rumsfeld
Democracy Now! Thursday, August 11, 2011
On Monday, a federal appeals court refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two U.S. citizens against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and unnamed others for developing, authorizing and using harsh interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were working for a private U.S. government contractor, Shield Group Security, in 2006 when they witnessed the sale of U.S. government weapons to Iraqi rebel groups for money and alcohol. Some 45,000 workers at Verizon have entered their fifth day on strike after negotiations between Verizon and two unions representing the workers broke down when the company attempted to cut health and pension benefits for workers and make it easier to fire workers. A new exposé on Haiti reveals how the United States led a vast international campaign to prevent former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from returning to his country while he was exiled in South Africa. Democracy Now!, a daily independent newshour
Email this pageGRITtv: The F Word: Aren't We Cheneyed Out Yet?
At what point do we call them the family of mass intimidation and simply stop playing into the Cheney clan's tired old terror tactics? Liz is the latest. Cheney child number one made the headlines this week, with an innuendo-laced video questioning the loyalty of lawyers who represent Guantanamo detainees. "The Al Qaeda 7: Who are they?" Asks the voice on a video released by Cheney's supposedly nonprofit, non-partisan new hit squad. (They call it an advocacy group?)
Liz is playing from a battered old family play book. Shortly after September 11, it was her mother out there, accusing people of lack of patriotism. Lynne Cheney teamed up with Senator Joseph Lieberman to release a report which accused colleges and universities of being the "weak link in America's response" and naming 117 professors and students whom they called "short on patriotism" and "hostile to the US and western Civilization."
Not to be outdone by his women, barely a month has passed between 2001 and today in which Darth Vader patriarch Dick Cheney didn't accuse some Democrat or another of endangering the homeland. The former vice president's training in bait and snitch dates back to the 60s when when he spied on Students for A Democratic Society meetings, jotting down names for his then-boss Donald Rumsfeld in an attempt to cut government funding for public colleges.
Teachers, lawyers, politicians, In case it's not entirely clear, the Cheneys aren't too hot on the independent professions of a free democracy, but they are red hot for the contemporary equivalent of red-baiting and they've gotten it down pat, how to harness money media to do their bidding.
After all, it's thanks to media that it works. Even concerted attacks on campus progressives, lawyers, and political candidates don't successfully discredit their targets without the help of media who carry the allegations and innuendos. Facts be damned, it's the accusations that do the work: intimidating scholars, chilling freedom of expression, driving lawyers and politicians out of the line of fire.
The media - like FOX - who went ahead this week and obediently printed the names of the Cheney-tagged "7" and place the dead horse heads in the beds. Without them, the Cheney mob are simply name-callers.
It's time the media started greeting Cheneyisms with the reaction they deserve. Snore. And most important of all, silence.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
GRITtv: Off the Map and Outside the Law
In Trevor Paglen's new book, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, he investigates the "off the map" locations of covert government activity, including the "salt pit" in Kabul where Khaled El-Masri was held.
Ben Wizner, from the ACLU's National Security Project, is El-Masri's lawyer and he joins Paglen in studio with Laura to talk about black sites, government secrecy, and why anything goes when prisoners are taken off the map.
GRITtv: Bagram: The Other Guantanamo
Like the controversial and due-to-be-closed prison at Guantanamo, Bagram Air Base holds prisoners who have not yet been charged--but unlike Gitmo, it often escapes discussion. Brave New Films talks to two former prisoners at the Afghanistan base and uncovers the horrors that become commonplace when the rule of law is pushed to the side.
GRITtv: September 14, 2009
According to a new report, Broken Law, Unprotected Workers, wage theft and workplace abuses are widespread across key industries in the economy. How does it happen? And David Cole, editor of Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable, on the authorization of torture by high level officials in the Bush administration. Will they be prosecuted?
GRITtv: Jonathan Mahler: The Hamdan Case, Executive Power and Closing Guantanamo
As the Obama administration seeks to come up with a proposal for trying Guantanamo detainees, one of the most important cases to challenge presidential authority may provide some lessons. There are still 240 detainees left on Guantanamo, and progress to close the prison has been stymied by Congress and other legal concerns. One of the most important trials of a Guantanamo detainee was that of Salim Hamdan. The ruling in his case essentially established that the executive cannot come up with a new trial system without congressional approval and that the executive cannot ignore the Geneva conventions. Jonathan Mahler, author of The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, discusses his book and the case that challenged the use of secret military courts.
