95 QuickLinks

Friday, January 30, 2009
Israel's leaders Attempt to Forestall War Crimes Proceedings
Mounting fear in Israel that the country's leaders face war crimes charges over their involvement in the recent Gaza offensive pushed officials into a frenzy of activity to forestall legal actions abroad. - Jonathan Cook

Saturday, January 24, 2009
Avnery: "A Crime Against Ourselves"
The Israeli author warns that his country has made a tragic mistake: "This war is a crime against ourselves .. a crime against the State of Israel."

Saturday, January 24, 2009
Zimbabwe Cholera: 50,000 cases already. Red Cross
"It is unraveling in front of our eyes. We have close to 50,000 cases and close to 3,000 deaths already."

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
President Obama suspends Guantanamo cases
(2 comments) HOURS after taking office, US President Barack Obama ordered military prosecutors in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals to ask for a 120-day halt in all pending cases.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
World Celebrates Obama
The world watched the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States along with American citizens. What they say they saw, read and heard was a message of renewed cooperation and leadership.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Earliest weapons-grade plutonium found in US dump
An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that's just where the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found - abandoned at the world's oldest nuclear processing site.

Saturday, January 17, 2009
All Welfare Payments End in California
(2 comments) Payments owed to Californians, including tax refunds, student grants, and all welfare payments, are to cease at the end of this month. California is no longer able to pay its bills. Total amount owing: 3.7 billion.

Thursday, January 15, 2009
US Rabbis Urge Obama to Push for Gaza Ceasefire
A coalition of American rabbis and other community leaders bought a full-page ad in the New York Times on Wednesday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for President-elect Barack Obama to convene an international Middle East peace conference. The initiative was led by Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Army Creating Security Zone Around Gaza; JPost
(2 comments) dispatched reserve units to the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the IDF was said to be carving out a "security zone" along the border, which it would retain even after an end to the fighting and use to conduct routine patrols aimed at halting rocket attacks against the South.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Chronology: Which Side Violated Ceasefire?
The Bush Administration and the New York Times Vs Amnesty International. - Howard Friel.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Demands Grow for Gaza War Crimes Investigation
Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Stephen Zunes: Virtually Entire Congress Supports War Crimes in Gaza
Congressional leaders are advancing a radical view of international law that would allow powerful countries to get away with war crimes.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Pentagon Official: We tortured in Guantanamo
Ms Crawford, a retired judge who also worked in the Reagan Administration, is the first senior Bush Administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have said that the US does not torture.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Nine Israeli Human Rights Groups Call for War Crimes Inquiry
NYT: Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Nowhere to Bury the Dead
"Gaza is all a graveyard," gravedigger Salman Omar said Tuesday as he shoveled earth in Gaza City's crammed Sheik Radwan cemetery. Just six miles wide and 25 miles long, Gaza has always suffered from a shortage of burial space. But Gazans say Israel's shelling and ground offensive have made it impossible for residents to reach Martyrs Cemetery - the only graveyard in the area with space to dig fresh graves.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Jeremy Ben-Ami: Obama Must Sieze Opportunity From Crisis
(1 comments) On the U.S.'s watch - in fact, with the U.S.'s protection and implicit blessing - Israel is marching slowly to the edge of an abyss. Those of us who truly love the country and care about the future of the Jewish people cannot stand idly by, watching it commit national suicide.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
General Smedley Butler: War is a Racket
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.. We must take the profit out of war.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Ru Freeman: Barack Obama's Silence on Gaza
Seven years ago, another American president took the sympathy of the world and transformed it into hatred. Just two months ago, Barack Obama won it back on the backs of ordinary Americans. Today he stands on the brink of repeating the biggest mistake of his predecessor.

Monday, January 12, 2009
Systematic targeting of civilians
Ewa Jasiewicz writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 11 January 2009 - Very detailed account of life inside Gaza

Monday, January 12, 2009
A Sderot Woman Speaks Out Against Gaza Operation
"Sderot is not monolithic. Here is what I received a couple of hours ago from Israel, written (in Hebrew) by a member of Kol Aher (another voice) - a Sderot-based peace group. As the tranlation is mine and this is the first place it appears, it is posted in its entirety." - Daily Kos; 10th January 2009

Monday, January 12, 2009
Gaza a 'Test Laboratory for New Weapons' - Mads Gilbert
(1 comments) "There's a very strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons," Mads Gilbert said at Oslo's Gardermoen airport, commenting on the kinds of injuries he and his colleague Erik Fosse had seen while working at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel Is Comitting War Crimes - Bisharat in WSJ
Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. (Published in Wall Street Journal.)

Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel Must Abide by International Law - SMH
Palestine has no air force, tanks or gunships to counter such an onslaught. The tiny strip of Gaza, with its 1.5 million people, only has its human resources to resist an attack from the region's most powerful army. It is easy to understand why Israel continues to ban foreign journalists from seeing the results of its war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Monday, January 12, 2009
John Lyons: Israelis Split on do-or-die Decision
The changing mood in Israel was reflected in the country's second biggest-selling newspaper, Maariv. A headline on its front page last week said, in Hebrew, "Not by Force". The paper said solutions to Israel's problems in Gaza needed to come by negotiation. This was not Haaretz.. Maariv is a tabloid with a big blue-collar audience -- middle Israel, the people who will be important in deciding the new government.

Monday, January 12, 2009
Gideon Levy: Things one sees from The Hague
(1 comments) The public, moral and judicial test will be applied to the three Israeli statesmen who sent the Israel Defense Forces to war against a helpless population, one that did not even have a place to take refuge, in maybe the only war in history against a strip of land enclosed by a fence. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will stand at the forefront of the guilty.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Welcome to Hell
The earthen walls of the lagoon – which contains 450 million gallons of sewage – are being weakened by the bombardment and the build-up of water pressure because pumps have run out of fuel. If they burst they will bring a death toll far greater than that of the military action so far. The World Bank has asked Israel to provide fuel for the pumps, let staff and spare parts through to the lagoon

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Uri Avnery: How Many Divisions?
From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not "hide behind the population", the population views them as their only defenders.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Rights Groups Condemn US Role in Gaza Attacks
"The Israeli airstrikes represent serious violations of international law -- including the Geneva Conventions and a range of international humanitarian law -- and the U.S. is complicit in all of it"

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Fuelling the Slaughter
The devastating Israeli firepower, unleashed largely on Palestinian civilians in Gaza during two weeks of fighting, is the product of advanced U.S. military technology. The U.S. weapons systems used by the Israelis -- including F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles and a wide array of munitions -- have been provided by Washington mostly as outright military grants.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Letter to Israel
(1 comments) Signatories include: Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield, head of the Movement for Reform Judaism; Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chair of the Labour party; Professor Shalom Lappin of the University of London; Baroness Julia Neuberger; Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism; Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein, principal of Leo Baeck rabbinical training college; and lawyer Michael Mitzman, who set up Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Gideon Levy: Time of the Righteous
(2 comments) "Anyone who justifies this war, also justifies all its crimes."

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Robert Scheer: Moral Blindness on Gaza
Why are we so indifferent to the death and destruction in Gaza? The major news outlets meekly accepted Israel's banning of journalists from entering Gaza as an excuse for downplaying collateral civilian casualties..

Sunday, January 11, 2009
"I know it when I see it" - Jewish dissent in Canada
Anton Kuerti, internationally acclaimed concert pianist, said: "I am not an expert on what is a war crime, but I can recognize one when I see one."

Sunday, January 11, 2009
John Nichols: House refuses to encourage Gaza Peace
The overwhelming majority of members abandoned Israelis and Palestinians who are seeking peace in the region and endorsed an over-the-top "Supporting Israel in Its Battle with Terrorist Hamas" resolution..

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Robert Fisk: Time to Stop the Mideast Comparison
Travelling on both sides of the Atlantic these past couple of weeks has been an instructive - not to say weirdly repetitive - experience.

Friday, January 9, 2009
John Pilger: Holocaust Denied
(5 comments) "When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC.

Friday, January 9, 2009
Former guard, on Guantanamo torture
(3 comments) A former guard at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay has spoken in his first television interview about the brutality he witnessed to inmates. Chris Arendt told the BBC what he saw amounted to ''torture'' and that some of his fellow guards were so violent as to be ''psychotic.'' Daniel Sandford reports.

Friday, January 9, 2009
UN levels War Crimes Warning at Israel
(3 comments) Killing of 30 people in Gaza when army shelled house full of evacuees 'has all hallmarks of war crime', says high commissioner for human rights.

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Robert Scheer: "Why do so few speak up for Gaza?"
Why is it that there is such widespread acceptance, beginning with the apologetic arguments of President Bush, that whatever Israel does is always justified as necessary to the survival of the Jewish state? It is not.

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Conyers Seeks Probe of Bush Crimes - Jason Leopold
In one of the first acts of the 111th Congress, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers proposed legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the "broad range" of policies pursued by the Bush administration "under claims of unreviewable war powers," including torture of detainees and warrantless wiretaps.

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Israeli Voices for Peace - Amy Goodman
(1 comments) Avnery: "A criminal war" Levy: "this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this." Jonathan Ben-Artzi: "tell out government, stop doing this." Neve Gordon: "..the Palestinian Resistance is rational." -- Gordon attended a large peace march last weekend in Tel Aviv with more than 10,000 other Israelis.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Marjorie Cohn: Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza
(1 comments) Since Israel began its war on Gaza 11 days ago, more than 560 Palestinians – about a quarter of them civilians – have been killed. Some two thousand Gazans, including hundreds of children, have been wounded. Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" marks an escalation of Israel's two-year blockade of the Gaza Strip..

Wednesday, January 7, 2009
How Israel Brought Gaza to the Brink - Avi Shlaim
(5 comments) "How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of Humanitarian Catastrophe." Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The US Pipeline - Funding the Israeli Military
(2 comments) Millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care, job and pension losses. However, none of these crises currently threatens to alter the flow of their tax dollars to Israel's government. It takes these greenbacks and buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. - by Seth Sandronsky

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
"Ask Congress to Speak Out About Gaza Violence" - Naiman
If you're a Member of Congress, and your name doesn't happen to be Dennis J. Kucinich, can you still speak out in opposition to the carnage that President Bush and Secretary of State Rice are actively promoting in Gaza? Yes, you can!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Israel's New War Ethic - Neve Gordon
(2 comments) "My mother, like most Israelis, is a devout news consumer, and last night I decided to keep her company in front of the TV." Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Monday, January 5, 2009
Dreyfuss - 'Bush's Last War Crime?'
(1 comments) "The Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched Saturday, might very well be George W. Bush's last and final war crime." - Robert Dreyfuss, in The Nation

Monday, January 5, 2009
"Extreme Double Standards on Terrorism" - Robert Parry
"The long and bloody hypocrisy of US/Israeli Acts of Terrorism" - Robert Parry, Consortium News "Without an extreme double standard on terrorism, it's hard to see how today's bloodbath in Gaza would be possible."

Saturday, January 3, 2009
UN; Gaza Facing 'Critical Emergency'
The UN has warned that Palestinians in Gaza are facing a serious health and food crisis, as Israeli air strikes continued for a seventh day.

Saturday, January 3, 2009
Tara & Bella - Unlikely best friends (Includes video)
(3 comments) Today, their love - and trust - is stronger than ever. Bella even lets Tarra pet her tummy - with the bottom of her enormous foot. They harbor no fears, no secrets, no prejudices. Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences. Take good look America. Take a good look world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?

Saturday, January 3, 2009
Pentagon is Muscling In (Military takeover of US Gov) WaPo
(13 comments) We no longer have a civilian-led government.. While serving the State Department in several senior capacities over the past four years, I witnessed firsthand the quiet, de facto military takeover of much of the U.S. government.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
UK PM: "Humanitarian Crisis", Calls for Ceasefire
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza amid a "humanitarian crisis" in the Palestinian territory. His plea came after the UK pledged to give £6.9m [$10 m.] in emergency aid for those caught up in the violence.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Memo for Obama - from Uri Avnery
The following humble suggestions are based on my 70 years of experience as an underground fighter, special forces soldier in the 1948 war, editor-in-chief of a newsmagazine, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement:

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Party to Murder - Chris Hedges
(3 comments) Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza .. wonder why we are hated? We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate, time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Israel Ordered to let International Media into Gaza
(3 comments) Israel's supreme court today ordered the government to allow the international media into Gaza to report on the effect of the air strikes on Palestinians.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
"We Have No Words Left"
(1 comments) Diplomatic fronts, such as the US-dominated Quartet, continue to treat occupier and occupied, colonizer and colonized, first-world high-tech army and near-starving refugee population, as if they are on the same footing.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
International Call for Gaza Truce
The Quartet, of the US, EU, UN and Russia, urged "an immediate ceasefire that would be fully respected". "They called on all parties to address the serious humanitarian and economic needs in Gaza and to take necessary measures to ensure the continuous provision of humanitarian supplies"

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Lights Out in Gaza, News Blackout in US
To justify U.S.'s carte blanche to Israel, the mainstream media restricts American readers to an echo chamber in which the following claims are repeated ad nausem until they are mistaken for fact:

Monday, December 29, 2008
"100 Eyes for an Eye" - Norman Solomon
(1 comments) "The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government's stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described."

Monday, December 29, 2008
Gaza: Where Civilians Become Targets
(1 comments) "If we accept – by silence or without questioning – that anything and everyone can be defined as "terrorist infrastructure", then we are designating all civilians in Gaza as being targets."

Monday, December 29, 2008
The Gaza Crisis: December 2008
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip violate important tenants of international humanitarian law, including violations of the Geneva Conventions.. The violations start with collective punishment - the entire 1.5 million people who live in the Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Monday, December 29, 2008
Statements on Gaza: Kucinich, & Hoyer - CONTRAST!
(1 comments) Hoyer: "Israel is acting in clear self defense..." Kucinich: "Israeli government attacks civilians in violation of international law" Dennis is calling for an independent UN inquiry on Gaza.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
To be in Gaza is to be Trapped
Once it was possible for Gazans to pass with relative ease in and out of the Strip to work in Israel. In recent years, the noose around the 1.5 million people living there has been tightening incrementally, until a whole population – in the most densely settled urban area upon the planet – has been locked in behind walls and fences.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
Hospitals in Gaza Cannot Cope
Russia Today has a video on the situation in Gaza, where Israel has launched an air strike attack. It reports that the strikes happened while children were leaving school, and many parents are still trying to locate their children. Watch it here:

Sunday, December 28, 2008
Israel's P.R. Offensive
(1 comments) Global PR campaign launched ahead of Gaza invasion. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has instructed diplomats across the globe to launch what is being described as a "PR blitz" to shore up international support for an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
UN Security Council urges End to all Military Activities in Gaza
The UN Security Council Sunday urged an immediate end to all military activities in the Gaza Strip, scene of deadly Israeli air strikes, and called on the parties to address the humanitarian crisis in the territory.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
Haaretz - Anti-Israel protests draw thousands across Europe
More than 1,000 people staged protests in Paris on Sunday against one of Israel's strike on Palestinian militants, police said, as the French government pushed for a halt to fighting.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
More than 1000 Israelis protest Gaza war, in Tel Aviv
(2 comments) More than a thousand people marched from the Cinemateque to the gates of the "Kirya" - Israeli Defense Minstry in Tel Aviv. PM Olmert was visiting there at the same time [Elsewhere, Olmert's daughter, Dana, is protesting the war.]

Friday, December 26, 2008
GOP's Double Standards Applied in Minnesota Recount
When Republicans lawyer up, that's "preserving the sanctity of the vote"; when Dems don't roll over and concede immediately, they're "stealing" ... something.

Friday, December 26, 2008
Buying back the Land - Support for Student Activist
(2 comments) Supporters of a man who disrupted an auction of land for oil and gas development near some of Utah's most famous national parks are trying to raise money to buy the land themselves.

Thursday, December 25, 2008
FBI Director Calls Cheney's big Lie (Scott Horton, Harpers)
"It is a lie which has been advanced for a specific reason: to cloak their criminal conduct."

Thursday, December 25, 2008
A Progressive's Christmas Page - PDB
Includes stories, poems, cartoons, and report on the million dollar gift to Minnesota Fire Victims.

Thursday, December 25, 2008
Obama's Zen State... - NYT
Even at the end of his long journey to win the White House, one question about Barack Obama came up again and again: How did he appear to stay even-tempered and levelheaded while traveling such a grueling road? At least part of the answer can be found here on the island of Oahu.

Thursday, December 25, 2008
Student Disrupts Govt Wilderness Auction (buys 22,000 acres)
(2 comments) University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher explains how he "bought" 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from drilling. The sale had been strongly opposed by many environmental groups.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Asked for his "Highest moment", Cheney replies "9/11"
(1 comments) On Fox News yesterday, Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney to identify the "highest moment" of the last eight years. It wasn't a trick question. Cheney pondered this for a few moments before answering..

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Movement to Try George W Bush et al for War Crimes
(1 comments) Members of the Bush admin and George W. Bush conspired to violate the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Principles and US obligations to both. Bush and key members of his admin violated US criminal codes and tried to make their crimes legal after they had already committed them. They embarked on this subversive action when it was made clear to them that they could be put to death for violations of US Codes..

Saturday, December 20, 2008
"Mr Obama, Make Media Reform a Priority"
On Thursday, an alliance of more than 100 groups, unions, musicians, bloggers and media and technology leaders sent a letter to President-elect Barack Obama calling on his administration to appoint leaders who will reform the media and protect the open Internet. - Josh Silver, Huff Post

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Rule of Law Idea Spreading Faster Than at any Time..
"Rule of Law idea spreading faster than at any time since Moses came down off the mountain" The idea of actually enforcing laws has reached Glenn Greenwald, Open Left, New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Iraq, Amnesty International, Vets for Peace, United for Peace and Justice, and all of these groups.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Why was Cheney so quick to admit he's a war criminal? - Marjorie Cohn
(3 comments) Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he's confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won't prosecute him. Both of those courses of action would be illegal.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Obama's PROMISE to reverse executive orders.
(6 comments) NYT OpEd: We expect Mr. Obama to keep the promise he made over and over in the campaign.. He said one of his FIRST ACTS as president would be to order a review of all of Mr. Bush's executive orders and REVERSE those that eroded civil liberties and the rule of law.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Newsweek: "The Noose Tightens"
The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing-and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Senate Committee Chair Prepares for Cheney Indictments
(2 comments) Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Prepares for Cheney Torture Indictments

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Demands for war crimes prosecutions in Mainstream
Demands that Bush officials be held accountable for their war crimes are becoming more common in mainstream political discourse. The mountain of evidence that has recently emerged directly linking Bush officials to the worst abuses, combined with Dick Cheney's brazen, defiant acknowledgment of his role in these crimes, is forcing us to embrace the need for accountability.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008
"The Sky is Falling" - NASA
"The boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes."

Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Iraq: 35,000 Troop casualties from "Non-Hostile" causes
More than half of the 70,231 US troop casualties in Iraq are from 'Non-Hostile' causes. That is, 35,955 dead and medically evacuated, as of Dec 6th 2008. These official figures do not include injuries diagnosed after the vets left Iraq (est 20,000, - mainly brain trauma)

Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Olbermann / Turley: "Cheney a war criminal"
(1 comments) JT: The argument of this Admin: "It can't be a crime because no one's prosecuted us for it." But it most certainly is a crime... And indeed it is one of the crimes that defines a nation committed to the rule of law."

Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Darth Vader strikes back
There was something weird and creepy about Cheney's interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl. In a video clip ABC posted on its website in which Cheney defends torture on familiar grounds (that is, torture isn't torture if he says it isn't torture), Karl looks nervous and uncomfortable, as though he expects hooded men to burst in at any moment and drag him off to the waterboarding chamber.

Monday, December 15, 2008
Leading Lawyer Calls for Rumsfeld Prosecution
President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, has resumed calls for formal prosecution of Rumsfeld following revelations by a Congressional report that Rumsfeld was to blame for the Pentagon policy allowing torture. "Rumsfeld and the others must be held individually accountable, and it must be before a court of law. There must be consequences for their illegal activities" he said.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Obama Meeting 'War Powers Act' Panel
Obama met Thursday with the leaders of a commission that has proposed revamping the legal process for launching military action, to require more consultation between a president and Congress.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Bush sneaks in laws to undermine Obama
By the time he vacates the White House, he will have issued a record number of 'midnight regulations' - so called because of the stealthy way they appear on the rule books - to undermine the administration of Barack Obama, many of which could take years to undo.

Saturday, December 13, 2008
Torture docs & Wiretap info Blocked from Obama Team
The DoJ has evaded a request from President-elect Barack Obama's transition team for documents about the secret programs of U.S. intelligence agencies. The team asked to "review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs." The inquiry has been denied. Among the information requested are official documents about the "legal rationale" for the secret wiretapping ..

Saturday, December 13, 2008
US Senate Report Identifies Admin War Criminals
(1 comments) The Senate report traces the abuses to a 2002 Bush memo that declared that international law on the treatment of war prisoners didn't apply to al Qaida or the Taliban. The report outlines how senior U.S. officials, including Rumsfeld, Myers and Rice, shaped policy decisions leading to the use of interrogation techniques that numerous legal authorities and former military officers have denounced as torture and war crimes.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Obama and Beyond
(1 comments) Now, Americans have the chance to make the future. By electing Obama, we've created a window of opportunity to make progress on a range of concerns, from ending the war in Iraq to establishing health care as a universal right to preventing climate change. But Obama can't do it alone...

Monday, December 1, 2008
Obama's Risky 'Team of Rivals'
If there's one book Obama should read before he sets any more appointments in stone, it would be James Douglass's remarkable book JFK and the Unspeakable.

Thursday, July 24, 2008
Rules prevent open discussion on Friday
Rules prevent discussion of impeachment on Friday, prevent naming either Bush or Cheney, and prevent accusing either or them of any offense. So, what was the reason for the meeting again? (Vince B. will be there, but what could he possibly say under these rules?)