Khadr Show-’Trial’ Blacked Out of NY Times, So Obamaphiles Won’t Care (Video)

The first military commission of a detainee renditioned to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay under the Obama Administration opened Tuesday. Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped eight years ago in Afghanistan at the age of 15 by the U.S. military, threatened with rape in detention at the U.S. air base at Bagram, transferred to Guantánamo where he was tortured until he confessed that he threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. Monday evening, Texas A&M at Qatar associate professor Todd Kent noted that it will likely not be a political issue for the Adminsitration because the mainstream media is downplaying it, though criminal justice is a large part of the president’s avatar, at Al Jazeera English’s “Inside Story”—which focused on the coming so-called ‘trial’ (23:41):

Shining City on a Hill Casting a Shadow Over Blood

Stephen Walt dissects a Manichean War Party meme used to brainwash and pacify the population of the West, to which Glenn Greenwald recently pointed elsewhere to show the propagandists’ play on words.

Arbitrary Government Kidnapping Under the Cloak of ‘Objectivity’

If Mohamed can become Josef, why not Joe Schmo?

Sri Lanka ‘Will Hang’ Former Army Chief for War Crimes Investigation Participation

The Sri Lankan defense minister has threatened to hang a parliament member, recently resigned from the S.L.A.F., if he exposes the country’s war crimes against the Tamils. The suppression of the war crimes during the country’s quarter-century civil war and the government’s forging alliances have dangerous potential.

Report: Human Experimentation at the Heart of Bush Administration Torture Program

Jason Leopold, deputy managing editor at Truthout, reports on the Physicians for Human Rights report, “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program.”

Finkelstein: Israel Deliberately ‘Creates Gazan Humanitarian Crisis’ (Video)

Peter LaVelle’s “CrossTalk” at Russia Today has Professor Norman Finkelstein, Chris Guiness and Mitchell Barak on the panel (26:02):

Military Tribunal Testimony: Teenage Detainee Tortured, Threatened With Rape

At Omar Khadr’s military tribunal, one of his interrogators testified to threatening the boy with rape—adding to never-ending tragic story of the U.S. government war of terror.

The Case for the Impeachment of Barack Obama

Dave Lindorff on Obama: as guilty as Bush, the war criminal.

Daily Briefing — 10th-11th August 2009

How Goldman Sachs bailed out Goldman Sachs with U.S. taxpayer dollars; U.S. Justice [sic] Dept.’s effort to probe torture abuse is one to validate torture; 59% of Pakistanis view the U.S. as their biggest threat; Israel vows to not evict unlawful Israeli settlers in the West Bank; China emulating the U.K.’s Big Brother surveillance program; NYC’s racist drug war; 84-year-old Ohio woman with Alzheimer’s slammed to the pavement by cop…

President Obama ‘Morphing Into His Predecessor’ Blocking Transparency and Prosecution of Torture (mp3/Video)

International human rights lawyer Scott Horton on AntiWar Radio, human rights investigator John Sifton on Democracy Now! (DN!), constitutional scholar Jonathon Turley with Rachel Maddow and ACLU attorney Amrit Singh with Anderson Cooper on Obama’s decision to further hide Bush Administration crimes of toruring and murdering detainees.

Detainees Tortured to Link Saddam to al-Qa’ida (mp3)

AntiWar Radio host Scott Horton interviews Marjorie Cohn on the recent revelation that torture was not used to thwart attacks and gather intel, but to manufacture connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’ida to justify the consciously illegal Iraq War.

Bush, Obama and the Torture of Morality

Freedomain Radio host Stefan Molyneux on Obama’s decision to “look toward the future” regarding torture.

Scott Horton on the Torture Memos (mp3)

Scott Horton of AntiWar Radio interviews “the other” Scott Horton of Harper’s.

Despite Obama Admin Report, Guantanamo Still Violates the Law

On top of Obama’s continuity — not change — toward the US’s ‘other Guantanamo’, the Center for Constitutional Rights experts dispute government assertion that Guantanamo complies with Geneva Conventions.