Category: activism

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

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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

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“Whatever happens to American ground troops who eventually, yes, will be withdrawn, will make no difference to the significance of the American presence, the violent American presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in Iraq. The whole region is being crafted, if you like, for a very, very long American colonial presence.” John Pilger

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“Today, words like ‘Progress’ and ‘Development’ have become interchangeable with economic ‘Reforms’, Deregulation and Privatisation. ‘Freedom’ has come to mean ‘choice’. It has less to do with the human spirit than with different brands of deodorant. ‘Market’ no longer means a place where you go to buy provisions. The ‘Market’ is a de-territorialised space where faceless corporations do business, including buying and selling ‘futures’. ‘Justice’ has come to mean ‘human rights’ (and of those, as they say, ‘a few will do’). This theft of language, this technique of usurping words and deploying them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of the most brilliant strategic victories of the Tsars of the new dispensation.” Arundhati Roy.

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Damn those ungrateful Pakistanis. After U.S. drone attacks killed more than 600 of their people since 2006—most of them civilians—it seems they think they have some right to say they don’t want the U.S. flying its “aid” planes to Swat and other “tribal areas.” The New York Times reports that “the Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American workers or planes to distribute the aid in the camps for displaced people.” Full article.

“I AM but a common man, I am not a speaker but I have spoken. I am not all that tall, but I have stood up. I am not a philosopher or poet or a singer or any of those things that particularly inspire people, but the one thing that I am is the evidence that this country lied when they said there was justice for all…” Leonard Peltier

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