The only pictures from the military "hearings"...

Are from sketch artist Janet Hamlin....you can see some of them here.

No one reads Kafka at Gitmo....

More from artist Molly Crabapple regarding the surreal existence at Guantanamo

LEST WE FORGET....

BIKO WAS MURDERED 36 YEARS AGO TODAY....
you can blow out a candle but you can't blow out a fire....

Oh....and cheers from the dog...

My friend at the talking dog is the only person I know personally who was around to actually witness the events of the U.S.  9/11 in NYC---so I always find his comments pertinent...and lest I forget that the dog's college roommate is now the figure head for this formally great country (making his comments perhaps more pertinent....)  I leave you with this from the dog.....

A song to commemorate another 9/11 ....

Seems my country managed to screw with Chili on this same date (although a few years earlier)....the land of Allende and my favorite poet Pablo Neruda...

this from Firedoglake.....

"The band who performed it, Inti Illimani, from Chile, was out of the country touring in Europe when the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a military coup supported by the U.S. on …. and get this … 9 11 1973. Their friend and fellow performer Victor Jara was arrested and tortured along with over two thousand of his countrymen in the National Stadium.

Victor, hands broken, a guitar thrown at him and mockingly told to try playing now, actually began to sing with many of the other victims before he was shot through with machine gun fire and his body thrown in the street in Santiago.

After fifteen years in exile Inti Illimani returned from exile. This song was written to commemorate their return to their homeland.

Two 911s, one of which when considered against the background of the other perfectly illustrates the horror of American exceptionalism . The puppet dictator installed by the US in Chile on 911 1973 ran concentration camps for political dissidents for decades and ruled the country with an iron fist . This event was far worse than our own 911 in the US. This short film does a remarkable job of documenting this and I highly recommend the few minutes it takes to watch."

secret ruling on secret motion in secret proceeding....

From Der Prozeß, by Franz Kafka:

K. must remember that the trial would not be public; certainly if the court deemed it necessary it could be made public, but there is no law that says it has to be.  Naturally, therefore, the accused and his defense counsel do not have access even to the court records, and especially not to the indictment, and that means one does not know - or at least not precisely - what charges to meet in the first plea. . . . Conditions like this, of course, place the defense in a very unfavorable and difficult position.  But that is what they intend. In fact, defense is not really allowed under the law, it's only tolerated, and there is even some dispute about whether the relevant parts of the law imply even that. 

(hats off to F.G.) 

Oh wait.... this is justice American style...... more here.

And pass the word.....another WTF issue with Obama

So now the president wants to appoint an attorney to be a federal judge for a lifetime appointment who believes that our constitution is only for the powers to be...... the vote on her nomination came up rather quickly and is set for tomorrow.
Can we defeat her????
Please do your part if you can.

And Thank You Sweden....

I was pleased to see that artists in Stockholm put orange masks on many of that beautiful cities sculptures...ahead of Obama's visit to the city.
Obama can run but he can't hide.
View some of those sculptures here and here.

The secrecy at Guantanamo....

Truthout has an excellent article on the "secrecy" that surrounds everything Guantanamo- including the secret camp 7.

Update on the two released Algerians...

The men have been released on "parole" by the Algerian government. More here.

Meanwhile Nabil Hadjarab's attorney is working to get his client back  client back to France where his entire family resides. There are alot of you from France who visit this blog--please help Mr. Hadjarab return home.

Artist views of Guantanamo

Click on the slides on the right hand side for the full array of drawings.

Question of the Day.....

Who knows more about detainee Ammar al Baluchi Hollywood or his Gitmo defense attorneys...??

Defense lawyers at the Guantánamo war court are turning the adage that art imitates life on its head with a legal motion that argues the makers of Zero Dark Thirty know more about what the CIA did to an accused Sept. 11 conspirator than the defendant’s lawyers do.

In a 418-page legal filing, lawyers for Ammar al Baluchi seek government documents on how CIA interrogators and other U.S. officials helped director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal prepare the first 20 minutes of the film. In it, interrogators waterboard, strip naked and string up on a rope a man named “Ammar” who is described as the nephew of the 9/11 mastermind who helped finance the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/30/3596920/who-has-more-info-guantanamo-lawyers.html#storylink=cpy

not surprisingly it is Hollywood.....read the rest here....

My Governments "secret" plan to close Guantanamo....

This so-called plan is probably the best explanation as to why Guantanamo has stayed open all these years under Obama- this is not a plan, it is a summary of the problems with very little thought being put on the actual closing of the gulag...typical Obama....
Anyway--Jason Leopold has more on the "secret plan" here.

For Nabil and Mutia---

Two Algerians released.....

Not my client but at least two are going home:
  The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Nabil Said Hadjarab and Mutia Sadiq Ahmad Sayyab from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Algeria.
MORE HERE.