June 26, 2008
Axis Of Appeasement
Keith talks to Hillary Mann Leverett about the deal struck with North Korea by the Bush administration. Continue reading
Day: June 26, 2008
Top Cheney aide downplays his role in interrogation policies + videos
By Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, June 26, 2008
WASHINGTON — Two of the Bush administration’s most influential lawyers on Thursday downplayed their roles in crafting controversial legal policies in the war on terrorism, even as they rejected criticism that the president had overreached in asserting sweeping executive powers.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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Sorry the sound quality is pretty bad in some of these videos. ~ Lo
Rep. Ellison’s Questions on Detainee Treatment
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) questions David Addington and Prof. John Yoo on detainee treatment
Rep. Nadler’s Questions on Torture
Rep. Conyers’ Questions on Torture
Rep. Davis’ Questions on Torture
More from HouseJudiciary:
The fighting that exacerbates Somalia’s hunger
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says thousands of Somali adults and children are malnourished and in urgent need of medical treatment.
This comes as local human rights groups claim conflict in the country has left more than 2,000 civilians dead so far this year.
Ama Boateng reports on the fighting that is exacerbating hunger and illness.
“The fighting that exacerbates Somalia…“, posted with vodpod
Britain’s War in the Cause of Fear and Ignorance By John Pilger
By John Pilger
06/26/08 “ICH”
The British lawyer Gareth Pierce, celebrated for her defense of miscarriage of justice victims, wrote recently: “Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, ‘shoot to kill’, the use of torture, brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name the actions were taken, remained ignorant.” Referring to the conflict in Northern Ireland, she was drawing a comparison with “our new suspect community,” people of Muslim faith, against whom a vicious, sectarian and mostly unreported war is well under way.
As Pierce points out, “internment, discredited and abandoned in Northern Ireland” now allows, not 42 days, but “indefinite detention without trial of foreign nationals, the ‘evidence’ to be heard in secret with the detainee’s lawyer not permitted to see the evidence against him.” Those snatched from their homes in Britain following 11 September, 2001 have all but vanished into an Anglo-American gulag, which in this country joins Belmarsh prison, where people are consigned to oblivion, with Broadmoor psychiatric prison, where they are sent as they go mad, and with Kafkaesque versions of “home” where others are interred under “control orders.” One of these home prisoners, wrote Pierce, “a man without arms, was left alone and terrified, unable to leave the flat or to contact anyone without committing a criminal offense, subject to a curfew and allowed no visits unless approved in advance by the Home Office.” Going into the garden, arranging a plumber, speaking to a child’s teacher all require permission. The families go mad, too.
Preferring “a quick death … to a slow death here,” one man who took a risk and returned to Algeria has been lost in the subcontracted gulag, where his new torturers have given “assurances” to the British government that they will do him no harm and while they do him harm are themselves reassured by the presence of British Petroleum, the ethical oil company, which has sunk £6 billion into getting oil out of Algeria’s southern Sahara. Another subcontractor, Jordan, is held economically afloat by the US so that George Bush’s “renditions” and torture can proceed there. No British court has found any of these people guilty of any crime. In Britain, as Tony Blair, a genuine prima facie criminal, put it so well, “the rules of the game have changed.”
As in the Irish conflict, it is again the ignorance of us, the public, upon which the state relies. All propaganda is directed at honing this ignorance and fabricating a fear. This is primarily the task of journalists. The true fear is in Muslim communities. Visit them and find people terrified by your knock on the door, and women who now never go out and the children wrapped in nightmares. In effect, control orders have been served on thousands of British citizens.
As Pierce reminds us, the Irish had allies in the Catholic Church and the 40 million Americans of Irish descent; Muslims are alone as they watch the British state, with its “obstinate incomprehension” of their faith, do to them as it would never do to those of other faiths. Imagine Jews treated this way. You cannot imagine it; the profanity is too great. The silence of British Jews, who have the history, is also great.
As the suppressed facts of “terrorism” show, Muslims are by far the most numerous victims – up to a million Iraqis dead, including 500,000 infants, during “sanctions” against Iraq in the 1990s; perhaps another million dead when Blair and his mentor ignited the current inferno; countless dead and maimed in Afghanistan by weapons that include the British thermobaric bomb, designed to suck the air out of human beings. And there is Palestine, an entire nation under a permanent control order.
Reviewing this monstrous record, it is no less than amazing that the world’s most violent governments – Britain is now the world’s leading arms merchant – have sustained only two retaliations on their home soil. With every hypocritical act, they beckon another. Moreover, wrote Gareth Pierce, “If our government continues on [this destructive] path, we will ultimately have destroyed much of the moral and legal fabric of the society that we claim to be protecting. The choice and the responsibility are entirely ours.”
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, filmmaker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of “Journalist of the Year,” for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. His new book, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs, is published by Jonathan Cape in June. http://www.johnpilger.com/
Copyright © John Pilger 2008
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State
TheRealNews on Jun 26, 2008
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Words, Words, Mere Words by Ralph Nader
by Ralph Nader
June 25, 2008
Senator Obama said earlier today that I haven’t been paying attention to his campaign.
Actually, I have.
And it’s clear from Senator Obama’s campaign that he is not willing to tackle the white power structure – whether in the form of the corporate power structure or many of the super-rich – who are taking advantage of 100 million low income Americans who are suffering in poverty or near poverty. Continue reading
Mosaic News – 06/25/08: World News From The Middle East
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
For more: http://www.linktv.org/originalseries
“Gaza truce strained by rocket fire,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Hezbollah a State Within a State,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Violence at Lowest Level in Three Years in Iraq,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“US-Led Coalition Bombs Paktika, Afghanistan,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Mali Democratic Alliance Committed to Peace,” Algeria TV, Algeria
“Fears of 9/11 in Britain,” Saudi TV, Saudi Arabia
“Living with the Dead,” New TV, Lebanon
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
“Mosaic News – 06/25/08: World News Fr…“, posted with vodpod
Elections, Capitalism, And Democracy By Charles Sullivan
By Charles Sullivan
06/26/08 “ICH”
Because so many of the people on the political left fear that John McCain will become the next president, they have allowed themselves to see the very moderate democratic candidate, Barach Obama, as a desirable alternative to the decidedly ghoulish McCain, rather than supporting a genuine progressive like Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, or Ralph Nader. They thus perceive Obama to be far more progressive than he really is. Such comparisons lead us down a dichotomous pathway that assures a continuous drift to the right.
Each election cycle the people on the left find themselves out-flanked by those on the right by allowing them to frame the debate and to define who we are. So each election we end up supporting a very moderate candidate rather than a truly progressive one. Because all of the mainstream candidates are intensively influenced by corporate lobbyists and the electoral system is owned by capital, democracy has remained as elusive as capturing the ghost of a saint with a piece of duct tape.
According to Ambrose I. Lane Sr., host of Pacifica radio’s “We Ourselves,” John McCain has the third most conservative voting record of anyone in the senate. Running an extremist from the opposite end of the political spectrum forces the democratic candidate further to the right than he or she already is. So when progressives fall into this trap, as they so often do, it is a win-win for the corporate lobbyists pulling the strings behind the curtain. They end up supporting a candidate they think can compete against extremists rather than one who actually represents their values. If you have to become like your opponent in order to defeat them, what can you honesty say has been won?
Progressives cannot gain ground by ceding their ideology to their conservative opponents in order to gain office. Without having a viable candidate coming from the far left of the Democratic Party, progressives cannot reasonably expect to push the debate back toward the political center, much less to the left of center. You can make a good case, however, that the democratic leadership under Howard Dean has no real desire to move to the left or to represent traditional progressive values. It likes the status quo just fine; a position that has served its corporate funders well.
Because it has been co-opted by corporate lobbyists—who always hedge their bets—the Democratic Party no longer houses a genuine left-wing faction that can effectively compete for votes in a way that emulates the success of the far right. Because right-wing extremism and corporate fascism are portrayed in the corporate media as reasonable centrist positions beneficial to the people—that is how they are perceived by those who receive their political education from those sources. Thus extremism packaged as democracy is widely considered to be the norm when, in fact, it is not; it is fanaticism couched as something much more benign or beneficial, even if it is a poison pill. Yet it is this extremism that undermines the interests of the nation’s working class people and keeps them subservient to corporate fascism. Voting for meaningful change is like running on a treadmill and expecting to actually go somewhere.
The problem is that capital, rather than informed citizens interested in democracy, is in control of the electoral process. Capital furthers the interest of capital, rather than the interest of the people, and this creates an irreconcilable conflict with genuine human interests. So we end up with a sociopolitical system that is not only fundamentally unjust; it is also predatory and cannibalistic. It consumes the very people who feed it and give it the appearance of legitimacy: the great unwashed working class.
Capitalism flourishes, for a short time, at least, by socializing costs and by privatizing profits and this concentrates and centralizes power into the hands of a select few. Its real purpose is not to serve people; it is to exploit them. Capitalism isn’t even a natural system; it is a purely human construct that has no basis in nature. It is a synthetic system and, as we have seen through chemistry, synthetic systems tend to become mutagens, and thus promote cancer.
Due in part to their extreme political naiveté and to delusional thinking, too many people have accepted corporate fascism as a centrist or “normal” position. Thus they have unwittingly allowed predatory and cannibalistic forces—unregulated markets—to determine the fate of the nation and its people. Neoconservatives and neoliberals, alike, have defined the free market as an unregulated market, which has become their concept of democracy. The so called free market is not under the control of human beings in any meaningful sense, and it does not respond to human needs. Like a creation of Frankenstein, it is a man-made monster that has escaped from the laboratory and is wreaking havoc across the countryside, menacing everyone and everything in its gargantuan steel-booted path.
By themselves, markets are not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly people need commerce and trade. However, it is when markets are deregulated—as required by the adherents of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics—that they turn upon people and become predatory, undemocratic, and cannibalistic. When markets are given more power and more rights than people, people will cede not only their power to them, but also their humanity. This is how markets have become all-powerful entities that have no soul or conscience and are answerable to no one: monstrosities in every sense of the word.
I would argue, however, that the object of commerce and trade should be to serve people and to benefit the whole of society, rather than to generate enormous profits for the benefit of a select few. Commerce without democracy cannot help us toward a free and democratic society; it can only undermine our every effort at genuine democratization.
Either you work for the public interest or you work for self-interest. It is this assertion that finally brings us back to our starting point—the electoral process. Because the process is under the control of capital rather than working class people, it undermines the democratic process and substitutes something else in its place. That process has led us to where we are and it can never take us back to where we started from. Nor can it ever lead us to genuine democracy or to justice. It can only bear the fruit of its own seeds; it can only provide us with more of what it has already produced.
If we the people are serious about real democratic government, we must work for it outside of the electoral process, as well as from within. We must organize a revolutionary force so powerful that it cannot be ignored or denied. We must institute effective and prolonged economic boycotts. We must organize work slow-downs, work stoppages, and general strikes in order to make corrupt government feel our pain. We must create labor unions that genuinely fight for worker’s rights while simultaneously transitioning the country away from an exploitive and self-destructive capital economy toward a people-oriented economy based upon need, rather than privatized profit subsidized by public funds. These are the means to creating a democratic workplace and bringing malignant capitalism to a grinding halt. The electoral process does not provide the tools for revolution; it subverts the process and only delays the inevitable.
While Barach Obama has run for the presidency on the premise of change, his ideology is fundamentally the same as the presidents who came before him: the economic theories of Milton Friedman and the belief in corporate deregulation; profits before people. Obama’s economic advisers subscribe to the same economic theorem that brought us the trickle down economics of Ronald Reagan and his disastrous foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy advisers subscribe to the same philosophy that brought us the invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine; every one of them a war-mongering imperialist with close ties to the military industrial complex with its nexus of profiteering. His energy policy team has great faith in clean coal and safe nuclear energy, neither of which exists.
Because the Obama team is anything but revolutionary, it is unreasonable to expect them to produce polices significantly different than the ones that are already in play. We saw this with Bill Clinton who campaigned on promises to do one thing but, once elected, did another. Clinton won office by being more right-wing than his republican opponent. That was no victory for progressives. How could it be?
This is not to say that Barach Obama is a bad person in any way. Certainly, he is an intelligent man of reasonably good character and a fine orator, but that does not qualify him as representative of the people or the democracy they so desperately need. Is he a better choice than John McCain? Without doubt he is. But then, so is almost anyone else. A toadstool would be a better choice than McCain. We must remember that Obama has been groomed to become president some day and that grooming was provided by special interests whose unstated purpose is to undermine genuine democracy by substituting an imposter in its place. They are convinced that the American people won’t know the difference. So don’t expect any significant changes under Obama, despite all of the campaign rhetoric to the contrary.
The presence of McCain makes the very moderate Obama an appealing alternative and that assures victory for the status quo. It frightens progressive voters away from supporting real progressives like Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney. Barach Obama was the real choice of the established orthodoxy all along. The marketing strategists have used John McCain to funnel the votes toward Obama and away from genuine progressives. That is where the real fight was. You can call it voting in the absence of real choice because that is precisely what it is. The same policies that have been in play for decades will continue on and we will keep getting a similar result.
Obama’s recent endorsement of warrantless wire-tapping is not only evidence of his belonging to the established orthodoxy; it directly connects him to the draconian policies of the Bush regime and to those of Senator McCain. No true progressive would want to be associated with the unlawful and unjustified surveillance of law-abiding citizens. This is a red flag that must not be ignored.
This is why the country continues to quietly drift further to the right: there is no real choice in elections and we continue to behave as if there are. It is the capitalist system that is at fault, not the candidates themselves who play the game according to the dictum of its inventors. They, too, as despicable as some of them are, are its unwitting victims.
What hope is there for genuine progressives in a game that is rigged? If we are ever to become responsible citizens, we must learn how to separate the contents of the box from the fancy packaging. The same old ideology, regardless of who espouses it, will not lead to meaningful change; nor will pursing the same old methods. If we are going to be satisfied with that, then we can continue to be pawns in a rich man’s game and accept the results of the game without complaint. If we expect better, then we must begin by demanding better of ourselves by recognizing what is being done in our name and doing something about it. But first we must awaken from our stupor and come to the realization that democracy means direct citizen action.
Charles Sullivan welcomes your comments at csullivan@copper.net
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DHS Announces $79 Million in State Grants for REAL ID
Department of Homeland Security
Release Date: June 20, 2008
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced today Fiscal Year 2008 REAL ID Demonstration Grant awards totaling nearly $80 million to assist states in improving the security of state-issued driver’s licenses (DL) and identification documents (ID). Grants will fund state-specific projects like improving the physical security of licenses, upgrading facility security, and modernizing document imaging and storage. Funding will also be provided for the development and testing of a verification hub that will enable states to query federal and non-federal document-issuing authorities and verify applicant source documents.
“Americans overwhelmingly want secure identification, and this funding will help those states working to provide it,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “We’ve made it more affordable for states to implement REAL ID by dramatically cutting costs and providing various and considerable funding options, and we’re requesting additional funding next year.”
The REAL ID Program addresses a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to enhance the security, integrity and protection of licensing and identification systems across the country. More than $58 million has previously been allocated for state-specific implementation projects that facilitate REAL ID compliance.
Each of the 48 states and territories who applied for Fiscal Year 2008 REAL ID Demonstration Grants will be awarded a portion of the available funding. Awards are based on an application’s overall effectiveness in meeting criteria identified in the grants application kit, and the number of DLs and IDs issued. Projects will focus on achieving material compliance, such as collecting applicants’ photos at the start of the application process and incorporating additional physical security features into DLs and IDs. Other funded projects that advance REAL ID implementation, include transitioning to centralized DL and ID production, improving data records for driver’s licenses, and upgrading source document imaging and storage.
The department has also pledged to fund in this grant cycle the implementation of a verification hub to be built and governed by the states. The hub will act as a central router to provide timely, accurate, and cost-effective verification to motor vehicle departments of an applicant’s source documents. States will be able to seamlessly verify the identity, lawful status and social security number of an applicant through this common interface.
The department has awarded $17 million to Missouri to lead the development of the verification hub. Four other states – Florida, Indiana, Nevada, and Wisconsin – will each receive $1.2 million to partner with Missouri for verification hub testing and implementation. Other states and territories will eventually connect to the verification hub and have the capability to verify applicants’ source documents.
These investments are essential to reducing and impairing the use of stolen, borrowed, altered, or counterfeit source documents widely used to obtain state-issued documents. For more information on the REAL ID Demonstration Grant program, or to learn more about REAL ID, please visit www.dhs.gov/realid.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Dandelion Salad 