December 10, 2007 – 5:49 pm
Bumper stickers as the modern version of political activism… Photo by cesar bojorquez. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)Recently, there has been an increasing amount of talk centering on the possibility (or even probability) that President Bush and his administration are going to declare martial law and bring around a new fascist state. There has been a [...]
By celestina
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Posted in News Opinion
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Also tagged bush, congress, constitution, democrats, fear, fisa, guantanamo, illegal-wiretapping, patriot act, politics, president, terrorist, terrorists, united-states, war-on-terror
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November 12, 2007 – 5:32 pm
One of the more disturbing bits of news to hit headlines today was that back in October, the House of Representatives passed a bit of legislation entitled Violent RadicalizationPhoto by kaerast. (License: Creative Commons Attribution) and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, H.R. 1955. Reading quick synopses and evaluations of this bill, one might think [...]
Everyone is suspect, now… Photo by Bryan Rosengrant. (License: Creative Commons Attribution) After reading a report earlier this week which references various law enforcement pamphlets which detail behaviours of potential terrorists (“If you encounter any of the following, call the Joint Terrorism Task Force”), I was quite naturally inspired to look back over the body [...]
February 22, 2007 – 10:34 pm
On January 11, 2002, the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Despite much public objection, calls by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, and several legal battles, we still hold over 400 prisoners in Guantanamo today. We are told that these men are the “worst of the worst”, “obvious threats to national security”, “Islamofascists”, and “terrorists”. We use these epithets to justify our new definitions which allow us to hold them outside the regulations of the Geneva Conventions, outside of previous United States law, and outside of our general moral concerns. It is worth a moment of our time, then, to consider who these men actually are, what we intend to do with them, and whether our means will justify our bespoken ends.
Of the 775 men and boys who have been held as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo, about 340 have been released, 110 are scheduled for release, around 70 are to stand trial, and around 250 “may be held indefinitely”. Only ten have been charged with anything at all.
December 21, 2006 – 10:21 pm
I have been proud to host many civil discussions on my column. We have talked about abortion, pornography, and various Bush controversies without ripping each other’s eyes out. It has been lovely. But this is not going to be one of those articles. Yesterday, the breaking news was that an American had actually been held [...]
A recent article I seeded about the Israel-Hezbollah conflict drew quite a remarkable chorus of voices, many of them outraged that I would dare to seed an article which was sympathetic to the Hezbollah viewpoint. In preparing to seed the link, it had certainly occurred to me that there would be debate, and yet I [...]
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