DhafirTrial

Glenn Greenwald Salon 7/04/09

Today is the ideal day to celebrate America’s specialness, and America’s paper of record inspirationally leads the ritual:

Clark Hoyt, New York Times Public Editor, April 26, 2009:

A LINGUISTIC shift took place in this newspaper (more…)

A Modest Proposal for Garrisoned Lands
By Chalmers Johnson  TomDispatch 7/02/09

The U.S. Empire of Bases — at $102 billion a year already the world’s costliest military enterprise — just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new “embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don’t occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. (more…)

Glenn Greenwald Salon 7/02/09

There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR’s Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR’s ban on using the word “torture” to describe the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics. (more…)

Govt Won’t Say Why Wazir Is Detained, Judge Rules They’ll Never Have to

Jason Ditz 6/29/09

In a ruling widely expected given the judge’s previous comments, US District Judge John Bates ruled that Haji Wazir, an Afghan citizen captured by the US in 2002 and held in detention at the Bagram internment facility in Afghanistan, has no legal right to challenge his detention in US courts. (more…)

Andy Worthington 6/27/09

Speaking for the first time since his release from Guantánamo after seven years’ imprisonment without charge or trial, following a successful habeas corpus appeal in January, Mohammed El-Gharani, now a free man in Chad, told Mohamed Vall of al-Jazeera, in an exclusive interview, how he felt about being imprisoned from the age of 14 to the age of 21. (more…)

Chris Hedges Truthdig 6/29/09

Our economic crisis—despite the corporate media circus around the death of Michael Jackson or Gov. Mark Sanford’s marital infidelity or the outfits of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest incarnation, Brüno—barrels forward. And this crisis will lead to a period of profound political turmoil and change. Those who care about the plight of the working class and the poor must begin to mobilize quickly or we will lose our last opportunity to save our embattled democracy. (more…)

Most Americans believe the First Amendment is sacred and inviolate, but not since the 1950s has it been under such attack - from both the right and the left. In a unique collaboration with her father, noted First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, Oscar® nominee Liz Garbus explores the social and political trends that have shaped America’s attitudes about free speech and how they can threaten the very tenets upon which the country was built. Premieres Monday, June 29 at 9pm (ET/PT)

Glenn Greenwald   Salon  6/27/09

When Obama first unveiled his “preventive detention” policy, many defenders praised him (and claimed he was different than Bush) because of his vow that — as he put it — “my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime.”  But now, relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity, Peter Finn and Dafner Linza of The Washington Post and ProPublica report that the White House is “crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.” Salon