A very strong new video by Tamil MIA, Born Free, shocks the senses. And rightly so: If singer/rapper M.I.A.’s purpose was to get people talking about her new single “Born Free,” she succeeded. The Sri Lankan-born artist debuted the graphic video on Monday. Immediately, fans took to social media to debate its scenes of military…
Showing all posts tagged Guantanamo Bay
Why doesn’t America release innocent Gitmo prisoners?
The Obama administration is little different to the previous Bush regime: The government is failing in more and more cases to produce evidence that the men it has imprisoned at Guantanamo belong there, according to ProPublica’s latest look at the lawsuits [1] that some 100 captives have filed in federal court to seek their freedom.…
How the US government knew the Gitmo boys were mostly innocent all along
What was that quaint idea of trusting government officials in a time of war? Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once declared that individuals captured by the US military in the aftermath of 9/11 and shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison facility represented the “worst of the worst.” During a radio interview in June…
Why Washington is scared of a website that doesn’t care about its secrets
The ground-breaking website Wikileaks – unafraid to publish pretty much any information that comes its way – is clearly a threat to the empire: This document is a classifed (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive…
Violence is a means and an end: an interview with Mark Danner
My latest article for New Matilda is an interview with leading American reporter Mark Danner: Leading US journalist Mark Danner calls a spade a spade and examines the political value of violence in this exclusive interview with Antony Loewenstein Mark Danner has some unusual characteristics for a mainstream US journalist. He has published in some…
The legacy of the war on terror (with a little help from torture)
A truly horrifying report from Britain about a man, Omar Deghayes, imprisoned for six years by the Americans, including at Guantanamo Bay, and never charged. He tells his story: It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool sen…sation of fingers being stabbed…
How Britain, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, defends torture
There are times when the Western state is exposed as outright liars. The case of tortured British citizen Binyam Mohamed is a case in point. The details are astounding. Senior government officials, intelligence services and ministers all lied. We really shouldn’t be surprised. “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied“, once wrote Claud Cockburn.…
The most accurate assessment of the real Obama presidency
Howard Zinn on Barack Obama’s one year in the top job: I’ve been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close is some of Obama’s rhetoric; I don’t see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies. As far as disappointments, I wasn’t terribly disappointed because I didn’t expect that…
Gitmo prisoners are left in limbo for the foreseeable future
The global authority on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Andy Worthington, has released a newly revised and definitive list of 2010 figures.
How we treat terror suspects is the sign of a true democracy
News that some of the alleged 9/11 masterminds will be tried in a New York city civilian court is welcome news but Andy Worthington, a Brit who has written about many of the Guantanamo Bay captives, issues caution on Democracy Now!: Well, I think—you know, I think it’s very appropriate that it does take place…