James Rosen | Washington | Nov 5

McClatchy - After an emotional debate over how to keep Americans safe, the Senate Thursday narrowly defeated an effort to prevent civilian trials in U.S. courts for the accused planners of the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate's 54-45 vote to reject the measure by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opens the door for President Barack Obama to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in federal court, rather than the military commissions Graham helped create.

Obama has pledged to shutter the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January and transfer some of its 220 detainees to the U.S. for trials in civilian courts.

Three Democrats — Jim Webb of Virginia and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor — and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined all 40 Senate Republicans in voting for the measure.

Milan | Nov 4

Reuters - An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against another three American defendants and the ex-head of the Italy's Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, as well as his former deputy.

William Fisher | New york | Nov 2

IPS - The state board responsible for licensing - and disciplining - psychologists in Louisiana is accused of turning a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse against one of its members, including complicity in beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions during his service as a senior advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

November 03

Al Jazeera - A US federal appeals court has ruled that a Canadian man cannot sue the US after he was held at a New York airport and then transferred to Syria, where he alleges he was tortured.

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, was detained by US authorities during a stopover in New York while heading home to Canada in 2002, and then sent to Syria because he was suspected of having links to al-Qaeda.

Arar says he was held in a Syrian jail for almost a year and that he was beaten and whipped with electrical cables during his detention.

Brad Knickerbocker | Augusta, ME | October 31

CSM - “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” is a political cliché long since out of use.

But with Tuesday’s election there, both sides in the fierce debate over same-sex marriage are hoping the outcome not only favors them but sends a clear message to the rest of the United States.

In May, the Maine Legislature passed a law legalizing gay marriage, and after initially opposing it Gov. John Baldacci signed the measure. If approved, “Question 1” on Tuesday’s ballot would overturn the new law.

M K Bhadrakumar | Oct 30

Asia Times - The worsening Afghan war has brought some good news for Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, the European Union announced it was lifting a four-year old arms embargo against Uzbekistan. The EU imposed wide-ranging sanctions in 2005 after Uzbek troops fired on civilians during an uprising in the city of Andizhan in Ferghana Valley, and Tashkent rejected calls by Western countries for an international inquiry into those killings.

Tuesday's decision completes an incremental process stretched over the past year or so on the EU's part to kiss and make up with Tashkent. The EU officials justified their decision with Tashkent's recently release of some political prisoners and abolishment of the death penalty. Amnesty International has promptly contradicted the claim with facts and figures.

Aside from the veracity of the EU claim, the reality is that Europe not only blinked first, it also bent its knees while doing so. Brussels kept a straight face, though, assuring the world audience that it would "closely and continuously observe the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan … [and] assess progress made by the Uzbek authorities."

All the same, the EU decision is a good thing. It underscores a new degree of realism often lacking in Western policy towards the strategic Central Asian region. The West has been far too prescriptive towards a region whose civilization dates back several centuries further than Europe's. Besides, the dogma regarding democracy and "regime change" was alien to the steppes and somewhat irrelevant at this point in time.

Are we seeing the end of the "regime change" ideology? The signals are tentative. Statements made by United States Vice President Joseph Biden during his tour this month of Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, hark back to the former president George W Bush era. But then, Biden was grandstanding in front of people upset over President Barack Obama's reversal on the Anti-Ballistic Missile system deployment in Central Europe.

....The fact that EU was making an exception that it isn't ready to contemplate yet for China should drive home the fact that the Afghan war is hitting the European capitals where it hurts.

Margaret Talev | Washington | October 29

McClatchy - President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed the first major piece of federal gay rights legislation, a milestone that activists compared to the passage of 1960s civil-rights legislation empowering blacks.

The new law adds acts of violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to the list of federal hate crimes. Gay-rights activists voiced hope that the Obama administration would advance more issues, including legislation to bar workplace discrimination, allow military service and recognize same-sex marriages.

Congress passed the hate crimes protections as an unlikely amendment to this year's Defense Authorization Act. Obama, speaking at an emotional evening reception with supporters of the legislation, said that more than 12,000 hate crimes had been reported the past decade based on sexual orientation.

Charlie Savage | Washington | October 28

NYT - After a Somali-American teenager from Minneapolis committed a suicide bombing in Africa in October 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating whether a Somali Islamist group had recruited him on United States soil.

Instead of collecting information only on people about whom they had a tip or links to the teenager, agents fanned out to scrutinize Somali communities, including in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio. The operation unfolded as the Bush administration was relaxing some domestic intelligence-gathering rules.

Ian Black | Oct 28

The Guardian - Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister during the Gaza war, would probably face arrest on war crimes charges if he visited Britain, according to a UK lawyer who is working to expand the application of "universal jurisdiction" for offences involving serious human rights abuses committed anywhere in the world.

Neither Olmert nor Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister during the Cast Lead offensive, and a member of Israel's war cabinet, would enjoy immunity from prosecution for alleged breaches of the Geneva conventions, predicted Daniel Machover, who is involved in intensifying legal work after the controversial Goldstone report on the three-week conflict. Neither are ministers any longer.

Prosecutions of Israeli political and military figures remain likely despite the failure to obtain an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, when he visited the UK earlier this month, he said. In the Barak case a magistrate accepted advice from the Foreign Office that the minister enjoyed state immunity and rejected an application made on behalf of several residents of the Gaza Strip.

"This needs to be tested at the right time and in the right place," Machover said. "One day one of these people will make a mistake and go to the wrong country and face a criminal process — and then it'll be a matter for the courts of that country to give them a fair trial: that's what the Palestinian victims want."

TruthDig/Alternet, By Penny Coleman, October 23

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."

A friend told me a couple of days ago that she avoids political blogs because most of them are less about dialogue than about spitfire opinion. She is right, of course; most political blogs are online opinion columns. Of those I read, my favorites are those where the writers think hard about issues and where readers and commenters do as well, whether there is agreement or not.

I think my own trajectory about discourse has moved, over the past 10 years or so, more and more toward trying to muster the energy of people of good will toward the pursuit of progressive (generally leftward) social change and away from the notion of more purely even-handed exchange, which is where I think I was when my first book, the original Race Manners, came out in 1999. I guess, like a lot of civil rights and racial justice advocates, I reached a point where I felt my energy was better used in service of those ready to carry out actual social change than in trying to pull in those who are invested in resisting it. To be blunt about it, I think history gives us pretty vivid evidence (abolitionism, women's suffrage, black and gay civil rights) that there is generally a majority that stands around watching while a committed minority doggedly pursues change until it is achieved.

Anyway, just after I had this conversation about blogs and discourse, I received a note from my friend Rob Levy pointing me toward an October 15 manifesto by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, a fiercely liberal church reformer and author of, among other works, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton responded today to a question about a justice of the peace in Louisiana who refused to sign the marriage license for an interracial couple out of concern "for the children."

"I've seen the story and I've looked into this a little bit. And I found that, actually, the children of biracial couples can do pretty good," said Burton, who is biracial himself.

"So in terms of anything else, I just think it's something that they're dealing with locally."

Oct 16

BBC - The High Court has ruled that US intelligence documents containing details of the alleged torture of a former UK resident can be released.

Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 31, who spent four years in Guantanamo Bay, claims British authorities colluded in his torture while he was in Morocco.

The UK government denies allegations of collusion and says it will appeal against the court's judgement.

It had stopped judges publishing the claims on national security grounds.

The key document in the case is a summary of abuse allegations that US intelligence officers shared with their counterparts in London.

Any publication of the material will be delayed until an appeal takes place.

Spencer S. Hsu | Washington | October 16

WaPo - A controversial federal program that deputizes state and local law enforcement agents to catch illegal immigrants is expanding under the Obama administration, despite changes announced this summer intended to curb alleged racial profiling and other police abuses.

The Department of Homeland Security reported Friday that only four of 66 participating agencies have dropped out because of the new federal requirements. And those losses are offset by the addition of five police, sheriff's and corrections departments, while six more are nearing approval, according to the department.

In the Washington area, sheriff's offices in Frederick, Loudoun and Prince William counties continue to participate.

Linda Feldmann | Washington | October 13

CSM - The decline in abortions corresponded with increased contraceptive use, though access to contraception remains uneven in the developing world.

Contraceptive use is up worldwide, and with that has come a decline in abortions and unintended pregnancies, according to a report [“Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress” - PDF] by the Guttmacher Institute released Tuesday.

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions performed worldwide fell from 45.5 million to 41.6 million. The global rate of abortions fell as well: from 35 abortions for every 1,000 women of reproductive age (15-44) in 1995, to 29 per 1,000 women in 2003.

George Kenney has an excellent podcast up today, I recommend listening. I know it's kind of anodyne to say that equal societies make better ones, but it still needs to be said, especially as our society grows less equal and less 'better' each day.

While I have your attention vis-a-vis Electric Politics, it's voting time again for best podcast of the year. Please vote for George as well, here. Week in and week out his podcast are the best. If only all media could be as thoughtful.

"Kristin" | October 8

FeministsForChoice - As if women didn’t have enough threats to their right to choose in this country, Oklahoma is doing its part to make sure women slowly but surely are demonized and criminalized for their right to choose to have an abortion.

If you live in Oklahoma, i officially extend my condolences.

H.B 1595 is a new provision on Oklahoma abortion laws that now requires, among other restrictions and requirements, an official record and reporting system of all abortions occuring within the state. This report will be available for anyone in the world to view, as it will be made public on a website as of March 1st. The Dept of Health, who among others has supported these new provisions, has declared that since the name and “personal information” will not be reported, there is no cause for concern or protest in regards to privacy issues. However, in reviewing the actual text of the law, the first 8 questions that will be asked and reported could easily be used to identify any member of a smaller community.

Robert Tait | Oct 9

The Guardian - The first death sentence has been passed against a defendant accused of involvement in the mass protests in Iran against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, prompting fears of a wave of executions against opposition activists.

A revolutionary court in Tehran handed the penalty to Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani, 37, after convicting him of muhabereh – taking up arms against Iran's Islamic system.

The sentence was imposed after he confessed to working for a little-known exile group, the Iran Monarchy Committee, which Iranian officials describe as a terrorist organisation. Prosecutors alleged that he plotted political assassinations with US military officials in Iraq before returning to Iran "aiming at causing disruption during and after the election".

Ali-Zamani admitted guilt during a series of public mass trials that began in August in which scores of senior pro-reformist politicians confessed to fomenting the unrest that followed Ahmadinejad's victory. Opposition leaders condemned the events as "show trials" and say defendants were tortured to force them to confess. Human rights campaigners today challenged Ali-Zamani's conviction and warned that it paved the way for further politically driven executions.

Stephen C. Webster | Oct 6

Raw Story - The United States government admitted on Monday that the torture of a Saudi man alleged to be part of the 9/11 plot was recorded on video, according to court documents procured by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The tapes, allegedly showing the torture of Mohammed al Qahtani, 31, have long been kept under wraps, but a discovery motion for video of his interrogations led the court to acknowledge their existence and order their release.

"The videotapes the government is required to produce will reveal the time period at the end of three months of intensive solitary confinement and isolation that immediately preceded the implementation of the 'First Special Interrogation Plan,' a regime of systematic torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against Mr. al Qahtani," claimed a CCR media advisory.

Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights have represented Qahtani since 2005. The accused 9/11 plotter has been a Guantanamo inmate since 2002.

Khartoum | Oct 3

Reuters - Sudan's ruling party nominated President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for re-election on Saturday despite an International Criminal Court warrant to arrest him for war crimes.

The Hague-based court says the government of Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup with Islamist backing, committed crimes against humanity while fighting mostly non-Arab rebels in Darfur.

The multi-party elections set for April 2010 will be the first in Africa's largest country in 24 years.

"The National Congress Party's General Conference has decided to support the nomination of Omar Hassan al-Bashir as (our) candidate for the presidential elections in 2010," the closing communique of the party conference, seen by Reuters, said.

Since the arrest warrant was issued last year, Bashir has received full backing from his party, which dominates the central government. He has travelled to countries that support him, in defiance of The Hague-based court.

The United Nations says some 300,000 people have died in Darfur, with more than 2 million driven from their homes in violence Washington describes as genocide. Khartoum rejects that description and puts the death toll at 10,000.

Washington | Sept 27

DPA - The US prison for suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will not be closed by January as planned, US government officials said Saturday.

According to a report by US broadcaster CNN, two members of the US administration stated that the planned date to close the facility would not be met due to unresolved legal questions.

The closure of the facility is still planned to proceed as soon as possible, the officials said.

John Byrne | Sept 24

Raw Story -

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.

Obama's decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times' New York edition on Thursday. It didn't appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, "Richest Russian's Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.")

Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions -- including the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

...nothing seems to reveal your inner truth like the story of Caster Semenya..

Read her tale, come back here, and by saying what the IAAF should do now... reveal the dark core of your gender politics.

Paul Redfern | Nairobi | Sept 9

The East African. - Hundreds of young African children, many of whom are under five years old, are being locked up by the British government because of legal battles over whether or not their parents should be allowed political asylum in the UK.

Some of the young children, several of whom are from Uganda, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo became so traumatised by the experience that they have needed prolonged counselling afterwards.

Britain's Home Office has been extraordinarily cagey about how many minors it keeps in the UK's detention centres while political asylum appeals are being dealt with but last week (August 31), it was revealed that on one day alone in June, more than 470 minors were being detained with their families.

One such victim who was tracked down by the Guardian newspaper is four-year old Ibrahim Ssentongo, a Ugandan child who was held along with his father Stephen in the notorious detention centre Yarl's Wood.

He is now so traumatised by the incident that even seven months after his detention he does not like going out.

"When he sees people in uniforms or white shirts and black trousers, like bus drivers or security guards in shopping centres, he stops," his father told the UK paper.

Many however are too scared to speak out about their ordeal even though Sheila Melzak, a consultant child psychotherapist working with families who have been detained, said Ibrahim's trauma was far from unusual.

After Downing Street

The extent to which American physicians and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is greater than previously known, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

A team of PHR doctors authored the new white paper, Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 Inspector General's Report. The report details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees' reaction to interrogation methods. PHR is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.