From the Law Office of H. Candace Gorman
From The Guardian:
Abu Zubaydah, whose full name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, is a stateless Palestinian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was one of the first detainees in the US “war on terror” to be tortured, and was subjected to a full range of what the Bush administration at the time termed “enhanced interrogation techniques”, in secret prisons in Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, and then the US base at Guantánamo Bay, on Cuba’s southern coast.
Now 54, he has been held in Guantánamo Bay without charge ever since, becoming one of its “forever prisoners”.
Abu Zubaydah was first seized in a sweep of suspected militants in Pakistan in March 2002. The US initially claimed he was a high-ranking member of al-Qaida, but has since dropped that claim, and now no longer alleges that he was even a member of the organisation.
According to a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s use of torture and other inquiries into the use of torture, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a single month, locked for more than 11 days in a coffin-sized box and left to lie in his own urine and faeces, stripped naked and beaten, suspended from hooks just above the floor, and kept awake for seven consecutive days and doused with cold water whenever he lost consciousness.
READ THE REST HERE.
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Not much else to say about what is going on. The question is, how do we put the brakes on this?
Right now I do not have the answer to that question. I think once again we are going to have to rely on our Courts to stop these madmen but that would be easier done if we had a Supreme Court that was not helping trump and his henchmen. If one or two more republican congressional representatives were to leave office then the democrats could at least take over the house of representatives. Unfortunately, in our system - with the republicans controlling the house of representatives, the senate and the Supreme Court- we are in a dark place.
stay tuned....
Well music is great for the soul but we have a lot of work to do this year.
Not just to keep the lunatic in check but to try to salvage our democracy and maybe even make it better and stronger.
So start by watching the deposition of Jack Smith. The special prosecutor who tried to hold the criminal president accountable. Take your time. Watch it in bits and pieces! Jim Jordan, the committee chair for the judiciary committee, a man who could not even pass the bar exam held off on releasing the video until new years eve- hoping people wouldn't know or watch.
But if you do not have time to watch the hole video. Here are the CLIF notes!
Check it out below on YouTube. It’s a very moving film, and
beautifully animated. It’s only 11 minutes. Share it with friends and family
over this holiday season.
Sean is also using the film to raise money to help kids in
conflict zones this holiday season. This has been one of the deadliest times to
be a child in this century. Please join me in donating here to War Child to get these kids (in places
like Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan) life-saving medical and mental health aid.
THANK YOU WELLS!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/opinion/trump-obama-drone-strikes-illegal.html
To the Editor:
Jeh C. Johnson’s condemnation of the Trump administration’s
recent strikes on boats in the Caribbean appears to be either ironic or lacking
in self-awareness.
While Mr. Johnson argues that Congress gave “implicit”
authorization for the Obama administration’s targeted killings in Afghanistan,
Yemen and Somalia — a claim many national security lawyers like me strongly
disagree with — it is undeniable that this policy opened the door to what is
playing out now off the coast of Latin America.
For the nearly quarter-century since the attacks of Sept. 11,
the public has been primed and conditioned by a “global war on terror” to
accept war without end or geographic limitation. The incineration of human
beings outside areas of active hostilities, who have not been identified or
tied to specific threats, let alone tried or convicted of crimes, has been
normalized.
Secret legal opinions conjured by creative executive branch
lawyers have twisted both domestic and international law beyond its breaking
point in order to authorize torture and warrantless surveillance, and to make
murder and assassination legal so long as, the public is told, the victims were
bad guys who posed a threat to the United States.
Let’s be clear: Drug traffickers are not terrorists or
combatants, the United States is not at war with any country in Latin America
and the extrajudicial killing of civilians is always murder. Mr. Johnson is
correct to condemn President Trump’s strikes, but his attempt to distinguish
and exculpate himself and his Obama administration colleagues rings hollow.
J. Wells Dixon
New York
The writer is a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional
Rights.
The Guantánamo survivors fund helps the men who are still living on the edge following their years of illegal detention and torture. If you can help please do.
Whether Guantanamo torture survivors return home or are resettled elsewhere, most face significant hurdles to resuming a normal life.
Your donation helps the Guantanamo Survivors Fund provide short-term support for survivors’ most urgent needs such as medical care, rent and food, prosthetics, and other vital necessities.
Remember when it came to light that my country was stuffing men in little boxes? How about the complaints of bright lights being left on all night so that the men couldn't sleep?The lack of medical care? The refusal to allow attorneys to visit?
If all of this sounds familiar it is because it is. This again is some of the torture we subjected the men at Guantanamo to.... and now ICE is reportedly using this same torture techniques on the men and women being held at detention centers here in the U.S. of A.
Read more here. (I think this is a gift link.)
Yes, these too are war crimes- but war crimes are a way of life in this government of mine.
“Everything the Trump Administration Does Must be Presumed Irregular” – Norman Eisen
There’s no doubt that crime is a problem in Washington. The current president, convicted criminal Donald Trump, continually breaks the law through Orwellian edicts, purported “executive orders”, tracts and brain spasms that are by turns laughable, alarming and downright crazy. Most are without authority.
Since Roger Fitch’s June report, many new EOs have been published with flagrantly lawless purposes; (executive) crime persists in Washington, even if Trump himself is immunised from penal consequences.
Many of the fledgling dictator’s oracular rants have been successfully attacked in federal district courts of the US, struck down or enjoined by judges who were appointed by Democrats, Republicans and Trump himself.
Read the rest here.
An expression many from my generation revert to when someone "bad" dies. The expression hails back to the movie "the wizard of oz." When the bad witch dies, the munchkins and everyone else bursts into spontaneous singing:
Cheney also push for the use of torture in the "war on terror."
As a dear friend said to me today "Cheney died today but thanks to trump, none of us can enjoy it,"
I am trying my best to enjoy it - but yes, we are in such bad times that it is hard to celebrate this particular war criminals death.
I hope to find time to say more about this awful human being in the future.
Stay tuned.
Halloween is a big holiday in this here country of mine. And it is especially popular in my neighborhood in Chicago. People decorate their houses and the atmosphere is festive as kids and adults dress up in costume. Kids from all over the city come to the neighborhood that I live in. It is safe and lots of good candy passed out.
This year we took precautions to continue keeping the neighborhood as safe as possible. The ICE thugs were all around us in the morning and our neighborhood set up a system with spotters relaying information and armed with whistles to alert everyone. I did my part. The ICE thugs stayed away from our neighborhood but we were just lucky. They were busy terrorizing other neighborhoods.
It was less than a month ago when I posed the question as to whether the criminals in my government would resort to bounties for capturing supposed drug dealers. Today I learned I was not far off. Seems the criminals are offering bounties for "illegal immigrants." I guess it doesn't matter if they are selling drugs, it only matters if they might be here in this country without the proper paper work.
At least they are not dropping leaflets yet- because with the economic hardship of so many people in this country that could work as well as it did in Afghanistan and Pakistan- and of course it would mean rounding up a lot of people that should never have been rounded up just so people could get the bounty. [This is not to suggest that people without the proper paperwork are legit targets.]