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Arjun Sethi the American lawyer based in Washington, DC, and a frequent commentator on civil rights and social justice-related issues has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘The US and enemy prisoners post 9/11’. Sethi states “Fear is a powerful human agent. It can cloud our judgment and dim our conscience. Left unchecked, it can skew the moral compass of a nation, leaving destruction in its wake. A recent bipartisan report by the Constitution project confirms what many have long suspected: US personnel tortured enemy detainees in the months and years following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The report lays bare a nation so paralysed by fear that it jettisoned longstanding human rights protections in the name of national security. …Human rights bodies and humanitarian groups, like the International Committee on the Red Cross, have uniformly condemned these practices, calling many of them torture. So have numerous US judges, who have thrown out an array of detainee statements arguing that evidence obtained through torture is not admissible. The coup de grace comes courtesy of the US government, who previously condemned other countries for engaging in the very same practices. …President Obama has insisted that he wants to look forward, and that culpable US personnel will not be prosecuted. …A commitment to look forward is just another way of saying forget the past. The fact remains that an array of actors - the President, his advisers, lawyers, psychologists and those on the ground - committed a grave human rights violation. Call it a movie script. President Bush produced it; his top advisers directed it; lawyers and psychologists provided the special effects; and personnel played the part. Only through government support, and the power to review classified information and subpoena witnesses, can this tragic story be told.”  Inspired by Arjun Sethi, Aljazeera ow.ly/lCDnx Image source Twitter ow.ly/lCDmR A nation so paralysed by fear (June 18 2013)

 

Arjun Sethi the American lawyer based in Washington, DC, and a frequent commentator on civil rights and social justice-related issues has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘The US and enemy prisoners post 9/11’. Sethi states “Fear is a powerful human agent. It can cloud our judgment and dim our conscience. Left unchecked, it can skew the moral compass of a nation, leaving destruction in its wake. A recent bipartisan report by the Constitution project confirms what many have long suspected: US personnel tortured enemy detainees in the months and years following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The report lays bare a nation so paralysed by fear that it jettisoned longstanding human rights protections in the name of national security. …Human rights bodies and humanitarian groups, like the International Committee on the Red Cross, have uniformly condemned these practices, calling many of them torture. So have numerous US judges, who have thrown out an array of detainee statements arguing that evidence obtained through torture is not admissible. The coup de grace comes courtesy of the US government, who previously condemned other countries for engaging in the very same practices. …President Obama has insisted that he wants to look forward, and that culpable US personnel will not be prosecuted. …A commitment to look forward is just another way of saying forget the past. The fact remains that an array of actors – the President, his advisers, lawyers, psychologists and those on the ground – committed a grave human rights violation. Call it a movie script. President Bush produced it; his top advisers directed it; lawyers and psychologists provided the special effects; and personnel played the part. Only through government support, and the power to review classified information and subpoena witnesses, can this tragic story be told.”

 

Inspired by Arjun Sethi, Aljazeera ow.ly/lCDnx Image source Twitter ow.ly/lCDmR

Limited only by ability to imagine possibilities (July 23 2012) Limited only by ability to imagine possibilities (July 23 2012)

Kerry James Marshall the 56 year old American artist painter known for his large-scale paintings, sculptures, and objects that take African-American life and history as their subject matter. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement on domestic life, in addition to working with elements of popular culture. Marshall developed a signature style during his early years involving the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African Americans with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances, while at the same time confronting racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. Marshall has been profiled by Rachel Wolff in an article on Artinfo, where he states “€œIf you look historically at the way painting has moved from representation to abstraction, the implications of that, in some ways, erased what people can identify as political and social content in a work, one of the quickest ways you can erase what they saw as limitations of ethnicity and race was to do abstract work, and by doing so, you would find your way into the mainstream of the art world. I am trying to demonstrate that there is a great deal of potential left in the black aesthetic and within the specificity of the Black Nationalist position as represented by the colors red, black, and green. That you can transcend what is perceived to be the limitation of a race-conscious kind of work. It is a limitation only if you accept someone else’s foreclosure from the outside. If you go into it yourself, you can exercise a good deal. And you are limited only by your own ability to imagine possibilities.”€

 

Inspired by Artinfo ow.ly/cltzw image source Ulrich Musum of Art ow.ly/cltss

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