Human Rights Law

Things Keep Their Secrets

Posted on October 14, 2008
for 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
I 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...

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The First Americans

Posted on October 12, 2008
The 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
For 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
To 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, 2008
cross-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, 2008
Christopher 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, 2008
From 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
An 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, 2008
What 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
An 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, 2008
Amigos: 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, 2008
Yesterday, 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, 2008
After 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
It 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
John 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, 2008
Esoteric 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, 2008
You 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, 2008
Imagine 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...

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