Positive Universe Abstracts

Coastal Post, CA
By Jennifer Van Bergen,
TomPaine.com
After President George W. Bush signed the controversial Military Commissions Act in October, the Justice Department wasted no time in using its new power to deny due process to the detainees swept up in the “war on terror.” Now that the bill which Sen. Patrick Leahy called “un-American” has become [...]

Amnesty International USA
Amnesty International deplores today’s decision to deny the Third Committee of the General Assembly a unique opportunity to adopt a strong Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Successful efforts to block adoption of this landmark draft Declaration were led by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States of America, Botswana and Namibia. [...]

Peculiar darn affliction madness is. In particular, one could reference political madness. Political madness can turn even the most normal of humans into a psychopathic murdering monster. Astride our imperiled planet, the grandiose politician gets the slaughtering wind up and presto, death ala depleted uranium munitions. Or maybe it could be the old tried and [...]

Pasadena Star-News, CA (m)
AFTER the Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Shiites by Sunnis, President Bush should go on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and give an interview headlined: “If I did it, here’s how the civil war in Iraq happened.” He could describe, hypothetically, a series of naive, arrogant and self-defeating blunders, including his team’s failure to [...]

by Mitchel Cohen
The U.S. escaped the 1991 Gulf war with few direct casualties. While 250,000 Iraqis were killed outright by the U.S. bombardment and another 750,000 died as a result of the U.N.’s international embargo spearheaded by the U.S., “only” 376 U.S. soldiers died in the Gulf; almost all of them were killed by so-called [...]

Washington Post, United States
The Bush administration claims detainees can’t disclose how they were treated.
BURIED WITHIN a recent government brief in the case of Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan is one of the more disturbing arguments the Bush administration has advanced in the legal struggles surrounding the war on terrorism. Mr. Khan was one of the [...]

Seattle Post Intelligencer
By AMY GOODMAN (m)
SPECIAL TO THE P-I
Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, began life as a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. When his owner had trouble with the young, unruly slave, Douglass was sent to Edward Covey, a notorious “slave breaker.” Covey’s plantation, where physical and psychological torture were standard, was called Mount Misery. [...]