The issue of refugees is central to the Australian election campaign. Usually most politicians are finding ways to demonise asylum seekers. It’s not a pretty sight. Today, new revelations that deserve wide coverage: Asylum seekers from the Oceanic Viking stand-off claim a “deal” to resettle all the people on board has been broken. Twenty-five asylum…
Showing all posts tagged Guantanamo Bay
Obama’s ongoing gulag at Gitmo
A journalist from the UK Independent writes about arriving in Guantanamo Bay for the trial of Omar Khadr. I like this quote from Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the London-based human rights group Reprieve: I have met Omar at Guantanamo – he was a child and still had the scars from the injuries he…
Handy reminder of US war goals
A beacon to the world, supposedly: Four of the nation’s most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned. The transfer allowed the…
Hicks demands justice and transparency for being abused in our care
A welcome development to erase the stain of the ongoing “war on terror”. I look forward to hearing those in Australia who backed David Hicks’ incarceration and torture saying sorry for this terrible injustice: David Hicks has enlisted legal experts in the hope of having his terrorism conviction quashed. In the three years since his…
How many people are still locked up at Gitmo?
The running sore of Guantanamo Bay shows no sign of abating: In a comprehensive recent study, Physicians for Human Rights alleges that healthcare professionals experimented on human subjects in order to hone the torture techniques authorized by the Bush Administration. The Department of Justice’s retracted torture memoranda advise that doctors should be involved at every…
American use of torture was common and still is
American journalist and author Joshua Phillips talks about his discoveries while writing, “None of Us Were Like This Before“: Prisoner abuse and torture was far more widespread than most people understand. It happened well beyond the walls of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA “black sites.” Prisoners were seriously abused in other U.S. military bases and…
Washington and the Muslim world, a testy relationship
Views from across the Arab world: We are now approaching the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, which offered Arabs and Muslims around the world a new “engagement” with the United States. A year later, how do Arab publics see the results of that effort–and how much do their…
Obama’s America isn’t so inspiring after all
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald on America’s continuing policies to deny human beings the right of appeal to terrorism charges. Obama equals Bush: So congratulations to the United States and… Barack… Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any…
Who helps us torturing “terror suspects?” Hint: Egypt and Israel
Robert Fisk on our friends in the “war on terror”: I began my column last week with the words “We know all about Guantanamo”. I was wrong. Courtesy of the Toronto press – until a few days ago, when half of them were censored out of the drumhead courts martial that pass for “justice” in…
No concern with cuddly Americans killing for Israel
In case anybody was unsure, this story in Politico includes a key point about the profound hypocrisy of America’s foreign policy (and the situation is little different in Australia). It’s alright for Jewish, American citizens to visit Israel and kill Arabs in the name of “fighting terrorism” but anybody caught on the side of the…