Torture

KSM and MSM

davidswanson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:17:08 -0500

By David Swanson

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM's motive? Isn't motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We're told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we're not told what that propaganda might be. If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn't that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don't they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word "Israel"?

Outside of progressive blogs, we're not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham. If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that "military justice" is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military? Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We're not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time. And in KSM's case it might include video of the "interrogation" of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect. More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting. It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can -- while still in the custody of the torturers -- give an un-coerced confession. Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we'd see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn't the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country? Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM's American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives. The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort. Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose. But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it. More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM's possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM. This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don't we talk about it?

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 order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

President Obama: Don't Lecture China on Censorship

dlindorff — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:22:53 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with
Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the
value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of
non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of
strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president
himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US
troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk
about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian
style control over information.

Let’s just take the issue of depleted uranium weapons, over 1000
tons of which have been expended in the US invasion of Iraq, most of it
in populated areas where millions remain exposed to the radioactive
dust of the burned material. There is almost no reporting on this topic
in the US media. The Pentagon has for years lied about and hidden the
effects of this deadly substance, used in shells, bombs and bullets
because of its unique ability to penetrate hard steel armor and
concrete bunker walls. It has refused to disclose where the weapons
were fired, and has denied US troops the tests that would show if they
have been contaminated. It has even resorted to having paid Pentagon
hacks surreptitiously libel, slander and otherwise undermine those
military sources and journalists who have tried to expose this scourge
(this reporter has been the target of such disinformation attacks).

But censorship in the US goes beyond these crude efforts at
government-directed control of information. In America, some of the
most potent censorship is done by the privately owned media—supposedly
a bastion of freedom of expression.

There is no reason why the US media cannot report on depleted
uranium and its deadly legacy in places where it has been used, such as
Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Kosovo, or on and around American
military bases from Maryland to Hawaii. And yet it does not. Just
recently, stories have appeared both on Britain’s SkyTV and in the Guardian newspaper,
reporting on an alarming rise in unusual birth defects and infant
cancers in Fallujah as well as in other Iraqi cities like Basra, Najaf,
Baghdad and Samara—all urban areas where there were major assaults by
US forces both in the initial invasion, when most of the DU weapons
were used, and later during fights against holed-up insurgent groups.

In Fallujah, the Guardian reports that birth defects are up by a
staggering 15 times normal—an increase of 1400%! While the article
doesn’t mention depleted uranium specifically, and says that doctors in
Fallujah have been "reluctant to attribute" the astonishing number of
birth defects to the massive assault on that city by US forces in late
2004, they do say those doctors cite “radiation and chemicals” which
were dumped on the city.

There is no such report about this in the US media.

Is that censorship? Of course it is.

The American government doesn’t tell CBS News or CNN not to report
this story, which amounts to a US war crime. It does not (at least
generally), contact the editors at the New York Times or the Washington
Post and say, “Don’t report on the infant mortality crisis in Iraq, or
on the possible connection to US weaponry” (Though the government did
ask and successfully get the Times to hold a story about the National
Security Agency's massive electronic spying program for a year, and
managed to pressure the Times' editors to kill a Times reporter's story
about President Bush's likely use of a hidden cueing device during the
2004 presidential debates). The editors of those news organizations
themselves most of the time simply decide that either the story is of
no importance to readers or they worry that they may be criticized
either by the government or by other media organizations for being
unpatriotic, or biased.

The end result of such a process of self-censorship, however, is
that the American public is as ignorant about certain things as someone
in China.

More ignorant in fact.

One thing I learned from living and working as a journalist and
journalism teacher in China back in the 1990s is that the Chinese
people, with their long experience of living in a totalitarian
dictatorship in which all media are owned and tightly controlled by the
state and the ruling Communist Party, are acutely aware that they are
being lied to and that the truth is being hidden from them.
Accordingly, they have learned to read between the lines, to pick up
subtle hints in news articles which honest journalists have learned how
to slip into their carefully controlled reports. They have also
developed a sophisticated private system of person-to-person reporting
called xiaodao xiaoxi or, literally, “back-alley news.” This
system used to be word-of-mouth between neighbors and friends. As
telephones became ubiquitous, it was done by phone, allowing
transmission over long distances quickly. Now there is the internet,
which, while it is systematically controlled via what has become known
as China’s “Great Firewall”—effectively all of China is like a vast
corporate “intranet” which blocks access to outside websites—still
allows the flow of email. This is nearly impossible to monitor,
particularly when the messages are not bulk mailed to large numbers of
addressees.

So in China, reports of corruption, of local rebellions or strikes,
of internal struggles within the government or party, or of important
news about the outside world that the government wants to keep at bay,
manage to circulate widely inside China despite a huge state censorship
apparatus.

This alternative highly-personal news network works because the
Chinese people know they are being lied to and kept in the dark, and
they want to break through that official shroud of secrecy and control.

In the US, in contrast, we have a public that for the most part is
blissfully unaware of the extent to which our news is being censored,
filtered and controlled. Like the President (who knows better), we
boast of our “free press,” and our open society, and indeed, as a
journalist, I am free to write what I want to write.

But given that most people get their news either from corporately
owned newspapers or from corporate radio and TV stations, it doesn’t
really matter what I or other journalists critical of the Establishment
write because it won’t appear in the corporate media. Since most
Americans, unlike most Chinese people, assume that they live in a
society with a free press and no censorship or control of information,
they don’t even bother to look beyond the information that is spoon-fed
to them by corporate media sources.

The result is that in my experience I have found peasants in rural
Jiangsu or Anhwei Province to in many cases be better informed about
their own country and the world than are typical American suburbanites.
Certainly if an American wants to be informed, all the information she
or he could want is available, but one has to be first of all aware
that one isn't getting certain information via the obvious sources, and
then one has to want to get it, and make the effort to find it. For
most Americans, all three of these elements are missing.

The list of censored stories and issues in the US, about which the
American public knows almost nothing is staggering, going well beyond
just the use of nasty weapons.

Do Americans know, for instance, that all the other modern western
Democracies in the world have some form of national health care—either
a state-run system like that in the UK or a single-payer model like
that in Canada, or some hybrid like they have in France or
Switzerland—and that in all those countries, the systems are so popular
that they have survived decades of conservative governments? No. Our
corporate media instead report on the crank critics of those systems
and allow us to believe they are hated by their citizens.

Do Americans know that the US no longer boasts the best standard of
living in the world—or even close? No. Because the American media
continue to portray the US as “number one.”

Do Americans know that Al Qaeda was actually a creation of the CIA?
No. This important bit of information doesn’t get mentioned in the US
media, which always starts the organization’s history at 1988, when it
got its name, when actually, its early origins date to the arming of
the mujahadeen by the CIA and the CIA-linked Pakistani intelligence
service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, when the US wanted to create and support resistance to the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

And of course, we rarely get to see the slaughter of women and
children that our beloved soldier “heroes” are conducting in Iraq and
Afghanistan in our name.

No censorship in America?

Mr. President, please. You may fool us, but at least don’t insult the intelligence of your Chinese audience.
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He spent seven
years in China and Hong Kong and Taiwan as a Fulbright journalism
professor and a correspondent for Businessweek magazine. He is author,
most recently, of "The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
and is the winner of a Project Censored award. His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Our Debt to Italy

davidswanson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:56:02 -0500

By David Swanson

The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called "a nation of laws, not men" to Italian law enforcement. Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.

In 2003, the CIA and the United States military kidnapped a man, a political refugee, in Italy. His name was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Our CIA agents spied on him from their luxury hotels and gourmet-meal lives in Milano (all paid for by U.S. tax payers). They were told to kidnap Nasr and send him to Egypt to be tortured, and they did so. According to recent statements by two of them, they knew perfectly well they were violating the law. But they were not worried enough at the time to refrain from discussing the matter on their cell phones as they enjoyed the dolce vita and racked up credit card bills wasting the same currency our government claims it has a moral duty not to waste on healthcare.

Nasr was indeed kidnapped, flown to Egypt, and tortured. His wife, Ghali Nabila, testified in Italian court for over six hours. In October 2004, she had been able to see him, briefly out of Egyptian prison. (He was eventually released years later.) Nabila said in court:

"I found him wasted, skinny - so skinny his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid."

Ordered, against her will, to describe his torture, she said:

"He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up, especially around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body parts."

Asked if that included genitals, she replied "Yes."

Nasr himself wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison and printed in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:

"I was hung by my feet from the ceiling, my head down, my hands tied to my back, my feet tied up. I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body, especially in my head, nipples, testicles, and penis. My testicles where also beaten with a stick and squeezed tightly if I refused to answer their questions or was suspected of telling lies. They fixed my body to an iron door and on a wooden instrument they call the bride, where my hands where tied over my head from behind and my legs tied together or sometimes each leg on different sides. The torture that takes place during this is electric shocks, and beating with a shoe and cables."

Presidents Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi oppose prosecuting Americans or Italians for kidnapping this man and transporting him to his torturers. The U.S. Department of Justice will, therefore, not prosecute. In Italy, on the other hand, there is still some measure of law, law as a standard applied to all equally, without immunity for those with the power to commit the greatest crimes.

Last Wednesday, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents, including the CIA's current second ranking official Stephen Kappes, and one member of the U.S. Air Force. The prosecutor Armando Spataro has repeatedly asked the Italian government to issue an international arrest warrant and request extradition by the United States. It has not yet done so.

One of the convicted CIA agents, Sabrina De Sousa, openly admits that the kidnapping was illegal, but says that she feels betrayed by those who authorized the operation and failed to protect its participants from prosecution. De Sousa ignores Nuremberg Principle IV, which requires noncompliance with illegal orders or instructions:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

But De Sousa also has a point, one well exemplified at Nuremberg: Those at the bottom are not the most responsible. Those who must be held accountable first and foremost are the decision-makers at the top. And who authorized the policy of kidnapping people and shipping them off to be tortured? Three top U.S. officials have authorized rendition: Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And in this case, the presidents responsible were Bush and, almost certainly, Berlusconi.

For justice to reach to those highest levels and thereby deter the practice of kidnapping, under the name rendition, in the years ahead, justice must be permitted to proceed on the paths it has blazed thus far. Americans must make Italians aware of our gratitude for their efforts to save us from ourselves. And Italy must be compelled to obey its laws rather than its president on the question of issuing international arrest warrants and a demand for extradition. The 23 fugitives already can expect arrest if they visit any nation of Europe. They should not be free to roam the rest of the world.

By U.S. standards, Italy would be justified in kidnapping these fugitives and "rendering" them to Italian prisons. An extradition request would be a generous favor of a sort that the United States does not grant to others. Failure to take that step on behalf of the rule of law will put the blood of future rendition victims on the hands of the Italian as well as the American people.

Vi prego, i miei carissimi fratelli e sorelli, salvateci da noi stessi.

PS: One opportunity for Americans to force this issue in our own country will occur when Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 10 a.m. on November 18th in Dirksen room 226. We should ask Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who claims to oppose torture, and Senator Patrick Leahy who chairs the committee, as well as Senator Russ Feingold and the rest of them to raise these issues, and be there to raise them ourselves.

Does Holder consider rendition legal. How does he distinguish it from kidnapping?

Will Holder extradite 23 figitives to Italy? Would he expect Italy to do the same?

Holder has accepted the instructions of the president not to prosecute top officials for known crimes. He needs to be grilled on that and informed that Congress will step up where he fails.

Holder is burying the OPR report (his departments own, years-old report on its authorization of torture), providing Congress with an excuse for inaction. He needs to be told to release it or watch it be subpoenaed and watch Congress proceed without using its delay as an excuse any longer.

In April Leahy asked top torture lawyer Jay Bybee to come in. He hasn't. Leahy needs to tell Holder that Bybee is being subpoenaed.

In April Holder testified on the House side and told me I'd be proud of my government -- When might I?

PPS: Speaking of the House side, Rep. Jay Inslee introduced this bill two years ago. This is the full text:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The momentum of cosponsors signing onto this bill was almost certainly a large factor in the decision to have Gonzales resign.

A similar resolution that would be of use now might read as follows:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Reasons to get this introduced:

The DOJ (and White House) have made clear they will not enforce the law.
We have very limited ability to influence them.
People all over the country who want a sign of hope and somewhere to put their energies that might have an actual impact could lobby for cosponsorship.
Cosponsorship of such a resolution would constitute a threat to expose secrets through a privileged impeachment hearing.
Such a threat would open up the possibility of committees using the power of subpoena as a lesser step.
A nation without laws cannot last.

####

CORRECTION: They did not prosecute Kappes.

Congress Must Stop Torture

davidswanson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:18:33 -0400

A Call for Congress to Take Action on Torture
October 28th, 2009

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Whereas over seven years have passed since President George W. Bush fraudulently induced the U.S. congress, the American people, and the world into the illegal war in Iraq,

Whereas it is nearly five years since Specialist Darby revealed the photos of Abu Ghraib that showed us torture being committed by our government in our name,

Whereas further evidence of torture remains secret and has been hidden from the public, courts, and Congress to insulate the perpetrators from appropriate criminal liability,

Whereas over the past years we have campaigned about the illegality of this war and the need to prosecute the high-level civilian and military officials who put in place the torture,

Whereas, notwithstanding all the congressional hearings and reports so far on these matters, those officials have not been brought to justice,

Whereas a prosecutor has been appointed to address only a very small number, perhaps as few as three, of the crimes committed and none of the crimes "justified" by the clearly illegal torture memos,

Whereas the Department of Justice's limited investigation of torture threatens to invite more torture around the world by undermining the Nuremberg precedent,

Whereas the Attorney General of the United States, under the influence of the President, appears unwilling to follow the facts about the illegal war in Iraq and torture to the full extent of the law,

Whereas we as citizens of the United States do not accept the damage to our country's honor committed by these persons, the threats to the lives and well-being of our children and fellow citizens sent to illegal wars, and the transformation of our country from a beacon of liberty to a beacon of torture,

WE NOW CALL FOR ACTION:

1. We call on Congress to start impeachment proceedings against Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as it is unconscionable that one who encouraged violations of such fundamental laws as those against torture and aggressive war be trusted to apply and shape the law.

2. We call on congressional committees to subpoena those responsible for aggressive war and torture, including former president Bush, vice president Cheney, and other former senior officials complicit in war crimes; and to enforce those subpoenas through the Capitol Police, rather than the Department of Justice.

3. We call on state bar associations to begin the process of revoking the law licenses of those lawyers who put in place the legal analysis for the illegal war and the torture.

4. We call on state licensing authorities to begin the process of revoking the licenses of all other professionals who participated in the torture such as psychologists, psychiatrists and other doctors.

5. We call on the American people to contact their congressional representatives and insist that, on our watch, the high, who are the instigators of illegal wars and torture, will be brought low, and that low-level personnel will not be the only ones prosecuted for committing crimes authorized and encouraged by their superiors.

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Forward and Post Widely!

Help Stop Torture!

SIGNED BY:
Robert H. Jackson Steering Committee
Action Center For Justice
After Downing Street
AngryVoters.Org
Backbone Campaign
Bend-Condega Friendship Project
Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law
Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
BuzzFlash.com
Campus Antiwar Network, Ole Miss
Center for Constitutional Rights
Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War, New York City
Chesapeake Citizens
Christiane Brown, The Solution Zone, KJFK
Citizens For Legitimate Government
CODE PINK: Women for Peace
Code Pink Portland
Marjorie Cohn, Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Collateral Repair Project
Consumers for Peace
Defending Dissent Foundation
Democracy for America - Tucson
Democracy for NYC
Democracy In Action (DIA)
Democrats.com
Democratic Activist blog
Docudharma
Eastside FOR
The Enviro Show,WXOJ-LP/WMCB
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
High Road for Human Rights
Humanists for Peace
IndictBushNow.org
Instruments For Peace
Jobs For Afghans
Justice Through Music
Liberty Tree Foundation
The Make America Again Project
Media With Conscience
Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored
Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Nashville Peace Coalition
Nicole Sandler, RadioOrNot.com
NC Democrats Network
New York Metro Progressives
North Country Coalition for Justice and Peace
Northeast Impeachment Coalition
OpEdNews.com
Oregon PeaceWorks
Peace & Justice Forums, Billings, Montana
The People's Email Network
PoetsWest (Seattle)
Progressive Democrats of America
Progressives Democrats of New York, 14th CD
Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains
PDA/DFA Progressive Democracy South Jersey
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County
The Progressive magazine
Rebublicans For Impeachment
Reclaim The GOP
RiseUpTampaBay.com
Sitkans for Peace and Justice
Squadron13.com
SUV Network (Seniors United for Victory)
ThisCantBeHappening.net
Topanga Peace Alliance
Topplebush.com
Transylvanians for Peace of Brevard, NC
True Blue Network
Uncommon Thought Journal
Velvet Revolution
VeteransAgainstTorture.com
Veterans For Peace Chapter 099
Veterans For Peace Chicago Chapter 26
Voices of Conscience
Voters for Peace
War Crimes Times
War Criminals Watch
Washington for Impeachment
Hazel Weiser, Executive Director Society of American Law Teachers -- SALT
Western North Carolina Stop Torture Now
Young Americans for Liberty at Ole Miss

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Your Town Can Demand Justice More Powerfully Than You Can

davidswanson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:04:04 -0400

By David Swanson

Most city council members take oaths to defend the Constitution. The Constitution makes the rights and standards in its amendments and in international treaties the supreme law of the land. Our nation has a rich tradition of local governments lobbying state and national governments through the passage of resolutions. Under Clause 3, Rule XII, Section 819, of the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives local governments may petition Congress. Under the First Amendment, we all can.

Just in recent years, on issues of peace and justice, hundreds of cities have passed resolutions in favor of peace, diplomacy, restraint from launching wars, and the cessation of wars in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, including 287 cities, 4 counties, and 17 states on Iraq alone. Through this and many other means, we have thus far prevented an attack on Iran, and we've won over a majority of the country to support ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- which we will eventually end if we keep up the struggle.

Over 100 cities passed resolutions urging the impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. They have yet to be impeached, but an impeachment push drove Alberto Gonzales out of town, may yet nail Jay Bybee and bring down the whole criminal power structure, and has solidly laid the groundwork for prosecutions. In fact, three cities have already passed ordinances committing their police to arresting Bush or Cheney should they dare to visit. I strongly recommend that your town do the same, as well as publicly backing the impeachment of torture-memo author Jay Bybee.

Meanwhile, Berkeley, Calif., has now joined United Nations human rights treaties that are not supported or complied with by the United States as a whole. And Amherst, Mass., may invite released Guantanamo victims to settle within its welcoming borders.

Perhaps most impressively, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) has led a campaign that has seen 414 local, county, and state resolutions passed defending our civil rights against abuses in the PATRIOT Act, and committing local police to noncooperation with federal violations of rights that were created by the U.S. Constitution.

Now the BORDC is launching a campaign to pass a pair of new ordinances, which I cannot recommend more strongly. These are powerful tools for restoring the rule of law and defending our civil rights. Passage of resolutions by towns often leads to their passage by states and to support for their substance by congress members, as well as to public education and a shift in media discourse.

The first model resolution offered by BORDC (which you can alter to suit local needs) limits local law enforcement efforts in support of federal warrantless spying. Of course, local and state police, as Americans, are required to comply with the Fourth Amendment anyway. But what happens when the feds say otherwise? This explicit legislation backs up those who take a stand.

The second model resolution is even more important. It places your town on record supporting federal and requiring local criminal investigations into torture. It includes an optional clause requiring the arrest of accused torturers as in the three ordinances noted above.

A third resolution that I can imagine but have not drafted would be modeled on this torture accountability resolution and require a criminal investigation of warrantless spying, which is not only unconstitutional but also illegal under state law in most states.

While we understand that there is strength in numbers in the abstract, too seldom do we employ that power through our levels of government from the smallest and most democratic up to the largest and most corrupt. Together, our towns can save our country, if we force our local representatives to take action.

Video: Rip-Roaring Event in Santa Fe Last Night With Ray McGovern, Ann Wright, Elliott Adams, David Swanson

davidswanson — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:45:39 -0400

David Swanson Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

More below the fold!

Ray McGovern Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

Ann Wright Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

Elliott Adams Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

Mateo Peixinho Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

Workshops earlier in the day:

David Workshop

Elliott Workshop

Ray Workshop

Ann Workshop

It's Congress: Don't Forget to Wash Your Hands After Hearings

dlindorff — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:06:35 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Some years ago, my wife and I, together with our young daughter,
took a circuitous summer train trip through France, Italy, Austria and
Germany. The last leg was an overnight express from Berlin that
deposited us at the Gare du Nord in Paris just at sunrise. Feeling
washed out from the ride, we made our separate ways to the facilities.
I was standing at the urinal with a bunch of other men, relieving
myself, when I heard this awful groaning coming from a stall. The
groaning grew louder and more painful sounding. Some guy was obviously
having a terrible time with his bowels. The agony continued, to the
point that we who were by now washing our hands at the sinks were
looking at each other in puzzlement, wondering what was going on. I
even wondered if someone should ask if the poor wretch if he needed
help.

Finally there was this enormous, impossibly long fart of incredible
volume and duration. This was followed by a long sigh of relief and an
awful stench.

We men in the rest room all looked at each other, shrugging and
stifling laughs. A few of us couldn’t contain ourselves and actually
burst out laughing.

There was a shuffle in the stall, and the latch was turned. We
couldn’t resist. Everyone turned to see who had just produced such a
prodigious noise and odor, expecting to see some huge, ponderous guy
lumber out. Instead, a shrivled little old man left the booth, nodded
silently at the rest of us, and exited the room.

I’m reminded of this incident by the recent efforts in Congress to
produce a health care reform bill—especially of the efforts in Sen. Max
Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee, which yesterday, after weeks of
allegedly painful negotiating among the so-called Gang of Six—three
conservative Democrats and three Republicans—and several weeks more of
discussions among members of the whole committee, produced a bill that
essentially leaves us with the status quo, except with some rather
smelly additions, such as a mandate that the uninsured and unemployed
buy some crummy health insurance plan offered by the private health
insurers or face a stiff fine by the IRS.

If the stench of corruption from the legal bribes of the insurance
industry lobby were not so vile and pervasive, we would all be rolling
in the aisles at the tiny fart produced by all that straining and
pushing on the part of Sen. Baucus (D-Montana) and his Finance Committee
colleagues.

Of course, it’s not over yet. Once both houses of Congress have
voted to approve the bills that have emerged from committee in House
and Senate, there will be another session on the pot—this time in a
secret conference committee, where members of the leadership of both
houses will negotiate to come up with a single bill to send back to
their respective houses for an up-or-down vote.

It can be safely predicted that the final legislation will resemble
much more the Senate version than the House version, because Senate
Democrats long ago surrendered control of that body to the minority
Republicans by accepting the so-called Rule of 60, whereby any
Republican can simply threaten to filibuster a piece of legislation and
the Democrats will immediately take it back and hack off any offending
piece of it to ensure that either all Democrats will vote for it, or
that one or two allegedly sane Republicans will join the majority of
Democrats, thus making a filibuster impossible.

Not once since at least 2006, when Democrats took over the Senate,
has the Senate Democratic leadership demanded that all Democrats in
that body support a bill or face retaliation, in the form of lost
committee assignments or sabotage of a bill important to local
constituents—the kind of thing that Republicans have done with their
members for years.

Indeed, Democrats seem to like the imaginary Rule of 60, as it
gives them a ready excuse to never have to actually do anything
progressive, as demanded by their electoral base.

And so, whether it’s health care reform, financial industry
regulation and reform, climate change legislation, civil liberties,
investigations into torture and war crimes, or ending the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, Congress has come to resemble a French railway station
lavatory, with committees grunting away in the stalls behind closed
doors, while a little old lady in the corner collects change from the
visitors who regularly come in to take a piss and monitor the
proceedings.
________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

NBC's Law and Order Depicts Fictional Prosecution of John Yoo, Dick Cheney, et al: Watch It Here:

davidswanson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:31:30 -0400

Go HERE and click on Season 20, Episode 1, "Memo from the Dark Side." You can then watch it on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, or iReel. Spread the word. Host a house party. Think about making this happen for real.

There Are So Many Days That Have Not Yet Broken

davidswanson — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:30:49 -0400

By David Swanson

I got pulled over for speeding in Texas yesterday and the officer looked like the kind of guy who dreamed about using his taser. So when he asked for my license and registration, I slowly got them out and handed them over.

"Do you know why I stopped you?" he asked.

I replied, "I think I do, sir, but I think you may be looking backward a little bit." Officer Rigveda (that was his name) looked behind him and then looked confused.

I tried to explain: "What I mean is, this is a time for reflection, not retribution. I know you don't want to hurt the morale of speeders and put the nation in danger."

"Step out of the car please."

I stepped out of the car, but I said roughly this: "I was just joking. Obama wants to prosecute prison guards for torture, but when it comes to the paper pushers who told them to do the torturing, he says 'this is a time to look forward, not backward.'" I used my best Barack Obama imitation, which is not saying much. I looked the man in the eye and tried to judge him, but all he said was:

"Place your hands on the roof of the car."

I didn't like how this was going, but I put my hands on the roof of the rented Chevrolet and said: "In my left front pocket you will find a memo drafted by my attorney which finds the speed I was traveling not to constitute a violation of the law. The memo is sealed but is potentially subject to release through a freedom of information act request, although -- again -- I don't really think you want to put our nation in danger. Do you?"

As Officer Rigveda searched me and administered a breathalyzer, I tried to explain the situation more clearly, since he just didn't say enough to reveal whether I was getting through to him. Mostly he gave one-sentence orders or asked questions.

"Where were you coming from and going to?" he grunted.

I said "Are you asking me that to be friendly or to investigate a crime, because if it's to investigate a crime then I don't recall."

He gave me a long look and finally said "I'm asking you to be friendly."

So, I said, "Well I'm late to get from the airport to a bookstore where I'm supposed to be signing copies of a book I wrote."

He asked what the book was called and I told him "Daybreak," and he seemed to think about it, somehow pleased by it, as if he'd caught me in something.

"Can you show me a copy of the book?"

I got one out of the car and showed it to him. He looked it over and quickly gave it back to me with a snort.

"You are a plagiarizer," he declared. Rigveda marched back to his police cruiser and pulled out a book, came over and handed it to me. The cover said: "Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality" by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Now it was my turn to look confused.

When I was able to think straight, I said "There cannot be more than one police officer in Texas who reads Nietzsche. Is Saul Alinsky in your backseat? Shouldn't I get a break just for having such astoundingly bad luck?"

He looked as me as if to say that he didn't think I constituted good luck from his point of view either. Then he cleared his throat and said:

"Beggars ought to be abolished: for one is vexed at giving to them and vexed at not giving to them."

Jesus Christ! He not only carried Nietzsche around in his taser mobile, but was quoting him at me.

Luckily, although I wasn't a plagiarist, I had named my book after another I liked. So I said: "Subjection to morality can be slavish or vain or self-interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or an act of despair, like subjection to a prince: in itself it is nothing moral."

Rig smiled, pulled out his taser, and said "I have no idea how I am acting! I have no idea how I ought to act! You are right, but be sure of this: you will be acted upon! at every moment! Mankind has in all ages confused the active and the passive: it is their everlasting grammatical blunder." He put his taser away and laughed for a half a second.

"One overlooks many moral weaknesses in a man," I told him, "employing in this a coarse sieve, provided he is a constant adherent of the most rigorous theory of morality! On the other hand, the lives of free-spirited moralists have always been put under the microscope: the rationale for this procedure is that a blunder in life is the surest argument against an unwanted insight."

And there I had stumped Officer Overman good. He stopped and walked around as I stood and sweated in the sun. But in a minute he came back with a big grin and said: "A man who says a lot and says it quickly sinks extraordinarily low in our estimation after even the briefest acquaintanceship and even if he talks sense -- not merely to the degree that he is burdensome to us but much lower than that. For we divine to how many men he has already been a burden, and add to the ill-humor he creates the contempt in which we suppose he is generally held."

I dropped to the ground and writhed in pain. Then I suddenly stopped and looked at him and said, rather loudly "Ah none of you knows the feeling the man who has been tortured has after the torture is over and he is carried back to his cell and his secret is with him! -- he is still clinging to it with his teeth. What do you know of the rejoicing of human pride!"

"You're not drunk," he replied, putting his breathalyzer away. "Just demented. I'll escort you to the book store."

We got in our separate cars, and he pulled his into the road beside mine and then screamed through his loudspeaker at a nearly deadly volume before flipping on his lights and siren:

"The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly!"

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 order it and find out when the 50-city tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

Obama's Narrowing Window of Opportunity

dlindorff — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:23:38 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.

The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks,
his General William Westmoreland, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, will be
coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in
Iraq too.

His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.

Pressure is mounting for an honest probe into the criminality of the
prior administration in its authorization and promotion of torture
against captives--most of them innocent--in the Bush/Cheney "war" on
terror.

The stock market, which by climbing back 50% from its collapse and
the bottom it hit on March 9, gave the president a breather, is showing
signs of exhaustion, and is likely to start sinking again, as investors
realize that there is no end in sight for the recession in the real
economy.

If all this continues into December, which is after all only a
couple of months away, Congress will go into recess, and when it
returns, it will be an election year, with all House seats up for
grabs, and a third of the Senate also facing re-election. Republicans
will be in an all-out campaign to reduce the Democratic majorities in
both houses, with history on their side (in almost every off-year
election, the party of new presidents lose support both houses of
Congress).

So, what's the president got to do?

First, he needs to announce a bold peace initiative in Afghanistan.
He should reject the call for more troops, and instead call for a
regional peace conference--one that would include all the neighborhing
countries around Afghanistan, and most significantly, the Taliban. At
such a conference, he should arrange for a new government of national
unity that includes the Taliban, and then get the hell out of the
country. Obama can declare victory if he wants, but the main thing is
to get out. Ditto for Iraq, where the US is still viewed as an occupier
and is going to be forced out eventually. There is no reason to stay
another day.

Second, he should declare the disfunctional and industry-polluted
health reform plans in Congress dead and simply announce that by
executive order, he is lowering the age for Medicare to 55, and is
switching all Medicaid patients in the country over to Medicare (with
the intention of lowering that age by five years ever year until all
are covered), and shutting down the Medicaid program. He should then
submit a bill to Congress establishing a government-owned insurance
company, open to all, with no restrictions on its ability to set
pricing and reimbursement rates or to negotiate discounts from
hospitals, doctors and pharmacy companies. Or alternatively, the bill
could enable anyone to simply buy into Medicare. He should tell
Democrats and Republicans alike that any member of Congress who votes
against that bill will not see any bill with her or his name on it get
his signature in his remaining years in office. The government company
would be phased out once Medicare covered everyone.

Finally, the president needs to announce that he is sickened by the
information he has received about the prior administration's torture
program, and that he is encouraging his attorney general to fully
investigate it, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone,
no matter how high up in the military or in government, who authorized
torture or who covered it up.

Congress could be expected to howl at the use of an executive order
to expand Medicare, but the president could declare a national health
emergency as justification, saying the recession had thrown too many
people off of health insurance, and that as well, states were in dire
fiscal shape and laying off workers because of the increased Medicaid
burden.

Removing older workers from employers' health insurance plans would
be a huge shot in the arm for struggling companies, as they are the
biggest users of health care. Lifting the $400 billion cost of Medicare
from state governments would free up money to prevent the layoff of
state and local employees, which is threatening to stifle economic
recovery.

Republicans can be expected to denounce the president for going
after the Bush/Cheney administration on torture, but most Americans at
this point are becoming aware of the damage that the policy has caused
to the country's international reputation, and to the soldiers in the
field.

Many people would also howl about bringing the troops home from
Afghanistan, and Iraq, but the truth is that the vast majority of
Americans are sick of both wars and would welcome an end to them.

The key to all these moves, however, is that Obama needs to explain
them not in terms of saving money, but as being the right thing to do.
Health care reform has to be presented as a moral imperative, not as a
money saver (even though covering everyone with Medicare would be a
huge net savings for everyone in the country). Ending America's foreign
wars would be a huge savings, but the real reason to do it is that the
US has no business being a global cop and imperialist occupier. And
prosecuting torture is essential if the US is to be a nation of laws.
You wouldn't know it to listen to the jaded pundits in the corporate
media, but in my experience, most Americans are basically decent
people, and would like to be citizens of a country that did decent
things, not just things that could be justified as making "economic
sense."

I'm not expecting any of this to happen, of course. This president
has shown repeatedly and convincingly that he is a creature of the
Establishment, not given to any bold initiatives or to challenges to
the status quo. I'm just saying that these are steps that could salvage
his presidency--a presidency that is seeming increasingly doomed. The
corollary is that if he doesn't do these things, he will find himself
with a diminished majority in November, 2010, a reinvigorated
Republican opposition, a tanked economy, an angry electorate (including
a lot of pissed off former supporters), and, basically, nothing to show
for his whole presidency come 2012.

And to top it off, for failing to prosecute Bush/Cheney torture, he
could well find himself subject to arrest abroad should he decide to
travel a bit once he is ousted from office in January 2013.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book
is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net