Human Rights Law

The Annotated White Man's Burden

Posted on July 10, 2008
In 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, 2008
From 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]...

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FISA: Civil, Criminal & Administrative Immunity

Posted on July 09, 2008
If 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, 2008
As 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, 2008
On 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, 2008
Today 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, 2008
It 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, 2007
The 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, 2007
Crossposted 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, 2007
NION will reopen at some point in the future. Peace. Alexa

I'm Depressed......

Posted on December 07, 2007
because 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, 2007
Last 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, 2007
Also 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, 2007
The 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, 2007
crossposted 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, 2007
Historical 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, 2007
In 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, 2007
If 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, 2007
There'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, 2007
By 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, 2007
  http://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 ½ mile from that house...

Pinky Show interview: Fear, Aggression, & Empire

Posted on November 28, 2007
I 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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