Revolution

Recommended: Joyeux Noel

On Christmas Eve, 1914, soldiers in what was to become known as World War I held an impromptu cease fire, crossing no-man's land and fraternizing with the enemy. Such acknowledgement of their common humanity horrified their commanding officers, who made sure that this kind of basic decency would never be repeated. Christian Carion washes his highly fictionalized account with sentimentality (he even manages to get a woman into the trenches), but since this is an inherently sentimental story, that's not a bad thing.

http://bayflicks.net/2006/03/

House votes to outlaw CIA waterboarding

By Thomas Ferraro 1 hour, 26 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defying a White House veto threat, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to outlaw harsh interrogation methods, such as simulated drowning, that the CIA has used against suspected terrorists.


On a largely party line vote of 222-199, the Democratic-led House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which bans torture in compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071213/pl_nm/security_usa_torture_dc


that helps
i'm very glad

Raine, Countess Spencer, captivated courtroom 73 at the inquest of Diana and Dodi Al Fayed on Wednesday.

She thanked everyone involved in the inquest for their effort in trying "to find out the truth about this matter".

"I beg you to do your utmost to solve this mystery, to tear aside anything that could be a cover up and sift everything possible and indeed impossible in order to allow poor Diana and poor Dodi to at last, truly, rest in peace."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7141205.stm

oops spoke too soon

GOP Blocks Senate Interrogation Bill

Thousands of fans rise up in support of player facing exile

The Watford midfielder is appealing against deportation to Sierra Leone

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor
Published: 16 December 2007

Thousands of English football fans yesterday staged a show of solidarity for an African player threatened with deportation back to his war-torn homeland.

The Watford footballer Al Bangura made an emotional half-time appearance at Vicarage Road to thank fans for their support in his fight against deportation to Sierra Leone after fans staged a protest against the Home Office decision during the game with Plymouth Argyle. Fans held up posters showing the midfielder's face under the words "He's family".

Bangura, who arrived in the UK four years ago, was told last Monday that his application for asylum had been rejected. The decision to deport the 19-year-old, who became a father two weeks ago, sparked a furious protest from the club, with an appeal backed by players' unions.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3255684.ece

Cameron invites Lib Dems to join him in 'united front' against Gordon Brown
Published: 16 December 2007

David Cameron has made an audacious attempt to capitalise on the change in the Liberal Democrat leadership by inviting the party to join him in a united front against Gordon Brown's authoritarian instincts.

As Lib Dem members cast their final votes in the contest between Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, the Conservative leader made an early move to improve relations with the party, claiming they could forge a "progressive alliance" to pressurise the Prime Minister into decentralising power from Whitehall.

In an article to be published on his website today, Mr Cameron also suggested that the Green Party could be brought into an alliance which would enable them to pursue environmental objectives through the "empowerment" of individuals and communities.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3255718.ece

Tory plans backfire as Lib Dems ridicule call for 'progressive alliance'
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 17 December 2007

David Cameron has been rebuffed by the Liberal Democrats after appealing for a "progressive alliance" to be formed to challenge Gordon Brown.

The Tory leader's move, ahead of tomorrow's Liberal Democrat leadership election result, backfired when it was ridiculed by senior party figures.


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3258015.ece


And I'm very glad to hear it

The war on a sunny day
How we march and play
How we make them pay
War is for a sunny day

Uniforms crispy neat
Seem cool in prickly heat
Boom make them sound retreat
War on a sunny day

War on a sunny day
How we make them pay
How we march and play

The war on a sunny day
Red soon turn to gray
That's when we turn away
War is for a sunny day

The war on a bleary day
Store the guns away
Hide cause the sky's all gray



So my dear children
What have you learned (War is for a sunny day)
We're ready to listen
Start with number one

I've learned my dear parents
How you let them make these wars (How we march and play)
Though not kings nor peasants
Know what we're fighting for

They call out the children
Said the second one in line (How we make them pay)
Then send them out to kill them
Spill their blood like vats of wine

Three said it's for the money
Or else from made up pride
Showing them no mercy (War is for a sunny day)
The leaders run and hide

There's collateral damage
Number four's heavy sigh (How we march and play)
Means so many families
By you are chose to die

And yet you choose leaders
And suffer dictator's rule (How we make them pay)
Every one of them cheaters
So tell us who's the fool

War is for a sunny day
How we march and play
How we make them pay

Thank you for contributing Edgar -
wishing you (and everyone) a happy holiday and peaceful New Year

**********************************************************

Named and shamed - Westminster councillors
vote to ban the charitable soup kitchen in true seasonal style - scrooge style that is.
How very traditional.

http://www.westminster.gov.uk/councillors/



Adams , Ian Conservative Little Venice
Aiken , Nicola Conservative Warwick
Argar , Edward Conservative Warwick
Astaire , Daniel Conservative Regent's Park
Barrow , Colin Conservative Hyde Park
Batty , Pamela Conservative Hyde Park
Blois , Frances Conservative Knightsbridge and Belgravia
Boothroyd , David Labour Westbourne
Bradley , Alan Conservative Tachbrook
Brahams , Michael Conservative Bayswater
Burbridge , Susie Conservative Lancaster Gate
Bush , Ruth Labour Harrow Road
Caplan , Melvyn Conservative Little Venice
Chalkley , Danny Conservative Vincent Square
Connell , Brian Conservative Bayswater
D Cruz , Rupert Labour Westbourne
Davis DL, Robert Conservative Lancaster Gate
Devenish , Anthony Conservative Knightsbridge and Belgravia
Dimoldenberg , Paul Labour Queen's Park
Doyle , Margaret Conservative Little Venice
Evans , Nicholas Conservative Tachbrook
Flight , Christabel Conservative Warwick
Floru , Jean-Paul Conservative Hyde Park
Grahame , Barbara Labour Church Street
Hall , Lindsey Conservative Abbey Road
Hampson , Gwyneth Conservative Regent's Park
Harvey , Angela Conservative Tachbrook
Havery , Andrew Conservative Churchill
Hooper , Angela Conservative Bryanston and Dorset Square
Hyams , Louise Conservative St James's
Joiner , Tim Conservative Regent's Park
Keen , Carolyn Conservative Bryanston and Dorset Square
Lewis , Audrey Conservative Bryanston and Dorset Square
Marshall , Harvey Conservative Marylebone High Street
McKie , Guthrie Labour Harrow Road
Milton , Sir Simon Conservative Lancaster Gate
Mitchell , Tim Conservative St James's
Moss , Alastair Conservative Maida Vale
Mothersdale , Antony Labour Church Street
Nemeth , Cyril Conservative Abbey Road
Nicoll , Alexander Conservative St James's
Page , Mark Conservative Marylebone High Street
Prendergast , Jan Conservative Maida Vale
Qureshi , Mushtaq Labour Queen's Park
Qureshi , Papya Labour Westbourne
Rahuja , Suhail Conservative Bayswater
Richardson , Sarah Conservative Churchill
Roberts , Glenys Conservative West End
Roe , Philippa Conservative Knightsbridge and Belgravia
Rowley , Lee Conservative Maida Vale
Rowley , Ian Conservative Marylebone High Street
Sandys , Duncan Conservative Vincent Square
Summers , Steven Conservative Vincent Square
Tabari , Sharan Labour Harrow Road
Taylor , Barrie Labour Queen's Park
Toki , Aziz Labour Church Street
Tombolis , Frixos Conservative West End
Warner , Judith Conservative Abbey Road
Wilder , Ian Conservative West End
Yarker , Nicholas Conservative Churchill





Have your say

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=3975&edition=1&ttl=20071225070148

" What is wrong with an act of kindness such as this? It is not going to encourage people to live in the street. It might well help to ward off hypothermia for those people less fortunatel than most of us."

Dr Nick Ashley, Huntingdon Cambs


"What would Jesus do?"

Anon, London UK




Westminster Homeless


Queen to urge care for vulnerable

The Queen will mark the 50th anniversary of her first televised Christmas message by urging people to care for the vulnerable in society.

She will also recognise the sacrifice and devotion to duty of the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7158800.stm

***********************************************************

Battle to halt deportation of girl, 3, puts spotlight on UK asylum policy
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 02 January 2008

A mother's legal battle to stop the Government deporting her sick, three-year-old daughter threatens to shame Britain over its treatment of child asylum-seekers in a test case being considered by the European Court of Human Rights.

The plight of Adedoyin Fadairo, who was born in America but has lived almost her entire life in London, has shocked asylum campaigners. She has been issued with deportation papers telling her to report to Heathrow where she must board a flight for the US, although she has no family there. The order warns her that while in Britain she must not breach immigration rules and threatens her with detention.

Home Office officials have also written to her mother informing her that her daughter, who has a serious kidney disorder, is not entitled to medical attention as she is not a UK citizen.

The case has been taken up by the European Court of Human Rights which will consider the girl's treatment and the legality of separating families who are claiming asylum in this country.

The 32-year-old mother, a Nigerian citizen whohas lived in Britain for 10 years after fleeing persecution, is being held at Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire where she is facing removal to west Africa. She has been separated from her daughter for 10 months.

Now the European Court of Human Rights has ordered the UK government to cancel the deportation so it can investigate the case.

Adedoyin is being cared for by her grandmother in London while her own daughter is detained. Repeated attempts to reunite mother and daughter have been rejected by the government, which has accused the mother of breaching immigration rules by allowing her daughter to benefit from medical treatment on the NHS.

The case highlights the ordeal of thousands of children caught up in the asylum system and raises concerns about Britain's reliance on an opt-out of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which it says is necessary to maintain an effective immigration policy. In 2001 the Government introduced a tougher policy for the indefinite detention of families with children without any formal recognition of the special legal status of children in international law.

In a letter sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September the Strasbourg court has asked Britain to answer 12 questions about the Adedoyin case.

The Government's response to the court concedes that Britain intends to remove both mother and daughter to Nigeria. But Adedoyin's mother says that her daughter does not have the right to live in Nigeria because she was born in America. She says her daughter has a US passport and has lived in Britain with her mother before the mother was first imprisoned for a passport fraud earlier this year and then further detained under immigration rules. Adedoyin's father deserted the family after she was born and is believed to be in Nigeria.

The mother's claim for asylum is based on her membership of a persecuted human rights organisation active in Nigeria, of which her father was a leading member. The mother, who does not want to be named because she fears victimisation in this country and Nigeria, says: "After 10 years I thought I was safe here and now I find myself caught up in a nightmare where I have become separated from my daughter. All I want is to be reunited with her and allowed to continue to live as a family in Britain. What is so wrong with that?"

The family's supporters say the case illustrates the unseen injustice of hundreds of family asylum cases that are rejected by the Government each year.

A parliamentary report published last year found that thousands of people fleeing persecution in their own countries end up victims of a "degrading and inhumane" asylum system.

The MPs also raised concerns about the greater use of detention against vulnerable people such as children, pregnant women and those with health problems.

The Home Office said the Government would not comment on an individual case. But a spokesman added: "We take the welfare of children extremely seriously and would always treat their cases with care and sensitivity. Where families are involved we always make a full effort to keep families together. However, in extremely rare cases families may attempt to use their children to frustrate immigration rules."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article3300978.ece

Hey, what a great start to the New Year! Wake up down the rabbit hole.

By the way, i googled the girl's name Adedoyin Fadairo and got no other hits off the web. The Independent is the only paper (or anything else) covering this story. Shocking isn't it??

Let's see if the BBC touch it

LONDON: Individual privacy is under threat in the United States and across the European Union as governments introduce sweeping surveillance and information-gathering measures in the name of security and controlling borders, an international rights group has said in a report.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/31/6097/


Happy 2008~ And Good Luck

100 pages of ****



Their smiles burn down our laughter
Their games are ruled by lust
Blood printed headlines
Trodden into dust
Lies and spies and torture
Round-ups on the estate
Can you say REVOLUTION?
Because the hour, it grows late





Endymion 2008

Wow - and just like that, a revolution took place







"It's the War," Says Iowa

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
"It's the War," Says Iowa to Hillary -- And a "Happy Blue Year" To All! ...from Michael Moore

Friends,

There was no doubt about it. The message from Iowa tonight was simple, but deafening:

If you're a candidate for President, and you voted for the war, you lose. And if you voted and voted and voted for the war -- and never once showed any remorse -- you really lose.

In short, if you had something to do with keeping us in this war for four-plus years, you are not allowed to be the next president of the United States.

Over 70% of Iowan Democrats voted for candidates who either never voted for the invasion of Iraq (Obama, Richardson, Kucinich) or who have since admitted their mistake (Edwards, Biden, Dodd). I can't tell you how bad I feel for Senator Clinton tonight. I don't believe she was ever really for this war. But she did -- and continued to do -- what she thought was the politically expedient thing to eventually get elected. And she was wrong. And tonight she must go to sleep wondering what would have happened if she had voted her conscience instead of her calculator.

more from Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=221

January 3rd, 2008
Edwards fires anti-corporate bombast

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=10642

That's what i want to hear

AT&T, Microsoft Discuss Internet Filtering

Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America - 1/6/2008

by Ray McGovern



"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater ... Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later ..."

These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a firsthand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages -- in English as "Defying Hitler."

I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Haffner's birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush's America ... this is almost unbelievable."

More about Haffner below. Let's set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how "odd" it is that the frontal attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such "calm, superior indifference."

Goebbels would be proud

It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.

In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen's book "State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," revealing the warrantless eavesdropping, was being printed, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. recognized that he could procrastinate no longer. It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen's book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs' trademark criterion: All The News That's Fit To Print. (The Times' own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper's explanation for the long delay in publishing this story "woefully inadequate.")

When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least.

Glitches

There were some embarrassing glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt, D-N.J., that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.

Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., apparently found Holt's scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.

What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Bush takes frontal approach

Far from expressing regret, the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance "more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks," and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:

"Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it."

On Dec. 19, 2005, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a "backdoor approach." He answered:

"We have had discussions with Congress ... as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."

Hmm. Impossible? It strains credulity that a program of the limited scope described would be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just passed the "Patriot Act" in record time. James Risen has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: "In October 2001 you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America." It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn't have a prayer for passage.

It turns out we didn't know the half of it.

What to call these activities

"Illegal Surveillance Program" didn't seem quite right for White House purposes, and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks. It took six weeks to settle on "Terrorist Surveillance Program," with FOX News leading the way, followed by the president himself. This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president's rhetoric on Dec. 17:

"In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations ... The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem..."

And Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page, dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006 confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant. "I had to make this personal decision in early Oct. 2001," said Hayden. "It was a personal decision ... I could not not do this."

Like so much else, it was all because of 9/11. But we now know ...

It started seven months before 9/11

How many times have you heard it? The mantra "after 9/11 everything changed" has given absolution to all manner of sin.

We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001. Should we not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home as well?

Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony in a case involving Qwest Communications strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me and other Americans. Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration's radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.

So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us. We know that the Democrats who were briefed on the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. (the one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee), Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and former and current chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. May one interpret their lack of public comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?

It is an important question. Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush's first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?

Are they all complicit?

And are Democratic leaders about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications corporations -- AT&T and Verizon -- who made millions by winking at the law and the Constitution? (Qwest, to its credit, heeded the advice of its general counsel, who said that what NSA wanted done was clearly illegal.)

What's going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately the adjective "spineless" has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats -- no offense to invertebrates.

Nazis and those who enable them

You don't have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.

In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German parliament building (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened and one's desk might be broken into."

But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?

In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery" of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:

"It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."

The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers -- "for the most part decent, unimportant individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.

The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized" Hitler's dictatorship.

As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner, "what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward. ... They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews. ... They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:

"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. ... At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. ... The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."

This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.

Our founding fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison wrote:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

We cannot say we weren't warned.


**

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. A former Army officer and CIA analyst, he worked in Germany for five years; he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

(Sidney Australia - I'm impressed)

Six years of Guantánamo's Camp X-Ray Prison - Remembered

" Six long years ago, the first orange-clad, shackled and blindfolded prisoners arrived at Guantánamo's Camp X-Ray. The Bush administration's plan was to fashion Guantánamo quite literally as an island outside the law -- a place with no lawyers, no rights and, above all, no public scrutiny. The administration labeled the men imprisoned at Guantánamo "illegal enemy combatants" who were to be held until the "cessation of hostilities" in the "war on terror" -- in other words, forever. Such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions and the constitutional "Great Writ" of habeas corpus were swiftly discarded because the men at Guantánamo were uniformly, in former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's words, "among the most dangerous, best trained vicious killers on the face of the earth." President Bush, somewhat more prosaically, assured the world that the Guantánamo prisoners were "bad people."

Make no mistake: There were, and are, innocent people imprisoned at Guantánamo. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, who was Guantánamo's commander for several years, candidly acknowledged in the Wall Street Journal: "Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks." And we now know that only a small percentage of the many hundreds of men and boys who have been held at Guantánamo were captured on a battlefield fighting against Americans; far more were sold into captivity by tribal warlords for substantial bounties."

Anthony D. Romero - Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Read His Full Article Here

Demonstrations are taking place around the world

Movie Magic

In Case You Missed It When He Wrote It Back In 1949



Why Socialism?

By Albert Einstein