There are, very simply, no words:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRc6MsMu4HY]
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We Shall Overcome
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A hell of a good story about the venerated movement song, inspired by the Boss’s cover, over on Slacktivist.
[via jefito]
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Late Summer Reading
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Okay, this is mean AND funny, all at the same time (particularly for those of us of a certain age and demographic, shall we say):
ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN AND THE MYSTERIOUS PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH (PDF file)
(last political gag/snark for a while, I promise.)
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Redraft
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Offered without comment:
War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.
Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.
The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.
Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as “outrages upon [the] personal dignity” of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts — such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women’s underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — that fall short of torture.
“People have gotten worried, thinking that it’s quite likely they might be under a microscope,” said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.
[more]
Via Sullivan.
