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By Michael Jerryson (Editor), Mark Juergensmeyer (Editor)
$24
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AP / Sang Tan
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Against the wishes of the U.S. government, British authorities released information Wednesday about the “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of former Guantá namo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed. The abuse allegedly took place in 2002 in Pakistan, following Mohamed’s capture and prior to his internment at Gitmo.
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Flickr / AndYaDontStop
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Police have charged an American soldier with assaulting his young daughter. Specifically, Joshua Tabor of Tacoma, Wash., is reported to have waterboarded his 4-year-old three or four times because she was afraid of water and had trouble with her ABCs.
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AP / Fareed Khan
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By Chris Hedges — The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
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AP / Elaine Thompson
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By Chris Hedges — Don’t blame the Internet. The bloodless and soulless journalism of the traditional media left newspapers on the wrong side of the growing class divide and their readers.
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White House / Pete Souza
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It was his third address to a joint session of Congress in less than a year, and it had all the usual gestures toward bipartisanship, but Barack Obama’s big speech was not without sizzle. The president shamed Republicans for obstructing, Democrats for giving up and the Supreme Court for auctioning off our democracy.
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By Ruth Marcus — Since the start of his presidency, I’ve been wrestling with three questions about Barack Obama: Did he take on too much? Is he too hands-off in his dealings with Congress? And the biggest, which puzzled me throughout the campaign as well—where is he, exactly, on the political spectrum?
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AP / Arnulfo Franco
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Andrés Thomas Conteris, reporting from within the besieged embassy where ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken shelter, outlines 10 ways the United States has supported the coup and undermined democracy in Honduras.
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Background: Suburbanbloke (CC-BY-SA)
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By Amy Goodman — A landmark class action case is under way in a New York federal court, with victims of apartheid in South Africa suing corporations that they say helped the pre-1994 regime.
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By Peter Z. Scheer — The last 10 years were abundant with films that pushed limits and attacked real issues in real time. Here are 20 of the best socially conscious, topical, progressive movies from a crazy decade.
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Wikimedia Commons / YooTube
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The New York Times picks the brain of John Yoo, who compares George W. Bush to Abraham Lincoln and says “It was my job” to write the memos that sought to legalize torture. Yoo now teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, of which he says: “I remind myself of West Berlin ... surrounded by East Germany during the Cold War.” (continued)
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AP / Mary Altaffer
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By Chris Hedges — The gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process.
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By Eugene Robinson — Last Christmas we were staring into the economic abyss. A year later, there’s reason to smile—but no telling where we’ll be a year from now.
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Twas the night before Christmas, and ... eh, screw it. Enough of Christmas. Here are the newsy bits you’ve been craving more than that pumpkin pie: The Simpsons, torture, gay marriage, crime-fighting music and more.
Posted on Dec 24, 2009
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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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Collage: Gravel photo from Flickr / Center for American Progress Action Fund
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By Chris Hedges — Few voices in American politics have been as consistent, as reasoned and as moral as his, which is one reason why Mike Gravel, on a chilly December morning, is in front of the White House, not inside it.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Europeans are coming to terms with the fact that President Barack Obama is not a miracle worker, and with the reality that everything he does is not magic.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — The president believes his Afghanistan surge will most likely create the conditions to bring the greatest number of U.S. troops home at the earliest possible date, a senior official said.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, President Barack Obama acknowledged the controversy of his award, as “the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.” He spoke of one of those wars, Afghanistan, in terms of self-defense and shared his thoughts on the concept of “just war.” (full remarks inside)
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AP / Jens Meyer
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By Chris Hedges — The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
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U.S. Army / Spc. David J. Marshall
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By T.L. Caswell — By escalating an unnecessary conflict, President Barack Obama runs the risk of damaging many more Americans through PTSD and other human consequences of warfare. We are heaping upon members of the military more responsibility, more work, more war, more physical and psychological trauma.
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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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By Joe Conason — The loudest voices on the right never tire of telling us that they are the truest patriots, but when did fear-mongering in a time of war become an act of patriotism?
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thisislondon.co.uk
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The British Defense Ministry is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse of Iraqi civilians by its soldiers. Many of the allegations, which include sexual attacks and torture, reflect U.S. soldiers’ acts depicted in photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
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Courtesy of the Tillman Family
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Pat Tillman’s birthday is Nov. 6, and we wish to commemorate his life by republishing Truthdig’s most popular piece, “After Pat’s Birthday,” written by Pat’s brother, Kevin Tillman.
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Flickr / lightmatter
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Twenty-three CIA agents are going to have to think twice about leaving the U.S. now that an Italian court has convicted them in absentia for snatching an imam in Milan and sending him to Egypt, where the cleric says he was tortured. (continued)
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By Amy Goodman — “Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He’s a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he’s doing.
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remhq.com
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The veteran alt-rockers of R.E.M. are joining forces with other musical acts such as Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and Roseanne Cash in a bid to close Guantanamo Bay. Their group effort, the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, sprung in part from their joint outrage about their music reportedly being blared at high volumes to upset prisoners held at the detention center in Cuba.
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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 / Emilio Morenatti
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By Fred Branfman — The Obama administration has already begun to escalate the fighting in Pakistan, a policy that could make even the Nixon-Kissinger destruction of Cambodia seem like a pleasant memory.
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A new short film by the group Alliance for Justice examines the role that lawyers played in authorizing and legitimizing torture under the Bush administration. It calls on the attorney general to investigate not just CIA operatives but the authors of torture memos in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
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White House photo
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Georgetown University law professor David Cole’s new book, “The Torture Memos,” investigates how key members of the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel rewrote the law to make torture legal.
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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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YouTube
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If you liked Dick Cheney, you’ll love Liz. The former vice president’s progeny is becoming a conservative star who regularly hits the airwaves to defend the worldview she shares with her father. She’s launching a Web site called KeepAmericaSafe.com and may even run for office one day.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Seven former heads of the CIA formally requested that President Obama halt an ongoing inquiry into suspect abuse (aka torture) by the agency, arguing that important CIA work would be hampered by such an investigation. Obama didn’t bite, claiming that “nobody’s above the law.” Except George W. Bush, it seems.
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rebelreports.com
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Many intelligence professionals have categorically disapproved of torture, claiming it both ineffective and counterproductive. Former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan writes of the mountains of good information uncovered with traditional interrogation procedures in contrast to the erroneous and unproductive intelligence gleaned from torture.
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By Eugene Robinson — A new report by Physicians for Human Rights reaches a sickening but inescapable conclusion: “Health professionals played central roles in developing, implementing and providing justification for torture.”
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U.S. Navy / MC2 Clay Weis
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By Marie Cocco — Dick Cheney represents a significant number of conservatives who still believe that the United States can bomb, invade, occupy and torture its way to security.
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White House / David Bohrer / Archive
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In a move that might spur some anti-Bushie types to nervously consult the Mayan calendar, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto has offered up none other than Dick Cheney as his pick for president in 2012—under the condition that the former veep is right about how to deal with the threat of terrorism.
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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs fielded a question about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s ongoing Enhanced Interrogation Press Tour with restrained disdain Monday, calling Cheney’s comments “the same song and dance we’ve heard since literally the first day of our administration,” as well as “wrong.”
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
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By Joe Conason — Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his supporters love America so much they would transform it into Stalinist Russia.
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By William Pfaff — Thus far in the torture debate that has gone on in the United States since 2001, I can think of only one high American government figure currently in office taking a stand on torture in terms of justice, honor and national integrity.
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AP / Ron Edmonds
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Hey, hasn’t something—or someone—been missing from this latest round of debate and discussion about America’s use of troublesome interrogation tactics in recent years? Who could it be? Oh, of course. Enter Dick Cheney, stage right.
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Wikimedia Commons
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By Eugene Robinson — History’s demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can’t be ignored. Especially when it comes to torture.
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White House
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CIA Director Leon Panetta might quit or get canned in the next year, reports ABC News. Anonymous officials said Panetta, who may have already threatened to walk, is unhappy with everything from his role in the hierarchy to some of the nasty things the agency is up to. Both the White House and the CIA vehemently deny the report.
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theblacksentinel.wordpress.com
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Although President Obama and others who were privy to information about alleged prisoner abuse by CIA employees and contractors previously passed on the possibility of prosecution, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has taken a different tack after reviewing the cases. Updated
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By Eugene Robinson — The summer has become a bummer, but almost every day there’s some reminder of how far we’ve come since President Obama’s inauguration—and how much worse things could be.
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