From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR’s Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR’s ban on using the word “torture” to describe the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics. Given the utter vapidity of her rationale (”there are two sides to the issue. And I’m not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?”), I was momentarily amazed to learn that she actually teaches “Media Ethics” to graduate students at Georgetown University (my amazement quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith — Doug Feith — to teach students “national security policy” and that Berkeley Law School has John Yoo “teaching law” to its students; next semester at Georgetown: Karl Rove teaches Civility in a Post-Partisan Age, Bill Kristol lectures on Accountability in Punditry, while David Gregory examines The Role of Intellect in Adversarial Questioning).

NPR’s “torture” ban and its Ombudsman’s incoherent defense of it has now turned into a significant controversy for NPR — and rightfully so. Yesterday, The Huffington Post trumpeted the controversy in a prominent headline all day long, focusing on Shepard’s refusal to be interviewed here. The media reporter Simon Owens wrote a long column on Shepard’s refusal to discuss her rationale with me despite my having been a primary critic of NPR’s policy (indeed, this controversy began several weeks ago when I noted the ample documentation from NPR Check of NPR’s steadfast refusal to use the word “torture” and the embarrassing contortions it employs to accomplish that).

Also, along with her On the Media appearance this weekend, Shepard went on another NPR-affiliated show — Patt Morrison’s KPCC Southern California Public Radio program — in a quality segment that included several good questions from Morrison (and even better ones from callers); a very well-compiled, illustrative and cringe-inducing montage of NPR’s repeatedly going out of its way to avoid calling Bush interrogation tactics “torture,” juxtaposed with an excerpt where NPR explicitly accused Iraqis in Sadr City of “using torture” against detainees; and, finally, the inclusion in the discussion of a Berkeley Professor of Linguistics explaining why it matters so much what the media does in this regard and how virtually all media around the world — other than what he called the “spineless U.S. media” — call these tactics “torture” (the KPCC program credits my criticisms of Shepard for catalyzing the controversy and the segment can be heard here). Amazingly, a caller asked Shepard about the advent of blogs and how it has diversified commentary, and in replying, Shepard put on her most condescending and self-glorifying voice to say this:

Read more Controversy

From Harpers
By Scott Horton

Often enough, commentators talk about the prospect that some foreign prosecutors will open criminal cases against Americans involved in some of the Bush Administration’s criminal enterprises, such as the operation of the torture black sites. But such cases are not speculative. They are already pending, and the most advanced of them is now coming close to the conclusion of the trial phase. In Milan, Italian prosecutors are pursuing kidnapping and assault charges against 26 American officials—CIA officers, diplomats, and a military attaché—in connection with the seizure and torture of a radical Islamic cleric known as Abu Omar. According to some observers, the case will conclude by the end of the summer.

Now Robert Seldon Lady, the former Milan station chief of the CIA and a key defendant in the case, has surfaced with an extended interview in Il Giornale, an Italian newspaper.

According to a translation by the Associated Press, Lady has set up a defense that sounds remarkably familiar: he was just following orders.

”I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors,” Lady was quoted as saying by Il Giornale. “It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair. I find consolation in reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was at war with terrorism, and that I could not discuss the orders I received,” he was quoted as saying. “I have worked in intelligence for 25 years, and almost none of my activities in these 25 years were legal in the country in which I was carrying them out.”

Read more Orders

From TruthDig
By Chris Hedges

The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out and people get a taste of Bill Clinton’s draconian welfare reform. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

Our economic crisis—despite the corporate media circus around the death of Michael Jackson or Gov. Mark Sanford’s marital infidelity or the outfits of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest incarnation, Brüno—barrels forward. And this crisis will lead to a period of profound political turmoil and change. Those who care about the plight of the working class and the poor must begin to mobilize quickly or we will lose our last opportunity to save our embattled democracy. The most important struggle will be to wrest the organs of communication from corporations that use mass media to demonize movements of social change and empower proto-fascist movements such as the Christian right.

American culture—or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures—was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.

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From After Downing Street
By David Swanson

The unanimous Declaration of the fifty united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a gang of lawless thugs and insist on the appointment of a special prosecutor to enforce the laws of the land even against those until recently holding the reins of Power, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Prosecution.

We hold these truths to be the foundation of our Constitution and therfore of the U.S. Code of law, that all men and women are considered equal, that they are given by the laws they have created certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men and Women, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever the high officials of any Government become destructive of these ends, and when that Government refuses to correct itself through impeachment, expulsion, and other checks and balances, it is the Right of the People to demand the prosecution of the criminals and to refuse subservience to that Government until this Demand is met, and thereby to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that high Government officials should not be charged for light and transient causes, nor should amorous affairs enter the consideration of responsible governance; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that humankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government by prosecuting the chief offenders, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these fifty states; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to insist upon the appointment of an independent Counsel to prosecute the following criminal acts. The history of the recent rule of George W. Bush, abetted if not directed by Richard B. Cheney, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Read more Indictment

From True Blue Liberal
By Sherwood Ross

The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.

“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.

“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.

An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hendren reported that one Manadel Jamadi died “of blunt-force injuries” complicated by “compromised respiration” at Abu Ghraib prison “while he was with Navy SEALs and other special operations troops.” Another victim, Abdul Jaleel, died while gagged and shackled to a cell door with his hands over his head.” Yet another prisoner, Maj. Gen. Abid Mowhosh, former commander of Iraq’s air defenses, “died of asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression” in Qaim, Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »

From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

After numerous delays sought by the Obama administration, it is expected that a 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report — aggressively questioning both the efficacy and legality of Bush’s interrogation tactics — will be released tomorrow. A heavily redacted version of that document was already released by the Bush administration in response to an ACLU lawsuit and it remains to be seen how much new information will be included in tomorrow’s version.

In anticipation of the release of that report, there is an important effort underway — as part of the ACLU Accountability Project — to correct a critically important deficiency in the public debate over torture and accountability. So often, the premise of media discussions of torture is that “torture” is something that was confined to a single tactic (waterboarding) and used only on three “high-value” detainees accused of being high-level Al Qaeda operatives. The reality is completely different.

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of “rogue” interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be “torture” when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined.

Read more Torture

From The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild

Finally, the Supreme Court has made a good decision on civil liberties.

The justices ruled when she was 13, Savana Redding had her rights violated when school officials insisted that she be strip-searched for the possession of—hold on here!—ibuprofen.

She had to strip to her underwear, then pull her bra and panties out and expose her privates. School officials found no drugs.

Savana called it “the most humiliating experience I’ve ever had.”

Ruling 8-1, the Justices concluded that Safford Middle School went too far.

That’s a welcome departure for the court, which has steadily increased the authority of school districts to intrude on the rights of students, with random drug testing of athletes and anyone in extracurricular activities. The court also has invited excessive monitoring of school newspapers.

For once, the court, almost unanimously, made a course correction.

The only dissenter was Clarence Thomas, who after sleepwalking through 18 years on the court, has finally settled on a role for himself other than that of Scalia’s second vote. And that is, to be even further to the right of Scalia. Earlier this week, Thomas was the sole member of the court who wanted to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Read more Drifting

From Common Dreams
By Amy Goodman

Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. Cell phones can capture video and send it wirelessly to the Internet. People can send eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, with a few keystrokes, to thousands or even millions via social networking sites. As these technologies have developed, so too has the ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.

A Wall Street Journal report this week claimed that the “Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.” The article named Nokia Siemens Networks as the provider of equipment capable of “deep packet inspection.” DPI, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “enables Internet Service Providers to intercept virtually all of their customers’ Internet activity, including Web surfing data, e-mail and peer-to-peer downloads.”

Nokia Siemens has refuted the allegation, saying in a press release that the company “has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran.” It is this issue, of what is legal, that must be addressed. “Lawful intercept” means that people can be monitored, located and censored. Global standards need to be adopted that protect the freedom to communicate, to dissent.

China has very sophisticated Internet monitoring and censoring capabilities, referred to as “the Great Firewall of China,” which attracted increased attention prior to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. A document leaked before a U.S. Senate human rights hearing implicated Cisco, a California-based maker of Internet routers, in marketing to the Chinese government to accommodate monitoring and censorship goals. The Chinese government now requires any computer sold there after July 1, 2009, to include software called “Green Dam,” which critics say will further empower the government to monitor Internet use.

Read more Free Speech

From Thomas Paine’s Corner
By Tom Burghardt

You have to hand it to Pentagon securocrats and their corporate cronies, they never miss an opportunity to demonize, vilify or otherwise slander domestic political dissent as “terrorism.”

The American Civil Liberties Union reported June 10 that “Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.”

According to the civil liberties’ watchdog: “Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: ‘Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?’ To answer correctly, the examinee must select ‘protests’.”

Yes, you read that correctly. The Pentagon has designed a training system that puts you in the crosshairs! And why not? Back in 2003 Mike Van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) said of antiwar demonstrators brutally attacked by riot cops at the Port of Oakland during a protest against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq,

“You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest),” said Van Winkle, of the state Justice Department. “You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.” (Ian Hoffman, Sean Holstege and Josh Richman, (”Intelligence Agency Does Not Distinguish Between Terrorism and Peace Activism,” Oakland Tribune, May 18, 2003)

Read more Protests

From AlterNet
By Joel Salatin

Perhaps the most empowering concept in any paradigm-challenging movement is simply opting out. The opt-out strategy can humble the mightiest forces because it declares to one and all, “You do not control me.”

The time has come for people who are ready to challenge the paradigm of factory-produced food and to return to a more natural, wholesome and sustainable way of eating (and living) to make that declaration to the powers that be, in business and government, that established the existing system and continue to prop it up. It’s time to opt out and simply start eating better — right here, right now.

Impractical? Idealistic? Utopian? Not really. As I’ll explain, it’s actually the most realistic and effective approach to transforming a system that is slowly but surely killing us.

What happened to food?

First, why am I taking a position that many well-intentioned people might consider alarmist or extreme? Let me explain.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the unprecedented variety of bar-coded packages in today’s supermarket really does not mean that our generation enjoys better food options than our predecessors. These packages, by and large, having passed through the food-inspection fraternity, the industrial food fraternity and the lethargic cheap-food-purchasing consumer fraternity, represent an incredibly narrow choice.

Read more Food Inc