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Archive for Torture

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Monday 25th July 2011

MP3 of Freedom Fest Panel Flogging the War on Terror

Jacob Hornberger, Sheldon Richman, and I had fun flogging the war on terror during a Freedom Fest panel earlier this month.
Since I was the token moderate on the panel, I went third. I started out my riff (@ 20 minutes into the tape) talking about how a TSA agent at Baltimore went [...]

Tuesday 21st June 2011

Bush, Torture, and the Rule of Law

from the March issue of Freedom Daily….
Bush, Torture, and the Rule of Law
by James Bovard
Last November, George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, hit the streets. And Americans could see firsthand the former president bragging about ordering torture. Bush wrote that when he was requested to approve the CIA’s waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he responded, [...]

Friday 8th April 2011

Obama’s Torture Regime?

Spencer Ackerman of Wired has an excellent piece today on the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command’s secret jails in Afghanistan. Ackerman notes:
Human rights groups have been sounding the alarm about these detention centers since 2009. Detainees who claim to have gone through the sites have told them about abuses inside the so-called “Black Jails” ranging [...]

Tuesday 15th February 2011

Video - My CPAC Patriot Act Bash (and Jacob Hornberger’s Speech)

FFF “Repeal the PATRIOT Act!” Roundtable from CPAC 2011 from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
Here’s the video from Saturday’s CPAC forum, sponsored by Campaign for Liberty.
Ivan Eland did an excellent job of moderating. My speech was probably about 15 minutes. Hornberger followed and gave the best speech I have ever seen [...]

Video - Me & Jacob Hornberger Thumping Conservative Statists

Jacob Hornberger Show from CPAC 2011 with James Bovard from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
From the Future of Freedom Foundation: This edition of the Jacob Hornberger Show was recorded at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 11, 2011. Jacob and special guest James Bovard discuss “Why Do Conservatives Support Statism?”
The Jacob [...]

Monday 24th January 2011

Our Know Nothing Foreign Policy (full text)

The American Conservative placed online today the full text of my review of Magic and Mayhem.
Worst and Brightest
Review of Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan, Derek Leebaert, Simon & Schuster, 336 pages
By James Bovard
In the decades since John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, foreign-policy experts have become Washington’s leading con [...]

Thursday 20th January 2011

JFK+50: Our Know-Nothing Foreign Policy

I received a copy of the March issue of the American Conservative in the mail today. Here are some brief outtakes from a book review (totaling @ 2000 words) I wrote in that issue on the general theme of Our Know-Nothing Foreign Policy :
*In the decades since John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, foreign policy experts [...]

Wednesday 5th January 2011

Why the Tea Party Should Despise George W. Bush

The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the September issue of Freedom Daily - (also on Counterpunch)
Why the Tea Party Should Despise George W. Bush
by James Bovard
The Tea Party movement is challenging politicians and political establishments in many parts of this country. Many Tea Party supporters define [...]

Tuesday 28th December 2010

Rep. Hoekstra Wins CIA Torture Medal of Honor

from the Future of Freedom Foundation sent out this op-ed today -
[also posted on Counterpunch here]
Hoekstra Receives CIA’s Bootlicking Award
by James Bovard, December 28, 2010
On December 21, the Central Intelligence Agency gave its Agency Seal Medal to Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra has labored almost ceaselessly to assure [...]

Thursday 2nd December 2010

WikiLeaks Interview: Trashing Congress, Hillary Clinton, & the American Media

Brian Wilson, talk show host extraordinaire at WSPD Toledo, and I had a great time on the air today raising hell over Washington’s reaction to WikiLeaks. It is a damn outrage to see kowtowing congressmen, a strutting Secretary of State, and groveling American journalists as far as the eye can see.
You can listen to [...]

Sunday 28th November 2010

Three More Cheers for WikiLeaks, Exposing More Official Lies

Anyone who favors self-government should support the efforts by WikiLeaks to expose official lies. Their latest release of hundreds of thousands of State Department diplomatic cables will hopefully undermine the piety and pretentiousness of U.S. foreign policy for years.
The Obama administration is rolling out the same old “people will die!” hobgoblin in response [...]

Thursday 9th September 2010

The True 9/11 Legacy: USA as Valhalla for Torturers and Government Secrecy

The Ninth Circuit court of federal appeals embraced the Obama and Bush administration’s spurious arguments that Americans cannot be permitted to know the details of Bush-era torture. But the court, in one of the most optimistic moments in recent judicial history, declared that its decision “does not preclude the government from honoring the fundamental [...]

Thursday 12th August 2010

How We Brought Freedom & Prosperity to Afghanistan

posted online today by the Future of Freedom Foundation, from the May issue of Freedom Daily -
BRINGING FREEDOM & PROSPERITY TO AFGHANISTAN
by James Bovard
The Obama administration is seeking to rechristen the Afghan debacle it inherited from the Bush administration. Obama

Friday 9th July 2010

“Freedom & the War on Terrorism” - my Pennslyvania speech…

Now online here: the video of my “Freedom and the War on Terrorism” speech last month in Bernville, Pennsylvania. I want to thank Bob Bowers, who organized this libertarian supper club, for inviting Jacob Hornberger and I to talk there. The audience was excellent - lots of hardliners full of fire-and-brimstone. [...]

Thursday 1st July 2010

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and Torture

3:14 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Torture | Comments: 1

Phil Giraldi makes an excellent observation on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in his Antiwar.com column today:
New Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has described retired Israeli Judge Aharon Barak as her “judicial hero.” Barak is sometimes described as a liberal, but a review of his decisions reveals that he has always sided with [...]

Wednesday 16th June 2010

Obama Administration: Don’t Question Sincerity of Torturers

1:58 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Supreme Court | Torture | Comments: 9

The Supreme Court disgraced itself on Monday by torpedoing the appeal of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was kidnapped at John F. Kennedy International Airport and sent by the U.S. government to Syria for torturing.
The Canadian government has publicly apologized to Arar for providing false information to the U.S. government about Arar’s suspicious connections. [...]

Tuesday 1st June 2010

Campaign for Liberty’s Review of Attention Deficit Democracy

Anthony Gregory has a generous review of Attention Deficit Democracy posted today at the Campaign for Liberty website:
There are few writers who pay more attention to the political follies of our time and who provide their readers with more meticulously documented reasons to be outraged than James Bovard, whose new book, Attention Deficit Democracy, presents [...]

Tuesday 20th April 2010

The Slippery Definition of Extremism

The Future of Freedom Foundation is shotgunning out this op-ed today….

The Slippery Definition of Extremism
by James Bovard
Americans are once again hearing of the perils of extremism. But the definition of this offense is slippier than a politician’s campaign promise. The definition of extremism has continually been amended to permit government policies that few sober people [...]

Saturday 30th January 2010

Justice Department Bans Justice for Torturers

The Obama Justice Department has apparently decided that, since torture is not a crime (at least not anything deserving of prosecution), then concocting legal doctrines that unleashed torturers around the world is also no offense.
A Justice Department internal investigation has concluded that John Yoo and Jay Bybee were gulity only of “poor judgment” in [...]

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