Rick Perlstein?s sprawling, rollicking book argues that Richard Nixon is the explanation for everything ? or at least for the rise of the right and the decline of almost everything else.

Honor Moore presents her father?s life and work, including his secrets.

A biographical novel reconstructs Robert Frost?s life.

Hu Jintao flies to Sichuan Province, where it is feared up to 50,000 people may have died in Monday's earthquake.

Top aid officials ramp up pressure on Burma, as the military government insists it has cyclone aid under control.

Between a quarter and a third of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970, says the Living Planet Index.

California's top court overturns the state's ban on same-sex marriages in a ruling expected to reignite debate.

Colombia did not fake computer files which it alleges connect rebels to Venezuela and Ecuador, Interpol says.

At least 100 people are killed in an oil pipeline explosion in the Nigeria's city of Lagos, the local Red Cross says.

US President George W Bush is due in Saudi Arabia for talks following a three-day visit to Israel.

The long-held dream of integrating Africa economically remains elusive, and new strategies are required for realising it, writes guest columnist Nkululeko Khumalo ahead of an African Union meeting on the subject which begins in Abidjan on May 19.

The World Bank says it is recalibrating its financing for anti-AIDS efforts in Africa, which shoulders more than two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS burden.

With the ascendance of China as a robust force on Africa's economic and political scene, plans are afoot in the European Union (EU) to pre-empt the Asian nation's dominance on the continent by forming a trilateral partnership that places Europe squarely in the centre.

AN INDEX of 21 rich states ranking their commitment to help African states shows Sweden, Ireland and Britain are the leading contributors to development on the continent.

One billion Africans located in under-served rural and urban areas across the continent are set to benefit from an initiative powered by a non profit association of the international satellite industry called Global VSAT Forum to double the number of earth station terminals operating in Africa by 2012.

Rice production in Asia, Africa and Latin America is forecast to reach a new record level in 2008, FAO said today, warning that world rice prices could remain high in the short term, as much of the 2008 crops will only be harvested by the end of the year.

The prohibitive cost of broadband in Africa, despite investments currently hitting 6.4 billion US dollars in the continent was the thrust of a paper presented by Eric Osaikwan, the Executive Secretary of African Internet Service Providers Association (AfrISPA) .

UNITED Bank for Africa, one of the largest banks in West Africa, has opened shop in Kampala. The bank has staked a capital investment of sh20.5b into its operations in the country, reports Sylvia Juuko.

Anti-Economic Partnership Agreements (Epas) campaigning resurfaced last week, with Oxfam International reiterating its desire to see African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries analyzing Epa impacts before turning their interim Epas with the European Union (EU) into legally binding arrangements.

Global Challenges

BOGOTÁ, May 15 (IPS) - Interpol reported Thursday that the files found on computers that Colombia seized from a FARC guerrilla camp in March were not tampered with and did belong to the rebel group.

LIMA, May 15 (IPS) - Peru is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which is already having perceptible effects in this country. According to a report by the National Environment Council (CONAM), the area of glaciers in the Andes has shrunk from 2,042 to 1,596 square kilometres in just 25 years.

SANTIAGO, May 15 (IPS) - The Chilean government has begun distributing carefully selected packages of books to thousands of low-income families. But the programme aimed at promoting reading is not without its detractors, who question the extent of its real impact.

LISBON, May 15 (IPS) - Cuba?s offer to provide cataract operations for people who have been on waiting lists for years at Portugal?s public hospitals triggered a reaction by the government and doctors, who may finally begin to provide a solution to this problem that affects thousands of elderly people.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (IPS) - More than 150 years after the United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, Washington should recognise that its dominance over the Americas has ended and that it must "engage Latin America on its own terms", according to a new report released here Wednesday by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the nation's most influential think tanks.

LIMA, May 14 (IPS) - Twenty European corporations are being tried for human rights violations before an ethical tribunal at the Peoples? Summit, organised for the third time by the Bi-Regional Network "Enlazando Alternativas" (Linking Alternatives) in Lima. The organisers announced that they hope to take some of these cases to ordinary courts of justice in Peru.

MANAGUA, May 14 (IPS) - The Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega granted asylum to two young Colombian women who survived a Mar. 1 bombing raid by the armed forces of their country on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador.

SANTIAGO, May 14 (Tierramérica) - Child malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean will be aggravated by global food shortages, even though the region produces much more food than it consumes, say experts and officials.

We turn now to three young Palestinians who use hip-hop to tell their story of the Nakba and what it means to be a Palestinian growing up inside Israel. DAM, or Da Arabian MCs, is the first group of Palestinian rappers and was formed in the late 1990s. All three...

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages. Ghada Karmi is a well-known Palestinian writer and medical doctor from Jerusalem who lives...

Red Cross: Up to 128,000 Dead in Burma, China Toll Rises as Rescue Hopes Fade, 20 Dead in Baghdad Suicide Attack, Palestinians Mark 60 Years Since ?Nakba?, Bush Visits Israel to Celebrate 60th Anniversary, Following Unrest, Lebanon Reverses Crackdown on Hezbollah, Edwards Endorses Obama in Dem Race, Polar Bear Designated...

With a career spanning more than six decades, Gore Vidal is one of America?s most respected writers and thinkers. He?s authored more than twenty novels and five plays. His latest book is Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir. [includes rush transcript]

May 1968 was a watershed month for France, when a wave of student and worker protests swept the country and changed French society forever. We speak to George Katsiaficas, author of numerous books, including The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968. [includes rush transcript]

(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

In a landmark ruling (.pdf) certain to spark far-reaching political and legal consequences, the California Supreme Court today ruled, by a 4-3 vote, that it is unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from the legal institution of "marriage," even if such couples are granted the right to enter into "domestic partnerships" or "civil unions" which provide most, or even all, of the same rights as "marriage." The Court is comprised of six out of seven Republican-appointed judges. The ruling had nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, but instead was based on the California State Constitution's guarantee of the "right to marry" and its guarantee of "equal protection" under the law.

Critically, the Court emphasized at the outset that its ruling had nothing to do with the political views of the judges with regard to gay marriage, but rather, was based solely on its legal analysis of past precedent interpreting the relevant provisions of the state Constitution (emphasis in original):

[O]ur task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership, but instead only to determine whether the difference in official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution.

Only after exhaustively analyzing California judicial precedent on these constitutional questions -- over the course of 121 pages -- did the Court conclude that the state statute "limiting the designation of a marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples." The ruling, in effect, compels state and local officials to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex and opposite-sex couples equally.

The crux of the Court's ruling is grounded in what it called "the right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own -- and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family." That right "constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons." The Court rejected a "separate-but-equal" arrangement for same-sex and opposite-sex couples -- where only the latter can enter into "marriage" -- because:

affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of of opposite-sex couples, [. . . and] assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same sex couples . . . poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect.

Given the controversial nature of this ruling, there are certain to be all sorts of myths being spouted by pundits and various advocates who object to the outcome here. Thus, it is vital to note:

(1) No rational person can criticize the Court's decision here without having at least a basic understanding of the governing California precedents. Anyone who condemns this ruling without having that understanding will be demonstrating a profound ignorance of -- and contempt for -- how the law works.

As the Court made clear, whether someone believes that "marriage" should include same-sex couples is completely irrelevant. It is equally irrelevant whether one believes that the U.S. Constitution can be read to require same-sex marriages. There is one issue, and only one issue, that matters here: are the provisions of the California State Constitution, in light of how they have been interpreted by that state's Supreme Court in prior decisions, violated by the exclusion of same-sex couples from the legal institution of "marriage"?

To be able to answer that question, one must have read and understood the key cases on which the Court relied, such as Perez v. Sharp (1948), Brown v. Merlo (1973) and numerous others. For reasons I've written about before, anyone who criticizes the Court's decision without reference to California constitutional law is engaged in rank sophistry or, to use a more familiar term, pure "judicial activism" (i.e., judging a constitutional question based on one's preferred outcome rather than the requirements of binding constitutional law). Put another way, those who criticize the Court here of "judicial activism" without bothering to familiarize themselves with relevant California constitutional law are themselves engaged in the purest, and lowest, form of "judicial activism."

(2) Equally misinformed will be anyone arguing that this is some sort of an example of judges "overriding" the democratic will of the people. The people of California, through their representatives in the State legislature, twice approved a bill to provide for the inclusion of same-sex couples in their "marriage" laws, but both times, the bill was vetoed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said when he vetoed it that he believed "it is up to the state Supreme Court" to decide the issue.

Polls have found substantial support for gay marriage in California, with dramatic trends toward favoring gay marriage. While there was a referendum passed in 2000 limiting marriage only to opposite-sex couples, five years later (in 2005), California's state legislature became the first in the country to enact a same-sex marriage law without a court order compelling them to do so. Thus, even leaving aside constitutional guarantees (which, in a constitutional republic, trump public opinion), today's ruling is consistent with that state's democratic processes and public opinion, not a subversion of it.

(3) Numerous states have already adopted laws declaring that they will not recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Moreover, the Defense of Marriage Act makes clear that states are not required to do so. Thus, those states which wish to continue to deny basic marriage rights to their gay citizens will be free to continue to do so. Today's ruling applies only to California.

(4) The Court did not rule that California must allow same-sex couples the right to enter into "marriage." It merely ruled that if the state allows opposite-sex couples to do so, then same-sex couples must be treated equally. The Court explicitly left open the possibility that the state could distinguish between "marriage" (as a religious institution) and "civil unions" (as a secular institution) -- i.e., that California law could leave the definition of "marriage" to religious institutions and only offer and recognize "civil unions" for legal purposes -- provided that it treated opposite-sex and same-sex couples equally. The key legal issue is equal treatment by the State as a secular matter, not defining "marriage" for religious purposes.

(5) Each time there is a court decision recognizing the constitutional rights of gay couples, all sorts of hysterical political commentary ensues. In October, 2006 -- right before the midterm elections -- the New Jersey State Supreme Court unanimously ruled that its Constitution requires same-sex couples to be given the same set of marital rights and privileges granted to opposite-sex married couples (though it ruled, by a 4-3 vote, that it need not be called "marriage").

As I noted at the time, all sorts of pundits and right-wing hacks shrilly predicted that the New Jersey gay rights ruling would lead to a major voter backlash that would mobilize social conservatives and destroy the Democrats' chances for victory in the midterm elections. Needless to say, for reasons I pointed to at the time, nothing of the sort happened. Our national elections are simply not determined by a decision by the state of California -- or New Jersey, Vermont or Massachusetts -- to extend equal rights to their gay citizens.

UPDATE: In a statement today, Gov. Schwarzenegger said:

I respect the Court’s decision and as Governor, I will uphold its ruling. Also, as I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling.

There had already been efforts underway by California Republicans to amend the State Constitution to exclude same-sex couples from "marriage." Gov. Schwarzenegger already vowed, and made clear again, that he would oppose not support such a referendum.

UPDATE II: Salon's Alex Koppelman has numerous updates on reaction to the decision from everyone from San Fransisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to various "pro-family" groups.

UPDATE III: Both painfully predictable and excruciatingly stupid -- in equal measure.

UPDATE IV: Just to underscore how exaggerated is the significance of gay marriage as a political weapon, here is a 2006 fear-mongering ad run in Arizona -- featuring John McCain -- urging Arizonans to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriage (h/t Hot Air's Allahpundit, whose analysis of today's ruling is (one must acknowledge) actually quite good, because he bothered to read the decision before opining):



Despite scare-mongering ads of that sort, conservative/libertarian Arizona voters became the first to reject a state-wide ban on same-sex marriage, reflecting the fact that exploitation of this issue is far less politically potent than it once was. And, of course, the 2006 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling weeks before the midterm elections did nothing to help the GOP stave off crushing defeat.

UPDATE V: Just to clarify in response to a couple of comments here and elsewhere: nothing in what I wrote states or suggests that one needs to be a "legal scholar," an "expert" or even a lawyer to form a reasoned opinion about the court's ruling. I don't believe that to be true, and have made that point before:

This doesn't mean that only lawyers or constitutional law experts can form opinions about the court's actions. Anyone can read the judicial opinion, then go read the precedents on this provision, and inform themselves about what the [California] State Constitution does or does not guarantee. But -- as is true for any other topic -- a basic understanding of the relevant issues, so plainly lacking in all of these overnight experts, is required to be capable of anything more than baseless demagoguery.

The point is that whoever wants to make a reasoned argument about the court's ruling must -- by definition -- familiarize themselves with the relevant issues, and there is only one relevant issue here: does the California State Constitution bar the law in question? The way our government and system of laws were created, judges have no discretion if the answer to that question is "yes." They're required to strike down the law. As Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 78, regarding the duties of the federal judiciary: "wherever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former."

It's self-evident that there's no way rationally to assess whether the Court acted correctly if one doesn't bother to find out anything about the California State Constitution and the precedent interpreting and applying it. Anyone who seeks to opine about the propriety of the court's ruling without doing that basic work is simply expressing an opinion about whether they like the outcome as a policy matter, i.e., is being guided by the defining attribute of so-called "judicial activism" (ignoring relevant law in favor of outcome preferences).

(updated below)

Joe Galloway, now a military columnist for McClatchy, is one of the nation's most accomplished war reporters. He was in Vietnam for years reporting on the war for UPI, and was the only civilian awarded the Bronze Star during that war, awarded for his rescuing wounded American soldiers under heavy enemy fire. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf has called him "the finest combat correspondent of our generation -- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend," and Gen. Barry McCaffrey said he "has more time in combat, under fire, than anyone wearing a uniform today."

On Monday, former Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita, as part of the email exchange I had with him over the "military analyst program," denied that the military analyst program excluded critics of the Pentagon (exclusion which is proven by voluminous DoD documents and which, independently, was alleged by Fox News' Col. Bill Cowan, who -- according to Howard Kurtz -- "said that three years ago, after he criticized the war effort on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' he was booted off the group, was never invited to another briefing, never got another telephone call, never got another e-mail"). In the email exchange I had with him, Di Rita claimed: "I simply don't have any recollection of trying to restrict [Col. Cowan] or others from exposure to what was going on."

To support his denials, Di Rita cited Galloway -- along with Gen. McCaffrey -- as examples of what Di Rita called the Pentagon's "reaching out to people who specifically disagreed with us." But yesterday, I received the following email from Galloway (re-printed in its entirety with his permission) which demonstrates that Di Rita's claim about Galloway is yet another false statement from the former Pentagon spokesman about the DoD's propaganda activities (and Galloway's email includes other relevant revelations):

Mr. Greenwald:

I read with great interest your exchange of emails with Larry Di Rita and howled with laughter at his attempt to cite me as proof that DOD did so reach out to military analysts who were anything but friendly to Rumsfeld & Co. I was never invited to any of those hush-hush briefings of the favored military analysts/retired generals and colonels. The sum total of DOD "reaching out" in my case:

-- I attended an off-the-record lunch with Rumsfeld in the early summer of 2003. I was astounded by his failure to grasp the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq; even more astounded by his flat declaration that the U.S. was NOT going to do any "nation-building" there.

-- In October of 2005 Di Rita called to invite me to travel with Rumsfeld "at the Secretary's personal invitation" on a trip to the Middle East and Australia. I declined because of a prior commitment to speak at the graduation of a class of new U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter pilots at Luke AB, AZ., which included my nephew. Di Rita was amazed that I would not cancel that event to travel with his boss.

-- In November 2005 Di Rita called again to invite me to have a "one-on-one" lunch/discussion with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. I accepted that one and arrived to find it was hardly one on one -- at the table waiting for me were Rumsfeld, CJCS Gen. Peter Pace, Army Vice Chief Dick Cody, JCS staff director Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp and Di Rita himself. We went at it hammer and tongs for an hour and a half on issues such as Baghdad HQ releasing enemy body counts while the Pentagon said we would never do that, and shouldn't; lowering Army recruiting standards to make the numbers; continuing to have our troops ride up and down the same roads day after day when they KNEW there were IEDs waiting for them. etc. I wrote my column that week on the lunch.

-- Several months later, in response to a column I had written about how Marine Gen. Paul Van Riper had walked out of an Iran scenario war game where he was commander of the opposing forces when he outfoxed the U.S. Navy & Marine attacking forces, sunk over a dozen major American ships and killed over 10,000 U.S. sailors and marines. The headquarters response was to re-start the war game with new rules forbidding Van Riper to employ any of his successful tactics -- using small speedboats and small aircraft packed with explosives in a mass kamikazi attack on the fleet; defeating U.S. eavesdropping by dispatching his orders by messengers; etc.

At this point Van Riper walked out. An investigation of the whole affair was done & DOD promised Van Riper they would release it within a year. They never did.

Di Rita sent me an email that said it was silly of me to criticize Rumsfeld because clearly he wasn't directly involved in such matters and could not be expected to know about or bear responsibility for this. This provoked an exchange of half a dozen email volleys in which I brought up every failure of Rumsfeld and his people at DOD in the ongoing operations.

Once Di Rita's responses tailed off I collected all the emails and sent them to a number of friends ... one of whom promptly posted the exchange on various weblogs. Di Rita then expressed "shock" that I had somehow allowed this "private communication" to become public....

I remain puzzled at their motives in this so-called reach out to me in fall of 2005 after they had so steadfastly ignored two and a half years of my weekly columns pointing out everything they were doing wrong. I suppose they thought Rummy could somehow "handle" me or impress me or scare me. Whatever it was it didn't work.

best regards

Joe Galloway

Bayside Tx.

The column which Galloway wrote about the Iran war games, and the ensuing bitter emails from Di Rita about it, were part of the DoD document dump, and can be read here. While it's certainly true that Di Rita and Rumsfeld tried to cajole Galloway into restraining his continuous criticisms, it is absolutely false to suggest that he (or, for that matter, McCaffrey or any other critic) was in any way included in those ongoing "military analyst" briefings. As the Memorandum endorsed by Di Rita makes explicitly clear, those briefings were only for --to use the Pentagon's own words -- the "reliably friendly" analysts who they knew would "carry their water." Clearly, trying to hold up Galloway as an example to disprove that is just as misleading as Di Rita's other denials about the functions of the Pentagon program.

There are several other developments in the "military analyst" story worth noting. Raw Story's Eric Brewer confirmed what I noted the other day: that Dana Perino, after Brewer asked whether the White House was aware of the military analyst program, did deny any such knowledge. But as Brewer wrote, and as the emails I pointed to strongly suggest: "Uh oh. Dana has denied something that is clearly true."

Yesterday, The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin urged that reporters aggressively demand answers from the White House regarding this clear discrepancy:

Olney, Md.: It looks like the Pentagon may have been behind "planting" retired officers as analysts for news outlets. Do you think this can be tied to the White House? Is their any evidence of White House involvement?

Dan Froomkin: There's no question at all the Pentagon organized it. As for White House involvement, that's a very good question. There's no hard evidence thus far, but I'm not sure anyone's really digging for it -- and it's hard to imagine they weren't plugged in to some extent.

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald lays out the case for journalists to aggressively enquire: "Was Karl Rove involved in the military analyst program?"

Actually, the evidence that is available is rather compelling, if not conclusive, that the White House was at least aware of and likely involved in the program, and Perino's denial of White House knowledge and involvement was thus false.

Media Matters has conducted a study demonstrating just how pervasive was the commentary from the Pentagon's hand-picked, "water-carrying" military analysts. They "collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR." If anything, the Media Matters study actually under-counts the appearances, since it only counted "the analysts named in the Times article," and several of the analysts who were most active in the Pentagon's propaganda program weren't mentioned by name in that article.

Finally, Media Bloodhound notes some extremely ironic, and characteristically pompous, comments from Brian Williams this week: "I think you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on." But as MB points out, Williams -- along with virtually every one of his colleagues -- has, 25 days after the NYT exposé first appeared, still failed and refused to inform his viewers about the Pentagon's propaganda program -- notwithstanding the serious criminality questions it raises, the Congressional investigations under way, and his own network's vital role in all of it.

UPDATE: In his own column today at McClatchy, Joe Galloway adds his own typically blunt and well-stated commentary about Di Rita's remarks and the military analyst program generally. I don't want to excerpt any of it because Galloway's column is well worth reading.

Relatedly, Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson points to what is probably the most compelling piece of evidence yet that the White House was kept apprised of what the Pentagon was doing: a July 12, 2005 memo from Donald Rumsfeld to Stephen Hadley which read: "Attached is a summary of the military analysts we took down to GTMO earlier this month." [It can be seen clearly as the second page of this batch of documents]. That is rather clear evidence of the sheer falsity of Dana Perino's denial of White House knowledge of this program.

As I wrote about last week, that June, 2005 GTMO trip and the ensuing TV commentary it generated was as propagandistic as it gets. This Rumsfeld email demonstrates that the White House was being fully informed as to the details of the fruits the program was producing. Shouldn't some White House journalist be asking Perino about this?

From June 7-9, I'll be participating in several events in DC and New York that I wanted to note for those interested in attending:

* On Saturday, June 7, at 6:00 p.m., I'll be speaking at the Future of Freedom Foundation's conference, entitled "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties." The conference is at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Reston, Virginia. Other speakers include Jonathan Turley, Bruce Fein, Ron Paul, Andrew J. Bacevich and several others. Event and registration information is here, and the schedule of speakers and events is here. The subject of my speech is "The 2008 Candidates and Civil Liberties -- A New Path or More of the Same?"

* On Sunday, June 8, at 5:00 p.m., I'll be at the 2008 ACLU Membership Conference, held at the Washington, DC Convention Center. I'll be participating in a panel discussion with Arianna Huffington, Rachel Maddow and ABC News' Jan Crawford Greenberg -- moderated by Adaora Udoji -- entitled: "Looking Ahead: Political Realities of a Post-Bush America." Event and registration information is here.

* On Monday, June 9, at 8:00 p.m., in New York, I'll be the guest on "Shoot the Messenger," the live theater show hosted by Daily Show Co-creator Lizz Winstead. The show is at The Green Room Theater at 45 Bleecker St (at LaFayette). Information about the show is here, and for those interested in attending, ticketing information is here. I'll be discussing Great American Hypocrites and political issues generally.

(updated below)

Time's Joe Klein, in a post this week he entitled "How Actual Journalism Works":

Third, look at the record. Tell me where I've been misled by my sources.

Joe Klein, The Guardian, February 4, 2002 (via LEXIS):

The noted Anglican hostage mediation expert Terry Waite wrote recently in the Guardian that: "I can recognise the conditions prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet, beaten on the soles of my feet with cable, denied all human rights and contact with my family for five years . . . Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled by the way we -- countries that call ourselves civilised -- are treating these captives."

Total rubbish, of course. The Camp X-Ray Yankophobe fiesta has died down in the past week as it has become clear that the prisoners -- I see no need to use euphemisms here -- are not being treated badly at all. The Red Cross has been in. Doctors are caring for them. They receive three square meals a day. They pray (and we provide arrows to point them the way). There's no air conditioning, but the winter heat in Cuba isn't exactly devastating. The cells are eight feet square; not the Ritz, but not quite inhumane, either. They were shackled and goggled when they were being transported, but no longer. They wear orange jump suits, which are probably an improvement over their Afghan cave-wear (I would actually prefer they be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas). They are not being tortured, Terry. They are being interrogated.

So there remain only two outstanding issues. One is legal: should these blokes be designated prisoners of war and accorded the right not to be interrogated? The second is social: Why on earth did our stalwart British allies join the predictably feckless Europeans in this dimwitted and loathesome orgy of recriminations? . . . .

And I believe that the US is abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Convention, despite the casual, ill-considered remarks of our rough-hewn secretary of defence, among others. . . .

Finally, a sad truth: while all the carping pains an Anglophile like me, most Americans don't give a fig about what you think. There is the old American bias toward seeing Europe as tired, flaccid and hopelessly parochial. And there is an old American saying which I think I've just invented: Before you get up on your high horse, be sure you are not riding an ass.

The ACLU, today (via email):

The American Civil Liberties Union has obtained previously withheld documents from the Defense Department, including internal investigations into the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody overseas. Uncensored documents released as a result of the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit shed light on the deaths of detainees in Iraq and internal disagreement within the military over harsh interrogation practices used at Guantánamo Bay.

"These documents provide further evidence that the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational, but was widespread and systemic," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "They only underscore the need for an independent investigation into high-level responsibility for prisoner abuse."

One of the documents released to the ACLU is a list of at least four prisoner deaths that were the subject of Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) investigations. The NCIS document contains new information about the deaths of some of these prisoners, including details about Farhad Mohamed, who had contusions under his eyes and the bottom of his chin, a swollen nose, cuts and large bumps on his forehead when he died in Mosul in 2004. The document also includes details about Naem Sadoon Hatab, a 52-year-old Iraqi man who was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility in Nasiriyah in June 2003; the shooting death of Hemdan El Gashame in Nasiriyah in March 2003; and the death of Manadel Jamadi during an interrogation after his head was beaten with a stove at Abu Ghraib in November 2003.

Another document obtained by the ACLU provides further context to objections raised by the Army's Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) about the use of harsh interrogation methods applied on Guantánamo prisoners.

The previously withheld documents can be viewed here. Documents previously obtained by the ACLU in connection with the U.S.'s use of torture can be viewed here.

Finally, from a July 13, 2005 briefing (.pdf) given to the Pentagon's TV military analysts by an unnamed General, when asked about acts of abuses admitted by the U.S. military at Guantanamo which had been alleged by FBI observers:


Thankfully, by virtue of what Joe Klein calls "actual journalism" (what Newsweek's Richard Wolffe describes as the "fantastic job" our political press does), Klein was able to assure the world that all of the concerns about Guantanamo were "total rubbish" -- nothing more than a "dimwitted and loathesome orgy of recriminations" from "feckless" and "flaccid Europeans." As he intrepidly reported, the U.S. was "abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions" at Guantanamo and the detainees were "not being treated badly at all." That's "How Actual Journalism Works" (of course, as emaydon points out, this is the easiest and most obvious answer to Joe Klein's request).

* * * * *

Joe Klein wanted to dress up the Guantanamo detainees as ballerinas and force them to wear pink tutus. Tom Friedman said that the reason the invasion of Iraq was "unquestionably worth doing" was because it was critical that we "take out our big sticks" and tell Muslims: "Suck. On. This." We have an extremely healthy and Serious Pundit class, particularly its leading war cheerleaders, and I think we should all be proud of our political discourse.

UPDATE: The Guardian, today (h/t rhenley):

The US has dropped charges against one of the six al-Qaida suspects charged with the 9/11 attacks, bolstering critics of the controversial military tribunal system set up to try the detainees.

The Pentagon official in charge of military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay dropped the death penalty case against Mohammed al-Qahtani without explanation. Lawyers for al-Qahtani attributed the move to clear evidence that the detainee was tortured while in US custody. . . .

The Saudi-born al-Qahtani was brutally interrogated for 48 straight days at Guantánamo in 2002 using a plan approved by former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Charges against him were dismissed "without prejudice", but the Pentagon claims the right to reinstate them at any time and to keep holding him at Guantánamo.

Bush administration lawyers who gave legal approval for the torture of al-Qahtani have exposed themselves to possible war crimes charges, according to UK human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, whose findings were first reported in the Guardian last month.

Coincidentally enough, that's the same paper where Joe Klein, the self-proclaimed Actual Journalist, told the world that Guantanamo detainees "weren't being treated badly at all," that "the US is abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Convention," and that anyone who said otherwise was "flaccid, feckless, dimwitted and loathsome."

(updated below w/correction - Update II)

Today's a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most Serious foreign policy expert, the brilliant Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has today declared our latest new war:

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.

So congratulations to us. After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our New Soviet Union. Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that it's a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III . . . the third great totalitarian challenge in the last, you know, 60 years," and which he today defines this way (featuring an amazingly disingenuous use of parenthesis):

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."

Friedman laments that "Team America" -- that's really what he calls it -- "is losing on just about every front."

What's most striking about Friedman's formulation is that -- in the 2003 NPR interview -- this is what Friedman said about why 9/11 happened:

I did a documentary last year for the Discovery Channel on the roots of 9/11, and we went with a team all over the Arab-Muslim world for over a period of about six months and interviewed people on what 9/11 was all about. And our conclusion was 9/11 was really fed by three rivers of rage. One was about what we do -- what we, the United States, do, whether it's how we use resources, it's our support for a dictatorial Arab regime so they'll sell us cheap oil. It's our backing for Israel when it does the right thing and when it does the wrong thing. 9/11 is fed, in part, by what we do, OK. . . .

The second and hugely important river of rage feeding 9/11 was a real overpowering sense of humiliation. . . . The Arab Human Development Report told us last year that 22 Arab states, not a single one has a freely and fairly elected government. . . .

And the third river of rage is how much these people hate their own governments, governments that keep them voiceless and powerless and prevent them from achieving their full aspirations in a world where they know how everyone else is living.

So 9/11 was caused by our backing of dictatorial Arab regimes, our unconditional support for Israel, our general interference in the Middle East, and the fact that Muslims aren't free. So what does Friedman want to do now? Have the U.S. wage a "cold war" (at least) for dominance in the Middle East alongside our