5: Donald Trump Leads the War on Truth — but He Didn’t Start It
AS THE FIRST presidential debate looms, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is being billed as something more than red versus blue, rich versus poor, or war versus peace. The election is being billed as something even larger — a national referendum on the nature of truth itself.
The choice, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, is between a respected politician with some regard for the facts, and a “charlatan,” “con man,” and “duplicitous demagogue.” The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and New Yorker have all drawn up detailed anthologies of Trump’s lies. Hopes that the debates’ moderators might call Trump out on his bad facts are looking unlikely to be fulfilled. “What is a big fact? What is a little fact?” Janet Brown, the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates, asked CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday afternoon. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica.”
The Intercept
4: Lawyer for Gitmo Prisoners Released to Uruguay: They Haven’t Seen Their Families in 15 Years
We speak with a lawyer who helped to represent the six Guantánamo prisoners who the U.S. government released to Uruguay, including Jihad Abu Wa’el Dhiab. CUNY law professor Ramzi Kassem has been to Guantánamo about 50 times. He discusses his client Dhiab’s case, what he is asking for and what the situation is overall at Guantánamo. “They’ve been in Uruguay for almost two years,” Kassem says. “And for that entire time, Mr. Dhiab and the other prisoners have been asking this question. You know, when are we going to see our families? Is that going to happen? How is that going to happen?”
Democracy Now
3: Aleppo: Bodies litter floor at makeshift hospital
Hospitals are struggling to cope in Syria’s Aleppo as government and Russian fighter jets continued to pound the city’s rebel-held east, killing more than 200 people in under a week.
Al Jazeera’s Amr al-Halabi, reporting from a makeshift hospital in the city, described a bleak situation as the hospital overflowed with dozens of dead and wounded people.
“Dead people are on the floor of this makeshift hospital,” Halabi said. “The situation here is desperate.”
Bodies littered the ground inside and outside the facility, as volunteers and relatives carried severly wounded people inside, looking for somehere to put them down on a floor already full with air raid victims.
“There is not enough space for us. We have to leave immediately to make more room for those injured,” Halabi said as a stream of ambulances ferried in the dead and wounded, overcrowding hospital wards.
“It looks like judgement day,” he said.
Aljazeera
2: Canada First Nations chief won’t join UK royals for ’empty gesture’ ceremony
One of British Columbia’s most influential First Nations chiefs has turned down an invitation to participate in a reconciliation ceremony with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during their visit to Canada, describing the symbolic ceremony as a “public charade” that papers over the Canadian government’s failure to keep its promises to indigenous peoples.
The Black Rod ceremony is slated to take place on Monday evening, in a private sitting room at the stately Government House in Victoria. Officials have spent more than a year carefully crafting every moment of the ceremony, which will see Prince William add a carved silver ring to the Black Rod, a ceremonial staff created in 2012 to commemorate the Queen’s diamond jubilee.
The staff is currently adorned with three rings, representing the province, Canada and the link to the UK. Prince William is expected to add a fourth ring – engraved with eagle feathers and a canoe – that will symbolise First Nations in the province.
“Reconciliation has to be more than empty symbolic gestures,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs in explaining his decision to decline the royal invitation.
The Guardian
1: Indigenous Man’s Family Call for National Protests Following His Death in Police Custody
A 29-year-old Aboriginal man has died in an Adelaide hospital, following an altercation with five guards while he was being held in remand at South Australia’s high-security Yatala prison.
The incident reportedly occurred around 11:30 AM on September 23, when the man—a member of the Pitjantjatjara and Wiradjuriwas nations—was waiting to make a scheduled court appearance via video link. Later in day—a Friday—the man was transferred to the Royal Adelaide Hospital in a critical condition, where his sister Latoya Rule alleges two prison officers were stationed by his bed, “watching his body.”
The 29-year-old man passed away early Monday morning. Two of the guards involved in the incident were also hospitalised, but have since been discharged.
Correctional Services Minister Peter Malinauskas had alleged the inmate—who is not being named for cultural reasons—attacked the guards, although the minister did not offer an explanation about what could have motivated the violence.
Vice News
