Justice At Last? Guantánamo Uighurs Ask Supreme Court For Release Into US by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
21 October 2009

One year and two weeks ago, District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered that 17 Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo be released into the United States. Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, the Uighurs were seized and sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers in December 2001, after they had fled a settlement in the Afghan mountains, where they had ended up after fleeing Chinese oppression.

One of the men had secured a resounding court victory last June, when appeals court judges ruled that the government had failed to prove that he was an “enemy combatant,” involved in any way with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and in the wake of this ruling the government abandoned all pretense that any of other 16 men were “enemy combatants” either.

Seymour Hersh: Military waging war with White House By Neil Offen

Dandelion Salad

By Neil Offen
The Herald-Sun
Oct 14, 2009

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have [President] Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”

[...]

“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

[...]

via The Herald-Sun – Hersh Military waging war with White House

h/t: Bruce Gagnon

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Is this our Afghan moment of peace? 13 year old Afghan boy will keep peace vigil with other youth

Six Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commanders Killed in Suicide Bombing, Iran Blames US and Pakistan

Barack Obama on Dandelion Salad

Afghanistan on Dandelion Salad

Pakistan on Dandelion Salad

The Ed Show: Ralph Nader: Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us!

Ralph Nader, by Dandelion Salad

Dandelion Salad

MoxNewsDotCom
October 20, 2009

more about “Ralph Nader: Only The Super-Rich Can …“, posted with vodpod

see

Barney Frank and the Planet of the Banks by Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader: Congress has shut us out

Max Keiser – Face Off – “Is the Crisis Over?”

The Ongoing Cover Up of the Truth Behind the Financial Crisis May Lead to Another Crash

Reviving the Local Economy with Publicly-Owned Banks by Dr. Ellen Brown

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2

The Iran Versus U.S.-Israeli-NATO Threats by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Submitted on Buzzflash

Dandelion Salad

Sent to DS from Rick Rozoff; reposted with permission from the authors.

by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine
Oct. 20, 2009

It is spell-binding to see how the U.S. establishment can inflate the threat of a target, no matter how tiny, remote, and (most often) non-existent that threat may be, and pretend that the real threat posed by its own behavior and policies is somehow defensive and related to that wondrously elastic thing called “national security.”  We should recall that this establishment got quite hysterical over the completely non-existent threat from Guatemala in the years 1950-1954, a very small and very poor country, essentially disarmed, helped by a U.S. and “allied” arms boycott, quickly overthrown in June 1954 by a miniscule U.S.-organized proxy force invading from our ally Somoza’s Nicaragua.  But a telegram drafted in the name of Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles shortly before the 1954 regime change in Guatemala warned that this country had become a “challenge to Hemisphere security and peace” and was “increasingly [an] instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere” and a “menace to [the] stability of strategic Central America and Caribbean area,” so that U.S. policy was “determined [to] prevent further substantial arms shipments from reaching Guatemala.”¹ And the New York Times featured this terrible threat repeatedly (one favorite, the lying headline of Sidney Gruson’s “How Communists Won Control of Guatemala,” March 1, 1953), a propaganda campaign dating back to 1950 that extended throughout the media, even reaching The Nation magazine (Ellis Ogle, “Communism in the Caribbean?” March 18, 1950).

Why We Desperately Need Health Care for All – Now by Dennis Kucinich

Dandelion Salad

by Dennis Kucinich
kucinich.us – Home
Tuesday, 20 October 2009

photo by Dandelion Salad

Dear Friends,

More about why we desperately need health care for all:

This past weekend I visited a festival at a church in a working class area of my district. These events are opportunities for people from the community to gather, to eat ethnic foods, listen to music and enjoy each other’s company; before the brisk, brooding Cleveland winter begins to set in. When I walked through the doors, I felt as though I had stepped back in time, to when I was a child growing up in the inner city of Cleveland where I witnessed people struggling every day to make ends meet. From this early experience I have learned to recognize poverty, the clothes it wears and the physical appearance it presents.

Ugly Americans Stay Home, Soiling Our Nest – Why Does the Unhinged Fringe Hate America? by Robert S. Becker

By Robert S. Becker
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.beyondchron.org
rbecker@cal.net
Oct. 20, 2009

We’re growing strange species of anti-American reactionaries these days. Earlier, arrogant Ugly Americans strutting abroad were always brash cheerleaders for their Homeland. Today, scores of deluded, unpatriotic numbskulls equate good citizenship with debunking America, especially: (a) our legitimate elections (despite pushing remote “democracy” wars), (b) majority rule (taking over “their” government), (c) the President (subversive alien), (d) government programs (rank socialism), and (e) free-market media except FOX “News” and rabid talk radio. How do teabaggers with infantile hoaxes hope to get “their country back”?

Thus frustrated fringes get fringier every week, like crazed chickens bloodying their own. South Carolina whiners blasted hardcore Lindsey Graham for not being hardcore enough, crying out “fake Republican,” “traitor” and “war criminal.” Unhinged mass hysteria likewise turned senators into mulish fools. Simultaneously scorning fair play or common decency, 30 very ugly GOP senators condemned Sen. Al Franken’s successful amendment denying government contractors the right to block remedies by duped, abused employees. One case involved a woman gang-raped – and held captive by Halliburton staff on its premises – whose contract forbade legal recourse.

UK Judges Order Release Of Details About The Torture Of Binyam Mohamed By US Agents by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
20 October 2009

In August 2008, while British resident Binyam Mohamed still languished in a prison cell in Guantánamo, two British High Court judges attempted to inform the public about what, in May 2002, the CIA had told their British counterparts about how they had treated him while he was being held in Pakistani custody, shortly before a British agent interrogated him.

The judges were Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones, and their attempt to inform the public came in a judgment that followed a judicial review of Mohamed’s case during the summer of 2008, which was itself triggered by the British government’s refusal to release 42 documents in its possession regarding his detention in Pakistan.

The Yes Men Pull Off Prank Claiming US Chamber of Commerce Had Changed Its Stance on Climate Change

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
Oct. 20, 2009

The Yes Men Pull Off Prank Claiming US Chamber of Commerce Had Changed Its Stance on Climate Change

The business community got a shock on Monday when its leading advocacy group appeared to make a startling announcement. A statement purporting to come from the Chamber of Commerce said the group had dropped its opposition to congressional climate change legislation and would now even support taxing carbon emissions. The news wires quickly picked up the story, and within minutes it was being reported on the websites of outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post. It also made its way onto cable news, including the Fox Business Network. It was all a prank pulled off by the Yes Men.

Is this our Afghan moment of peace? 13 year old Afghan boy will keep peace vigil with other youth

Submitted on Buzzflash

Dandelion Salad

Note: please write a short message in support of these kids to President Obama:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Sent to DS from Hakim in Afghanistan.

http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
October 18, 2009

13 year old Abdulai will keep the
Afghan peace vigil from 22/10/2009

Dear friends of peace,

This may be a chance for Afghan youth to raise the possibility of love, for Man to do a little something for other Men, by standing and waiting firmly for peace before the giants that be.

10 Afghan youth, including 13 year old Abdulai, have committed to give voice to peace amidst the noise of war.

We will speak our conscience to all who are willing to listen because we have wishes that are common to all Men.

We are ordinary, insignificant Afghan youth who believe that human civilization and history is waiting for further concrete encouragement to turn the tide on violence. We wish to encourage a turnaround for peace, confident that love and truth are strong enough to stand before giants.