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For Immediate Release
July, 12 2010, 04:59pm EDT
Contact:
Rachel Myers, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
ACLU at Guantanamo to Observe Military Commissions Proceedings
Canadian Omar Khadr Pledges o Boycott His Trial in the Unfair and Unjust System
GUANTANÁMO BAY, Cuba
The American Civil Liberties Union is at Guantanamo this week to observe the pretrial proceedings of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2002 for war crimes allegedly committed when he was 15. The ACLU strongly believes that terrorism cases should be tried in federal criminal courts and that the military commissions are unable to deliver reliable justice and should be shut down for good.
After a military commissions judge today refused Khadr's request to defend himself, Khadr told the court that he would boycott the rest of his proceedings. In a statement he read before the court, Khadr called the military commissions system unfair and unjust and said that it was constructed to "convict detainees, not to find the truth." If Khadr's trial goes forward as planned in August, the U.S. will become the first nation since World War II to prosecute someone for alleged war crimes committed as a child.
The following can be attributed to Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher with the ACLU, who is at Guantanamo observing the proceedings:
"The Obama administration should shut down the illegitimate military commissions system that has become a stain on our nation's reputation and prosecute terrorism suspects in the time-tested federal criminal courts. The commissions system is unfit to try any Guantanamo detainee, especially an alleged child soldier who has been held in U.S. custody for over a third of his life and subjected to years of abuse. Omar Khadr, like all Guantanamo terrorism suspects, should be tried in federal courts that guarantee due process. If that isn't possible, the U.S. must send him home to Canada."
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
As Dr. Oz Helps Prove 'There Is No Republican Health Care Plan,' Democrats Have Solution Most Refuse to Embrace: Medicare for All
"Healthcare is becoming unsustainable under Trump," says one progressive politician running for US Senate. "Medicare for All would fix it."
Nov 16, 2025
The Trump administration came under fire on Sunday after sending Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, onto CNN's weekend news show to try to explain the Republican Party's elusive "solution" to the nation's healthcare crisis, a topic of much interest in recent weeks amid the longest government shutdown in the nation's history and growing fears over massive premium increases or loss of coverage for tens millions of Americans.
Asked during his appearance to explain what Republicans are considering to address the surging cost of healthcare, Oz talked about direct cash payments—something Trump himself has floated in recent weeks—as well as the idea of health saving accounts (or HSAs) which allow for personalized accounts set up to help pay for out-of-pocket medical needs, though not premium payments.
"If you had a check in the mail, you could buy the insurance you thought was best for you," Oz stated without explaining in what way that is different from people who received tax credits to purchase plans on the insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act signed into law by former President Barack Obama.
Pushing such empty ideas while claiming them as viable solutions to soaring costs is partly what led critics like Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) this week to issue a public service announcement which stated flatly: "There is no Republican health care plan"—despite repeated claims to the contrary by GOP lawmakers, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Dr Oz: "If you had a check in the mail, you could buy the insurance you thought was best for you" pic.twitter.com/rLoMdxhNPV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 16, 2025
"Dr. Oz a few years ago was pitching Medicare Advantage for All—a scheme to put every person on the corporate health insurance plans he used to sell," said Andrew Perez, a politics editor for Zeteo, in response to the interview. "Now, he’s saying let’s take away insurance from millions and give them a few bucks for their health care instead. Insane."
In a blog post published last week, Nicole Rapfogel, a senior policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonpartisan policy think tank, explained why expanded HSAs, backed by the government or otherwise, would do little to nothing to improve access or lower costs for healthcare.
"Expanding HSAs has been a consistent theme, including in the House-passed version of the Republican megabill, though those provisions didn’t pass the Senate," explained Rapfogel. "But these policies are misguided and would do little to preserve access to affordable, comprehensive coverage."
She further explains that HSAs generally are better for wealthier people who have spare income to direct into such accounts, but of little use to poorer Americans who are already struggling to make ends meet each month. According to Rapfogel:
Most people do not have spare cash to set aside in HSAs; an estimated 4 in 10 people are in debt due to medical and dental bills.
People in lower tax brackets also benefit less from HSA tax savings. For example, a married couple making $800,000 saves 37 cents for each dollar contributed to an HSA, more than three times the 12 cents per dollar a married couple making $30,000 would save.
Further, HSAs do not promote efficient use of health care services. Research has shown that HSAs do not reduce health care spending, but rather shield more of that spending from taxes.
Given that understanding of the well-known limitations of HSAs or other avenues of government backstopping of private insurance, the level of bullshitting or straight up ignorance by Oz on Sunday morning, for many, was hard to take.
It's "pretty amazing," said economist Dean Baker on Sunday, "that Dr. Oz doesn't know that people choose their insurance under Obamacare, but no one ever said Dr. Oz knew anything about healthcare."
In an interview with Newsmax earlier this month, Johnson—who has argued that the GOP has reams of policy proposals on the topic—accused Democrats of having no reform solutions to the nation's healthcare crisis other than permanently fighting to save the status quo, including the "subsidizing the insurance companies" which is at the heart of the Affordable Care Act.
Taxpayer subsidies for private insurance giants "is not the solution," Johnson admitted at the time, though his party has refused to offer anything resembling a departure from the for-profit model which experts have demonstrated is the central flaw in the US healthcare system, one that spends more money per capita than any other developed nation but with the worst outcomes.
Meanwhile, as Republicans show in word and deed that they have nothing to offer people concerned about healthcare premiums in the nation's for-profit system, only a relative handful of Democratic Party members have matched renewed focus on the nation's long-simmering healthcare crisis with the popular solution that experts and economists have long favored: a single-payer system now commonly known as Medicare for All.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Senate Democrats, made the demand for Medicare for All a cornerpost of his two presidential campaigns, first in 2016 and then again in 2020. On the heals of those campaigns, which put the demand for a universal healthcare system before voters in a serious way for the first time in several generations, a growing number of lawmakers in Congress embraced the idea even as the party's establishment leadership treated the idea as toxic.
While a 2018 study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst detailed why it is "easy to pay for something that costs less," people in the United States exposed to the arguments of Medicare for All over the last decade a majority have shown their desire for such a system in poll after poll after poll.
A single-payer system like Medicare for All would nullify the need for private, for-profit insurance plans and the billions of dollars in spending they waste each year in the form of profits, outrageous pay packages for executives, marketing budgets, and administrative inefficiences.
Despite its popularity and the opportunity it presents to show the working class that the Democratic Party is willing to turn its back on corporate interests by putting the healthcare needs of individuals and families first, the party leadership continues to hold back its support.
Lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who served as national co-chair to Sanders' second presidential run, has been arguing in recent weeks, amid the government shutdown fight, that Democrats should be "screaming" their support for universal healthcare "from the rooftops" in order to seize on a moment in which voters from across the political spectrum are more atuned than usual to the pervasive and fundamental failures of the for-profit system.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in the US House, on Thursday reiterated her support for universal coverage by saying, "Instead of raising premiums for millions, how about we just get rid of them? Medicare for All!!"
As former Ohio state senator and progressive organizer Nina Turner said on Saturday, "This is a moment to mobilize for Medicare for All."
I went on Fox News to make the case for national health insurance & Medicare for All.
Democrats need to be screaming this from the rooftops. pic.twitter.com/eq9VO0pAxw
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) November 15, 2025
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, another former Sanders surrogate now running for the Democratic nomination in Michigan's US Senate race, has been another outspoken champion of Medicare for All in recent weeks.
"While MAGA slowly suffocates our healthcare system, we’re watching corporate health insurance choose profits—and corporate Democrats capitulating," El-Sayed said last week, expressing frustration over how the shutdown fight came to end. "Who suffers? The rest of us. It’s time for a healthcare system that doesn’t leave our insurance in the hands of big corporations—but guarantees health insurance for all of us."
Following Dr. Oz's remarks on Sunday, El-Sayed rebuked the top cabinet official as emblematic of the entire healthcare charade being perpetrated by the Republican Party under President Donald Trump.
"They think we're dumb," said El-Sayed of Oz's convoluted explanation of direct payments. "They know that no check they send will cover even a month of the healthcare Trump bump we can’t afford—but they think we’re not smart enough to know the difference. Healthcare is becoming unsustainable under Trump. Medicare for All would fix it."
In Maine on Sunday, another Democratic candidate running for the US Senate, Graham Platner, also championed the solution of Medicare for All.
After watching Oz's peformance on CNN, Tyler Evans, creative director who works for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) declared in a social media post: "If we had Medicare for All, you could simply go to the doctor."
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50,000 March in Brazil to Celebrate Death of Fossil Fuel Industry at COP30
"It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
Nov 16, 2025
An estimated 50,000 people took to the streets of Belém do Pará, Brazil, on Saturday to demonstrate outside the halls of the United Nations annual climate summit, holding a "Great People's March" and makeshift "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" as they demanded a just transition toward a more renewable energy system and egalitarian economy.
Organized by civil society organizations and Indigenous Peoples groups from Brazil and beyond, the tens of thousands who marched outside the thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30) summit called for an end to the rapacious greed of the oil, gas, and coal companies as they advocated for big polluters to pay for the large-scale damage their businesses have caused worldwide over the last century.
“We are tens of thousands here today, on the streets of Belém, to show negotiators at COP30 that this is what people power looks like," said Carolina Pasquali, executive director of Greenpeace Brazil, said as the march took hold. "Yesterday we found out that one in every 25 COP30 participants is a fossil fuel lobbyist, proportionally a 12% increase from last year’s COP. How can the climate crisis be solved while those creating it are influencing the talks and delaying decisions? The people are getting fed up–enough talking, we need action and we need it now.”
The report by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition last week showed that at least 1,600 lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry are present at the conference, making it the second-largest delegation overall, second only to Brazil's, the host nation.
"It’s common sense that you cannot solve a problem by giving power to those who caused it," said Jax Bongon from the Philippines-based IBON International, a member of the coalition, in a Friday statement. "Yet three decades and 30 COPs later, more than 1,500 fossil fuel lobbyists are roaming the climate talks as if they belong here. It is infuriating to watch their influence deepen year after year, making a mockery of the process and of the communities suffering its consequences."
While the overwhelming presence of fossil fuel lobbyists has once again diminished hopes that anything worthwhile will emerge from the conference, the tens of thousands in the streets on Saturday represented the ongoing determination of the global climate movement.
João Talocchi, co-founder of Alianza Potência Energética Latin America, one of the key groups behind the "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" portion of the day's action—which included mock caskets for the oil, gas, and coal companies alongside parades of jungle animals, wind turbines, and solar panels representing what's at stake and the better path forward—noted the key leadership of Indigenous groups from across the Global South.
"From the Global South to the world, we are showing what a fair and courageous energy transition must look like," said Talochhi.
Ilan Zugman, director of 350.org in Latin America and the Caribbean, noted the significance of the demonstration, including the symbolism of the funeral procession.
"We march symbolically burying fossil fuels because they are the root of the crisis threatening our lives," explained Zugman. "Humanity already knows the way forward: clean energy, climate justice, and respect for the peoples who protect life. What is missing is political courage to break once and for all with oil, gas, and coal. It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
With the COP30 at its midway point, climate activists warn that not nearly enough progress is being made, with the outsized influence of the fossil fuel industry one of the key reasons that governments, year after year and decade after decade, continue to drag their feet when it comes to taking the kind of aggressive actions to stem the climate crisis that scientists and experts say is necessary.
“We are taking to the streets because, while governments are not acting fast enough to make polluters pay for their climate damages at COP30, extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc across the globe," said Abdoulaye Diallo, co-head of Greenpeace International's "Make Polluters Pay" campaign. "That is why we are here, carrying the climate polluters bill, showing the projected economic damages of more than $5 trillion from the emissions of just five oil and gas companies over the last decade."
"Fossil fuel companies are destroying our planet, and people are paying the price," said Diallo. "Negotiators must wake up to the growing public and political pressure to make polluters pay, and agree to new polluter taxes in the final COP30 outcome."
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'National Security Threat'? 95-Year-Old Human Rights Scholar Richard Falk Interrogated for Hours by Canada
"Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
Nov 15, 2025
Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk—world renowned scholar of international law and former UN special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights—was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation's complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,'” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.
“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation's capital.
The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to "document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require."
In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Falk said he believes the interrogation by the Canadian authorities—which he described as "nothing particularly aggressive" but "random" and "disorganized" in its execution—is part of a global effort by powerful nations complicit with human rights abuses and violations of international law to “punish those who endeavour to tell the truth about what is happening” in the world, including in Gaza.
Martin Shaw, a British sociologist and author of The New Age of Genocide, said the treatment of Falk and Elver should be seen as an "extraordinary development" for Canada, and not in a good way. For a nation that likes to think of itself as a "supporter of international justice," said Shaw, "to arrest the veteran scholar and former UN rapporteur Richard Falk while he is attending a Gaza tribunal. Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds."
Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo, a supporter of the Palestine Tribunal, told Al-Jazeera he was “appalled” by the interrogation.
“We know they were here to attend the Palestine Tribunal. We know they have been outspoken in documenting and publicizing the horrors inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and advocating for justice,” Woo said. “If those are the factums for their detention, then it suggests that the Canadian government considers these acts of seeking justice for Palestine to be national security threats–and I’d like to know why.”
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