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By Paul Cummins $14.78
By Robert Cohen $27.96
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As Chris Hedges reported Monday, American Muslims are being dragged into jail on dubious and unclear connections to terrorism. Meanwhile, the president retains the authority to kill U.S. citizens without trial. But most Americans aren’t speaking up. Salon blogger and constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald discusses why.
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By Amy Goodman — Ten years ago, Omar Deghayes and Morris Davis would have struck anyone as an odd pair. While they have never met, they now share a profound connection, cemented through their time at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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 AP / Brennan Linsley
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The indefinite detention center that has undermined American justice since the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan 10 years ago Wednesday is still open for business in Cuba. (more)
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 Joseph Voves (CC-BY)
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By Peter Van Buren —
Morris Davis was fired by the Library of Congress not because of his work performance, but because he wrote a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on his own time, using his own computer, as a private citizen. The government just did not like what he wrote.
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 Flickr / stevendamron
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Essayist, Yale English professor and TomDispatch contributor David Bromwich takes a careful accounting of the “sacked” and “saved” members of the Obama administration in an attempt to reveal the similarities between his presidency and George W. Bush’s. (more)
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 AP / Carolyn Kaster
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By Fred Branfman — Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.
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 Flickr / JTF Guantanamo
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A detainee accused of being an al-Qaida operative committed suicide in a Guantanamo Bay prison yard, U.S. officials say. His death brings the total number of Guantanamo “suicides” to six since the U.S. began sending foreign captives there in 2002. (more)
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 State Department
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells The Atlantic that China’s “deplorable human rights record” is “a fool’s errand” to “stop history.” That’s some tough talk from the global representative of a country that throws its enemies in an island gulag when it isn’t remotely executing them.
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 AP / Mark Lennihan
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By Robert Scheer — There is a craven disconnect between the eagerness of leading editors to exploit the important news revealed by WikiLeaks and their efforts to distance themselves from both the courageous website and Bradley Manning, the alleged source of documents posted there.
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.jpg) Flickr / The National Guard
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Attorney General Eric Holder said Guantanamo documents recently released by WikiLeaks will not impact military tribunals for terror suspects. The documents reveal flaws in the U.S. detention program at the facility.
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Amy Goodman reports on Dr. John Leso, a psychologist who allegedly participated in the torture (or “harsh interrogation,” his defenders might say) of Guantanamo detainees and now faces trial in New York.
Posted on Apr 6, 2011
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By Amy Goodman — This week, the New York state Supreme Court will hear the case against John Leso, a psychologist who is accused of participating in torture at the Gitmo prison camp that President Obama pledged, and failed, to close.
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to masterminding the 9/11 terror attacks sometime during or after his 183 waterboardings, will face a military tribunal now that the Obama administration has given up on the idea of trying to convict him in the U.S. justice system.
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Paresh Nath, Cagle Cartoons, The Khaleej Times, UAE —
Posted on Mar 11, 2011
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 Brennan Linsley / AP / dapd
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By Robert Scheer — It is the right—indeed, need—of the American public to learn the truth about the motives, financing and methods of those who are alleged to have torn at the heart of our social fabric.
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 Paul Keller (CC-BY)
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Military trials will resume at America’s notorious island gulag. The president failed during the last two years to shut down the detention facility, which he says helps America’s enemies recruit, and move trials to the civilian justice system. (more)
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 U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith
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Thursday’s New York Times headline on Pakistani disappearances and U.S. disapproval is just a bit too much to take. ... (more)
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By Amy Goodman — “Gitmo is going to remain open for the foreseeable future,” said an unnamed White House official to The Washington Post this week. For guidance on the notorious U.S. Navy base in Cuba, President Barack Obama should look to an old naval facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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 U.S. Navy / PH1 Shane T. McCoy
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The president promised to restore our basic constitutional protections, but that was back in the campaign when we were drunk on hope. These days, “It can be hard to distinguish between the Bush administration and the Obama administration when it comes to detainee policy,” laments The New York Times.
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 Wikimedia Commons
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An appeals court in D.C. has sided with an Algerian detainee, Belkacern Bensayah, finding that since there was no direct communication between Bensayah and al-Qaida, he could not be considered part of a terrorist group.
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Is that an Icelandic volcano erupting or just the sound of Sarah Palin hosting a nature show on the Discovery Channel? Dig into today’s list and judge for yourself.
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 U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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While President Barack Obama will miss his goal of shutting down Guantanamo by January, the U.S. has returned 12 detainees from the notorious prison to their respective homelands. That leaves more than 100 detainees awaiting repatriation.
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 Flickr / Tanya N
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Even after the hoopla of President Barack Obama’s executive order barring torture, evidence is surfacing that CIA agents are cooperating with, and potentially supervising, Palestinian security agents who are detaining and allegedly torturing Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
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This important new book tells the story of the world’s most famous prison from the perspective of the lawyers who toiled under notoriously difficult conditions on behalf of the detainees.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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The gossipy schoolchildren who make up Washington’s power elite have sunk their claws into White House counsel Greg Craig. The president’s top lawyer has had one of the toughest jobs in the building—reversing George W. Bush’s torture policies, finding a Supreme Court justice and vetting some of the nation’s most complex legislation—and he has the scars to prove it.
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 AP / Lynne Sladky
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By Marie Cocco — With the arrest of Najbullah Zazi, the man allegedly behind the biggest terror plot since 9/11, the truth is clearer than ever: Law enforcement stops terrorism. Not secret island prisons.
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 mgx.com
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Senior White House officials have made it known that the self-imposed deadline for closing Guantanamo by January, one of the first orders laid down by Barack Obama as president, may have to be extended as legal and logistical questions prevent the U.S. from regaining its “moral high ground.”
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 Flickr / Rennet Stowe
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President Obama has ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by January 2010. To meet that deadline, the administration may push for a new detention facility on U.S. soil. Such a compound, sources tell AP, would include space for the indefinite detention of prisoners deemed too dangerous to face trial.
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 U.S. Navy / Shane T. McCoy
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Although a judge had called the case “an outrage” that was “riddled with holes,” just last week the government said it would continue to try to prosecute Mohammed Jawad, a Guantanamo detainee whose “confession” was reportedly obtained through torture. Now the administration plans to free Jawad and return him to Afghanistan.
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 guardian.co.uk
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Finally someone is going after George W. Bush for his crimes against the world—it’s just a shame that it’s not the U.S. Congress. An Al-Jazeera journalist imprisoned for six years in Guantanamo is planning joint legal action against the former president.
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 blog.ecr.co.za
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Several reformists currently jailed in Iran are alleged to have been tortured as the government tried to obtain videotaped “confessions” of a foreign plot against the government. Such “confessions” would paint politicians like presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi as agents of the West.
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 AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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Dick Cheney, former vice president, defense secretary and White House chief of staff, has signed a reported $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster to publish his memoirs as a public official in four administrations. Bets are it’ll be a thriller marked with torture, stolen elections, war and, hopefully, no sex.
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 AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s lieutenants would love it if all the networks ran a crawl line at the bottom of the screen during news broadcasts that kept repeating: “The economy, health care, energy, education. The economy, health care ... .”
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Will Nancy Pelosi survive the onslaught of scrutiny and criticism in the wake of recent CIA torture-briefing revelations with her House speaker status intact? Is President Obama in over his head, what with all the hubbub over torture photos and military tribunals?
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 AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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Funny how declarations made in the heat of campaign season can be later forgotten by our nation’s elected officials. President Obama continued to do the reversal cha-cha late into the week with his decision to take up the very military tribunals he had sharply criticized before taking office.
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 guardian.co.uk
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After key Bush era CIA torture documents were released by the Obama administration, human rights officials are dismayed at the news that CIA agents who ordered and conducted torture will not be prosecuted.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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By Marie Cocco — Indefinite and secret detention at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, was a fundamental breach of justice and morality when the Bush administration did it. It is made worse by the stench of hypocrisy when the Obama administration does it.
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 U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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Mark Danner made headlines last week with his essay in The New York Review of Books on the CIA’s use of torture and a secret report from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing such practices. Find out why he says, “Torture is for people with weak nerves.”
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 U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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President Bush repeatedly claimed that the United States, under his leadership, did not torture, but a confidential report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross found otherwise. The ICRC has a unique global role in monitoring the treatment of prisoners.
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 aclu.org
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The Justice Department has released nine secret memos and opinions written by the Office of Legal Counsel that authorized some of the Bush administration’s unlawful national security policies.
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 U.S. Navy / Photographer's Mate 1 Shane T. McCoy
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Remember those two videotapes documenting “enhanced interrogation” that the CIA destroyed, despite a judge’s order to preserve such evidence? Well, it turns out the agency wiped 90 more just like them.
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 Air Force
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In announcing her department’s annual human rights report, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made multiple references to the elephant in the room—the United States’ own tarnished record, saying “America must first be an exemplar of our own ideals.”
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 White House
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In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama acknowledged the dire state of the economy, but struck a hopeful tone as he expanded on his vision for recovery. Investments in energy, education and health care will be key, he said, as will an expanded bailout of the financial sector. (Summary, video and full text after the jump)
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Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama must deal with a new presidential role that he did not seek but cannot avoid: managing big chunks of the private-sector economy.
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 U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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A three-year review of more than 40 countries has found that justice systems prior to 9/11 were perfectly capable of combating terrorism. The U.S. and Britain were especially opportunistic in their violations of human rights and international law and gave comfort by example to other abusive regimes, the International Commission of Jurists found.
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 DoD
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A 2006 memo from the State Department to the U.S. Transportation Command suggested holding Guantanamo detainees after they had been cleared in order to avoid bad press. “Got it ... Thank you,” was the reply, and indeed, no prisoners flew out of Guantanamo for three months.
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 POTUS Executive Office
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The former vice president tells Politico that there is a “high probability” of a terrorist attack involving “a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” and that the current administration is “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States. ...”
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 Flickr / Unhindered by Talent
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President Obama may be trying to shut down Guantanamo and CIA black sites, but he’s decided to make renditions a part of his regime. In case you’ve repressed it along with other Bush-era nightmares, extraordinary rendition is what the U.S. calls kidnapping someone and sending him to a nasty place to be tortured.
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