YOUTUBE (6 mins)- Julian Assange Subterranean Homesick Blues -filmed in Dylan's original 1965 alley

by Shut Gitmo Mon Jun 27, 2011 19:10

Thursday, June 23, 2011

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES DISRUPTED BY ANTI-TORTURE ACTIVISTS
Witness Against Torture Interrupts a Vote on the
House Floor with the call "Close Guantanamo!"

WASHINGTON, DC – While the US House of Representatives chamber filled for a vote today at 4:40pm, Representatives' eyes and ears turned toward the Chamber's gallery as a group of activists interrupted proceedings to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and denounce provisions in the Defense Appropriations Bill concerning detention policy.

Fifteen people from the group Witness Against Torture stood in the gallery to read the following statement:

Today the House of Representative is in the process of contemplating not the passage of a bill but
the commission of a crime. Provisions in the proposed Defense Appropriations Bill grant the United
States powers over the lives of detained men fitting of a totalitarian state that uses the law itself as
an instrument of tyranny. The law would make the prison at Guantanamo permanent by denying
funds for the transfer of men to the United States, even for prosecution in civilian courts.

REPORT CONTIUED
http://www.witnesstorture.org/pr-06-23-2011

by Review Thu Jun 30, 2011 07:23

Principles collapse when victory is the goal
Reviewed by Elizabeth McAlister
Elizabeth McAlister

THE VIOLENCE OF PEACE: AMERICA’S WARS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA
By Stephen L. Carter
Published by Beast Books, $24.99

This was not an easy book for me to read; it is not an easy book for me to review. The author, Stephen L. Carter, is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught since 1982. Among his courses are law and religion and the ethics of war.

He is also a legal and social policy writer, columnist, and best-selling novelist. In The Violence of Peace he explores not only President Obama’s mindset with regard to our country’s wars, but the process by which a man who campaigned as a peace president came to view the world from the Oval Office roughly the same as George W. Bush viewed it.

One after another, Obama’s principles and promises collapsed, confronted by what he came to understand as the demands of office.

The book dives deeply into an analysis of just war principles because they became the foundation of Obama’s justification for his administration’s wars, wars he believed to be moral and just because they fulfilled these criteria:

* They were the last resort, entered into when all other avenues of settling disputes proved impossible;
* They were entered into only when there was a reasonable hope of success;
* They are being waged using the minimum possible force.

I would, perhaps, read Carter more readily and easily were he a bit more steeped in Leo Tolstoy and Jacques Ellul than in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. And I believe there is a radical difference between the conduct of a politician and that of a citizen seeking to live by the Gospels of Jesus and/or by the principles inherent in the practice of nonviolence. What makes that more complex in the United States is the veneer of Christianity assumed of and by our leaders -- the wars in which we are now embroiled were proclaimed by Bush from the pulpit of the National Cathedral. Obama presents himself to this nation (and perhaps the world) as a man of faith and prayer. Yet we who call ourselves Christians have a responsibility to be advocates and defenders of the poor and oppressed. When we fail in that duty, violence is the direct consequence.

Carter is realistic in his evaluations.

Realism leads him to conclude that violence is natural and normal for humanity and society, that it is a necessity imposed on rulers and ruled. But it is not always true that what is natural is good, and that what is necessary is legitimate.

http://ncronline.org/node/25300

by Pride snaps London Mon Jul 04, 2011 04:11

Hi everyone,
Here's a link with photos from yesterday pride, marching with "Queer Friends of Bradley Manning":
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64728140@N02/sets/72157626975415307/with/5894344059/

Great atmosphere, we talked with loads of people and gave about a thousand leaflets.
Serena

by Solidarity Tue Aug 23, 2011 19:25

The Digital Vandal: Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s War Against Transparency
by JLLLOW

The transparency movement has many vocal proponents. A recent event in the Wikileaks sagas proves that those who could be in the most effective position to strengthen it are only content to give it lip service.

Take Daniel Domscheit-Berg, for example. A former Wikileaks staffer, Domscheit-Berg had a very public and bitter falling-out with Wikileaks editor Julian Assange in September 2010 and has since cultivated the public role of pragmatist pitted against Assange’s flinty eccentric in a battle of archetypes.

Soon after his dismissal, Domscheit-Berg made it a personal signature to tirelessly use every publicity opportunity to disparage his former employer. He announced he would be starting a new rival whistleblower website – Openleaks – a supposedly sensible and measured alternative to his previous gig. A gossip-heavy and factually inconsistent book followed – Inside Wikileaks: My Time With Julian Assange At The World’s Most Dangerous Website, filled with the mundane details of Assange’s eating habits and dress sense. Additional details on Domscheit-Berg’s predilection for unappetizing quasi-meat dishes and general whining helped feed the internet meme machine for several months.
ARTICLE CONTINUED.......
http://21stcenturysamizdat.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/the...ency/

WikiLeaks Statement on Daniel Domscheit-Berg and OpenLeaks
and statement by Julian Assange Sat Agust 20th. 2011
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/chek37