Where is Obama's support of Syrian democracy? As Bashar al-Assad reverts to his family pedigree and continues what has become a brutal, methodical, and systematic crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, it seems hard to account for the Obama administration's rhetorical gentleness toward him. Consider: The Syrian regime of Assad pere et fils has been an implacable enemy of Israel since its Baathist inception 40 years ago, and has long played host to an alphabet soup of anti-Israel Palestinian resistance groups branded as terrorists by the US. Indeed, the Assad regime has been a charter member of the US government's small and exclusive list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979.
And even if many of the groups harboured by Syria have long since faded, the Syrian government has maintained its credentials by hosting, as it continues to do, the external leadership of Hamas. Nor is Washington's perception of the Syrian threat limited to the conventional sphere. Obama's reasoning Syria-Israel peace deal. Guantánamo Files - Lives in an American Limbo. Brennan Linsley/Associated Press The American prison at Guantánamo Bay still holds 172 detainees, most rated “high risk.” These articles are based on a huge trove of secret documents leaked last year to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times by another source on the condition of anonymity. Military intelligence officials, in assessments of detainees written between February 2002 and January 2009, evaluated their histories and provided glimpses of the tensions between captors and captives.
What began as a jury-rigged experiment after the 2001 terrorist attacks now seems like an enduring American institution, and the leaked files show why, by laying bare the patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a . The documents meticulously record the detainees’ “pocket litter” when they were captured: a bus ticket to Kabul, a fake passport and forged student ID, a restaurant receipt, even a poem.
Medicare Panel Runs Into Bipartisan Opposition. US credit rating: Congress has many debt plans, but will it heed warning? A report that Standard and Poor’s has lowered its US credit outlook from “stable” to “negative” jolted the New York Stock Exchange and fueled calls for Congress and the White House to come to terms on a solution to America’s soaring debt. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition While maintaining its AAA rating on US debt, the rating agency added a cautionary note due to the nation’s “rising government indebtedness” – and the prospect that Congress and the White House will not deal with it. It’s a signal that if a political deal is not reached by 2013, the US credit rating could be downgraded, triggering higher interest rates and deepening the debt crisis. “There is a material risk that US policymakers might not reach an agreement in how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013,” Standard and Poor’s concluded.
In fact, Washington is awash with plans to rein in deficits. Gitmo in the Heartland. Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. On the evening of May 13, 2008, Jenny Synan waited for a phone call from her husband, Daniel McGowan. An inmate at Sandstone, a federal prison in Minnesota, McGowan was serving a seven-year sentence for participating in two ecologically motivated arsons. It was their second wedding anniversary, their first with him behind bars. So far his incarceration hadn’t stopped him from calling her daily or surprising her with gifts for her birthday, Valentine’s Day and Christmas. But Jenny never got a call from Daniel that night—or the next day, or the next.
About the Author Alia Malek Alia Malek is the author of A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. Also by the Author Communication Management Units, the highly restrictive prisons holding mostly Arab and Muslim men, continue to operate outside the law, with no oversight. Can Egyptians turn the fervor of Tahrir into lasting political engagement? Guantanamo is an evolutionary experiment.
On March 7, when president Barack Obama signed an executive order (E0) that varnishes the framework of indefinite detention without trial, he put the final nail in the coffin of his day-two promise to close Guantanamo. Those detainees who, in the government's view, can not be tried but are too dangerous to release will continue to be subject to "law of war detention" because they are deemed by official reviewers "in effect, [to] remain at war with the United States". This means that Guantanamo can remain open as long as the "war on terror" continues. Not only is there no end in sight, no one is even speculating about what the end might look like. This executive order, as well as the recent announcement that military commission trials will resume, was no surprise. In that speech, he explained that, contrary to his earlier promises and condemnations, military commissions were indispensable and indefinite detention may be necessary.
Forever Guantanamo The petri dish of detention Still life. Virginia Tech fined over 2007 campus shooting response. 29 March 2011Last updated at 22:23 Virginia Tech shut the building where most of the killings occurred for months after the shooting The US government has fined Virginia Tech university $55,000 (£34,413) for failing promptly to warn students at the start of a 2007 shooting massacre. The education department said the school broke federal law when it waited two hours after the first killings to warn students of a gunman on campus. The university in Blacksburg, Virginia, said it would appeal against the fine. In April 2007, 32 were killed when a student went on a two-and-a-half-hour rampage before killing himself. "Because Virginia Tech failed to notify its students and staff of the initial shootings on a timely basis, thousands continued to travel on campus, without warning," the department wrote in a letter announcing the fine.
On the morning of the massacre, Cho Seung-hui, 23, shot and killed two students in a dormitory. Maximum fine.
Unions. First Big Coal Broke the Union. Then It Broke This Town. Matt Eich/Luceo Images Read more: Kevin Drum on how screwing unions screws the middle class, and 11 charts that explain everything that's wrong with America. From a chair on the porch of her home in a hollow deep in the Appalachians, Lora can see the top of Montcoal Mountain being blasted off.
The explosions a mile and a half away ruffle her curtains, rattle family photos in her living room, and may be why her walls are laced with cracks. A fine gray dust settles on the steps as fast as she can sweep it off. The noise and "fly rock" raining down have forced her daughter and dozens of neighbors to sell their houses and move away. Lora worries she'll be next. "I wouldn't be satisfied with another place," she says, sitting and chain-smoking Pall Malls. But fighting isn't an option for Lora, who asked me not to use her real name for fear of repercussions: The mining operations that are destroying the land also employ her son and son-in-law—good jobs, the only real ones around. US neo-cons urge Libya intervention - Features. In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.
The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The usual suspects It was Kagan and Kristol who co-founded and directed PNAC in its heyday from 1997 to the end of Bush's term in 2005. Interventions Those actions set the pattern for the 1990s. Liberal hawks Opposition. PA stonewalled the Goldstone vote - The Palestine Papers. The Palestine Papers reveal the conversations between US and PA officials in the days before the vote [EPA] On October 2, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council was widely expected to pass a resolution supporting the Goldstone Report, the UN’s probe of war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
The Council instead agreed to delay a vote on the report until March 2010, following major reservations expressed by the Palestinian Authority, the United States and Israel. A UNHRC endorsement of the report would have brought Israeli officials one step closer to prosecution before a war crimes tribunal, an event many Palestinians were anxious to see. But, as The Palestine Papers reveal, the Palestinian Authority apparently sacrificed a potential victory for Palestinian victims in exchange for favorable assurances on negotiations from the United States and, they hoped, from Israel. Quid pro quo During a meeting at the U.S. As Arabs protest, Obama administration offers assertive support. The Obama administration is openly supporting the anti-government demonstrations shaking the Arab Middle East, a stance that is far less tempered than the one the president has taken during past unrest in the region.
As demonstrations in Tunis, Cairo and Beirut have unfolded in recent days, President Obama and his senior envoys to the region have thrown U.S. support clearly behind the protesters, speaking daily in favor of free speech and assembly even when the protests target longtime U.S. allies such as Egypt. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that "the Egyptian government has an important opportunity . . . to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people. " She urged "the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media sites. " Asked whether the administration supports Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replied only: "Egypt is a strong ally. " Redistricting 101: Eight facts about redrawing the US political map - How could reapportionment affect the next presidential election? Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 Shot Near Tucson.
Obama blasts Congress's limits on Guantánamo transfers. President Obama strongly objected on Friday to provisions of the 2011 Defense Authorization Act that prevent the military from transferring Guantánamo detainees to the US for trial. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition The president registered his opposition in a two-page signing statement issued shortly after he approved the Defense Department funding bill.
Mr. The measure also blocks the transfer of Guantánamo detainees to foreign countries unless the Defense secretary and secretary of State certify that the receiving countries are willing and able to prevent the detainee’s future involvement in acts against the US. “Despite my strong objection to these provisions.… I have signed this Act because of the importance of authorizing appropriations for … our military activities in 2011,” Obama said. But those efforts are now stalled. The restrictions are not open-ended. Power Shift Toward G.O.P. Resonates in 3 States.