“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.
Filed under Weekly Column
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.
Filed under Weekly Column
Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are stepping up the pressure by staging elaborate stunts.
Filed under Weekly Column
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.
Filed under Weekly Column
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.
Filed under Weekly Column
Journalist Christian Parenti responds to our interview with Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves
Filed under News
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Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj’s first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan and speak to his brother, Asim al-Haj. [includes rush transcript]
Just two months after local opposition thwarted its effort to build a massive outdoor training facility near San Diego, the private military company Blackwater USA is being accused of secretly trying to build a new one just blocks from the US-Mexico border. Blackwater received approval for the 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, California, by filing for permits using the names of two subsidiaries. [includes rush transcript]
In the largest labor strike since the invasion of Iraq, ports along the West Coast—all twenty-nine of them—were shut down as some 25,000 dockworkers went on a one-day strike to protest the war. We speak to Jack Heyman of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. [includes rush transcript]
We speak to the top election officials from two states—California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan—about some of the contentious issues facing the American electorate ahead of the November presidential election. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification. Many Democrats and civil rights groups have opposed the law, saying it is a thinly veiled effort to suppress elderly, poor and minority voters, those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats. [includes rush transcript]