This morning one can spend hours reading articles and comments about the attack on the "vehicle" (read: fortified Rolls Royce tank) carrying HRM Prince Charles and Camilla - and forgetting what the ESSENCE of this is about (which, if you are a faithful reader of this blog - not many left save intelligence agencies - should be clear to you by now.
So this bit just radiated at me as posted in the New York Times' coverage (under BUSINE$$ - who'd a thought?). Now this is TRUTH: (thanx Terry !)
Terry
U.K.
December 10th, 2010
8:41 am
Whilst violence is very much to be discouraged, the police policy of 'kettling', holding people without food, water or toilet facilities, like sardines, for hours and hours on end, is designed to make them boil over, hence the term. Then the fascists can wade in and crack some skulls while blaming the kettled people they provoked. This is all part and parcel of hypocritical, sneaky Britain, in which 40 percent of the population live in relative poverty, such as is unexpected in a rich nation. The cry about the money running out is not true, it has merely been redirected into the coffers of the super-rich tax evaders, who also direct the plutocracy they falsely claim to be a democracy in Britain. The government is in any case a stitch up and was not voted in by the people, who are disgusted with these criminals. Handy thing, an unwritten constitution and no Bill of Rights! Along with a bit of gerrymandering and three Thatcherite, neo-con political parties that jump to the tune of the same New World Order banker pipers, it's any which way you lose for the majority of the people, as this farce illustrates.
"I would feel ashamed if I didn't deal with the way that the world is, not simply dream of the way the world I would like it to be," he said.'
The thing about this lying public schoolboy's utterance, is that the world is how it is because of manipulative, lying, thieving , classist fascists such as himself and his Bullingdon Club millionaire Cabinet mates.
The fees are just one aspect of the onslaught. The multi-billion Pound National Health Service is being handed on a plate by the coalition to the waiting parasite sons and daughters of the chosen ones, the quack class, who are carefully selected through a racist, classist school education system, which limits people's chances right from birth, so that these vultures can pick it clean to line their already inflated pockets, and further favour the rich over the poor (who pay a lot of money in taxes and National Insurance for 'their''free' NHS). The rich are in other words stealing everything they can, pushing up costs astronomically, or bankonomically, and stripping the people of everything they can in the fashion one would expect to find in the middle ages, not the twenty-first century.
Health outcomes are directly related to wealth, as is schooling, and now the rich want to ensure that the 'oiks', the less well off, are excluded from the knowledge economy, as they have been excluded from so many growth and advancement opportunities down the centuries in a Britain that is becoming even more socially divided than at any time in living memory.
There's also no money for education, but plenty for arms deals, even if the multi-billion Pound weapons are to be mothballed. The bankers levy, which was a paltry GBP 2,6 Billion over five years has also been reduced by get out clauses; the rich tax avoiders and evaders, hiding at least GBP 20 Billion a year are being let off the hook; leaking schools are being left to rot, while richer areas are being given special attention and funding. And so it goes on. Uncontrolled, rampant greed and arrogance by a class of colonialist slavers who believe they are genetically born to rule and be served. No, seriously! Let them eat cake!
And have they decreased and reined in spending, or reduced the trade deficit? Hell no, they've increased both. As long as the good old boys are making money; the old school tie waving in the Lodge, all's dandy.
The student protest is just the beginning. The fascists, including the royals(who got a bit of a wake-up call, when they went on a voyeuristic peek at the plebs, in the old Rolls), are inviting the workers, and anyone excluded from being treated as a human being in 'Great' Brutannia [sic] - which is more than half the population - to join the students out on the streets.
The sooner the place becomes a People's Republic the better, but you won't hear that from the average Brit journalist, since this occupation has also been a preserve of the Tories and their neutered batmen for some time, despite the deliberate pose of neutrality or pinko-trendiness that some have put on.
Is this the winter of Britain's discontent?
Watch this space.
My toolbar for the blog has been disabled, so it's a bit hard to put ALL the links I am going through this morning, but please take the time to look at this and think REAL HARD about what is at stake now as AUSTERITY and idiocy rule ...
I also suggested a WAR CRIMES SCHOLARSHIP FUND !!!
And believe me, it WAS a conference !!
Virginia
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2008-09-18 15:01.
* Criminal Prosecution
By Sherwood Ross
ANDOVER , MASS. (Special) -- Twenty recommendations made at a conference on prosecuting President George Bush for war crimes are under consideration for action, according to conference convener Lawrence Velvel, a prominent law school dean.
"Attendees discussed the violations of international and domestic law that were committed and are now studying recommendations for action," said Velvel. “All of us feel that those who committed war crimes and other crimes against humanity must be held accountable," he said. “The continued viability of Nuremberg Principles barring aggressive war and torture depends on it.”
More than 120 public officials, lawyers, academics, and authorities on the U.S. Constitution and international law attended the two day conference, which was held in Andover , Massachusetts on September 13th and 14th.
The conference resulted in recommendations ranging from asking the next U.S. Attorney General to prosecute Bush, to having any of some 2,700 county district attorneys launch proceedings against him for murder, to having Bush prosecuted for war crimes in other countries.
A newly formed committee will decide which of the suggestions can practicably be pursued.
The complete list of possible actions is:
1. Working for the election of district attorneys who pledge to prosecute high level war criminals for murder under state law, and working for the reelection of district attorneys who pledge to prosecute such criminals for murder.
2. Working for the election of state attorneys general who pledge to prosecute high level war criminals for murder under state law.
3. Working for the election of local executive and legislative officials (e.g., city council members) in specified localities who will formally denounce war crimes and might even seek to take action against them, as apparently has occurred in Vermont.
4. Mandamus proceedings to force local prosecutors to act.
5. Requesting state bar authorities to disbar the lawyers who were part of the executive cabal to authorize torture and other abuses that are crimes under international law, domestic law, or both.
6. Teach-ins at universities on the question of war crimes.
7. Asking universities to conduct hearings on whether certain individuals (e.g., John Yoo, Jack Goldsmith) should be dismissed from faculties for aiding and abetting criminal acts.
8. A march of many thousands of American lawyers on the Department of Justice (a la Civil Rights or Viet Nam war marches or the million man march). The purpose of the march would be to highlight lawyers’ belief that crimes were committed and must be punished.
9. Seeking prosecutions of high level war criminals before foreign courts or before international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court.
10. Asking the next federal Attorney General to prosecute war criminals.
11. Seeking major congressional investigations of what occurred.
12. Obtaining inspector general reports of what was done in given federal departments like the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, etc.
13. A truth and reconciliation commission.
14. Impeachment, even after the culprits leave office. And, unless he resigns from the federal bench, Jay Bybee, who collaborated with John Yoo on the first torture papers, will still be in office after the election.
15. Legislative or judicial action to dramatically cut back on, and sometimes totally eliminate, the present vast overuse by the federal government of the state secrets doctrine, executive privilege and other such doctrines.
16. Repeal of immunity amendments (which, even if not repealed, may have tremendous holes in them with regard to federal prosecutions, are unlikely to have any immunizing effect at the state level (though they may nonetheless be claimed as a defense), and whose only effect on foreign and international prosecutions would be to encourage them because these amendments indicate that the American federal government (like the governments of Argentina and Chile for many years) refuses to take action against federal criminals.
17. Resisting pardons, particularly advance pardons by Bush or the next president before there are convictions.
18. Creating an office of Chief Prosecutor(s), with Vince Bugliosi as Chief Prosecutor for domestic actions and perhaps a Co-Chief Prosecutor, with international prosecutorial experience, as Chief Prosecutor for foreign and international actions. This office would handle prosecutions in which governmental officials are willing to use “our” designated chief prosecutor as the lead lawyer, and would advise governmental prosecutors who desire to handle the prosecutions themselves but are willing to use “our” chief prosecutor as an adviser.
19. Setting up an internet-accessible repository, or library, of information on the pertinent war crimes, so that persons will have ready access to all relevant information. The repository, or library, should be cross indexed by subject matter, and should include briefs, articles, books, memos, speeches, etc. -- anything that sheds light on what was done.
20. Considering what, if anything, can be done to overcome the current ineptitude, failure and sometimes even deliberate hiding of facts by the corporate mass media, and to consider how the web might be used to accomplish this.
Vincent Bugliosi, former Los Angeles county prosecutor, extensively explained the legal reasoning under which Bush can be prosecuted for murder once he is no longer president. Bugliosi added that “No Federal, state or local statute says there is any person who can't be prosecuted for murder."
Bugliosi said that, of the 2,700 district and county attorneys having the power to prosecute, "There should be one prosecutor bold enough to say 'No man is above the law'. I am looking for that courageous prosecutor and I am not going to be satisfied until I see George W. Bush in an American courtroom prosecuted for murder."
Bugliosi said the evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq was overwhelming. "There are over 100 books” providing facts to underpin“ bringing Bush to prosecution for the deaths of 4,000 American soldiers under false pretenses," Bugliosi said.
Philippe Sands, director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College , London , discussed violations of law such as torture. He said that "Under the Convention Against Torture, any person who has tortured anywhere in the world can be arrested in the United Kingdom " if they enter that country.
Political scientist Christopher Pyle of Mt. Holyoke College , S. Hadley, Mass. , spoke for many Conference attendees when he said, “The evidence is overwhelming. The torture, kidnapping, and degradation of suspected terrorists was part of a deliberate policy, hatched and concealed at the highest levels of the Bush administration.” Pyle said the nation does not need any “truth commission” that will offer immunity to suspects who confess their crimes because “if there is no threat of punishment, and therefore no prospect of plea bargains, why would underlings admit anything?”
Any attempt by President Bush to pre-pardon himself or any of his aides involved in war crimes and torture would be “an obstruction of justice,” said Pyle.
He suggested one approach could be to appoint “a non-partisan prosecutor with considerable independence,” much as Attorney General Elliot Richardson did when he chose Archibald Cox to lead the Watergate team. “A special prosecutor could be chosen by the next attorney general from among any number of distinguished Republican attorneys.”
Professor Amy Bartholomew of Carleton University , Ottawa , told the conference that the Bush administration was attempting to replace the Nuremberg Principles adopted after World War Two with “a global and transnational state of exception” under which the U.S. can invade countries with impunity.
Peter Weiss of the Center For Constitutional Rights pointed out that there is no need for any new legislation to outlaw aggressive war, since “It is already outlawed by Article 2 of the United States Charter.”
Dean Velvel summarized the conference proceedings by saying, “In a nutshell, this conference was about giving continued life to the Nuremberg principles, which our country itself established, instead of allowing guilty members of the Bush Administration to destroy those principles wholesale by committing aggressive war and torture with impunity.”
(For additional information contact Sherwood Ross, sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
The nationalistic and fascist government of Georgia from the year 1989 support the policy of the annihilation and the impression of the aboriginal Ossetian population from the territory that they occupy. From 1991 as a consequence of repeated military actions that were undertaken by the criminal authorities of Georgia against the small nations and the national purge murdered thousands of people –Ossetians, Abkhazians, Armenians, Russians. At the same time the scale of the genocide passed over the silence by mass media. The atrocity of the Georgian fascists, the tortures surpassed the one of the German fascists during the World War II.
The Georgian nation is sick, the ideas of the national oneness, justifying the territorial claims are warmed up by the Georgian mass media. The government of Georgia is financed by the USA, having it's own geopolitical interests in the region. Now the tragedy is developed, the Ossetian people are systematically shot in own houses, perish under blockages of the destroyed houses. The Georgian fascists have destroyed, have wiped about Ossetian villages, the city of Tskhinval is in ruins. It's impossible to count up the quantity of victims, that were buried under blockages of the houses destroyed by fire of the Georgian aggressors, the account goes on thousand. Groans of people from under blockages are audible. The Republic hospital where had helped to the wounded man was destroyed by the Georgian artillery, under blockages were wounded men and medical workers who could not be released under heavy fire of the opponent. Thus the Georgian party cynically declares the constitutional order prompting, one for another offers insinuations to accuse the Russian or Ossetian parts in the conflict. The people of Abkhazia will be the following victims of the Georgian extremism. We ask for the help, solidarity, and if it is possible with an exit on the international sites. Let the world knows the truth, instead of presented by the Georgian masters of falsifications lie.
At this moment the massed, intense, extremely cruel shelling of the housing estate of Tskhinval from the howitzers, mortars, artillery, IFV, tanks with using the system of the volley fire "Grad" from the direction of the Georgian villages continues. The bombardment goes on with the persistent volleys with the intervals under one second.
This information was supplemented with the chief of the information department of the South Ossetian part of the Control Committee Inal Pliev.
Here is the entire text.
There are the hits to the houses that are situated in the immediate region of the boundary. There is fire and smoke around of us. Continues the intimidation and the oppression of the peaceful population. I suppose that the number of the victims will increase badly. But I have no idea about the number of victims, because we are in the shelters.
Just now Saakashvily have declared by the radio that "gained a victory over the Russian Federation and Georgian troops are in the zone of the conflict and control Tskhinval totally and the Ossetian separatists will be obliterated".
He also made the number of victims of the Ossetian part public (1500 persons). "I don't fight against the peaceful population, but with the gangsters". But in such a small nation can't exist 1500 gangsters. It's obviously that it is done to receive any political dividends. This war don't directed at the political victory, it is directed at total destruction of the peaceful nation.
Now it is known that in the villages that have been occupied and that are released now the Georgians have taken away the Ossetian hostages. On the side of Georgia fight the international terrorists that had taken part in the war in Chechnya.
It's especially discomposedly that the Georgian part hide the huge number of hostages from the Ossetian villages. This signify that they will be meanly killed as it was done earlier during the previous conflicts.
I think that it was wise of Russia to provide safety of civilian population, by talking with the Georgians their native war language. The Russian collaboration is not enough, because the Georgians used heavy artillery against Tskhinval yesterday and today too.
It`s necessary to destroy that artillery, because our people are dying, owr town is practically broken to pieses, otherwise South Osetia will be totally destroyed.
Inal Pliev, the chief of the information department of the South Ossetian part of the Control Committee.
The International Community that has been hypnotized with the crying misinformation of the government of Georgia and the cynical insinuations of Saakashvily doesn't undertake any measures to cut off the military actions of the Georgian part. On the contrary, they make different attempts to deprive the people of the South Ossetia of the peacemaking support and, in that way, doom them to the absolute destruction with the Georgian fascists. Meanwhile, the Georgian nationalists achieve their aims annihilating nearly one and a half thousand people of the South Ossetia and depriving the roofs and making the potential refugees the others.
The irrepressible national ambitions and the territorial pretensions are warm up with the Georgian mass media, the supporting of the USA – the world-wide predominant force that has it's own interests in the region. When in April of 1989 in Tbilisi in the result of the dispersal of the unapproved antistate and nationalistic meeting perished 20 Georgian women, the Georgian part demonstrated the national hysteria with the involving of the universal mass media. Though, there is the data that those events also were the skilled insinuation of the Georgian "masters of the theatrical genre". And now, when thousands of people die, the Georgian nation triumphs, approving of the actions of their fascist government. The West is deaf.
To live as a part of the fascist state is impossible. We ask for the juridical and legal help for recognizing the independence of the South Ossetia. And we ask for the help in the reducing the truth about the tragedy to the International Community, the RF and the common people.
Innocent Ossetian civilians and Russian citizens killed: exact numbers cannot be established
A massive and intensive shelling of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval continues today as the city endures it's the worst attacks so far in the upsurge of violence in the Caucasus. While much of the civilian population in the capital are sheltering in their houses, many cannot take refuge from the bombs as their homes have been destroyed. There are still many women, children and elderly residents remaining in the city and, according to the latest information available, the city continues to resist the incursion of Georgian troops and has still not been captured. Georgian armed formations and heavy artillery have been accused of doing everything in their power to raze Ossetia with no regard to the safety of the civilian population.
In these minutes Georgian SU-25 planes dropped bombs on the peaceful citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia. SU-25 also strikes at ossetian village Kvernet, and bypass road,Zar, the only road, which links South Ossetia with the North. Perfidious massive bombardment of Tskhinval by the morning became more intense. In the city and its environs are fighting with heavy weapons.
The people of South Ossetia requests assistance from the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev and the Government of Russian Federation to take urgent measures to protect the residents of South Ossetia, which are citizens of the Russian Federation and to do everything to stop the genocide of the Ossetian people.
According to preliminary data, in the city killed more than 15 civilians.
The Georgian convoy of tanks and infantry is moving towards Tshinval. Already devastated a large part of the town. Several buildings in the center of the city burn. Parliament House RYUO burned, the government buildings complex is damaged. High-rise housing and other residential buildings are burning.
South Ossetia intended to take resolute measures on the facts of shelling of Ossetian settlements by the Georgian side. This was stated by the President of the Republic of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity. «Presently the situation is very serious. At the height above Nuli village Georgians are constructing another post. We will take most tough decisions in this regard, for this are band formations and they are shelling our villages. The situation is aggravating from the Georgian side»-claimed Eduard Kokoity.
Georgian armed formations fired the funeral procession in Mugut village, Znaur region of RSO. As the Minister of Interior informed IA «Res» correspondent there was a funeral of RSO law enforcement organs serviceman Anatoly Kabisov killed during the firing of RSO MIA post in Velit village on the night from 1 to 2 August.
Georgian armed formations fired the funeral procession in Mugut village, Znaur region of RSO. As the Minister of Interior informed IA «Res» correspondent there was a funeral of RSO law enforcement organs serviceman Anatoly Kabisov killed during the firing of RSO MIA post in Velit village on the night from 1 to 2 August.
The President of the Republic of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity received the delegation from North Ossetia. They discussed the situation created over South Ossetia last days. All the participants mentioned the complexity of situation. Eduard Kokoity emphasized that the people should not yield to the provocations organized by the Georgian side, whatever tragic and grave as it may be.
monbiot.com | So here we go again. For the second time, Channel 4 has been fiercely criticised by the broadcasting regulator for a programme attacking environmental science. For the second time the director was Martin Durkin. Ten years ago, his series Against Nature was found to have misled his interviewees about “the content and purpose of the programmes” and distorted their views “through selective editing”(1). Now Ofcom has ruled that the programme he made last year – The Great Global Warming Swindle – treated two scientists and an organisation (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) unfairly(2). For the second time, Channel 4 will have to make an embarrassing primetime apology.
But while the new ruling exposes some of the channel’s practices, it also exposes the limitations of the regulator. The programme was peppered with distortions and misleading claims. But despite being presented with a vast dossier of evidence by climate scientists, Ofcom decided that it could not rule on the matter of accuracy. While news programmes are expected to be accurate, other factual programmes are not, and Ofcom “only regulates misleading material where that material is likely to cause harm or offence.” It decided that The Great Global Warming Swindle hadn’t caused actual harm to members of the public and would not rule on whether or not the programme had misled them. In fact, it is precisely because “the discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great extent settled by the date of broadcast”, meaning that climate change was no longer a matter of political controversy, that a programme claiming it is all a pack of lies could slip past the partiality rules. The greater a programme’s defiance of scientific fact, the less likely Ofcom is to rule against it. This paradoxical judgement allows Channel 4 to keep getting away with it.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is part of a long-standing pattern. Channel 4 upsets all sorts of people, and it has every right to do so. On all other issues it appears to do so in a random fashion, sometimes attacking people on one side of the debate, sometimes on the other. But one polemical position has kept recurring over the past 18 years: a fierce antagonism towards environmentalism. Some of these programmes have used misrepresentation, distortion or fabrication to sustain claims that environmental concerns are the fantasies of self-serving scientists. It is arguable that no organisation in the United Kingdom has done more to damage the effort to protect the environment.
For the first eight years of the channel’s life, its coverage of environmental issues was broad, diverse and often stimulating. It broadcast 20 programmes a year in its Fragile Earth slot. But two years after Michael Grade became chief executive, its programming began to change. The trend continued after he left.
In 1990 Channel 4 screened a documentary called The Greenhouse Conspiracy, directed by Hilary Lawson at the company TVF. It maintained that “there is no evidence at all” for dangerous climate change. There is a conspiracy among scientists, it said, to talk up the dangers in order to win funding(3). No reasonable person would dispute that Channel 4 should show countervailing views, or would claim that it has an obligation to take an environmentalist line. But there were three problems with this programme, which appear to characterise several of the channel’s films about the environment.
The first is that it was billed as a science documentary, rather than a one-sided polemic. It had an anonymous and authoritative voiceover, rather than the onscreen presenter you would expect to see in a polemical film. It presented as hard fact statements that were extremely contentious and often plain wrong. The second is that contributors’ commercial interests were not mentioned. The third problem is that though the majority of scientific opinion was at odds with the line the programme took, the opposing point of view was scarcely represented. The contribution of a very eminent climate scientist was edited to make him seem like an inconsistent crank, while maverick outsiders were presented as the voices of scientific orthodoxy.
But this film became a template for the channel’s environmental coverage over much of the following 17 years. Its most prominent films about the environment screened in this period took the same line as The Greenhouse Conspiracy, which created the impression that environmental problems do not exist and that environmental scientists are mendacious fanatics.
In 1997 Channel 4 broadcast a series across three hours of prime time on Sunday evenings, called Against Nature. Made by Martin Durkin, then working for the production company RDF, it claimed that the greens are modern-day Nazis who have been “needlessly consigning millions of people in the Third World to poverty and early death”. The programme’s publicity stated that it “highlights the absence of scientific rigour behind notions like the greenhouse effect and global warming”, yet the series made the most elementary scientific blunders, describing sulphur dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the oceans as the major net source of carbon dioxide.
Like The Greenhouse Conspiracy, Against Nature was billed as a science programme, rather than a polemic. It had no onscreen presenter. It amplified the credentials of some of its contributors and failed to reveal that some were funded by fossil fuel industries. The programme makers duped and misrepresented the environmentalists they featured. This series was subject to one of the most damning verdicts that Ofcom’s predecessor, the Independent Television Commission, has ever handed down.
None of this, or subsequent distortions, stopped the channel from continuing to pay Martin Durkin to pursue what looks like a personal crusade against science. In 1998, he hired a research biochemist and TV researcher called Najma Kazi to help him with a film for Equinox called Storm in a D-Cup claiming that breast implants are completely safe. After two weeks she walked out. “It’s not a joke to walk away from four or five month’s work,” she told me, “but my research was being ignored. The published research had been construed to give an impression that’s not the case. I don’t know how that programme got passed.”(4) In 2000, he made another film – a 90-minute special – for Equinox about genetic engineering. He interviewed the environmentalist Dr Mae-Wan Ho. “I feel completely betrayed and misled”, she said. “They did not tell me it was going to be an attack on my position.”(5) Neither of these programmes, however, was criticised by the regulators.
During this period, Channel 4 broadcast several environmental programmes which were vicious and grossly unbalanced denunciations of environmental science. But, as independent film makers I have spoken to testify, proposals for programmes which expressed concern about the environment were rejected out of hand. When I went to speak to the man who was then the director of programmes, Tim Gardam, to ask why the channel seemed so hostile to the environment, he told me something that shocked me more than any defensive statement. “I don’t know what’s important any more”.
The list of environmental programmes Channel 4 has sent me shows a sharp reduction in output during the years 1992 to 2006(6). But in mid-2006 I was told by an executive that the channel had realised it had been misled by people who were sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. It seemed as if the dam had broken. Channel 4’s new commissions suggested that it was at last beginning to wake up to the fact that environmental issues were not just the crazy fantasy of a group of green fascists. That was until March 2007, when The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast, backed by a massive promotional campaign. The director, yet again, was Martin Durkin, and once more he was given 90 minutes of prime time.
The first thing I noticed about the Great Global Warming Swindle is how similar it is to The Greenhouse Conspiracy, broadcast 17 years before. The two programmes made the same claims, using some of the same contributors. They were now a little greyer and fatter, but they repeated their line almost verbatim. A vast accumulation of evidence in the intervening years, contradicting the programme’s thesis, was ignored – it appeared that very little had changed since 1990. Indeed much of the distortion in the programme involved the freezing of timelines at points convenient to his argument, producing a misleading impression of current evidence.
Some of the graphs Martin Durkin used in the programme, for example, seem to have been altered, changing the historical record. A graph of 20th Century temperatures was attributed in the programme to NASA. In reality it was first published by an Exxon-funded lobby group and creates the false impression that most of the rise in temperature occurred before 1940, after which there was a sharp fall(7). The data it used ended in the mid-1980s. On Durkin’s version however, the timeline was extended to 2005 – the change of dates on the graph appeared to support his argument. Following complaints, the dates were corrected when the programme was rebroadcast.
He used a graph of temperatures over the past millennium to make the claim that they were higher during the 12th Century than they are today. But again the timescale was altered. An arrow marked “Now” points to data which in fact end at 1975. A third graph had been mislabelled in the same way: the arrow marked “Now” points to the global temperature 108 years ago, in 1900. On a fourth graph, the film-makers altered part of a curve, thereby creating the impression that temperature has precisely tracked changes in sunspot cycles. The author of the original graph complained that the film had presented “fabricated data … as genuine” to make its case(8). In response Durkin said it was a mistake.
It would require a book to catalogue all the distortions and fabrications The Great Global Warming Swindle is alleged to have included. A complaint by a team of senior scientists – the first peer-reviewed submission ever made to Ofcom – runs to 188 pages(9). Not only did the film inflate credentials of some of the contributors; some of them appear to have been made up altogether. The climate sceptic Tim Ball, for example, was said to be a professor at the Department of Climatology in the University of Winnipeg. There is no such department and he has not held a professorship since he retired in 1996. Philip Stott, the programme claimed, is a professor at the Department of Biogeography, University of London. While he was once a Professor of Biogeography, there was no such department, and Stott retired some time ago, becoming professor emeritus. Piers Corbyn was given a doctorate he does not possess and described as a “climate forecaster”. He is in fact a weather forecaster – a very different matter – and has published no peer-reviewed papers on either topic since 1986(10). Fred Singer is said to have been the director of the US National Weather Service. In reality he was Director of the US National Weather Satellite Center.
Far from revealing its contributors’ financial interests, the film created the impression that they have taken no money from the coal or oil industry. In truth 10 of its protagonists have either been funded directly by fossil fuel companies, or have received paid employment from lobby groups funded by these companies, which campaign against taking action on climate change(11). Tim Ball claimed in the programme that “I’ve never received a nickel from the oil and gas companies.” But he has received fees from two groups which lobby against taking action on climate change – Friends of Science and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project – both of which receive major funding from energy companies(12). The Great Global Warming Swindle looks like free, undisclosed propaganda for coal and oil firms. Channel 4 forcefully denied this. Ofcom decided that it is “unable to assess or adjudicate on the relative merits of these strongly disputed allegations.”
The film invoked an extraordinary conspiracy theory to explain why governments have tried to tackle climate change. It began, the Swindle claimed, with the British coal miners’ strike. “The miners had brought down Ted Heath’s conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was determined the same would not happen to her. She set out to break their power … At the request of Mrs Thatcher, the UK Met Office set up a Climate Modelling Unit, which provided the basis for a new international committee called The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.” In reality, Mrs Thatcher did not make a public statement on climate change until 1988, three years after the miners’ strike ended in their defeat. The IPCC was established in the same year – not by the UK Met Office but by the World Meteorological Organisation and the UN(13) – and the Climate Modelling Unit (the Hadley Centre) did not open until two years afterwards, in 1990(14).
Here too were inaccuracies of the same stamp as those which appeared in Against Nature. The Great Global Warming Swindle claimed that volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all sources of man-made carbon dioxide put together. In truth they produce less than 1%. It maintained that “the biggest source of CO2 by far is the oceans” (they remain a net carbon sink). Sea level changes have “nothing to do with melting ice” (melting ice is in fact responsible for about 40% of the rise) and so on and so forth. One of the contributors to the Great Global Warming Swindle, Carl Wunsch, says that he was duped into appearing in the documentary and his words were “grossly distorted by context”(15). Ofcom found that Professor Wunsch had been treated unfairly in the way in which his edited interview had been presented but that his comments about CO2 in the ocean were not unfairly edited.
Perhaps the cruellest distortion perpetrated in Durkin’s programme was the claim, also carried in Against Nature, that environmentalists are condemning the poor to live without electricity and to cook their meals on smoky fires, causing millions of premature deaths from respiratory disease. The film interviewed a Kenyan official at a rural clinic, whose solar panels did not produce enough power to run both the fridge and the lights. This was apparently the fault of Western environmentalists, who had somehow obliged the clinic to use solar power, which is “at least 3 times more expensive than conventional forms of electrical generation.”
In reality, it is much cheaper to install solar panels in parts of rural Africa which do not have transmission lines than to build a new grid connection, which is probably why the clinic was using them. If they are providing insufficient power, the cheapest solution is to install more panels and batteries. The solar fridge, developed by the British environmentalist and engineer Guy Watson, has saved countless lives, as it permits vaccines and blood which would otherwise be degraded by heat to survive in even the remotest locations. Environmentalists have been amongst the most outspoken campaigners against cooking on smoky fires, partly because of the health effects, partly because they use huge amounts of wood and partly because the black carbon they produce is a cause of global warming. This was the only partiality issue on which Ofcom was prepared to rule, because it regards the treatment of the poor, by contrast to climate change, to be a “matter of major political controversy”. It decided that in this respect the programme breached its rules.
This film was presented as a dispassionate science documentary. We were not told whose opinions the anonymous narrator represented. Outrageous claims were stated as bald fact. Ofcom has decided that there is “no …requirement” to disclose the personal views of the presenter “in relation to factual programmes”. The Great Global Warming Swindle, like Against Nature, had a huge impact, persuading many people that manmade climate change is not taking place. I attended a presentation by a pollster from Ipsos Mori who showed that there had been a decline last year in the number of people who believed that global warming was a real phenomenon – primarily, she said, as a result of Durkin’s film(16). This is hardly surprising. No one unfamiliar with the channel’s record on this issue could have imagined that a public service broadcaster would have transmitted a programme containing so many distortions.
This became a personal issue when the man who commissioned The Great Global Warming Swindle, Hamish Mykura, appeared on the Today programme to defend the film. It was, he said, part of “a season of opinionated polemical films about global warming”, and was balanced by a film I had made, broadcast in the same week, for Dispatches(17). I was flabbergasted. Neither I, nor the audience, nor anyone on the production team had been told that my programme was part of “a season of opinionated polemical films about global warming”, or that it would be linked to The Great Global Warming Swindle. Had I known this, I would have pulled out. When I asked Mykura for evidence – some memos or publicity material about this “season”, for example – he was unable to provide any(18).
My film was subjected to such a rigorous process of fact-checking that it was, in effect, edited by Channel 4’s lawyers. While this made it rather dull, it also meant that it was robust and unchallengeable: any claim which would not stand up to rigorous academic scrutiny was excluded. Despite this, it was billed as a controversial polemic and my own personal view (I was the onscreen presenter). Durkin’s film, by contrast, appears to have been exempted from such rigorous fact-checking and was not presented as his opinion. Why did such radically different standards apply? And in what sense did my film “balance” Durkin’s? Mine was about policies seeking to address climate change: I was not asked to demonstrate that manmade global warming was taking place. Even if that had been my aim, Channel 4 misunderstands its public service obligations if it believes it has to strike a balance between truth and falsehood. I was glad to see that Ofcom found that the other programmes in the channel’s schedule “were not sufficiently timely or linked” to the Swindle to balance it.
The channel appears until now to have shrugged off criticism of these programmes: even, in fact, to have enjoyed it. They create “noise”, which is considered by some executives to be the thing that counts. Hamish Mykura, the man who commissioned The Great Global Warming Swindle, has since been promoted. Channel 4’s spokesman tells me “It would be wrong to suggest that Channel 4 has an agenda regarding environmental programmes. The vast majority of Channel 4’s programmes on environmental issues over the last 20 years have reflected the opinion of the majority of scientists on man-made global warming. … to the best of our knowledge, since 1990 there has been 5 ½ hours of programming giving voice to the minority of scientists who question man’s role in global warming.” This, it says, “is against the background of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] stating that there is a 90% certainty that the causes of global warming are man-made, it follows that there is a 10% uncertainty. Yet this 10% uncertainty receives a disproportionately small amount of airtime.”
I find this argument extraordinary. A 90% level of confidence doesn’t mean that 10% of the evidence suggests that an effect is not occurring – in fact there is no reliable evidence showing that manmade global warming is not taking place. It is expressed in this way because there is no absolute certainty in science. The “very high confidence” the IPCC expresses in the global warming thesis is the strongest statement any reputable scientist would make about his area of study. It is legitimate and right to stress that there can be no absolute certainty about global warming. But this is not what Channel 4 has done. The five and half hours of programmes which attack the thesis (and there have been many more which savage other aspects of environmentalism) express absolute certainty that manmade global warming isn’t happening.
So why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens? I am not sure, but it seems to me that much of its programming – whether it concerns property, celebrities or contestants seeking fame and money – is aspirational. Environmentalism is counter-aspirational. It suggests that the carefree world Channel 4 has created, the celebration of the self, cannot be sustained.
It is against my interests to publish this article. I would like to continue making programmes for Channel 4. I recognise that what I have written may jeopardise this work. But these matters are far more consequential than my own employment. By broadcasting programmes that appear to manipulate and even fabricate evidence, it has impeded efforts to forestall the 21st Century’s greatest threat. For how much longer will this be allowed to continue? And for how much longer will Ofcom forbid itself to state that a programme is misleading?
George Monbiot’s book Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice is published by Guardian Books, at £10.99.
References:
1. Independent Television Commission, 1st April 1998. Channel Four to Apologise to Four Interviewees in “Against Nature” Series. Press Release.
2. Ofcom, 21st July 2008. Broadcast Bulletin, Issue 114.
8. Nathan Rive and Eigil Friis-Christensen, 27th April 2007. Regarding: “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on March 8, 2007. http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html
"But are there not many fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."
” Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
I was going through some old newspaper clips the other day and found a long feature piece I wrote in 1990 about a man who I have come to regard as one of the great Americans of the 20th century.
His name was George Henry Seldes, a fiery, muckraking newsman and Vermonter who covered some of the greatest stories of his time.
Seldes, who wrote more than 20 books and worked well into his 90s, lived and wrote in Hartland. He died at the age of 105. Seldes was more than a newsman. Seldes was a free thinker and a true believer in the Constitution and a tireless fighter” in his many works for the civil liberties of all Americans.
In a wide-ranging interview in 1990 for a story celebrating his 100th birthday, Seldes made a bold prediction, one that caught my eye as I reread the piece.
Seldes said he feared that American soldiers would ultimately fight and die in the Middle East.
"For now, I think it's (war) been postponed. I'm afraid, though, the situation will keep boiling and we'll have a war there,"
he said.
Seldes had an incredible career as a newsman, mostly as a foreign correspondent with the Chicago Tribune.
He interviewed Lenin in Russia during an anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, covered the Spanish Civil War with Hemingway and was red-baited and brought before the McCarthy hearings.
Hemingway, Seldes said, was one of the first reporters to write about how, in Spain, "Germany was preparing for the coming (second) world war. And nobody paid attention to him."
Seldes was in Germany and Italy in the 1930s when fascism was nothing but an idea. In the 1990 feature, I wrote:
"And he (Seldes) saw how that idea, bolstered by lies, deception and thugs who made themselves rulers, altered the face of Europe."
Seldes, who interviewed Mussolini, the murderous fascist who came to power in Italy before World War II, was something of an authority on fascism.
But no other event of the 20th century had as great an impact on the old muckraker than did the Spanish Civil War. The world, including the American press, Seldes said, "ganged up on Spain." The fascists eventually won there.
If he were alive today, it would be fascinating to get George Seldes's take on the Bush administration. I can tell you this: Seldes could always smell a rat, and he would have despised what Bush and his thugs have done to the Constitution of the United States in the name of "national security."
He might have even gone so far as to describe Bush as a fascist.
By invading a weak nation without provocation, this government, in fact, duplicated the bullying tactics of the notorious fascists and Nazis of the 1930s and '40s.
This long war in Iraq has done far more than cost this nation in blood and treasure.
It has made our country weaker, militarily, and has helped to create a new generation of terrorists who see us as a ruthless nation that uses force as an instrument of foreign policy.
This war has allowed a corrupt administration to tilt this country in the direction of fascism not seen in my lifetime.
Here's what Bush and his henchmen have done to help disembowel our Constitution:
Warrentless wiretapping.
Discarding the Geneva Convention, which concerns the treatment of captured soldiers.
The illegal prison at Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are held indefinitely without the right of habeas corpus.
The use of telecommunications companies to spy on Americans.
Cooking up evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And what of the things we have yet to learn?
God bless this country if we are ever the victims of a truly horrific terrorist attack. In addition to the consequences of such an attack, we could very well find our civil liberties further threatened.
Government policies and officials of the kind that Bush brought us will do anything they can to "protect us," even if it means stripping us of our liberties. Fascism could be only a series of devastating attacks away, for Americans and their liberties.
I think that is what Robert Jordan, the central character in Hemingway's great novel about the Spanish Civil War, was referring to when he was asked by a fellow rebel fighter (in the above quote) about how many fascists there were in America.
If we can be so lost as to elect a man who repeatedly violates the highest laws of our land in order to run up his agenda and to allow him to launch an unjust war that continues to this day, can we really be that far away from the fascism that Robert Jordan so frighteningly foresaw?
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.
Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.
But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.
In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.
“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”
A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”
Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.
The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”
The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”
The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”
The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interviePublish Postw that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.
“It saddens me,” said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called “thought reform” and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a “180-degree turn.”
The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.
Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani’s treatment.
Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.
These techniques Did Not originate with the Communists:
The techniques were diagrammed and spelled out earlier, in Gestapo manuals (View a photocopy online of an original at GW University’s National Security Archives) produced in the 30’s, are identical (except for the sexual perversion) to all of the torture techniques used by the CIA (and who knows what other agents of the US gov) since the disastrous National Security Act was passed under Truman. The Gestapo’s favorite techniques (yielding terror and false confessions, not accurate info) included a combination of sensory deprivation (with or without sensory overload), self-inflicted pain (stress positions etc), environmental stress (hot, cold etc), sleep deprivation, controlled starvation, with or without asphyxiation techniques(such as water boarding). Remember the Abu Ghraib photos of thugs torturing with asphyxiation by sitting on the board sandwiched chests of their civilian prisoners. Many die from asphyxiation techniques. One of the few convictions for U.S. torture in Iraq was for the asphyxiation torture death of uniformed Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush (the heavy set officer that officially surrendered to Gen Schwarzkopf at the end of Gulf War I) who had turned himself in for questioning while the U.S. was holding members of his family. He had been water-boarded but died while tightly bound head-first in a sleeping bag. Celebrities and pundits, who undergo fake water-boarding, help to trivialize one of the worst tortures in history.
Through “Operation Paperclip”, the US secreted many Nazi war criminals to the US, not just rocket scientists, but sadistic torturers (among multiple other categories) so as to learn what they knew. It was therefore obvious from the very beginning (starting in 2001 at Bagram) to those with even a cursory knowledge of this history, that the 1st accounts coming out of Bagram air force base in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and all the rest meant not just isolated, rogue or poorly trained soldiers being cruel but the top-down institution of the Gestapo’s techniques as the policy of the Bush administration. It has been reported in the last several months that Bush is now “rendering” and torturing 10’s of thousands of people on a world-wide network of prison ships. (He stole that idea from the British).
The Soviets had their own version of “Operation Paperclip” and learned from the Germans as well. The big joke after World War II was that the US could brag that “our German scientists are better than the your (the Soviets) German scientists”.
It is quite curious that those who should know better would claim that these techniques were studied scientifically and perfected by the fascists, not the communists. That is not to say that all of the powerful democracies (including the U.S.) have used torture (and terrorism) extensively for over a century. The U.S. killed and tortured the people of the Philippines by the hundreds of thousands at the turn of the last century.
No need to blame the Communists on this one.. Makes you wonder what the source of the story was.
Website:http://www.MoveToAmend.orgMission:We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.
Company Overview:
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, The People rule.
I. Powers and Rights Reserved To We the People, Never Delegated or Violated Without Consent
A. The People are expressly defined as human beings and does not refer to corporations or contractual relationships.
B. No contract, agreement, or promise may ever bind any human to refuse to enforce the law, or prohibit them from speaking on matters of public interest.
C. We the People may believe anything, including the possible belief that this Constitution must be discarded and replaced with a superior document which defends the People and protects their power to enforce this Constitution against the Government.
D. The People are educated to apply the lessons of history to ensure rights are preserved, power asserted, and this Constitution is protected from domestic and foreign enemies.
E. The People have the enforceable right and power to review any public document and access any public official.
F. The People have the enforceable right to engage in any speech, communication, or discussion on issues of war crimes, government incompetence, or allegations of reckless government planning and maladministration.
G. Government officials, agencies, departments may not invoke any power or right they have denied to the People.
H. The People have the right to affordable housing. Where none is available, the government is denied the power to prosecute anyone for not living in a home, or residing in a public park, open forest, or public lands.
I. The People have the enforceable right to freely travel, without questions, and without delay. Any law enforcement officer, agents, or contacted security official who uses any ruse, scheme, or deception to engage in pretextual stops shall be enforced as a violation of this Constitution.
J. The People have the enforceable right to compel govenment officials, contractors, and securty personnel to identify themselves, disclose their policies and procedures, and respond to complaints about violations of this Constitution, the Supreme Law, or laws of war.
K. The People may not be subject to any electronic surveillance except on probable cause and a warrant before a judicial tribunal. The President, Congress and others are expressly denied the power to enact, create, use, or rely on quasi-judicial tribunals to self-certify warrants to conduct surveillance.
L. All denied powers to the US Government in this Constitution are reserved to the People to be used to defend the Constitution.
II. Powers and Rights Reserved to States
A. States shall have authority to enforce any law within their jurisdiction. Failure to enforce the laws of war shall be prosecuted as a war crime.
B. States shall, when the Federal Government refuses to enforce the Constitution or Supreme Law, enforce the national and international law against contractors, legal counsel, state or US government officials.
C. Any state may start impeachment investigations or proceedings against the President, Member of Congress, or US government official on issues of international laws of war, domestic rebellion, or violations of the Supreme Law oath of office, or Geneva Conventions. The States shall, upon receipt of an impeachment investigation or conviction from any other state, shall within 10 days debate that resolution. If convicted by 2/3 of the States, that US government official shall be removed from office. Any effort to thwart State efforts to enforce the US Constitution through impeachment investigations or impeachment proceedings at the State level may be construed as a subsequent violation of this Constitution and laws of war.
D. The States may, without notice, organize themselves to collectively defend this Constitution from the domestic enemies in the United States government. The States Governors have the standing power, right, and authority to use deadly combat force to enforce this Constitution against US government officials.
E. A failure of any State official to enforce the laws of war shall be subject to a war crimes trial within 90 days of discovering that evidence. Where there are credible allegations of war crimes, a failure to investigate shall be construed as a subsequent war crime, punishable by the death penalty.
F. States have the power to enforce contract obligations between contractors and the US government which affect the rights of their State citizens. Failure to enforce these contractual obligations against the contractors or US government could be construed as a subsequent violation under the laws of war and US Constitution against legal counsel, state officials, or court officers.
III. Independent Branch
A. All US government, contractor-provided, and legal counsel data shall be retained in an independent branch.
B. The President, Congress, and Judicial branches have no power, right or claim to not fully fund this Independent Branch.
C. The Independent Branch conducts electronic surveillance of the US government, stores that data, and ensures there are independent, safe, retained records of all US government transaction, including conversations and memos between legal counsel and government officials. Once created for the government or connected with any legal or illegal activity, these records are public records.
D. The data may be seen only upon a showing of reasonable belief or suspicion by the United States Congress, Court, or Executive Branch that the information may be useful in enforcing the Constitution, Supreme Law, or Geneva Conventions.
E. Private citizens may view any data, unless the US government provides sufficient, detailed evidence why that request for information should not be met for bonafide, lawful secrets. Any effort to hide evidence behind a claim of "state secrets," where that claim is linked with an effort to bypass the Constitution, oath of office, Supreme Law, or laws of war may be punishable by the death penalty.
F. All government data belongs to the People. Any legal counsel working for the US government shall ensure that the People's right to reliable information is protected. A failure to protect this information could be construed as a war crime.
IV. Prosecutorial Branch
A. All prosecutorial options are denied of the President.
B. The Prosecutorial branch has the power to raise independent combat power, support them, and may lawfully use that deadly combat force to confront Members of Congress, the Judicial Branch Officers, or the Presidents upon showing of probable cause for war crimes.
C. The prosecutorial power is the exclusive power of the prosecution branch. However, anyone may make a claim of illegal activity, and enforce the laws of the United States and States respectively. Any effort to block anyone from unilaterally attempting to enforce the laws of war through discovery, investigation, and open discussion of those alleged war crimes shall be construed as a possible subsequent offense under the laws of war.
D. Legal counsel are subject to public review, audit, and can be required, with fair notice, of a requirement to demonstrate before any court their compliance with the laws of war.
E. Legal counsel may be denied authority to conduct discovery during any investigation when that discovery is linked with efforts that would thwart war crimes investigation, enforcement of the Supreme law or Geneva Conventions.
V. Judicial Branch
A. The Judicial Branch is above the Legislative Branch and Executive Branch only in order of precedence. The Judicial Branch is a co-equal branch, and closest to the People and Constitution. It is least responsive, and most slow to the People's daily interests to enforce the Constitution and Supreme Law or Geneva Conventions.
B. Where the Judicial Branch does not timely enforce the Constitution, Supreme Law, or laws of war, the States and People retain the power and right to investigate and prosecute allegations of US government illegal activity, war crimes, or violations of the Supreme law.
C. All precedents under the laws of war are binding on the Judicial Branch, US government, and the People through enforcement actions.
D. Any decision by any judicial officer not to fully enforce the laws of war, Supreme Law, or this Constitution may be construed as a war crime, subject to the death penalty.
VI. Legislative Branch
A. The Legislative Branch is listed after the Judicial Branch because it is less responsive to the People.
B. The Members of Congress may be stopped between sessions and held to account for their failure to enforce the laws of war.
C. Refusing to investigate or impeach the President, Judicial Officers, or any current or former US government official for alleged war crimes, maladministration, illegal warfare, or other crimes against the People, States, or US Government shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to not fully assert ones oath of office, and punishable by the death penalty under the laws of war.
D. There are three chambers to the Congress. The Senate and House have a legal duty to fully enforce the laws. Any decision to not timely review evidence of impeachable offenses, or not investigate war crimes or maladministration could be construed as subsequent offenses under the laws of war.
E. The Superior Chamber shall decide, before any debate, whether the proposed bill is or is not Constitutional. This determination is subject to approval, challenge, and rejection by the People, States, and Judicial Branch.
F. The Congress is denied the exclusive power to make rules. Any rule which prohibits any investigation into alleged malfeasance in re the laws of war, Supreme Law, or oath of office is illegal, and may be construed as a subsequent offense under the laws of war.
G. The Congress shall comply with public audits, and timely provide within 45 days of an audit report a statement of remedy, and outline a plan within 90 days to fully comply with all legal obligations under the Statute, Supreme Law, oath of office, and laws of war.
H. The Congress may raise and support an army, and independently order that army only against the President when the President refuses to enforce the laws of war, or comply with his legal obligations under this Constitution.
VII. Executive Branch
A. The Executive Branch is led by three Presidents, co-equal with non-overlapping jurisdictions. The Executive Branch has one power: Executive Power. All actions taken under that one power are lesser authorities not powers. The Executive Branch has no power to create new powers or assign itself broader power.
B. The Executive Branch is listed last because it is the least responsive to the People, and the greatest threat of tyranny to this Constitution. The President is a clerk, not a King or Emperor. The President only manages programs. The President has no power to ignore, rewrite, or refuse to enforce the law. Each of the three Presidents shall have an ongoing requirement to demonstrate to the People and States and Congress and Courts compliance with the Constitution, Supreme Law, oath of office, and laws of war.
C. The Domestic Affairs President is responsive to the States and US Government on internal affairs.
D. The Foreign Affairs President shall have exclusive power to interact with foreign powers. The Foreign Affairs President is denied any power to violate the laws of war, or use covert activity against American citizens.
E. The Executive Branch, Congress, Judiciary, and Foreign Affairs President are denied the power to thwart any lawful State action to organize with foreign powers and agents to defend the US Constitution, enforce the laws of war, or protect the rights and powers of the People and States against domestic encroachments by the US government, legal counsel, or other US government officials.
F. The Commander in Chief shall only have power to lead combat operations during war time. Congress shall conduct ongoing, public reviews whether the Commander in Chief is or is not competent in managing combat operations. The Presidents and Commander in Chief are denied the power to prohibit Congress from using electronic surveillance or use separately raised and supported armies to conduct this oversight during wartime and peacetime.
G. The Executive Branch is denied the power to block anyone from getting access to illegal activity related to the laws of war.
H. During Peacetime, the Commander in Chief shall periodically cooperate with ongoing Oversight of US combat forces to ensure they are combat ready, fully trained on the laws of war, and prepared to lawfully be used to defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies.
I. The Executive Branch and Presidents and officers, agents, contractors, and personnel are denied the power, right, or authority to order anyone to ignore any statute, law, legal requirement, or obligation under the Constitution.
J. The Executive Branch has no power or authority to directly contact the Legislative Branch by name. The President may only request, not order other branches of government. All Communications between the Executive and Legislative Branch shall pass through the Prosecutorial Branch, and retained in the National Archives. Those records are available for public inspection at any time. The People have the enforceable right to compel the Executive Branch, Legislature, and Judicial Branch to produce documents.
K. The Executive Branch, Congress, Judicial Branch, and Prosecutorial Branch, and States are denied the power to wage warfare, information warfare, or harass American civilians through his agents, combat troops, or third parties in the United states or from overseas. Any funds used for this illegal purpose belong to the People and States. Contracts used to enforce, compel, or organize this illegal activity are not enforceable, and contrary to public policy.
L. The Presidents are denied a presumption of competence until proven. The President shall always have the burden of proof, and is expressly denied a presumption of good faith until demonstrated with overwhelming evidence in public. An election result is not proof of competence nor does it satisfy a presumption of good faith, only of mastery to win an election through legal or illegal methods and deception.
M. The Executive Branch and Presidents and subordinate agency head, contractor, and employees are expressly denied any assurance any conversation he has related to illegal activity, war crimes, unlawful acts, or other threats to the US Constitution shall remain secret behind any shield, scheme, agreement, or technology. Any order a President or anyone gives to anyone to hide, destroy,not provide, or conceal evidence of illegal activity may be construed as a subsequent war crime, punishable by the death penalty. This restriction against following illegal orders may not be bypassed by claiming the order was from a non-person, electronic device, or other non-Constitutionally recognized entity, database, policy, guide, or other document.
N. The Presidents are denied the power to use any combat force, technology, or other military weapon or plan against American civilians, except in cases of internal rebellion which only the Congress shall approve in writing. When the Congress fails to act, or abuses its authority, the State Governors may lawfully use deadly combat force to detain and enforce the laws of war prohibiting illegal use of force against American civilians.
O. The Presidents are denied the power to induce any civilian to take any action that might deny them on any Geneva protections as a civilian. Any order, ruse, scheme, propaganda, or unreliable information to induce anyone to wage war, information warfare, or any action to harass civilians is punishable by the death penalty, and may be enforced as a violation of the laws of war.
P. The President, when delegating any power to any agency head, agrees that that agency shall be organized as if it were a separate, lesser, and not coequal branch. Those agencies shall fully cooperate with the other branches of government to ensure power within the branch or department is divided. There is no single agency, division, or office in the Executive Branch that is beyond ongoing oversight by the other four branches.
Q. The President shall have no power to block the Congress, States, Judiciary, Prosecutorial, and Independent Branch from a having co-equal status to oversee, manage, and organize that lesser branch. If the President refuses to substantially comply with that requirement, Congress may not lawfully provide funding for that agency, and the funds return to the States and People.
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?
Trying to train the next generation of diplomats what the issues that they will face are, how to survive the coming hard times and how to conduct themselves so that they, unlike most of their role models, DO THE RIGHT THING. They are inheriting a neocon Klusterfuck, are ill prepared and need whatever help they can get.
