NOAM CHOMSKY: “The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism”

EXCLUSIVE DemocracyNow!
December 17, 2009

Noam Chomsky delivers the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism at Columbia University School for International Affairs...

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Author & Journalist Naomi Klein: Fate of Planet Rests on Mass Movement for Climate Justice

DemocracyNow!
December 11, 2009

Hundreds of activists from across the globe are gathering every day in downtown Copenhagen for the people’s climate summit, the Klimaforum. On Thursday night, Shock Doctrine author and journalist Naomi Klein addressed a packed hall at a panel on ecological debt and climate justice.

We go now to people’s climate summit, the Klima Forum taking place in the heart of Copenhagen where hundreds of activists from across the globe are gathering every day. Reparations, justice, models of alternative development, sustainable consumption, non-market solutions, climate refugees, indigenous rights. These are some of the many concerns being raised at the People’s Climate Summit away . On Thursday night, Shock Doctrine author and journalist Naomi Klein addressed a packed hall at a panel on ecological debt and climate justice...

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As Wall Street Posts Record Profits and US Hunger Rate Grows, Robert Scheer Asks: “Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?”

DemocracyNow!
November 19, 2009

A pair of new government reports released this week paint a startling picture more than a year after the economic meltdown. On Tuesday, the New York Comptroller Office said Wall Street profits are set to exceed the record set three years ago. The four largest firms took in $22.5 billion in profits through September. Meanwhile, far more people are going hungry in the United States than previously thought. The Department of Agriculture estimates 50 million Americans, including a quarter of all children, struggled to get enough to eat last year. We speak to veteran journalist Robert Scheer...

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PATRIOTs and Secrets Hearing, Day One Wrap Up

By emptywheel
November 4, 2009

A quick overview of Wednesday’s doings in House Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of the PATRIOT Act renewal.

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Sportswriter Dave Zirin On Obama’s Olympic Error

DemocracyNow!
October 2, 2009

As President Obama lobbies the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago for the site of the 2016 summer Olympics, Dave Zirin looks at why Chicago may not want to be the host city. Zirin argues Olympic Games have economically hurt cities in the past. And, he writes “To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest.”...

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Police Crackdown on G20 Protests: Democracy Now! Reports from the Streets

DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2009

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit under the shadow of a police crackdown on protesters in the streets. Heavily-armed riot police are out in force all over the city, using tear gas, stun grenades, smoke canisters, and sound cannons, which direct extremely loud shrill sounds. This is believed to be the first time sound cannons have been publicly used in the United States. Democracy Now! producer Steve Martinez reports from the streets of Pittsburgh...

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Ralph Nader on the G-20, Healthcare Reform, Mideast Talks and His First Work of Fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

DemocracyNow!
September 21, 2009

As the United States prepares to host the Group of Twenty nations summit in Pittsburgh later this week, we speak with longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, author and presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Nader discusses Congress’s failure to pass any meaningful financial reform on Wall Street over the past year and critiques Obama’s healthcare reform proposal. Ralph Nader also talks about his first work of fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Nader describes the book in terms of a practical utopia, a fictional vision that could become a new reality...

Afghan Detainees Allowed To Question Detention

AP via NPR
September 13, 2009

The Pentagon has begun putting into place a new program under which hundreds of prisoners being held by the military in Afghanistan will be given the right to challenge their detentions, a defense official said Sunday.

Prisoners at Bagram military base are all to be given a U.S. military official to serve as their personal representative and a chance to go before new so-called Detainee Review Boards, to have their cases considered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss a program that has not been formally announced.

The initiative amounts to the first time prisoners will be able to call witnesses and submit evidence in their defense. There are some 600 detainees at the facility, some who have been held for up to six years...

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The Real Lessons of 9/11

by Robert Parry
Consortium News
September 11, 2009

On this eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s worth reflecting on how even a mildly competent U.S. President might have prevented the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and drove the United States into a spasm of revenge that has wasted untold blood and treasure...

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Eight Years After 9/11, Ground Zero Volunteer Dying of Lung Disease is One of Many Still Fighting For Justice

DemocracyNow!
September 11, 2009

Today marks the eighth anniversary of 9/11 with vigils being held to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks. We look at a group of victims that are often forgotten in the Sept. 11 narrative–the thousands of rescue workers who became sick after being exposed to contaminants at Ground Zero. Hundreds have died. We speak to Joe Picurro, a New Jersey ironworker who worked as a volunteer on the Pile for 28 days. He is now dying of lung disease. We also speak with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D–NY), she is co-sponsoring the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, and we talk to Dr. Jacqueline Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine...

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“The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today”

Democracy Now!
September 9, 2009

We speak with Kevin Bales, a leader in the abolition movement to end modern-day slavery and co-author of The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Bales estimates some 27 million people labor as slaves today—more than at anytime in history. Bales has also helped expose modern-day slavery in the United States, where he estimates between 14,000 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the country each year. He writes, “There has never been a single day in our America, from its discovery and birth right up to the moment you are reading this sentence, without slavery.”...

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Oliver Stone: 'The truth about Hugo Chávez'

posted by Oliver Stone to
The Guardian Film Blog
September 3, 2009

South of the Border is Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's record of a trip to Venezuela to meet the president, Hugo Chávez. Ahead of the film's premiere at the Venice film festival on Monday, Stone writes about his hopes for the film, and the future of US foreign policy in the region...

A Paradise Built in Hell: Rebecca Solnit on “The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster”

DemocracyNow!
August 31, 2009

We speak with author, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit about her latest book that examines Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster chronicles both the crimes of the vigilantes and the powerful during Katrina, as well as the numerous instances of altruism, generosity and courage displayed by the vast majority of people who lived through this catastrophe...

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Lebanese man is target of first rendition under Obama

By Bob Drogin
L.A. Times
August 22, 2009

Contractor Raymond Azar is arrested in Afghanistan, hooded, stripped and flown to the U.S. His alleged crime? Bribery. A human rights activist calls the case 'bizarre.'

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Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, and an Epic Revolt

by Jeff Severns Guntzel
Utne Reader
August 13, 2009

In 1996, shortly after Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her house arrest she met with a visiting journalist and told him: “I'm afraid that countries and events keep slipping from the headlines, and we have slipped.”...

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ENVIRONMENT-NIGERIA: Playing With Fire

Analysis by Khadija Sharife
InterPress Service
July 17, 2009

Nigeria's gas flare-out date has once again been extended - this time to 2011. The decision follows 25 years of political procrastination by the federal government and illegal behaviour on the part of major oil multinationals engaged in flaring associated gas (AG), the byproduct of oil production in the Niger Delta...

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Noam Chomsky on “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours”

DemocracyNow!
July 3, 2009

Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor, author and dissident intellectual, just turned eighty years old this past December. He has written over 100 books, but despite being called “the most important intellectual alive” by the New York Times, he is rarely heard in the corporate media. We spend the hour with Noam Chomsky. He spoke recently here in New York at an event sponsored by the Brecht Forum. More than 2,000 people packed into Riverside Church in Harlem to hear his address, titled “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours.” In his talk, Chomsky discussed the global economic crisis, the environment, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire and much more...

Why President Zelaya's Actions in Honduras Were Legal and Constitutional

By Alberto Valiente Thoresen
RebelReports Guest Contributor
July 1, 2009

Zelaya attempted to give Hondurans the gift of participatory democracy. It was the coup leaders who violated the constitution. Those who say otherwise are wrong...

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Iranian Election Divides Arabs, Their Leaders

by Peter Kenyon
Morning Edition
National Public Radio
June 25, 2009

Around the Arab world, reactions to the Iranian election have ranged from street demonstrations to Internet protests. But Arab leaders, many of whom are wary of the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have either remained silent or embraced his re-election as legitimate...The gap between the public and their leaders in the tightly controlled, economically powerful Persian Gulf states has rarely been this clear...

Let Iran know that the global community is monitoring their every move.

Amnesty International
Online Action Center

Iranian authorities must refrain from using excessive violence against those protesting against the recent election results

Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in the June 12 elections in Iran, there have been widespread protests against the contested election results. The Iranian authorities have responded with violence and repression. Reports indicate that large numbers of people were severely beaten by riot police and that several people have been fatally shot Furthermore, over 100 people are reported to have been arrested, including the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami. Amnesty International is concerned that those detained may be subjected to torture and ill-treatment. The Iranian authorities have attempted to stop the flow of information both among Iranians and from Iranians to those outside by blocking cell phone communication, text messaging and email. Amnesty International is also concerned that the protests, which have already drawn massive crowds in Tehran and other cities in Iran, may be met with increased levels of violence by Iranian authorities. AI calls for the authorities to exercise restraint in response to further demonstrations and to release all those who have been detained for peacefully expressing their opinions about the results of the election. It also calls for an end to restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and association, including the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas.

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Abuses In Sri Lanka Worry Human Rights Groups

by Philip Reeves
Morning Edition
National Public Radio
June 19, 2009

It's been a month since the civil war ended in Sri Lanka. Government troops defeated the Tamil Tiger separatist rebels, who they fought for nearly three decades. Tensions remain high on the island, and human rights activists say they're worried about the future of democracy in Sri Lanka...

Sure They Stole It...Up Front and Honestly

By REZA FIYOUZAT
CounterPunch
June 15, 2009

...Here was Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a man who is as much a figurehead of the regime as any, and here were these people willing to go along with this insult of a 'choice' within a highly anti-democratic setup, and yet even the presidency of one of their own could not to be tolerated by the deeply conservative establishment. The Iranian people have been forced, yet again, to admit painfully that they clearly cannot call the theocratic rule over them anything other than an absolute dictatorship...

Why the Taliban won't take over Pakistan

By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 7, 2009 edition

For reasons of geography, ethnicity, military inferiority, and ancient rivalries, they represent neither the immediate threat that is often portrayed nor the inevitable victors that the West fears.

Jeremy Scahill: “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama”

DemocracyNow.org
May 19, 2009

Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal...

Human Rights Investigator, Attorney John Sifton: Torture Investigation Should Focus on Estimated 100 Prisoner Deaths

DemocracyNow!
May 14, 2009

We get reaction to the Senate hearing on torture from private investigator and attorney John Sifton, executive director of One World Research, which carries out research for law firms and human rights groups. Sifton has conducted extensive investigations into the CIA interrogation and detention program. He says any investigation of Bush administration torture and rendition should include an estimated 100 homicides of prisoners in US custody.

100 Days to Restore the Constitution: Assessment

Center for Constitutional Rights

The First 100 Days of the Obama Administration: Small Glimmers of Hope, but Little Real Change

The first 100 days of the Obama administration presented a historic opportunity to restore the Constitution after the Bush administration’s systematic attempts to dismantle it, right by right, while ignoring international human rights standards. Yet, despite several strong steps, the Obama presidency has failed to live up to its promises in many areas of critical importance, including human rights, torture, rendition, secrecy and surveillance.

Ronald Reagan: vengeful, score-settling, Hard Left ideologue

by Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
May 1, 2009

This is a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become:...

Poor Countries Struggle to Mainstream Gender in Trade

Annelise Sander interviews UNCTAD officer SIMONETTA ZARRILLI
Inter Press Service

Trade affects women and men differently. Women's livelihoods, in particular, can be undermined by trade liberalisation. Despite this fact, gender analysis is usually absent from trade negotiations and agreements.

Learning from our tortured past

Tell President Obama: We need a non-partisan inquiry to make sure we don't repeat past mistakes

Today's Senate report on torture and President Obama's comments have set the wheels in motion – but we need your help to keep up the momentum towards a full reckoning on the United States' use of torture.

Call on President Obama to set up a nonpartisan inquiry to evaluate the full cost of abuses, look at how we got there, and come up with safeguards so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. The U.S. needs to invest in a forward-looking strategy on intelligence gathering that gives interrogators training and guidance on which techniques work, and which techniques – such as torture – don't.

Momentum is on our side – please let the Obama administration know that the public wants the truth about torture. Our national security depends on it.

Toward Climate Geoengineering?

Saturday 18 April 2009

by Andrew Glikson, t r u t h o u t | Perspective


That global climate change has reached an impasse whereby the "powers-to-be" are entertaining climate geoengineering mitigation, instead of the urgent deep reduction of carbon emissions required by science, represents the ultimate moral bankruptcy of institutions and a failure of democracy.

Pacifica Radio at 60: KPFA Remains a Sanctuary of Dissent Six Decades After Its Founding

Democracy Now!
April 15, 2009

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of Pacifica Radio. On April 15th, 1949 at 3:00 p.m., a charismatic conscientious objector named Lewis Hill sat before a microphone and said, “This is KPFA Berkeley.” With that, KPFA went on the air, and the first listener-supported radio station in the United States was born. Pacifica Radio is the oldest independent media network in the United States, and its sixtieth birthday comes as a deepening crisis engulfs mainstream media. To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Pacifica Radio today, we feature a documentary about the first Pacifica Radio station: KPFA in Berkeley. It’s called KPFA on the Air by filmmakers Veronica Selver and Sharon Wood and narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.

Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia

Alternet
By K'Naan , URB Magazine. Posted April 14, 2009

...Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard. But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they could dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, where as in to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after Tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters, the UN Convoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, that deterance has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation's death trap...

'Green Revolution' Trapping India's Farmers In Debt

National Public Radio
Morning Edition
April 14, 2009

As the world's population surges, the international community faces a pressing problem: How will it feed everybody?

Until recently, people thought India had an answer.

Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones

Daud Khattakin and Christina Lamb
Times Online
April 5, 2009

...As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base...

AFTER THE SUMMIT: What Was Accomplished & For How Long?

A look at the coverage and impact of the G20 Summit that ended this week in London

Landmark Ruling Confirms Indian Reservation

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 (IPS) - Chanting "Anna Pata, Ana Yan" (Our Land, Our Mother), members of indigenous organisations and activists celebrated a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling Thursday that confirmed the borders of a huge indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle and set an important precedent for future land disputes.

March 21 March On The Pentagon - Iraq

On the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War...
March on the Pentagon
Saturday, March 21, 2009

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime
Jobs & Education - Not Wars & Occupation

Gather at 12 noon at 23rd St. & Constitution Ave. NW in Washington, D.C.!

FOCUS THE NATION 2009 ~ A Nationwide Town Hall

A Nationwide Town Hall on
America's Energy Future

On April 18th, 2009, town-hall meetings across the country will explore local, regional and national solutions to the climate-energy challenge. These meetings will connect campuses, communities and elected officials in a nationwide town hall meeting on America's energy future.

Together, we will ensure we know the facts about climate and clean energy, seize the opportunity to convey the urgency and promise of this moment to decision-makers, and take meaningful action now.



Join Focus the Nation and help lead the effort.

Power Shift ’09: 12,000+ Students Attend Largest Youth Summit on Climate Change in US History

This weekend, an estimated 12,000 young people were at the D.C. Convention Center for Power Shift ’09, the largest youth summit on climate change in history. College and high school students from all fifty states, all Canadian provinces, as well as a dozen countries, came together to discuss organizing for a clean energy revolution on the local and national levels. We hear some of their voices.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/2/power_shift_09_12_000_students

http://powershift09.org/

Score one for sustainable food

Obama taps a real reformer, Kathleen Merrigan, for deputy USDA secretary

...President Obama suddenly seems intent on blazing a new path for USDA. Sure, he picked a farm-state governor with ties to the ethanol and biotech industries as USDA chief. But that's almost reflexive in our political system. The key question became: who would he pick as the deputy -- the official who typically gets things done and sets the tone for the department? Would he pick a corn-fed flack, like Bush did? Another go-along to get-along type in the Vilsack mode? Or a real reformer?

Obama chose Kathleen Merrigan, director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts. From what I can tell at first blush, she's a real reformer.



In the sustainable-ag community, the reaction has been near euphoric. Merrigan has made the "sustainable dozen" list of deputy secretary candidates put forward by Iowa-based Food Democracy Now...

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/23/164240/296

The AP Has No Case Against Shepard Fairey

Jonathan Melber Co-author of ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career
February 8, 2009
Huffington Post

A few days ago, the Associated Press announced that Obama's famous HOPE poster amounts to copyright infringement. The artist behind the poster, Shepard Fairey, has never hidden the fact that he based his iconic creation on a photograph he found through Google. The AP thinks it owns the copyright to that photograph, since Mannie Garcia was freelancing for the AP when he shot it. With posters sold out, a special edition in the National Portrait Gallery, and major exhibitions in New York and Boston, the AP wants in on the windfall.


But the AP would very likely lose this case if it ever ended up in court. That's because, under copyright law, Fairey's work almost certainly qualifies as "fair use" of Garcia's photograph...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-melber/the-ap-hase-no-case-again_b_165068.html

Jailing Kids for Cash

Amy Goodman
February 18, 2009

As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States...

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/2/18/amy_goodmans_new_column_jailing_kids_for_cash

Rendition Suit A Test Of Obama Transparency

by Ari Shapiro NPR
All Things Considered, February 8, 2009 · Monday morning will bring the best indicator to date of whether the Obama administration intends to break from President Bush's practice of using broad claims of state secrets to prevent lawsuits from being heard in court. The test comes in a case about torture being argued before three judges on a federal appeals court in San Francisco...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100364043

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) Urges Homeowners to Stay in Foreclosed Homes

After an $850 billion bailout for Wall Street and another $25 billion for the auto industry, struggling homeowners still await large-scale government assistance. The Obama administration says it’s working out the details of its plan to stem foreclosures. In the absence of government action so far, some are taking action on the local level. In Michigan, Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans announced Monday he won’t enforce sales of foreclosed homes. And in Ohio, Rep. Marcy Kaptur is encouraging homeowners facing foreclosures to stay in their homes. Meanwhile, the government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae has agreed to restructure mortgages after a campaign led by one of its biggest critics, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.

Close Torture Loopholes in the Army Field Manual

President Obama's three executive orders of January 22, 2009 call for the closing of Guantanamo within one year, the closing of secret CIA 'black sites,' and the limiting of interrogation techniques to those allowed in the Army Field Manual (AFM), eliminating the numerous executive orders and opinions issued during the Bush administration that granted official approval for torture, cruel and inhuman treatment, and abuse. These executive orders certainly represent an extraordinary step forward, but we remain concerned about potentially exploitable loopholes. Please take a moment to ask him to close the loopholes.

While the current Army Field Manual does not allow waterboarding, it does include approved techniques that constitute torture. One glaring problem with the executive order on torture is the implicit approval of the current AFM as it stands. The Army Field Manual is a guidebook for U.S. interrogators, meant to set a standard in accordance with the law. However, it has serious shortcomings - particularly following a Bush-era 2006 revision that attempted to legitimize some of the abuses taking place at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Please join us in urging President Obama to clarify that his executive order truly means an end to U.S. torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Appendix M of the Army Field Manual - a new section introduced in 2006, applicable only to "unlawful combatants," the category applied to detainees in Guantanamo, at secret CIA prisons, and elsewhere - allows the use of techniques such as prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and inducing fear and humiliation of prisoners. These techniques, especially when used in combination as permitted by the AFM, constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and in some cases, torture. These techniques have caused documented, long-lasting psychological and physical harm and were condemned by a bipartisan congressional report released last month, as well as by the Bush-appointed head of the military commissions at Guantanamo.

Much like John Yoo's infamous "torture memos" at the Office of Legal Counsel attempted to provide a legal cover for the authorization of torture by high-ranking Bush administration officials, the addition of Appendix M attempts to provide the same cover, utilizing the Army Field Manual. President Obama's executive order repudiates Yoo's memos - but it is not sufficient to do so without also repudiating this appendix, drafted in light of those memos.

The rewritten 2006 AFM also included other problematic changes - allowing U.S. interrogators to pretend to be from another country, or to pretend the prisoner is located in another country (including countries known for torture and abuse), and allowing interrogators to use "Fear Up," a procedure designed to psychologically exploit prisoners' existing fears - and supplemented to allow interrogators to induce "new fears" in prisoners.

President Obama's executive order created a task force that has six months to examine whether to create "additional or different guidance" for agencies such as the CIA, outside the U.S. military - a potential escape hatch for a return to CIA "enhanced interrogations" and torture.

Please join us today to ask President Obama to reaffirm that his executive order will not provide a loophole for the CIA to return to torture and illegality, and to ensure that Army Field Manual lives up to the standards it is expected to set by revoking Appendix M and other sections of the AFM that could allow torture, abuse, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to continue. It is important that this review be conducted transparently, and with the open consultation of human rights groups. For too long, secrecy has ruled the day and protected torture and abuse.

Join us also in encouraging the Obama administration to fully investigate and prosecute those officials responsible for war crimes, torture and other violations of U.S. law. No future administration should take us back to these dark times. There needs to be individual accountability for the torture program, and other crimes committed. Prosecution is the only way to deter future lawbreakers.

We believe that President Obama wants to end torture through this executive order. Please join us today to help ensure that those goals are fully met.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/383/t/4089/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26522

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Crisis as Opportunity for "Another World"

January 22, 2009
By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 21 (IPS) - A World Social Forum (WSF) revitalised by a global crisis that has awakened new interest in the proposition that "another world is possible" - now perceived as either less utopian or more urgently needed - will take place from Jan. 27 to Feb. 1 in Belém, in northern Brazil.

With the economy in free-fall, a more concrete debate will occur in Belém on "the nature of the crisis" and the model of development, according to Cándido Grzybowski, the head of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE) and one of the original organisers of the WSF.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's decision to attend the WSF in Belém on Jan. 29 and 30, instead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, reflects a change in the alignment of forces.

This year’s edition of the WEF, which brings together the world's business, political and cultural élite annually, will be held Jan. 28 to Feb. 1 under the theme "Shape the Post-Crisis World". The WSF originated as a rival assembly, to protest the WEF’s policies and propose alternatives.

In January 2007, Lula chose to attend the WEF in Davos and skip the 7th WSF in Nairobi, Kenya. It was a gravy-train time of strong global economic growth, soaring commodity prices and plentiful foreign investment in Brazil. The markets seemed to promise prosperity for all.

Now, given the economic, energy, environmental and food crises, the ideas of the WSF appear to be more attractive and realistic...

Let There Be Light

Columbia Journalism Review
Editorial — January / February 2009

How President Obama should reopen our government

by The Editors

Over many years, Americans have come to embrace the idea that democracy suffers when the work of government is excessively secret—the people are shut out, corruption and cynicism thrive, and accountability wanes. Yet President Bush and Vice President Cheney have run an administration in which the executive’s lust for power outstripped the public’s right to know. One of the most troubling aspects of Bush’s campaign against government transparency was the ease of its advance. Battles were won with brief memos, unilateral executive orders, and signal flags from on high.

Here is an arena in which President Obama can forcefully demonstrate, as he indicated on the campaign trail, that he will turn the lights back on in the White House. Some steps would be relatively easy. The president should:

http://www.cjr.org/editorial/let_there_be_light_1.phphttp://

War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation

Steve Niva | January 7, 2009
Foreign Policy in Focus


Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in order to avoid this military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating...