“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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In hearings yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the head of US Central Command Gen. John Abizaid said the U.S. military has investigated 75 cases of abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2002. Abizaid is responsible for US military operations in both countries. He said the army was still investigating several homicides in Afghanistan that went as far back as December 2002.
The issue of the US military’s treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq has only become a major issue in the US since scores of photos showing US soldiers abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were published by US media outlets. But the abuse has been going on from the beginning of the so-called war on terror, even if the corporate media only picked up on the story in the past few weeks.
Today, we are going to play a documentary that Democracy Now! premiered in the US a year ago this week: “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death.” It was produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.