"For the past six years, our rights have been on the chopping block. If 2007 was the year we didn’t get our freedom back, 2008 will be the year we demand it. Our holiday wish list is simple: We want our Constitution back. It doesn’t even need a ribbon. This New Year, we resolve to hold our leaders accountable. We hope they will resolve to follow the law."

2007: The Year We Didn’t Get Our Freedoms Back

Top 10 ways our government failed us:

C. Rosenberg's latest story about Adel Hamad #940 with a picture & paragraph about Lydia participating in last year's protest at SouthCom:

YouTube-aided detainee released, sent home to Sudan
Posted on Thu, Dec. 13, 2007 BY CAROL ROSENBERG
The military has sent home from Guantánamo Bay a Sudanese hospital worker whose lawyers campaigned in cyberspace for his freedom, in part by enlisting television's West Wing president to make a YouTube video.

Adel Hamad, 49, was among 15 long-held detainees whose release was announced by the Defense Department Wednesday night. Thirteen captives went to lockups in Afghanistan and two were set free in Sudan.

The transfer lowered the prison camp population at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba to ''approximately 290,'' or below 300 for the first time since an airlift filled the crude open-air compound called Camp X-Ray on Feb. 15, 2002.

Hamad, a charity worker in Peshawar, Pakistan, claims he was wrongly captured by Pakistani security forces and handed over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002. Thursday, he took part in a government-sponsored news conference in Khartoum, Sudan, to protest his five-year confinement....

CodePINK Protest Torture at the White House on International Human Rights Day.

bonus video below the fold, Col. Ann Wright interview...

Dennis Kucinich at the SOA

Cynthia McKinney at SOA Watch Event 2007

Does anyone else think it's time to take away their tasers?

Taser video shows RCMP shocked immigrant within 25 seconds of their arrival
Last Updated: Thursday, November 15, 2007 | 12:52 PM ET CBC News

An eyewitness's video recording of a man dying after being stunned with a Taser by police on Oct. 14 at Vancouver International Airport has been released to the public.

The 10-minute video recording clearly shows four RCMP officers talking to Robert Dziekanski while he is standing with his back to a counter and with his arms lowered by his sides, but his hands are not visible.

About 25 seconds after police enter the secure area where he is, there is a loud crack that sounds like a Taser shot, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbles and falls to the floor.

Another loud crack can be heard as an officer appears to fire one more Taser shot into Dziekanski.

As the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor....

http://www.soaw.org/index.php

November Vigil: 16-18,2007
Take a Stand for Human Rights!

On the weekend of November 16-18, thousands will gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia for the Vigil and the Nonviolent Direct Action to Close the School of the Americas and to end the racist system of violence and domination that the SOA represents. Take a Stand for Justice!

After a close vote in the house of representatives on an amendment that would have cut funding for the SOA/WHINSEC, a series of very successful delegations to Latin America, and the Bolivian and Costa Rican governments’ announcements that they would cease all training at the school; this years vigil is shaping up to be one of the most exciting in recent years!

Come celebrate with us and join torture survivors, students, social movement leaders, religious workers, peacemakers, the Indigo girls, Congressman Jim McGovern, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the 1000 Grandmothers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Carrie Newcomer, Students for a Democratic Society, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Veterans for Peace, Aimee Allison, Josefina Lazo from El Salvador, Jim Schmitz of AFSCME, Miguel Ángel Vásquez de la Rosa from Oaxaca and thousands more in denouncing SOA/WHINSEC-sponsored violence in Latin America and demand a radical change in U.S. foreign policy!

Senate confirms Mukasey as attorney general
Bush nominee wins backing for post despite waterboarding flap
updated 12:56 a.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 9, 2007
WASHINGTON - The Senate confirmed retired judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general Thursday night to replace Alberto Gonzales, who was forced from office in a scandal over his handling of the Justice Department.

Mukasey was confirmed as the nation’s 81st attorney general after a sharp debate over his refusal to say whether the waterboarding interrogation technique is torture.

President Bush thanked the Senate, even though the margin had been whittled down from nearly unanimous by a sharp debate over Mukasey’s refusal to say whether the waterboarding interrogation technique is torture.....

Roll Call Vote...

I guess this means no water-boarding simulations in front of Bill Nelson's offices!

Mukasey Must Denounce Torture, Publicly and On the Record
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Mukasey’s nomination without getting real answers on the issue of torture and the broader issue of executive authority. In doing so, they missed a real opportunity to make progress on ending torture and reining in a president that believes he is above the law. Now, every senator has a responsibility to act.

Take Action: Tell Your senators Mukasey must commit to enforcing torture and spying laws.

Full Senate Should Seek What the Judiciary Committee Failed To Obtain (11/6/2007)

Senate Should Not Move Forward with an Attorney General Nominee Who Refuses to Classify Waterboarding as Torture

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON-- – As the Senate Judiciary Committee voted today to approve the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for attorney general, the American Civil Liberties Union now calls upon the full Senate to obtain what the committee could not – an admission from the nominee that waterboarding and other extreme interrogation tactics are torture. During the confirmation hearings and in his responses to further questions, Judge Mukasey carefully avoided stating whether waterboarding is torture when authorized by the federal government, as well as refusing to say that it is also illegal for foreign countries to waterboard, beat and shock American citizens...

Petition: http://WhenTheSaints.org It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region, and still there are tens of thousands of families without homes. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of
the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. Support
the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 by signing the petition at
www.WhenTheSaints.org

Senator Bill Nelson Votes for Torture by Cenk Uygur Posted June 1, 2007
Bill Nelson sold us out. So much for the Democratic majority. It doesn't mean much when you have "conservative" Democrats who are consistently willing to make deals with the Bush administration to allow them to continue their hideous practices.

The Democrats are in the majority in the Senate Intelligence Committee and all they needed was all of their party members on the committee to vote the right way to end torture by the US government. But Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) wouldn't have it. He likes torture too much. I'm sorry, let me use the Orwellian language they use - he found value in the enhanced interrogation techniques used against detainees in the war on terror...

Grandmother to be released from jail Friday after 60 day sentence for ‘trespassing’ at Army torture school
Fri, 2007-05-18 Cathy Webster, a grandmother from Chico, CA., will be released from the Sacramento County Jail on Friday, May 18, after completing her 60 day sentence for crossing onto the U.S. Army Base at Ft. Benning, Georgia, as part of a protest against the U.S. Army School of the Americas...

Why I Fight II - Tom Baxter
See Paragraphs 366, 384 and 385, Law of Land Warfare, US Army Field Manual 27-10

IRAQ: Child mortality soars because of violence, poor health care
BAGHDAD, 15 May 2007 (IRIN) - A recent report by the US-based NGO Save the Children says that although Iraq's under-five mortality rate is in the middle range when compared to other developing countries, it has worsened faster than in any other country. Observers say the main reason for this is the continuing violence and lack of funds for the health sector. "Never in Iraq's history have so many children died because of diseases and violence. The mortality rate among them has jumped to a level which will require years to be controlled," said Dr Jaffer Ali, a senior official and paediatrician in the Ministry of Health...

United Nations Independent Expert on Rights of Migrants Continues U.S. Fact-Finding Mission in Florida

Florida Visit Includes Investigation of Migrant Conditions in Immokalee and Haitian Detention and Deportation Policies
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, May 9, 2007

CONTACTS
Paul Silva, ACLU, (212) 549-2689 or 2666, media@aclu.org
Brandon Hensler, ACLU of Florida, (786) 363-2700

IMMOKALEE, Fla. The American Civil Liberties Union today welcomed the official fact-finding visit to the United States by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. The ACLU is among several groups and individuals selected to meet with the Special Rapporteur to testify about the conditions of immigrants and migrants living in the United States....

National Immigrant Solidarity Network, ActionLA Coalition
Statement on LAPD Brutally Attacks May Day Immigrant Marchers at McArthur Park
May 1, 2007 10:00 PM PST

National Immigrant Solidarity Network and Action LA is outraged to learn that at about 6:30 PM, May 1, the LAPD fired rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds of hundreds of people at the May Day rally in McArthur Park. This was after the police had declared an unlawful assembly. Most of the people present did not hear or know about the police declaration..

April 25, 2007
For Jews Only? By SONJA KARKAR
Israeli Democracy
The time will have to come for Israel to declare its hand: is it "a state of the Jewish people throughout the world" as it defines itself, or a state of all its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish? So far Israel has managed to convince the Western world that it is the only democracy in the region, but neglects to add that this democracy works only for its Jewish citizens. This is the conundrum: Israel has been unable to reconcile what it says it is, with want it wants to be ­ democratic and exclusively Jewish...