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    • In Congress, Dem and GOPer Working Together to Change the NDAA | Mother Jones
      "Smith and Amash's effort comes amid a bipartisan backlash against indefinite detention that has already produced legislation on the state level. Republican-dominated legislatures in Arizona, Maine, and Virginia have passed anti-NDAA legislation. Proponents of indefinite detention argue that Congress' 2001 authorization of the use of military force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban permits the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens, even those apprehended in the United States. But the Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on the issue. Opponents counter that indefinite detention of American citizens in the United States is unconstitutional."
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      I don’t think any “climate movement” is going to reverse the tide of history, for one reason: We are all climate change. It is not the evil “1%” destroying the planet. We are all of us part of that destruction. This is the great, conflicted, complex situation we find ourselves in. I am climate change. You are climate change. Our culture is climate change. And climate change itself is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg, if you’ll pardon the terrible but appropriate pun. If we were to wake up tomorrow to the news that climate change were a hoax or a huge mistake, we would still be living in a world in which extinction rates were between 100 and 1000 times natural levels and in which we have managed to destroy 25 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last four decades alone.
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      “You are unable to say that [such a book] consisting of political speech could not be captured under [NDAA section] 1021?” the judge asked. “We can’t say that,” Torrance answered. “Are you telling me that no U.S. citizen can be detained under 1021?” Forest asked. “That’s not a reasonable fear,” the government lawyer said. Advertisement “Say it’s reasonable to fear you will be unlucky [and face] detention, trial. What does ‘directly supported’ mean?” she asked. “We have not said anything about that …” Torrance answered. “What do you think it means?” the judge asked. “Give me an example that distinguishes between direct and indirect support. Give me a single example.” “We have not come to a position on that,” he said. “So assume you are a U.S. citizen trying not to run afoul of this law. What does it [the phrase] mean to you?” the judge said. “I couldn’t offer any specific language,” Torrance answered. “I don’t have a specific example.”
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      "(Judge) Forrest also repeatedly asked for assurances – at least five times – that the NDAA would not sweep up people like the plaintiffs: journalists engaged in journalism and citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Again, every time, the lawyers for Obama and Panetta said that they could not give her such assurances. [...] We now have it from the U.S. government lawyers’ own mouths: This law may put journalists at risk, or at least the lawyers explicitly refused to rule out that option for their client – and, as Forrest put it, they have “one very big client.”"
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      "When the long history of political infiltration is reviewed, the Occupy Movement should be surprised if it is not infiltrated. Almost every movement in modern history has been infiltrated by police and others using many of the same tactics we are now seeing in Occupy. "
    • Critiques Of Libertarianism: A Non-Libertarian FAQ (Huben)
      "The purpose of this FAQ is not to attack libertarianism, but some of the more fallacious arguments within it. That done, libertarians can then reformulate or reject these arguments. This is also needed to help people place libertarianism and its arguments in context. It is very hard to find any literature about libertarianism that was NOT written by its advocates. This isolation from normal political discourse makes it difficult to evaluate libertarian claims without much more research or analysis than most of us have time for. Compare this to (for example) the extensive literature of socialism and communism written by ideologues, scholars, pundits, etc. on all sides. Libertarianism is scantily analyzed outside its own movement. Let's fix that."
    • UPDATED: Limbaugh's Misogynistic Attack On Georgetown Law Student Continues With Increased Vitriol (Media Matters for America)
      Always good to have a reference, this is it. "Rush Limbaugh is not backing down after widespread condemnation over his misogynistic attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University Law School student who testified before Congress recently about the problems caused when women lack access to contraception. " Multiple clips for future show and tells.
    • America's Death Squads (Davies, PDA Community/ZCommunications)
      "Barack Obama has halted the macabre parade of hooded, shackled suspects in orange jumpsuits stumbling off American planes into the tropical sunshine at Guantanamo, but he has not done so by restoring the rule of law. Instead, to a great extent, he has replaced Bush’s policy with a global campaign to simply kill a wide range of people in cold blood: terrorism suspects, resistance fighters, and anyone else added to secret lists for secret reasons. From a uniquely American “exceptionalist” point of view, killing suspects instead of capturing them is a convenient way to avoid the embarrassment of sweeping up hundreds of mostly innocent people in an indiscriminate global dragnet and then not knowing what to do with them. The dead tell no tales. Public outrage is contained within the faraway countries where the killings take place and does not cause domestic political problems."
    • Corruption in Iraq: 'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay' (Abdul-Ahad, Guardian)
      Iraq ten years after: instead of one Saddam, many little ones. "Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like his brothers. Then one day she took a phone call from an officer who said she could go to visit him if she paid a bribe. She borrowed the money from her neighbour and set off for the prison. "We waited until they brought him," she said. "His hands and legs were tied in metal chains like a criminal. I didn't know him from the torture. He wasn't my son, he was someone else.""

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Accused 9/11 conspirator verdict delayed in Germany

Posted by Thomas Nephew on January 22nd, 2004

Moroccan national Abdelghani Mzoudi was to have learned today whether he would be judged guilty by a court in Hamburg, Germany, of being accessory to 3000 counts of murder. But German newspapers including Die Welt are reporting that the verdict will be delayed because of a new witness:

According to Mzoudi’s defense attorney G?l Pinar the witness is a man who claims to be an Iranian spy. He claims to have wanted to warn American officials before September 11, but was not taken seriously. He knows via an e-mail from Iran that Al Qaeda terror organization wants to liquidate Mzoudi, because it assumes he is cooperating with German officials. The witness claims to know, via phone calls from Iran, that Mzoudi is knowledgeable with codes, and was therefore responsible for information exchange.

Before this development, Mzoudi was all but certain to be judged innocent by the Hamburg court and judge Ruehle today. This was mainly because of a statement apparently made by Ramzi Binalshibh, (now probably at Guantanamo), claiming that Mzoudi played no role in the 9/11 planning carried out in Hamburg. Other evidence in the case, such as photos of Mzoudi together with 9/11 chief conspirator Mohammed Atta, was not compelling enough to Judge Klaus Ruehle to justify keeping Mzoudi in jail.

It’s not clear yet that the witness will actually take the stand himself, let alone how persuasive his testimony will be if it’s heard. According to Die Welt, the Iranian spy’s German interrogators and a German federal attorney will be heard from first; the court’s decision on how to proceed will be announced at the end of the day.

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