Category: activism

Feingold said he is increasingly disturbed by the war in Afghanistan, where troop levels are escalating by the month, US casualties are mounting and the insurgency is expanding. “It appears that no one even asked the president about [Afghanistan] at his [July 22] press conference after apparently thirty or thirty-one Americans were killed in Afghanistan last month. How is that possible?” Feingold asks. Full article.

However, the most shocking detail to emerge from Maj. Montalvo’s visit to Afghanistan was his announcement that recent research indicated that Jawad was not 16 or 17 when seized (in contrast to the Pentagon’s claim that he was 18), but that he was in fact just 12 years old. Full article by Andy Worthington.

The Obama administration is considering creating a special unit of professional interrogators to handle key terror suspects, focusing on intelligence-gathering rather than building criminal cases for prosecution. Full article.

Sami al-Haj, the al Jazeera journalist who spent seven years at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo is preparing to file a lawsuit against former president George W Bush and other top Bush administration officials. al-Haj was repeatedly interrogated by U.S. operatives attempting to falsely link al Jazeera to al Qaeda. al-Haj was also tortured. Full article.

[…] contrary to mainstream opinion that believes Afghanistan to be a “justified” war, the invasion and ongoing occupation are actually in violation of the US Constitution and international law. Full article.

“Last week a report by inspectors general at five federal agencies offered more insights into the efforts of the National Security Agency and CIA on warrantless eavesdropping. It turns out there not just one, but an entire suite of secret efforts that the report helpfully labelled “the President’s Surveillance Programme” (PSP). Each new report makes it clearer that Cheney’s stated determination to “take the gloves off” resulted in the creation of a shadowy bureaucratic archipelago of highly secret anti-terror programmes accountable to virtually no one (except, theoretically anyway, Cheney himself).” Full article.

an american army colonel’s clear sense of purpose to subdue violence with violence, to hunt down and kill insurgents, resulted in a massacre in iraq. how many more massacres are we willing to overlook as we expand our empire? synopsis of article.

Not only is torture illegal, but condoning it leads us down a slippery slope toward unfettered executive power and sets a dangerous precedent for prisoner treatment, both in the U.S. and abroad. What are the implications for the future of the United States, especially in terms of public faith, the rule of law, and global trust and respect, if our government refuses to investigate and prosecute torture? Full article.

Another question was about “the fact that liberal, educated people are the ones who can listen and appreciate your arguments and books and not the poor.” Roy’s touchiness showed as she replied that, “strangely in India, the hierarchy of education and status has, like you, resulted in more narrow thoughts at the top rather then amongst the poor.” Arundhati Roy

read the full article.

Nonviolent activists and Muslims are held in draconian conditions, while the man charged with killing Dr. George Tiller trumpets from jail the extreme anti-abortion movement’s campaign of intimidation, vandalism, arson and murder. Full article.

What strikes me as one of the many things we can learn from this McNamara experience is that we’ve got to stop revering these superficial qualities of brightness and smartness, and bring up a generation which thinks in moral terms, which has moral intelligence, and which asks questions not, “Do we win or do we lose?” Asks questions, ” Is this right? Is it wrong?” Howard Zinn

Watch the interview.