we're #47! we're #47 (this is not a good thing)

Mostly due to crackdowns against journalists during the Occupy protests,the United States has dropped from 20th place to 47th place in the press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders. Guantanamo is still open. Indefinite detention is the law of the land. This is not a good look.

Huffington Post: Press Freedom Index: Occupy Wall Street Journalist Arrests Cost U.S. Dearly In Latest Survey

the us government and human experimentation

From Democracy Now!
Exposed: US Doctors Secretly Infected Hundreds of Guatemalans with Syphilis in the 1940s gives a more in-depth look at the recently uncovered story.

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from the Nazis to Tuskegee to Puerto Rico gives a much more wide-ranging and historical look at how exploited populations have been used in human medical experimentation.

And finally Experiments in Torture: Medical Group Accuses CIA of Carrying Out Illegal Human Experimentation raises the very disturbing possibility that after 9/11, the Bush administration's treatment of Guantanamo detainees included human experimentation in violation of US law and the Nuremberg code. Read: The Torture Papers by Physicians for Human Rights for more details.

snl: guantanamo bay going out of business sale

architecture is not justice

They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.
But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.

An excerpt from Sami al Hajj's poem, Humiliated In The Shackles

publish or perish: guantanamo

I just found out about this story by reading the post Why Close Reading Matters I: Guantanamo Bay Poetry over at the Constructivist's blog. Basically, in spite of considerable hurdles and difficulties, a certain amount of poetry written by Guantanamo prisoners has been able to escape (even if the poets have not) and has been collected in a volume to be published in August by the University of Iowa Press. The story is also covered over at Common Dreams in: Inmates’ Words: The Poems of Guantanamo What is probably the most provocative and disturbing aspect of this story is the fact that some of the Guantanamo poems aren't being published due to U.S. national security concerns!

See also:
cagedprisoners.com (on Guantanamo)
nommo (politics and Muslim poets)

guantanamo, dred scott and the amistad

Common Dreams: Guantánamo, Dred Scott and the Amistad by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith