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DOJ’s Risen Plot Thickens
“Thousands of journalists, press advocates and free-speech supporters are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to abandon its prosecution of Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, the former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information about the government’s embarrassingly ill-conceived effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. On Monday, the group RootsAction.org launched a petition calling for Sterling’s release. The group says blowing the whistle on reckless government activities is not a crime but a ‘public service,’ and supporters apparently agree. “
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Drone Killings and Torture: Peace Activists to be “Rehabilitated” in Jail
“On the second day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prohibited most forms of physical torture. On the third, a CIA drone strike he authorized killed up to 11 civilians.”
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“Big Victory” — Government Ends Threat to Jail James Risen
“This is a big victory for defying illegitimate authority. The Bush and Obama administrations have tried to coerce and intimidate James Risen with a series of subpoenas beginning in early 2008. Nearly seven years later, a crucial lesson from his refusal to back down is that journalists — and the rest of us — must not give an inch to government officials who are trying to undermine the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.”
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“The Complicity of Psychologists in CIA Torture”
“Two names appear dozens of times in the committee’s summary: Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar. These are the pseudonyms that were given to James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. It has been known for several years that these two contract psychologists played central roles in designing and implementing the CIA’s torture program. Now we also know how lucrative that work was for Mitchell and Jessen: their company was paid over $80 million by the CIA. …”
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Prosecuting Torture
“Since the inception of the CIA’s program, the Bush administration setting up Guantanamo, its rendition program etc., CCR has made efforts both in the United States and around the world to hold government officials and private contractors accountable. The Senate Intelligence Committee report again, and with great force, tells us why officials must be held accountable. The United States government is required to do so under the convention against torture. The pressure on it must be maximized to do so. As the government seems to have clay feet, including Obama, international prosecutions in Europe and around the world are necessary.”
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International Activists Demanding Climate Justice
“The People’s Summit is about developing solutions to climate change that are effective and not exploitative of people and the planet’s precious resources – including water. We are against privatization and extreme extractionism. We don’t accept a world that will be six degrees Celsius warmer – which is what we face if present trends in fossil fuel expansion are not impeded. Unions will come together with other social movements in Lima to develop organizing strategies on numerous levels. The people are uniting for a real alternative.”
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Lies About Torture
“Many presumably well-meaning people say that torture doesn’t work. But that’s not true. Torture does work, just not in the way its defenders claim. It’s great at producing false but useful information — like when the U.S. turned Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi over to the Egyptian dictatorship, which tortured him into saying that Iraq was cooperating with al-Qaeda. That figured prominently in Colin Powell’s war speech at the UN, helping provide propaganda for a pretext for war. So torture can actually work quite well.”
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Police Killing: Death, Lies and Videotape
“The movement to end police murder with impunity is not asking for solutions. It is demanding them, and the president’s body camera proposal does not even begin to answer the call. We will continue to see seemingly spontaneous mass demonstrations all across the country going forward, because the evasion of justice by the murderers of Eric Garner proves what Americans of color have long known: police can get away with anything, even murdering someone, in broad daylight, on videotape, without provocation, using illegal force methods. This movement will stop at nothing less than the end of police brutality, profiling, militarization,…
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“Abusive Cop Picked to Head Police Reform Commission”
“‘If the president’s idea of reforming policing practices includes mass false arrests, brutality, and the eviscerating of civil rights, then Ramsey’s his man. That’s Charles Ramsey’s legacy in D.C.,’ said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard … speaking of the ex-D.C. chief and current Philadelphia Police Commissioner. ‘Obama should immediately rescind his appointment of Commissioner Ramsey, who is a mass violator of civil rights and civil liberties.’”
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Ashton Carter: * Insider * Spawned Nuclear Buildup
“Carter was also instrumental in establishing the policy that led to the new demonization of Russia which we see today. He advised Clinton on missile technology and how the U.S. could begin to deploy a missile shield in Alaska while claiming it was not violating the 1972 anti-ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, although Russia was not convinced. Bush actually walked out of the ABM treaty, which Clinton had already violated, and the missile race was on. Carter also advised Obama on expanding the U.S. empire to Asia in the so-called Asia pivot, which resulted in new bases in the Pacific,…
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn