“I think it’s funny Mr. Kobach, because when you mention illegal immigrant, I think of all of you.”— Ponka-We Victors (D-Wichita), a member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and the Tohono O’odham Nation, responding to anti-immigration hawk Kris Kobach’s testimony against in-state tuition for undocumented students, via Indian Country Today.
Ouch!
Just when you think it couldn’t get much worse in the military commissions at Guantánamo, something happens to prove you wrong. It all began in late January when, during pretrial hearings in the case against five men accused in the 9/11 attacks, the audio feed — which runs on a 40-second delay to prevent leaks of classified information — was abruptly cut off. The media and observers, who sit behind a soundproof glass wall at the back of the court, noted the silence. But the cut surprised even the military judge, who believed he was the only one with authority to press the button and who did not consider the information being discussed at that moment classified.
The audio cutoff was initiated “not by me,” the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said angrily at the time, and “I’m curious as to why.” He added, “If some external body is turning the commission off under their own view of what things ought to be … then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off.”
Read who cut the audio and how the how attorney-client meeting rooms were bugged »
Photo: Flags fly above the sign for Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay.
© 2009 Reuters
From Greenwald’s excellent piece on the death of Aaron Swartz:
“Whatever else is true, Swartz was destroyed by a “justice” system that fully protects the most egregious criminals as long as they are members of or useful to the nation’s most powerful factions, but punishes with incomparable mercilessness and harshness those who lack power and, most of all, those who challenge power.”
A number of Tumblr’s have already pointed to this article; I wanted to highlight this quote. The rest can be found here.
— Chris Hedges (via azspot)
(via azspot)
An assumption of human free will is fundamental for any system of legal accountability. Unfortunately, the more the cognitive sciences develop, the more they suggest that our moral reasoning lies largely outside of our control—and can even be manipulated.
An example is transcranial magnetic stimulation. Experiments with TMS reveal that you canalter somebody’s moral reasoning using a powerful magnet. Unscrupulous military leaders could artificially distort their subordinates’ morality for the worse by attaching a TMS unit to their helmets. Yet if a soldier committed war crimes because somebody else had turned off his morals, it is hard to see how we could hold him responsible for his actions.
From “Who Will Be Accountable for Military Technology?” by Paul Robinson.
Trenton Oldfield, who disrupted the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race in April this year to protest against inequality, was sentenced to six months in jail for the offence of “public nuisance”. Although the race was restarted 25 minutes later, Judge Molyneux made it clear that Trenton had disrupted the smooth running of things, and for that he must go to jail: “Thousands of people had lined the banks of the river to enjoy a sporting competition. Many more were watching at home on live television.” The message is blunt: if it’s on TV and aristocrats are involved, then the state can deprive you of your liberty for as long as it likes.
More here.
“Private Spies and Our Growing Surveillance State”
The fact that we know very little about how TrapWire operates—even though most of the company’s clients are taxpayer-funded organizations—cuts to the heart of the problem of outsourcing intelligence. Since private corporations are not subject to public records law, there are limited avenues by which we might learn more about what the firm’s technology is really capable of. That, like many other thorny issues TrapWire raises, is a problem that applies to all intelligence contractors. As more secrets are farmed out to private corporations, the public loses twice: we pay more for the privilege of being surveilled, and we lose crucial access to the very transparency mechanisms that are supposed to keep the intelligence agencies in check and operating within the rule of law.
From Kade Crockford’s excellent piece in The Nation.
