Amnesty report: “USA: Still failing human rights in the name of global ‘war’

USA: Still failing human rights in the name of global ‘war’
Source: Amnesty International

As detentions in the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay enter their ninth year, and the 22 January 2010 deadline for the detention facility’s closure ordered by President Barack Obama approaches only to be missed, the administration has registered “wins” in two recent court decisions on the detentions. They are Pyrrhic victories for the authorities, however, coming at a high cost to human rights principles and ensuring that Guantánamo will remain synonymous with injustice well into the second year of the Obama administration.

OPEN SOURCE ECONOMIES

from Global Guerrillas by John Robb

Open source warfare is in the process of revolutionizing war by enabling communities of small autonomous groups to successfully fight much larger foes. In the initial tests of the method (i.e. the Spanish Civil War of our time: Iraq), open source insurgents were able to fight the most powerful military ever fielded to a standstill for years. It will only get more effective from here on out as the method evolves, technology roars forward, and traditional militaries like the US become husks of their former selves (due to a lack of funding and political divisiveness).

The American political system: ruin and reform,

by openDemocracy

Author:

Godfrey Hodgson

Summary:

The Supreme Court has just made even harder the effort to limit the degradation of American politics by money, says Godfrey Hodgson.

For many years now, many informed observers – journalists, academics, even practitioners with tender consciences – have agreed that American politics is being ruined by money: by the abundance of money from special interests sloshing around Washington, and by the avidity with which all too many politicians pursue it, first to ensure their re-election, then for themselves.

JOURNAL: Indications of Open Source Economies

from Global Guerrillas by John Robb

Open source warfare isn’t a model based purely theoretical musings. It was grounded in observations. First, the combination of qualitative evidence gathered in Brave New War and on this blog allowed the creation of a working model for open source warfare that was both explanatory and predictive. Second, the hard and ground breaking work by Bohorquez, Gourley, Dixon, Spagat, and Johnson demonstrated (see Nature: Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency) it empirically and provided a method to model it computationally.

A Theory of Human Rights,

from open Democracy News Analysis

Author:

James R Mensch

Summary:

Freedom is the goal rather than the ground of human rights. But freedom is also essentially dependent on others and other cultures. Achieving the conditions for freedom – human rights – is humanity’s overriding moral obligation.

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Tagged in: Americana, human rights, open source economies

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