“Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He’s a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.
Filed under Weekly Column
U.S. Army Reserve Spc. Chancellor Keesling died in Iraq on June 19, 2009, from “a non-combat related incident,” according to the Pentagon. Keesling had killed himself.
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Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are stepping up the pressure by staging elaborate stunts.
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Lt. Dan Choi doesn’t want to lie. Choi, an Iraq war veteran and a graduate of West Point, declared last March 19 on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “I am gay.” Under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, those three words are enough to get Choi kicked out of the military.
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A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home—all for using Twitter.
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Journalist Christian Parenti responds to our interview with Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves
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Another female employee of the military contractor KBR has come forward with allegations of rape in Iraq. The woman, identified by the pseudonym “Lisa Smith,” says two colleagues raped her at a southern Iraqi military base in January. She says a supervisor told her to “keep quiet” or face danger. “Lisa Smith” will be testifying publicly tomorrow before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last year, former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones sued KBR and its former parent company Halliburton after she says she was drugged and gang-raped by employees of the company in Baghdad. Today, in their first joint interview, we speak to both of these women, who have bravely come forward with their stories. We also speak with journalist Karen Houppert, who broke the story of “Lisa Smith” in The Nation magazine. [includes rush transcript]
Global food prices have risen dramatically, adding a new level of danger to the crisis of world hunger. In Africa, food riots have swept across the continent, with recent protests in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent—in Sierra Leone, 300 percent. In the United States there has been a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months. We speak with Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. [includes rush transcript]