“The War to Start All Wars”: Did U.S. Invasion of Panama 25 Years Ago Set Stage for Future Wars?

democracynow

Published on Dec 23, 2014
http://democracynow.org – This month marks the 25th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Panama. On December 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush launched Operation Just Cause to execute an arrest warrant against Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, once a close U.S. ally, on charges of drug trafficking. During the attack, the United States unleashed a force of 24,000 troops equipped with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a country with an army smaller than the New York City Police Department. We discuss the Panama invasion and how it served as a template for future U.S. military interventions with three guests: we are joined by Humberto Brown, a former Panamanian diplomat, and Greg Grandin, a professor of Latin American history at New York University and author of “The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.” His new article for TomDispatch is “The War to Start All Wars: The 25th Anniversary of the Forgotten Invasion of Panama.” We also speak with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

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Bush & Cheney Should Be Charged with War Crimes Says Col. Wilkerson, Former Aide to Colin Powell

democracynow

Published on Dec 23, 2014
http://democracynow.org – Calls are increasing for the prosecution of George W. Bush administration officials tied to the CIA torture program. On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch called on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor who would investigate the crimes detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the program. On Monday, The New York Times editorial board called for a full and independent criminal investigation. We put the question about prosecution to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Watch years of Democracy Now! coverage of the U.S. torture program in our archive:
http://www.democracynow.org/topics/to…

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Weaponizing Health Workers: How Medical Professionals Were a Top Instrument in U.S. Torture Program

democracynow

Published on Dec 23, 2014

http://democracynow.org – Physicians for Human Rights is calling for a federal commission to investigate, document and hold accountable all health professionals who took part in CIA torture. Last week, the group released a report titled “Doing Harm: Health Professionals’ Central Role in the CIA Torture Program.” The report finds medical personnel connected to the torture program may have committed war crimes by conducting human experimentation on prisoners in violation of the Nuremberg Code that grew out of the trial of Nazi officials and doctors after World War II. We speak with Nathaniel Raymond, a research ethics adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, who co-wrote the new report. “We now see clear evidence of the essential, integral role that health professionals played as the legal heat shield for the Bush administration — their get-out-of-jail-free card,” Raymond says. “There has often been this narrative that Mitchell and Jessen were the lone gunmen of torture, that they were doing this out of their garage,” Raymond explains. “They were operating inside a superstructure of medicalized torture. It was not just them alone. It includes physicians’ assistants, doctors and it may include other professionals. What they were doing was everything from ‘care’ to actual monitoring, calibration and design of the tactics.”

Watch years of Democracy Now! coverage of the U.S. torture program in our archive:
http://www.democracynow.org/topics/to…

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Ex-Bush Official: U.S. Tortured Prisoners to Produce False Intel that Built Case for Iraq War

democracynow

Published on Dec 23, 2014
http://democracynow.org – Since the release of Senate findings earlier this month, the assumption that the CIA’s torture program’s sole motive was post-9/11 self-defense has gone virtually unchallenged. There has been almost no recognition that the George W. Bush administration also tortured prisoners for a very different goal: to extract information that could tie al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion of Iraq. While the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program’s goals. We are joined by retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Wilkerson helped prepare Powell’s infamous February 2003 speech to the United Nations wrongly accusing Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The claim was partially based on statements extracted from a prisoner tortured by Egypt on the CIA’s behalf, who later recanted his claim. Wilkerson says that beginning in the spring of 2002 — one year before the Iraq War and just months after the 9/11 attacks, the torture program’s interrogations “were as much aimed at contacts between al-Qaeda and Baghdad and corroboration thereof as they were trying to ferret out whether there was another attack coming like 9/11. That was stunning to me to find that was probably 50 percent of the impetus.”

Watch years of Democracy Now! coverage of the Iraq War in our archive:
http://www.democracynow.org/topics/Iraq

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Thom Hartmann on Science & Green News: December 22, 2014

thomhartmann

Published on Dec 23, 2014
Thom Hartmann on Science & Green News for the week of December 22, 2014

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Earth at Risk 2010 (2/8) Dr. William R. Catton, Jr. (author of “Overshoot”)

Fertile Ground Environmental Institute

Published on Jul 28, 2014

William Robert Catton, Jr. (born January 15, 1926) is an American sociologist best known for his scholarly work in environmental sociology and human ecology. His intellectual approach is broad and interdisciplinary. Catton’s repute extends beyond academic social science due primarily to his 1980 book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change.

Earth at Risk is an annual conference in San Francisco that brings together some of the greatest thinkers and activists in the fields of social and environmental justice. For more information, visit www.earthatrisk.info.

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MPA in Environmental Science and Policy Promotional Video

Columbia SIPA

Uploaded on Jul 25, 2014

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Noam Chomsky: still going strong at 85 – Newsnight

BBC Newsnight

Published on Nov 26, 2014
Noam Chomsky is in the UK for a special talk at the British Academy. He dropped by Newsnight to talk to Evan

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Nature Bats Last

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Saïd Business School – Our vision

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Published on Sep 5, 2013

Dean Peter Tufano shares his vision and aspirations for Saïd Business School as part of the wider University of Oxford community.

See list of Saïd Business School videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/OxfordSBS/playlists

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