Human Rights Law

Mohammed El Gharani Ordered Released from Guantanamo

Posted on January 15, 2009
News of the day includes the second ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon that the U.S. must release a detainee.In today's ruling, Leon said the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, was an enemy combatant because it relied almost exclusively on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility has been called into question by government personnel...

Torture Confirmed by Bush Official

Posted on January 14, 2009
Judge Susan Crawford is the senior official in the Bush administration charged with reviewing administration policies and actions toward detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Crawford refused to refer al-Qahtani's case for prosecution sayingHis treatment met the legal definition of torture...

Salim Hamdan: Free at Last

Posted on January 12, 2009
Salim Hamdan, the ex-driver for Osama Bin Laden has been set free in Yemen at the end of his sentence served.  The tribulations of Hamdan's 7 long years in U.S. custody has been chronicled here at NION in a series of diaries. habacuc, Flickr, Creative Commons After being detained in 2001, Hamdan arrived at Guantanamo in 2002...

Forgive Not

Posted on January 12, 2009
On the opinion page of the New York Times today is a piece by Dahlia Lithwick entitled Forgive Not in which an argument is made for accountability in government.  Lithwick argues for a full investigation of recent administration activities....it's clear that the first step will be a thorough determination of what has occurred...

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Monday Night Book Club: Donkey Bookmobile Edition

Posted on January 12, 2009
Anybody else remember bookmobiles? When I was a child, back there in the last millennium, I lived in a modest California Central Valley town of about 10,000 people. Though we had a perfectly fine public library just off downtown, a bookmobile daily crawled through the streets delivering books to those who were too old, sick, young, automobile-impaired, or Boo Radley-like to frequent the place...

Unhappy Anniversary Guantanamo

Posted on January 11, 2009
Today, January 11, 2009, marks the seventh anniversary of the transfer of the first 20 detainees to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.Today, about 250 men remain, most of whom have been there for nearly seven years, in a detention system that has significantly damaged America's reputation around the world...

Barney Frank And "The Gay Agenda"

Posted on January 10, 2009
Wingers often bruit about the phrase "the gay agenda," which, like a related phrase, "the gay lifestyle," they are usually careful not to precisely define. For when they do, we learn that such phrases most often reflect a silly and unreasoning fear among wingers that Nefarious Forces are plotting to somehow force them, the wingers, to engage in sodomy from dusk till dawn, then don chaps of leather and ride loud motorcycles in parades...

Cheney: "We Don't Need No Stinking Pardons"

Posted on January 08, 2009
Vice President Darth Cheney, in the latest stop on his "Everything I Did Was Right, Legal, And Just" tour, has informed Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press that there exists no reason for George II to issue pre-emptive pardons to save the bacon of those who authorized and/or inflicted torture in the War on Terra...

How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does

Posted on January 07, 2009
Originally posted at AlterNet, and reposted here with additional links and some minor format changes In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310...

Psychologists for Social Responsibility Action Alert on Gaza

Posted on January 07, 2009
Psychologists for Social Responsibility(PsySR) has issued the following statement on the crisis in Gaza: ACTION ALERT: PsySR Urges Action for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza Dear PsySR Members and Friends, Psychologists for Social Responsibility urges you to join us in strongly advocating that the U...

To A Blind, Blind World

Posted on January 06, 2009
An Iranian court has determined that a man who blinded a woman by pouring acid over her head should himself be blinded by the forced appplication to his eyes of five drops to each orb of the same chemical with which he blinded and disfigured his victim...

The Ordeal of Muhammad Saad Iqbal

Posted on January 06, 2009
The stories of detainees held by America in the past few years are beginning to come to light little by little.  The front page of our local edition of the New York Times has another in the ongoing series of these articles just this morning.When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants...

How GOP Plans to Defend BushCo on Torture

Posted on January 05, 2009
I don't have any special source within inner Republican Party circles. Nor do I have any particular new insight into the dynamics of how the GOP works out their policy. What I do have is the statement of the Republican minority opinion on the Senate Armed Services Committee's "supposedly bipartisan" report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U...

Dirt

Posted on January 05, 2009
Early last Monday morning, KGO-San Francisco's Ray Taliaferro, dean of the Left Coast lefty AM-radio talk-show hosts, signed on with an impassioned sermon both poxing, and pleading with, all parties in Israel's current assault on Gaza. A brief account of that jeremiad can be found here...

The Lizard People!

Posted on January 04, 2009
My work as an historioranter occasionally leads me to visit some of the loonier extremes of the Internet - the chat rooms with the padded walls and such - but one ballot cast in Minnesota during the latest election sent me further into the weirdness than did even Apocalypse 2012!  I have no idea if the guy who voted for "Lizard People" knew what he was favoring, but if even a smidgen of the stuff I've learned about historical Lizard People is for real, then casting a ballot on their behalf is no joke...

Aafia Siddiqui, The Most Dangerous Woman In The World

Posted on January 04, 2009
After more than five years of imprisonment at Bagram Air Force Base, years of physical abuse, repeated rapes, years of surgeries without anesthesia, years of starvation and isolation, years of psychological torture in the form of not knowing the whereabouts of two of her young children and having the third imprisoned with her, starved and abused and seeing everything that was done to her, Fox News-watching "patriots" can rest easily...

Cosinas Americanas / American Kitchens

Posted on January 04, 2009
Welcome to Cosinas Americanas, a new weekly series at NION about flavor and sazon in American kitchens and in our culture. Now, what you read here most likely won't be tradition brought over from The Mayflower, but then, neither were we, entiendes? Even if you don't like to cook or bake, pull up a chair, have a cafecito and know you are welcome...

Science Tidbits Friday

Posted on January 02, 2009
Here we are again gathering for a day of new and exciting tantalizing news in the realm of science.  New discoveries.  New takes on old knowledge.  The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available...

Torture From The Taproot: Why The Truth Matters

Posted on January 02, 2009
It is said that the taproot of violence is hatred of truth. This supernatural soliciting ... cannot be good; ... If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is But what is not...

If They're Going To Denounce Us As "Pagan"

Posted on December 30, 2008
...we might as well know as thing or two about Pagans. To this end I, your resident Witch (Pagan) shall offer a few tidbits of explanation. The vast majority of Pagans do not worship the devil. Witches, the practitioners of Wicca, do not believe in the devil at all, let alone worship him...

Monday Night Book Club and Open Thread

Posted on December 30, 2008
Good evening, and welcome to Monday Night Book Club. Tonight, I'm curious about what books you're reading, or what books you may have received as holiday gifts (asked for or . . . maybe not asked for, entiendes?) For most of my family and friends, books are the gifts I really love giving, but there's always a little guesswork involved here unless it's my daughter, who sends her wish list to Santa Claus in Calle Ocho, and grandpa sends the list back to me...

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Prisoner of Conscience

Posted on December 29, 2008
The story of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi is a long and involved tale.Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi known as Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi was born in 1958 in Nablus, today (06/2007) in the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority and then a part of Jordan. When al-Maqdisi was still a child his family moved to Iraq where he later studied at Mosul's university...

Lives In The Balance

Posted on December 27, 2008
By way of disclaimer, I understand the desire for prosecution of war crimes. I want justice as much as the next cowgirl. With nothing but admiration, for initiative is always worthy of respect, I can't agree with The Citizens Petition: Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes...

Ex Nihilo: X Marks The Spot

Posted on December 27, 2008
("Ex Nihilo" is a running head I'll be using from time to time for oddments that upbubble in the wee hours. Too fagged at present to offer oddments of my own, I've instead stitched together some of Ken Kesey's, from three separate talks: one delivered at St...

Harold Pinter 1930-2008: "What happened to our moral sensibility?"

Posted on December 25, 2008
Harold Pinter died yesterday of cancer at age 78. He was one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century. In his plays, like The Homecoming, The Birthday Party, and Old Times, he caught the ambivalent and restless conflict, the striving for significant personal connection and the intricate by-play of emotion and memory, that lay at the heart of the human dilemma...

Happy Holidays

Posted on December 24, 2008
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa . . . . whatever you celebrate, much joy to you and yours. Feliz navidad y paz . . . --Alexa

One More Torture Testimony

Posted on December 23, 2008
Cage Prisoners as a site works to keep stories of the detainees around the world in the public eye.  Testimony [the personal stories of detainees] from Zeeshan Siddiqui was released in the past few days.  Once again the tale is one of horror in detention...

First British Citizen Convicted of Terrorism

Posted on December 22, 2008
From the UK comes an a href=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5365911.eceannouncement/a of the conviction this week of the first British citizen to be found guilty of terrorism.blockquoteRangzieb Ahmed, 33, was part of a three-man cell on an unknown terrorist operation in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in December 2005 that was aborted/blockquoteThe conviction came after an 11 week trial...

A Pagan Christmas to All!

Posted on December 21, 2008
Among the mouth-breathingest of mouth-breathing Republicans, it's a well-known fact that every November or so, we libruls gather in our covens and plot the paganization of Christmas. nbsp;In their iLeft Behind/i-style fantasies, we are the legions of Satan, come upon the Earth to foist secular ideas and iGodless/i traditions upon the flock of the Lamb...

Army Teaching Kids Killing is Fun

Posted on December 20, 2008
Growing up in the South, my brothers and I learned to respect weapons and to handle rifles and shotguns from the time we were little persons. nbsp;Today's kids get a different set of lessons thanks to our military establishment. nbsp;The Army Experience Center (AEC), located in the Franklin Mills Mall just north of Philadelphia is a state of the art video game and entertainment center a href=http://www...

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