Osama bin Laden's personal driver and bodyguard, who made the magisterial sum of $200 per month, 34-year-old Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was held years without charges at Guantanamo Naval Base prison, has just been found guilty of lesser charges in the first of a series of planned "military commission" trials by the Bush Administration. Comprehensive news coverage of the Hamdan trial can be found at the Miami Herald.
Hamdan was found not guilty on two counts of conspiracy to foment terrorism in league with Al Qaeda. He was found guilty on five of eight charges of providing material support to terrorists. He has yet to be sentenced, and faces possible life imprisonment. In any case, the Bush Administration has already said that whatever the verdict or sentence, no "enemy combatant" will be released until the "war on terror" is over, i.e., until hell freezes over.
Sunday through Wednesday, we're raising money for Jerry Northington, aka possum, who is running for Delaware's at-large seat in the House of Representatives. Possum's primary is this September. Possum is a Vietnam Vet and veterinarian who will provide our caucus with one more, and a much better, Democrat!
Rather than just asking you for donations, for this diary we're holding an auction here on NION of featuring eight digital photos. Each will have their own page. The auctions end at 7:30 PDT/10:30 EDT on Wednesday night! (Bids put in after the deadline, as indicated by the clock used on this site, will not be honored. So don't wait until the last minute.) Eight other photos will be sold at fixed prices as will be described on a diary at Daily Kos.
The artists participating in the auction are Eddie C. and dadanation. Fixed price photos will be from lineatus and myself. Why us? Based on a quick skim through C&J, I contacted only as many artists as I could handle logistically. In the future, for Jerry's campaign and maybe others, we'll hope for more.
Click through to find the auction rules, links to auction pages, and some stunning photos.
(...) The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Envy prevents me from offering a proper description for this photo.
If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules. Auction ends promptly at 7:30 PDT/10:30 EDT on Wednesday evening, August 7 -- no late bids accepted. Thanks for participating!
A serene still life and a study in contrasting tones.
If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules. Auction ends promptly at 7:30 PDT/10:30 EDT on Wednesday evening, August 7 -- no late bids accepted. Thanks for participating!
This is a bright, beautiful study in contrasting textures, colors, and moods.
If you want to bid, post a comment entitled "BID - $xxx" where "xxx" is the amount of your bid. Please make sure no one has already outbid you! See this diary for auction rules. Auction ends promptly at 7:30 PDT/10:30 EDT on Wednesday evening, August 7 -- no late bids accepted. Thanks for participating!
Happy Monday, amigos! I hope everyone had a peaceful, relaxing weekend. It's been a busy weekend for me but much fun, and as I write this, late on Sunday evening, the thought of Monday morning and facing a jammed calendar and inbox filled with work-related email makes me want to hibernate on the sofa with my daughter, eat popcorn, watch Animal Planet and pretend that Monday will be an easy, stress-free day. You, too?
I try to find a sense of accomplishment in the many small things I can do while I'm on hold, or have a few minutes free to write a letter or sign a petition. Yes, it may seem like a tiny and miniscule gesture, but do you know that Moazzam Begg, a victim of rendition, torture and illegal imprisonment at Guantanamo stated the following upon his release from US custody?
I was beaten and verbally abused in detention. After a few days, the guards asked me, 'Do you know that your name is all over the Internet?'
After that, I was treated better by the guards before being released. The appeals sent by Amnesty members definitely had an effect on my case.
You see, the "little" things we do in collaboration sometimes result in success stories. So join me, if you will, in a Five Minute Activist session.
The opening, and 20-some hours of athletic competition throughout the Games, will be covered and streamed live on the web by Aboriginal Peoples Television Newtwork.
The ceremony will end with the raising of the Spirit Pole which has travelled all over BC and been symbolically and literally carved by hundreds of people before being rowed to Cowichan. (rough design sketch at right)
Poles are stories, old or new. Carey Newman, who designed this pole, explains it here. A great pole can be read in multiple ways. In a move that will honor and entertain locals for generations (the pole will remain in place) Newman has also folded the foundation myth of Cowichan into his pole:
Also told by the figures on the pole is the story of Quw'utsun. When the People first saw the place that would become their home, the mountains appeared to be "frogs warming their backs in the sun." The hul'q'uminum word for this is Scowutsun. Known today as "Cowichan," Quw'utsun is "a place to warm your back in the sun." The pole itself is meant to represent the mountains. The river flows down the mountain and wraps around the Frog near the base. Unseen from the front, the Sun is opposite the Moon, warming the Eagle's back. The wings of the Eagle are designed to be his feathers and wings, but also a Cowichan blanket.
Last month, I examined the testimony from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogations and torture. The hearings concentrated on the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, and its use of military psychologists hired by the CIA to "reverse-engineer" SERE program elements for use in coercive interrogations by the United States at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.
The timelines constructed out of this testimony and ancillary documentary evidence showed the Department of Defense turned to SERE for help in interrogating "enemy combatants" in July 2002. At least, that seems the case if you follow the summary given by SASC Committee Chair, Senator Carl Levin, adhered to in subsequent reports by every other journalist -- but one).
Sometimes I wonder why people (1) have children. Doesn't it stand to reason that if you don't want a child, aren't willing and happy to accept the "responsibility" or the crimp in your party girl lifestyle, you'd take some precautions to avoid bringing yet another unwanted child into the world?
Another little girl is missing in Florida. And yes, I do take it personally. I'm not here to sit in judgment of her mother or play amateur sleuth or keyboard crimesolver. The dread that washes over me is not, I'm sorry to say, a unique experience, because children "go missing" with startling frequency in this country and I want to know how in coño we watch it happen over and over again on television and do nada but wring our hands and pray.
Five days after 9/11, Vice President Cheney appeared on television and talked about fighting terrorism, stating: "...We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world. ..."
Rand Corporation has recently published a report which concludes that terrorist groups rarely cease to exist as a result of winning or losing a military campaign. To me it is mind-boggling that it took Rand, or anyone else, 8 years to come to this conclusion. Now the damage has been done. Hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, over a million lives lost, millions of people displaced, destruction of property and in the end we've only created more "terrorists" which in turn could be used as a pretext to continue the GWOT.
By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.
These findings suggest that the U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts.
Dr. Bryant Welch's recent article, Why Did They Do It? - Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association, published online at Counterpunch, Psyche, Science and Society, and many other sites, is a powerful indictment of the moral and political bankruptcy of the American Psychological Association, written by a key insider.
Dr. Bryant is a Harvard law school graduate and a licensed psychologist. For over twenty years he's been a key member of the APA bureaucratic apparatus. Bryant's article is best when it details some of the organizational and personnel links inside APA that helped fashion that organization's pro-military policies, including its seeming indifference to the issue of psychologist involvement in torture.
This is an old essay, and as such, I left it to the sidebar...I think it still relevant as we look to the abuses of minorities, hate crimes against even tolerance of the gltb tribe and the atrocities of our health care system. Not to mention Endless War!)
This is an attempt at starting a dialogue about the fabric of what our human existence entails at present, and what it should strive to be.
Sometimes the universe is best examined through a microcosm. I am completely unconvinced that the way I will attempt this will be in any way better than the framing I vehemently objected to, but it will be my own attempt at a beginning. A stepping stone.
I am going to start small. I was 6 years old when my 18 year old sister was killed in a car accident. I remember how devastated my Mother was to lose her first born, and wishing it had been me instead. Not being morose at all, my 6 year old logic told me that it would be easier on my Mom, because she had not had as much time to get attached to me. Ok, leave that thought in the back of your mind and lets move forward.
