Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Scare the hell out of them!

     
       Daily Show: MBA Ethics Oath - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.



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You Have A Right To Be Heard!!!

Please take time to be heard on the health-care issue. Help us slap down the crazies and their fear-mongering, deceitful, hateful blabbering.

Our health-care system is broken and stands to become even more broken if there is no reform which includes a public option.

It is now or never, Peeps.


 DEBUNK HEALTH CARE REFORM MYTHS (click to send a letter to your hometown news paper)

Write a Letter to the Editor
Myths, distortions, and bald-faced lies about President Obama's proposed health care reform have been cynically promoted by the insurance industry and right-wing extremists for several weeks now.  And to some partisans, killing health care reform by whatever tactics are necessary is simply a way to derail the Obama presidency. 

Evidence is now emerging that these falsehoods -- amplified by millions of dollars in special interest advertising and the 24-hour news cycle -- have begun to set in among otherwise conscientious citizens, threatening our reform efforts.

Submit a letter to the editor of your local newspaper today to make sure your neighbors know the cost-reducing FACTS about health care reform and the public option.

Don't forget to COMPLETE YOUR LETTER by clicking on one or more talking point (Step 2)!



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Update: 2009 Swine Flu

Sunday, August 30, 2009


This is an update on H1N1 / swine flu along with sites with authoritative information and some cool graphs and charts.


The information here builds on prior unbossed work, including a two-parter on H1N1, examining the science of understanding the likely path and virulence of this variety of flu in Impure Thoughts on Pure Science - Lessons from 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu. Part 1 and information gleaned from the 1918 influenza pandemic - Impure Thoughts on Pure Science - Lessons from 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu. Part 2.


Those stories included information on the disease's virulent attack on the lungs as also being a marker of the pandemic 1918 flu. In addition, an announcement from the World Health Organization (WHO) in the last couple days states that a similar pattern is now being seen with H1N1.


One unbossed theme has been health, related to pandemics and, increasingly, influenza. Past stories on influenza are aggregated here and stories on pandemics are here.


Useful sites

Information on Symptoms

Canada has a summary of symptoms, including identifying those that are very serious and how to respond.

What is special about the current Swine Flu

More information on the nature of the disease can be found in a July CIDRAP report.
Information on the spread of H1N1

Here is an update from the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is keeping track of the spread of H1N1 in a number of ways. For example, it is producing colour-coded maps to show its geographic spread.

You will see some red hot spots for the Aug. 10-16 map, but most of the map is grey - meaning no data is available - including substantial parts of Europe. China and Russia and nearby areas are white - for "no activity". The US is grey, as is Canada, Africa, and Australia, just to name a few places, while New Zealand is a red hotspot - meaning "widespread".

With so much grey and white blanks, we can only speculate. However, we have data among far flung locations, and among those reporting in, the most common color is red. It seems likely, then, that a large part of the world is red, including the US.

In other words, if Mexico is red, how can the US not be? We can safely assume that H1N1 is circulating among us and it is useful to have authoritative information.


Here are particularly useful sites for updates and information.

CDC, H1N1 Monitoring Questions & Answers and general information.

This unofficial Animated Map of H1N1/Swine Flu Cases in the United States "animates the swine flu spreading across the United States starting from April 26 to May 14, 2009 when the CDC stopped collecting data on H1N1 cases."

The CDC has its own maps, graphs, and charts, including data for regions of the US by weeks. link. They have their pluses, but a big minus is that they not as clear in terms of easily showing trends as the unofficial animated map linked to above. They are designed for experts - not for laypeople.

However, here are useful things you can get from the CDC's website.
Click on a region, and you get a graph, and that can take you to the data behind the graph. All are interesting, with different patterns in the various regions. However, there is no linkage of the data by week with calendar dates. As a result, it's hard to tell how things are going.

The CDC website data display at this link is much more useful, since it links with real world and has both a map and graph coupled with dates. The graph compares flu data for the prior two years.

At this link, you can also get a weekly CDC summary of flu news, followed by a chart with details on types of flu data collected.

Here is the most recent week's data from the CDC, to give you an example. Note the direction of changes in H1N1 hospitalizations and deaths over the prior week.

A total of 8,843 hospitalizations and 556 deaths associated with 2009 influenza A (H1N1) viruses have been reported to CDC an increase from 7,983 hospitalizations and 522 deaths from the prior week


* During week 33:
o 804 (18.0%) specimens tested by U.S. World Health Organization (WHO) and National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS) collaborating laboratories and reported to CDC/Influenza Division were positive for influenza.

o 99% of all subtyped influenza A viruses being reported to CDC were 2009 influenza A (H1N1) viruses.
o The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was below the epidemic threshold.
o Five influenza-associated pediatric deaths were reported and all were associated with a 2009 influenza A (H1N1) virus infection.
o The proportion of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) was below the national baseline. Region IV reported ILI above their region-specific baseline.
o Two states and Puerto Rico reported geographically widespread influenza activity, 13 states reported regional influenza activity, 10 states and the District of Columbia reported local influenza activity, 24 states reported sporadic influenza activity, one state reported no influenza activity, and Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands did not report.


If you scroll farther down, you get a bar graph with colors linked to types of flu. It makes seeing the increase and increasingly prevalence of H1N1 easy to see.

We will certainly continue covering this issue.


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Making liars pay a price

It seems that Americans, themselves, should have legal recourse against elected officials and ACNM (American corporate news media) who misinform or(disinform) them about any issue, especially extremely important national issues such as fixing a very broken healthcare system not to mention dragging our country into a war of aggression and the war crimes that are soon to follow the mother of all war crimes. 

News media, under the Constitution, have special privileges for a very good reason. Our founders knew that a Democratic Republic could not long function without an informed electorate. When our modern-day, 24-hour, corporate-owned news media (print or electronic), misinform us out of laziness or disinform us for reasons of propaganda, they are committing no less than treason. 

The American people must insist on truth from our elected officials and the news media whose job it is to report the truth, not simply repeat talking points from spokesmen of either political party. We have, for too long, put up with lies from both American officials and the news media. We should have legal recourse against those who betray us with deceit and fear-mongering to protect the greedy and those who lust for absolute power.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

This article by Edward Wasserman is generating some discussion about what the traditional media should do when influential people spread misinformation to the public. Propaganda works essentially by means of repetition, so reporting the lies only to correct them typically assists in disseminating them. No wonder that so many Americans believe the nonsense being spread by opponents of health care reform, given that the US media, without bothering to explain the details of the proposed reforms, has played those myths up even when reporters did point out that the complaints are imaginary.


Wasserman is of course right that merely debunking persistent lies doesn't work to deflate them. But his proposed solution won't work either.


Wasserman, taking his cue from Greg Marx's post at the Columbia Journalism Review, argues that the trad media should somehow train itself to just ignore the liars and thus deprive their lies of oxygen. But that takes no account of Fox News, viral emails, televised blab fests, and all the modern means of disseminating politically convenient lies.


As tristero points out, that solution would have done nothing to halt the disastrous rush to war against Iraq with all the misinformation being spread by the Bush administration and its busy little helpers. But tristero's solution, for the media to learn to mock the liars, is unlikely to happen. And though it would be a good start, it's insufficient because rebuttals are necessary as well. It's hard to harness ridicule to serious fact-checking.
A better solution is for the media to make sure that the liars pay a steep price for every lie they try to disseminate. Here for example is a scenario offered by Wasserman:

Suppose some headline-loving political eminence announces that the reason the health system is in crisis is illegal immigration. Now, you could refute that with experts, with numbers, with facts. And it wouldn't matter a bit -- not if you lead your newscast with him, if you let that week's debate revolve around his claims. You'd still whip up rage, you'd still give him a soapbox, you'd still bleed off attention from the issues lawmakers need to tackle to fix healthcare, you'd still create a population that believes something that isn't so.

The real solution seems pretty self-intuitive: Make the story about a liar spreading lies. Put your politician on the defensive by making him the focus of the story. Describe how he is making things up, call them 'lies', show the extent to which he's doing it deliberately, and let him try to defend himself. If he weasels out or backtracks, ask him when he's going to set the record straight publicly and if he'll be apologizing to the people he misled. If necessary, target the liar repeatedly and remind your audience of other lies the politician has foisted on the public.

In other words, confront the sons of bitches who are screwing up political discourse by spreading lies. Make it clear that there's a heavy price to pay for lying, and lies will become less attractive.
Didn't any reporters in America ever learn how to deal with schoolyard bullies? Punch the political bullies hard in the nose and they'll leave us in peace. Maybe literally.


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Monday, August 31, 2009

Shining light on CIA torturers cum whiners

Sunday, August 30, 2009 

 

This report by Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick is already generating criticism as yet another installment in the Washington Post's repulsive effort to build public support for Dick Cheney's defense of abusive interrogations (regarding which see this satirical commentary on yesterday's installment). I think something more subtle is going on in today's piece. Pincus and Warrick are airing Cheney's argument that the investigation of CIA abuses damage morale at the Agency, only to cut it down by showing repeatedly that any complaints at the CIA are limited to those few officials who took part in the abuse and now stand to be held accountable for it.

Not only does the current article not align itself with Cheney's position, it provides ammunition against Cheney's argument that we should be concerned about the mental anguish of torturers who now have to suffer through an investigation of their conduct. In fact, some of that ammunition is new and will prove useful in rebutting Cheney's talking points.


For example, the article highlights the outrage that was felt by many CIA officials at the reports that were trickling back about the abuse of prisoners. Here it quotes CIA Inspector General John Helgerson saying that he was cheered on by the rank and file officer when he began his investigation into CIA wrongdoing:

Helgerson now says he received a steady flow of information, questions and encouragement during his inquiry. "Frankly, I could not walk through the cafeteria without people walking up to me, not to complain but to say, 'More power to you.' "
Former senior officials say that they were concerned with what was an unprecedented program and that as reports came in from secret sites alleging improper activities, they took action, including sending reports to Helgerson.

The article's central point is made right at the outset, in the last clause of the report's first sentence – which hangs there as a rather pointed rebuke of the torturers' self-serving whining:

Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general's review of the agency's interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.
From there Pincus and Warrick go on to quote one of the lead advocates for abusive CIA programs, Alvin Krongard (who retired and went to work for Blackwater), to the effect that the release of Helgerson's report and hence the prospect of investigations means that morale at the CIA has dropped "down to minus 50". That's an assertion that the rest of the article proceeds to show is grossly inaccurate, so Krongard is exposed as an alarmist at best. In any case, Krongard's complaint is directly juxtaposed to a comment by Helgerson:

At the same time, former inspector general John L. Helgerson, whose review of the program was largely declassified Monday, said that the release, though painful, would ensure that the agency confronts difficult issues head on, instead of ignoring or trying to bury them.

As every complaint is aired, the reporters undercut it by showing that it isn't necessarily representative of the views held throughout the Agency. Indeed, they also point out that nobody can reasonably claim to know what all CIA officers think (a rhetorical trick that is essential to the arguments advanced by the Cheney/Krongard faction that claims to speak for the poor put-upon CIA officer):

It is impossible to extrapolate from the small sample contacted by Washington Post reporters about the effect the varied inquiries are having on the thousands of agency employees, more than one-third of whom are spread around the world. But among the dozens of officials who were part of the program and either remain active or have retired, feelings run high about how the White House and the Justice Department have handled the issue.

It's primarily those who are implicated in torture who are raising a fuss about investigations and the release of information about their activities.


The article also points out that CIA officers were wary of the abusive interrogation program from the start and had immediately anticipated that there would be legal problems in the future when the program was exposed...despite Bush administration lawyers' attempts to reassure the CIA that it had been indemnified and was free to torture away.

Read in this light, the Pincus/Warrick column does a public service by dismantling one of Cheney's most emotive talking points.
Posted by smintheus at 10:58:47. Filed under: general


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Cheney is Afraid of a DoJ Torture Investigation

 

 

Friday, August 28, 2009

You might reasonably have surmised that Dick Cheney fears where an investigation into the torture and mistreatment of terrorist suspects could eventually lead. Until now Cheney has restricted himself to lying about the effectiveness of the CIA and DoD interrogation programs, claiming to know decisive information that remains classified, and denouncing those who seek to investigate the government officials who abused prisoners under the color of law. But now we have some direct evidence of how rattled Cheney has become by Attorney General Holder's decision to initiate what is after all an extremely limited investigation. Its scope currently is limited to the CIA interrogations that employed even more abuse than the torture memos had actually authorized.


In an interview that will be aired on Sunday, Cheney made a couple of really remarkable statements according to McClatchy's Warren Strobel. First, Cheney endorsed the behavior of CIA officers who blatantly ignored the restrictions placed upon interrogators by government lawyers. This only a few days after the release of a 2004 CIA Inspector General report that revealed lurid details of prisoner abuse! Cheney had to know that he would be derided and denounced for coming out in favor of such things as mock executions, promises to rape and murder the family members of suspects, and threats with a gun and electric drill.


And secondly, Cheney rather transparently tried to build distance for himself with regard to the use of waterboarding, for which he has been the most vocal public advocate since at least 2006 (his original endorsement of waterboarding was a story broken here at unbossed). Cheney wants us to believe that though he was aware of the existence of the practice in general, he wasn't informed about any particular applications of waterboarding to specific prisoners. This even though reams of evidence have accumulated that interrogators who employed waterboarding were in very regular contact with CIA headquarters, and that the White House was deeply interested in the progress of those particular interrogations to the point of asking for multiple updates for days on end!


Here is how Strobel describes the Cheney interview:
Cheney, who strongly opposes the Obama administration's new probe into alleged detainee abuse, was asked in the Fox News interview whether he was "OK" with interrogations that went beyond Justice's specific legal authorization.

"I am," the former vice president replied.

"My sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks," he said. "It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well."
[...]

Cheney said in the interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, according to a transcript, that he was aware of the waterboarding, "not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved."


What Cheney fears is pretty obvious. First, he believes that the investigation into a few CIA officers who scandalously flouted the torture memos' rules for coercive interrogations could provide the sharp edge that might pry open the whole sordid program of systematized abuse and expose it to judicial and public scrutiny. 

It was a program that Cheney apparently sponsored and helped to design.


Secondly, Cheney fears that he could then become a target of investigation. He is especially vulnerable to prosecution because of the close interest he took in the most abusive interrogations. One might be able to persuade a slightly gullible grand jury that the "conditioning" or "exploitation" of prisoners (hypothermia, for example) does not constitute torture. But waterboarding universally has been considered torture since at least the times of the Great Inquisition. Cheney seems to think now that he needs to build a case that he was no more aware of actual instances of waterboarding than anybody else who was briefed on the CIA program.
Cheney may also be aware that his likeness has now been put on one of the "Torture Team" playing cards that the Center for Constitutional Rights has created ("Collect and prosecute them all"). He's in the big leagues now.

Update: Here is the transcript of the Cheney interview on Fox News Sunday. Cheney's comments are even more over the top than one might have expected. Early on he insists that Attorney General Holder's decision to open a (very limited) review of potential CIA wrongdoing is "clearly a political move". "I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this," Cheney adds. Obviously Cheney wants to avoid at all costs having to debate the issue on the grounds of whether laws were broken. When Chris Wallace raises the question of whether the DoJ will also investigate the lawyers who wrote the torture memos, Cheney expresses great indignation at the possibility and then quickly changes the subject.


Cheney also dodges the question of whether he knew about the scandalous details of abuse that were described in the CIA Inspector General's report. That is where Cheney admits to knowing about the existence of waterboarding in general, though not about who it was used against. But Cheney avoids addressing whether he was aware of any of the other types of abuse. He follows that with a blunt endorsement of those who engaged in abuse even beyond what the torture memos had authorized:

WALLACE: Let me ask you -- you say you're proud of what we did. The inspector general's report which was just released from 2004 details some specific interrogations -- mock executions, one of the detainees threatened with a handgun and with an electric drill, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times.
First of all, did you know that was going on?

CHENEY: I knew about the waterboarding. Not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved.

The fact of the matter is, the Justice Department reviewed all of those allegations several years ago. They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session. It was never used on the individual, or that they had brought in a weapon, never used on the individual. The judgment was made then that there wasn't anything there that was improper or illegal with respect to conduct in question...
(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Do you think what they did, now that you've heard about it, do you think what they did was wrong?

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. Those interrogations were involved in the arrest of nearly all the Al Qaeda members that we were able to bring to justice. I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.

It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?

CHENEY: I am.


More tellingly still, Cheney refuses to be pinned down on whether he'd agree to speak to a DoJ prosecutor. He states, bizarrely, that his views are already sufficiently well known because he's been publicly outspoken. That suggests that a prosecutor may have to treat interviews such as this one as if they were held under oath.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Cheney also assures Chris Wallace that Democrats are soft on national security and national defense. 




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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Honduras: Lessons From the Coup: Or, Why Are We in Honduras Anyhow?


by: John Lamperti, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Supporters of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Supporters of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya gather at a concert in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Photo: AP)    

The June 28 military coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Honduras was a shock. When the Central American wars of the 1980s finally ended, the region seemed on a path toward electoral democracy at last. The military's ouster of President Zelaya, followed by the suspension of civil liberties and repression of non-violent protests, looks like a return to the bad old days when coups were the rule and real elections the rare exception.


Together with all Latin American nations and the UN General Assembly, the United States condemned the coup. President Obama said, "The coup was not legal," and added "President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras." The US has also taken modest steps to pressure the post-coup acting government to accept mediation and restore some form of democracy. That US response was a positive change from the past, when this country would have welcomed such a coup or even instigated it. (Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Venezuela 2002, to mention only a few.)


So far, so good - but subsequent statements by US officials, and the limited actions that have been taken (or not taken), are troubling. For example, all countries in the region except the United States have withdrawn their ambassadors from Honduras. Worse, a recent letter by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Verma addressed to Senator Richard Lugar blames the victim, implying that President Zelaya brought on the coup through "provocative actions." Verma's letter seems to indicate that the US is not, after all, committed to the return of President Zelaya to office.


A State Department web page, dated February 2009, asserts "US policy toward Honduras is aimed at consolidating democracy, protecting human rights, and promoting the rule of law." The United States must hold to those declared principles and join the rest of the hemisphere in restoring the elected president of Honduras.


Beyond that immediate need, there are two important lessons for US policy.
  

 First, at least six of the military officers who implemented the coup and the subsequent Iran-like repression of pro-democracy protests are graduates of the (in)famous "School of the Americas." The SOA, providing US training to Latin American military personnel, has long been known throughout Latin America as the "School of Coups," or sometimes the "School of Assassins," because so many coup plotters and abusers of human rights have trained there. The coup leaders in Honduras, Generals Romeo Vasquez and Luis Suazo, are both SOA alumni, twice so in the case of Vasquez, and other coup plotters are also SOA grads. Although the SOA has officially changed its name to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," the old epithet "school of coups" evidently still fits. And despite the coup, Honduran soldiers are still training at the SOA as if nothing had changed.


A long-running movement to close the SOA as part of a new "good neighbor policy" toward Latin America has gained considerable support in Congress. Currently, a bill numbered HR 2567, the "Latin America Military Training Review Act," would suspend operation of the SOA and mandate review of all US training for Latin American militaries. The involvement of SOA grads in the Honduras coup, and the army's brutal attacks on pro-democracy protestors afterwards, show once again that such legislation is badly needed. It should pass promptly.
   

Second, it may seem surprising that one US response to the coup was suspending some military cooperation with Honduras. What military cooperation?? In fact, the United States has maintained a military presence in the country since the 1980s, when Honduras served as the main staging area for the Reagan administration's "contra" war against Nicaragua and interventions in El Salvador. During that period contras and Honduran soldiers committed numerous crimes against Honduran civilians, including hundreds of murders and "disappearances," with no protest from US authorities. Joint US/Honduran maneuvers such as Operation Solid Shield in 1987, intended to intimidate the Nicaraguan government, involved nearly ten thousand US troops. But when the wars ended, the military operations and cooperation did not.

US military aid to Honduras has recently run around $10 million per year, a sum that sounds small but one that represents perhaps 1/7 or 1/8 of the nation's military budget. (The US reportedly "suspended" $16.5 million in military aid after the coup.) The main US military presence on the ground is Joint Task Force Bravo, based at the Honduran Soto Cano Air Base (Palmerola). The US State Department says that Bravo "plays a vital role in supporting combined exercises in Honduras and in neighboring Central American countries." According to a 12th Air Force Fact Sheet, Bravo's mission also includes "supporting Latin American armed forces as they ... demonstrate support for human rights and subordination to civilian authority," areas in which the Honduran military has spectacularly failed. Some 500 to 600 US troops are stationed at Soto Cano on an essentially permanent basis, joined by a roughly equal number of US and Honduran civilian employees. Recent visits by outside observers found that despite the coup, it is essentially "business as usual" for US/Honduran cooperation at both Palmerola and at the SOA.


Clearly, all this strongly supports the Honduran military establishment, providing it with political legitimacy in addition to the direct assistance. Even leaving aside the issues raised by the coup, is this a good policy? Arguably, it is not.


Undoubtedly the most successful nation in Central America since the 1950s has been Costa Rica. It has by far the best social indicators (literacy, life expectancy, etc) in the region, and has been largely peaceful while its neighbors suffered from civil wars and foreign interventions. One major reason for these advantages is clear: Costa Rica abolished its military establishment in 1948. As a result it has invested in social welfare instead of weapons, avoided military coups or rebellions, and maintained the most democratic government and the most legitimate elections in the region.


Costa Rica's president, Oscar Arias, has attempted to mediate the Honduran crisis; so far his proposals have been accepted by President Zelaya but not by the coup leaders. In a recent article (The Washington Post, 7/9/09) Arias emphasized that militarism is a widespread and chronic problem in Latin America. Events such as the Honduran coup, he wrote, "are the price we pay for one of our region's greatest follies: its reckless military spending. This coup d'etat demonstrates, once more, that the combination of powerful militaries and fragile democracies creates a terrible risk." The "nearly $50 billion" that Latin American governments will spend this year on their armies, Arias continued, "is nearly double the amount spent five years ago, and it is a ridiculous sum in a region where 200 million people live on fewer than $2 a day." He concludes that more weapons and soldiers will contribute nothing to meeting human needs, and will only "destabilize a region that continues to view armed forces as the final arbiter of social conflicts."
   

Honduras, like Costa Rica, does not need an army or an air force. No foreign nation threatens to invade, and those tens of millions of military dollars could be far better spent on human welfare. Internal security is a police, not a military problem, and neither poverty nor domestic crime can be fought with advanced jet aircraft. The Honduran military has not provided security to the Honduran people; on the contrary, without that military the coup and subsequent ugly repression could not have taken place.


The United States, of course, cannot dictate to Honduras or any other nation that it must follow Costa Rica's lead, and the example of our own enormous military spending is hardly one to emulate. Still, we could and should use our influence and our aid to strengthen the civil societies of our neighbors and seek to reduce the size, importance and influence of their military institutions. In particular, there is no good reason to continue to strengthen and legitimize the Honduran military. All US aid to Honduras should be civilian, helping to build a more prosperous and just society. Supporting the military does not help the Honduran people.


For the United States to heed these two "lessons" would mean a major shift in how we relate to our neighbors. Defunding the SOA would be a small but important step in the right direction, away from endorsing the militarism that has plagued Latin America. We might then truly help in "consolidating democracy, protecting human rights, and promoting the rule of law."

John Lamperti is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of several books on the theory of probability and on random processes. Since 1985 one of his main interests has been Central America and what the United States has been doing there. He is the author of "Enrique Alvarez Cordova: Life of a Salvadoran Revolutionary and Gentleman" (MacFarland, 2006).


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Let The Sun Shine In......

Possible swing vote Dem Senator would 'tend not to' back public option

Now, there's a solid, principled stand for you. She would "tend not to support" a public option? What does she mean by that? Is it that she would tend not to unless we, the people, can come up with more money than the vested corporate interests can?


Speaking with CNN on Sunday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said she would "tend not to" support a not-for-profit public health insurance option, adding that "[there] are some portions of our health care system that are working, but it’s all too expensive."


The network referred to Landrieu as "a possible swing vote in Republicans’ favor" on President Barack Obama's health insurance reform proposals.


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Let The Sun Shine In......

Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane

Does it not occur to any of these whack-jobs that if these detention centers exist, they had to be there during the Bush/Cheney administration; an administration which did more to harm our nation and sell-out our rights than Obama has ever thought of doing. 

Further, if there comes any verifiable evidence that what these nutjobs are saying is true, they will not be alone in resisting such undemocratic, unAmerican and authoritarian activities. No American in his or her right mind would stand for anything like what is described here from any administration.
I'm in no way afraid that any of us have anything like this to look forward to from this administration. Seems the little authoritarians are at it again. They are scared witless and therefore under a great deal of stress. When little scared authoritarians begin to disintegrate, their favorite defense is projection, which leads to long, dangerous paranoid states. No matter what the issue, they can connect it to whatever their greatest fear is and spew Chicken-little like pronouncements in an attempt to scare hell out of any one of our easily frightened countrymen/women.
As my bumper stickers says: Fearful People Do Stupid Things.

Posted on Fri, Aug. 28, 2009

Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 28, 2009 08:08:02 PM


WASHINGTON — Is the federal government building secret camps to lock up people who criticize President Barack Obama?


Will it truck off young people to camps to brainwash them into liking Obama's agenda? Are government officials planning to replicate the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, using the guillotine to silence their domestic enemies?

No. The charges, of course, are not true.

However, the accusations are out there, a series of fantastic claims fed by paranoia about the government. They're spread and sometimes cross-pollinated via the Internet. They feed a fringe subset of the anger at the government percolating through the country, one that ignites passion, but also helps Obama's allies to discount broader anger at the president's agenda.


In one, retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson says the government has prepared 1,000 camps for its own citizens. He also says the government has stored 30,000 guillotines to murder its critics, and has stashed 500,000 caskets in Georgia and Montana for the remains.

Why guillotines? "Because," he wrote in a report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, "beheading is the most efficient means of harvesting body parts."


In a second warning, the Web site Worldnetdaily.com says that the government is considering Nazi-like concentration camps for dissidents.

Jerome Corsi, the author of "The Obama Nation," an anti-Obama book, says that a proposal in Congress "appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany."


Another Web site, Americanfreepress.net, says the proposal "would create a Guantanamo-style setting after martial law is declared."


There's no evidence of such a plan.


In truth, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has proposed a bill that would order the Homeland Security Department to prepare national emergency centers — to provide temporary housing and medical facilities in national emergencies such as hurricanes. The bill also would allow the centers to be used to train first responders, and for "other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security."


In another ominous warning, a group called the Oathkeepers boasts that it wouldn't cooperate if the government orders dissidents locked up.


"We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext," the group says in its list of top principles.


Oathkeepers is built around the idea that its members — active and retired military, police and firefighters — all have taken an oath to defend the Constitution, not the federal government.


Whether inspired by the group or not, the message of loyalty to the Constitution has been heard in many of the angry protests in town hall meetings this summer against a proposed health care overhaul — often side by side with the suggestion that the health care proposal is unconstitutional.


U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., also is worried about the federal government and children, saying a bill expanding the AmeriCorps volunteer service could lead to mandatory camps for young people.


"There is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service," Bachmann told a Minnesota radio station.


"And the real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."


ON THE WEB
For more on HR 645
For more on Oathkeepers


MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
Judge rules that he, too, can grant access to U.S. secrets
Here's the truth: 'Birther' claims are just plain nuts
Fighting false health care claims, Obama repeats one of his own

For more McClatchy politics coverage visit: Planet Washington

McClatchy Newspapers 2009
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Let The Sun Shine In......

'We hate the United States': Secessionists Rally in Texas




For some folks in Texas, the prospect of a universal health care scheme isn't just cause for protest and debate -- it's reason enough to secede from the United States altogether.


Some 200 people rallied at the State Capitol in Austin on Saturday, a small but vocal crowd that set itself in opposition to pro-health care reform protesters.


Larry Kilgore, a Christian activist that the Texas Observer says has advocated execution for homosexuals, "drew some murmurs of disapproval" when he told the crowd: “I hate that flag up there. ... I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”
“We hate the United States!” he declared later in his address.


Although the Texas independence movement is nothing new, observers say it has been given new life by the debate over health care, which some secessionists see as an attack on the US Constitution, and therefore grounds for abandoning the Union.


But many observers place responsibility for the movement's growth in prominence on Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who in April suggested that the Obama administration's policies may drive Texas to leave the United States.
"If Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that," Brian Beutler at TalkingPointsMemo quoted Perry. "But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

"Rick Perry's talk of secession appears to have buoyed efforts by Texas secessionists who want the governor to follow through," Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater blogged on Sunday.


Slater went on to debunk some of the assertions made by the secessionists:
Another self-styled patriot invoked George Washington as an ally of secession (History lesson: Washington presided over creation of the union) and Sam Houston - "You go ask Sam Houston what he thought about secession. He did it anyway." (History lesson: Houston opposed secession. He ran for governor as an independent Unionist in 1859. Despite his efforts, the people of Texas voted to secede, and he was forced out of office in March 1861.)

As the Texas Observer notes, no prominent Texas politicians showed up to the event, not even the 70 or so members of the state legislature who supported a declaration (PDF) earlier this year affirming the sovereignty of Texas over its own constitutional affairs.


Prior to the protest, organizer Gerry Donaldson told Robert Moon of Examiner.com that secessionists are "calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. ... Either we will restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again."


"For his part, Perry says he never advocated secession - only resistance to federal programs that infringe on states' rights," the Morning News' Slater reports. "The message is part of his anti-Washington appeal to the right-wing of the Republican Party in advance of next March's GOP primary against [prominent Texas Republican] Kay Bailey Hutchison."


-- Daniel Tencer



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Let The Sun Shine In......

Cheney ‘OK’ With Violating Felony Torture Statute

Well, of course he is. Cheney is an embarrassment to all decent Americans who understand that violations of the Constitution and various treaties we have signed onto (and pressured other nations to sign onto) has nothing to do with Al Qaeda and their heinous acts of terrorism.


What a policy of torture does is give us a black-eye on the world stage, cause more hatred of the U.S. among people who did hate us before and hatred among those who did not hate us before Vice was seen begging Congress for permission to keep torturing people and cause our allies to distrust us.


Cheney should be the first man in the Dock at the Hague, since it is becoming more and more evident that we do not seem to be morally capable of holding our own war criminals accountable.





By Muriel Kane | Raw Story

In an interview with Fox News to be aired this Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is “OK” with CIA interrogations that violated Justice Department guidelines and condemned the prospect of any investigation of abuses as potentially “devastating” to morale.


The 2004 Inspector General’s report released on Monday cited numerous cases of possible violations of the felony torture statute, which prohibits both “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering” and “the threat of imminent death.”


Beginning on page 69 of the report (pdf) is a list of “Specific Unauthorized or Undocumented Techniques,” in some of which the facts “warranted criminal investigations.” Among the cases cited are one in which a CIA officer repeatedly choked a shackled prisoner until he almost passed out and several examples of mock executions. These are the cases that Cheney is now defending.


“The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’” Cheney stated. “Instead, they’re out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions.”

Does Cheney mean the lawyers who would basically find it within the law for the president to commit murder if he wanted to? Does he mean the lawyers who would have found it within the law to round up political opposition within the voting public and charge them with being supporters of terrorism or simply disappear them without charges or their right to an attorney?


Calling the extreme interrogation techniques “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives,” Cheney insisted, “It was good policy, it was properly carried out, it worked very, very well.”


Cheney has consistently asserted that when reports on the interrogations are released, they will show that torture of detainees worked. However, recently declassified documents show no such thing.


For example, Cheney’s claim that “the individuals subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided the bulk of the intelligence we gained about Al Qaeda” does not necessarily mean that any usable intelligence resulted from the use of torture on those individuals rather than more conventional techniques.


What Vice means is that torture got information they specifically wanted, whether true or not.


As Raw Story reported two days ago, even a former homeland security adviser to President Bush has admitted that “it’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied versus when that information was received.”


Cheney further described Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to proceed with a probe of detainee abuse as an “outrageous political act.” He blamed President Obama for “trying to duck the responsibility of what’s going on here” when he indicated that the decision was the attorney general’s to make. Read more.


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Let The Sun Shine In......

What's Really Up With Obama and Holder?



The truly rotten apples were at the top during the last appalling administration. Let's hope the top apples in the current administration are not proven even more rotten by acts of obstruction of justice and conspiracy after the fact.


A.G. Holder needs to hear from every Pelican Independent who feels as strongly about this horrendous issue as I do.


The crimes of the Bush administration have already made the country less secure in many, many ways. Will the current DOJ refuse to hold top officials from the last administration accountable for those crimes? If this turns out to be the case, the Obama administration may well be a one term administration. I , for one, will not be here to vote for them. I certainly could never vote for the party who enabled their White House to commit horrendous crimes in our name and with our blood and treasure by refusing to do their jobs of over-sight but who, instead, made every attempt to change the laws to permit war crimes and domestic crimes such as wire-tapping of American citizens and data-mining which would be useless in finding and arresting real terrorists but which would be very useful in gathering information about ordinary American citizens for use at some future date in order to commit more and worse crimes against the Constitution.




I became an independent after the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, when it became clear to even my very republican father that the U.S. had become a big Banana Republic; his words.



The assassination of JFK was believed to have been the deluded actions of one lone gunman. Not many people in my neck of the woods believed any of the conspiracy theories which ranged from: 1) LBJ was behind the assassination to 2) the possibility that Nixon was behind it. That alone was astonishing given that Oswald was murdered in front of our eyes on national television by a small-fry nightclub owner connected to organized crime. His stated motive for having done so was laughable. Nevertheless, there was no Internet in those days, making it easier for the government to subvert any "inconvenient truth."



It was my father who put one and one together and came up with rotten bananas to describe what was happening to our country; a coup. I was still in shock and beginning a very long grief process. I remember thinking, "it's all down hill from here." I remember the hole in my heart when hope had resided


It was no less than an hour after he informed me of Bobby's death that he told me that he could no longer easily believe in the lone-nutcase official story of either assassination. (Was it not Will Rogers, one of my favorite American folk-philosophers, who said that the good thing about Americans is that an official has to lie to the American people if he/she is planing or conspiring with others to commit crimes or cover them up; the bad thing about Americans is that they are easily lied to?)


I remember how shocked I was that a man who despised the Kennedys was making such an accusation, especially to his daughter who was a "Kennedy Democrat" long before I could even vote.


Later, noting that the joke that was the Warren Commission had Democrats on it and that the Democrats, at the time, had a majority in Congress and that a cover-up was allowed to stand without much outcry at all, especially after Bobby's death. (JFK and RFK were two popular Democrats from the same family, a family that was never the same after their violent deaths. The nation was never the same either.) Furthermore, Bush/Cheney were not the first president and vice president who lied this nation into an unnecessary war by escalating a small presence in Vietnam to a full blown invasion based on a lie, the "Gulf of Tonkin incident." Thus, I became an independent, as did my father, and have never registered to vote as anything but an independent.



We weren't alone. Many independents broke from the Republican and Democratic parties in the late 60s and early 70s because it became clear that neither party could be trusted entirely with our values and principles.


Perhaps, the current administration believes that those of us who have been demanding accountability for years will have no other real choice but to vote for the lesser of the evils. Unfortunately for them, we have quite a few alternatives, not the least of which is to remove all support by removing ourselves from our country; a country that no longer resembles the one we were taught to believe in.


The main forces behind the election of Obama and a democratic congress were 1) an astounding turn-out of young voters 2) a large turn-out of minorities and 3) a large majority of independent voters swung toward the Democrats as a result of criminal and incompetent actions by the most appalling administration of my lifetime and their enablers in the rest of a government so corrupt it is becoming doubtful that the nation will survive it.



I would hate to see the young voters of today as disgusted and disenfranchised as we were 40 years ago. It would also be sad to see minority voters turn away from the first president from a minority group. Most of us, independents, would hate to have to drop out of the electoral process as many of us did years ago, but who became re-engaged in the last decade or so. Nevertheless, it can happen if the promises of the Obama campaign become forgotten by the Democrats.



If the more recent crimes by the GOP are not investigated and those found guilty of those crimes are not held accountable, we can expect even worse crimes by a new GOP administration.



By David Swanson
(with image by Michael Parenti)


Attorney General Eric Holder is addressing a war crime without addressing the wars, and is focusing on the lowest ranking participants in that crime without addressing its status as official policy established by higher ups and openly confessed to by a former president and vice president. This is bad applism, the same approach that has held a handful of recruits responsible for Abu Ghraib, claiming to thereby remove bad apples from a good system. But Congress' and the public's approach to the horrors of the past eight years is driven by our own bad applism, by our belief that the departure of Bush and Cheney in itself significantly repaired a system of government that is rotten to the core.


As Holder left an appropriations subcommittee hearing on April 23rd I spoke up loudly from the third row, "We need a special prosecutor for torture, Mr. Attorney General. Americans like the rule of law. The rule of law for everybody."


He replied as he approached me and walked by, surrounded by body guards, "And you will be proud of your government."


I was joined by others in replying simultaneously, "Yes, we want to be proud of our government. We're ready. No need to wait."


Four months later, last Monday, Holder appointed a special prosecutor, but only for particular incidents of torture and with this important, and illegal, limitation announced by Holder: "[T]he Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) regarding the interrogation of detainees." Even did our domestic system of government allow the OLC to create laws, our obligation under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed by President Reagan, ratified by the Senate, and made the supreme law of the land by Article VI of our Constitution, would prevent the creation of any law that permitted torture.


This decision by Holder had been publicly dictated to him by President Obama, and therefore sets a precedent of allowing a president to choose when laws should be enforced, and of allowing an aggressive political party to dictate such things to a defensive one. In April 2008, candidate Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News, "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt." (Apparently it's somehow different to have it consumed by what Republicans perceive as an evil plot to euthanize their grandmothers.) Holder's decision also establishes as accepted precedent the practice of "legalizing" obvious crimes by instructing the OLC to draft secret memos stating that the crimes are legal.


Holder's intention on Monday was clearly not to create a criminal investigation of a crime, but to create a preliminary investigation into whether to have a full investigation into certain types of people involved in certain incidents. Those meant to have immunity include not just any torturers who complied with the OLC's secret memos, but also the lawyers who drafted the memos, the lawyers who told them what to draft, and the higher ups who authorized and developed the torture program. And if the preliminary investigation never results in prosecutions, then immunity will be shared by all, even the bad apples.


But another course of events is possible. Assistant United States Attorney John Durham could, if he chooses, expand his focus beyond Holder's intentions. Durham does not have the independence enjoyed by someone like Ken Starr, who was authorized under the now lapsed independent counsel statute, and funded by Congress, to investigate then President Bill Clinton until he found or manufactured a crime, any crime. But Durham has been assigned to preliminarily investigate certain instances of torture, and the limitations dictated by Holder do not technically limit him.


Who in this sick saga "acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the OLC"? Nobody we've heard of thus far. Certainly not Alberto Gonzales who encouraged George W. Bush to declare that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were not covered by the Geneva Conventions in order to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Definitely not George W. Bush who acted on that advice, who held command responsibility for acts of torture before and after the drafting of OLC memos, who launched the illegal wars of which torture was one small part, who failed to hold torturers accountable once exposed, and who has confessed in a televised interview to approving of torture. Decidedly not Dick Cheney, who has made similar televised confessions with great frequency while also fingering Bush. And not John Rizzo, acting general counsel for the CIA until this past July, who told the OLC what types of torture he wanted "legalized" and provided false information to the OLC to encourage that process. Logically not the OLC lawyers themselves who drafted the memos that blatantly declare crimes to be legal, crimes known to them to be illegal, memos later overturned by the Department of Justice under President Bush before being enshrined as having temporarily been law by Holder and Obama. Nor the same lawyers and others at the Justice Department who orally approved acts of torture not covered by the memos. Nor those lawyers and the lawyers at the CIA who created guidelines for interrogations that the CIA's inspector general considered so vague as to encourage their own violation. And not any of the actual torturers we've yet read about, each torture session thus far exposed having taken place prior to the memos, in excess of the crimes authorized by the memos, in ignorance of the memos, and/or with documented concern by the torturers that they might later be prosecuted.


While I am not yet proud of my government in this regard, I am proud of my country's civil society and of the many organizations and individuals that immediately protested Holder's announcment on Monday as insufficient. These included groups like the ACLU, MoveOn.org, Alliance for Justice, Constitution Project, and Amnesty International that for years refused to support calls for the impeachment of Cheney or Bush, but which now support their prosecution, as do 217 organizations that have signed a statement I drafted in February. Congressman John Conyers, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, and Senator Russ Feingold, all opposed impeachment but all immediately released appropriate statements on Monday, as did many good bloggers who never backed impeachment but immediately criticized Holder's plans as insufficient. Of course, also speaking out on Monday were groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and Voters for Peace who have always been there. True Majority / U.S. Action, which has replaced MoveOn.org in recent months as the model of timidity, in contrast announced an unqualified success last week. But what happened last week demands action from all of us, and an understanding of the full extent to which our system of government itself has been damaged.


In a nutshell, here are four things that happened simultaneously at the beginning of last week:

1. Selective leaking from the OPR.

For years, we've awaited the "imminent" release of a report from the OPR on the OLC, that is to say a report from the Office of Professional Responsibility on the Office of Legal Counsel, a report by one section of the Department of Justice on another. It may strike a few of us as silly to await a report on the drafting of torture memos (not to mention war memos) from the same agency that produced them, when we've already seen the memos and can remind ourselves of their blatant and gruesome criminality any time we like. But the House Judiciary Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee have delayed any investigations or impeachments until that report is released, state bar associations to which citizens have filed complaints have delayed any possible disbarrments until that report appears, and commentators have suggested for reasons that remain unclear to me that this report will change everything. Holder began his announcement on Monday by stating that he had "reviewed" this report "in depth." But he did not make it public. Had he done so, it would likely have called attention to his failure to open a criminal investigation into the crimes there described, namely the drafting of the memos. Instead, Holder leaked to the New York Times the findings of another OPR report recommending the reopening of investigations of particular torture cases that the Department of Justice had previously chosen not to pursue. Then he announced an investigation into those who had violated, as opposed to those who had drafted, the memos. This selective leaking was not entirely unlike the Bush-Cheney gang's practice of selectively leaking misleading claims about weapons of mass destruction to the New York Times and then discussing those reports the next day on television.


2. Recommendations by task force on interrogations and transfers.

After five months, a task force created by President Obama made public some of its recommendations to him, including recommending the creation of a new team to oversee interrogations, and recommending the continued use of rendition -- the practice of shipping people to other nations for interrogation. This generated a pair of contrasting stories. The first, which got more play, became another story of Obama (again) ending torture and putting the past behind us. The second became a story about concern that torture would be continuing, albeit outsourced. In other positive but limited news, the Obama administration leaked word that it would finally give the Red Cross, if not the public, the names of prisoners it was holding outside any rule of law in secret camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and -- compelled by a court -- Obama finally released Mohammed Jawad, a teen-aged prisoner held for six years in Guantanamo on no legal basis, as others still are.


3. Release of CIA IG report and other documents.

Following a suit by the ACLU, the CIA was forced to release (portions of) a report on torture produced by its inspector general in 2004 and other documents outlining the CIA's and OLC's torture policies as late as 2007. These documents added to our understanding of the crimes committed without exonerating anyone or establishing that torture had proved itself an effective interrogation method. Included in the report, but heavily redacted, are accounts of torture to the point of murder, which is arguably not a useful interrogation method. And, of course, were torture ever effective it would remain illegal as well as potentially counterproductive by producing animosity toward a nation that engages in it and by brutalizing those practicing it. Redacted from the report for no legitimate reason that I can imagine -- and the former inspector general himself objects to this censorship -- were the report's recommendations. Also released, to the Center for Constitutional Rights, was a pair of memos that former Vice President Cheney had been claiming to want released for months. Cheney had said repeatedly that these memos would prove that torture had been effective. Nothing in the memos actually backs up Cheney's claims or contradicts the evidence that torture does not work, evidence presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee by former interrogator Ali Soufan on May 13th. In fact, the documents that Cheney claimed would prove his case consist largely of information allegedly obtained from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with no explanation of how it was obtained, except for references to his revealing information once confronted with the testimony of other prisoners. And much of the information relates to plots that were at most in the brainstorming stage. The time bomb wasn't ticking and in fact didn't even exist.


4. Appointment of prosecutor.

Having orchestrated the three announcements above, Holder announced the appointment of a special prosecutor with the limitations I've described.


THE FIRST BRANCH


We can and must increase the direct pressure on the Department of Justice to fully prosecute torture and numerous other crimes, including aggressive war, the use of assassination squads, misspending funds on war, lying to Congress, using false propaganda domestically, imprisoning children, detaining people without charge, using the U.S. military domestically, spying without warrant, exposing an undercover agent, obstructing justice, politically motivated prosecutions, and so on. Many of these crimes could be prosecuted at the state or local level as well, including the murder of U.S. soldiers, as argued by Vincent Bugliosi. We can and must work to advance civil suits and foreign and international prosecutions as well. We must use every tool and technique we have, and I enthusiastically support the discussions some activist organizations are currently engaged in about plans to nonviolently surround the Department of Justice and not let anyone leave until the department lives up to its name. But isn't there another angle that we're forgetting? Might we not have some use for that institution that takes up the first 58 percent of the U.S. Constitution?


Restoring power to Congress is essential if we want to deter and prevent executive abuses in the future, so an approach that empowers Congress has long-term advantages. And in the short-term, we may find that we have more power over people we can vote out of office, generate good and bad local media for, fund and defund, and protest and disrupt as needed, than we do over a prosecutor. It strikes me as just possible that we could pressure Congress to produce additional, superfluous but influential, information that would feed an expansion of the criminal investigation while imposing other forms of accountability directly.


Reasons Congress might be empowered to act with greater backbone than it's shown in the past several years include: 1) progressive House members came very close to stopping a war supplemental / IMF bailout bill in June. 2) progressive House members may stop or shape a healthcare bill if they don't collapse in the final lap. (This is true and important regardless of how good or bad you think the measure is for which they've taken a stand.) 3) these first two things have happened because of public pressure and the public is just getting warmed up. 4) the corporate media last week finally began admitting that torture has occurred, calling it by the name torture, and admitting that torture is a crime. 5) the new Justice Department has made clear that it will not hold the previous Justice Department accountable. 6) Congressional action at this point cannot be used as an excuse for not appointing a special prosecutor; he's already been appointed. 7) Democrats gain politically every time Cheney and Bush and their criminal gang of thugs are mentioned in public.


So, what do we want Congress to do? We want the House Judiciary Committee to hold impeachment hearings for judge, and former OLC head, Jay Bybee, force him to talk, subpeona those involved, and enforce compliance through the Capitol Police and inherent contempt, not through the Justice Department or the White House. We want the Senate Judiciary Committee and other committees to take up appropriate crimes, send out subpoenas, and enforce them. We want the House to establish a select committee, as would be done through passage of H.Res. 383, a resolution introduced in April by Congress members Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, and John Conyers. We want the House and Senate to pass a bill to extend to 10 years the statutes of limitations on prosecuting the crimes at issue, as proposed by John Conyers seven months ago but not yet introduced as a piece of legislation. (Most crimes are limited to 5 years for prosecution, torture is typically 8 years, unless torture becomes murder in which cases there is no limitation.) The Justice Department is investigating for possible prosecution crimes on which the statute could soon expire. In such circumstances, the Attorney General ought to be extremely grateful to Congress should it take this action. And if any of this must wait for the never-to-be-released OPR report on the OLC, then Congress can publicly and aggressively demand the release of that report, or a member with access to it can read it into the record. Congress also needs to force the release of torture photos, and sadly a side benefit to Holder of having now named a prosecutor may be a new legal basis for concealing them.


Congressman John Conyers spoke to a crowd of activists from around the country at Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., in June at a fifth birthday party for Progressive Democrats of America. Conyers opened by remarking: "There is no one more disappointed than I am in Barack Obama." This comment sank in hard for some of the activists in the room who had been told by Conyers last year that electing Obama took precedence over impeaching Dick Cheney. But Conyers was talking about healthcare. "Buddy," said Conyers, referring to President Obama, "you are wrong on healthcare and it's going to cost you big time." Conyers argued that unless we compelled Obama to order Congress to write a better healthcare bill, Obama would be a one-term president. Of course, this is extremely twisted. It is far easier for us to influence our representatives in Congress, and they have the power to send Obama a good healthcare bill whether he wants it or not. But I bring this up as an indication of willingness by Conyers to differ with the executive. If it's right to push for better healthcare, it might just be right to push for enforcement of our laws against torture as well. In some corner of his soul, Conyers wanted to impeach Bush and Cheney, and not a single one of the arguments he used against it applies to Jay Bybee.


Well, I take that back. There is one argument he used that still applies, but it's greatly weakened and it never held water. It is true that the corporate media would attack Conyers and call him names. While the media has generally and suddenly admitted that torture is a crime and that the crime was committed, there is also a general media consensus that it should not be prosecuted. A number of media pundits, in fact, have asserted that it would be wrong to prosecute such crimes precisely because the media would do an outrageous job of reporting on it. But Conyers and other members of the Judiciary Committee and other congress members in general are smart enough to realize that no media coverage has the power to make Dick Cheney sympathetic. And Conyers would not have to do this alone. Wexler, Nadler, Kucinich, Baldwin, Lee, and others would readily stand with him.


There are three big forces corrupting our government, and the corporate media is only one of them. Another is the influence of parties. Why did the war supplemental / IMF bailout bill pass? Because the Democratic party threatened and bribed its members to vote Yes, against the wishes of their constituents. "I want to support my president," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who changed her No vote to a Yes. But Conyers voted No, and to my knowledge there is very little that his party can threaten him with.


The third big corrupting force is legalized bribery or "campaign contributions." There is a lot of money behind keeping the wars going and covering up most war crimes. There is huge money behind protecting the corporations engaged in illegal spying. There is a tidal wave of money drowning out healthcare reform. But there is not a major money source behind torture. We need to think in terms of removing these sources of corruption as we work to restore power to Congress, but on the issue of torture the corrupting dollar signs may not be aligned strongly against us.


Another force corrupting our government is the shift of power from Congress and the courts to the White House and the immunity from law enforcement granted to the president. These are changes happening right now, as outrageous innovations made by Bush and Cheney are accepted and cemented in place by Obama. Imagine if Conyers had attempted or even succeeded in impeaching Cheney, if Congress had not tried to retroactively immunize Bush and Cheney through legislation, if courts had universally upheld the law the past several years, or if prosecutions of top officials were now underway. In that very different world, which can still be achieved, I'm willing to wager that President Obama would not be altering laws with signing statements or creating laws with executive orders, would not be establishing preventive detention, would not be continuing renditions, would not be escalating in Afghanistan or continuing in Iraq or routinely striking Pakistan or employing mercenaries like Blackwater or propagandists like the Rendon Group, would not have kept Robert Gates as Secretary of "Defense", would not have allowed John Rizzo to remain for any time as general counsel at the CIA, would not have given jobs in the White House to John Brennan or Greg Craig, would not be keeping so many politically selected prosecutors in place so long, would not be keeping the spying programs in place and secret, would not be expanding claims of state secrets beyond what Cheney ever attempted while imitating Cheney in hiding records of visitors to the White House, and would not be failing to prosecute crimes like torture which is what allows them to continue no matter how many times you say they've ended. Without a real deterrent, like law enforcement, any crimes that Obama does end can simply be revived as policy options, no longer crimes, by his successors.


When will we all get over it and stop asking for justice? It doesn't matter. That's the wrong question. Without justice, the crimes will continue and remain available to the leader of our empire who with each passing year accumulates more of the powers of an emperor. (As someone tweeted at me last week, the Romans thought they were keeping themselves safe by torturing Jesus.) Law enforcement is not in conflict with "looking forward". It is only by preventing crimes that we can look forward to a world without them.


Deterring crimes is a key part of the reform process needed in Washington, but other systemic changes are needed as well, and new approaches to citizen engagement are needed to get us there. Imagining that the departure of Bush and Cheney moves us noticably in that direction is, I think, our own form of bad applism. Undoing the damage that they and those who went before them have done is a task that remains ahead of us. And envisioning and creating a structure of government that goes beyond undoing the damage to establish positive rights and benefits that others in the world enjoy or are seeking is a task that no one will lead us in other than ourselves.

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David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. Arrange to review it on your blog and Seven Stories will get you a free copy. Contact crystal at sevenstories dot com.


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