(Thanx Tommy!)
Friday, 16 March 2012
ACLU VS Department of State
On April 12, 2011, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for 23 State Department embassy cables that were released by WikiLeaks in November 2010 and then published by major newspapers. The ACLU sued the government after it failed to respond to the FOIA request. The lawsuit caused the State Department to release portions of the diplomatic cables to the ACLU.
The cables describe the U.S. government's efforts abroad to avoid attention or accountability over actions it has taken in connection with the "war on terror." The communications include the deceptive use of drones for targeted killings, opposition to the release of photos showing U.S. torture of detainees, and attempts to undermine European investigations into the rendition and torture of terror suspects.
Since the embassy cables were published by WikiLeaks in November 2010, the State Department has denounced the leaking of the documents and instructed its employees to not download them from the internet. In another example of the government's unrealistic position, it has said that lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees may not read classified documents released by WikiLeaks about to their clients unless they do so at a secure government facility (those documents, released on April 24, were not part of the ACLU's FOIA request).
The government refused to confirm the authenticity of any particular cable until it was forced to comply with the ACLU’s FOIA request. On October 21, 2011, the State Department released redacted versions of eleven cables and withheld the other twelve in full. When compared to the leaked cables published by WikiLeaks, the redacted releases expose what the government chooses to hide from the public and shed light on the government’s self-serving serving secrecy regime.
The ACLU is currently litigating the government’s justifications for concealing leaked and publicly available information. The government's continued anti-democratic policy of keeping documents classified despite their widespread availability illustrates a disturbing hostility to transparency and Americans' right to know what the government is doing in their name.
The cables describe the U.S. government's efforts abroad to avoid attention or accountability over actions it has taken in connection with the "war on terror." The communications include the deceptive use of drones for targeted killings, opposition to the release of photos showing U.S. torture of detainees, and attempts to undermine European investigations into the rendition and torture of terror suspects.
Since the embassy cables were published by WikiLeaks in November 2010, the State Department has denounced the leaking of the documents and instructed its employees to not download them from the internet. In another example of the government's unrealistic position, it has said that lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees may not read classified documents released by WikiLeaks about to their clients unless they do so at a secure government facility (those documents, released on April 24, were not part of the ACLU's FOIA request).
The government refused to confirm the authenticity of any particular cable until it was forced to comply with the ACLU’s FOIA request. On October 21, 2011, the State Department released redacted versions of eleven cables and withheld the other twelve in full. When compared to the leaked cables published by WikiLeaks, the redacted releases expose what the government chooses to hide from the public and shed light on the government’s self-serving serving secrecy regime.
The ACLU is currently litigating the government’s justifications for concealing leaked and publicly available information. The government's continued anti-democratic policy of keeping documents classified despite their widespread availability illustrates a disturbing hostility to transparency and Americans' right to know what the government is doing in their name.
WikiLeaks Diplomatic Cables FOIA Documents
(Thanx Son#1!)
Jack Kerouac play to receive world premiere
Jack Kerouac's only full-length play will receive its world premiere this year, 55 years after it was written.
Beat Generation, a three-act play rediscovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 2005, will be staged for the first time this October in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the University of Massachusetts Lowell will deliver eight performances of staged reading as the centrepiece of this year's Jack Kerouac Literary festival.
Written in 1957, shortly after the publication of On the Road, Beat Generation shows a day in the life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's drink-and-drug-fuelled alter ego. The play draws on his own life and those of other Beat writers including Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, who subsequently starred in the film Pull My Daisy, which was based in part on the play.
Kerouac had sent his work to numerous producers and actors, including Marlon Brando, in an attempt to drum up interest for a production, but after failing to do so asked his agent Sterling Lord to shelve the script.
On its rediscovery in 2005, Lord said: "It conveys the mood of the time extraordinarily well, and also the characters are authentically drawn."
The author's biographer Gerald Nicosia said at the time: "Kerouac wrote the play in one night when he returned to his home in Florida after the publication of On the Road." The play was commissioned by off-Broadway producer Leo Gavin, but remained unpublished until 2005 and unperformed until now.
"This is a moment of literary and theatrical history," said Charles Towers, artistic director of the Merrimack.
The production was announced on Monday, coinciding with the US publication of Kerouac's "lost" first novel, The Sea Is My Brother, written when he was 21. The novel, in which two young men travel from Boston to Greenland, was published in the UK last November.
Matt Trueman @'The Guardian'
Keith Haring’s Eclectic Journal Entries Go Online
Dan Colman @'Open Culture'
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