Free At Last

Anonymous declares Day of Action against NDAA (VIDEO)

2012-01-11T12:55:00.001-08:00

Published: 11 January, 2012, 00:10

Anonymous wages attack on NDAA

Time magazine called the protester the person of the year for 2011, but if the US government continues with its campaign against American freedom, defying corruption with demonstration as such will be outlawed in only a matter of time.Concerned over how very real the collapse of the US Constitution is because of Congress’ passing of the National Defense Authorization Act, activists with the online collective Anonymous have proposed a national day of actionagainst the controversial legislation to occur next month.

TAGS: Crime, Protest, Terrorism, Law, Internet,USA

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA, was recently signed off by US President Barack Obama. Under the legislation, the Department of Defense is guaranteed spending appropriations for a 12-month span. Thanks to certain provisions snuck in, however, the US government is granted the powers to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens without charge, essentially creating Guantanamo Prison-style detention possibilities for anyone deemed a threat by American authorities.

Hacktivists had initially proposed a massive campaign against the act for January, but have now moved the protest to launch on February 3.

US President Barack Obama insists that he will not abide by such provisions, although the laws are still written and approved under his own name. Although he could abide by his word and remove himself from endorsing any of the provisions, the fact that the legislation does still for such enforcement does not negate its existence.

"The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield,” says ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero of the dangerous realities promised under NDAA. Even if the president says he will not abide by the powers he has now been bestowed with under the legislation, Romero says that Obama “will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

Activists against the legislation have rallied in opposition since it first moved through Congress. Following Obama’s New Year’s Eve signing, however, widespread disbelief and concern has only increased and now Anonymous is urging Americans to take it to the streets before Congress begins to act on the damning bill

“While we cannot force the American people to protest, we must tell them that this law will trip away any rights they thought they had including but not limited to free speech, free press, free access to information and the right to protest, assemble and bear arms,” recites a digitzed voice in a recent YouTube clip uploaded by an account alleging to be affiliated with the Anonymous collective. The narrator describes that NDAA allows for the government to detain suspects, “even American citizens, without trial” for any allegedly belligerent acts.

“What is a belligerent act?” asks the speaker. “Is protesting a belligerent act? Is being Anonymous a belligerent act? This is where we draw the line.”

“This is when we revolt.”

In a written message that appears in the video, the operative says that the protests will spawn nationally. “Everyone will flood the street. The street is now your place of protest.”

Since NDAA first entered Congress, protests have occurred across America although they have attracted relatively small numbers of participants and have almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media.

Demonstrations were staged outside the White House for several days in a row with a handful of protesters being arrested for their actions.

"We are trying to get word out to the people that they need to petition laws like this," one Anonymous operative participating in the campaign, Operation Blackout, tells RT. "NDAA was passed with minimum media attention, so 'Anons' and [those with the Occupy Wall Street movement] have been dedicated to raising awareness. So far word has spread pretty fast. Now we have to convince those who "represent" us to actually do what they were elected to do."

Even people who've come to me trying to defend NDAA have quickly backed off when they realized exactly what this law means to US citizens," adds the operative.

Previously, hacktivists aligned with the Anonymous collective attempted to wage cyber attacks on the creators and signers of NDAA, going after lawmakers involved in the bill by posting private information on the Web.

“No longer will you enslave the people. The world will know of your violations against the rights of the citizens you were elected to represent,” read a statement from one Anonymous operative at the time.

In recent weeks, a similar online-organized attack against supporters of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, forced in part several major corporations from withdrawing support of the legislation.

US laundered millions for drug cartels

2012-01-11T12:53:00.001-08:00

Marijuana plants are burned during an anti-drug operation in Guatemala (AFP Photo / Getty Images)

TAGS: Crime, Drugs, USA,Government Spending, North America

The Mexican Drug War has so far yielded around 50,000 deaths and has become one of the biggest problems poised on North America during the last century.

It might be a tremendous tally of lost lives, but just as impressive though is the amount of money that the US has invested in the war. Since attempting to cooperate in the battle against dangerous cartels in the south, the United States has moved millions of dollars of narcotics and profits around the world in a money laundering scheme meant to infiltrate the seedy underbelly of Mexico’s drug trade.

What America did, instead, was consequentially fund a deadly campaign that has left a bodycount built with the massacre of thousands of journalists, officers, agents and civilians.

Recent reports obtained by the New York Times reveals that American drug enforcement agents posed as money launderers in an elaborate scheme that was meant to install men within the ranks of the cartels and take them down from the inside. The documents suggest that American agents worked hand-in-hand with Mexican law enforcement officials and a Colombian informant working undercover in 2007 to try to get to the inside. Doing so, they participated in massive felonies, moving millions worth of contraband and cash all over the world.

According to the documents made possible through an extradition order by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, US efforts in conjunction with Mexican and Columbia contacts included a plethora of wire transfers of tens of thousands of dollars at a time and the illegal smuggling of millions of dollars in cold, hard cash. The Times reports that there was also at least one in-depth international incident that led to American agents accompanying a massive coke shipment from Ecuador, into Dallas, Texas and then Madrid,

Five years down the road, however, the Mexican drug war has been incredibly disastrous and all too deadly. While the number of drug war-related deaths in 2007 peaked short of 3,000, that statistic only worsened for the next several years, with 2011 showing the only significant decrease in casualties since then.

Even still, an estimated 12,000 people were killed during the war in 2011 alone.

By 2006, the Mexican drug cartels had already infiltrated American soil, operating out of an estimated 100 US cities. In 2007, the DEA-led initiative attempted to curb that distribution, but two years later the US Department of Justice upgraded the scope of the drug cartels’ presence in the US to 200 diverse markets. Between 2006 and 2007, assaults against Border Patrol agents on the US/Mexican boundary rose by 46 percent, with attacks on US authorities leaving at least two dead on US soil in the two years that followed.

While the DEA was conducting their attempted sting, agents were forced to improvise their moves in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. While one official close to the matter talking on condition of anonymity tells the Times that such stings involve an “enormously complicated undertaking when it involves money laundering, wires, everything,” others add that the massive campaigns that seem to have failed massively required a strategy that left agents scrambling by the seat of their pants.

“The same rules required domestically do not apply when agencies are operating overseas,” Morris Panner of the Center for International Criminal Justice at Harvard tells the Times, “so the agencies can be forced to make up the rules as they go along.”

Panner acknowledges the dangers created by working in such grey territory, adding that “If it’s not careful, the United States could end up helping the bad guys more than hurting them.”

Only less than five years after the operation has ended, America is just seeing by way of the document leak that their attempted investigation might have really been detrimental to their efforts.

How to Start a Revolution: 10 steps | wikiHow

2011-12-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

How to Start a Revolution: 10 steps | wikiHow

Corruption And Election Tricks Are Adding To The U.S.' Energy Troubles

2011-11-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

The Obama administration pulled off a rare trifecta this past week, demonstrating in three separate energy decisions how corruption and election manipulation are killing jobs and restricting the nation’s energy supply, but paying political dividends to our sitting president.

The first example of the administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation occurred last Friday, when it announced that it would decline to make a decision on a proposed pipeline to carry oil from western Canada to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The Keystone XL pipeline would put Americans to work building the pipeline, would create additional jobs along the Gulf Coast where the oil would be refined.

Predictably, environmental activist groups argued against the pipeline, asserting that we should be weaning ourselves off of oil rather than taking steps to make it more available and affordable. They also argued that the production of this particular oil, recovered from oil sands, imposed more environmental damage than oil produced from conventional deposits. China has nevertheless made it clear that if the United States chooses not to purchase the oil, it will, so a U.S. decision not to purchase the oil will do nothing to alleviate oil sands production, even if environmental activist claims against the process are to be believed.

After reviewing the proposal for several months, the Obama administration was scheduled to announce a decision this fall. Instead, the Administration announced last Friday it would wait until after the 2012 elections to decide.

All the facts have been studied and a decision is ripe for the making. So the question is, why the delay? The reason is obvious; a decision on the pipeline might hurt the president’s reelection campaign. Approve the pipeline and anger the president’s liberal base when he most needs its support. Scuttle the pipeline and Republicans have more ammunition to support their claims that the Obama administration is restricting energy supplies and killing jobs.

A major consequence of the Administration playing political games with the timing of its pipeline decision is that Canada could well decide not to wait around indefinitely for a fickle president to determine whether his personal political career is advanced by approving the pipeline. China will take the oil today and will be more than happy to sign a long-term contract for it. Friendship aside, the smart economic move is to secure a buyer when one can, and friendship only goes so far when billions of dollars of sales are at stake – especially when friendship appears to be only a one-way street right now as Obama unnecessarily leaves the Canadians hanging.

Moreover, the president’s political gamesmanship is keeping domestic oil prices high, and killing jobs. Even if the president announces a year from now that he will approve the pipeline (and even if the Canadians are still waiting around for our decision a year from now), the president will have needlessly prolonged unemployment. If approving the pipeline is the right thing to do, there is no reason other than political self-interest not to give the approval now.

The second example of the Obama administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation came to light yesterday, when it was revealed that the Administration pressured Solyndra executives to delay layoffs that were planned for October 2010 until after the November 2010 midterm elections.

Solyndra was preparing to make necessary job cuts in light of its difficulty generating revenue. Rather than allow the company to immediately make a decision that would maximize its chances to eventually balance its books, Obama administration officials used their leverage to push Solyndra to delay necessary cost-saving measures. Delaying necessary cost-saving measures would harm the financial viability of the taxpayer supported company but would avoid an embarrassing news story for the president and his political allies on the eve of an election.

Solyndra indeed held off announcing its job cuts. On the morning after the 2010 midterm elections, Solyndra announced it would lay off 190 workers and close one of its factories. The Obama Energy Department rewarded it by thereafter giving the floundering company millions more taxpayer dollars even though its ultimate fate was by then readily apparent.

Again, as was the case with the Administration’s Keystone XL pipeline decision, the only reason for it to delay was for the president to gain a transitory political advantage. If layoffs needed to be made and a factory needed to be closed to improve the prospects of Solyndra’s survival, delaying such necessary action merely placed the company further at risk of going bankrupt. Despite the fact that these were taxpayer dollars with which the Obama administration was playing politics, it indeed chose to pressure Solyndra to delay implementing action that would have improved the chances of its survival.

Solyndra gave in to the Administration’s pressure and predictably went bankrupt soon thereafter. Solyndra executives will be bailed out in bankruptcy court (especially with taxpayer funded federal loan guarantees backing them up) and the Administration successfully avoided an embarrassing news story on the eve of the 2010 midterm elections. The only losers were the remaining 300 million Americans left on the financial hook for such corrupt political gamesmanship.

The third example of the Obama administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation also came to light this week with advance excerpts of a book written by Peter Schweizer exposing how the Administration is abusing federal energy loan programs to pay off political donors. According to Schweizer, over 80 percent of the billions of dollars distributed under the federal stimulus 1705 Loan Program “went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008.”

“Indeed, at least 10 members of Obama’s finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting your money,” Schweizer added. “At the same time, several politicians who supported Obama managed to strike gold by launching alternative-energy companies and obtaining grants.”

Under normal circumstances there would be a hefty political price to pay for deliberately obstructing an economically necessary pipeline merely for personal political gain, pressuring a company to make financial decisions that make the company more likely to take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with it into bankruptcy, and using federal stimulus dollars to pay off political donors rather than maximize job creation. But government interfering with energy markets is now the rule rather than the exception, and where there is excess government power there is invariably government corruption. As our nation suffers an unnecessary and self-inflicted energy crisis, government corruption of the energy market has apparently become the “new normal.”

U. S. Government May Be Primary Suppliers of Mexican Drug Cartel Guns

2011-11-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.

From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When these soldiers desert, their US-supplied weapons (grenades, sniper rifles, assault weapons, etc.) often accompany them over to the cartels. In 2008 and 2009, 13,792 and 20,530 small arms were exported to Mexico from the US. Over 92% of these arms were civilian legal semi-automatic or non-automatic firearms, a number eerily similar to the debunked 90% number echoed by the ATF. A 2008 State Department memo to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows a $1,000,000 shipment of select fire M4A2 assault rifles to the Mexican Federal Police Force, (AKA Federales) one of the most corrupt Mexican government agencies.

The most recent numbers from 2010 show the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) — the State Department agency responsible for overseeing the exportation of military goods — authorized the transfer of 2.5 million units of small arms, weapon optics, silencers, and related components. In that same year, over 11 million units of ammunition and 127,000 units of explosive ordnance were cleared for exportation to Mexico. This amounted to $25 million worth of small arms, ammunition, and explosives shipped to Mexico authorized by our State Department.

In recent months, allegations have surfaced that the State Department’s US Direct Commercial Sales Program and DDTC may have directly shipped arms to the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s hit squad. The Zetas were at one time trained and supplied with American weaponry by our own 7th Special Forces Group in the early 1990s. These claims against the State Department arose even after the DDTC recognized the Americas Region in 2009 as having the highest rate of unfavorable traces for their Blue Lantern Program. The Blue Lantern Program involves traces performed by the DDTC to ensure exported military weaponry does not end up with an unauthorized nation or organization. For the Americas, 80% of traces where unauthorized end users were identified involved small arms. Data specifically for Mexico was unavailable from the State Department.

From 2008 to 2009, when President Obama entered office, Defense Department expenditures to Mexico have increased from $12 million to $34,000,000 and State Department expenditures increased from $7.2 million to $356 million. While 2010 data is currently unavailable, it appears our foreign aid to Mexico has continued to increase for 2011. These statistics imply the State and Defense Departments may very well be the top suppliers of small arms to Mexico’s drug cartels and not civilians. Only the information obtained from ATF Firearms Traces will tell. However, those records are not public. After the DOJ and the White House knowingly pursued attempts at new gun control legislation, we are left to ask the question; is this just another case of government stupidity or is this something more premeditated?

Join the revolution

2011-11-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

This is why I invite you to join the revolution in whatever constructive way you can. Now is the time to make your voice heard, just as all those protesting right now are doing.

My only bit of wisdom to pass along in this regard is to make sure it's your OWN voice and don't let yourself be played by some organized globalist agenda that now wants to hijack the protests for their own nefarious purposes.

The essence of freedom is LIBERTY, honest money, private property rights and a system of law that applies to everyone.

YES, the globalist bankers are crooks. They probably deserve to be strung up in a public square somewhere, but even such actions should never be taken without due process and a proper trial. What's really wrong with America today is that the criminal elements are running the show, from the White House to Wall Street. And it's time the People demanded that EVERYONE abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. After all, didn't the President swear to protect it when he became President? So why does he now selectively ignore it?

The revolution happening right now is a revolution borne out of frustration, and although it seems to lack focus in the mixed messages heard on the street right now, it will soon coalesce into a call for justice and an end to the systems of tyranny that dominate the American landscape today.

The transition out of freedom and justice will be fraught with violence, I fear, and there will soon be Martial Law declared across our land. Be prepared for what's coming, and have no illusions that the second American revolution is now at our doorstep. I only ask: What will you do with this opportunity? Will you stand for liberty and justice when it really counts?

The second American revolution has begun

2011-11-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

There's a sense of desperation in America today. Their jobs are being exported out of the country, their health insurance is being dropped by employers, their dollars are becoming increasingly worthless with each passing day and their futures don't look very promising. They're angry, frustrated and desperate, so they take to the streets and protest. Occupy Wall Street! Occupy The Fed! Take to the streets!

It's the right thing to do, but what most protesters -- and nearly all Americans -- don't fully grasp is that nearly every powerful institution is a criminal racket. It's not just Wall Street that's operated like a criminal mob, folks: It's the U.S. Congress. It's the health care industry. It's conventional agriculture, the mainstream media, the processed food manufacturers, the government regulators and of course the entire military industrial complex.

Nearly everything around you is a criminal operation. The banks openly steal your homes while laundering money for global drug lords. The U.S. government runs illegal guns into Mexico while allowing cocaine and heroin back into the USA to be sold at pumped-up black market prices. The mainstream media broadcasts outright lies and complete fabrications as if they were fact. Much of modern medical "science" is complete quackery or fiction, funded by corporations for the purpose of expanding corporate power. The local water supply is intentionally contaminated with toxic poisons known as "fluoride," and the local food supply is tainted with other dangerous chemicals like aspartame, MSG and BPA.

Your local hospital is almost certainly involved in a medical racket that seeks to insert high-profit medical procedure charges onto patient bills, and your local nursing home most likely throws granny in the hospital for a few days in order to get triple billing from Medicare upon their return. Doctors prescribe antibiotics because they get kickbacks from the drug companies, and the medical journals are little more than science whores who have been bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. And don't forget vaccines, which have become the pathway through which infectious disease is actually spread among the population using live viruses injected into innocent children (http://www.naturalnews.com/033447_I...).

Wake the heck up, people! Most of modern society is a giant con. Nearly every institution, every mega corporation, every government and nearly every politician or bureaucrat is really just a criminal mobster trying to steal your wealth or gain control over your actions and thoughts. Most institutions actually cause the very things they claim to be fighting against!

The Next American Revolution

2011-11-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

By Mark Alexander

What is the Authority for Rebellion?

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

(PUBLISHER'S WARNING: The following essay may cause heartburn and knee-jerk reactions, especially in those who are predisposed to "give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety." But as Benjamin Franklin concluded, they "deserve neither liberty nor safety." For such feeble souls, Samuel Adams advised, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" For those who are not cast among that faint-hearted lot, please read on.)

I receive hundreds of messages every day from Patriots across the nation. For the last three years, one thematic question has emerged with ever-increasing frequency. To paraphrase that question: "What is the authority to rebel against the central government?"

That question is most often asked by those who have taken their oath of allegiance to our Constitution, particularly active duty, reserve and veteran military personnel. Typical is this note from a disabled combat Patriot this week: "Please clarify for me when my solemn oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND [his emphasis] domestic,' kicks in."

Such questions were once deemed too radical and discordant for consideration in civil discourse. However, as Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution has been all but completely usurped by the rule of men through the Left's so-called living constitution, the frequency and tenor of questions about the future of Essential Liberty for our once-great Republic is propelling them into mainstream debate.

The unfortunate ascension of Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres had a silver lining: It revitalized the spirit of American Patriotism in tens of millions of our countrymen. The imminent threat to Liberty posed by Democratic Socialism is the catalyst driving this great awakening and it is spreading.

To the question of the authority to rebel against government, we turn to the Constitution's guiding document, our Declaration of Independence. It clearly affirms the "unalienable rights" upon which our Constitution was instituted, and those rights supersede the authority of the Constitution itself as they are the inherent rights of man.

This authorizing language reads as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

So, is it time for another American Revolution?

The answer to that question depends upon the answer to a more fundamental question: Is it too late to restore authority of our Constitution? Moreover, will the current dire circumstances result in a sunset or sunrise on Liberty?

In my enthusiastic analysis, the degraded state of the union presents a great opportunity for restoration of Rule of Law, and this sunrise on Liberty is already in progress under the broad heading of the Tea Party movement. Further, having been in close proximity to revolutions on foreign soil, I am intimately aware that restoration (or revolution without shots fired) is a far more desirable path than the violent one -- not that the latter must ever be excluded as an option.

But behind every sunrise is a sunset. As Ronald Reagan warned thirty years ago, when the "Reagan Revolution" temporarily restored our nation's course toward Liberty, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."

Make no mistake; there are formidable obstacles to the restoration of Liberty. The most daunting of these impediments is complacency, the result of either a false sense of comfort, institutionalized ignorance or both. The votes of some 43 percent of Americans have already been co-opted Barack Obama socialist programs and policies. Nonetheless, I still believe that the ballot box is a viable alternative to the bullet box at this juncture. Every effort to work within what remains of our Constitution's framework to restore its Rule of Law, as outlined in The Patriot Declaration must be exhausted.

If the 2012 election cycle does not provide sufficient momentum toward the goal of restored Liberty, there are substantial measures of civil disobedience that can ratchet up the pressure -- measures which will find support among true conservatives in both the House and Senate.

Either way, we face a long, uphill battle. It has taken many years to degrade Rule of Law, and it will take many years to fully restore it.

As for timing, Obama has already dropped a debt bomb on our economy, the goal of which is to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." The greatest systemic risk to Liberty that this act of economic violence poses is the destruction of free enterprise by way of taxation, regulation and insurmountable debt. Accelerating the Left's effort to crush free enterprise, Obama and his Senate majority rejected the House's Balanced Budget Amendment as part of the recent "budget deal" to increase U.S. debt. The result: As of this date, our nation's total outstanding debt is now in excess of our total annual gross domestic product (economic output), for the first time since 1947. Then, most of the debt was associated with WWII. Now most of the debt is associated with socialist spending programs for which there is no constitutional authority.

It should, of course, be the highest aspiration of every Patriot to restore our Constitution's Rule of Law, a fundamental principle of which is the separation of economy and state. But is there still time, and are we sufficiently resolute?

Leading the forces arrayed against us are the statist extremists, the "useful idiots" on the Left who now vilify as "terrorists" those seeking to restore Rule of Law.

In a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting this week hosted by Veep Joe Biden, Demo Rep. Mike Doyle said of the recent budget negotiations, "We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money." Biden, to his everlasting shame, concurred: "They have acted like terrorists."

Biden, Doyle, and the Kool-Aid-drinking legions of the Left are formidable. But history shows that Barack Obama's model for prosperity, is a blueprint for economic collapse, a model that is antithetical to prosperity and ultimately at odds with Liberty.

Patriots, we have an obligation to secure Liberty for our posterity, and in the words of John Adams, "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison dated January 30, 1787: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. ... An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Today, Tea Party "terrorists" should expect no such accommodation, as "honest republican governors" are few and far between.

That same year, Jefferson famously wrote more pointedly to John Adams's son-in-law, William Smith, "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. ... What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Short of the bullet box, it is my fervent prayer that on 6 November 2012, an unprecedented army of American Patriots will use the ballot box to further alter the course of our nation toward Liberty and Rule of Law.

That notwithstanding, American Patriots remain well aware of both the authority for rebellion and more importantly the obligation to overcome tyranny, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. There may come a time to fight, and our Founders wisely extended to us the means for rebellion. We also fully understand the cost outlined in its closing: "For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

We do.

let's get serious obama Legalize Marijuana, End The Budget Crisis

2011-02-16T07:29:00.000-08:00

The government has several reasons to legalize marijuana now. The costs associated with marijuana for the government are huge. A study by Jeffery Miron, a professor at Harvard, said that legalizing marijuana would save the government $7.7 billion a year. Second, legalized marijuana would bring in a large amount of tax revenue. Miron estimated that it would bring in $6.2 billion if it were taxed at the rates of alcohol and tobacco. Next, many studies agree that marijuana is actually safer than alcohol and tobacco. It doesn’t really make sense for marijuana to be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are sitting on shelves in the store. Finally, the prohibition of alcohol should have taught us something. Making it illegal made it much less safe and only served to make organized crime rich. Illegal marijuana is making our government broke and drug dealers rich.

Budget Shortfalls

Right now many states including the one I live in, Tennessee, are having huge budget shortfalls due to the recession. These states have been forced to cut jobs and hours. Some states, like California, are in huge trouble. They are actually shutting down the government for 2 days a month right now to save money. That means less hours for the workers, and inconvenience for everyone in the state. Miron estimates that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion dollars a year by reducing the enforcement and incarceration costs. Legalizing marijuana would allow us to use our police force in ways that are much more helpful to the general population than trying to put Michael Phelps in jail. This budget savings would allow many jobs to be saved around the country.

Increased Tax Revenues

If we were to legalize marijuana, we would add significant taxes to any purchase. The cost would be similar to the current cost, however, the profit would be going to the government in the form of tax revenue instead of to drug dealers. Miron put the estimate at around $6.2 billion dollars. Remember those budget problems I was talking about, this would be a nice windfall that could help save / create more even more jobs. Making marijuana legal would also reduce drug related crime and keep our youth doing legal work instead of being enticed by the huge amounts of money that is made selling drugs.

Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol and Tobacco

Medical experts say that marijuana use is generally safer and less addictive than other legal drugs.

“Is marijuana safer [than alcohol]? The short answer is ‘yes,’” said Dr. Mitch Earleywine, a University of Southern California psychologist who is the author of “Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence” and the just published “Mind-Altering Drugs: The Science of Subjective Experience.” The evidence is clear, he told DRCNet. “Cannabis has no lethal dose, so you can’t die from it. The impact on the brain structure for cannabis is nil, but there can be very serious brain function changes with alcohol abuse. Also, more dramatic liver functions are impaired with alcohol. Malnutrition, B-vitamin deficiency, and Korsakoff’s Disorder are all linked to alcohol, but not cannabis.”

I am certainly not advocating the use of marijuana. I don’t and have never used it. I also don’t drink or smoke. That isn’t the point. The point is that the health effects are similar or less than other legal drugs. It just doesn’t make sense for marijuana to be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are not.

Learn from History, Prohibition Failed

Prohibition was a very interesting social experiment in the United States. It made alcohol illegal. It did not however remove alcohol from America. What it did was make people drink things that were much worse for them. It also made organized crime a lot of money. Does this sound familiar? Marijuana is pretty easily found in the United States right now even though it is illegal, but who knows what else it contains. Drug dealers are getting rich and not paying taxes just like the organized crime did during Prohibition. We could help fix that with the fair tax, but it makes more sense to just take away their illegal income. We have to start learning from history. Prohibition of alcohol was a failure, prohibition of marijuana isn’t working very well either.

Legalize Marijuana, Solve the Budget Problem

Right now we are in a recession. Unemployment is higher than anyone would like it to be. President Obama just signed an almost $800 billion stimulus package into law trying save jobs. We should legalize marijuana and help out some of the many states that are currently having serious budget problems. It would certainly help a lot to have more money coming in and less going out.

Millencolin

2011-02-15T04:38:00.001-08:00

A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History

2011-02-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

CAIRO — As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: “Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas.”

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Ed Ou for The New York Times

Cairo, Feb. 3 After more than a week of unrest, anti-Mubarak protesters clashed with supporters of the president for control of Tahrir Square. When confronting the police, the protesters wore armor made of cardboard and Pepsi bottles.

The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.

They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.

As their swelling protests shook the Egyptian state, they were locked in a virtual tug of war with a leader with a very different vision — Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, a wealthy investment banker and ruling-party power broker. Considered the heir apparent to his father until the youth revolt eliminated any thought of dynastic succession, the younger Mubarak pushed his father to hold on to power even after his top generals and the prime minister were urging an exit, according to American officials who tracked Hosni Mubarak’s final days.

The defiant tone of the president’s speech on Thursday, the officials said, was largely his son’s work.

“He was probably more strident than his father was,” said one American official, who characterized Gamal’s role as “sugarcoating what was for Mubarak a disastrous situation.” But the speech backfired, prompting Egypt’s military to force the president out and assert control of what they promise will be a transition to civilian government.

Now the young leaders are looking beyond Egypt. “Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world,” said Walid Rachid, one of the members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which helped organize the Jan. 25 protests that set off the uprising. He spoke at a meeting on Sunday night where the members discussed sharing their experiences with similar youth movements in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.

“If a small group of people in every Arab country went out and persevered as we did, then that would be the end of all the regimes,” he said, joking that the next Arab summit might be “a coming-out party” for all the ascendant youth leaders.

Bloggers Lead the Way

The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005. Mr. Maher and others organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks, and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally recognized opposition parties. “What destroyed the movement was the old parties,” said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four times.

By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.

After a strike that March in the city of Malhalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6. To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups. Bad weather turned the strike into a nonevent in most places, but in Malhalla a demonstration by the workers’ families led to a violent police crackdown — the first major labor confrontation in years.

Just a few months later, after a strike in the Tunisian city of Hawd el-Mongamy, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia. The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent. “We shared our experience with strikes and blogging,” Mr. Maher recalled.

For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.

The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo — a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist—after Otpor’s, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.

Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp’s work. One of the group’s organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.

“The Academy of Change is sort of like Karl Marx, and we are like Lenin,” said Basem Fathy, another organizer who sometimes works with the April 6 Youth Movement and is also the project director at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which receives grants from the United States and focuses on human rights and election-monitoring. During the protesters’ occupation of Tahrir Square, he said, he used his connections to raise about $5,100 from Egyptian businessmen to buy blankets and tents.

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Moises Saman for The New York Times

Cairo, Feb. 11 Egyptians celebrated the announcement that President Mubarak was stepping down. “Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than a 1,000 people died in this revolution — most of them killed by the police,” an organizer said.

‘This Is Your Country’

Then, about a year ago, the growing Egyptian youth movement acquired a strategic ally, Wael Ghonim, a 31-year-old Google marketing executive. Like many others, he was introduced into the informal network of young organizers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to jump-start its moribund political opposition.

Mr. Ghonim had little experience in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the mainstay of the government’s power. He offered his business savvy to the cause. “I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people to trust the brand,” he said.

The result was a Facebook group Mr. Ghonim set up: We Are All Khalid Said, after a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by police. Mr. Ghonim — unknown to the public, but working closely with Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement and a contact from Mr. ElBaradei’s group — said that he used Mr. Said’s killing to educate Egyptians about democracy movements.

He filled the site with video clips and newspaper articles about police violence. He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: “This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights.” He took special aim at the distortions of the official media, because when the people “distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them,” he said.

He eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of users, building their allegiance through exercises in online democratic participation. When organizers planned a “day of silence” in the Cairo streets, for example, he polled users on what color shirts they should all wear — black or white. (When the revolt exploded, the Mubarak government detained him for 12 days in blindfolded isolation in a belated attempt to stop his work.)

After the Tunisian revolution on Jan. 14, the April 6 Youth Movement saw an opportunity to turn its little-noticed annual protest on Police Day — the Jan. 25 holiday that celebrates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British — into a much bigger event. Mr. Ghonim used the Facebook site to mobilize support. If at least 50,000 people committed to turn out that day, the site suggested, the protest could be held. More than 100,000 signed up.

“I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before,” Mr. Ghonim said.

By then, the April 6 movement had teamed up with Mr. ElBaradei’s supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to plaster Cairo with eye-catching modernist posters advertising their Tunisia-inspired Police Day protest. But their elders — even members of the Brotherhood who had long been portrayed as extremists by Mr. Mubarak and the West — shied away from taking to the streets.

Explaining that Police Day was supposed to honor the fight against British colonialism, Essem Erian, a Brotherhood leader, said, “On that day we should all be celebrating together.

“All these people are on Facebook, but do we know who they are?” he asked. “We cannot tie our parties and entities to a virtual world.”

‘This Was It’

When the 25th came, the coalition of young activists, almost all of them affluent, wanted to tap into the widespread frustration with the country’s autocracy, and also with the grinding poverty of Egyptian life. They started their day trying to rally poor people with complaints about pocketbook issues: “They are eating pigeon and chicken, but we eat beans every day.”

By the end of the day, when tens of thousands had marched to Tahrir Square, their chants had become more sweeping. “The people want to bring down the regime,” they shouted, a slogan that the organizers said they had read in signs and on Facebook pages from Tunisia. Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement said the organizers even debated storming Parliament and the state television building — classic revolutionary moves.

“When I looked around me and I saw all these unfamiliar faces in the protests, and they were more brave than us — I knew that this was it for the regime,” Mr. Maher said.

It was then that they began to rely on advice from Tunisia, Serbia and the Academy of Change, which had sent staff members to Cairo a week before to train the protest organizers. After the police used tear gas to break up the protest that Tuesday, the organizers came back better prepared for their next march on Friday, the 28th, the “Day of Rage.”

This time, they brought lemons, onions and vinegar to sniff for relief from the tear gas, and soda or milk to pour into their eyes. Some had fashioned cardboard or plastic bottles into makeshift armor worn under their clothes to protect against riot police bullets. They brought spray paint to cover the windshields of police cars, and they were ready to stuff the exhaust pipes and jam the wheels to render them useless. By the early afternoon, a few thousand protesters faced off against well over a thousand heavily armed riot police officers on the four-lane Kasr al-Nile Bridge in perhaps the most pivotal battle of the revolution.

“We pulled out all the tricks of the game — the Pepsi, the onion, the vinegar,” said Mr. Maher, who wore cardboard and plastic bottles under his sweater, a bike helmet on his head and a barrel-top shield on his arm. “The strategy was the people who were injured would go to the back and other people would replace them,” he said. “We just kept rotating.” After more than five hours of battle, they had finally won — and burned down the empty headquarters of the ruling party on their way to occupy Tahrir Square.

Pressuring Mubarak

In Washington that day, President Obama turned up, unexpectedly, at a 3:30 p.m. Situation Room meeting of his “principals,” the key members of the national security team, where he displaced Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, from his seat at the head of the table.

The White House had been debating the likelihood of a domino effect since youth-driven revolts had toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, even though the American intelligence community and Israel’s intelligence services had estimated that the risk to President Mubarak was low — less than 20 percent, some officials said.

According to senior officials who participated in Mr. Obama’s policy debates, the president took a different view. He made the point early on, a senior official said, that “this was a trend” that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran. By the end of the 18-day uprising, by a White House count, there were 38 meetings with the president about Egypt. Mr. Obama said that this was a chance to create an alternative to “the Al Qaeda narrative” of Western interference.

American officials had seen no evidence of overtly anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. “When we saw people bringing their children to Tahrir Square, wanting to see history being made, we knew this was something different,” one official said.

On Jan. 28, the debate quickly turned to how to pressure Mr. Mubarak in private and in public — and whether Mr. Obama should appear on television urging change. Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak, and several aides listened in on the line. Mr. Obama did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power. At this point, “the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast,” a senior official said. Mr. Mubarak resisted, saying the protests were about outside interference.

According to the official, Mr. Obama told him, “You have a large portion of your people who are not satisfied, and they won’t be until you make concrete political, social and economic reforms.”

The next day, the decision was made to send former Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to Cairo as an envoy. Mr. Obama began placing calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and other regional leaders.

The most difficult calls, officials said, were with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Mr. Netanyahu, who feared regional instability and urged the United States to stick with Mr. Mubarak. According to American officials, senior members of the government in Saudi Arabia argued that the United States should back Mr. Mubarak even if he used force against the demonstrators. By Feb. 1, when Mr. Mubarak broadcast a speech pledging that he would not run again and that elections would be held in September, Mr. Obama concluded that the Egyptian president still had not gotten the message.

Within an hour, Mr. Obama called Mr. Mubarak again in the toughest, and last, of their conversations. “He said if this transition process drags out for months, the protests will, too,” one of Mr. Obama’s aides said.

Mr. Mubarak told Mr. Obama that the protests would be over in a few days.

Mr. Obama ended the call, the official said, with these words: “I respect my elders. And you have been in politics for a very long time, Mr. President. But there are moments in history when just because things were the same way in the past doesn’t mean they will be that way in the future.”

The next day, heedless of Mr. Obama’s admonitions, Mr. Mubarak launched another attack against the protesters, many of whom had by then spent five nights camped out in Tahrir Square. By about 2:30 p.m., thousands of burly men loyal to Mr. Mubarak and armed with rocks, clubs and, eventually, improvised explosives had come crashing into the square.

The protesters — trying to stay true to the lessons they had learned from Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gene Sharp — tried for a time to avoid retaliating. A row of men stood silent as rocks rained down on them. An older man told a younger one to put down his stick.

But by 3:30 p.m., the battle was joined. A rhythmic din of stones on metal rang out as the protesters beat street lamps and fences to rally their troops.

The Muslim Brotherhood, after sitting out the first day, had reversed itself, issuing an order for all able-bodied men to join the occupation of Tahrir Square. They now took the lead. As a secret, illegal organization, the Brotherhood was accustomed to operating in a disciplined hierarchy. The group’s members helped the protesters divide into teams to organize their defense, several organizers said. One team broke the pavement into rocks, while another ferried the rocks to makeshift barricades along their perimeter and the third defended the front.

“The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood played a really big role,” Mr. Maher said. “But actually so did the soccer fans” of Egypt’s two leading teams. “These are always used to having confrontations with police at the stadiums,” he said.

Soldiers of the Egyptian military, evidently under orders to stay neutral, stood watching from behind the iron gates of the Egyptian Museum as the war of stone missiles and improvised bombs continued for 14 hours until about four in the morning.

Then, unable to break the protesters’ discipline or determination, the Mubarak forces resorted to guns, shooting 45 and killing 2, according to witnesses and doctors interviewed early that morning. The soldiers — perhaps following orders to prevent excessive bloodshed, perhaps acting on their own — finally intervened. They fired their machine guns into the ground and into the air, several witnesses said, scattering the Mubarak forces and leaving the protesters in unmolested control of the square, and by extension, the streets.

Once the military demonstrated it was unwilling to fire on its own citizens, the balance of power shifted. American officials urged the army to preserve its bond with the Egyptian people by sending top officers into the square to reassure the protesters, a step that further isolated Mr. Mubarak. But the Obama administration faltered in delivering its own message: Two days after the worst of the violence, Mr. Wisner publicly suggested that Mr. Mubarak had to be at the center of any change, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that any transition would take time. Other American officials suggested Mr. Mubarak might formally stay in office until his term ended next September. Then a four-day-long stalemate ensued, in which Mr. Mubarak refused to budge, and the protesters regained momentum.

On Thursday, Mr. Mubarak’s vice president, Omar Suleiman, was on the phone with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 2 p.m. in Washington, the third time they had spoken in a week. The airwaves were filled with rumors that Mr. Mubarak was stepping down, and Mr. Suleiman told Mr. Biden that he was preparing to assume Mr. Mubarak’s powers. But as he spoke to Mr. Biden and other officials, Mr. Suleiman said that “certain powers” would remain with Mr. Mubarak, including the power to dissolve the Parliament and fire the cabinet. “The message from Suleiman was that he would be the de facto president,” one person involved in the call said.

But while Mr. Mubarak huddled with his son Gamal, the Obama administration was in the dark about how events would unfold, reduced to watching cable television to see what Mr. Mubarak would decide. What they heard on Thursday night was a drastically rewritten speech, delivered in the unbowed tone of the father of the country, with scarcely any mention of a presumably temporary “delegation” of his power.

It was that rambling, convoluted address that proved the final straw for the Egyptian military, now fairly certain that it would have Washington’s backing if it moved against Mr. Mubarak, American officials said. Mr. Mubarak’s generals ramped up the pressure that led him at last, without further comment, to relinquish his power.

“Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 people died in this revolution — most of them killed by the police,” said Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive. “It shows how civilized the Egyptian people are.” He added, “Now our nightmare is over. Now it is time to dream.”

Timeline: Mubarak’s Presidency

Unrest in Tunisia, Fueled by Facebook

Times Topics

Complete Coverage of the Protests in Egypt »

Egyptian Military Dissolves Parliament (February 14, 2011)
Tunisians Turn to Everyday Matters (February 14, 2011)
Yemeni Youth Square Off With Forces (February 14, 2011)
Iranian Leaders Vow to Crush March (February 14, 2011)
Egypt Erupts in Jubilation as Mubarak Steps Down (February 12, 2011)
Tunisia Leader Flees and Prime Minister Claims Power (January 15, 2011)

Related in Opinion

Cohen: From 9/11 to 2/11 (Feb. 14, 2011)

Video: Tahrir Square, a Forum for All (Feb. 14, 2011)

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Egypt

2011-02-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hosni Mubarak's 30 year regime has ended and power has been handed over to the military. The new rulers say that their rule is temporary and will only last until democratic elections are held - but civil rights groups have say that protesters have been detained and tortured by the army.

Transcript

HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: Now to Egypt's tentative new dawn. After 18 days of pro-democracy demonstrations, President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year regime is over, leaving the military in charge. The generals say their rule is temporary and will only last until democratic elections are held, which could be as soon as six months away.

But with civil rights groups claiming scores of protesters have been detained by the Army and some are being tortured, the question now is whether the military will keep their word. The ABC's Middle East correspondent Ben Knight reports from Cairo.

BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER: The most important thing to know about the Egyptian Army is that apart from being the biggest military force in the Middle East, it's also Egypt's biggest and richest business conglomerate.

Behind the tanks and the guns, it has massive interests in manufacturing, agriculture and real estate. It owns resort hotels and factories that make everything from cars to dishwashers to olive oil.

Some estimates say it makes up more than 10 per cent of the country's economy.

And if these soldiers rise high enough in the ranks, they know they'll be rewarded for their loyalty with a healthy slice of the action.

The military has been the power behind the throne for 60 years.

TARIQ OSMAN, AUTHOR, 'EGYPT ON THE BRINK': People say the regime has fallen. I argue the President has fell; the regime has not. Because the regime that has ruled Egypt for the past 60 years is still, or has been, the military establishment, which continues to control the situation today in Egypt. So effectively the structure's the same.

BEN KNIGHT: And it has the most to lose if Egypt moves to a democratic system of government. So why is it that the Egyptian people are so prepared to let the Army take over their revolution, and why do they trust them to keep their promises? Well, not everyone does.

MOHAMMED SIRAGH: The people lost some confidence in the Army, especially since Wednesday and Thursday when the lynch mob - basically the doors were open for the lynch mob to come and attack the people here in Tahrir (inaudible) and they continued supporting the President until now.

BEN KNIGHT: Mohammed Siragh was helping his fellow protesters clean up Tahrir Square on the weekend, but unlike most of them, he's not planning on leaving just yet.

MOHAMMED SIRAGH: So we wanna see the process beginning so that we have tranquillity in our hearts, that we can leave (inaudible). Everyone knows that if anything goes wrong or if they try to do any snake work, we're gonna come right back.

BEN KNIGHT: It's hard to overstate just how popular the Army is in Egypt. Most importantly, it's never turned its guns on the people, and in the Middle East, that's a proud claim to make. Egyptians have long felt that if their government ever turned on them, it would be the Army that saves them. So when the police disappeared from the streets in January and the Army arrived, they were welcomed as heroes.

These are the real men, the biggest sacrifices. The heroes.

BEN KNIGHT: Some individual soldiers even joined the protests. But the beginning of the end for Hosni Mubarak was when the Army commanders publicly supported the people's demands and promised not to fire on them. Now, it's over, and long-time democracy activists like Hisham Kassem still can't quite believe it's happened.

HISHAM KASSEM: I'm still absorbing it. I still am. I choke sometimes when I think about it. Amazing. I've always worked hard for this, but today, for the first time in my life, I'm proud to be Egyptian. I really am. I love the way we did it. Peaceful.

BEN KNIGHT: Hisham Kassem was the publisher of Egypt's largest daily newspaper until 2006, but for 20 the years he's been one of the few vocal opponents of the Mubarak regime. So, does he trust the Army to keep its word?

HISHAM KASSEM: I do, yes. The only other option is bloodshed. If the military try and stay in power, you know, as a de facto governing council, my forecast or my analysis, definitely not. It's too much, it's not something anybody can handle, you see? It just won't pass by. Egypt has changed after January 25.

BEN KNIGHT: But the Army's leadership has not. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi is 80 years old, and as head of the Army, he also chairs the military council that will now rule Egypt until it holds democratic elections. Again, he seems an unlikely choice. Leaked cables have described him as Mubarak's poodle, resistant to change and without the energy or world view to do anything other than maintain the status quo.

Yet four times in the past week, he's promised the Egyptian people that all of their demands will be met and on time.

Tariq Osman believes the Army will simply be unable to go against the momentum for change.

TARIQ OSMAN: It is supported by tens of millions in the massive block, demographic block of the Egyptian middle class; a clash, even if it's only psychological clash between the military and these aspirations of the millions of the middle class, in my view is unlikely.

BEN KNIGHT: Egyptians might seem comfortable with the huge change they're about to undertake, but some of their neighbours are not. In Israel, the talk has all been about what happens when the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood becomes the next ruling party of Egypt.

HISHAM KASSEM: I can't tell you how much time I spent explaining, OK?, to different American administrations, diplomats, etc. that that is not the case, that the Brotherhood have been trying to get to power for 82 years and they have failed. That they are there because Mubarak is preventing people like me from going out on the streets, OK? That they're working through mosques. Mubarak was not able to close mosques so that became the clear, visible opposition of Mubarak.

BEN KNIGHT: But he says Israel can stop worrying that its peace treaty with Egypt is about to be torn up.

HISHAM KASSEM: We will prove to the world, OK?, that this is not a radically Islamic country, that we refuse to be identified politically as Muslims, OK? This is our religion, not our political affiliation. And, um, ah, I guess that's the only way we're going to defuse that fear.

BEN KNIGHT: But for Egyptians like Mohammed Siragh, the focus will be much closer to home.

MOHAMMED SIRAGH: And so we wanna make sure that the corruption is not going to seep back in and destroy what we've done so far. So we wanna maintain our strength and momentum to make sure that nothing will seep through the cracks.

The Protests

2011-02-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, erupted in mass protests on Jan. 25, 2011, as the revolution in Tunisia earlier in the month seemed to inflame decades worth of smoldering grievances against decades of heavy-handed rule by President Hosni Mubarak. After a week of mass protests, Mr. Mubarak said he would not seek reelection but refused to step down. His government has appeared to be trying to wait the protesters out, offering a reform plan that consists of minor concessions. But the protesters, having beaten back an attempt by armed pro-government supporters to drive them from Cairo's Tahrir Square, managed to keep the movement's momentum going. On Feb. 10, the armed forces signaled they would intervene "to protect the nation,'' but in an address that night Mr. Mubarak appeared to cling to office, saying he would remain while reforms were undertaken during the remainder of his term. More than 300 people are estimated to have died in Egypt since the turmoil began, according to human rights groups.

Feb. 10

Egypt's armed forces said they had begun to take measures to "protect the nation,'' creating a supreme military council. But in a late-night address to the nation, Mr. Mubarak unexpectedly refused to budge, saying he would stay on through the end of his term.
Labor strikes and worker protests flared across Egypt, affecting post offices, textile factories and even the government’s flagship newspaper, providing a burst of momentum to protesters, even as the government pushed back with greater force against their demands.
Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit dismissed calls by Egyptian protesters and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scrap the country’s emergency laws, which allow the authorities to detain people without charges.

Feb. 9

Inspired in part by the emotional televised interview with Wael Ghonim, the largest crowd of protesters in two weeks occupied Tahrir Square, surrounded the Egyptian Parliament and staged sporadic demonstrations and strikes in several Egyptian cities.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have pressed the United States not to throw its weight behind the democracy movement in a way that could further destabilize the region, diplomats said.

Feb. 8

As the authorities and protesters struggle to grasp the see-sawing initiative in the 15-day-old revolt, the government unveiled new pledges of reform, but demonstrators gathered in ever greater numbers to reject anything less than the president’s immediate ouster.
In a live television interview after his release from an Egyptian prison, the Google executive Wael Ghonim acknowledged that he was one of the people behind the anonymous Facebook and YouTube campaign that helped galvanize the protest that has shaken Egypt for the last two weeks.
Slide Show: Young Egyptians Spread Their Message

comments

2011-02-10T18:44:00.001-08:00

comments are welcome from your friendly neighborhood punker!!!

Mubarak must leave !!!

2011-02-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 4, 2011

After supporting him with money and weapons for 30 years, the United States and all democracies must insist that Hosni Mubarak heed the voices of his young citizens who call for him to step down immediately and spare Egypt further bloodshed and economic loss.

The young Egyptians who have dug their heels deep into Cairo's Tahrir Square were born during Mubarak's three decades in power. They have known no other president and face a bleak future under his corrupt rule. Inspired by recent events in Tunisia, they finally took to the streets to seek change. Though Mubarak vowed this week to finally step down in September, few believe him, and with good reason: He has reneged on every election promise for political reform made since coming to power in 1981. Only hours after offering this "concession," Mubarak unleashed thugs and provocateurs on unarmed protesters amassed in Tahrir Square. At least five demonstrators were killed and hundreds injured. This followed reports that convicts have been released or escaped from prison, adding to the insecurity and violence on the streets of Cairo.

A president who would condone these crimes against his people and deny all cellphone and Internet access across the country has lost any semblance of credibility. For the vast majority of Egyptians, this is simply the last straw. When Mubarak became president after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, he vowed to serve only one six-year term. But he has ruled under a "state of emergency" since those chaotic days. Emergency laws enabled him to suspend the rule of law and bypass Egypt's esteemed judiciary. He has systematically eliminated, harassed or defamed any potential alternative to his leadership. He has rigged elections, silenced dissidents and prohibited even small political rallies. He has beaten and jailed democracy activists and sent civilians to military courts. He tightly controls the media and has cracked down hard on young bloggers. (I was tried and convicted in absentia on charges of "defaming Egypt's reputation" for writing on this page in 2007 in support of democratic change.)

Mubarak has continued Sadat's economic liberalization to an open-market economy, but much of the benefits of growth have been skewed toward a narrow group of elites. Corruption around the president's family is legendary and on par with that which toppled Tunisia's Ben Ali ruling family. Meanwhile, roughly a fifth of the Egyptian people live in poverty, and the once-vibrant middle class cannot afford a decent education or the skyrocketing costs of housing, or find jobs.

Mubarak claims he is proud of his record of service and vows to "die on the soil of Egypt." He will allow the country to descend into chaos rather than leave and allow us to rebuild our land. As I write, my wife is reporting sounds of gunfire from several districts in Cairo. We propose a solution to this impasse: In return for Mubarak resigning from the presidency immediately, the United Nations and Western powers could ensure him and his family safe passage to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he spends most of his time anyway. He could avoid prosecution by agreeing to return the wealth his family has amassed during its years in power.

According to the Egyptian constitution, the recently appointed vice president would become the interim president until scheduled elections in September. The prime minister has vowed to find and prosecute those responsible for violent attacks of the past 48 hours. He should be supported in restoring law and order and getting the economy back on its feet. He must rapidly bring the brave young protesters into a broad-based national dialogue, along with members of opposition groups, the media, clean elements within the business community and civil society leaders.

With concerted efforts among the reform elements in Egypt and leaders of Western democracies, this scenario could be the way out from today's perilous situation. Egypt's instability threatens peace and stability across the region. Barack Obama and his European counterparts face a moment of truth: They can move rapidly to support the democracy activists who are putting their lives on the line in Tahrir Square, or history may never pardon them.

What The "Do Nothing" Obama Has Accomplished That We Choose To Ignore Or Fail To Acknowledge

2011-02-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

There is a rising chorus of impatient progressive bloggers, some on these pages, calling Obama a failure and a do-nothing president only nine months into his first of four years as president. SNL's "do-nothing skit" on Obama may well have empowered some on our side to start playing on the fringes of the Limbaugh sandbox. While the charges and name-calling are not as vicious as the Limbaugh Lemmings, it has started nonetheless.

So what has our newly-minted asshole president been doing for nine months?

Let's start with what he has not done. He has not found a cure for cancer, reversed climate change, ended poverty, brought peace to the Middle East, ended all wars, created enough new jobs, or created a single-payer healthcare system. These are big ticket items that no president will ever accomplish, so it is a little disingenuous to suggest a standard for Obama that does not apply to all past presidents or to future presidents. As Princeton economics professor Alan Blinder says in assessing what Obama has accomplished so far, "If he seems to have achieved little, it's partly because he set out to do too much." To which I would add, and we created an unrealistic agenda for what we wanted him to accomplish.

Let's continue with what he has done. First and foremost, none other than the Wall Street Journal, in an assessment titled, "Democrats Quiet Changes Pile Up", says he has accomplished more in nine months than George Bush did in his first nine months.

Let's be specific:

1. Significantly, he buried the Imperial Presidency of George Bush and restored the Constitutional balance of government by respecting the equal standing of the legislative branch of government. As a former constitutional law professor, this is a major matter of change of tone and style that he promised during the campaign, and he has delivered. (Not pretty or necessarily effective given the Reid-less leadership in the Senate, but we are a constitutional democracy.)

2. Passed and signed the stimulus package, the biggest piece of legislation--ever--in blinding speed, thus being able to start to stabilize the economy, with GDP now projected to grow at the rate of 3 percent by the end of the year. Check the comeback of your 401K since Obama has taken over.

3. Stabilized the top 20 banks without federalizing them.

4. Reduced the rate of foreclosures inherited from the Bush administration.

5. Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that makes it easier to sue for wage discrimination, a dramatic reversal of the bill's fortunes under Bush.

6. Granted regulatory power to the FDA to control tobacco products, another dramatic reversal of the Bush years that industry has lobbied hard to prevent.

7. Signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Act that expanded federal hate crime protection to categories of sexual orientation and gender, to the major consternation of the Religious Right.

8. Killed the F-22 fighter jet program, a popular program with Congress, saving billions of dollars.

9. With a stroke of a pen, enacted, ~~by executive order~~, (see correction below in comments, it was a bill signing) the largest conservation measure in 15 years, spanning the Bush and Clinton records.

10. Implement an electronic medical record system before any healthcare legislation was introduced. This new technology will be singularly responsible for saving lives and reducing the high administrative costs of healthcare, a key element of reform.

11. Extended a $2500 tax credit to 5 million families to help with college tuition.

12. Cooperated with Japan in bringing a $5 billion stabilization package for Pakistan.

13. Engaged the Muslim world in a dialogue, beginning with his unprecedented speech in Cairo, followed by an interview with Al Arabiya, and face-to-face discussions with Iran, a total reversal of the Bush years of Muslim baiting and hate.

14. Dramatically reversed the reputation of the United States around the world, with now most nations looking favorably on the US, and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as one consequence.

15. Agreed to plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq, at a slower pace than what he promised, but based on knowledge that commanders-in-chief, not candidates, have.

16. Brought the White House online, doing for the White House what he had done for political campaigning. There are now online Q&A's with the administration, and a White House blog.

17. Released the names of all visitors to the White House, a total reversal of the secret Bush years.

18. Told Mexico that the US is responsible for some of their drug problems, a no small, but truthful admission.

19. Restored the rights of states to regulate the medical use of marijuana without fear of federal law enforcement intrusion.

20. Banned the use of torture, and he has begun a complete review of the torture policies under Bush.

21. Appointed the first Latina to the Supremes: Imagine what would have happened to the Supreme Court under four more years of radical Republicans. Obama has thus averted a long-term dramatic swing to the extreme right on the court, and appointed a progressive to keep matters in check.

In summary, and to those on these pages and elsewhere who see things differently, I say this feels a little like Waiting for Godot. Let's recall one thing that Samuel Beckett said in the mischievous play:

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased."

Read the update post here.

Read the second update post here.

OK For Republicans - But Not Democrats

2011-02-01T13:13:00.001-08:00

Political Cartoon is by Jim Morin in the Miami Herald.
Link to original post

Why We Should Care

2011-02-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

The Covert Kingdom -- Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Texas
But until progressives come to understand what [fundamentalists] read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.

Estimate of Political Strength

2011-01-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

The best way to estimate the strength of the theocratic right is to go to their organizations and see how they rate our legislators. To view how Christian Coalition rates the U.S. Congress, click here; the Eagle Forum, click here. To view the scorecards of the most powerful organization of the theocratic right, the Family Research Council, click here.

The magazine Campaigns and Elections has published two studies evaluating the relative strength of the Religious Right in state Republican Parties. The studies were directed by John C. Green, professor of political science and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at The University of Akron.

The color-coded maps to the right demonstrate a shift from the year 1994 (top) to the year 2000 (bottom). Red is strong, green moderate, and yellow weak. The study's conclusion:

"In 2000, Christian conservatives were perceived to hold a strong position in 18 state Republican parties, the same number as in the 1994. The moderate category had 26 states, exactly twice the 1994 number. And the weak category declined to seven cases, down from 20 six years prior. Clearly, the biggest change was the increase in the moderate category, but there was considerable movement in all categories."

This link provides the chart by states produced by the above study.

The Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 107th Congress, was intended to bypass campaign finance reform and allow houses of worship to collect money for political campaigns. It was drafted with help the American Center for Law and Justice, a law school founded by Pat Robertson. These contributions would have been both anonymous and tax exempt. This bill was lobbied for intensively by virtually all the key organizations of the theocratic right, and opposed by a strong coalition of mainline religious groups. It was defeated in the House of Representatives on October 3, 2002, thereby denying unrestricted campaign contributions to be made through the collection plate.

Because most groups except the theocratic Right opposed the bill, it was a good measure of their numbers in the House in 2002. Roughly 43% of those who voted supported the bill (178 for, 239 against). Candidates backed by the theocratic Right won 18 new seats in the House of Representatives in 2002. The bill was re-introduced in January, 2003. It is in the House Ways and Means Committee with 160 sponsors.

From Church and State, February, 2004:

The North Carolina congressman has been successful at garnering more support for the new bill, which like its predecessor was written with the help of ACLJ attorneys. The measure, which is pending in the House Committee on Ways and Means, has more than 160 cosponsors, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Legislative staff at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as well as other public interest groups, believe the bill is gaining momentum and that its chances for being approved by the House are greater each day.

The Hostettler bill, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 23, 2004, indicates the strength of the religious right. While media attention focused on the two-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court by its Chief Justice Roy Moore, little, if any attention was focused on a House measure that passed by a vote of 260 - 161. The Hostettler bill blocks the federal government from spending any tax funds to enforce the 11th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals order to have the monument removed. During floor debate, the author of the bill insisted that Congress has the power to curb the courts. This bill is an assault on an independent judiciary.

From Church and State on the Hostettler bill:

One Alabama newspaper blasted the amendment. Calling the move "outrageous and wholly unconstitutional," The Tuscaloosa News editorialized July 30, "While the amendment can and certainly should be stripped from the bill in the Senate, Hostettler's move shows that the same kind of blatant disregard of the law that Moore is trading in back here in Alabama is also current in Washington. That his ploy is not likely to stand does not make it any less outrageous."

Who Is The Theocratic Right?

2011-01-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

Americans United has compiled a very good guide to the Religious Right.

Here's a longer answer: This site is not about...

This site is not about religion. Many religious leaders, including those from mainline Christian churches, are deeply concerned about the religious right. The Interfaith Alliance, for example, "is a nonpartisan, clergy-led grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the positive, healing role of faith in civic life and challenging intolerance and extremism."

This site is not about Christianity. The theocratic right does not view mainline Christians as true Christians. Some call this movement the "Christian right," but there are many Christians who consider themselves at the right wing of the political spectrum, but don't necessarily support the agenda of the theocratic right. Likewise, many people identify themselves as "Christian" and "conservative," but don't support the goals of the religious right.

The term Evangelical should not be used as synonymous with the theocratic right. Evangelicals cover the whole political spectrum. Former President Jimmy Carter, America's first evangelical Christian president, still teaches Sunday school at his Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. He said in an interview with The American Prospect, April 5, 2004:

When I was younger, almost all Baptists were strongly committed on a theological basis to the separation of church and state. It was only 25 years ago when there began to be a melding of the Republican Party with fundamentalist Christianity, particularly with the Southern Baptist Convention. This is a fairly new development, and I think it was brought about by the abandonment of some of the basic principles of Christianity.

This site is not about Republicans. To quote a highly respected, very conservative Republican, former presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater,

Our problem is with ... the religious extremists ... who want to destroy everybody who doesn't agree with them. I see them as betrayers of the fundamental principles of conservatism. A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means. (1994)

From another seasoned Republican to whom Goldwater spoke those words, Bill Rentschler,

Prepare yourself, fellow Americans, for historic change, the most dramatic and far-reaching change in your lifetime, a sweeping metamorphosis that may alter radically the distinctive, time-honored structure of the fabled American experiment, which has endured for most of the last 225 years.

The Republican Main Street Partnership, is a group of GOP moderates that includes Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Gov. George Pataki of New York, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. Salon claims moderate Republicans are feeling desperate.

It's no wonder moderates are feeling desperate. After all, a faction within their own party is fighting to purge them -- and that faction includes some of the nation's most powerful Republicans.

This site is about...

While this site is not about Republicans, it is about Republican strategists who target people of a certain faith as a way to expand the base of their party, and about a very specific group of religious leaders who are using the Republican Party as a way to gain dominion over society. As explained by journalist and author Chris Hedges:

This movement is a hybrid of fundamentalists, Pentacostals, Southern Baptists, Conservative Catholics, Charismatics and other evangelicals, all of whom are at war doctrinally, but who nonetheless share a belief that America is destined to become a Christian nation, led by Christian men who are in turn directed by God...Lately the leaders of the movement have even begun to reach out to Mormons.

America becomes, in this militant biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America's Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan.

Glenn Beck, Defender Of Agnosticism

2011-01-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

You see that "Question with boldness" Jefferson quote at the beginning of the Beck/Palin video? Here's Jefferson's full remark:
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

That's right. In a video in which he claims that God founded America, Glenn Beck references a quote in which our most important Founding Father stood tall and proud for agnosticism, and against the politics of fear.

Awesome.

War on Secular Society

2011-01-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

"We need to find ways to win the war" Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist, and deputy chief of staff told a gathering of the Family Research Council in March, 2002. The Family Research Council is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations of the theocratic right today. Rove wasn't talking about the war on terrorism. He was talking about the war on secular society.

The Reverend Tim LaHaye co-authored Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium, published in 2000. The best-selling book issues a call to arms for evangelical Christians to battle against secular humanism. Mind Siege declares that secular humanism is a "religion," and issues marching orders to evangelical Christians to gear up for an all-out battle to root secular humanists out of public life; their bottom line is that "No humanist is fit to hold office."

LaHaye, best known for the Left Behind series, was one of the founders of the Moral Majority. He first declared war on secular humanism in 1980 with his widely read book, The Battle for the Mind, in which he claims that evangelicals need to become politically involved to fight the great evil, secular humanism, that is threatening to destroy America.

Paul Weyrich said in a talk:

"The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society."

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, explained the nature of the war on secularism in 1991 at a Christian Coalition Road to Victory gathering:

"It's going to be a spiritual battle. There will be Satanic forces.... We are not going to be coming up just against human beings, to beat them in elections. We're going to be coming up against spiritual warfare."

Robertson named his enemies in a 1992 newsletter, Pat Robertson Perspective. The list includes, among others, the National Organization for Women, the National Education Association, the National Council of Churches, the Gay-Lesbian Caucus, as well as People for the American Way, and Americans United for a Separation of Church and State. They are lumped together as the "Radical Left."

"The strategy against the American Radical Left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific... Bypass their strongholds, then surround them, isolate them, bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat. The battle for Iwo Jima was not pleasant, but our troops won it. The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant either, but we will win it." (from the book, Pat Robertson, The Most Dangerous Man in America? by Rob Boston).

Noting that the country is facing a war in Iraq, Alabama Governor Bob Riley declared,

"There is another war going on in this country. This one is far more insidious. It's one that you just can't go and attack. It's a war for the absolute soul of this country."

Gov. Riley was Speaking to the Alabama Christian Coalition's "Friends of the Family" Celebration, March 8, 2003. Gov. Riley has asked his political allies to enlist in a crusade to restore the Christian character of America.

Rev. D. James Kennedy, pastor at the 9,000 member Coral Ridge Presbyterian and founder of the Reclaiming America for Christ movement reaches a viewing and listening audience of about 3.5 million people every Sunday morning. He talks about going beyond the destruction of the Berlin Wall to battering down

"the even more diabolical 'wall of separation' that has led to increasing secularization, godlessness, immorality, and corruption in our country."

"God has called us to engage the enemy in this culture war. That is our challenge today." Kennedy wrote in Character & Destiny: A Nation In Search of Its Soul, (Zondervan Publishing House, 1997). In the same book he states:

"How much more forcefully can I say it? The time has come, and it is long overdue, when Christians and conservatives and all men and women who believe in the birthright of freedom must rise up and reclaim America for Jesus Christ." (written with Jim Nelson Black)

If the theocratic right is waging war, they also see themselves as victims. From Federal Judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, April 26, 2005:

"These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud."

Church and State reported, April, 2003:

"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is helping a controversial Religious Right group raise money to defeat a so-called 'war on Christianity' in America and preserve the nation's alleged "Christian heritage."

DeLay endorsed a campaign by the Rev. Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), which claimed in a fund-raising letter that it will raise $12.6 million to

"stop the all-out assault on Christians being waged by our government, by America's educational institutions, by the media and throughout popular culture." (To read a current fundraising letter by TVC, click here.)

War on Christians, Alternet, March 17, 2006:

According to the Revealer : "'The War on Christians' conference is coming to D.C., featuring a modified-A-list of conservative heavyweights organized by Vision America, including Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, Sen. John Cornyn, Phyllis Schlafly, Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Tom DeLay, as well as some Jews..."

Justice Sunday II, according to The American Prospect, was nothing less than an effort to "reinforce a sense of victimhood:"

...as speaker after speaker hammered on the theme of oppression of Christians by a shadowy liberal establishment, it became clear that, like many of the sermons, books, and articles written by leaders of the Christian right, the real purpose of "Justice Sunday II" was to reinforce a sense of victimhood among the broadest possible swath of American Christians.

Funding the Culture Wars by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy provides a detailed account of who provides the money for the culture wars and where it is going. (January, 2005)

Richard Viguerie, who pioneered direct mail fundraising for the theocratic right, spoke on December 15, 2004, to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. He talked about how people of his belief have been attacked and victimized by secular society.

From the Reverend Rod Parsley, a rising star of the Religious Right speaking at a "War on Christians" Conference held in Washington, D.C, March, 2006:

"We are at a point of crisis. Our culture is in chaos. The moral foundations, once constructed by the tenets of our faith, are quickly crumbling around us, with no sign of a cure."

At a Washington, D.C., gathering in late March sponsored by his Vision America organization, the Texas preacher and an array of invited speakers spent hours blasting the alleged enemies of Christianity and arguing that to save America from moral ruin more evangelicals needed to get politically active.

Dominion Mandate

The term dominion means control over, in this case control over all the democratic institutions in this country. Sara Diamond in her book Road to Dominion is credited with recognizing dominion as a political goal. She defines Dominion Theology in an article for Z Magazine in 1985:

Christians are mandated to gradually occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.

"Our aim," according to Pat Robertson at a banquet in 1984, "is to gain dominion over society." The path to dominion was made clear when Robertson told the Denver Post in 1992 that his goal was to "take working control of the Republican Party."

Katherine Yurica's article, The Despoiling of America provides a comprehensive overview of Dominionism, the Bush administration, and the Neoconservatives.

Authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell have written an influential textbook for Christian schools titled America's Providential History.

"The Puritans are prime representatives of this "spirit of dominion... They recognized the scriptural mandates requiring Godly rule, and zealously set out to establish that in all aspects of society."

Dominion theology provides the theological rationale for a "Christian" nation. John F. Sugg writes in the Weekly Planet, Tampa, Florida, March 2004:

Dominion theologians ... preached ... that it was Christians' job to take over the world and impose biblical rule. Christ would not return, they said, until the church had claimed dominion over all of the world's governments and institutions ...

In 2000, the Republican Party of Texas declared that it "affirms that the United States is a Christian nation." Last month, [February 11, 2004,] that sentiment reached the national level. The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 would acknowledge Christianity's God as the "sovereign source" of our laws. It would reach back in history and reverse all judicial decisions that have built a wall between church and state, and it would prohibit federal judges from making such rulings in the future.

An article appeared in Harper's, March, 2003 called "Jesus Plus Nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats" by Jeff Sharlet. While the term "dominion" isn't used, the goal is the same. Says Sharlet, the ultimate goal of the Family is "a government built by God," which is by definition a theocracy.

Sharlet's article, Inside America's most powerful megachurch, along with Chris Hedges' Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters, make up a two-part series called Soldiers of Christ. (Harpers, May, 2005) Sharlet's description of the New Life Church in Colorado springs illustrates how the dominionism movement is organized socially.

What is Dominionism? Palin, the Christian Right, & Theocracy

2011-01-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin is a "Dominionist" with an apocalytic End Times theological viewpoint that sees the war in Iraq as part of God's plan. More on the End Times in the next post. Let's talk about Christian Right Dominionism and tendencies toward authoritarian theocratic governance.

With a number of bloggers calling Sarah Palin a "Dominionist," it is a good idea to clear up some obvious errors in the use of terminology.

Neither Sarah Palin nor her Protestant church affiliated with the Assemblies of God should be described as practicing a form of "Dominion Theology" or "Christian Reconstructionism." That is just plain wrong.

It is fair to suggest that Palin displays the tendency called "Dominionism" in some of her public statements.

As one of the authors who popularized the term "Dominionism" (along with Sara Diamond, and Fred Clarkson), I feel some obligation to clear up this confusion, which stems from some very sloppy research posted on a number of websites where the terms "Dominionism," "Dominion Theology," and "Christian Reconstructionism" are used improperly and interchangeably.

"Christian Reconstructionism" is a form of "Dominion Theology" that influenced a tendency toward "Dominionism" in the Christian Right and certain evangelical churches such as The Assemblies of God. But, lumping of these theologies together is neither accurate, nor fair.

How did this confusion get started?

In a September 1994 plenary speech to the Christian Coalition national convention, Rev. D. James Kennedy said that "true Christian citizenship" involves an active engagement in society to "take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God." Kennedy's remarks were reported in February 1995 by sociologist and journalist Sara Diamond, who wrote that Kennedy had "echoed the Reconstructionist line."

More than anyone else, it was Sara Diamond who popularized the term "dominionism," using it to describe a growing political tendency in the Christian Right. It is a useful term that has, unfortunately, been used in a variety of ways that are neither accurate nor useful. Diamond was careful to discuss how the small Christian Reconstructionist theological movement had helped introduce "dominionism" as a concept into the larger and more diverse social/political movements called the Christian Right.

Dominionism is therefore a tendency among Protestant Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists that encourages them to not only be active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God.

This highly politicized concept of dominionism is based on the Bible's text in Genesis 1:26:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (King James Version).

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" (New International Version).

The vast majority of Christians read this text and conclude that God has appointed them stewards and caretakers of Earth. As Sara Diamond explains, however, some Christian read the text and believe, "that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns." That, in a nutshell, is the idea of "dominionism."

Just because some critics of the Christian Right have stretched the term dominionism past its breaking point does not mean we should abandon the term. And while it is true that few participants in the Christian Right Culture War want a theocracy as proposed by the Christian Reconstructionists, many of their battlefield Earth commanders are leading them in that direction. A number of these leaders have been influenced by Christian Reconstructionism, which is a variant of theocracy called "theonomy."

William Martin is the author of the 1996 tome With God on Our Side, a companion volume to the PBS series. Martin is a sociologist and professor of religion at Rice University, and he has been critical of the way some critics of the Christian Right have tossed around the terms "dominionism" and "theocracy." Martin has offered some careful writing on the subject. According to Martin:

"It is difficult to assess the influence of Reconstructionist thought with any accuracy. Because it is so genuinely radical, most leaders of the Religious Right are careful to distance themselves from it. At the same time, it clearly holds some appeal for many of them. One undoubtedly spoke for others when he confessed, 'Though we hide their books under the bed, we read them just the same.' "

According to Martin, "several key leaders have acknowledged an intellectual debt to the theonomists. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy have endorsed Reconstructionist books."

Before he died in 2001, the founder of Christian Reconstuctionism, R. J. Rushdoony, appeared several times on Christian Right televangelist programs such as Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the program hosted by D. James Kennedy, writes Martin.

"Pat Robertson makes frequent use of 'dominion' language" says Martin, "his book, The Secret Kingdom, has often been cited for its theonomy elements; and pluralists were made uncomfortable when, during his presidential campaign, he said he 'would only bring Christians and Jews into the government,' as well as when he later wrote, 'There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.' "

Martin also points out that "Jay Grimstead, who leads the Coalition on Revival, which brings Reconstructionists together with more mainstream evangelicals, has said, 'I don't call myself [a Reconstructionist],' but 'A lot of us are coming to realize that the Bible is God's standard of morality . . . in all points of history . . . and for all societies, Christian and non-Christian alike. . . . It so happens that Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and North understood that sooner.' He added, 'There are a lot of us floating around in Christian leadership James Kennedy is one of them-who don't go all the way with the theonomy thing, but who want to rebuild America based on the Bible.'"

So let's choose our language carefully, but let's recognize that terms such as "dominionism" and "theocracy," when used cautiously and carefully, are appropriate when describing anti-democratic tendencies in the Christian Right.

"Dominionism" as a Term or Description

The term "dominionism" is used different ways by different people. When new terms are developed, that is to be expected. If we are to use words and phrases to discuss ideas, however, it pays to be on the same page concerning how we define those terms. This is especially true in public debates.

In her 1989 book Spiritual Warfare, sociologist Sara Diamond discussed how dominionism as an ideological tendency in the Christian Right had been significantly influenced by Christian Reconstructionism. Over the past 20 years the leading proponents of Christian Reconstructionism and dominion theology have included Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, and Andrew Sandlin.

Diamond explained that "the primary importance of the [Christian Reconstructionist] ideology is its role as a catalyst for what is loosely called 'dominion theology.'" According to Diamond, "Largely through the impact of Rushdoony's and North's writings, the concept that Christians are Biblically mandated to 'occupy' all secular institutions has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right." (italics in the original).

In a series of articles and book chapters Diamond expanded on her thesis. She called Reconstructionism "the most intellectually grounded, though esoteric, brand of dominion theology," and observed that "promoters of Reconstructionism see their role as ideological entrepreneurs committed to a long-term struggle."

So Christian Reconstructionism was the most influential form of dominion theology, and it influenced both the theological concepts and political activism of white Protestant conservative evangelicals mobilized by the Christian Right.

But very few evangelicals have even heard of dominion theology, and fewer still embrace Christian Reconstructionism. How do we explain this, especially since our critics are quick to point it out?
The answer lies in teasing apart the terminology and how it is used.

Christian Reconstructionism is a form of theocratic dominion theology. Its leaders challenged evangelicals across a wide swath of theological beliefs to engage in a more muscular and activist form of political participation. The core theme of dominion theology is that the Bible mandates Christians to take over and "occupy" secular institutions.

A number of Christian Right leaders read what the Christian Reconstructionists were writing, and they adopted the idea of taking dominion over the secular institutions of the United States as the "central unifying ideology" of their social movement. They decided to gain political power through the Republican Party.

This does not mean most Christian Right leaders became Christian Reconstructionists. It does mean they were influenced by dominion theology. But they were influenced in a number of different ways, and some promote the theocratic aspects more militantly than others.

It helps to see the terms dominionism, dominion theology, and Christian Reconstructionism as distinct and not interchangeable. While all Christian Reconstructionists are dominionists, not all dominionists are Christian Reconstructionists.

A nested subset chart looks like this:
---Triumphalism
---------Dominionism
---------------------Dominion Theology or Theocracy
----------------------------------Theonomy
----------------------------------------------Christian Reconstructionism

The specific meanings are different in important ways, although the terms have been used in a variety of conflicting ways in popular articles, especially on the Internet.

In its generic sense, dominionism is a very broad political tendency within the Christian Right. It ranges from soft to hard versions in terms of its theocratic impulse.

Soft Dominionists are Christian nationalists. They believe that Biblically-defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. They fear that America's greatness as God's chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals. Purists want litmus tests for issues of abortion, tolerance of gays and lesbians, and prayer in schools. Their vision has elements of theocracy, but they stop short of calling for supplanting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Hard Dominionists believe all of this, but they want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. For them the Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely addendums to Old Testament Biblical law. They claim that Christian men with specific theological beliefs are ordained by God to run society. Christians and others who do not accept their theological beliefs would be second-class citizens. This sector includes Christian Reconstructionists, but it has a growing number of adherents in the leadership of the Christian Right.

It makes more sense to reserve the term "dominion theology" to describe specific theological currents, while using the term "dominionism" in a generic sense to discuss a tendency toward aggressive political activism by Christians who claim they are mandated by God to take over society. Even then, we need to locate the subject of our criticisms on a scale that ranges from soft to hard versions of dominionism.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates

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Theocracy is derived from the two Greek words Qeo/j(Theos) meaning "God" and kra/tein (cratein) meaning "to rule." The Reverend Rod Parsley, a champion of theocracy, or what he calls a "christocracy," told his congregation at the World Harvest Church, located just outside Columbus, Ohio, "Theocracy means God is in control, and you are not." more

The theocratic right seeks to establish dominion, or control over society in the name of God. The late D. James Kennedy, former pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries, called on his followers to exercise "godly dominion ... over every aspect ... of human society." At a "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference in February, 2005, Kennedy said:

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

Twenty-five years ago, dominionists targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could advance their agenda. At the same time, a small group of Republican strategists targeted fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches to expand the base of the Republican Party. This web site is not about traditional Republicans or conservative Christians. It is about the manipulation of people of a certain faith for political power. It is about the rise of dominionists in the U.S. federal government.

Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself. more

According to acclaimed journalist and television host Bill Moyers,

"True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals ... it's the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on." more

(To read the rest of the Home Page that was on this site before the 2006 midterm elections, click here.)

Back from the Brink

Before the midterm elections of 2006, dominionists controlled both houses of the U.S. Congress, the White House and four out of nine seats on the U.S. Supreme Court. They were one seat away from holding a solid majority on the Supreme Court. As of January 1, 2007, dominionists will not control the leadership of either house of Congress, and the President will no longer be able to so easily appoint dominionists to the federal courts.

Five of the Republican Senators who were unseated on November 7 received whopping scores of 100% from the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family Voter Scorecards. Those Senators are: Conrad Burns (R-MT), George Allen (R-VA), Rick Santorum (R-PA), James Talent (R-MO), and Mike DeWine (R-OH). Rick Santorum was the number three ranking Republican in the party. Santorum and Allen both had Presidential ambitions. (FRC and FOF are the most politically influential of dominionist organizations.) For more discussion of the elections go to Talk To Action.

Where do we go from here?

Dominionists were very close to controlling all three branches of the federal government from which they could impose their narrow interpretation of scripture on the rest of society. People so close to full political power are not going to go away. The American people need to maintain vigilance and understand the history of how dominionists came to political power. And we need to embrace democracy with a passion -- for it was voter apathy that allowed leaders like Pat Robertson to get so many dominionists elected to Congress in the first place.

by cberlet

Bush Vetoes Bill Banning Torture

2008-03-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," the president said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it."

The bill provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and includes the interrogation requirement. It passed the House in December and the Senate last month.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence, and raise the country's moral standing abroad.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would work to override Mr. Bush's veto next week. "In the final analysis, our ability to lead the world will depend not only on our military might, but on our moral authority," said Pelosi, a California Democrat.

But based on the margin of passage in each chamber, it would be difficult for the Democratic-controlled Congress to turn back the veto. It takes a two-thirds majority, and the House vote was 222-199 and the Senate's was 51-45.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Mr. Bush often warns against ignoring the advice of U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq. Yet the president has rejected the Army Field Manual, which recognizes that harsh interrogation tactics elicit unreliable information, said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

"Democrats will continue working to reverse the damage President Bush has caused to our standing in the world," Reid said.

"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. "We will not stop until (the ban) becomes law."

Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Bush "will go down in history as the torture president" for defying Congress and allowing the CIA to use interrogation techniques "that any reasonable observer would call torture."

"The Bush administration continues to insist that CIA and other nonmilitary interrogators are not bound by the military rules and has reportedly given CIA interrogators the green light to use a range of so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, and exposure to extreme cold," Daskal said. "Although waterboarding is not currently approved for use by the CIA, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to take it off the table for the future."

In a statement on Friday, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said, "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."

He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear."

The intelligence bill would limit CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.

President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency. ... It will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world.

Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Mr. Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialized interrogation procedures" that the military does not need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield," while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.

"We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland," Mr. Bush said. "If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives."

The CIA director said in a memo Saturday to agency employees that it is not a choice between a "blanket application of the Army Field Manual or the legalization of torture."

The manual "does not exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques," Mike Hayden wrote. "There are methods in CIA's program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, (that) are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law, and are most certainly not torture."

He said military and intelligence missions are different. Hayden described the CIA program as a "tightly controlled and carefully administered national option that goes beyond the Army Field Manual" and has been a "lawful and effective response" to the threat of terrorism. "It will continue to be so as we work within the boundaries established by our nation's laws," he wrote.

The 19 interrogation techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual include the "good cop/bad cop" routine; making prisoners think they are in another country's custody; and separating a prisoner from others for up to 30 days.

Among the techniques the field manual prohibits are:

hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes.
stripping prisoners naked.
forcing prisoners to perform or mimic sexual acts.
beating, burning or physically hurting them in other ways.
subjecting prisoners to hypothermia or mock executions.

It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

But waterboarding is the most high-profile and contentious method in question.

It involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world and human rights organizations as torture.

The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 includes a provision barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees, including CIA prisoners, in U.S. custody. Many people believe that covers waterboarding.

There are concerns that the use of waterboarding would undermine the U.S. human rights efforts overseas and could place Americans at greater risk of being tortured when captured.

The military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006 and says it has not been used since three prisoners were subjected to it in 2003.

But while some Bush administration officials have questioned the current legality of waterboarding, the administration has refused to rule definitively on whether it is torture. Mr. Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture.

The White House says waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA.

"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Mr. Bush said.

Meanwhile, Newsweek reported earlier this week that the Canadian government is refusing to use testimony from alleged al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in its prosecution of two terror suspects, because the testimony was acquired during CIA interrogations in which Zubaydah was waterboarded.

Newsweek quotes a Canadian spokesman as saying that the director of the nation's intelligence service finds torture "morally repugnant and not particularly reliable," and that information obtained through torture is not knowingly used.

Iraqi Civilians Experience September 11th

2008-03-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting Statistical Comparisons

Every 9.74 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th.

There are 9.53 Virginia Tech shootings in Iraq & Afghanistan every day.

There is on average 305 daily civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 14 days, as many Iraqi and Afghani civilians are killed as the entire amount of American military personnel killed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Note: There is some discrepancy between various sources on the amount of civilian casualties since the US-led invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan. A study in October of 2006 listed over 650,000 killed (see Washington Post article below) while other sources vary from over 1 million to just over 80,000 (see British-government funded Iraq Body Count below). I computed 400,000 Iraqi civilian fatalities and 45,000 Afghani civilian fatalities by averaging several sources, though I personally feel these are conservative estimates.

Update: The differing methodologies among these studies led to these wide variations. For example, the lowest figure from IBC is based solely on media reports of violent deaths, while the Lancet study surveyed random families in Iraq and includes non-violent war related deaths, such as those dead to lawlessness and collapsed infrastructure.

Raw Data: 400,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths, 45,000 Afghani Deaths, 4,208 US Deaths in Iraq (3,972 of which are US armed forces and 236 private contractors), 415 US Deaths in Afghanistan, and 2,974 September 11th Deaths.

Sources: Deadly Hubris: A million Iraqis dead — for what? By Justin Raimondo. http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=163051

How Many Iraqis Have Really Died? By Diane Farsetta. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77992

Forgotten victims by Jonathan Steele, the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,718647,00.html

September 2007 – More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered. Opinion Research Business, http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78.

Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan

Casualties of the Iraq War, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003

Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation, Antiwar. http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 by David Brown, Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

Iraq Body Count, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.

Where Does Barack Obama Stand on the Issues?

2008-02-12T07:25:00.000-08:00

Where Barack Obama Stands on Education:

The failure of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind program has education at the forefront of American's minds. Obama thinks that the choice between pouring in more money or mandating more tests and standards is not a good representation of our only options.

To attract and inspire better teachers, he introduced the Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act, which rewards school districts for implementing new and effective methods for improving student achievement and giving raises to teachers who perform well.

To assist disadvantaged children, he sponsored the Summer Term Education Programs for Upward Progress (STEP UP) Act to offer grants for summer learning programs.

To help make college education more affordable, Obama's very first bill was designed to increase the Federal Pell Grant limit from $4,050 to $5,100.

Education Voting Record:

· Yes on the After School Funding Amendment
· Yes on the Education Funding Amendment
· Yes on the Education Amendment
· Yes on the Elementary and Secondary Education Amendment
· Yes on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Amendment
· Yes to Increase the Maximum Federal Pell Grant Amendment

Where Barack Obama Stands on Health Care:

Health care has been an ever-worsening crisis in the United States through several presidential terms. Obama is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and has made affordable, quality health care a top priority. Obama's Hospital Quality Report Card Act would require hospitals to track and report on their quality of care, including safety and timeliness on treatment and services, thus giving consumers greater choice and the information needed to make important healthcare decisions.

To combat medical errors and excessive costs due to outdated technology, he proposed the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program Efficiency Act.

His website lists some startling facts about children's exposure to lead poisoning that has inspired him to introduced two bills to address the issue: the Lead Poisoning Reduction Act and Lead Free Toys Act. These aim to reduce the large amount of lead found in many child care centers and children's toys.

Poor community planning can endanger children and citizens through lack of sidewalks and safe places to play. Obama's Healthy Places Act requires communities to evaluate how new projects and policies would effect the health of community members.

Obama has been traveling inside and outside of the United States to promote HIV testing and expand AIDS research and treatment. He collaborated with other officials to introduce the Microbicide Development Act. Microbicides are topical ointments that women can use to prevent the transmission of various infections, including HIV.

Health Care Voting Record:

· Yes on the Stem Cell Research Bill
· Yes on the Unintended Pregnancy Amendment
· Yes on the Teen Pregnancy Education Amendment
· Yes on the Medicaid Generic Drug Amendment
· Yes on the Hurricane Health Care for Survivors Amendment
· Yes on the Medical Assistance and Prescription Drug Amendment
· Yes on the AIDS Drug Assistance Program Amendment
· No on the Medicaid Amendment
· Yes on the Medicare Part D Amendment
· Yes on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Amendment
· Yes on the Prescription Drug Plan Amendment
· Yes on the Medicare Premiums Amendment
· Yes on the Prescription Drugs Amendment
· Yes on the Influenza Vaccine Injury Compensation Amendment

Where Barack Obama Stands On National Security and Foreign Affairs:
Obama has been a very vocal opponent of the Iraq War, having voted against it from Day 1. In November 2005 he publicly called for "(1) a reduction in the number of U.S. troops; (2) a time frame for a phased withdrawal; (3) the Iraqi government to make progress on forming a political solution; (4) improved reconstruction efforts to restore basic services in Iraq; and (5) engaging the international community, particularly key neighboring states and Arab nations, to become more involved in Iraq." In January 2008 he introduced an alternative to President Bush's plan. which would reduce American troops in Iraq and pass more responsibility to the Iraqi government.

Together with Senator Richard Lugar, Obama traveled to the Soviet Union and spearheaded an initiative (signed into law in January 2007) which seeks to reduce conventional weapons caches before they fall into the hands of terrorists. It also assists nations with the detection and destruction of weapons of mass destruction before they are smuggled across their borders.

He introduced initiatives to stabilize the Democratic Republic of Congo and end the genocide in Sudan. His efforts included visiting refugee camps in Darfur and meet with Sudanese officials.

He introduced legislation to mandate evacuation plans for people with special needs during emergencies.

He assisted with the creation of legislation aimed at securing United States chemical plants, regulating spent nuclear fuel, requiring nuclear power plants to immediately inform the government about radioactive substance leaks, and preventing attacks on drinking water systems.

National Security and Foreign Affairs Voting Record:

· Yes on the Transit Security Amendment
· Yes on the Defense Department FY 2007 Authorization Bill
· Yes on the Emergency Supplement Appropriations Act, 2006
· Absent/Not Voting on the 2005 Future Military Funding for Iraq Amendment
· Yes on the Homeland Security Grant Program Amendment
· Yes on the Price-Gouging During Emergencies Amendment
· Yes on the Judicial Review of Detainees Amendment
· No on the Detainees at Guantanamo Bay Amendment
· No on the Media in the Middle East Amendment
· Yes on the Reporting Matters in Iraq Amendment
· Yes on the Immigration Reform Bill
· Yes on the Secure Fence Act of 2006
· No on the English as National Language Amendment
· Yes on the Oversight of CIA Interrogation and Detention Amendment
· Yes on the Cluster Munitions Amendment
· No on the 2006 Troop Redeployment Amendment
· Yes on the Security of Cargo Containers Amendment
· Yes on the FEMA Amendment
· No on the CAFTA Implementation Bill

Where Barack Obama Stands On Family Issues:
Obama's website notes that "Children without fathers in their lives are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison." In order to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, enforce child support, and combat domestic violence, he collaborated with Senator Evan Bayh to sponsor the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act.

He presented legislation aimed at lowering the income limit on the Child Tax Credit, allowing 600,000 more families to qualify.

His STOP FRAUD Act is the first federal bill designed to curb and criminalize mortgage fraud.

Family Affairs Voting Record:
· Yes on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program Amendment
· No on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Funding Amendment
· No on the Death/Estate Taxes and Minimum Wage Bill of 2006
· Yes on the 2005 Minimum Wage Amendment
· No on the Child Custody Protection
· Yes on the Child Safety Lock Amendment (concerns firearms)
· No on the Same Sex Marriage Resolution

A review of voting records and sponsored legislation also shows Barack Obama involved in improving benefits and programs for United States Veterans, eliminating barriers to voting, cultivating alternative energy resources, and advocating for transparency and accountability in politics.

It is critical that voters understand a candidates platform compared to his or her voting history in order to see if they consistently put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Use this summary to determine if Barack Obama truly represents you as a voter.

CNN debunks false report about Obama

2008-02-07T17:42:00.001-08:00

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa. (Watch video of Obama's school Video)

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

The Insight article was cited several times Friday on Fox News and was also referenced by the New York Post, The Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News and a number of political blogs. (Watch how the Obama "gossip" spread Video)
School not a madrassa

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.

Barack Obama Pledge

2008-02-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: The Great Need of the Hour

2008-02-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates of Jericho, they could not enter. The walls of the city were too steep for any one person to climb; too strong to be taken down with brute force. And so they sat for days, unable to pass on through.

But God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city, and on the seventh day he told them that when they heard the sound of the ram's horn, they should speak with one voice. And at the chosen hour, when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

There are many lessons to take from this passage, just as there are many lessons to take from this day, just as there are many memories that fill the space of this church. As I was thinking about which ones we need to remember at this hour, my mind went back to the very beginning of the modern Civil Rights Era.

Because before Memphis and the mountaintop; before the bridge in Selma and the march on Washington; before Birmingham and the beatings; the fire hoses and the loss of those four little girls; before there was King the icon and his magnificent dream, there was King the young preacher and a people who found themselves suffering under the yoke of oppression.

And on the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today:

"Unity is the great need of the hour" is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome.

What Dr. King understood is that if just one person chose to walk instead of ride the bus, those walls of oppression would not be moved. But maybe if a few more walked, the foundation might start to shake. If a few more women were willing to do what Rosa Parks had done, maybe the cracks would start to show. If teenagers took freedom rides from North to South, maybe a few bricks would come loose. Maybe if white folks marched because they had come to understand that their freedom too was at stake in the impending battle, the wall would begin to sway. And if enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

We have an empathy deficit when we're still sending our children down corridors of shame - schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education.

We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can't afford a doctor when their children get sick.

We have a deficit in this country when there is Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others; when our children see nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree today, in the present, in the twenty-first century.

We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities; when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans serve tour after tour of duty in a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged.

And we have a deficit when it takes a breach in our levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that God calls on us to feed; the sick He calls on us to care for; the least of these He commands that we treat as our own.

So we have a deficit to close. We have walls - barriers to justice and equality - that must come down. And to do this, we know that unity is the great need of this hour.

Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we've come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We've come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily - that it's just a matter of a few ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our problems would be solved.

All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price.

But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart - that puts up walls between us.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot stop there. It is not enough to bemoan the plight of poor children in this country and remain unwilling to push our elected officials to provide the resources to fix our schools. It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed reforms. It is not enough for us to abhor the costs of a misguided war, and yet allow ourselves to be driven by a politics of fear that sees the threat of attack as way to scare up votes instead of a call to come together around a common effort.

The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country's ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.

And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today. The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges, and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip.

That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words - words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity - the hard-earned unity - that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope - the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.

The stories that give me such hope don't happen in the spotlight. They don't happen on the presidential stage. They happen in the quiet corners of our lives. They happen in the moments we least expect. Let me give you an example of one of those stories.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She's been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.

And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.

And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.

And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope - but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone

In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.

So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.

2008-01-30T19:18:00.000-08:00

NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-01-30T19:09:00.000-08:00

Six years of illegal US detentions

2008-01-14T21:13:00.000-08:00

On the sixth anniversary of the US detention centre at Guantánamo, thousands of Amnesty International members and supporters are taking action around the world calling on the US government to end illegal detentions at Guantánamo and elsewhere.

This anniversary is not just about Guantánamo. The detentions there are only one part of the unlawful detention policies and practices that the US government has adopted since 11 September 2001 in the name of counter-terrorism and national security. These include secretly transferring detainees between countries (“renditions”), holding them in secret detention sites and subjecting detainees to interrogation techniques and conditions that amount to torture or other ill-treatment.

Amnesty International was one of the first to call for the closure of the Guantánamo detention facility. New voices have taken up the demand each year as more and more people have come to recognize the unlawfulness of the detentions.

Today, more than 1,200 parliamentarians from countries including the UK, Japan, Israel, Bahrain and Germany, are joining Amnesty International in its call on the USA to end all its illegal detentions and either to charge detainees with recognizable crimes and bring them to trial in civilian courts, or release them in a way that guarantees respect for their human rights.

As Amnesty International enters a year of activities to celebrate 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we focus on what remains to be done in order to make the promise of universal, indivisible human rights a reality.

Guantánamo is a symbol of injustice and abuse. Secret detention, torture, renditions, and indefinite detention without charge flout basic human rights principles and jeopardize rather than promote security.

Justice for the victims of terrorism lies in full and open trials for anyone against whom there is evidence of involvement in such crimes. Justice for detainees and their families lies in full access to due process and remedies for human rights violations. Long-term security will not be achieved without justice and respect for the human rights of all.

Today is not a day of passive remembrance but one for action: governments and citizens across the world should call on the US authorities to bring their detention policies and practices into line with international law.

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2007-12-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

Please give comments! Say hi tell me who you are and if you enjoy my site and or what i can do to make it better..........................................................................thank you all

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IRAQ A COLONY OF THE U.S.

2007-12-13T04:34:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure that I’ve read a more sickening document than the one that was released by the White House yesterday entitled ‘Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America’. Encapsulated in this document is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US.

Far from ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people from the ‘yoke of tyranny’ for them to become a ‘free and democratic’ model to which all other Middle Eastern states could aspire, which was the propaganda and rhetoric used by the neoconservatives that convinced the Coalition of the Willing that Iraq was a ‘noble and righteous cause’, the declaration instead condemns Iraq to an endless occupation designed to enhance the power of the elite puppets of Iraq, and to ensure that Iraq’s resources remain firmly under American control and enriching American controlled oil companies. In short, the document is the instrument by which Iraq has effectively become a colony of the US.

There are several iniquitous points made in the document that betray the real intent of the administration but, in particular, point five of the second principle relating to ‘the economic sphere’ which says: “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq,” and point eight which says: “Supporting the Republic of Iraq to obtain positive and preferential trading conditions for Iraq within the global marketplace including accession to the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status with the United States,” says it all.

Iraq’s puppet leaders have signed over Iraq to the US.

2007-12-08T16:19:00.001-08:00

C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations

2007-12-08T09:41:00.001-08:00

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by President Bush and Congress. It was not clear who within the C.I.A. authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The New York Times informed the C.I.A. on Wednesday evening that it planned to publish an article in Friday’s newspaper about the destruction of the tapes. Today, the C.I.A. director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote a letter to the agency workforce explaining the matter.

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

Mr. Moussaoui’s lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Mr. Moussaoui — showing that the Al Qaeda detainees did not know Mr. Moussaoui and clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.

General Hayden’s statement said that the tapes posed a “serious security risk,” and that if they were to become public they would have exposed C.I.A. officials “and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers.”

“What matters here is that it was done in line with the law,” he said. He said in his statement that he was informing agency employees because “the press has learned” about the destruction of the tapes.

General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.

“This is a matter that should have been briefed to the full Intelligence Committee at the time,” an official with the House Intelligence Committee said. “This does not appear to have been done. There may be a very logical reason for destroying records that are no longer needed; however, this requires a more complete explanation. “

Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” his statement read

In October, federal prosecutors in the Moussaoui case were forced to write a letter to the court amending those C.I.A. declarations. The letter stated that in September, the C.I.A. notified the United States attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., that it had discovered a videotape documenting the interrogation of a detainee. After a more thorough search, the letter stated, C.I.A. officials discovered a second videotape and one audio tape.

The letter is heavily redacted and sentences stating which detainees’ interrogations the recordings document are blacked out. Signed by the United States attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the C.I.A.’s search for interrogation tapes “appears to be complete.”

There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that C.I.A. officials destroyed in 2005. Mr. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said the destruction of the tapes could carry serious legal penalties.

“If anybody at the C.I.A. hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute,” he said.

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and C.I.A. officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

He said the worries about the impact a leak of the tapes might have in the Muslim world were real.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves near-suffocation. But C.I.A. officers judged that the release of photos or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.

“People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power,” the official said.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.

Mr. Holt said he had been told many times that the C.I.A. does not record the interrogation of detainees. “When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said ‘What tapes?’,” he said.

Concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War

2007-12-06T03:42:00.000-08:00

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007--there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.

Baloney.

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the “suicide epidemic”. Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone “THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR.”

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the “official” 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”

Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.

It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.

Check it out the video at: CBS News “Suicide Epidemic among Veterans”

How dead are the Bill of Rights?

2007-12-04T20:48:00.000-08:00

1st Amendment:	no establishment of religion	20% dead	Lemon v. Kurtman Test is appropriate though religious fanatics on local level increasingly ignoring the law.
1st Amendment	free exercise of religion	80% dead	Employment Division v. Smith allows government to regulate religion to enforce a compelling state interest.
1st Amendment	free speech	70% dead	5 major areas of exceptions now exist; as well as time, place and manner rules; and special context rules.
1st Amendment	free press	10% dead	Courts often use gag orders to prevent news coverage of trials.
1st Amendment	right to assemble/petition	70% dead	HUD Housing efforts
2nd Amendment	right to bear arms	90% dead	Crime Bill of 1994 banned 19 types of semi-automatic rifles.
3rd Amendment	no quartering of soldiers	0% dead
4th Amendment	no searches without warrants	100% dead	Limited by definition of reasonable expectation of privacy; 11 exceptions to warrant requirement; and United States v. Leon good faith rule. *In 1995, Congress completely obliterated this Amendment. It no longer has any force and effect.
5th Amendment	Grand jury indictment required	0% dead	* 0%, but grand juries are now usually stacked with pro-prosecution regulars who do not know how to exercise their rolls as grand jurists.
5th Amendment	no double jeopardy	80% dead	The Wheeler and Heath cases allow prosecution by the Feds and multiple states while the Blockburger line of cases allows multiple prosecutions resulting from the same conduct.
5th Amendment	privilege against self-incrimination	40% dead	The Schmerber and Muniz cases have reduced this protection to only the extremely limited category of testimonial evidence.
5th Amendment	due process	100% dead	Expanded way beyond original intent to create bureaucratic nightmare. * Made more evident when in 1996, the Supreme Court allowed all regions of government to seize property without any due process and allowed the ignorance of the 'can not take private property without compensation' clause.
6th Amendment	speedy trial	90% dead	Under Barker v. Wingo Test defendants have been made to wait as long as seven years before trial takes place.
6th Amendment	right to jury (criminal case)	30% dead	Batson line of cases places rights of jurors over the fair trial rights of defendants.
6th Amendment	confrontation by witnesses	100% dead	Maryland v. Craig allows witnesses to testify from other rooms or even on videotape without any chance to cross examine.
6th Amendment	right to counsel	10% dead	Applies only in cases where actual incarceration is imposed.
7th Amendment	right to jury (civil case)	0% dead
8th Amendment	no cruel or unusual punishment	100% dead	Expanded by liberals well beyond its intended meaning, which has resulted in codling criminals.
8th Amendment	no excessive bail or fines	100% dead	Both excessive fines and bail are regularly used now.
9th Amendment	nondisparagement clause	100% dead	Expanded by liberals well beyond its intended meaning.
10th Amendment	reserved powers clause	100% dead	Garcia v. San Antonio Metro Transit Authority killed the 10th Amendment, and all hopes for control over congressional power.

U.S vs. U.S. vs. United States

2007-12-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

Few Americans realize that There are three definitions for the "United States". Most have been misled to believe that the term "United States" has a single meaning and is a generic term referring to the country as a whole. Not always so. The legal standing of each individual American to any one of the three varies depending on his lack of status or his status in law. If you are a citizen of the District of Columbia (the Democracy) you have privileges granted by congress--Or, if you are a Citizen of the Union (the Republic) you are endowed with Rights --some of which are unalienable. All licenses are privileges whereas Rights are gifts from God. Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition at page 1703 defines the term as follows, "UNITED STATES". This term has several meanings. (1) It may merely be the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. (2) It may designate territory over which sovereignty of the United States extends; or, (3) it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution. " Hooven & Allison Co. vs Evatt, 65 S.Ct. 870, 880, 324 U.S. 652, 89 L. Ed. 1252."

The first (1) "United States" is as a sovereign among the nations of the World under International Law (a nation amongst nations). It consists of (1) the Union States and (2) the federal zone (District of Columbia, U.S. territories and possessions, forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings), and is represented collectively in the international arena by the U.S. Consuls abroad as one and the same entity. The flag that properly represents it in the world arena is "Old Glory".

The second (2) "United States in Hooven, supra, was created by the Constitution in Art. 1 ,Clause 8, Cls. 17 and 18. This "second United States" received further authority when under Art. 4, Clause 3, C1. 2, "to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the territory or other Property belonging to this United States" but it gave no authority to Congress to extend its municipal authority into the Union States. The latter gave Congress power to extend its jurisdiction (law making powers) beyond the limits of the District of Columbia over which Congress was to exercise "exclusive Legislation" to include the former territories such as the Northwest territory, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands, and currently, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and other territories, possessions, areas and enclaves. It's flag is the Stars and Stripes with the yellow fringe representing a plenary Martial Law jurisdiction. The geographical area known as the "United States" (DC) has its own citizens. (see United States vs. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 588) who are generally referred to as United States citizens. The yellow-fringed flag signifying this jurisdiction is not for decorative purposes. It signifies the jurisdiction of the District, also known as the Corporate U.S. Federal that has been extended into the Union states by the 14th Amendment. This is the flag of the Democracy. It should be obvious to everyone who observes the flag next to his Senator or Representative from Washington D.C., that he represents the Districts interest in the area of his constituency and not the other way around. When the function of the Circuit Courts of the United States of America was changed to appellate status by another layer of courts, these courts were labeled United States District Courts-- the courts of the District. Where are the courts of the United States America sitting today ??

The third (3rd) "United States" ( of America ) described in Hooven, supra, is the 50 Union States united by and under the Constitution. This "3rd united States" (of America) is known as the Republic. It's flag is "Old Glory" In the Constitutional Courts, the civil authority of the Constitution is signified by the Stars and Stripes hung vertically behind the bench just as it hangs behind the Speaker's Chair in the house of Representatives. Why, one might logically ask, is that not found in our courtrooms today?

The Republic has Citizens of it's own called American Nationals. Those are the Sovereign Citizens who qualify as such by being Members of the Posterity refereed to in the Preamble and can only be the Natural Born or Naturalized White Inhabitants of each state whose forefathers delegated by solemn agreement certain powers to the Congress of the "United States" (D.C.), which powers are limited to those delegated in Art. 1, Clause 8, Cls. 1-16 and Art. 4, Clause 3, Cl. 2, though today unlawfully expanded far beyond Constitutional limits by the usurpation on the one hand and by the deception of offering benefits by contract which American Nationals unwittingly and unknowingly enter on the other hand.

When legislating for the third "(3rd) united States" (of America) all powers not enumerated in Art. 1, Clause 8, Cls. 1-16, are reserved for those sovereign Citizens and states of the Republic by the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution of these united States of America (In Union) respectively. The Founding Citizens of the Republic gave very limited powers to the Congress of the United States to legislate for the geographical area known above as the "3 Union States", described in the Hooven case, supra. These legislative powers are limited to being exclusive within the area of it's jurisdiction as is that power possessed by any one of the legislatures of the 50 states of the Union when legislating for its responsive geographical area. However, when legislating for the 50 Union states collectively as a nation, Congress is bound by the chains of the Constitution and must remain inside the jurisdictional boundaries of Art. 1, Clause 8, Cls. 1-16, "and out of the jurisdiction of any particular State" [18 U.S.C. Clause 7 (1), (5), & (7), see particularly Clause 7 (3)].

Constitutional Law
Territories, power of the United States over, as plenary[ full, entire, complete, absolute ] In exercising its constitutional power to make all needful regulations respecting the territory belonging to the (2nd) United States, Congress is not subject to the same Constitutional limitations as when it is legislating for the 3rd states of the Union.
Hooven & Allison Co. vs Evatt, supra; Downes vs. Bidwell 182 U.S. 244

Constitutional Guaranties as extended to territories.

"In general the guarantees of the Constitution, save as they are limitations upon the exercise of excessive legislative power, when exerted for or over the insular possessions of the United States, extend to them only as Congress, in the exercise of it's legislative power over territories belonging to the United States, has made those guarantees applicable." Hooven & Allison Co. vs. Evatt, supra. ie., The Court states that the rights of those within Congress's sphere at exclusive jurisdiction are mere "privileges" extended them at the whim of Congress. Those who live in the District of Columbia, it's enclaves, territories, or possessions, and those who live in the ceded areas of the several states (called "federal areas or enclaves") are known as #2 United States citizens. They are true federal citizens. From the standpoint of Constitutional law Congress has 100% control over the lives of All #2 United States citizens whenever they reside in the several states, or elsewhere, and their rights are subject to Congress's exclusive legislative authority. Such rights are called "civil rights". This type of government is a "Legislative Democracy", the object of which, since passage of the 14th Amendment, has been to rob Natural Born Citizens of their birthright and bring all Americans into the Democracy under the legislative authority of Congress as a single group under authoritarian rule --contrary to the intent of the Organic Constitution. In contrast, white people living in the Union States (the Republic) are not under the Congress's legislative authority and are known as American Nationals. They are citizens of the (3rd) united States of America. The reason that the federal government prefers that everyone submit to its authority "voluntary" under the 14th Amendment through participation in Social Security is that the IRS can lawfully tax only federal #2 United States citizens, it's employees and those others who willingly contract with it. and not #3 American Nationals who chose not to. It's authority does not lawfully extend to the latter unless they "voluntarily" place themselves under the "private commercial law" of CORPORATE U.S. FEDERAL by contracting with it by such a simple and subtle means as merely using Federal Reserve Notes and associated commercial paper instruments. Included in this latter group are those Whites who elected to be 14th Amendment citizens by "voluntarily" entering into unilateral contracts with the federal government by contracting for Social Security Old Age Insurance, obtaining licenses, privileges, etc, and by "voluntarily" making W-4 and 1040 contracts annually. This is what is meant by their claim that the federal income tax is "voluntary". In this way, those who "volunteer" themselves into federal contracts place themselves under the authority of Congress's powers to regulate commerce under Art. 1, Clause 8, Cl.3, subjecting themselves to the federal income tax. Thus the federal government ultimately obtains legal title to all of our property and total control over our lives leaving us with only the equitable interest so long as we perform the terms of our contracts. A serious breach of the contract means the loss of our equity; i.e., the government will take our property. The 1st clause of the 14th Amendment created a subject matter enclave jurisdiction to "artificially" create citizens not circumscribed by the Organic Law (Negroes, corporations, licensees, etc.) and placed them directly under municipal authority of Congress so that wherever they might "reside" in any one of the several states, territories, or possessions, they are within the scope of Congress's legislative authority as their existence is a federal state created privilege.

Since the nations bankruptcy in 1933-- and the subsequent overthrow of the Constitution in 1933--though our government will not "openly and officially" admit it-- its position is that all Natural Born Citizens are also "subjects" with jurisdiction acquired by our "voluntary" contractual participation in Worldwide Social Insurance. Accordingly, all races are considered joined together as 14th Amendment (D.C.) citizens, "subjects" since being "enrolled" into Commerce by their "birth certificate", and by subsequently confirming their consent, when "applying for" such Unilateral Contracts as the Drivers and Marriage Licenses, Social Security Application, Selective Service and Voters' Registration, Bank Accounts, Credit Applications, W-4, and 1040 Income Tax Contracts, etc.For those who would chose to follow Satan, God provided flaws in the Constitution -- Art. 1 Clause 8, Cls 3, 17,& 18, and Art. 1, Clause 10, Cl. 1- - for the International Bankers to discover , to humble Christian Americans who would turn their backs on their God to worship the strange gods of greed, power, prestige, sex, the sports world, etc.- - their idols of materialism - - all violations of the First Commandment. When a Natural Born Citizen with a SS# refuses to sign a 1040 contract the federal courts will rule that he has " a know legal duty" which compels him to contract with government without ever requiring the government to produce the laws that make him liable for the tax and require the affirmative act of filing. Such quasi- coerced and compelled "commercial agreements"- - though entered out of fear - - need only be entered voluntarily and intentionally to have validity. The fact that he did not enter the agreement knowingly is immaterial. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

It has taken concerned American Nationals 62 years to figure out why our Constitutional protections have been legislated away since 1913 by a Congress initially ordained with no such powers. Under the Common Law, violations require an injured party (a Corpus Delicti), and contracts must be entered Knowingly, Willingly, and with full knowledge of informed consent (intentionally). Having done so unknowingly or unwillingly could not have resulted in any forfeiture of unalienable Rights that would bring about a loss of property (labor) or liberty (held in captivity) as has been the case resulting from alleged Internal Revenue Code violations by American Nationals. Such an insidious plot perpetrated against American Nationals could only have been conceived and hatched in the mind of Satan. How did this system of Commercial Law develop? It developed as a result of the use of the introduction and use of Federal Reserve Notes (Commercial Paper). In pursuance of our use of this "Commercial Paper" the courts in our country are proceeding under the old Negotiable Instruments Low which has been codified into the Uniform Commercial Code and subsequently adopted by all the states. A Federal Reserve Note dollar is a fictional instrument a "colorable" dollar, and not the lawful dollar described in Clause 9 of the Coinage Act of 1792, (371-1/4 grains of .999 silver.) Common Law and Equity use gold and silver; Admiralty use gold only. All systems of law described in the Constitution are based on substance. No system of law that uses paper can be genuine - - -therefore it is a "colorable" system of law. So the Banksters and the Bar Association invented this new "colorable" jurisdiction to support this colorable law called "statutory law" which operates not according to "Public Law" but according to "Public Policy". For many years Patriots thought that because this statutory jurisdiction followed Admiralty rules it was an Admiralty jurisdiction. Not so! The only reason the Banksters did not enforce the Bankruptcy of 1933 by 1938 and foreclose on this and other bankrupt nations is that they did not have control of the guns. So you see why it is today that gun control is our governments paramount objective through deception of anti-terrorism legislation?

Our servants of the Public Trust have long ignored the meaning of the 9th and 10th Amendments and the Concept of "unalienable Rights" so eruditely stated by Jefferson in the Declaration Of Independence for the benefit of the People of this nation and their Posterity. Our Natural and Unalienable Rights run much deeper than those so called "civil rights" regulated by Congress through the 14th Amendment, [Proof of this among others is the duplicate due process clause provided therein for its citizen "subjects" ]If we expect to claim our Rights it is our individual responsibility to see that the Bill of Rights is enforced and that those violating our Rights are tried for Treason. ] Truly, we are engaged in a spiritual battle. The situation that presently exists in the 50 Union States is the very reason the 2nd Amendment was written - - so that the contract called the Constitution could be enforced by the People (i.e. the state 3 Citizens).

Why all the confusion over the simple term "United States" ?

Obviously, to extend the taxing powers beyond their constitutionally authorized limits. Everybody knows that:" The District of Columbia is not a state within meaning of the Constitution" [ U.S. vs. Virginia (1805) ] like the 50 states of the Union, and yet it is referred to in all the (2) United States Codes as a "State", meaning the corporate and statutory venue of the Union. The District of Columbia is a corporation which is also known as the "1 & 2 United States." It must have it's own definition for "state" since it 1 & 2 and the territorial States were not formed as Union States (3) by and under the Constitution. It is the primary entity owning Guam, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, etc., which are federal States. Nevertheless, the federal courts are unconstitutionally enforcing the jurisdiction of CORPORATE U.S. FEDERAL (2) entity upon the entire geographical area of the Union states (3) as if they were under Congress' exclusive legislative authority (see 18 U.S.C. Clause 3231, with it's Cross References referring the reader to 18 U.S.C. Clause 7, @ (3). The law is clear on this point, but the courts won't enforce it. Here are the facts concerning the term "United States" when used in the federal tax code (Title 26) which has it's own peculiar definitions (called terms of art) written by the craftiest of legal minds, and paid by our tax dollars to defraud us, the American People, of our labor property.

1."United States" does not mean the fifty states of the Union except in
two extremely limited areas which deal with excise taxes on articles and goods.

2. "United States" means "federal areas" within the fifty states of the Union which are ceded to the "United States" and under the municipal authority of the Congress seated in Washington, D.C., but it does not include the entire geographical areas of the several states of the Union.

3. "United States" means the possessions of the District of Columbia which are its States - - -Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands. It does not mean the 50 Union States.

4. The numbers 2 and 3 above are called "States" but are not to be confused with the states of the Union, such as Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. The "Internal Revenue Code" is purposely written to mislead and is purposefully misconstrued by the courts in the interest of promoting "Public Policy".

5. "United States" are: Congress assembled at home (the seat of government), the District of Columbia and its territories (termed States in the IRS Code) and its possessions (ceded areas, military posts, navy yards, etc.) called federal enclaves.

6. "United States Citizen" does not mean a Natural Born Citizen who is an American National. State Inhabitants who live in the Common Law venue and jurisdiction of one of the 50 Union States are not "subject to" the income tax laws unless they either work for the federal government [see 26 U.S.C. Clause 6331(?)] and thus are compelled to pay a Kickback for the contractual privilege received. Or they are those who produce alcohol, or tobacco under Title 27, the Stamp Tax Act. The District of Columbia is referred to as a "State" in the Income tax laws and Social Security laws, as well as in all other codes of the "United States" to purposely leave the law open to interpretation so the courts can "mold" it in the interest of "Public Policy" under the Colorable Law of the Uniform Commercial Code. Federal Law Distinguishes How our government complies with the law while promulgating the fraud...

Do they know the difference? You bet they do! and the following law proves it. From the Code of Civil Procedure.28 United States Code: Section 1746 Unsworn declarations under penalty of perjury. "Wherever, under law of the United States, or any rule, regulation, order, or requirement made pursuant to law, any matter is required or permitted to be supported by him, as true under penalty of perjury, and dated in substantially the following form.

(1) If executed without the United States: "I declare (or certify. verify, or state) under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on (date).
(Signature)"

(2) If executed within the United States , its territories, possessions, or commonwealths: "I declare (or certify, verily, or state) under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on (date) (Signature) [emphasis mine] The writers of the Code of Civil Procedure in (1) above are referring to the Common Law venue and jurisdiction (that of the Republic), and in (2) above, the statutory venue and jurisdiction of the District Of Columbia (that of the Democracy) -- not just whether one is inside or outside of the country -- but whether one is legally situated inside or outside the Republic, through your ignorance in this instance will never be challenged. Please also note that when government employees and agents sign documents they are only required to swear that the information is true, correct and NOT "Complete " as is required of those United States citizens/"subjects" who submit 1040 contracts because of their so-called "voluntary" relationships with the District. That should incline one to inquire just who considers whom the master and whom the servant in this relationship. A word to the wise ....

Sorry, But It's Just Not Working Out...

2007-12-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

It's a little-known fact that the American colonies actually declared their independence from the British empire on July 2, 1776. However, this declaration was not approved until July 4, 1776. Only two founding fathers signed the declaration that day: John Hancock and Charles Thomson. John Adams wrote, "The 2nd of July will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival."

Colonel John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 8, 1776, to a crowd at Independence Square in Philadelphia. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud to George Washington and his troops in New York City on July 9, 1776. The crowd gathering there became so excited upon hearing the Declaration that a statue of King George was torn from its pedestal and melted into 42,000 patriot bullets.

The names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were withheld from the public until 1777, because their treasonable act would result in death if the Revolution were unsuccessful. Nonetheless, five signers were captured by the British and brutally tortured as traitors. Nine fought in the War for Independence and died from wounds or from hardships they suffered. Two lost their sons in the Continental Army. Another two had sons captured, and the British pillaged and burned the homes of at least a dozen of the fifty-six signers.

Today, America honors the sacrifices of these revolutionaries by filling its fat collective gut with beer and red meat, yelling at television sets purchased with fiat currency and bloated credit. Declare your independence from freedom! Death of the Republic sale going on now at McBeastly's! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!

US says it has right to kidnap citizens in Britain

2007-12-03T17:50:00.000-08:00

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

The US government’s view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice.

The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are resident in London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British courts.

During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government, about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman’s nephew. Gavin Tollman was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005.

Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said.

He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction.

In 2005, Gavin Tollman, the head of Trafalgar Tours, a holiday company, had arrived in Toronto by plane when he was arrested by Canadian immigration authorities.

An American prosecutor, who had tried and failed to extradite him from Britain, persuaded Canadian officials to detain him. He wanted the Canadians to drive Tollman to the border to be handed over. Tollman was escorted in handcuffs from the aircraft in Toronto, taken to prison and held for 10 days.

A Canadian judge ordered his release, ruling that the US Justice Department had set a “sinister trap” and wrongly bypassed extradition rules. Tollman returned to Britain.

Legal sources said that under traditional American justice, rendition meant capturing wanted people abroad and bringing them to the United States. The term “extraordinary rendition” was coined in the 1990s for the kidnapping of terror suspects from one foreign country to another for interrogation.

There was concern this weekend from Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP, who said: “The very idea of kidnapping is repugnant to us and we must handle these cases with extreme caution and a thorough understanding of the implications in American law.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “This law may date back to bounty hunting days, but they should sort it out if they claim to be a civilised nation.”

The US Justice Department declined to comment.

Racism has invaded Canada

2007-12-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article754394.ece

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13575.htm

This has been a good week to be in Canada — or an awful week, depending on your point of view - to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on “terrorism” charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country’s more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I’d already be checking the airline timetables for a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?

First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of a plot to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the “facts” or casting any doubt on their sources — primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS’s headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. “Home-grown terrorists” has become theme of the month — even though the “terrorists” have yet to stand trial.

They were in receipt of “fertilizers”, we were told, which could be turned into explosives. When it emerged that Canadian police officers had already switched the “fertilizers” for a less harmful substance, nobody followed up the implications of this apparent “sting”. A Buffalo radio station down in the US even announced that the accused had actually received “explosives”. Bingo: Guilty before trial.

Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual pious concern for the rights of the accused. “Before I go on, one disclaimer,” purred the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. “Nothing has been proved and nobody should rush to judgment.” Which, needless to say, Wente then went on to do in the same paragraph. “The exposure of our very own home-grown terrorists, if that’s what the men aspired to be, was both predictably shocking and shockingly predictable.” And just in case we missed the point of this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that “Canada is not exempt from home-grown terrorism”. Angry young men are the tinderbox and Islamism is the match.

The country will probably have better luck than most at “putting out the fire”, she adds. But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match? For a very unpleasant — albeit initially innocuous — phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17 — and, indeed their families and sometimes the country’s entire Muslim community — are now referred to as “Canadian-born”. Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there’s a subtle difference between this and being described as a “Canadian” — as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).

If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the Globe and Mail’s front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police arrest operation: “Parked directly outside his ... office was a large, gray, cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the two brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented unit...” Come again? Brown-skinned? What in God’s name is this outrageous piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily? What is “brown-skinned” supposed to mean — if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the “other” in Canada’s highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto’s police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as “white-skinned” (which he most assuredly is). Amid this swamp, Canada’s journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country’s new military involvement in Afghanistan.

More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military operations against Taleban insurgents. They are taking the place of US troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in Iraq.

Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war — those who doubt this should note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in “defense spending” in Afghanistan and only $500m in “additional expenditures”, including humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic) — and, by extension, in Iraq. In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.

None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the cause of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper — the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much — said a few days ago that “we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan. In any event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated that threat somewhat.” I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa this week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and fellow passengers. In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of Goddard’s other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.

The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola’s coffin at Canada’s national military cemetery. A heartrending photograph of him appeared in the Post — but buried away on Page 6. And on the front page? A picture of British policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim “who may have links to Canada”. Allegedly, of course.

Mr. Cover-up

2007-12-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

Official Washington is remembering the late Rep. Henry Hyde fondly, recalling the Illinois Republican as a well-respected “pro-life” advocate who held President Bill Clinton accountable for lying about a sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

But there was another side to Hyde, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 83. As a senior member of national security oversight committees, Hyde helped cover up criminal and political wrongdoing by the Reagan-Bush administrations in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In August 1986, for instance, Hyde was one of the ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee who trooped down to the White House to question National Security Council aide Oliver North about press accounts linking him to a secret operation to supply the Nicaraguan contra rebels in defiance of the law.

After North and his boss, John Poindexter, denied the allegations, Hyde joined Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, and committee chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, in rejecting a bill that would have authorized a formal investigation.

Later that day, since I had co-authored an Associated Press story citing 24 sources about North’s secret network, one of Hamilton’s aides contacted me to say that the committee had sided with the “honorable men” at the White House over our 24 sources.

“It wasn’t a close call,” the aide added.

It was, however, an erroneous call.

Two months later, on Oct. 5, 1986, one of North’s contra supply planes was shot down over Nicaragua, and the following month, the Iran-Contra operation, which involved using profits from secret arms sales to Iran to help finance the contras, was revealed.

In early 1987, however, Hyde re-joined Cheney and Hamilton on the congressional Iran-Contra committee, where the three congressmen again sought to narrow the investigation and minimize what had happened.

Hyde and Cheney led the charge in defense of President Reagan, while Hamilton engineered immunity for Oliver North and bought into the cover story that Iran-Contra was mostly a rogue operation.

However, the more serious Iran-Contra investigation led by Republican special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh eventually broke through the rogue-operation cover story and also discovered that the chronology of the covert Iran arms shipments kept stretching back to the early 1980s.

Indeed, a growing body of evidence indicated that the secret contacts between the Reagan team and the Iranians dated back to Campaign 1980 when President Jimmy Carter was desperately trying to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran – and witnesses claimed Republican operatives were trying to sabotage Carter’s efforts.

Since this controversy centered on alleged Reagan-Bush attempts to block Carter's pre-election release of the hostages, it became known as the “October Surprise” case, but it also could be viewed as the prequel to Iran-Contra. [For the fullest account of the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

October Surprise Task Force

When the October Surprise controversy finally reached critical mass in 1991, the House authorized an investigation – and turned again to Hamilton and Hyde to lead it. (By this time, Dick Cheney had taken a job as George H.W. Bush’s Defense Secretary.)

Much like they had earlier, Hamilton and Hyde approached the October Surprise probe more as a damage-control operation designed to minimize partisan bickering than a serious pursuit of the truth.

Evidence pointing to Republican guilt was discounted or ignored, while alibis were manufactured for key Republicans, including Reagan’s campaign chief William J. Casey and vice presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, on dates when they were alleged to have met with Iranians.

Hamilton even let Hyde veto the appointment of one Democratic staff investigator, House Foreign Affairs Committee chief counsel Spencer Oliver, because Oliver believed the October Surprise charges just might be true.

By fall 1992, the Hamilton-Hyde task force was putting the finishing touches on a debunking of the October Surprise case, complete with the illogical alibis for key Republicans. [For details on the alibis, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bushes & the Death of Reason.”]

However, in the weeks after President George H.W. Bush lost his 1992 reelection bid to Democrat Bill Clinton, new incriminating evidence began pouring in to the October Surprise task force, so much so that Hamilton’s chief counsel Lawrence Barcella saw no choice but to extend the investigation several months.

But that option was not acceptable to Hamilton and Hyde. Instead, Barcella was told to wrap up the inquiry with much of the new evidence simply kept out of public view. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Original October Surprise.”]

To shore up the fragile debunking conclusions before the report was released on Jan. 13, 1993, the Hamilton-Hyde task force selectively leaked its findings to friendly reporters or to others who weren’t familiar with the controversy’s intricate details.

After getting the desired knock-down stories that morning, Hamilton and Hyde presided over a peculiar news conference in a House committee room.

Though the topic was the task force report, copies were kept shrink-wrapped out of the hands of reporters. In other words, the reporters weren’t allowed to see the report until after the news conference was over.

The tactic worked. Few reporters actually read the report and even fewer knew enough to spot the holes. Washington’s “conventional wisdom” quickly solidified around the judgment that the October Surprise was a loony conspiracy theory.

Hamilton put on the finishing touches by writing an op-ed for the New York Times, entitled “Case Closed.” The article cited supposedly solid alibis for the whereabouts of William Casey as the key reason why the task force findings “should put the controversy to rest once and for all.” [NYT, Jan. 24, 1993.]

Hyde’s Speech

Ten days later, Henry Hyde took to the House floor to gleefully mock anyone who still doubted the October Surprise innocence of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

During his "special order" speech, the white-haired Hyde did acknowledge some weaknesses in the House task force findings. Casey's 1980 passport had disappeared, as had key pages of his calendar, Hyde admitted.

Hyde noted, too, that the chief of French intelligence, Alexandre deMarenches, had told his biographer that Casey did hold hostage talks with the Iranians in Paris in October 1980. Several French intelligence officials had corroborated that assertion.

But Hyde insisted that two solid blocks of evidence proved that the October Surprise allegations were false. Hyde said his first cornerstone was hard-rock alibis for Casey and other key suspects.

"We were able to locate [Casey's] whereabouts with virtual certainty" on the dates when he allegedly met with Iranians in Europe to discuss the hostages, Hyde declared.

For instance, Casey had been in California (at the Bohemian Grove resort) on the late July 1980 weekend of a purported meeting with Iranians in Madrid, Hyde said.

There was an alibi, too, that same weekend for the late Cyrus Hashemi, an alleged Iranian intermediary who had ties to the CIA, to Tehran's radical mullahs and to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Hashemi was in Connecticut, Hyde said – even though Hashemi's older brother Jamshid testified under oath that he and Cyrus were with Casey and a senior Iranian cleric in Madrid that weekend.

The second debunking cornerstone, Hyde said, was the absence of anything incriminating on FBI wiretaps of Cyrus Hashemi over five months in late 1980 and early 1981 when he was under suspicion for his dealings with Iran.

"There is not a single indication that William Casey had contact with Cyrus or Jamshid Hashemi," Hyde said. "Indeed, there is no indication on the tapes that Casey or any other individuals associated with the Reagan campaign had contact with any persons representing or associated with the Iranian government."

Crumbling Cornerstones

But under any careful inspection, both of Hyde's cornerstones crumbled. The alibis for Casey and others were laughably bogus. The clear and documented record showed that the House investigators had put Casey at the Bohemian Grove on the wrong weekend. (He was there the first weekend of August, not the last weekend of July.)

Plus, the proof of Hashemi's presence in Connecticut consisted of phone records showing two one-minute calls, one from a lawyer to Hashemi's home and one back to the lawyer. There was no evidence that Hashemi received or made the calls, and the pattern more likely fit a call asking a family member when Hashemi was due home and the second call giving the answer.

Hyde was wrong, too, about the absence of incriminating evidence on the Hashemi wiretaps. But since those wiretaps were secret in 1993, that argument was impossible to judge then.

However, when I accessed the raw House task force documents in a remote Capitol Hill storage room in late 1994, I found a classified summary of the FBI bugging.

According to that summary, the bugs revealed Cyrus Hashemi deeply enmeshed with Republicans on arms deals to Iran in fall 1980 as well as in financial schemes with Casey's close friend and business associate, John Shaheen.

And contrary to Hyde's claim of "not a single indication" of contact between Casey and Cyrus Hashemi, the Iranian banker was recorded as boasting that he and Casey had been "close friends" for years.

That claim was supported by a CIA memo which stated that Casey recruited Cyrus Hashemi into a sensitive business arrangement in 1979.

Beyond that, the secret FBI summary showed Hashemi receiving a $3 million offshore deposit, arranged by a Houston lawyer who said he was a longtime associate of George H.W. Bush. The Houston lawyer, Harrel Tillman, told me in an interview that in 1980, he was doubling as a consultant to Iran's Islamic government.

After Ronald Reagan’s election in November 1980, Tillman was back on the line promising Hashemi help from the "Bush people" for one of his foundering business deals. Then, the FBI wiretaps picked up Hashemi getting a cash payment, via a courier arriving on the Concorde, from the corrupt bank, BCCI.

The House task force had concealed these documents, allowing Hamilton and Hyde to miswrite an important chapter of recent American history.

Internal Dissent

In his House speech, Hyde also avoided any mention of resistance within the task force to the bogus alibis for Casey and others.

When a draft version of the report was shown to task force Democrats in December 1992, a staff aide to Rep. Mervyn Dymally of California quickly spotted some of the report's absurd alibis.

One of those alibis was that Reagan’s foreign policy adviser Richard Allen had written down Casey's home phone number on one key day, supposedly proving that Casey was at home. Another alibi was that because a plane flew from San Francisco directly to London on another key date, Casey must have been onboard.

According to sources who saw Dymally's dissent, it argued that "just because phones ring and planes fly doesn't mean that someone is there to answer the phone or is on the plane." But Dymally's reasonable observations were fiercely opposed by Hamilton, who pressured Dymally into withdrawing the dissent.

If the dissent were not pulled, Hamilton threatened to denounce Dymally for missing task force meetings and for not having his staff aide cleared to review all classified material.

Hamilton warned Dymally, who was retiring from Congress, that he would "come down hard" on Dymally. The next day, Hamilton fired all the staffers who had worked on Dymally's Africa subcommittee.

Seeing the firings as retribution (though Hamilton denied a connection), Dymally relented and withdrew the dissent, which was never made public. With the road cleared, the task force report rolled ahead to become the official history of the United States.

For his handling of the October Surprise case, Hamilton won kudos from columnist David Broder and other Washington insiders. Hamilton was praised for his bipartisanship in exonerating well-liked Republicans, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, of a dirty trick that bordered on treason.

Hamilton’s accommodating investigative style ultimately earned him one of the highest unofficial Washington honors – the title of Wise Man – assuring him seats on blue-ribbon panels that have included the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group.

Before his death, Henry Hyde was honored as well, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

The President We Were Warned About

2007-12-01T07:52:00.001-08:00

George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington feared would destroy our experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

With the "war on terror," Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the "terrorists" will always provide a convenient shadowy target. That's just the "continual warfare" that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war — the very issue now at stake in Bush's battle with Congress.

In his "Political Observations," written years before he had served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever.

"In war," Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, "the discretionary power of the executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people."

How remarkably prescient of Madison to anticipate the specter of our current King George, imperiously undermining Congress' attempts to end the Iraq war. When the prime author of the U.S. Constitution explained why that document grants Congress — not the president — the exclusive power to declare and fund wars, Madison wrote, "The delegation of such powers (to the president) would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments."

Because "no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare," Madison urged that the constitutional separation of powers he had codified be respected. "The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war ...

the power of raising armies," he wrote. "The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them."

That last sentence perfectly describes the threat of what President Dwight Eisenhower would describe 165 years later as the "military-industrial complex," a permanent war economy feeding off a permanent state of insecurity. The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the military profiteers and their cheerleaders in the government of a raison d'etre for the enormous war economy supposedly created in response to it.

Fortunately for them, Bush found in the 9-11 attack an excuse to make war even more profitable and longer lasting. The Iraq war, which the president's 9-11 commission concluded never had anything to do with the terrorist assault, nonetheless has transferred many hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars into the military economy. And when Congress seeks to exercise its power to control the budget, this president asserts that this will not govern his conduct of the war.

There never was a congressional declaration of war to cover the invasion of Iraq. Instead, President Bush acted under his claimed power as commander in chief, which the Supreme Court has held does allow him to respond to a "state of war" against the United States. That proviso was clearly a reference to surprise attacks or sudden emergencies.

The problem is that the "state of war" in question here was an al-Qaida attack on the United States that had nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Perhaps, to spare Congress the embarrassment of formally declaring war against a nation that had not attacked America, Bush settled for a loosely worded resolution supporting his use of military power if Iraq failed to comply with U.N. mandates.

This was justified by the White House as a means of strengthening the United Nations in holding Iraq accountable for its weapons of mass destruction arsenal, but as most of the world looked on in dismay, Bush invaded Iraq after U.N. inspectors on the ground discovered that Iraq had no WMD.

Bush betrayed Congress, which in turn betrayed the American people — just as Madison feared when he wrote, "Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other."

PENTAGON WARNING

2007-11-30T06:15:00.000-08:00

Let me simplify . . . and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9-11. That’s the next coup that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution . . . what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world—in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

All these violations were impeachable had they been found out at the time but in nearly every case the violations were not found out until [the president was] out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable. They weren’t found out in time. But I think it was not their intention, in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 1970s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but [they] have believed in executive government, single-branch government under an executive president—elected or not—with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this, I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country—but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country [and the Framers of the Constitution] thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with ‘signing statements.’

Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says: ‘I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.’

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the executive branch, essentially of the president—a concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.”

* * *

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right. It’s not just ‘our way of doing things’— it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody, including Americans.

On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This executive branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition [even] from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran, which, even by imperialist standards, [violates] standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the executive branch but most of the leaders in Congress.

The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t; it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress—Democrats and Republicans—and the public and the media, we have freed the White House — the president and the vice president—from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, can we do about this?

We are heading toward an insane operation. It is not certain. [But it] is likely.… I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran, is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And . . . we will not succeed in moving Congress, probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small, perhaps—anyway not large—possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

* * *

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9-11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little.

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, ‘traitor,’ ‘weak on terrorism’—names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath of office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the armed services.

And that oath is not to a commander in chief, which is not [even] mentioned. It is not to a Fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath, which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada—who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war—is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously [the matter of] upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. [All the personnel] under him who understand what is going on — and there are myriad — are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate—and frankly of the Republicans —that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.
Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.”

Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read [about] in The Washington Post who threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from madmen in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves —they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relations with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.”

7 Reasons to Legalize Marijuana

2007-11-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

Yearly drug mortalities: Tobacco, 340-400,000; Alcohol, 125,000; Caffeine, 1000 to 10,000; Legal drug overdoses, 14-27,000; Illicit drug overdoses, 3800 to 5200; Aspirin, 180 to 1000 Marijuana, 0. —US Surgeon General

Just writing the title for this article feels a bit criminal. The War on Drugs has gotten us to the point where saying anything positive about marijuana makes you an immoral, youth-corrupting, teasonous jerk. Yet, the first casualty in the drug war was the truth. In our national frenzy to eradicate certain (but not all) types of drug use, we have become mired in a swamp of lies that do more damage to our nation than any drug ever could.

One does not have to be a past, present or would-be marijuana user to care deeply about this issue. The criminalization of marijuana has negative consequences that affect us all. Even such arch-conservatives as William Buckley, George Shultz and Milton Friedman have called for the legalization of marijuana. Their bottom line: fighting a war against marijuana constitutes a monumental waste of resources.

Marijuana is a common plant that has grown wild around the world for thousands of years. From 1000 B.C. until the late 1800s, it was the planet’s most widely-cultivated crop. Its psycho-active properties have long been important to many cultures for medicinal, spiritual and recreational purposes. There are hundreds of productive uses for which marijuana provides an ideal source material. Yet since 1937, the US has made the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana a venal and stringently punished crime. This is great foolishness with dire consequences. It is time for a change.

Criminalization creates crime

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. —Abraham Lincoln

An estimated 10% of prisoners currently held in federal prisons were arrested for marijuana cultivation, possession and/or use. These people were not running huge quantities of drugs across our borders, or selling drugs to children, or in any way endangering other people. They were simply growing or using marijuana, usually in the privacy of their homes.

For this so-called crime against society we now demand mandatory sentences of twenty years to life, often without parole. The marijuana user will he in jail long after the rapist, armed burglar and kidnapper have been released. Indeed, our prisons are now so overcrowded with non-violent drug users that truly dangerous criminals are often put back on the streets for lack of space. Likewise, our police are so busy arresting non-violent drug users, and our courts so burdened with hearing their cases, that genuine threats to our society are that much harder to address.

It costs about $20,000 a year to incarcerate a federal criminal. That’s a half a million dollars per marijuana user if we hold him or her for twenty-five years. And it is likely that their time in jail will only turn marijuana users into real criminals, an added bonus for society when we get around to releasing them.

Criminalization is unconstitutional

In every society, the use of one or a small number of drugs is not only tolerated, but actively encouraged and promoted. And that goes hand in hand with defining all other drugs as “bad.” —Dr. Andrew Weil

Nowhere in the US Constitution is there support for the criminalization of marijuana or for the resulting war against peaceful US citizens, The Constitution clearly protects as primary each individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Founders understood that government should intervene in its citizens lives only when someone’s actions are harming someone else’s body or property. Marijuana users generally do neither.

The Constitution does specifically ban cruel and unusual punishment. Is it not unusually cruel to seize property, to utterly ruin lives, and to incarcerate people for twenty and more years for the growing of a common plant? Or for the decision to smoke that plant in the privacy of one’s home?

Ironically, the first draft of the Constitution was written on paper made from marijuana (or “hemp” — marijuana’s blue-collar name). Hemp was such an important product in the 1700s that farmers were required to grow it. And there is evidence that some of our Founding Fathers, after long days of fostering rebellion, liked to kick back and smoke a bowl or two of Colonial Hemp.

Criminalization obstructs free enterprise

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. —Thomas Jefferson

The marijuana plant provides a soft yet durable fiber that is ideal for countless purposes in the textile, papermaking, and building industries. Its seeds provide an equally versatile oil and a high source of protein. Its leaves and flower tops have been processed into powerful medicines for thousands of years. All of this comes from what should he an abundant and renewable resource.

In a culture that idolizes the free market and clamors after the need for more and better jobs, the criminalization of marijuana represents a gross contradiction and a terrible waste. What would modern inventiveness and the entrepreneurial spirit do with this plant if the government would just get out of the way? A massive new industry would he born overnight. Millions of good, decent livings would be created and the world would be better for it.

Criminalization is unecological

They’ve outlawed the number one vegetable on the planet. —Timothy Leary

Marijuana is an herbaceous annual plant and a member of the mulberry family. It makes extremely efficient use of the sun, growing ten to twenty feet in a single short season. It is capable of growing in virtually any climate or soil on Earth, including all fifty of the United States. As it has no weed or insect enemies (except the DEA), it can be grown without using fertilizers, pesticides, or other chemicals.

Thus, the cultivation of marijuana is a soil-improving boon to the environment wherever it is grown. By criminalizing marijuana, we not only lose this beneficial plant, we often compound the loss by attacking it with soil-poisoning herbicides.

In addition, the criminalization of marijuana results in a host of other environmental losses. It would be far better for the environment, for instance, if we made paper from marijuana fiber rather than trees; or replaced some of the chemically-intensive cotton industry with marijuana-based textiles; or started burning marijuana by-products instead of fossil fuels.

Criminalization is religious oppression

Lord, there’s danger in this land. You get witch-hunts and wars when church and state hold hands. —Joni Mitchell

Marijuana, when smoked, typically affects one’s body, mind, and emotions. Marijuana is, in this regard, quite like many other psycho-active substances including alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, meat, and prescription drugs. The decision to use or engage in any such substances is a personal choice that may involve some risk, since all such substances can be harmful when overused.

There is ample evidence that the mal-effects from overusing marijuana are minuscule compared to the proven mal-effects from overusing such legal intoxicants as alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcohol and tobacco are legal while marijuana is banned. Why?

The main thrust against using marijuana is religious moralizing. Some religious people are convinced that using marijuana is bad, as in eternal-damnation-bad. Secular arguments carry little weight in such circles; God says don’t smoke it and that’s all there is to it (Though God did allow the first Gutenberg Bible to be printed on hemp paper.)

People certainly have the right to such beliefs and should be free to practice according to those beliefs. However, this is a country founded upon a clear separation of church and state. Everyone is free to practice according their own beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be, as long as such practices do not harm others.

The criminalization of marijuana is the turning of one group’s religious morals into secular laws that everyone else must obey. This is unconstitutional and unamerican. Moreover, millions of Americans are prevented from freely following their own spiritual paths which, as with numerous indigenous cultures, may well involve some use of marijuana or other psycho-active plants.

Criminallzation does not protect children

If there is anything more destructive to reason and common sense than drugs, it must be anti-drug frenzy. Early signs include memory loss, an inability to process simple facts, and a belligerent narrowing of the eyes. —Barbara Ehrenreich

The most compelling argument for the criminalization of marijuana is that we must protect our children from being unduly influenced toward serious drug overuse. While it is certainly preferable that children not be exposed to marijuana, tobacco, alcohol, and other potent drugs until they are old enough to make wise, informed choices, the fact remains that the criminalization of such substances has not worked. Indeed, a trip through many of today’s schools proves just the opposite: the more desperately we’ve fought the War on Drugs, the more that drugs have proliferated among our nation’s children.

The only thing that works with kids is the truth. They have highly-attuned antennae for hypocrisy; they cannot be expected to take seriously the demonizing of marijuana while tobacco kills 400,000 people per year, alcohol kills another 125,000, and the advertising industry tells them that those drugs are cool.

We need to honestly inform children about the nature of human consciousness and the common attraction toward various intoxicants. We need to explain how different intoxicants work, including their positive and negative aspects. Then we need to provide healthy environments with compelling options for play and learning, so that children naturally wait until they’re old enough to decide for themselves whether or not to try drugs.

Criminalization is bad public policy

The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS — or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day. —Joycelyn Elders, M.D.

Finally, consider that cancer and AIDS patients are prohibited from using the only substance that consistently improves their appetites; that glaucoma sufferers are not allowed to smoke away their pain; or that MS patients are prevented from trying marijuana, despite anecdotal reports of its effectiveness in treating their condition.

What are we doing? What gives anybody the right to stop such people from medicating themselves?

Even if you have no desire to use marijuana, in any of its forms, as a citizen you are involved in the choice to keep it illegal and thus bear responsibility for the consequences of that choice. For all the above reasons, the continued criminalization of marijuana is a bad choice leading to bad public consequences.

Good public policy regarding marijuana would remove all criminal sanctions against it, would oversee its cultivation, would regulate its many uses, and would collect appropriate taxes from its consumers. Let’s move on to real problems. Let’s legalize marijuana.

Ugly American

2007-11-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

There is no end to the shame-parade of the Iraq fiasco. Since no one in the Bush administration ever makes a mistake or does anything wrong, and since thou shalt never criticize the troops, how does America explain the big mess over there? It’s the frikkin Iraqis fault!

The established spin — and we’re hearing this crap from the democrats as much as the republicans — is that “Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed to take advantage of the Iraqi people’s desire for peaceful and productive lives and of the enormous commitment and sacrifices made by the United States and other nations.”

Maliki, along with the fledgling Iraqi parliament, are, according to this narrative, a bunch of ungrateful slackers who have totally botched the nifty gifts of democracy and freedom that we bestowed on them. If they only had the infinite courage of American politicians they would have gotten their political house in order lickedy-split, cleaned up the civil war thing, and signed all their oil over to the West.

And we wonder why they hate us.

Of course, America doesn’t exactly model swift, certain, and effective democratic processes to the rest of the world. There are several hugely important problems that our politicians have written off as “third rail” issues, ie, too politically dangerous to even talk about, much less legislate. Healthcare, social security, the drug war, climate change, federal debt, campaign financing, voting technologies: just a few issues that, in a healthy functioning democracy, one could reasonably expect to find vigorous debates leading to decisive votes.

But years and years can pass without even discussions on these matters, much less results. And our politicians have had more than 200 years to works out the kinks, they are all millionaires with guaranteed job security (when they lose elections they just go on to higher-paying lobbying positions), and they don’t have to worry about being murdered or kidnapped by the electorate.

Yet even worse than spectacle of overfed Americans complaining about those slacker Iraqis is the shucking off of responsibility for the unmitigated and ungovernable mess WE created there.

This is not Iraq’s fault. Not Saddam’s fault. Not Iran or Syria’s fault.

It’s America’s fault — the whole thing. Blaming the victims for our criminal failings is just more American ugly.

Deja War

2007-11-29T06:50:00.001-08:00

Incredibly, it’s happening again. As if Iraq never happened, as if the innumerable lessons from that national shame and continuing horror never happened. As if the ‘06 election slapdown and clear annunciation of the people’s will never happened.

Incredibly, the same cast of chickenhawk fools and lazy legislators who brought us Iraq are now dragging the country into an even bigger pile of bushit. Incredibly, the media awaits their next sage utterances on the “progress” in Iraq and the need to bomb the hell out of Iran as if they had a shred of credibility remaining.

Incredibly, there’s nothing that we can do to stop it. Democrats either believe the war-think rhetoric about Iran’s evil intentions — why, someday they might be as aggressively violent as us! — or they see more Bush-Cheney-war as good election politics. In any case, Dems are desperate to avoid looking soft on terror, so how can they say no to the indiscriminate bombing of a bunch of Muslims, or Arabs, or whatever the hell they are over there?

As the actually sage Chris Hedges puts it, we will soon be bombing Iran because we’ve lost all capacity for the empathetic communication that international diplomacy requires:

But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn’t worked well in Iraq. It hasn’t worked well in Afghanistan. And it won’t work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.

Now He Tells Us

2007-11-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. —Ala Greenspan

For years now, those of us who dared state the obvious — that Bush/Cheney’s obsession with Iraq was all about oil — have been dismissed as left-wing cranks, or worse, as terror-loving traitors.

I doubt that this admission from the former high priest of American capitalism will make a difference. He’s just one of a long line of truth-telling former Bush-abettors.

Still, it’s an important statement, and not just the oil part: our decision to destroy a sovereign nation that did us no harm and push the world to the brink of apocalypse just so we could service our oil addiction is just one of a very long list of hard American truths shrouded in political denial.

The first step in waking from denial is the recognition of how deeply and dangerously asleep we’ve been.

friends

2007-11-23T22:20:00.001-08:00

To all my friends out there leave comments and call me if you have my number. If not ask....
S.C. can have my info any time and lets get this revolution going. stand, fight right now never back down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

----------------
Now playing: Hatebreed - Immortal Enemies
via FoxyTunes

Big Oil, Big Influence

2007-11-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

During his first month in office, President George W. Bush appointed Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force charged with developing the country's energy policy. The group, which conducted its meetings in secret, relied on the recommendations of Big Oil behemoths Exxon Mobil, Conoco, Shell Oil, BP America and Chevron. It would be the first of many moves to come during the Bush administration that would position oil and gas companies well ahead of other energy interests with billions of dollars in subsidies and tax cuts—payback for an industry with strong ties to the administration and plenty of money to contribute to congressional and presidential campaigns.

During the time that Bush and Cheney, both of whom are former oil executives, have been in the White House, the oil and gas industry has spent $393.2 million on lobbying the federal government. This places the industry among the top nine in lobbying expenditures. The industry has also contributed a substantial $82.1 million to federal candidates, parties and political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 80 percent of the industry's contributions have gone to Republicans.

Buying Pro-Industry Policy

This support has not gone unrewarded. In 2005, Bush, who has received more from the oil and gas industry than any other politician, signed an energy bill from the Republican-controlled Congress that gave $14.5 billion in tax breaks for oil, gas, nuclear power and coal companies. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was based on recommendations by Cheney's energy task force, also rolled back regulations the oil industry considered burdensome, including exemptions from some clean water laws. All of this transpired only one year after Congress passed a bill that included a tax cut for domestic manufacturing that was expected to save energy companies at least $3.6 billion over a decade.

"Political action committees, lobbyists and executives do not give money to politicians or parties out of an altruistic support of the principles of democracy," says Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program. "They are savvy investors expecting a return on their investments. Politicians routinely deliver on campaign contributions that are provided to them... [by] giving goodies to the industry." And the size of those contributions matters.

In comparison, environmental groups and alternative energy production and supply companies, which didn't see similar benefits come out of the Republican Congress's legislation, have made paltry contributions. Environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and the Nature Conservancy, which often push for policy that is punitive to Big Oil, have given nearly 11 times less than the oil industry since 2001. The disparity is not a strategic difference, but the financial reality for these smaller competing interests. Exxon Mobil, for example, reported the largest annual profit on record for a U.S. corporation in 2006, bringing in $39.5 billion. Comparatively, the nonprofit Sierra Club Foundation—which funds organizations in addition to the Sierra Club—reported income in 2006 of $29 million.

With members of Congress paying special attention to Big Oil, the policy that elected representatives have developed does not reflect the interest of the public, which wants "affordable, reliable, clean sources of energy," Slocum says. A 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center found a majority of Americans across the political spectrum want an energy policy that emphasizes renewable and alternative sources of energy.

"Energy companies have a right to have a say in energy policy. Do they have a right to dictate energy policy, to be the only people at the table? Absolutely not. That was the main problem with the Cheney task force—[the industry] was the only one at the table," says Slocum.

To keep its prominent seat, the industry spends big sums of money on hiring the top lobbyists in Washington to push its agenda on a variety of issues, not just related to energy but on issues ranging from education to real estate. After a few years of declining lobbying expenditures, the industry spent $63.3 million in 2005, most of which was probably related to the energy bill. (Lobbying reports don't require lobbyists to itemize their spending related to specific bills or amendments). In 2007, with a new energy bill in the pipeline, the industry's lobbying expenditures are on track to exceed last year's total of $73 million. Big Oil has spent seven times more than environmental groups on lobbying since President Bush took office.

Marchant Wentworth, a lobbyist for the environmental advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, says money buys access. "I've been working in the public interest environmental business for 30 years and 90 percent of the time I'm talking to staff," Wentworth said. "The oil and gas industry talks to the members themselves. That is a huge difference. Access is an important thing."

The Biggest Spenders and Takers


	"With a new energy bill in the pipeline, the industry's lobbying expenditures are on track to exceed last year's total of $73 million."

The energy companies that spend the most on lobbying the federal government also tend to be those that give the most to politicians for their campaigns. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Oil, Shell Oil, Chevron and BP America—many of which provided guidance to Cheney's task force—have spent the most among energy companies on lobbying. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, in addition to El Paso Corp and Koch Industries, have been among the most generous campaign contributors within the industry during Bush's time in office. The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil industry in Washington, declined to comment for this story, and a spokesman from the national trade group the Independent Petroleum Association of America was unavailable for comment.

Lawmakers, who live in areas that depend on oil production for their economy, are likely to be among the largest recipients of contributions from the oil and gas industry—and to vote in favor of legislation that helps it. The top three members of Congress to receive money from Big Oil during the Bush administration are all Republicans and are, not surprisingly, all from oil-rich Texas. The big names include Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both of whom have supported subsidies for gas and oil exploration and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Also is Rep. Joe Barton, who sponsored the 2005 energy bill and was chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee at the time. Fellow Texan Tom DeLay, who was the House Majority Leader in 2005 and was instrumental in pushing the energy bill through, also ranks among the top to receive money from the industry during Bush's two terms. Of the 50 members of Congress who have received the most contributions from oil and gas companies since 2001, only six are Democrats.

Campaign contributions don't always get the oil industry desired results. Many of the oil industry chieftains, who were pushing to open ANWR for exploration, were disappointed when the 2005 energy bill came out of conference committee without that provision. Nor, do campaign contributions always get the industry's favorite candidates elected. Four of five of Big Oil's most favored candidates—all Republicans—lost their re-election races in 2006, despite hefty campaign contributions from oil and gas employees and PACs that cycle. The losers included Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Conrad Burns of Montana, George Allen of Virginia and James Talent of Missouri.

Battles on the Horizon

With Democrats now in control of Congress, the oil and gas industry is finding that it's getting less for its money on Capitol Hill. Other industries with competing interests and far less cash to spread around, such as environmental groups and alternative energy producers, are now finding more support for their legislative goals. For example, the Clean Energy Act of 2007 seeks to repeal the 2004 and 2005 tax breaks to Big Oil and re-direct the money to renewable energy efforts.

Because of the change in power, the oil industry faces the possibility of stricter oversight and fewer goodies from Congress. The industry "definitely has to be worried that there will be anti-oil legislation of all types, and also possibly regulations, depending on who takes over the White House," says David Victor, a law professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow on the Council for Foreign Relations. Victor was part of the council's task force on energy security.

"I think [the new leadership] generally puts the issue on the agenda for legislative action. It puts it higher on the agenda. But it's not clear Congress will actually be able to do very much in terms of getting the votes for legislation, because energy policy in reality is very controversial and often very expensive," Victor said. "That's something that both parties have a difficult time dealing with."

So far Congress has been slow to push through comprehensive energy legislation, in part because issues related to renewable energy standards and fuel efficiency standards differ by region, rather than political party, which means not all democrats are on board, says Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental advocacy group Clean Air Watch. "Some of the southern-based coal burning power companies have killed or delayed efforts to set a renewable energy requirement for electric companies. Michigan Reps. and others influenced by the car industry have also managed to put off any kind of tougher requirements for fuel economy." O'Donnell says. "John Dingell is a democrat but doesn't see eye to eye with [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi in some of these issues and so far you've seen somewhat of a stalemate."

Dingell has consistently defended the auto industry, which is fighting against stricter fuel economy standards. These standards have not been changed since the 1980s. The auto industry is a major player in Dingell's home state of Michigan, which relies heavily on the industry for jobs and is the corporate home of General Motors, Ford and the domestic division of DaimlerChrysler. Among all members of Congress, Dingell has received the second most in contributions from the auto industry at $869,200, just behind Republican Spencer Abraham, a former Michigan senator. The industry has been one of Dingell's largest contributors during his career—second only to electric utilities.

During former President Bill Clinton's administration, Congressional Democrats who supported more rigid standards missed a chance to pass such legislation, but they had to grapple with a Republican-controlled Congress largely unsympathetic to the idea. Congress just adjourned for the Thanksgiving break without voting on an energy bill that would, among other things, boost the fuel efficiency of the nation's vehicles. Speaker Pelosi had hoped but failed to bring the measure to a vote, largely because negotiations stalled over the fuel economy standards.


	"With Democrats now in control of Congress, the oil and gas industry is finding that it's getting less for its money on Capitol Hill."

The Changing Climate for Energy Policy

As Congress wrestles with the comprehensive energy legislation, the oil and gas industry is not only fighting off repeals of its tax breaks, but is pushing again for increased domestic production of energy, specifically permission to drill in certain coastal areas that have been off limits. The companies are also trying to prevent democrats from prosecuting them for jacking up prices excessively and they publicly oppose the bill's mandated use of alternative fuels. The industry joined the fight for coal-to-liquid fuel, in which oil companies have investments, but the controversial provision to encourage creating diesel fuel from domestic coal has already been eliminated from both the house and senate's versions of the bill. The legislation is also meant to correct an error by the interior department during former President Bill Clinton's time in office that allowed many companies to drill in deep waters without paying royalties. [for more on the royalty issue, see NOW reports "The Royalty Treatment" and "Crude Awakening"]

The best Big Oil can do right now is slow down the legislation, Wentworth of the Union of Concerned Scientists says. "The [legislation] is being held up because the oil and gas industry is concerned about closing loopholes for offshore drilling," he says. "They're fighting this tooth and nail. This is slowing down the clean energy solutions that the public wants."

Environmentalists, who had very little influence in Congress when Republicans were in control, are now seeing the lawmakers seriously consider their positions. This includes environmentalists' support of fuel efficiency standards, a mandate for electric utility companies to produce 15 percent of electricity from renewable sources and their opposition to coal-to-liquid fuel development. Nowhere is this change in tides more evident than in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is heavily involved in energy legislation. California Sen. Barbara Boxer, considered one of the environment's biggest champions, has chaired the committee since her party assumed control of the Senate in the 2006 election. Boxer replaced Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican who has received $572,000 from the oil and gas industry since President Bush took office—more than all but three other members of Congress. Since 2001, Boxer has received less than $13,000 from the industry and nearly 69 times more from environmental policy groups than Inhofe.

"The oil and gas industry, like almost every other industry, will shift some donations from Republicans to Democrats," says Eric Smith, a political scientist who researches environmental policy at the University of California-Santa Barbara. "It's clear that the industry strongly prefers to have Republicans in power, but industries generally focus on short-term advantages. In the short term—now and presumably after the 2008 elections—Democrats hold congressional majorities. So to win the short-term battles, the industry must try to persuade Democrats in Congress to go easy on them."

Big Oil, which has always contributed heavily to Republicans, isn't likely to defensively switch its contributions to favor Democrats. But so far this year, 27 percent of the industry's contributions have gone to Democrats, up from 18 percent in the 2006 election cycle, when Republicans were still in power. In the presidential race, the Democrats' share is even higher—Democratic hopefuls for president have so far received 30 percent of the industry's contributions. Among Republicans, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has so far collected the most from the industry, while presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raised the most from the industry among Democrats.

The Democratic Congress has made clean energy legislation a priority because of rising gas prices and concerns about the nation's dependence on foreign oil sources, in addition to a scientific consensus that human activity is the root cause of today's global warming. Many Republicans, too, are on board and looking for solutions. "The single most important thing that's happened in the last five years is the price of oil has shot up," Stanford's David Victor says. "That run-up has changed the politics and incentives for people to take an interest in conservation, and that's completely bipartisan. There are people in the left wing and the right wing that say we need to do something about this problem."

*Total includes all contributions greater than $200. The Federal Election Commission does not require recipients to itemize smaller donations.

Friends and any S.C.

2007-11-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

2 Uzbek Inmates Die of Torture

2007-11-22T12:58:00.000-08:00

Nov 22nd, 2007 | MOSCOW -- Two Uzbek men convicted of Islamic extremism have died in prison and their bodies showed signs of severe torture, relatives and a rights activist said Thursday.

The torture of people imprisoned for alleged Islamic extremism has increased ahead of next month's presidential elections in Uzbekistan, human rights advocate Surat Ikramov said. President Islam Karimov is running for a third term on Dec. 23 despite a constitutional two-term limit.

Thousands of devout Muslims in the former Soviet nation have been targeted by authorities fearful of the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia.

The body of Takhir Nurmukhammedov, 42, was delivered to his family on Nov. 15 and it was clear he had been "brutally, inhumanly tortured," one of his sisters said.

The sister, speaking on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals, said she had visited Nurmukhammedov in prison in September and he told her that he had lost hearing and had a leg broken as a result of "incessant" torture. The family never received a death certificate with the cause of death, she said.

A police squad followed the family to the cemetery, preventing other mourners from paying their respects, the sister said.

Nurmukhammedov was arrested in April 2002 and convicted of membership in Hizb-ut Tahrir, a banned Islamic sect, and of plotting to overthrow the government. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Ikramov said the case against Nurmukhammedov was fabricated as part of a government crackdown on Muslims that convene outside government-sanctioned mosques.

On Nov. 13, the body of another prisoner convicted of Islamic extremism was delivered to his family with signs of torture, Ikramov said. Fitrat Salakhiddinov, 40, was also buried under police surveillance.

Police surrounded his family's house and prevented reporters from speaking with his relatives.

The Interior Ministry refused to comment Thursday, and no one answered the phone at the central prison administration.

Both men were imprisoned in the eastern city of Andijan, where government troops put down a revolt in 2005. Rights groups said at least 700 mostly peaceful protesters were killed. The government accused Islamic militants of fomenting the violence and put the death toll at 187.

Ikramov said he knows of at least six inmates who have died of apparent torture in Uzbek prisons this year and believes the real number to be much higher.

"This fall there has been an epidemic of torture applied to people languishing in Uzbek prison for alleged Islamic extremism," said the rights defender, who was kidnapped and severely beaten in 2003 by men he said were sent by the Uzbek secret services.

What Would Jesus Buy?

2007-11-22T10:06:00.000-08:00

"Black Friday” is the name retailers have given to the day after Thanksgiving in their attempt to make Christmas synonymous with shopping. On Black Friday, Americans are expected to flock to the malls and shopping centers, eager for discounts, armed with plastic. Business analysts fill the airwaves with predictions on how the fickle consumer will perform, how fuel prices and the subprime mortgage crisis will impact holiday shopping. Black Friday is followed by “Cyber Monday,” a name coined by the retail industry to hype online shopping. Listening to the business news, one would conclude that the future not only of the U.S. economy but of humanity itself depends on mass, frenzied shopping for the holidays.

Rev. Billy is the street preacher played by Bill Talen, a New York City-based anti-consumerism activist who is the subject of a new feature-length documentary hitting theaters this week, “What Would Jesus Buy?” The film is produced by Morgan Spurlock, who gained fame with his documentary “Super Size Me,” in which he showed his physical and emotional decline while eating only McDonald’s food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month.

In the movie, Talen and his amazing Stop Shopping Gospel Choir cross the country in two biodiesel buses, holding public faux-Gospel revivals denouncing the “Shopocalypse,” our crass, corporate, credit-driven consumerist culture and its reliance on sweatshops abroad and low-wage retail jobs at home, while celebrating small-town, Main Street economies, the strength and value of fair-trade shopping, and making do with less.

“We are here today, 28 days before Christmas,” Rev. Billy intones at the outset of his tour, to his home congregation in Greenwich Village, “behind so many layers of billboards, with supermodels looking down on us in their Christmas lingerie, billboards covered with fake Dickensian gingerbread lattes—we’re going to go out across this shopping-addicted country.” He added later, “We will sit down and defeat the bulbous yellow feet of the most famous corporate logo in the world, and the one that has chosen to steal our children’s imaginations for 80 years, the devil, Mickey Mouse.”

En route to Disneyland from New York City, the reverend and his flock stop by the Mall of America in Minnesota, Wal-Mart’s world headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., and numerous Starbucks shops and big-box stores like Target and Staples—educating and engaging, confronting and confounding, with creative street theater and direct action. In Traer, Iowa, we meet Michael Reuman, whose clothing store has been open for more than 100 years: “Wal-Mart is killing small-town America. We’ve got two sons, and I have not encouraged either one of them to come back to the store. There’s no future here.”

This week, Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee, standing in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, released a stunning report on the sweatshop conditions in which crucifixes are manufactured in China. St. Patrick’s, Trinity Church in New York and the Association for Christian Retail all sell crucifixes traced to the Junxingye factory in Dongguan, China. There, women as young as 15 work seven days a week, 14 hours a day, and earn only 9 cents per hour, after room and board are deducted from their pay. What would Jesus buy, indeed.

Black Friday is also “Buy Nothing Day”—a global boycott of shopping and consumerism. Started by Kalle Lasn and his colleagues at Vancouver-based Adbusters magazine, Buy Nothing Day seeks to place the ad-fueled and news-media-supported shopping frenzy in a global context. He says, “Driving hybrid cars and limiting industrial emissions is great, but they are Band-Aid solutions if we don’t address the core problem: We have to consume less.”

The fair-trade movement is growing—focusing on safe, organic products made locally, by people earning not just the legal minimum wage but a living wage. Networks of sustainable businesses and nonprofit organizations are forming, linking producers with consumers, cutting out the corporations and the middlemen, allowing the people who make the items to get a larger share of the sale price. From clothing to chocolate to food to flowers to fuel, it is becoming increasingly easy to shop ethically. Heifer International features a selection of farm animals that you can sponsor, which the organization will deliver to a poor family in need elsewhere in the world.

This holiday season, spend time with family and friends—it’s worth more than money. Shop locally, or find a fair-trade store or Web site. Before walking into that big-box store, ask yourself, “What would Jesus buy?”

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RATINGS TODAY, CENSORSHIP TOMORROW

2007-11-22T09:59:00.003-08:00

A few years from now, when we look back at what crippled the Internet as a global forum for the free exchange of information, at least we'll know it was done with the best of intentions.

Who, after all, could oppose Internet ratings if they create a "family-friendly" online world?

And so, to make the Net safer for kids and to avert government regulation, the Internet brain trust has banded together to push rating, filtering and labeling technology -- a private-sector techno-fix to cleaning up the Net. President Clinton has signed on and has used his bully pulpit to jawbone companies that were wavering on the issue. And the news media have covered the president's initiative with the gusto of a pep rally.

With all this firepower behind them, ratings are coming to a Web site near you -- in fact, to all Web sites, if proponents have their way. And a panoply of would-be censors -- from foreign despots to home-grown zealots and pandering politicians -- couldn't be happier.

"What's happening now is a move toward the privatizing of censorship," says David Sobel, legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "It's likely to destroy the Internet as it's existed up till now."

There are a great many ironies here, but the greatest irony is that the censorship will be self-imposed -- we're doing it for the sake of family, parents, children. In truth, Internet ratings are being driven by the changing business interests of the major players involved.

In the last go-around over muzzling the Internet, Net users, the computer industry, the media and civil liberties groups all united against the government's Communications Decency Act -- which the Supreme Court buried last month. This time around, the lineup is a lot more lopsided.

On one side: the U.S. government, the high-tech industry, most major media outlets and a vocal cast of parents' organizations, child-safety advocates and anti-obscenity groups.

On the other: the American Civil Liberties Union, EPIC, the American Library Association, a smattering of university scholars and that guy over there waving the "No ratings" sign.

Why have the software companies and Internet firms gone over to the other side? Certainly, they're spooked by the specter of Congress passing a "son of CDA" bill. But it goes beyond that.

Internet ratings dovetail nicely with big business's desire to make the Internet safe for God, apple pie and commercialism. The "dark side" of the Net -- hackers, foreigners, political extremists, geeks, "phreaks," porn purveyors, hate groups, people who SHOUT IN ALL CAPS AND USE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!! -- will largely be banished to an unrated no-man's land where browsers and search engines fear to tread.

So it was no surprise that the invitation list to the Internet summit at the White House on July 16 bore names like Netscape, America Online and IBM rather than names like geekboy or cybergrrrl. At the meeting, President Clinton announced a "parental empowerment" initiative that would give parents the tools to shield children from obscenity, violence and antisocial messages on the Net. Although every idea on the table is software-based, the administration couldn't resist dubbing the plan the "E-chip," a cousin of television's V-chip, which will block unsuitable programming.

"We need to encourage every Internet site, whether or not it has material harmful to minors, to rate its contents ... to help ensure that our children do not end up in the red-light districts of cyberspace," Clinton said.

And the assembled captains of industry obliged. Netscape indicated it would support Internet ratings in its next browser, meaning that more than 90 percent of all browsers will support Internet ratings. (Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 already includes ratings as an option for parents to turn on.) The search engines Yahoo, Lycos and Excite also fell into line, pledging to ask for self-rated content labels for all Web sites on their directories.

There's just one problem with all this: "Childproofing" the Net by labeling content is likely to be an unmitigated disaster for adults.

"Unfortunately, a lot of people think we need to knock down everything to the common denominator of this mythical 6-year-old who surfs the Net," says Sobel of EPIC. "If this trend continues, the Internet is not going to be the open forum of ideas that it has been."

"These efforts to rate the Net result from a real misunderstanding of what the Internet is all about," says Jaron Lanier, a visiting scholar at Columbia University and computer scientist who coined the term "virtual reality." "The Internet is not just another medium choice, like television or the movies. It's the future of all communication that's not face to face. To say that we're going to rate all communication is a criminal idea."

"This will have a devastating effect on free speech all over the world -- and at home," declares Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard Law School and one of the foremost authorities on Internet ratings. "To my mind, PICS is the devil."

PICS, or Platform for Internet Content Selection, is the labeling language developed at MIT that allows Web pages to be rated and screened out. In theory, dozens of rating systems could be used with PICS technology; the Christian Coalition could rate sites on their godliness, and the ACLU could rate them on their friendliness to free speech. But in practice, only three groups have devised actual rating systems based on PICS: SafeSurf, Safe For Kids and the de facto industry leader, RSAC.

RSAC is short for the Recreational Software Advisory Council, and if that sounds like a strange term for a body wielding such enormous power over free-speech issues, it may be because the group was originally set up in 1995 to rate video games. In April 1996, its mission was expanded to devise a rating system for the Net. The nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass. -- just down the road from MIT -- is now backed by IBM, Dell, Disney, CompuServe, Microsoft and leading media companies.

For site operators, RSAC's Internet rating system (RSACi) works like this: You connect to the RSACi Web site and fill out a form rating your site for sex, nudity, violence and offensive language. Then you're assigned a tag and slap it into your Web page's HTML code. The tag is invisible to anyone looking at your Web page but can be read by PICS-enabled browsers, search engines and "censorware" software products like Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol.

Under this rating system, the end user can set a tolerance level of 0-4 for each content category. You could allow "moderate expletives" (level 2) or screen out "strong language" (level 3). You could permit "clothed sexual touching" or draw the line at "passionate kissing." It's all intended to make for an idyllic, family-friendly, Frank Capra kind of browsing experience.

But the Net has begun to buzz with critiques of PICS, RSACi and Net rating systems. They've been derided as parochial, inflexible, culturally biased to reflect the prejudices of those doing the rating, unable to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction and more appropriate to computer games than to text and complex ideas.

Moreover, such a clunky Web-based system seems irrelevant to a large chunk of cyberspace. Ann Beeson, the ACLU staff attorney who helped bring down the CDA in ACLU vs. Reno, observes: "Everybody thinks of the Internet as the Web, but they don't think of e-mail, or Internet Relay Chat, or the hundreds of Usenet newsgroups with no person in charge, or bulletin boards and conference threads. How do you rate those?"

But let's put aside all of these criticisms for a moment. Even if RSACi and all the other PICS-based Internet rating systems worked perfectly, they would still suffer from one monstrous flaw: The user may not be the one making the decision on what material is screened out.

"The problem," Lessig points out, "is that the filter can be imposed at the level of the individual user, the corporation, the proxy server, the Internet Service Provider or the national government. This is disastrous, because you can have invisible filtering done at any level of the distribution chain."

That's the essential difference between filtering and censoring: Who decides what you can see?

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A little-noticed anti-terrorism bill quietly making its through Congress is raising fears of a new affront on activism and constitutional rights.

2007-11-22T09:59:00.001-08:00

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in an overwhelming 400 to six House vote last month. Critics say it could herald a new government crackdown on dissident activity and infiltration of universities under the guise of fighting terrorism. The bill would establish two government-appointed bodies to study, monitor and propose ways of curbing what it calls homegrown terrorism and extremism in the United States. The first body, a National Commission, would convene for eighteen months. A university-based “Center for Excellence” would follow, bringing together academic specialists to recommend laws and other measures.

Critics say the bill’s definition of “extremism” and “terrorism” is too vague and its mandate even more broad. Under a false veil of expertise and independence, the government-appointed commissions could be used as ideological cover to push through harsher laws.

Following last month’s approval in the House, the Senate version is expected to go before the Judiciary Committee this week.

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Venezuela’s Chavez calls Bush ‘madman,’ says U.S. planning to invade Iran

2007-11-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called U.S. President George W. Bush a “madman” on Thursday and accused the United States and Britain of planning to invade Iran, Venezuela’s closest ally in the Middle East.

“He thinks of himself as the owner of the world and now they are making plans to invade Iran, and plans against Venezuela too,” Chavez said in a televised speech. “The guy is a madman.”

Chavez, a sharp critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, did not provide any evidence of his allegations. Chavez frequently refers to Bush as “Mr. Danger” and has accused the U.S. president of being “the greatest terrorist in the world.”

Since U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Adolf Hitler last week, Chavez has also begun referring to Bush as “Hitler.”

“The Americans are going to have to tie (Bush) down one of these days, because if they don’t he’s capable of destroying half the world,” Chavez said Thursday.

The Venezuelan leader also said British Prime Minister Tony Blair has teamed up with Bush in a confrontation with Venezuela.

“He’s the madman’s unconditional and subordinate ally, and now he also came out shooting against us,” said Chavez.

The British prime minister, speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, urged Venezuela to abide by the rules of the international community and said he’d like to see true democracy in communist-led Cuba, Venezuela’s closest ally in Latin America.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said Thursday that Venezuela wants to maintain healthy diplomatic relations with all nations but cannot accept meddling in its affairs.

“Venezuela is a peaceful, democratic country that fights for peace in the world, for social justice and good relations between all the nations of the Earth,” Rangel said in a statement. “But, at the same time, our country has a high sense of dignity, sovereignty and respect as the highest norm of the international right to nonintervention.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel Rondon sent a formal complaint about Blair’s statements to the British Embassy in Caracas, saying Blair’s comments showed his disregard for “the principles of sovereignty, non-interference and self-determination.”

Venezuela, along with Cuba and Syria, have voted against referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for resuming uranium enrichment and no longer allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.

The United States fears Tehran is developing a nuclear bomb.

Chavez has repeatedly accused officials in Washington of planning to invade Venezuela, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter. U.S. officials have denied any such plan exists.

During Thursday’s speech to supporters, Chavez also criticized Britain’s long-standing claim to the Falkland Islands _ known as the Malvinas Islands by most Latin Americans _ and its recapture of the islands after Argentina invaded them in 1982.

“These islands are Argentine, give the Malvinas back Mr. Blair,” said Chavez, a close ally of Argentina President Nestor Kirchner. “The British army went there to trample upon Argentine soldiers, supported by the government of the United States.”

Venezuela is in the midst of a diplomatic row with the United States that has seen diplomatic officials expelled from both countries.

U.S. officials expelled the chief of staff at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington from the United States last week in what the U.S. State Department said was retaliation for Venezuela’s expulsion of a U.S. naval officer accused of spying.

Chavez predicted on Wednesday the United States would step up attempts to undermine his government as he runs for re-election this year.

“The forces of imperialism aren’t going to rest” in the months leading up to the Dec. 3 election, Chavez said.

Ron Paul challenging the American Empire

2007-11-21T21:59:00.000-08:00

Flying under the radar of mainstream media coverage, supporters of Dr. Ron Paul, a seventy-two year old ten-term congressman and obstetrician from Texas, have staged a political revolution. Despite little publicity, they have raised over $15 million, mostly in small donations, giving Paul more money in the bank than John McCain.

In a November 5 “money bomb” (inspired by Guy Fawkes Day as depicted in the film, “V for Vendetta”) the Paul Revolutionaries raked in $4.3 million. In doing so, they set a new one-day record for all Republican candidates. In addition, Paul’s backers have spontaneously organized over 1,100 meet-up groups. That’s more than any other candidate in the race including the youthful and photogenic Barak Obama. By all indications, most of the meet-up group members, now numbering over 60,000, are under age twenty-five. Paul’s appeal can be attributed to his no-holds-barred small government, pro-liberty message as well as his consistent call to bring home the troops.

Reporters are right to emphasize the wide gap between Paul and the pro-war Republican presidential field but they should not stop there. If they dig a little deeper, they will find that his disagreements with Democrats are equally great. Paul is the only candidate in either party who wants to shut down the entire American overseas political and military Empire.

Rather than “isolationist” in foreign policy, however, Paul embraces as his own Thomas Jefferson’s stated goal of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” But, unlike our third president, Paul appears bound and determined to apply these words across-the-board. His voting record shows a consistent support for free trade and legislation to redirect the military strictly to home defense rather than foreign occupation. The Democrats, by contrast, largely share the bi-partisan post-World War II consensus of spreading democracy, human rights, or “vital interests” by military force.

Few subscribe to this consensus more zealously than Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton who has considerable credentials as a hawk dating back to her husband’s administration. Most notably, she was an aggressive cheerleader for the bombing campaigns against both Iraq and Serbia in Kosovo. Paul, like many Republicans at the time, opposed both. Although Hillary later broke with Bush on Iraq, she rejects a non-interventionist approach. She wants to leave U.S. troops behind in Iraq to fight al Qaeda as well as keep them in the region. When asked in a recent debate whether she would promise that the troops would be home from Iraq by the end of her first term, Clinton refused. Although Barak Obama opposed the war from the outset, his current views are not much different. He also intends to station U.S. forces permanently in the region and reserves the right to put them back in Iraq again in full force to stop “genocide” (a term he never defines). John Edwards advocates the same approach.

While it is true that the Democrats are dovish on Iraq when compared to Bush, they blow bugles on the Darfur region of Sudan. The frontrunners demand tougher sanctions, imposition of a no-fly zone, and U.S. aid for more UN troops. Edwards pledges to work with NATO and deploy U.S. “military assets” to enforce the zone. Clinton has even suggested a blockade of the Port of Sudan, an act of war under international law. The truculence of the Democrats on Darfur defies logic given their objections to the Iraq War. The same conditions apply in Darfur that also led to the Iraq quagmire including a history of Islamic sectarian strife, a long civil war, and no real tradition of the rule of law and democracy. Despite widespread violence and Sunni fundamentalism in Sudan, there has never been a suicide bombing there. Were the Democrats to spread the War on Terror into Darfur, that statistic would certainly change.

Rather than avoid all foreign political entanglements, as would Paul, the Democratic frontrunners promise to extend them. All three, to quote Edwards, hope to exercise “American leadership to forge powerful alliances-with longtime allies and reluctant friends, with nations already living in the light of democracy and with peoples struggling to join them.” In contrast to Paul, they do not intend to scale down foreign American bases, much less reconsider the merits of George McGovern’s old dream to “Come Home America.” As Obama puts it, the United States “cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now….we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world.” Woodrow Wilson could not have said it better.

If Americans expect a “great debate” about foreign policy fundamentals in 2008, absent an upset by Paul and his campaign against the American empire and for free trade, they will not get it. That would be a pity. As examples of “blowback” from previous and ongoing interventions continue to mount, such as spiraling oil prices, the free-fall in the value of the dollar, and the current strife in Pakistan and Kurdistan, Americans need such a debate more than ever before.

Right Wing Hypocrisy, or Why Sex Guilt Fucks Things Up For Everyone

2007-11-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

The story is pretty much boilerplate at this point. “Right-wing Republican politician/ prominent Christian Right leader, famous for advocating a rigid sexual morality, caught in sex scandal.” It’s hardly even newsworthy.

The latest, of course, is David Vitter, Republican senator from Louisiana, who built a career supporting abstinence-only sex education, opposing same-sex marriage, and generally trying to legislate sexual morality . . . and was recently identified as (and has admitted to being) a client of the D.C. Madam.

There’s also right-wing evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, preaching about the evils of homosexuality and supporting a ban on same-sex marriage . . . having regular sex with a gay male prostitute. There’s Republican Congressman Mark Foley, pushing for laws to protect minors from sex predators on the Internet . . . sending sexually explicit and seductive emails and instant messages to underage pages. There’s Bob Allen, Republican representative in the Florida House and co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign, sponsoring a bill to tighten Florida’s public sex laws . . . getting arrested for offering a male cop $20 to blow him in a public bathroom.

And that’s just in the last year.

I’m not even talking about Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Bob Livingston, the widespread pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood, and similar scandals from years past. It seems like cartoonist Tom Tomorrow is asking the right question: “Should we assume that every sanctimonious, moralizing Republican is a closeted sexual libertine – or just most of them?”

So here’s what I’m finding fascinating.

It’s not just that these right-wing figures are generally preaching a rigid sexual morality that they don’t practice. The pattern I find so compelling is that, for so many of them, the specific taboo sex acts they engage in are the exact ones they publicly campaign against.

Ted Haggard – preached against the evils of homosexuality; had sex with a male prostitute. Mark Foley – campaigned against Internet predators endangering minors; sent sexual and seductive emails and instant messages to teenagers. Bob Allen – tried to tighten bans on public sex; solicited a guy in a public bathroom. And now Vitter – opposed same-sex marriage to protect marriage’s sanctity; cheated on his wife with prostitutes. (In what were reportedly some fairly unusual variations.)

It’s almost eerie, how precisely the hypocrisy matches up.

Admittedly, a big part of this pattern comes from the media focus. Hypocrisy in powerful public figures is big news, and I’m sure there’s some cherry-picking in the coverage. After all, “Married Congressman caught with hookers – and he campaigned on the sanctity of marriage!” makes great headlines. “Married Congressman caught with hookers – and he voted to renew the Farm Bill!” isn’t going to make headlines anywhere but the Surrealist Times.

But even given that, there’s a precision to the match-ups between the public condemnation and the private behavior that seems like more than coincidence and media focus.

Maybe it’s all just smokescreens. You rant enough about the evils of homosexuality and pedophilia, and you figure nobody will suspect the truth about those teenage boys. But if all this sexual hypocrisy is a smokescreen, it’s a singularly stupid one. It may protect you from suspicion for a while – but when the hammer comes down, it’s going to come down that much harder. So even from a purely pragmatic angle, you’d think that if you were offering $20 to blow strangers in public bathrooms, you’d pick an issue to campaign on other than the evils of public sex.

Or maybe it’s the natural human tendency each of us has, to believe that we personally can be trusted to know which laws and rules should be obeyed, but that other people can’t be and everybody else should just obey the law. But while that explains the right wingers’ overall willingness to break sex laws and flout sexual taboos, it doesn’t explain the eerie specificity with which their law/ taboo breaking matches their public condemnation.

What’s that about, anyway?

I’m no expert. I’m not a psychologist or therapist. But based on my years of experience in the sex world, what this smells like to me is sexual guilt – and overcompensation for it.

I don’t think Ted Haggard was happy about having sex with men. I doubt seriously that David Vitter or Jimmy Swaggart felt great about seeing prostitutes. Ditto Mark Foley about being hot for teenage boys, or Bob Allen about picking up guys in public bathrooms. Maybe some of these right-wing hypocrites are laughing up their sleeves about how they’ve pulled one over on everyone. But for the most part, I think they feel tremendous guilt about wanting, and having, the exact kinds of sex that they believe are destroying society and making baby Jesus cry.

So they overcompensate. They hate themselves for wanting what they want and doing what they do . . . so they preach against it, and propose legislation against it, and do everything in their power to relocate their guilt out in the world instead of inside their own treacherous minds and bodies. They may even feel that, in fighting the scourge of homosexuality or whatever, they’re somehow making up for their own misdeeds. I even have some compassion for them, although I’d have a whole lot more if they weren’t screwing things up for the rest of us.

And this is just one more reason we need to work for a new sexual morality – to shift it away from a guilty freakout over which tab goes in what slot, and towards a morality based on honesty and consent.

Because if people in power weren’t so wracked with guilt about their own sexuality, I think they’d be a lot less obsessively controlling about everyone else’s. If Ted Haggard hadn’t felt so guilty about fucking men, maybe he’d have become a minister in the gay-positive MCC . . . instead of battling gay rights at every turn. If Mark Foley hadn’t felt so guilty about emailing and IMing teenage pages, maybe he’d have felt comfortable going for guys who were young but legal . . . instead of trying to turn the Internet into a Norman Rockwell painting. And if David Vitter hadn’t felt so guilty about wanting unusual fetishistic sex, maybe he and his wife could have come to an agreement about it . . . instead of trying to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the depraved ravages of gay people in love.

Just a thought.

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