We’d love more of this! <video>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI</video>
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics, History, Justice, Video, politics at 11:04 PM UTC
May 5th, 2009
15 seats, none for single-payer
May 7th, 2008
Ticking Time Bomb
How many of these scenarios have there ever actually been?
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, History, Justice at 5:45 PM UTC
April 16th, 2008
Merck wrote the research & doctors signed it for money
JAMA published this today. Every one of these doctors need to provide answers to the medical community, and if they didn’t actually conduct the research they attached their name to, their medical license should be revoked. People are dead because of this nonsense…
Recent litigation against Merck & Co Inc related to rofecoxib provided a unique opportunity to examine the practice of guest authorship and ghostwriting related to the research and promotion of this medication. Our objective was to provide a review using a case-study exploration of court documents, in tandem with a review of the medical literature, to describe the practice of guest authorship and ghostwriting related to rofecoxib.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice at 10:03 PM UTC
March 27th, 2008
Don Siegelman is being released!
I’ve written about this a few times, and have been checking out Scott Horton’s posts over at Harper’s...this 60 Minutes piece will bring you up to speed if you don’t know anything about this:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice at 10:33 PM UTC
February 15th, 2008
Halliburton Steals Information from Petrobas (PBR)
If someone just made this story up…
(Reuters) – Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA: Quote, Profile, Research)(PBR.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said Thursday that computers containing “important information” of oil and gas field research off the Brazilian coast were stolen. “There was a theft of equipment that contained important information for the company,” Petrobras confirmed by phone. “The event is under investigation.” The company said it has copies of the stolen data but did not specify the nature of the data.…The subsalt cluster has aroused strong interest from the oil industry after Petrobras said, in late 2007, it had recoverable reserves at between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of light crude in the Tupi field and in-place reserves of up to 20 billion barrels. [ID:nN23604539]
(CNN) The objects were being transported by U.S. oilfield service company Halliburton Co. (HAL), the Web site said. The hardware contained confidential information on research that led to recent discoveries of massive new oil and gas fields in ultra-deep waters off the Brazilian coast, Terra said, without giving sources.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics, Justice at 12:21 AM UTC
January 31st, 2008
Harper’s Weekly Review (part)
“…Dwarf thieves had infested Swedish buses,9 Lithuania was pondering changing its name,10 and a plot by retired Turkish Army officers to kill Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was foiled. 11 Police in Malda, India, were battling avian flu by conducting a poultry massacre. “We have planned to collect ‘backyard chickens’ from the houses in the evening and kill all of them late at night,†said the district’s deputy director of animal-resources development, N. K. Shit.12 George Piro, the FBI field agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein, recalled his last meeting with the Iraqi dictator, when the two smoked cigars and Saddam kissed Piro on the cheek three times. “It made me feel,†he said, “somewhat awkward.†(by Christian Lorentzen)
Scott Horton is without a doubt my favorite writer at the moment. Harper’s online has his work up for free on the site’s front page. You can find out why John Yoo hasn’t come over for dinner lately. Keynesian economics, Leo Strauss, J$hn Ashcr$ft, Afghanistan, “Blitzwasser†or hot-water incident (so named for the kettles of boiling water that the citizens threw at federal tax collectors), Don Siegelman…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Economics, History, Justice, Military, politics at 11:25 PM UTC
January 30th, 2008
Election Shenanigans in New Hampshire
BlackBoxVoting.org on top of things up in New Hampshire:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Video, politics at 10:44 PM UTC
January 20th, 2008
Mississippi mud
This is a good one…
(Lead Story – NYTimes Sunday Business Section – By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ) …Linking Mr. Scruggs, Mr. Patterson and other figures in the case is an obscure former college football star, farmer and politically well-connected adviser to Mr. Scruggs named Presley L. Blake (Google Search). At the hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors described Mr. Blake as a key go-between in an elaborate bribery plot, and they are now examining his ties to Mr. Scruggs. No charges have been brought against Mr. Blake.The story of Mr. Blake, who has received at least $10 million from Mr. Scruggs, threatens to reveal just how Mr. Scruggs worked the political back rooms of Mississippi — and Washington — to win a huge settlement with cigarette makers that garnered him approximately $1 billion in fees as well as a role in “The Insider,†the 1999 movie about the battle with Big Tobacco. Mr. Scruggs’s connections have never been a secret: his brother-in-law is former Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. But the expansion of the investigation is especially significant because for Mr. Scruggs, law and politics have been closely intertwined…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics, Justice, politics at 2:39 PM UTC
December 6th, 2007
Randi Rhodes
This one’s a bit long (35 minutes), but it’s one of those speeches that define a moment so perfectly, that it will represent what a person is remembered for long after they’re dead. Dig this…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Video, politics at 12:32 AM UTC
November 12th, 2007
Nance, Kleinman, and Waterboarding: The Remix
This is a compilation from a House committee hearing last week, courtesy of TPMmuckraker:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, Video at 1:32 AM UTC
November 7th, 2007
Olbermann on Torture
A Special Comment on torture:
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Justice, Video, politics at 2:40 PM UTC
November 6th, 2007
Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman is the host of this show, which can be seen and heard by going to the Democracy Now! website. Without fail, where the mainstream media fails to even attempt digging into a story, this show right here will make up the difference. What I like most is how useable the site is, so when I get into a certain story I can easily search and if sometime in the past an interview pertaining to it took place, I can always have the transcript and audio file downloaded to my PC within minutes.
I’ve read two of her books, which at least one of she co-wrote with her brother. I highly recommend both of them:
STATIC: GOVERNMENT LIARS, MEDIA CHEERLEADERS, AND THE PEOPLE WHO FIGHT BACK
What got me thinking about Democracy Now! lately, has been this stupified glop glop in the press on scandals and Constitution-shredding that is packaged as something new, when in fact it is anything but. I’ll post a clip tomorrow that will provide a perfect example, having to do with Donald Rumsfeld’s management philosophy. He’d shoot off 60 or so “snowflakes” around the Pentagon every day, basically mucking up the works, as these things wouldn’t even cover something actionable, but could represent more of what was going on inside the old bastard’s head on a given day. As if he were having a debate with himself over the ins and outs of defending a personal failure by spreading out the misery far and wide, and trying out his political swirms on the department as a whole.
I got aggrivated mostly because this story was actually covered in Bob Woodward’s ‘State of Denial’ over a year ago. Anyone could read that book and see Rumsfeld for what he is, the infighter with little competence to lean on when it came to managing the defense department. Though for me it’s the series of books that have come out since then, mostly relying on released documents and interviews with people who wouldn’t have spoken up sooner, which go much further than a couple of snowflakes telling us what we already knew.
Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal. By the standard set by our own laws and certainly the standard set by international law, he should find himself on trial at some point. Piecing a belief like this one together is something that takes place over a stretch of time, with hundreds of thousands of words read, and once in a while the crucial interview with someone in the know on a show like Goodman’s Democracy Now! opens up a doorway. It is a crucial function of our fake democracy, these shows that really focus on finding out the truth. They are few and far between.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice, Military at 1:49 AM UTC
October 24th, 2007
No Lake, No Trout
I. (TPMmuckraker – Iraq Revokes All Contractor Immunity – Spencer Ackerman) “The metaphorical statue of L. Paul Bremer III has come crashing down. Today the Iraqi government formally revoked one of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s enduring vestiges — a decree of immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for U.S. security contractors.“
II. (Think Progress) “In California, half of the equipment the National Guard needs is not in the state, either because it is deployed in Iraq or other parts of the world or because it hasn’t been funded, according to Lt. Col. John Siepmann. While the Guard is in good shape to handle small-scale incidents, “our concern is a catastrophic event,” he said. “You would see a less effective response (to a major incident),” he said.
At a press conference five months ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) echoed these concerns, stating, “A lot of equipment has gone to Iraq, and it doesn’t come back when the troops come back.” The Chronicle reported that the California National Guard was missing about $1 billion worth of equipment. Now, as 14 major wildfires rage across the state, those earlier warnings are materializing. While California currently has approximately 1,500 Guardsmen serving in Iraq, the strains on the disaster response teams are compounded by the missing personnel and equipment.“
III. (CNN – Turkish Planes Bomb Kurdish Rebels) “Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships have been bombing Kurdish separatist positions in Turkey along the Iraqi-Turkish frontier amid continuing diplomatic efforts to avert a major cross-border incursion by Turkish military forces.“
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, Words, politics at 11:48 AM UTC
October 23rd, 2007
Lake Trout
I. Two Republican representatives, both of whom I think the worst of as a rule, seem to be battling against Cheney over the White House’s leaking of false information that indicates Israel struck a nuclear facility in Syria that was being built with the help of North Korea. Check this out:
(Raw Story – GOP Accusing White House of Leaking) In 2006, Larisa Alexandrovna reported for RAW STORY on Hoekstra’s approval of Vice President Cheney’s renewed use of former Iran-Contra middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar to help frustrate diplomatic talks between the US and Iran. A follow-up article by Alexandrovna revealed that Hoekstra himself had met with Ghorbanifar in the late spring or early summer of 2006 in a possible attempt to create “falsified intelligence” that could lead to war with Iran. Alexandrovna has also reported that the target of the Israeli airstrike was not a nuclear facility and, most recently, that sources in the intelligence community believe Vice President Cheney is behind the selective leaks concerning the incident.
One intelligence official told Alexandrovna, “The allegations that North Korea was helping to build a nuclear reactor have not been substantiated by US intelligence, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Cheney and his minions at the NSC, Elliot Abrams and Steve Hadley, from leaking the information [to the press], which appears to be misleading in the extreme.”
II. After the bloggers (including myself and others) jumped all over the story about Senator Rockefeller’s love for the idea of granting immunity to telecom companies coinciding with a campaign bucks bonanza – the NYTimes finally covers it, on a Tuesday and thus far only online.
III. 
“(Murray Weiss – NYPost) THE number of NYPD cops using drugs, stealing property – even from the dead – and committing other acts of corruption, including extorting sex from female suspects, spiked sharply last year, according to a confidential NYPD report.“
IV. (Raw Story) “The mayor of the Indian capital said Monday that authorities could not deal with the scourge of violent monkeys, blamed for the death of a top city official over the weekend. The danger posed by the estimated 10,000 monkeys that roam the city was brought home sharply on Sunday when deputy mayor S.S. Bajwa, 52, died after falling from his apartment while fighting a horde of wild simians. If the animals are caught, “we are under pressure to release them due to pressure from animal activists and from people due to religious reasons“
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, politics at 12:32 AM UTC
October 21st, 2007
bBlogBouillabaisse – DiceK in Game Seven
Pam’s House Blend: “Rudy flip-flops on marriage amendment — and still fails to win over Values Voters“ Straw Poll Results:
Name … Percentage
1. Mitt Romney … 27.62%
2. Mike Huckabee …27.10%
3. Ron Paul … 14.98%
4. Fred Thompson …9.77%
5. Sam Brownback …5.14%
6. Duncan Hunter …2.42%
7. Tom Tancredo … 2.30%
8. Rudy Giuliani …1.85%
9. John McCain … 1.40 %
Al: “Manny Ramirez gets put on the top six stories on Yahoo for saying it doesn’t matter if the Red Sox lose game 5…mountains of words all over the frivilous vast expanse of sporting media, and Dubya slides on this episode right here”. Video pulled from Blue Girl, Red State
Manila Rice from The Largest Minority covered Maher Arar’s appearance at a House hearing (via satelite, since it’s still not safe for him to actually step foot in America): Calls Mount for Bush to Apologize to Torture Victim
The Liberal Doomsayer sends Dennis Hassert off proper
James at NBAObsessed: Gilbert Arenas to test Free Agency
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, politics, sports at 2:33 AM UTC
October 19th, 2007
Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) – Selling Us Out
I’ve been watching this immunity story like a hawk, but haven’t had the time to comment on it here. This post I found after reading TPMmuckraker’s front page today was too good not to share. I’m posting the first 2 sentences of the post written by Ryan Singel on Wired.com, along with two charts. He’s put together an outstanding case study on why we will never have a government “of/by/for the people” as long as elections continue to be financed with private money.
(Ryan Singel: Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash) Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans. He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, politics at 10:30 PM UTC
October 12th, 2007
Colbert on the Overcrowded Prisons
October 11th, 2007
Priorities of Tyranny – One Way DNA
(Richard Willing, USA TODAY) “Since 2006, the Justice Department has yet to spend any of the $8 million set aside by Congress for DNA tests for convicts to prove their innocence while it has used $214 million to collect DNA from convicted criminals and improve crime labs, records show. “DNA evidence is such a powerful tool in proving guilt or innocence that it’s inexcusable not to use it,” says Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief sponsor of a bill to provide more funding for what is known as innocence testing.“ (h/t TPMmuckraker)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice at 2:16 PM UTC
Karl Rove Linked to Siegelman Prosecution
(Harpers) “For months, the Alabama Republican machine has attempted to brush off claims about Rove’s involvement as some sort of fantastic speculation. Those efforts have just been exploded. We are one step closer to understanding why Karl Rove left the White House, and perhaps also why Alberto Gonzales stepped down as attorney general. The Siegelman case is emerging, as we predicted, as the most damning exhibit yet in the story of the Bush Administration’s use of the Justice Department as a partisan political tool.“
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, politics at 11:04 AM UTC
September 25th, 2007
Read This Sentencing Memorandum
(Harpers) From a February 26 sentencing memorandum by Judge Gregory R. Todd, in the case of Montana v. Andrew McCormack. In 2006, McCormack was arrested for stealing beer. After entering a guilty plea, he received a sentence of probation, community service, and a fine.
Mr.McCormack, to the question of “Give your recommendation as to what you think the Court should do in this case,” you said, “Like the Beatles say, ‘Let it be.’” If I were to overlook your actions and let it be, I would have to ignore that day in the life on April 21, 2006. Evidently, you said to yourself, “I feel fine,” while drinking beer. Later, whether you wanted money or were just trying to act naturally, you became the fool on the hill. As Mr. Moonlight at 1:30 A.M., you did not think for yourself, but just focused on I, me, mine. Because you didn’t ask for help, wait for something else, or listen to your conscience saying, “Honey, don’t,” the victim later that day was fixing a hole in the glass door you broke. After you stole the eighteen-pack of Old Milwaukee, you decided it was time to run for your life and carry that weight. But when the witness said, “Baby, it’s you,” the police responded, “I’ll get you,” and you had to admit, “You really got a hold on me.” You were not able to get back home because of the chains they put on you. Although you hoped the police would say, “I don’t want to spoil the party” and “We can work it out,” you were in misery when they said you were a bad boy. When the police took you to jail, they said, “Hello, goodbye,” and you became a nowhere man. Later, when you thought about what you did, you may have said, “I’ll cry instead.” Now you’re saying, “Let it be,” instead of, “I’m a loser.” As a result of your hard day’s night, you are looking at a ticket to ride that long and winding road. Hopefully, you can say when I’m sixty-four, “I should have known better.”
September 23rd, 2007
Lynch the Jena 6
Former White House press secretary Tony Snow on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday: “Here’s the unmentionable secret: Racism isn’t that big a deal any more. No sensible person supports it. Nobody of importance preaches it. It’s rapidly becoming an ugly memory.”
Unfortunately, Tony Snow’s judgement regarding who is and who isn’t a “sensible person” isn’t all that good. This was prior to him becoming a paid liar, but for the right-wing it’s a mantra that some know to be complete bullshit. Nothing gets them more defensive than to have race enter a discussion, and since they’ve been in charge of the country for so long, it has worked for them. This situation in Jena isn’t something that side wants to hear about right now, and to make matters worse, here come the neo-nazis. You know, the ugly guys from high school (those that actually went) who just threw in the towel one day, shaved their head, decided to hang out with other guys with shaved heads who couldn’t get laid either, so that maybe their combined loser potential could somehow bring happiness into their lives, which it didn’t, mostly because at some point they realize they’re attracted to men with shaved heads and wallet chains – BUT – beating on niggers, spics and queers managed to help them stop thinking about skinhead group sex all the time, so they do it as often as they can. The upside to this life, is that when they get caught and locked up, they can finally find happiness, as having sex with one another in prison doesn’t compute as being gay to them. Unfortunately, once they’re parolled and back running with their people, the urges build up once more, and the only way to feel better is to find someone to beat up. Back to prison, which they’re secretly happy about, but if anyone else knew about it, they’d have to get kicked out of the gang…
Anyways, ‘Lynch the Jena 6′ is the title of a web posting, made by a group of repressed homosexual neo-nazis, and it lists the phone numbers and addresses of each of the six kids’ families. Pat’s House Blend – a new blog I’ve found recently – posted on this, and is where I read these exerpts from their message:
Repressed homosexual neo-nazi leader William A. White also listed some of the defendants’ telephone numbers, urging his readers to “Get in touch, and let them know justice is coming.” On his Web site, White complained of “agitators” who were demanding acquittals.
A posting Thursday afternoon that contained contact information for the six youths was headlined: “Addresses of Jena 6 Niggers; In case anyone wants to deliver justice…If these niggers are released or acquitted, we will find out where they live and make sure that white activists and white citizens in Louisiana know it…in order to find someone willing to deliver justice.”
I know, I know…these are just a handfull of crazies. The point is, they’re out there. Repressing their desire for rough man love, at home thinking about it most nights as they listen to Michael Savage.
UPDATE 9/24/07
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice at 1:25 AM UTC
September 20th, 2007
JENA – Feet meet pavement
White kids from the high school hang nooses up on trees on school property, and one of them gets his ass kicked for it. Something to learn from, nothing too serious, as he was up and about that night, attending a function. Rural Louisiana has a number of things locked up for whites, and the judgement of a DA in this case, was that the six black kids needed to be charged with attempted murder. Now there are thousands of protesters inside of that town, and for the black community this is the place to take a stand. I agree.
UK Guardian – Bell, 16 at the time of the attack, is the only one of the “Jena Six” to be tried so far. He was convicted on an aggravated second-degree battery count that could have sent him to prison for 15 years, but the conviction was overturned last week when a state appeals court said he should not have been tried as an adult. Thursday’s protest had been planned to coincide with Bell’s sentencing, but organizers decided to press ahead even after the conviction was thrown out. Bell remains in jail while prosecutors prepare an appeal. He has been unable to meet the $90,000 bond.
I haven’t been able to confirm it for myself just yet, but apparantly the DA went to the school and spoke to all of the black kids in the cafeteria or auditorium, telling them that if they continued protesting the arrest of their classmates, if they didn’t accept the fact that they were no good niggers for thinking they had the right to criticize white folk, that he’d come down on them hard. The slate of injustice is stocked full at the moment, but this example right here speaks to what America really is.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice at 3:49 PM UTC
September 19th, 2007
The Webb Amendment
Jim Webb is one hell of a leader, and this time around, Repubicans are going to have a tough time claiming to care about the troops if they filibuster. This bill would give the troops equal recovery time to how long they’re at war. Otherwise, a soldier could finish up a 15 month tour in Iraq, change units and end up back there in 6 months. That’s what’s happening now. The stop loss policy was largely ignored for too many years, but come Wednesday (big day on CSPAN!) that could finally change. Secretary of Defense Gates was pre-empting this amendment on the talk shows this past Sunday, arguing against it. “The Price of Loyalty”…indeed.
Supposedly this guy was going to be an honest broker, but here he’s blocking for the sake of Lil’ Bush not having to end the war before he’s out of office. Here’s Webb’s one minute clip explaining the amendment.
Update: Here’s the news from today, no surprise – GOP opposes bill regulating combat tours
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, Video at 1:09 AM UTC
September 12th, 2007
The Rundown 9/12/07
General Petraeus has a boss, CENTCOM Commander Admiral William Fallon, and he told his subordinate in March that, “[Petraeus, you're] an ass-kissing little chickenshit. I hate people like that.” ~~ Two suicide bombings that killed (at least) 50 people in Algeria last weekend were carried out by the North Africa wing of al-Qaeda. ~~ Senator Obama (campaign speech): “I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002. I opposed it in 2003. I opposed it in 2004. I opposed it in 2005. I opposed it in 2006. I introduced a plan in January to remove all of our combat brigades by next March. And I am here to say that we have to begin to end this war now.” ~~ Since 2001, health insurance premiums for US families are up 78%. ~~ In pill-popping news, a study based on data from a National Center for Health Statistics survey discovered that, “the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 4000% from 1994-2003.” ~~ “The Department of Justice’s Voting Section is pressuring 10 states to purge voter rolls before the 2008 election based on statistics that former Voting Section attorneys and other experts say are flawed and do not confirm that those states have more voter registrations than eligible voters, as the department alleges.” ~~ A study showed that in 38 states, “conservative columns reach more readers in total than progressive columns.” ~~ And finally, for all those folks who like to complain about ‘liberal academia’ – Erwin Chemerinsky (Legal Affairs magazine named him one of the ‘top 20 legal thinkers in America’ in 2005), hired as the dean of a new law school at the University of California at Irvine a week ago, and has now been fired by the chancellor because, “he had not been aware of how Chemerinsky’s political views would make him a target for criticism from conservatives”; Chemerinsky replies, “I’m angry because I don’t believe anyone liberal or conservative should be denied a position like this because of political views.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Military, politics at 11:34 PM UTC
September 6th, 2007
LIVE FREE OR DIE
What New Hampshire thinks about gay marriage:
August 30th, 2007
Don Siegelman
I don’t know if any of you have been following this story, but with the resignations of Gonzo and Turd Blossom this past week, I’ve got a sense that this man is at the center of why they’re suddenly gone. Don Siegelman was formerly the governor of Alabama, as well as the Attorney General, and a number of other high-level political posts in over 20 years of public service in the state. The election in 2002 was one of those good-ol-boys (win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat) style victories for his opponent, as the night of the election, after polls closed and the election officials had gone home, Republicans busted into one precint and conveniently discovered a ”computer glitch” that swung 6000 more votes to their side, thereby securing the election. Siegelman fought it as best he could, but eventually conceded the election.
A little while later, a campaign manager for his opponent mentioned to his staff that “Karl had assured me” Siegelman would be taken down, and that “his girls would take care of him”. One of those girls was his wife, who happened to be a US Attorney. The subsequent arrest, perpwalk, trial, conviction…the whole thing has stunk since day one, and it really exposes what the real issue is here in the US Atty scandal, that it’s not really about those who were fired as much as it’s about who wasn’t fired. I highlighted the exploits of US Atty Steve Biskupic here a couple months ago in his pre-election prosecution of a woman named Georgia Thompson. This Siegelman case is another example of what happened there, only on a much larger scale.
Keep your eyes peeled for news regarding this story right here, because not only is it getting goofier by day, it may just be the “crime” we’ve all been waiting for.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice, politics at 2:22 PM UTC
August 15th, 2007
Maher Arar Video – Gonzo vs. Leahy
This case is on my mind, and I wanted to post this video once more. In light of what we now know, watch this again and consider how absolutely full of shit Gonzo is right here:
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Justice, Video at 3:35 PM UTC
August 13th, 2007
Birds of a Feather
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Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq
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Memo shows [Utah] mine owners already knew they had roof problems in March
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Texas girl in [taxpayer funded] ”boot camp” is tied to a van and dragged
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Cheney in ’94 on why it would be stupid to occupy Iraq
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Justice, Military, Video, politics at 2:50 AM UTC
August 12th, 2007
Maher Arar’s Murderers Are Exposed
“With persons likely to be tortured, there’s not even [been] a claim of a cost-benefit analysis. It’s not like you’re torturing to get the ticking bomb. It’s just that we would rather send this person back and have that person face torture than keep them imprisoned in Canada. There’s not even a trade-off there. It seems to me you can only come to a conclusion like that if you don’t accept the person as fully human.”
– University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin
As journalism catches up with our most recent history, this turn of events which landed Canadian citizen Maher Arar in a torture chamber in Syria will become more and more familiar. ‘Ethics’ and ‘war’ are certainly two words that have no business being anywhere near one another according to the right-wing hawks out there, but I’ve disagreed with that opinion from the start. When the rules that govern our decision making are eliminated, as they were after 9/11, not only do we lose our legitimacy, but the results we hope to achieve move further out of reach.
A dynamic such as this, will again prompt the hawks to argue an unethical position that must disregard the mistakes as being a ‘cost of doing business’, while blaming someone like me for the fact that the mistakes themselves are what creates the blow back, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if I and others hadn’t shined a light on such things. This is the mindset that always seems to start from a point where the government is infallible, and it is the media outlet that publishes details of what the government has been doing without our knowledge that is to blame. The newspaper isn’t simply doing what a newspaper is there to do, but rather it is purposely trying to kill each and every one of us.
The details behind Maher Arar’s detention, the reason why he was picked up, came up in a hearing a few months ago, with Senator Leahy grilling Gonzo on why it happened, and also how we could justify outsourcing his torture to a country like Syria. (The Murder of Maher Arar – 1/07) I wrote about this exchange and set up a Google Alert for anything pertaining to Arar, but the information needed to figure out how it came to be that the US government had convinced the Canadian government to hand over one of its citizens to be treated in this way, was still bogged down by that tired “harmful to national security” argument, so often a masquerading embarrassment and nothing more. That is absolutely the case here.
A judge in Canada recognized this, and so he did what a US judge hasn’t yet had the guts to do, and that is to reject the argument made by our government that the people have no right to any information, especially embarrassing information like this. He made it public. It has prompted a robust debate in Canada about issues our MSM tends to drown out, like “can we give up our rights so easily for the sake of national security”? Due process is the big one for me, as it has become much too easy for the US government to simply pick and choose who needs to be removed from society without having to prove wrongdoing.
It made our government lazy and arbitrarily brutal. We have bought in to the foolish notion that torture is a legitimate, productive way to extract actionable information from a suspect. Here is my favorite pick of the Canadian media of the past couple days.
That is apparently what happened to Ahmad Abou El Maati, another Canadian who, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, was tortured by Syrian jailers into making a “confession” about planning a terror-bomb attack in Canada. He fingered Arar as an associate, and that appears to have been enough to make Canadian government agencies discard Arar’s rights like a used tissue.
Need we say that El Maati, once back in Canada, renounced his confession, saying he would have told his jailers anything, and that he apologized for randomly naming Arar? (Canada.com)
No apology from the US government should be expected. I’m sure that the major players involved in making stories like this a reality are convinced of their righteousness. We know that President Bush considers what happened to Maher Arar “God’s Will”.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Justice, Military at 5:20 PM UTC
August 7th, 2007
Wabbit Feet
(UK asks U.S. to free residents from Guantanamo) Britain asked the United States to release five British residents from Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday in what analysts saw as a sign that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a more independent stance from Washington.
(The Black Sites – A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program – The New Yorker) Excerpts: In March, Mariane Pearl, the widow of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, received a phone call from Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General. At the time, Gonzales’s role in the controversial dismissal of eight United States Attorneys had just been exposed, and the story was becoming a scandal in Washington. Gonzales informed Pearl that the Justice Department was about to announce some good news: a terrorist in U.S. custody—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks—had confessed to killing her husband. (Pearl was abducted and beheaded five and a half years ago in Pakistan, by unidentified Islamic militants.)
The Administration planned to release a transcript in which Mohammed boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”Pearl was taken aback. In 2003, she had received a call from Condoleezza Rice, who was then President Bush’s national-security adviser, informing her of the same news. But Rice’s revelation had been secret. Gonzales’s announcement seemed like a publicity stunt. Pearl asked him if he had proof that Mohammed’s confession was truthful; Gonzales claimed to have corroborating evidence but wouldn’t share it. “It’s not enough for officials to call me and say they believe it,” Pearl said. “You need evidence.” (Gonzales did not respond to requests for comment.)
Special Agent Randall Bennett, the head of security for the U.S. consulate in Karachi when Pearl was killed—and whose lead role investigating the murder was featured in the recent film “A Mighty Heart”—said that he has interviewed all the convicted accomplices who are now in custody in Pakistan, and that none of them named Mohammed as playing a role. “K.S.M.’s name never came up,” he said. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer, said, “My old colleagues say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that it was not K.S.M. who killed Pearl.” A government official involved in the case said, “The fear is that K.S.M. is covering up for others, and that these people will be released.” And Judea Pearl, Daniel’s father, said, “Something is fishy. There are a lot of unanswered questions. K.S.M. can say he killed Jesus—he has nothing to lose.” Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the top defense lawyer at the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, which is expected eventually to try Mohammed for war crimes, called his serial confessions “a textbook example of why we shouldn’t allow coercive methods.”