World-News

CounterPunch
by David Macaray

Even though Peace Corps volunteers aren’t experts on political policy or international relations, they do know a thing or two about cross-cultural exchanges. If you were to ask any ex-volunteer who they think would be the worst possible choice for an emissary or ambassador to a foreign country — particularly one expected to mingle at the village level — they’d tell you it would be a soldier...

https://counterpunch.org/macaray10292009.html



Can human rights win the war?

The American Prospect
by Adam Serwer

10/29/09

When Marine Reserve Gen. Douglas Stone addressed New America’s Counterterrorism Conference last week, he almost sounded like a human-rights activist. Calling the Constitution a ‘Human Rights Document,’ Stone declared that the fight against terrorism wasn’t just a physical one but ‘a historic debate about the rule of law and human rights,’ taking place on ‘the battlefield of the mind.’ Stone’s battlefield was once the detention centers of Iraq, where he worked to reform the system after the Abu Ghraib scandal, reducing recidivism and therefore the flow of fighters to the insurgents. The same thing, he said, needs to happen in Afghanistan, where prison conditions and lack of due process are creating favorable conditions for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to radicalize the imprisoned. ‘What if exactly what we’re doing in detention is exactly what the enemy wants?’ Stone asked. ‘Is that not aiding and abetting the enemy?’

https://tinyurl.com/ykrfypb


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Taliban
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=al-Qaeda
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Constitution
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=ignorance
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=arrogance
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=counterterrorism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=insurgents
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Abu+Ghraib
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=David+Macaray

10/29/09

Tennessean

A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000. A child-care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees. Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times. The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president’s $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program’s first progress report...

https://tinyurl.com/ygl344j


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recovery
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus

Der UN-Sonderbotschafter Alston verlangt Aufklärung über das Programm, das gegen internationales Recht verstoßen könnte.

https://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/31/31409/1.html



Keine Unbeteiligten getötet?

Die Untersuchung des von Deutschen angeforderten Luftangriffs auf zwei entführte Tanklastwagen in Afghanistan wirft mehr Fragen als Antworten auf.

https://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/8/146449



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Drohne
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan

Bill Quigley and Deborah Popowski, Truthout: "The Louisiana board that licenses psychologists is facing a growing legal fight over torture and medical care at the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons. In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired Col. Larry James watched behind a one-way mirror in a US prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming, near-naked man on the floor."

https://www.truthout.org/1029091



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Abu+Ghraib
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=interrogat
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bill+Quigley
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Deborah+Popowski

Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "President Barack Obama signed a Defense Department spending bill into law Wednesday, which includes a provision that will change the way military commissions are structured. Human rights organizations and legal advocacy groups believe these controversial Bush-Era commissions primarily deny defendants the protections that federal courts provide and have responded with disappointment to their inclusion in defense legislation by a president who, during his presidential campaign, was quoted as saying he would 'reject the Military Commissions Act.'

https://www.truthout.org/1029098



Military Commissions Revived: Don't Do It, Mr. President!

Andy Worthington, Truthout: "I was so delighted that the Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday, included a hard-won concession that the administration can transfer prisoners from Guantanamo to the mainland to face trials (even though the legislation still bears the fingerprints of interfering lawmakers, and still, scandalously, prevents any innocent man from being rehoused in the country that falsely imprisoned him) that I overlooked two other distressing facts."

https://www.truthout.org/1103095



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=DoD
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Defense+Authorization+Act
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=military+commissions
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Yana+Kunichoff
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Andy+Worthington

William Fisher, Truthout: "The long road to the proverbial 'day in court' just got longer for five men who claim they were 'disappeared' and tortured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."

https://www.truthout.org/10290912



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Fisher

The new rules have given F.B.I. agents the most power in national security matters that they have had since the post-Watergate era.

https://documents.nytimes.com/the-new-operations-manual-from-the-f-b-i#p=1



Loosening of F.B.I. Rules Stirs Privacy Concerns

One section lays out a low threshold to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat. Another allows agents to use ethnicity or religion as a factor - as long as it is not the only one - when selecting subjects for scrutiny.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/us/29manual.html?_r=1


From Information Clearing House

The covert Bush administration program that used retired military analysts to generate favorable wartime news coverage may not have been terminated, Raw Story has found.

https://snipurl.com/swrpg


From Information Clearing House



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=propaganda
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=military+analyst

By Thomas R. Eddlem

The National Security Agency is building huge new storage facilities to store the unconstitutionally gained data on the American people's telephone calls and Internet traffic permanently, including new buildings in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah, and San Antonio, Texas.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23838.htm



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=National+Security+Agency
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Thomas+R.+Eddlem

By Kim Carlyle

We must look back. And we must hold accountable the men and women who have broken our laws, tarnished our honor, and spit on our ideals.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23845.htm



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=war+crimes
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kim+Carlyle