Victoria Brittain writes at Tomdispatch.com A four-month hunger strike, mass force-feedings, and widespread media coverage have at last brought Guantanamo, the notorious offshore prison set up by the Bush administration early in 2002, back into American consciousness. Prominent voices are finally calling on President Obama to close it down and send home scores of prisoners […]
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Terrorism
Fresh US covert Drone Strikes in Pakistan and Yemen (Serle and Woods)
Excerpted from a report by Jack Serle and Chris Woods for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Pakistan The only drone strike reported to hit Pakistan in May killed Wali Ur Rehman, second-in-command of the Pakistan Taliban (TTP). It was the first US attack in Pakistan for 42 days and came less than a week after […]
Have we no Shame? Will Hunger Strikes and medical Torture finally close Guantanamo? (Hickman)
John Hickman, author of Selling Guantanamo, writes in a guest column for Informed Comment Curious isn’t it how the decision-making of the United States Government is also imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay? In a seemingly escape-proof blame game President Obama insists that the U.S. Congress prevents him from closing the prison while Congressional Republicans insist either […]
America’s Murder Inc. Abroad: Engelhardt on Scahill’s Latest
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com: Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 — and just about no one noticed. Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of CIA tradecraft, which Johnson defined as “the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people.” In […]
Did the Boston Bombing Hurt the Syrian Revolution? Obama & Putin Confer as Rebels Allege Regime Massacre
The phone call between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin after the Boston Marathon bombers were identified as Chechens, in which Obama thanked Putin for Russia’s cooperation on counter-terrorism and promised more such collaboration, was probably the most cordial exchange the two countries have had for some time. The thaw was occurring as Syrian […]
Is LindJohn’s notion of an Enemy Combatant Racist? How about attempted Assassination of the Commander in Chief?
Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain (or as I refer to them, LindJohn) have demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be charged as an enemy combatant rather than tried as an American civilian. This attempt to sidestep the US Constitution by creating an alternative jurisdiction, and to try civilians in military courts, is a stride toward dictatorship. […]
Chechen Jihadis Reject Tsarnaevs (OSC)
The USG Open Source Center translates a reaction from the Caucasus Emirate Islamic insurgency on the news that the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of the Boston Marathon bombing. The CEII casts doubt on their guilt and also on the plausibility that these are jihadis, given their internet profiles at Russian-language sites. It does not claim […]
Fathers and Sons and Chechnya
The anger and embarrassment visible in the interviews given on Friday by the uncle and the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, are entirely understandable. But I see clues here to family dynamics that may be important in understanding what happened. In Ivan Turgenev’s 1862, novel, “Fathers and Sons,” the […]
Report: Highest US Officials Responsible for Use of Torture (Plus Daily Show Video)
The political reality of the United States in the world is that of blowback. Blowback is a term of art in the intelligence community for what happens when a covert operation goes bad and comes back to bite you on the ass. The US spent the 1980s encouraging Muslim radicals to engage in ‘freedom fighting’ […]