DhafirTrial

Bob Egelko San Francisco Chronicle 2/08/09

The public is likely to get its first close look at the Obama administration’s policies on torture, secrecy and prisoners’ rights in a San Francisco courtroom today, when federal judges press a government lawyer for a position on the practice known as extraordinary rendition. (more…)

By William Fisher The Public Record 2/08/09

A prominent law professor is charging that the Defense Department is issuing questionable data on the number of Guantanamo detainees who have been released “and then returned to the battlefield” because the government “is now in a position where they have to find some bad guys — even if they have to invent them by naming people who were never there.” (more…)

Dahr Jamial Truthout 2/08/09

Among things that have not changed in Iraq is one that I hope never changes. After a four-year-long absence, each of my meetings here with former friends and fresh acquaintances seems to suggest that adversity has taken its toll on everything except Iraqi hospitality and Iraqi generosity. I am awestruck to find the warmth of the Iraqi people miraculously undiminished through grief, loss and chaos. (more…)

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris The Observer, U.K. 2/08/09

Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer, will step through the grand entrance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London tomorrow and demand the release of her client – a British resident who claims he was repeatedly tortured at the behest of US intelligence officials – from Guantánamo Bay. Bradley will also request the disclosure of 42 secret documents that allegedly chronicle not only how Binyam Mohamed was tortured, but may also corroborate claims that Britain was complicit in his treatment. (more…)

Severe Problems in Supply Routes Afflict Aghanistan War Effort

JUAN COLE Informed Comment 2/08/09

While the attention of the US public and the news media here has been consumed (understandably enough) by the congressional debate over the economic stimulus plan, America’s war in Afghanistan has nearly collapsed because of logistical problems. (more…)

William Fisher Inter Press Service 2/06/09

Legal experts and human rights advocates are challenging the public to remember Guantanamo’s “child soldiers” when the detainees there are characterised as “the worst of the worst”. (more…)

Evidence of torture ‘buried by ministers’

Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian 2/05/09

The government was accused last night of hiding behind claims of a threat to national security to suppress evidence of torture by the CIA on a prisoner still held in Guantánamo Bay. (more…)

by Ralph Nader Commondreams 2/04/09

Let’s start with a fairness point. Why should you pay a 5 to 6 percent sales tax for buying the necessities of life, when tomorrow, some speculator on Wall Street can buy $100 million worth of Exxon derivatives and not pay one penny in sales tax? Let’s further add a point of common sense. The basic premise of taxation should be to first tax what society likes the least or dislikes the most, before it taxes honest labor or human needs. (more…)