Blogs

Matthew, a radical reference volunteer, got arrested yesterday at the Critical Mass Bike Ride in NY city. According to Maggie Soffer, a street librarian coordinator, he is expected to be released this afternoon. A bystander at 7th avenue and 14th street said "it was amazing, there were packs of bikes, wheel-to-wheel passing by for about an hour." See NYC Indymedia for detailed information and breaking news.

Florida newspaper asserts culpability for torture in Iraq lies with SECDEF.

Two inquiries have concluded that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the result of leadership failures. The secretary of Defense should be held accountable.... But the real culpability lies at the top - all the way to Rumsfeld.

--St. Petersburg Times. Published August 28, 2004

Truthout RNC04 coverage. There's nothing there yet, but they have links to audio, video reports and still images.

Here's a pretty scary article by Bob Barr at Findlaw.com. Basically -- in case you didn't know(!) -- we're back in the early 1970s and the era of Cointelpro. Read on...

The FBI, no longer content with working to maintain order at political events, is now preemptively identifying and interrogating ("interviewing") possible demonstrators. It has summarized this strategy in a memo.

To make matters worse, the Department of Justice blessed the FBI strategy in its own memo - suggesting that no First Amendment concerns are raised by the interrogations.

As I will explain in this column, however, the truth is quite to the contrary: The strategy, as outlined in the memo, is a serious threat to free speech.

weblink: New York Times (free registration required)

"A senior Defense Department official" disclosed to the NY Times classified parts of an internal Army review of inhumane interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib that violate the Geneva Conventions. The disclosures concern how "senior Pentagon officials," by dispatching Guantánamo Commander Gen. Geoffrey Miller to Iraq in August 2003, prevailed upon Iraqi commander General Ricardo Sanchez to order the effective use of torture in interrogation. Sanchez, we are told, accepted Miller's "recommendation" of interrogation procedures that a Joint Task Force of the CIA and Special Operations Forces had used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had formalized in a July 2003 policy, Joint Task Force 21's "Battlefield Interrogation Team and Facility Policy." The policy "endorsed the use of stress positions during harsh interrogation procedures, the use of dogs, yelling, loud music, light control, isolation and other procedures used previously in Afghanistan and Iraq." It's hardly unreasonable to conclude that Miller was sent to Iraq by the unnamed "senior Pentagon officials" to set Sanchez up as the foil for implementing, in Iraq, Rumsfeld's 2002 instructions to Special Operations Forces - as reported in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh - to effectively use torture in interrogation as a means of extracting so-called "actionable intelligence." A March 2003 DOD memorandum, legally sanctioning illegal interrogation techniques in Iraq - together with the NYT's latest disclosures and other DOJ and White House memoranda - provide plausible circumstantial evidence that President Bush, or Rice and Rumsfeld, approved the use of torture in interrogating detainees, even as the White House creates a smokescreen of "plausible deniability" by first blaming a few soldiers and now implicating "derelict" or "negligent" military commanders.

LThe American Library Association's resolution against torture.
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ADOPTED: RESOLUTION AGAINST THE USE OF TORTURE
AS A VIOLATION OF THE ALA'S BASIC VALUES

The ALA Council adopts the RESOLUTION AGAINST THE USE OF TORTURE AS A VIOLATION OF THE AMERICAN

MediaChannel.org and Media for Democracy today presents The Unofficial Media Guide to the Republican National Convention to help journalists to cover real stories.

http://www.publicampaign.org/pressroom/pressreleases/release2004/release08-18-04.htm

"Health care

http://www.allianceforsecurity.org/survey/pressrelease

"In a sharp reversal from historical support for military service, the first comprehensive national survey on the draft reveals that our country could face a crisis in military capacity with an unprecedented number of draft eligible adults stating they will actively seek deferment or refuse to serve if a draft is reinstated.

Ok, so I like comics as political commentary. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Troubletown by Lloyd Dangle

Ward Sutton