Torture News Strike

Submitted by Bob Fertik on April 16, 2008 - 7:25am.

Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer
Kansas City Star
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News

On 4/11/08, George Bush told ABC News he personally approved of the approval of torture - including waterboarding - by Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet.

Bush said, "Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

You would think a President confessing to war crimes would be on the front pages of all the nation's newspapers, and all over their editorial pages - not just on Countdown and The Daily Show.

You'd be wrong. The only newspapers that have covered the story are in the box on the right.

Is your newspaper missing from this list? Then let's work together to do something about it.

We're calling this action our "Torture News Strike."

Call the Editor of your local newspaper and tell him/her you are suspending your subscription until they give Bush's torture confession the serious coverage it deserves either in the news or editorial section, or preferably both.

If you get home delivery, then call the circulation department and tell them to suspend delivery until further notice. (If you buy at the newsstands, read something else.)

Want to connect with other activists who read the same newspaper as you? Read more...

Torture Is Over (if we want it)

Submitted by davidswanson on June 11, 2008 - 1:47pm.

Torture News Strike

By David Swanson

Chairman John Conyers' reasons not to impeach Bush or Cheney do not even include an assertion that they have not committed impeachable offenses or crimes. How could they, when Conyers is selling a book listing many of Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses and crimes? Conyers' reasons do not include an assertion that he can end the ongoing crimes through some other approach. And they do not include any claim that a successful impeachment wouldn't end the crimes effectively and deter their future commission. Impeachment, in fact, could and would end, among much else, torture by U.S. public servants.

Conyers' reasons not to proceed are, in that context, laughable. Here are the excuses he recently provided to Code Pink - New York activists:

"1. The majority does not want impeachment."

Rice's Lies About Torture

Submitted by dlindorff on May 23, 2008 - 10:00am.

By Dave Lindorff

Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?

After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency) were dreamed up, proposed and approved for use—meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.

The Bush Family's Bad Latin Real Estate Investment

Submitted by dlindorff on May 2, 2008 - 2:43pm.

By Dave Lindorff

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.