Guantanamo, are asking for a letter campaign by the public on Jawad's behalf...
McCain, POWs, & the Stab in the Back
Posted on August 26, 2008I have never been tortured. But I have worked clinically with those who have, including U.S. POWs. I can tell you it breaks the mind and the body, the soul and the spirit, in a way that can never be forgotten. Now John McCain cites his experience as a POW and torture victim as an anodyne to every mildly injurious political attack...
Who/What Is John McCain - In His Own Words
Posted on August 26, 2008Here are the three bare essentials to know who/what John McCain is, in his own damning words: 1. He is a militaristic authoritarian:McCain suggests military-style invasion modeled on the surge to control inner city crime Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group "devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream...
Bush Killing Coastal Louisiana
Posted on August 26, 2008In the first part of this environmental-themed series, the devastation experienced by New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region was discussed. This installment will focus on Louisiana's wetlands which are being washed away and the sinking of New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana...
Katrina And The Environment
Posted on August 25, 2008Not only were Katrina, the federal flood, and Rita massive human tragedies, they were for reasons which will be detailed below easily this nation's biggest environmental calamity. And their potential impacts on human health and life in New Orleans and in the rest of the affected area are still being assessed over 2 1/2-years later...
Walmart and Katrina: Heroic Or Opportunistic?
Posted on August 25, 2008Conventional wisdom has been that the true friends of New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Region during the federal flood and the onslaught of Katrina and Rita were not FEMA or any other organization of the federal government. They include several big-box stores including a much-maligned Walmart...
Katrina, PTSD Not Over For Louisiana, Mississippi
Posted on August 25, 2008While news on A.) Obama and/or Biden, B.) McCain, or C.) Both of the above has been clogging the mainstream media, Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Region are being tortured by the after-effects of Katrina, the federal flood, and by PTSD. And it's time bloggers got over whatever trivia Obama's been caught up in lately and Housegate and asked both candidates what really matters--why they've been downplaying the continued suffering of the Gulf Region, and what each plans to do for the area if he becomes President...
US Admits Detaining 7 Year Old Child
Posted on August 25, 2008This is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national, physician, mother of three young children, one in US detention since 2003. She was kidnapped five years ago in Pakistan and is obviously a victim of horrendous torture at Bagram AFB. Dr...
For Lalia
Posted on August 24, 2008Under Sharia law, the victims become the criminals, again. Afghanistan is building new jails for women. Though there are only 300 female prisoners now, that number is expected to grow. While there are no signs of a crime wave, one of the reasons for the increase is an unlikely one...
The Age Of The President-Pontificate Of The U.S.A.
Posted on August 24, 2008Last week's Saddleback Civil Forum on Presidency, quite appropriately dubbed "The Faith Forum", heralded a new age for the Presidency of the U.S.A. - that of the President-Pontificate. For decades now, especially since the late 70's-early 80's, it has become a ritual of sorts for candidates seeking the Office of the Presidency of the U...
Oath Betrayed
Posted on August 23, 2008Soldiers are trained to kill and doctors to heal. At least that's how we usually understand those two professions. --Dr. Steven Miles of Physicians For Human Rights. There are literally tens of thousands of FOIA requests on the ACLU website, categorized as Government Documents on Torture Freedom of Information Act...
Friday News and Open Thread
Posted on August 22, 2008Not exactly news to NION, or our psychologist editors, but very good to see this story getting some play in the traditional media. Psychologists protest against involvement in torture: Over 400 psychologists in the United States are currently withholding dues to the American Psychological Association over it's failure to explicitly condemn all forms of torture...
American Indians, Hollywood, and Stereotypes
Posted on August 21, 2008Racism is based on ignorance and is passed down generationally. One racist adult caretaker may infect a few children with their racism; however, one racist film or television show would infect many more and more deeply ingrain any racism that already was in existence in my opinion...
Man On A Leash
Posted on August 21, 2008Almost immediately, two thoughts come to mind when I hear Lynndie England's name: The infamous photo of the nude Iraqi prisoner on a leash and The Stanford Prison Experiment. In sentencing testimony, England, who had faced a maximum of nine years behind bars, said she was sorry for her actions but that she remained an "American patriot...
Code-Talking Racist Vampires and Mormon Propaganda
Posted on August 21, 2008Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (one of my very favorite chick lit authors; what about it, muchachos?) has asked a provocative, disturbing question on her blog: Is Stephenie Meyer Racist? Furthermore, is she also hard-selling Mormon talking points in her astonishingly popular young adult Twilight series? As many of you know, the final book of Stephenie Meyer's popular vampire series came out this weekend, breaking sales records with 1...
Fox Censors Story on Torture Death of Kim Soo-im
Posted on August 20, 2008Charles J. Hanley, special correspondent for Associated Press (AP), has written a compelling, fascinating and sad tale of the execution of purported Korean "Mata Hari", Kim Soo-im, at the start of the Korean War. He linked her torture and death to the recent revelations about the more than 100,000 murders of leftists or suspected leftists sympathizers in 1950 by the U...
China: Free Wu Dianyuan And Wang Xiuying!
Posted on August 20, 2008cross posted from The Dream Antilles The Chinese Government is very afraid of these two women. Seventy-nine-year-old Wu Dianyuan, on the right, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, followed the law. They applied for a protest permit. They wanted to protest inadequate compensation for the taking of their homes in preparation of the Olympics...
Elks Club
Posted on August 20, 2008The factotums of Bomb McCain sound exceedingly silly in vowing that their man could not possibly have seized the opportunity to listen in on the questions that would be asked of him at Saturday's Saddleback "faith forum." According to the New York Times, faith-forum ringmaster Rick Warren "seemed surprised to learn that Mr...
No Fly List Can Be Challenged In District Court
Posted on August 20, 2008The Ninth Circuit ruled that a person can challenge the inclusion of their name on the government's no fly list. Sounds pretty obvious that you should have that right, but that isn't the Bush Administration's position. The Case is Ibrahim v Department of Homeland Security and it was decided by a two to one decision of the Ninth Circuit Court if Appeals...
I'm Going To Hell
Posted on August 19, 2008cross posted from The Dream Antilles Pardon me. I'm not a Christian. Never was, never will be. I don't believe that Jesus was the messiah, that he died for my sins. I don't have a personal relationship with him. I haven't been saved...
And The Bottom Line is ...
Posted on August 19, 2008However much one may try to analyze what has been going on lately in every possible way, the bottom line invariably boils down to one word: incompetence. Here's a little something I wrote a while back and which bears repeating yet again:Intellectual sloth reaps ignorance...
Late Summer Reads on Psychology, Anthropology & National Security
Posted on August 18, 2008For those trying to squeeze in some serious late summer reading, I strongly recommend Dr. Bryant Welch's recently published book, State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind. Dr. Welch elegantly and succinctly describes the psychological mechanisms behind paranoia and denial, and links them to the mindset of many Americans post-9/11...
Miracles: Gracias, Nezua
Posted on August 17, 2008Take a look at us now, mi amigos! Who thinks a human rights community has to be a dark and cheerless place? Dios mio, I couldn't have dreamed this sazon and brio and new light, but Nezua has created a very beautiful and exciting new look for us. There are a couple of tiny tweaks left, for which we will need some help from Soapy, but I'm ready to welcome our contributing editors back and announce our reopening very soon...
Comment period now open on Bush ESA-gutting rules
Posted on August 15, 2008With today's publication in the Federal Register of the proposed changes in how the ESA is administered, the thirty-day period for public comment officially begins. Their heading is Interagency Cooperation Under the Endangered Species Act. Aww, isn't that cute? Who could possibly oppose cooperation? You can comment here...
The Ethic of Total Opposition
Posted on August 15, 2008Through these fields of destruction Baptisms of fire I've watched all your suffering As the battles raged higher And though they did hurt me so bad In the fear and alarm You did not desert me My brothers in arms - Dire Straits, 'Brothers in Arms' It is said that "rock bottom" has the advantage of being the only place from which ascent is guaranteed...
2,408 Days of Illegal Imprisonment
Posted on August 14, 2008Tomorrow, August 15, marks the fifth anniversary of Iraq Moratorium. Please visit this link to find events in your area, and some ideas on what you can do to protest the war today. U.S. Segregates Violent Iraqi Prisoners in Crates The U.S. military is segregating violent Iraqi prisoners in wooden crates that in some cases are not much bigger than the prisoners...
A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal
Posted on August 14, 2008SOMEHOW THIS MADNESS MUST CEASE. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam...
Beautifully Human: Jill Carroll
Posted on August 13, 2008On Jan. 7, 2005, while on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, freelance reporter Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Baghdad. Her translator, Alan Enwiyah, was murdered. On Jan. 17, Carroll's captors issued a statement demanding that the United States free all female Iraqi prisoners in U...
2,407 Days of Detention
Posted on August 13, 2008Omar Khadr Back in Court Today Today's court appearance by Omar Khadr will mark the 10th time the Toronto-born prisoner will have been taken by armed convoy from his cell to a makeshift courthouse. Doctor Examines Pakistani Accused of U.S. Troop Attack A Pakistani woman suspected of links to al Qaeda and accused of trying to kill U...
We Knew Him When
Posted on August 13, 2008copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org "We knew him when." These are the words countless in cyberspace will offer in January 2009. As Congressman Jerry Northington, a Democrat from Delaware, is sworn into office, Citizen Journalists throughout numerous net neighborhoods will chortle...
No Gay Marriage; Edwards Redux
Posted on August 12, 2008Yeah, yeah . . . I'm going there. You don't have to come with. But I dare you not to. Q: You said your opposition to gay marriage is influenced by your Southern Baptist background. Most Americans agree it was wrong to use religion to justify slavery, segregation, and denying women the vote...
A Love Story
Posted on August 11, 2008Her grave is set near her family's home, adjacent to a large grove of coconut palms, beside the backwater of a peaceful lagoon east of Hoi An. She died far away, in childbirth, bringing twin girls into the world in the high plateau country of Dac Lac Province...
Step aside, Bono - Hail Comrade Yao!
Posted on August 11, 2008Amid all the other exciting news from Beijing, and while our president disgraces himself and the nation, a hero takes on another challenge. Yao Ming has accepted an invitation from the United Nations Environment Program to become its first Environmental Champion...
All in
Posted on August 11, 2008On its way out the door of the White House, the Bush administration today decided to take one last giant runny reeking dump on the carpet: The Bush Administration's Plan To Make The Endangered Species Act Extinct is nothing less than nullification of law by administrative fiat...
Late For The Sky
Posted on August 10, 2008Now, y'all didn't think I was gonna just take a pass on the Edwards scandal, did you? Ay, no. Truth be told, the death of Bernie Mack is a much bigger loss to me, personally. It takes no particular skill to be dishonest and selfish. But someone who could see the Very Funny in just about any situation and share the joke so well as Bernie Mack, now that was some mad talent...
Ghost Islands: Diego Garcia
Posted on August 10, 2008WANTED: Extraterritorial location for indefinite detentions, torture of prisoners, and gigantic secret military installation. Island preferred, remoteness a plus; must be cleared of troublesome natives and provide for completely restricted access...
APA Bureaucrats Try to Torpedo Anti-Torture Resolution
Posted on August 10, 2008As Stephen Soldz, one of the supporters of an anti-torture referendum resolution now being mailed out to members of the American Psychological Association, reports: The APA has launched a strong effort at spin and disinformation regarding the referendum...
Where are the Children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad
Posted on August 10, 2008Cross-Posted to Daily Kos Where Are Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Children ? by Chacounne Sun Aug 10, 2008 at 02:10:22 AM PDT Once again, I find myself unable to sleep, because once again I am haunted by the image in my mind's eye. Every day, several times a day, I am haunted by an image of two little boys, the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who were kidnapped when they were 7 and 9 years old and turned over to the CIA...
"First they will have to kill us."
Posted on August 08, 2008Pop Quiz Tomorrow, August 9th, is: a) Gillian Anderson's birthday b) The anniversary of the destruction of Nagasaki c) International Day of the World's Indigenous People d) The first day of John Edwards' life as a has-been To kickstart the celebration of the UN's International Day of the World's Indigenous People on August 9, Survival International has named what it calls the "Unholy Trinity" - the corporations guilty of the most flagrant abuse of tribal peoples...
Conditions for War Crimes
Posted on August 08, 2008So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility ...
Torture Trial Ends: Reflections on the Hamdan Verdict
Posted on August 06, 2008Osama bin Laden's personal driver and bodyguard, who made the magisterial sum of $200 per month, 34-year-old Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was held years without charges at Guantanamo Naval Base prison, has just been found guilty of lesser charges in the first of a series of planned "military commission" trials by the Bush Administration...
About That Whole "Defining Reality" Thing ...
Posted on August 05, 2008Remember this (emphasis added)?(...) The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued...
My friends, there will be more wars. A campaign promise.
Posted on August 04, 2008"There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars..." We're gonna have a lot of PTSD to treat, my friends, we're gonna have a lot of combat wounds.." John McCain, January 2008 "I know how to win wars...
Monday Action Items and Open Thread
Posted on August 04, 2008Happy Monday, amigos! I hope everyone had a peaceful, relaxing weekend. It's been a busy weekend for me but much fun, and as I write this, late on Sunday evening, the thought of Monday morning and facing a jammed calendar and inbox filled with work-related email makes me want to hibernate on the sofa with my daughter, eat popcorn, watch Animal Planet and pretend that Monday will be an easy, stress-free day...
Jerry "Possum" Northington PHOTO AUCTION FUNDRAISER PAGE!
Posted on August 04, 2008Sunday through Wednesday, we're raising money for Jerry Northington, aka possum, who is running for Delaware's at-large seat in the House of Representatives. Possum's primary is this September. Possum is a Vietnam Vet and veterinarian who will provide our caucus with one more, and a much better, Democrat! Rather than just asking you for donations, for this diary we're holding an auction here on NION of featuring eight digital photos...
Auction 4: Bronx Bumble Bee, by Eddie C.
Posted on August 04, 200816" x 20" print. No bids under $20 accepted. Envy prevents me from offering a proper description for this photo. If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules...
Auction 3: Phaius Tankervillia, by dadanation
Posted on August 04, 20087.5" x 10" print. No bid under $15 accepted. A serene still life and a study in contrasting tones. If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules...
Auction 2: Phaius on a Rainy Day
Posted on August 04, 20087.5" x 10" print. No bids under $15 accepted. This is a bright, beautiful study in contrasting textures, colors, and moods. If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules...
The Games begin in two hours.
Posted on August 03, 2008No, not those games. The 2008 North American Indigenous Games officialy begin this afternoon with an opening ceremony at 5 Pacific time. The opening, and 20-some hours of athletic competition throughout the Games, will be covered and streamed live on the web by Aboriginal Peoples Television Newtwork...
Little Girls (and Boys) Lost
Posted on August 02, 2008Sometimes I wonder why people (1) have children. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you don't want a child, aren't willing and happy to accept the "responsibility" or the crimp in your party girl lifestyle, you'd take some precautions to avoid bringing yet another unwanted child into the world? Another little girl is missing in Florida...
Why the Silence on Real Torture Timeline?
Posted on August 02, 2008Last month, I examined the testimony from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogations and torture. The hearings concentrated on the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, and its use of military psychologists hired by the CIA to "reverse-engineer" SERE program elements for use in coercive interrogations by the United States at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere...
Friday Open Thread and Books: The Dark Side by Jane Mayer
Posted on August 01, 2008If you haven't read NION co-administrator Valtin's Physicians, Psychologists & the Problem of "The Dark Side" -- well, whatcha waitin' for, muchacho? Five days after 9/11, Vice President Cheney appeared on television and talked about fighting terrorism, stating: "...
How Not to Fight Terrorism - The Rand Report
Posted on July 31, 2008Rand Corporation has recently published a report which concludes that terrorist groups rarely cease to exist as a result of winning or losing a military campaign. To me it is mind-boggling that it took Rand, or anyone else, 8 years to come to this conclusion...
Main Thing
Posted on July 31, 2008So let's talk, amigos. What's your main thing? Don't worry, I'm not going to ask who is your main thing -- but if feel like telling me, I'll keep it on the dolo. What in cono is a Main Thing? It started out as a mangling of the English language by yours truly...
On Eve of the Convention: Is APA Leadership Splintering?
Posted on July 30, 2008Dr. Bryant Welch's recent article, Why Did They Do It? - Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association, published online at Counterpunch, Psyche, Science and Society, and many other sites, is a powerful indictment of the moral and political bankruptcy of the American Psychological Association, written by a key insider...
Measures of Worth
Posted on July 30, 2008This is an old essay, and as such, I left it to the sidebar...I think it still relevant as we look to the abuses of minorities, hate crimes against even tolerance of the gltb tribe and the atrocities of our health care system. Not to mention Endless War!) This is an attempt at starting a dialogue about the fabric of what our human existence entails at present, and what it should strive to be...
Tuesday Afternoon
Posted on July 29, 2008(Animals, atoms, AUMs.) An' Up Through The Ground Come A Bubblin' Crude Russian scientists in Pisces mini-submarines have descended to the bottom of Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, containing an estimated 20 percent of the planet's fresh water...
... to his eternal shame and our nation's great discredit
Posted on July 29, 2008originally posted at Daily Kos A clear and urgent duty of the next president will be to investigate the Bush administration's torture policy and give Americans a full accounting of what was done in our name. It's astounding that we need some kind of truth commission in the United States of America, but we do...
The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb
Posted on July 28, 2008Can we finally, at long last, put this bit of sensationalized fiction to rest? James Richardson at the Great Orange Satan wrote in Talk To Me About Torture: I must admit I don't share the level of outrage the rest of my peers do over the numerous revelations of torture...
History Will Absolve Me, v. 2.0: Che Guevara
Posted on July 27, 2008It was perhaps the most reproduced, recycled and ripped off image of the 20th Century. From Caracas to Cape Town, Cleveland to Cap Haitien, one man's admittedly handsome face on a T shirt tells you more about its wearer than how well he or she fits it...
Action: Rescind Wounded Knee Medals of Dis Honor
Posted on July 27, 2008Petition: Medals of Dis Honor Twenty-three soldiers from the Seventh Calvary were later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for the slaughter of defenseless Indians at Wounded Knee. We are asking that these Medals of DIS Honor awarded to the members of the 7th Calvary of the United States Army for the murder of innocent women children and men on that terrible December morning be rescinded...
Eichmann in Manhattan, Part One: Introduction and Some Definitions
Posted on July 26, 2008This is just some thinking aloud for a book chapter that I'm trying to organize over the next few weeks. If all goes well, I'll have a decent enough draft worked up by the time the fall semester starts. First, Eichmann in Manhattan is the working title for the chapter for reasons that I hope will be apparent as we proceed...
Obama and Afghanistan - Worrisome
Posted on July 26, 2008Senator Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, has said that he wants to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq within about 16 months. Now it appears that political differences are narrowing and that a possible consensus is building for just that...
The *Real* "Axis Of Evil" Of Our Times
Posted on July 24, 2008Remember that old "Axis of Evil" thingie concocted by Bush and Co.? Here's a refresher (emphasis added): Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th...
I am so tempted to violate copyright
Posted on July 24, 2008crossposted from DailyKos that is how moved I am right now. I have just finished reading a column that is affirming of life, insistent on moral clarity, and totally appropriate to the incident which occasions its writing, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic...
Consequences, Consequences, Consequences
Posted on July 23, 2008So, what do you think happens when you break international laws and treaties, proudly do not recognize international courts, commit grave war crimes and crimes against basic human rights? You are branded a rogue nation, right? And of course, rogue nations have to "stick" together, right? Case in point (via C&L): Indicted For War Crimes, Sudan Cites U...
Code Talking White Trash & Exploitation Capitalism
Posted on July 22, 2008Cross-posted due to Nonpartisan's request from The Wild, Wild Left Were I not a recovering Catholic, I would surely believe I burned off many a purgatory hour yesterday, far exceeding the actual 7 hours spent in the merry go round of hell called "taking mother in law to her doctor's appointment...
History Will Absolve Me, v.1.0
Posted on July 21, 2008Say you want a revolución? It's hard not to find Fidel Castro somewhat simpatico, even for me, because you can't help but be in awe of Cuba's stubborn sense of rebellion. The socialist revolution was Latin America's great "fuck you" to Yankee domination and for all that hemming and hawing about gringo this and gringo that and John Huston's Mexican bandits in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the public humiliation of Richard Nixon during a 1970s visit to Venezuela, to the outcries of leftists in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina, who were squashed by the subterranean forces trained by the CIA, only Cuba was able to extend its middle finger with some efficacy...
Black Holes Of Human Rights, Decency And Justice
Posted on July 21, 2008Remember this little tidbit of news (via here) from last month? Here's a refresher: U.S. planning big new prison in Afghanistan In "a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come," the New York Times reports today that "the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex" at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan...
Subpoena Power, Sugarcane and Sundries on Sunday
Posted on July 20, 2008I was like ZOMG! no WAY!!1! and then Stuart Taylor went: President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. More on how I'm not feelin' it, dude -- WTF? after I dis my own people and tell you how Barack Obama listened to my wise counsel and now that Barack listens to Alexa again, all the planets and stars of the universe align to assure his success - and ours...
Losing Ourselves Beyond Redemption
Posted on July 19, 2008The increasing erosion of our constitutions, civil rights and democracies as they are being gradually subjugated by Authoritarian Security Surveillance States. The bloating no-fly lists and terrorist watch-lists. The continuing inhumane and barbaric renditions, "enhanced interrogations" and indefinite detentions - of children, teenagers and adults alike...
Friday Follies
Posted on July 18, 2008(People behaving badly: here, there, everywhere.) Comfort Stations Air Force generals are attempting to divert "War on Terra" funds to pay for "comfort capsules" that will allow government VIPs to enjoy world-class travel on military transport planes...
Political Murder
Posted on July 17, 2008Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, head of the Malaysian opposition party PKR, will apparently be released on bail following his arrest on charges of sodomizing a former aide. In Malaysia, the "crime" of sodomy--with or without consent--is punished by five to twenty years in prison, plus whipping...
Senate removes PEPFAR funding, lifts HIV travel ban
Posted on July 17, 2008Today the Senate reauthorized the PEPFAR, giving it $50B over the next 5 years to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria abroad. The bill also included a provision to lift the HIV travel ban (which severely restricts the ability for seropositive people to travel between and immigrate to the US) and struck down a provision in the older version that called for a third of the funding to be used for abstinence-only education...
Omar Khadr, The Good Son
Posted on July 17, 2008Omar al Khadr worshipped Allah and Tintin. Even after he hit puberty and discovered American action films and Nintendo, Omar, a conscientious Islamic student, still loved to quote from the adventures of the Belgian cartoon reporter, which he seemed to know by heart...
Omar Khadr: The Tale Of The Tape
Posted on July 16, 2008The first footage of an interrogation at the military base, while powerful, doesn't show us anything we didn't already suspect. A 16-year-old sobbing teenager is not, needless to say, the image the Pentagon would like you to associate with its infamous destination for "enemy combatants...
Power and Fear: A personal reflection
Posted on July 16, 2008For years now I have talked about power and how people may be attracted to power and the people who hold that power. It has been saidPower corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the aftermath of the tragic hurricane in Myanmar (Burma) a few short weeks ago I was reading a long ago speech about power and fear...
Physicians, Psychologists & the Problem of "The Dark Side"
Posted on July 15, 2008"Any of us could be the man who encounters his double." -- Friedrich Durrenmat (1) Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (not due out in the bookstores until tomorrow), is already creating headlines and generating controversy...
GITMO teen's interrogation tape to be released this mornig...
Posted on July 15, 2008Warning. Graphic picture of Omar's wounds when he was arrested. The wounds he was denied treatment for while he was being interrogated. Mandated by a high court ruling, the defense lawyers representing Omar Khadr have been given and will release 7 1/2 hours of videotaped interrogation tomorrow...
Farewell To Privacy. Hello To Arms
Posted on July 14, 2008copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org The Courts and Congress have come to believe there is reason for fear. Enemies are everywhere. Those who wish to do us harm are in our homes. They talk to us on our telephones. Some sashay in through our computers...
Ghost Ships
Posted on July 13, 2008Brothers that live when we are dead, don't set yourself against us too. If you could pity us instead, then God may sooner pity you. We five or six strung up to view, dangling the flesh we fed so well, are eaten piecemeal, rot and smell. We bones in a fine dust shall fall...
They said all-reety, they was all-righty
Posted on July 13, 2008and he was a zombie for you, little ladies! big love to Zwoofie this weekend and always. (Good at about 1:33 on) On Sunday, Haitian American voters meet-up at mi casa. Most are new citizens, and many have never voted at all. Bonswa and happy Sunday to all...
Sunday Open Thread and News
Posted on July 13, 2008Not all the news is fit to print these days as the world continues to be a frightening place. The sabre rattling continues day by day as President Bush supports Israeli aggression toward Iran.President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official...
A talk by Corneille Ewango
Posted on July 12, 2008Although this talk was given a year ago, the good folks at TED just now got around to making it public. Ewango is a botanist, former poacher, and winner of the 2005 Goldman Prize for his heroic efforts to protect the DRC's Okapi Faunal Reserve in the chaos of civil war...
President of Sudan to Be Charged With Genocide
Posted on July 11, 2008This is the first time that the International Criminal Court will bring charges against a sitting leader for genocide and crimes against humanity. UNITED NATIONS, July 10 -- The chief prosecutor of the Internationals Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant Monday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and crimes against humanity in the orchestration of a campaign of violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the nation's Darfur region during the past five years, according to U...
Media Loves Some "Maverick"
Posted on July 11, 2008While I was angsting about FISA, I didn't even notice that John McCain hit an all new-low in ignorance this week. And as Max Bergmann reports, there shouldn't even BE a McCain campaign after this disastrous week. 'Course, media didn't notice, either. Damn...
The Annotated White Man's Burden
Posted on July 10, 2008In February, 1899, Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of British imperialism, published in McClure's Magazine a poem for an American audience. In it, Kipling hailed the brash new imperialists on the block, congratulated us on our recent conquests, and – even as the sun was setting on Victoria's Age – let would-be 20th-century colonialists know what was in store for those who chose to meet their racial obligations by lifting the unfortunate brown folk out of the mire...
Science and tradition - allies in the Salish Sea
Posted on July 10, 2008(from Truth & Progress) The Coast Salish peoples' sacred inherent right is to restore, preserve, and protect our shared environment and natural resources in our ancestral homelands - the Salish Sea. To that end, some of the Coast Salish participating in this year's intertribal canoe gathering of Northwest native peoples will be monitoring and recording water quality continuously, with the assistance of the US Geological Survey...
Senator Obama, This Is -Not- Okay
Posted on July 09, 2008From Barack Obama's website on Monday, July 7, our presumptive nominee ("better than McCain, si!") had this to say about his capitulation on FISA: "This was not an easy call for me," --snip-- "And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal-breaker...
UPDATED! Get your revised 4th amendment here
Posted on July 09, 2008[By twocents, posted with muchas gracias y propinos. go give twocents some love at the Great Orange Satan.] THESE ARE BUSY TIMES, and there's an election to win. So many things to be done, that I thought it might help my fellow Kossacks to have their new fourth amendment protections available in standard editing form: The [previous] right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [dependent upon the discretion of the government], and no Warrants shall issue [only sometimes be needed later], but [with no legal requirement to demonstrate] upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and [with no legal requirement for] particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized [because 9-11 changed everything]...
FISA: Civil, Criminal & Administrative Immunity
Posted on July 09, 2008If this FISA bill is passed in the Senate, then Bush & the telecoms may reap a trifecta of retroactive or prospective immunities: civil, criminal and administrative. In addition to a telecom's retroactive civil immunity, this bill may also provide Bush with a colorable argument of civil and criminal immunity...
Afghanistan: As The Seasons Come And Go ...
Posted on July 09, 2008As the world turns and seasons come and go, the Afghanistan adventure remains a disastrous quagmire. Except, of course, in the feverish minds of those (neocon) cheerleading supporters of this FUBAR and dedicated Bush supporters/emulators/followers, such as Canada's very own Defense Minister Peter McKay (emphasis mine): Defence Minister Peter MacKay dismissed the idea that the Taliban is launching a new offensive in Afghanistan, saying Tuesday the mounting death toll and surge in violence are linked to the end of the annual poppy harvest...
Deconstructing "The Zen" of Torture
Posted on July 08, 2008On the recent diaries list at Daily Kos yesterday, I happened upon a screed that damn near made me want to unplug my cable, shut down, be a Good Citizen who mindlessly watches Fox News, takes vacations and goes shopping: Transcend The Pain: Techniques for Enduring Torture, Part One...
Another Haitian Dead in ICE Custody
Posted on July 08, 2008Today would have been Valery Joseph's 24th birthday. Instead, Mr. Joseph's family and immigration reform advocates gathered for a press conference in Miami this afternoon to demand an independent review of Joseph's death. Joseph Valery was born in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour and moved to the United States when he was 8 years old...
Democracies In Trouble
Posted on July 05, 2008It would seem that our democracies in Canada and the U.S.A. are not the only ones ailing - especially with regards to the increasing - and successful - assaults on our privacy and civil liberties ... all in the name of the false God of Security. Indeed - things are not looking so good either in the U...
Guantanamo staff trashing web sites and spreading propoganda
Posted on December 12, 2007The Wikileaks group have struck again. Today they revealed that Guantanamo staff have been engaged in a campaign of propaganda, revising the web encyclopedia Wikipedia entries, including removing detainee IDs from Wikipedia, and posting pro-Guantanamo propaganda around the web...
No Moral Compass: Pelosi, Democrats, & the WP Revelations
Posted on December 10, 2007Crossposted at Invictus and Daily Kos Notoriously (depending upon your point of view), this past weekend the Washington Post published an article revealing that a number of top Democrats and Republicans were briefed in September 2002 on CIA interrogation methods...
Taking a Break
Posted on December 09, 2007NION will reopen at some point in the future. Peace. Alexa
I'm Depressed......
Posted on December 07, 2007because of the "Great Forgetting." That's how commonscribe eloquently and originally described what has happened regarding Katrina and New Orleans. The Great Forgetting can be seen in how BushCo has been successfully keeping Katrina and New Orleans on the back burner in the hope that nobody recalls how Bush was responsible for New Orleans' flooding...
Did destroyed CIA tapes show psychologists torturing? Did APA dodge a bullet?
Posted on December 07, 2007Last night we had news that the CIA, in 2005, destroyed videotapes of the "interrogation", aka, torture, of two al Qaeda detainees. One of these detainees has been identified as Abu Zubaydah. Of special relevance is that, according to Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair last summer, Zubaydah was tortured by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen...
Another Major Guantanamo Document Leaked
Posted on December 04, 2007Also posted at Daily Kos and Invictus First it was the leak of the 2003 Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Manual for Guantanamo. The SOP included procedures for psychological torture and abusive conditions of detention, including long-term isolation to foster dependence upon interrogators and "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process"...
Ole Miss Should Not Host A Debate
Posted on December 04, 2007The first nominees' debate of 2008 is slated for Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi on Sept. 26. Ole Miss has to be the most undeserving debate venue and Oxford the most unqualified community selected, and it's not just because of Oxford's mere 650 hotel rooms...
'I will never leave Guantanamo'
Posted on December 03, 2007crossposted from dailykos This is about a man, whom his lawyer calls "Joseph" for the faithful husband. And it begins very bluntly: "WE HAVE important news for you!" Chained to the floor of a cell in Camp Six, Guantanamo, Joseph said nothing. But he had some news for us, too...
Starting a Great War
Posted on December 02, 2007Historical analogies that rely for strength upon generally-held assumptions - often exemplified by a folksy appeal to authority in the form of the phrase, "they say" - carry with them both advantage and disadvantage. The recognition of human nature ("power tends to corrupt...
U.S. claims right to kidnap around the world
Posted on December 02, 2007In another of those "I know they do it but I can't believe they actually say it moments, the Times (of London) report that the US government claims the right to kidnap people anywhere it wants, if they are accused of a "crime" in the US. Like the ban against torture, the legal remedy of extradition is another of those needless legal niceties to be thrown overboard by the all-powerful US government: AMERICA has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States...
Sioux Scalp Needs Coverage by Olbermann
Posted on December 02, 2007If someone had told me that someone would be selling a Sioux scalp online on the 143rd Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre; I would have hoped, "Surely nobody would be that barbaric and seeped in genocide denial." Right? Wrong. (Photos will be deleted after the scalp is in the proper tribal hands...
APA on the Road to Damascus?
Posted on December 01, 2007There's nothing like defeat to demoralize the vanquished and embolden the victorious. But such clearcut victories or defeats, while they may happen in warfare, rarely happen in political battle. Due to repeated charges of torture of detainees, and the lack of elementary rights of prisoners in U...
"This Government Does Not Torture People"
Posted on November 28, 2007By Rory Kennedy Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rory-kennedy/this-government-does-not_b_67544.html Many aspects of the devastating war in Iraq have compelled our attention - we agonize over the rising body count among our own forces, we express our rage over the staggering reports of innocent Iraqi dead, we read between the lines of official statements to glean the larger motive behind the invasion...
143rd Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre of Nov. 29th, 1864
Posted on November 28, 2007http://images.google.com/image... Chief Black Kettle: I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies. A Cheyenne cemetery is in the same direction as where my mother told me she watched gypsies camp through her west window as a girl, about ˝ mile from that house...
Pinky Show interview: Fear, Aggression, & Empire
Posted on November 28, 2007I was recently interviewed on the Pinky Show about the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding our American culture and empire in the age of the War on Terror. Here is the YouTube version: Those preferring can read the transcript after the fold [reproduced with permission of the Pinky Show]: Transcript: Fear, Aggression, & Empire Note: The following is a verbatim transcript of the program's spoken dialogue...
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How can I get my parents away from my bulling brother?
First of all, if you are paying your lawyer, you should not be on the back burne...
What names to use as grantor on a Quit Claim Deed?
Normally, if John and Mary own the property and they are transferring it to one ...
What is the statute of limitations in New york State as to how long a person may claim heirship?
who has paid the taxes for the last 7 to 11 yrs ? you can take a house by openly...
My father died and left my mother $200,000 (life insurance) My Mother died 2 years later leaving my sister and I with both about $75,000 each. (including house/vehicles/belongings which I never got). We were supposed to
File a police report. Two police reports, one for you and one for your sister. G...
Must I refinance my house aftering taking full ownership after a divorce via a quit claim?
When financing there are at least two documents...the mortgage and the note. The...
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