Free Talk Live

Despite Barack Obama’s promise in 2009 – one of his first as president – to shut down “Gitmo,” the U.S. evidently has no intention of doing so anytime soon. In fact, the only thing concerning Gitmo that the Obama administration has shut down is the office of the special envoy, Daniel Fried, who had been tasked with its closure. The U.S. State Department reassigned Fried in late January, and he will not be replaced.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear any new Guantánamo appeals even though half of the men being held were cleared for release five years ago. Critics of Monday’s decision say it leaves the fate of prisoners — many of them long cleared for release — in the hands of a conservative D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has constantly sided with military prosecutors and refused to order the release of any prisoner. The high court also refused to reinstate a lawsuit by former "enemy combatant" José Padilla against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Mahdi Hashi, the British-Somali man who disappeared from east Africa shortly after being stripped of his British citizenship, appeared yesterday in a New York federal court alongside two Swedish men. All three appear to have been rendered by the United States from Djibouti, and have now been charged with terrorism offences. Hashi, 23, is accused of ‘providing material support’ to Somali militant group al Shabaab. A statement released by the FBI revealed that Hashi has been in the US penal system since November 12. Neither his family nor his UK legal team were informed.

The military claims Assange shared sensitive names and places, but he says he redacted them, and the military went by their un-redacted originals to accuse him for all the people he "harmed."

He shared that info on Judge Napolitano's Freedom Watch on October 30.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife mistakenly left their eight-year-old daughter behind following lunch at a country pub recently.“The PM and wife Samantha were distraught when they realised Nancy wasn’t with them,” his office confirmed in a statement, according to British media.

“Thankfully when they phoned the pub, she was there safe and well.

“The PM went down straight away to get her.”

GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the British drugmaker, has agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor criminal charges, and pay $3bn to settle what government officials described as the largest case of healthcare fraud in US history. Monday's agreement , which still needs court approval, would resolve allegations that the British drugmaker broke US laws in marketing two popular drugs for unapproved uses and to failing to disclose important safety information on a third. The three billion dollar combined criminal-civil fine will be the largest penalty ever...

The Department of Defense has released more than 800 heavily-redacted pages of intelligence oversight reports, detailing activities that its Inspector General has “reason to believe are unlawful.” The reports are the latest in an ongoing document release by more than a half-dozen intelligence agencies in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by EFF in July 2009.

I'd rather recruit ex-drug dealers, convicts and even child molesters rather than consider anybody who has been in the pay of the British Government.

With each revelation, or court decision, on US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo—or the airing this month of The Tillman Story and Lawrence Wright's My Trip to Al-Qaeda—I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who died seven years ago this week. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.