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The stridence of the New York Times editorial page against the Turkish Erdogan government actions contrasted with the silence toward the domestic Obama government actions regarding WikiLeaks is telling.

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As I have repeatedly pointed out, stripping detainees to “demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor” was introduced as a Standard Operating Procedure at Gitmo back in 2002 when they were preparing to torture Mohammed al-Qahtani. Abu Zubaydah’s torturers, like Bradley Manning’s jailers, call it being “God.” That must be the standard procedure that President Obama [...]

As I noted earlier today, State Department Spokesperson PJ Crowley described Bradley Manning’s abuse as counterproductive and stupid at an event at MIT yesterday. Ethan Zuckerman has a transcript of Crowley’s remarks. Charlie deTar: There’s an elephant in the room during this discussion: Wikileaks. The US government is torturing a whistleblower in prison right now. [...]

Things for anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya have gone from difficult to worse. Yet even after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the mistake of telling the truth about Qaddafi’s strength, there has been little discussion about this report from James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (one exception is Dan Drezner). Here’s part of what Clapper [...]

When PJ Crowley tweeted this the other day: These are not #Twitter or #Wikileaks revolutions. They belong to the people, but technology can expand and accelerate the pace of change. I was going to tweet back that he had to say that, given the necessity of maintaining the Administration party line on WikiLeaks. I’ve pointed [...]

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The folks at the Fed who run our economy apparently believe in the Easter Bunny. And Casper the Friendly Ghost. And Santa Claus. I mean, I can only conclude the folks over there are completely unhinged from reality given their claim that no people–not a single homeowner–was wrongly foreclosed. A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage [...]

Back in 2002, Gitmo’s Standard Operating Procedures advocated stripping detainees of clothing as a way of demonstrating the omnipotence of the captors. In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee. With Abu Zubaydah–as Jane Mayer has written–they explicitly tied this [...]