“Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He’s a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.
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U.S. Army Reserve Spc. Chancellor Keesling died in Iraq on June 19, 2009, from “a non-combat related incident,” according to the Pentagon. Keesling had killed himself.
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Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are stepping up the pressure by staging elaborate stunts.
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Lt. Dan Choi doesn’t want to lie. Choi, an Iraq war veteran and a graduate of West Point, declared last March 19 on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “I am gay.” Under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, those three words are enough to get Choi kicked out of the military.
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A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home—all for using Twitter.
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Journalist Christian Parenti responds to our interview with Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves
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Today marks the second anniversary of the execution of West African author and activist Ken Saro Wiwa. He led a campaign against the ecological devastation that petroleum giant Shell was causing in his homeland—the oil-rich region of Nigeria called Ogoniland. The protests targeted the company’s abusive practices and even caused a partial shutdown of some of its facilities. But the Nigerian military regime, led by General Soni Abacha, launched a wave of fierce repression against the Ogoni, which led to the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other men on November 10, 1995, in the yard of Port Harcourt prison.
Sportswear giant Nike has come under repeated attack by human rights and labor groups for the atrocious and exploitative conditions in the company’s 150 factories that employ some450,000 workers across Asia. Nike has denied that it mistreats its workforce, even going so far as to hire former UN Ambassador and civil rights leader Andrew Young to inspect the factories. After completing a two-week tour of 15 Asian factories, Young said earlier this year that Nike was doing a good job.