Human Rights Law

Capitalist Follies: Rancheros Visitadores, Citigroup, and the CIA

Posted on November 24, 2008
A posting the other day, quoting Chris Floyd on the machinations of the U.S. power elite, prompted a regular reader of mine to send a very interesting link to a story a friend of his worked on over the past few years. As reported by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connolly, Alejandro Tomas, a senior faculty member at Seattle Central Community College, has assembled a startling photo essay on one of the conclaves where the rich and privileged meet...

Algerian Detainee Release Rejected by Bush Administration

Posted on November 23, 2008
In spite of their being ruled not "enemy combatants" the Algerian detainees, Mustapha Ait Iidr, Boudelaa El Hadj, Lakhdar Boumedien, Nechla Ahmed, and Ahmed Saber are not up for release any time soon according to an administration spokesman.  An unconfirmed report in the Arabic press tells the tale...

Kenya

Posted on November 23, 2008
When future historioranters analyze the data from this past election, at least one thing will be abundantly clear: of all the nations in Africa, Kenya played the largest role in America's 2008 electoral process.  It hadn't been expected to be so - the odds were on perennial favorites like Egypt, South Africa, the still un-interdicted Sudanese Genocide, or that nutjob in Zimbabwe - but there Kenya was, looming like Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti...

Judge Rejects Forced Confession of Mohammed Jawad

Posted on November 22, 2008
The ACLU reports that a U.S. military judge at Guantanamo has rejected the confession of Mohammed Jawad, age 22 or 23, because the confession was obtained under coercion. A representative for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who was present at the hearing at the tribunal at the US military base in Cuba, revealed that Jawad's confession had been rejected as evidence in the case...

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How Guantanamo Can Be Closed

Posted on November 22, 2008
Have I told you lately that when Andy Worthington has something to say, I'm gonna listen? Mr. Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, an extraordinary compendium of biographies of 774 illegally detained individuals of Bush's War on Terra, is a journalist and historian, whose work is often featured at Huffington Post, FireDogLake and CagePrisoners, to name a just a few...

Federal judge rejects enemy combatant charges against Guantanamo prisoners

Posted on November 21, 2008
Today the Bush administration suffered its fourth major defeat since June in litigation over detentions at Guantanamo. This ruling by US District Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee, is the most devastating yet. He'd been expected to favor the government, not least because in 2005 Leon had ruled that the detainees have no habeas rights...

Sitting Bull Was Right

Posted on November 21, 2008
http://digilander.libero.it/Bo... Historical revisionists of American Indian history portray indigenous people being as violent as white Europeans were before they arrived on this continent and after settlement. Consequently, HBO's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was no exception in the scene with Sitting Bull and Col Nelson Miles on the Buffalo Robe, as Miles justified the genocide he was committing as "You were as violent as we are, we're doing the same thing to you that you did to them (paraphrasing)...

The Guantanamo Decision-A Stark Truth Revealed

Posted on November 21, 2008
(With apologies to Smintheus, whose excellent post on the same case has already appeared, here is my take on one aspect of why the Boumediene case is significant moving forward.) November 20, 2008 was a long awaited but still historic day. For the first time, a US Court has heard and decided on Habeas Corpus petitions of Guantanamo prisoners...

Michael Mukasey is unhappy

Posted on November 21, 2008
Attorney General Michael Mukasey is unhappy about losing the first two Guantanamo habeas corpus reviews. Yesterday's defeat was especially galling because the judge responsible for saying that the government's evidence against the prisoners was garbage, Richard Leon, is himself a reliable Republican partisan...

A Woman Buried Alive: Update on the Siddiqui Case

Posted on November 20, 2008
More details are emerging on the news that purported Al Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Arrested last summer, and wounded after supposedly grabbing for a U.S. soldier's rifle, Siddiqui was given a Forensic Evaluation Report at FMC Carsville Texas Hospital, where she is currently held...

The Forgotten Men: New UC Report on "Guantanamo and its Aftermath"

Posted on November 17, 2008
Last summer, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First released Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the U.S.. The study looked at medical and psychological evidence of the costs of  torture by eleven men who endured such abuse by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay...

Monday Night Book Club: The Kite Runner

Posted on November 17, 2008
I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it...

The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Posted on November 17, 2008
"Whatever the truth, it is immaterial. Nothing justifies the depths of sadism that the US government and its lackeys routinely descend to." --Najma Sadeque, Pakistan-based rights activist and senior journalist, referring to the treatment meted out to Dr...

This is the End of the Arrogance

Posted on November 15, 2008
Will he or won't he? Mad speculation, rumor and "sources close to the President-Elect" nonwithstanding, only Barack Obama knows the content and order of his priorities. ("Sources close to" may well know, but they aren't yacking it up on the teevee talk panels or writing Op-Eds...

Guantánamo Bay was bad enough - Bagram is worse

Posted on November 14, 2008
Bagram Air Base is an American facility 47 kilometers (27 miles) north of Kabul.  The base was built by the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan.  Today the base is the busiest facility of its type in Afghanistan as well as a detention center housing more than 600 prisoners...

Influential Talk-Show Host Shifts Position: Cheney To The Hague

Posted on November 13, 2008
For 30 straight years KGO has been the most listened-to AM radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. From dusk till dawn, it can also be heard throughout the entirety of the west coast, from Canada to Mexico. KGO pioneered the talk-radio format, long before it was seized and exploited by the rightwing noise machine...

British Teen Allowed Right to Die

Posted on November 13, 2008
Where does the responsibility of society end and the right of an individual take over?  The argument continues day by day, but at least one young person has been given the right to make her own decisions as to some parts of the end of her life.  The youngster is refusing a lifesaving heart transplant against the wishes of local doctors and hospital personnel...

Cautionary letter to American Psychological Association President Kazdin

Posted on November 13, 2008
Jean Maria Arrigo and Mike Wessells, two members of the American Psychological Association's infamous PENS task force (Psychological Ethics and National Security), have written to letter to APA President Kazdin warning of the dangers of repeating PENS flaws in the process of the Implementation Committee for the recently passed APA referendum banning psychologists working in detention centers operating outside of or in violation of international law or the Constitution...

Influencing People, Losing Friends

Posted on November 13, 2008
Where I come from in Kentucky, folk wisdom says you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Payanda Muhammad is an example of mistreatment of human beings leading to their turning to a new cause.  On the outskirts of Kabul is Pul-i-Charkhi prison...

NO to Proposal for New Terrorist Courts

Posted on November 11, 2008
It's with a great deal of hope that Barack Obama will be inaugurated President next January. In regards to the Bush Administration's policy on torture and indefinite detention, as represented by the ongoing incarceration of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base, Obama announced in August 2007: "As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions...

Monday Night Book Club: Poems from Guantánamo

Posted on November 10, 2008
This is a modified version of a previous story, with some added content. Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life. Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free, but they are slaves...

Monday Open Thread and Science News

Posted on November 10, 2008
From the no kidding department comes the ideaChildren of immigrants who enter school with low math and reading skills have a better chance of catching up with their peers if they attend a school with high-performing students, well-supported teachers and services to families of English as a second language (ESL) childrenNow who in their right mind would have thought any less...

Communities of Rumor and the American Electorate

Posted on November 08, 2008
I really can't understand people who look at Sarah Palin, who listen to her obvious incompetence, and see an inspiring leader and future President.  Or people who felt the same way about George W. Bush in 2000.  Or people who not only hate gay marriage, but honestly believe that it's the greatest threat that faces America today...

Voting To End Torture

Posted on November 08, 2008
"Instead of allowing this President--or any President--to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered...

With Government MIA, Pakistani Quake Victims Obtain Aid From "Terrorists"

Posted on November 08, 2008
With government aid sporadic or non-existent, survivors of the October 29 6.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked the impoverished Pakistani province of Baluchistan are receiving assistance from local Islamist groups, some of which the US has condemned as "terrorist organizations...

Renewal of Hope

Posted on November 06, 2008
President-Elect Obama on human rights, torture and Guantanamo. 91 pages of emails and documents produced through FOIA request have shed new light on the treatment of two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident in military jails within the United States...

Close Down Those Black Holes Of Human Rights And Decency, Mr. Obama!

Posted on November 06, 2008
Dear Mr. President-elect Barack H. Obama; My heartfelt congratulations on your election to the office of the President of the United States of America. I understand that you must be quite busy in these hectic days following election night, and consequently I shall be brief and to the point...

Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul Gets Life in Prison

Posted on November 05, 2008
In a post earlier this week, Valtin reported a verdict had been reached in the trial of Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul.  In the excitement of yesterday's election his sentencing passed almost without note.  al-Bahlul has been sentenced to life in prison...

Barack Hussein Obama: President Of The United States

Posted on November 04, 2008
Pennsylvania has been called by MSNBC for Obama. So I'm going to say it. Retaining all the 2004 Kerry states, and picking up (at least) Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, Barack Hussein Obama becomes the next president of the United States. There's a new sheriff in town...

Polls Close In Six States

Posted on November 04, 2008
The polls have closed in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, and Vermont. Vermont has been called for Obama. Kentucky for McCain. No surprises there. If Obama carries Virginia, he wins. Markos claims he has done just that. If he carries Indiana, it will signal a rout--349-390 EVs for Obama...

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