"That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
To the Anti-War Movement in the United States:
Barack Obama is sending a surge of 20,000 troops to Afghanistan.
An antiwar movement that does not move immediately to oppose the Obama doctrine of shifting the central front of the war on terror to Afghanistan, no longer deserves to be called an anti-war movement.read more...
The World Can’t Wait organizes people living in the United States to repudiate and stop the fascist direction initiated by the Bush Regime, including: the murderous, unjust and illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; the global “war of terror” of torture, rendition and spying; and the culture of bigotry, intolerance and greed. This direction cannot and will not be reversed by leaders who tell us to seek common ground with fascists, religious fanatics, and empire. It can only be possible by the people building a community of resistance - an independent mass movement of people - acting in the interests of humanity to stop, and demand prosecution, of these crimes.
I just learned that my friend Howard Zinn died today. Earlier this morning, I was being interviewed by the Boston Phoenix, in connection with the release in Boston February of a documentary in which he is featured prominently. The interviewer asked me who my own heroes were, and I had no hesitation in answering, first, “Howard Zinn.”
Just weeks ago after watching the film on December 7, I woke up the next morning thinking that I had never told him how much he meant to me. For once in my life, I acted on that thought in a timely way. I sent him an e-mail in which I said, among other things, what I had often told others about him: that he was,” in my opinion, the best human being I’ve ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life.”
Why does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the “Pottery Barn rule.” That is – “if you break it, you own it.”
The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either – that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions – with a big B.
The following interview, with Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, was conducted by email by Elizabeth Ferrari, and was originally published on Democratic Underground.
Elizabeth Ferrari: Andy, last week was a terrible week for lies and misinformation regarding Guantánamo, particularly concerning the Yemeni prisoners and a Pentagon statement alleging that 1 in 5 released prisoners had engaged in terrorist activities. You wrote a number of articles about these topics (see here, here and here), and also discussed them onDemocracy Now! on Friday, and I was hoping in this interview to follow up on some of these stories.
On January 8, I made my way to a TV studio in central London to hook up with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez in New York to discuss the recent uproar over the release of Yemeni prisoners from Guantánamo, and the Pentagon’s most recent claims that 1 in 5 released prisoners have engaged in terrorist activities, for Democracy Now! The segment, entitled, “After Years in Guantánamo Prison Without Charge, Future Even More Uncertain For Yemeni Detainees,” is available below, and is featured here on the Democracy Now! Website.
The Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Tuesday that upholds the Bush administration's broad claims of executive power to detain non-citizens.
The case, Al-Bihani v. Obama, "was the first by the Circuit Court to directly apply the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush creating a constitutional right for Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their captivity,"according to the SCOTUS blog. "Unless reviewed and overturned either by the en banc Circuit Court or the Supreme Court, the new decision will control how scores of detainee cases are resolved in District Court in Washington."
Back in March, I published a four-part list identifying all 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, as “the culmination of a three-year project to record the stories of all the prisoners held at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” Now updated (as my ongoing project nears its four-year mark), the four parts of the list are available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.
As I explained at the time, the first fruit of my research was my book The Guantánamo Files, in which, based on an exhaustive analysis of 8,000 pages of documents released by the Pentagon (plus other sources), I related the story of Guantánamo, established a chronology explaining where and when the prisoners were seized, told the stories of around 450 of these men (and boys), and provided a context for the circumstances in which the remainder of the prisoners were captured.
KABUL – The United Nations said Thursday that a weekend raid by foreign troops in a tense eastern Afghan province killed eight local students and warned against nighttime actions by coalition forces because they often cause civilian deaths.
The Afghan government said its investigation has established that all 10 people killed Sunday in a remote village in Kunar province were civilians. Its officials said that eight of those killed were schoolchildren aged 12-14. . . .
President Obama has recently nominated Sharon Browne, a far right wing attorney, to the Legal Services Corporation Board. Legal Services law offices throughout the country provide free legal services to low-income residents of the U.S. Browne’s nomination is an insult to the thousands of legal services staff who struggle daily to provide adequate legal services. Her nomination is also an indication of how far Obama has gone to appease the right-wing. The following is a statement issued by the National Lawyers Guild in response to Obama’s action.
In many respects, a year of President Barack Obama feels much the same as...a year of George Bush. Wars metastasize, prisons migrate from Cuba to Illinois, bankers get richer – 2009 has many elements of deja vu. “Barack Obama has firmly established the continuation of Bush regime domestic, foreign and economic policy.”
“Barack Obama has firmly established the continuation of Bush regime domestic, foreign and economic policy.”
It is hard to keep track of all the Obama abominations taking place as he nears his first anniversary as president of the United States. Just as the Nobel Peace Prize winner announces more war, true health care reform bites the dust. The Copenhagen climate change summit ended with the United States, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, making no commitment to change its ways and offering almost no help to the poor nations of the world who are serious about climate change.
At West Point on December 1, one of President Barack Obama's key arguments for escalating the war in Afghanistan was the danger that Islamic fundamentalists like al Qaeda or the Taliban might seize power in Pakistan and/or get hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
"The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered," Obama stated. "And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them."
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The following interview, with Andy Worthington, author of .jpg)
