Inside the Belly of the Beltway Beast

Today in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, 17 uighur men detained and imprisoned for seven years, first in Afghanistan and then in Guantanamo Bay were ordered to be freed and released to the U.S. Judge Ricardo Urbina rejected the government's argument that the men, all of whom were declared non-enemy combatants four years ago should remain detained against their wills in a state of legal limbo. Judge Urbina ordered the immediate release of all the men, and scheduled a hearing for Friday at 10 a.m. to discuss the details of the men's acclimation to living inside the U.S. Uighurs are an Islamic ethnic group residing in western China. Many want to separate from the Chinese regime and form their own homeland. For this reason, China does not want their return, nor do many of them wish to return due to the likelihood that they would be imprisoned and tortured for their beliefs. A small uighur community will house the men for a temporary period in the Washington Metro ...

Thursday 19 June 2008 by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | Perspective "We can never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was 'legal,' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did was 'illegal.' It was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany , but I am sure that if I lived in Germany during that time I would have comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal ... we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive." Martin Luther King Jr. There have been over 15,000 arrests for resistance to war since 2002. There were large numbers right after the runup to and invasion of Iraq . Recently, arrests have begun climbing again. Though arrests are a small part of antiwar organizing, their rise is an indicator of increasing resistance. The information comes from the Nuclear Resister, a newsletter that has been rep...