Judge: Continue Force-Feeding at Guantanamo; Freedom Act Passes; Tom Paine our Contemporary

Judge: US Must Force-Feed Guantanamo Detainee. The U.S. ‘must’ force-feed a hunger striking Guantánamo detainee, according to a U.S. federal judge who late Thursday night lifted a temporary restraining order against performing the process—widely considered a form of torture—on Syrian inmate Abu Wa’el Dhiab. District judge Gladys Kessler said the decision was made because of the “very real probability” that Dhiab, who continues to be held at the detention facility despite having been cleared for release in 2009, might die.

USA Freedom Act Passes House With Protests and Sighs. Many legislators and campaigners are unsatisfied with the “watered-down” version of the anti-surveillance bill that passed the House of Representatives on Thursday. Many legislators and campaigners are unsatisfied with the “watered-down” version of the anti-surveillance bill that passed the House of Representatives with a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, 303 to 121, on Thursday. The USA Freedom Act is the first piece of legislation “aimed specifically at curbing U.S. surveillance abuses revealed by Edward Snowden,” The Guardian reports.

Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary. Paine did for the American Revolution what we must do for our present-day revolution against the corporate state: He created a political language that exposed the realities of despotic power and demanded a rational response. Sunday’s event will be about Thomas Paine, the author of “Common Sense,” “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason”—the most widely read political essays of the 18th century, works that established the standards by which rebellion is morally and legally permissible. We will ask whether the conditions for revolt set by Paine have been met with the rise of the corporate state. Should Paine’s call for the overthrow of British tyranny inspire our own call for revolution? And if it should, to echo Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

Sources: Popular Resistance, Truthdig.

Paul Brown is a retired neuroscience professor whose primary interests are human rights, overpopulation, mass extinction, global warming, and the military-industrial complex. Links to all his Before It’s News articles are at /contributor/pages/189/210/stories.html.