The Nation: Rigged Trials at Gitmo
Rigged Trials at Gitmo
ROSS TUTTLE
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/tuttle
A key official has told The Nation that the trials are rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.
And:
Colonel Davis's criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned this past October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior defense officials to pursue cases deemed "sexy" and of "high-interest" (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. "I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system," he wrote. "I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively."
Amartya Sen: More on "Imperial Illusions"
by Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen responds to Niall Ferguson's letter about the legacy of British imperial rule in India.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=42348eec-0823-4c4b-8b86-c2d9db78cc46
Even after overlooking that misattribution, it can, however, be asked whether Ferguson should be so sure that India could have done little of the kind that Japan did. His comparisons with "Qing China" and "Ottoman Turkey" are certainly worth considering, but does he not overlook here the extent to which there were early industrial and financial developments, as well as global affiliations, already in India? I commented on this in my essay: "When the East India Company undertook the battle of Plassey and defeated the Nawab of Bengal, there were businessmen, traders, and other professionals from a number of different European nations already in that very locality. Their primary involvement was in exporting textiles and other industrial products from India, and the river Ganges ... on which the East India Company had its settlement, also had (further upstream) trading centers and settled communities from Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Prussia, and other European nations." Despite the early history of industrial and financial developments in India, we cannot, of course, be sure what would have happened there in the absence of British conquest, but Ferguson's ridicule of what he calls "Meiji India" avoids the important issues involved.
Hugo Chavez vs Exxon
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papantonio talk about the legal battle between Hugo Chavez and Exxon Mobil over oil profits in Venezuela. If Exxon is victorious, Chavez has threatened to cut off oil supplies to the US.
In Defense of Food: Author, Journalist Michael Pollan on Nutrition, Food Science and the American Diet
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist
Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but “edible food-like substances.” His previous book,The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and theWashington Post. His latest book, just published, is called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. [includes rush transcript]
DN: Frances Fox Piven on 'progressive' candidates
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: ... I wanted to comment on the question of program that everybody—all of us have brought up. Whose program do we like? Who is stronger, Hillary or Barack? Or was it Edwards in an earlier phase? I think that, look, these are all ambitious people. They all take money from unsavory sources. They’re all determined to win, to beat out their competitors. They all evade the troublesome issues in American society, if they can. The question of whether—who we should support is a question, rather, of which of these candidates is more likely to encourage and then be vulnerable to the movement politics, which sometimes sets presidents straight. You know, in 1932, FDR didn’t run with a good program; he ran with the same program the Democrats had run with in 1924 and 1928, and that wasn’t a good program. But nevertheless, his rhetoric encouraged people who were suffering as a result of the Depression—working people, the unemployed—and helped to fuel the movements, which then forced FDR to support initiatives which he otherwise would not have supported, including the right to organize. And I think you can see the same pattern in JFK, LBJ, so we—people who are our movement leaders don’t get to this stage of a presidential campaign.
Helmling: Adorno Public and Private
Steven Helmling
University of Delware
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/current.issue/17.3helmling.html
Review of:
Adorno, T.W. History and Freedom: Lectures 1964-1965. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
---. Letters to His Parents: 1939-1951. Ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. Trans. Wieland Hoban. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
---, and Thomas Mann. Correspondence 1943-1955. Ed. Christoph Gödde and Thomas Sprecher. Trans. Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
Gerhardt, Christina, ed. "Adorno and Ethics." Special issue of New German Critique 97 (Winter 2006).
Clip:
"When students excited by "The Culture Industry" or some other Adorno reading ask how to get a larger grip on Adorno overall, I finally have a good answer:History and Freedom, Adorno's previously unpublished 1964-1965 lectures at Frankfurt. There are now several of these collections: in the 1960s, tape recorders were usually running when Adorno was speaking; and these lectures, addressed (from notes but without script) to undergraduates, are far more accessible than the self-consciously "difficult" writings addressed to fellow-adepts. Buzz on these lectures always mentions that they were given while Adorno was composing Negative Dialectics; History and Freedom is among the collections that can be read as a collateral draft of parts of that "late" work. Actually History and Freedom reprises Adorno's whole career: the lectures continue the argument of Dialectic of Enlightenment (the opening lecture is called "Progress or Regression?"); along the way, two lectures elaborate the crucial early essay, "The Idea of Natural History," and no fewer than four extend the hints in "The Actuality of Philosophy" on "the transition from philosophy to interpretation." All of Adorno's major career investments are here except "the aesthetic": there are, indeed, many asides on art especially in the lectures on interpretation, but "the aesthetic" connects with the main theme mostly via Hegel's "end of art.""
ei: How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
~NJK
How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml
"Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians."