Human Rights Law

Saving 49 Lives (Part 2), The First Action Step

Posted on February 02, 2009
cross-posted from The Dream Antilles Yesterday I wrote about the 49 people facing the death penalty in the federal courts because of decisions made by previous, Bushco AGs, and that these were lives we could save.  This essay continues that discussion...

Reflecting on the Early Days of Guantanamo

Posted on February 02, 2009
The full story of Guantanamo may never be known with real certainty, but by bits and pieces the tales are being told.  In an opinion piece yesterday, Karen Greenberg relates the story she found over the years by interviewing dozens of involved people...

Remembering The Federal Death Penalty, Saving 49 Lives

Posted on February 01, 2009
cross-posted from The Dream Antilles and docuDharma It might be easy to forget the Federal Death Penalty.  We might not want to think about it. It wasn't an issue in the past election.  For eight years the Bush DoJ used its muscle to expand federal use of capital punishment by overruling local United States Attorneys' decisions not to seek death...

Guantanamo Poetry

Posted on February 01, 2009
The poetry of Guantanamo has been excerpted here at NION before.  The 72-page book edited by Mark Falkoff is now available for all to read.  The collection is writings produced by the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  These words were written on paper, scratched on styrofoam cups, and etched into napkins...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

BushCo's Guantanamo Recordkeeping: Literally Kafkaesque

Posted on January 30, 2009
"I fear your case will end badly. You are held to be guilty. Your case will perhaps never get beyond a lower Court. Your guilt is supposed, for the present, at least, to be proved."                                                                                      --Franz Kafka, The Trial Reading the report in Sunday's Washington Post about the sloppy, negligent, even contemptuous record-keeping in the BushCo White House involving the cases of those interned in Guantanamo, I was struck by the feeling I had encountered such surreal legal dishevelment somewhere before...

Court Rules Proposition 8 Crusaders Must Reveal Donor Names

Posted on January 30, 2009
Federal District Court Judge Morrison England refused Thursday to shield the names of financial donors to the campaign in favor of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that amended the state constitution to recognize marriage only between one man and one woman...

US General, NATO Commander Orders War Crimes Be Carried Out

Posted on January 30, 2009
 You thought with Bush gone that we would no longer see headlines like this didn't you ? You were wrong. US General John Craddock, NATO's top comaander in Afghanistan has issued orders to kill Afghani Drug Dealers even without any evidence "that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops...

Intelligence Professionals: Al-Marri Internment "Powerful Recruitment Tool" For Al-Qaeda

Posted on January 29, 2009
On Wednesday a group of 16 intelligence professionals signed off on a brief filed with the United States Supreme Court asserting that George II's decision to snatch Ali Sareh Kahlah al-Marri from his home in Peoria, Illinois, designate him an "enemy combatant," and intern him indefinitely in a Navy brig without charges, is "far outside the traditions of this nation," "undermines" the rule of law, and has served as "a powerful recruitment tool for violent extremists...

Ghaleb al-Bihani Loses In Court

Posted on January 29, 2009
On January 28, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled the government may continue to hold Ghaleb al-Bihani as an "enemy combatant."Bihani's attorneys argued that their client was only a cook for the Taliban and never fired a weapon at U.S. forces. But Leon said such allegations were enough to justify Bihani's continued detention...

Cosinas Americanas: Chinese Peasant Cuisine

Posted on January 28, 2009
In this edition of Our Alexa's "Cosinas Americanas," your humble sub, in honor of Chinese New Year, celebrated January 26 as "The Year of the Ox," presents three recipes from Chinese peasant cuisine. Please feel free to add your own favored, or feared, Chinese dishes in the comments, below the fold...

"Prevent Hate Crimes, Destruction and Desecration On The Schaghticoke Reservation"

Posted on January 26, 2009
Prevent Hate Crimes, Destruction and Desecration On The Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, CT We, the undersigned, call upon the Connecticut State Governor Jodi Rell to investigate and order an immediate halt to the hate crimes, destruction, desecration of sacred lands and encroachment that started after Federal Recognition and allowed to occur on the Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, CT from 2004, to date...

Canadian PM "The Only Guy Now In The World Who Seems To Believe In Guantanamo"

Posted on January 26, 2009
President Obama having Thursday issued executive orders commanding the closure of the prison at Guantanamo "as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order," and suspending the facility's "military tribunals" for 120 days, Canadian politicians and pundits are becoming increasingly exasperated with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who persists in his years-long refusal to request repatriation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who at age 15 was shot by American combatants in Afghanistan, tortured, imprisoned, and eventually charged with the "murder" of a US soldier, and whose show trial was shut down Thursday by Obama's orders...

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us Army Field Manual that Tortures

Posted on January 25, 2009
Originally published at AlterNet A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation's interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented "a good start...

France Reportedly Urging EU Nations To Accept Guantanamo Prisoners

Posted on January 24, 2009
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday that France has drafted a plan for European Union countries to accept 60 of the remaining 245 prisoners confined in the soon-to-be-shuttered prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. President Obama issued an executive order Thursday directing that "[t]he detention facilities at Guant?namo ...

New Administration Re-Examining Divine Right Of Kings

Posted on January 23, 2009
A month or so ago I confidently predicted in this diary that some time this spring the United States Supreme Court would rule in the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri that a president may not scoop people off US soil and imprison them indefinitely Because He Feels Like It...

Look On Ozymandias

Posted on January 23, 2009
(A companion piece to Unitary Moonbat's "The Akhenaton Treatment." Originally posted on Daily Kos, summer solstice 2006, anniversary of my daughter's fall. Nobody round these NION parts (ceptin Julia) seems to have recommended or commented in it then, so maybe no one round here has seen it...

Science Tidbits Friday

Posted on January 23, 2009
Once again the time has come to gather around for another 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...

Obama's Executive Orders on Guantanamo and the Question of Prosecutions

Posted on January 22, 2009
+++ Update: Here's a link to the draft executive order's text +++ Like attacking a hydra with many heads, the new administration is planning to take its first whacks at the torture regime set up by the Bush Administration. It's most infamous manifestation lies 90 miles off the U...

Thinking Like a Hybrid

Posted on January 20, 2009
This morning a friend e-mailed me a link to this essay, written shortly after the election but recirculating on this bi-racial inauguration day. It made me realize that if I were as much black as I am Hawaiian, I'd have experienced many of the things she writes about...

Change Has Come

Posted on January 20, 2009
copyright ? 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org It was but a minute after the newly elected President took the "Oath of Office."  At 12:01 Post Meridian, on January 20, 2009, the White House web page was changed.  In the spirit of a new dawn, the Oval Office gave birth to its baby...

For Just One Day

Posted on January 19, 2009
"And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, the whole world is doomed." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I've Been To The Mountaintop." For just one day, let there be no progress. Let us not find a new way to convert seemingly worthless pieces of earth into technological slaves that fulfill our every whim...

My Best Friend Voted For Prop 8

Posted on January 19, 2009
This is in no way a defense of her vote, merely an explanation. I certainly don't agree with her decision, but I thought it might be good for people to understand what went into the thinking of one person who voted for prop 8. You may remember my best friend...

Monday Night Book Club: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Posted on January 19, 2009
Good evening, and welcome to Monday Night Book Club. Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise; For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven; From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection; Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan...

Shalom FAQ on Gaza Conflict

Posted on January 18, 2009
Stephen Shalom has an indispensable Question and Answer on Gaza over at ZNet. It is too long to post here (it prints out at 36 pages), so make sure to go and read it. As with anything written by Stephen, it is impeccably documented with 138 references...

The Continuing Whitewash of the Bush/Cheney Torture Legacy

Posted on January 18, 2009
In a lengthy post at Democratic Underground on Saturday night blogger Time for change examines the ongoing coverup and whitewash of the Bush/Cheney torture regime.Even as the convening authority of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Susan Crawford, finally comes forward with revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay against suspected terrorist Mohammed al-Qahtani, our corporate media and others continue to whitewash the Bush/Cheney torture legacy...

The Akhenaton Treatment

Posted on January 18, 2009
He thought he knew better than his people; thought he could, through sheer force of will, change a public mindset centuries in the making.  He was an iconoclast (literally) 2000 years before the term would be coined by medieval Byzantines, but within a couple of decades after his rule, he was a victim of iconoclasm himself: the enemies he'd created had obliterated nearly every trace of his reign, as well as the monotheistic religion he had promulgated as a state faith...

Binyam Mohamed To Be Free At Last

Posted on January 17, 2009
Following four years in U.S. detention and a series of transfers around the world, Binyam Mohamed has been notified of his impending release to England.He is one of three remaining detainees who claim British residency and whose return to this country would bring to an end the UK's association with (Guantanamo Bay)...

Petition: Obama Free Leonard Peltier

Posted on January 17, 2009
Crossposted at Native American Netroots Petition: Obama Free Leonard Peltier! Therefore Be It Resolved, that we require the new incoming President Barack Obama immediately offer a Presidential Pardon to Mr. Leonard Peltier so that Leonard may join his children and grandchildren and continue the fight for Indigenous freedom...

Science Tidbits Friday

Posted on January 16, 2009
Come gather around one and all for another 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...

The Continuing Saga of Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al-Ginco

Posted on January 16, 2009
Seven years ago this week 26-year-old Syrian Kurd Abdul Rahim Abdul Razzak al-Ginco was taken into custody by U.S. forces in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.He claims that after being taken into US custody he was subjected to stress positions, sleep deprivation and threatened with dogs...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.