Chris Floyd writes at Empire Burlesque “The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project:”
 
“You cannot disentangle the torture program from the war of aggression in Iraq – nor from the illegal wiretapping program, the corrupt war profiteering, an… Read full post »

Update: I have posted much further documentation for the following post in a new post "Follow-up on Sources for Gitmo Prisoners Aren't 'Persons.'"

I recommend that you read "Tugging on the Torture Thread" also if you haven't already done so in addition to what follows:

If you ask most peopl… Read full post »

Update 2: See my follow-up article "DoD Deletes 'Protest = Terrorism,' Problems Remain." 

Update appended at the end:

The Department of Defense is training all of its personnel in its current Antiterrorism and Force Protection Annual Refresher Training Course that political protes… Read full post »

Stephanie Smith, Photo by Ben Garvin, NY Times 

Mad Cow Disease isn’t the only problem.

In the Sunday October 4, 2009 New York Times, a horror story about hazardous hamburger is told by Michael Moss in “Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Inspection of Ground Beef.&… Read full post »

Israel continues to claim that the hundreds of civilian deaths (including children) in its war upon Gaza are the result of Hamas using civilians as human shields.

Israel repeated this claim today in responding to the International Committee of the Red Cross' unusually blunt criticism of Is… Read full post »

A powerful and moving story from Consortium News that everyone should read, told by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who, upon learning of the torture being carried out there on behalf of the CIA, felt impelled to speak out. As a result, his career was ruined.

As Max Weber, the exper/… Read full post »

CNN reported yesterday: 

"The Senate late Thursday easily passed a $91 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After stripping it of funds to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and placing restrictions on the transfer of its detainees, the bill wa… Read full post »

At least that's the way the headline should read based on the latest news:

The New York Times reported today in “Obama Resisting Push for Interrogation Panel:”

“The White House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate signaled on Thursday that they would block for now any effor… Read full post »

This is a follow-up on my last posting. Today's NY Times reports that the Obama administration is experiencing growing pressure to investigate and prosecute the torturers of the Bush years:

"In the end, aides said, Mr. Obama opted to disclose the memos because his lawyers worried that they… Read full post »

(Additional material at the end) 

In CQ:  

Nancy Pelosi, in stating that she's known for years about the wiretap on Rep. Jane Harman (a story that now has legs and threatens precious Harman's career and that of Pelosi, poor dears), unintentionally revealed yesterday why Congress h… Read full post »

(The photo above is from a collection of photos turned over to Dr. Philip Zimbardo (chief investigator of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment). It is among the photos from Abu Ghraib that have not been released to the public.)

This post is in response to a criticism of my last… Read full post »

CNN Reports today, September 5, 2009: 

"Could George W. Bush or some of his top aides end up behind bars?

"George W. Bush could be investigated for the steps taken after 9/11. It's extremely unlikely, but the Obama administration is taking its first steps along a path that could lead… Read full post »

On Wednesday the Justice Department announced Obama's plans for continuing indefinite detentions of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the government. Note that this is a designation rather than an adjudicated fact because those who are being indefinitely detained in this way are… Read full post »

On December 29, 2009 the New York Times plugged torture lawyer John Yoo’s book Crisis and Command in a friendly interview by Deborah Solomon. Solomon begins by describing his book as “an eloquent, fact-laden history.” I think of the interview as an aid to those who try to lose weigh/… Read full post »

David Swanson's newest article is up at World Can't Wait. It's entitled: "US Government Threatens to Prosecute Waterboarding."

An exciting development for those of us who have been waiting anxiously for precisely that headline.

Except that the waterboarding that our government is threatening to… Read full post »

The murderous, collective punishment - war crimes - being meted out upon Palestinians in Gaza by Israel - with the US government's approval - is sparking outrage around the world. Not only must people of conscience speak out about this, but a deeper understanding of what's afoot is urgently needed. I… Read full post »

Item: Katharine Mieszkowski writes in today’s Salon: “In her new book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry, [Lenore] Skenazy suggests that many American parents are in the grips of a national hysteria about child safety … fed by sen/… Read full post »

Added material at the end - 5/15/09

Obama: "the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further… Read full post »

"Many of the people coalescing around the Tea Party Movement, young and old, are at the beginning of their political awakening. They are angry and frustrated by what they see and rightly so. They're in the midst of a personal storm. They see their own little boats… Read full post »

The King of Pop is dead. What killed him?

The first answer is that his pop killed him. Joe Jackson's to blame. He's at fault for the perversely abnormal childhood that Michael lived through and that led him to spend the rest of his life trying to have a childhood… Read full post »

By now we have nearly all heard about the raucous town hall meetings over health care. In today's Washington Post (August 11, 2009), for example, Sen. Arlen Specter, meeting with the public in a Lebanon, Pennsylvania town hall meeting, reproducing a similar scene that greeted him&nbs… Read full post »

From Raw Story: "In an interview posted Monday, former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that because use of torture 'may be necessary' in the future, the Obama administration erred in disclosing the Bush administration’s 'enhanced interrogation' techniques.

"Gonzales was… Read full post »

The notion that the people get the leaders (and system) they deserve is a common, oft-repeated one. It’s really a restatement of what some scholars call the democracy-at-work thesis: the people collectively and democratically decide who will lead them. Hence, the leaders at any given point in t… Read full post »

In the September 19, 2009 Washington Post we learn that the DOJ’s investigation of torture by US personnel will be even narrower than originally proposed by Eric Holder.

“The Justice Department's review of detainee abuse by the CIA will focus on a very small number of cases, inc… Read full post »

"Amid the tidal wave of human misery swamping Gaza City’s central hospital a horrified Norwegian volunteer doctor found a minute to type a text message on his mobile phone to friends back home.

“'We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children.… Read full post »