Aijaz Zaka Syed

This article was first published on November 16 2006

That night my editor went down twice to go home and then came back wondering if we, after all, should carry that particular picture on Page One. I didn’t blame him. As editor, he had to keep his readers’ sensitivities and sensibilities always in mind.And that picture of a young Palestinian woman stuffed in the drawer of Beit Hanoun morgue with her two daughters — a toddler and another one and half-year old — lying next to her was too stunning and too disconcerting even for us who are in the business of news and come across scenes of death and destruction almost on a daily basis.

The young mother, Sanah Assamna, looked as if she had just fallen asleep after having lulled her loved ones to sleep. It was just too beautiful and too painful! How could Israel’s brave soldiers kill such lovely and innocent creatures while they slept in the comfort and safety of their homes in Beit Hanoun that Tuesday night?

My boss was right to fret if by splashing such pictures on our front page, we would upset our readers. "We don’t want our readers to stare at dead bodies at their breakfast table, for God’s sake, do we?" shouted news editor from across the newsroom.

"He is right," the editor nodded in agreement. "Although I agree that this is the picture of the day — and very arresting and striking at that, we cannot publish such disturbing scenes of cruelty on Page One."

"But when the guys who are responsible for this depravity against women and children are least embarrassed about it, why should we have any qualms in bringing this to light?" I persisted.

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David Brown

The federal prosecutors of the Obama administration are testing out the legal machinery for using grand jury investigations as a tool for circumventing constitutional protections.

Indefinite Detention Without Trial: Completely Unconstitutional, Yet Routine (AWIP)

After five months in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the political opinions of their acquaintances, Katherine Olejnik and Matthew Duran are to be released from a federal prison in the US state of Washington today. A third man, Matthew Pfeiffer, remains incarcerated in order to “coerce” testimony from him.

Olejnik and Duran have been imprisoned since last September, while Pfeiffer was incarcerated last December. None of the three were accused of any criminal conduct. Instead they have been held on grounds of civil contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. Much of their time in prison was spent under solitary confinement.

Their imprisonment has been at the instigation of federal prosecutors in the Obama administration’s Justice Department. The grand jury was convened to investigate “ongoing violent crime” relating to May Day protests last year in Seattle, during which minor acts of vandalism were committed.

In the case of Olejnik, the grand jury only kept up the pretense of investigating vandalism for four questions before turning the interrogation to the social contacts and political beliefs of people she was suspected of knowing. When she refused to answer questions regarding others’ political beliefs she was thrown in jail.

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Eric Peters

Abuse people and they tend to get angry. Abuse them long enough – without repercussions – and the anger eventually explodes. It is an old lesson, often forgotten. And which must, therefore, often be relearned.

British redcoats were hated for their haughty, contemptuous treatment of colonial civilians. This idea that the wearer of a red uniform was a special – sacred – personage, entitled to deference and different treatment.

In particular, different treatment by the law. What a colonist dare not do, a redcoat could do with impunity. Or at least, without much fear of repercussions. It lead to Lexington and Concord. And to 1776. We are at the same juncture today. Only our redcoats wear black and blue.

In Florida, one of these latter-day redcoats – a state trooper – literally walked away from any responsibility for causing the death of an innocent person (and severely hurting two others) who just happened to be in the way of his grossly negligent and arguably criminal conduct. Here are the facts:

On Feb. 10 of last year, Florida Trooper Detrick McClellan heard a report over his cop radio that some kids were reportedly throwing rocks from an overpass. Though not on-duty, McClellan chose to “respond.” So far, so good.

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