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Before Wikileaks, Iraq War Vets Revealed War Crimes By Laila Al-Arian
WAR CRIMES ON MY MIND.
Please join http://lawsnotmen.org, which is the Robert Jackson Steering Committee's web address.
Parliamentary Hearings on G20
Not for the lighthearted, but essential to UNDERSTAND the future of North American protest.
Hmmmm..
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Placing Your Global Bets | TomDispatch
Too long to post this is Tom at his snarky wittiest -- and therefore most astute.
Ghoulish on the world sitution, just in time to be read before Halloween.
Injustice in the age of Obama - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
">Please read Cindy S's compassionate, empathetic article about this tragic tragic case:
The treatment of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is symbolic in the minds of many Muslims. Her treatment has caused more damage to US-Muslim relations (particularly in Pakistan) than any 'soft power' state department program could undo [EPA] |
Since being the defendant in about six trials after I was arrested for protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, it’s my experience that the police lie. Period.
However the lies don’t stop at street law enforcement level. From lies about WMD and connections to "al Qaeda," almost every institution of so-called authority - the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, FBI, all the way up to the Oval Office and back down - lie. Not white lies, but big, Mother of all BS (MOAB) lies that lead to the destruction of innocent lives. I.F Stone was most definitely on the ball when he proclaimed, "Governments lie".
Having clarified that, I would now like to examine a case that should be enshrined in the travesty of the US Justice Hall of Shame.
In February of this year, Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani mother of three, was convicted in US Federal (kangaroo) Court of seven counts, including two counts of "attempted murder of an American." On September 23, Judge Berman, who displayed an open bias against Dr. Siddiqui, sentenced her to 86 years in prison.
The tapestry of lies about Dr. Siddiqui - a cognitive neuroscientist, schooled at MIT and Brandeis - was woven during the Bush regime but fully maintained during her trial and sentencing this year by the Obama (in)Justice Department.
Before 9/11/2001, Aafia lived in Massachusetts with her husband, also a Pakistani citizen, and their two children. According to all reports, she was a quietly pious Muslim (which is still not a crime here in the States), who hosted play dates for her children. She was a good student who studied hard and maintained an exemplary record, causing little harm to anything, let alone anyone.
After 9/11, when she was pregnant with her third child, she encouraged her husband to move back to Pakistan to avoid the backlash against her Muslim children - which was a very prescient thing to do considering the Islamophobia that has only increased in this country since then.
Tortured 'truth'
Following the move to Pakistan, Dr. Siddiqui and her husband divorced. Her life took a horrendous turn justly after. While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) - supposed mastermind of the 9/11 plot - was being water-boarded by the CIA 183 times in one month, he gave Dr. Siddiqui up as a member of al-Qaeda. Was this a case of stolen identity, or was Mohammed just saying random words like you or I would to stop the torture?
There is some disputed "intelligence" that Aafia had married KSM’s nephew, a tenuous allegation at best, and even so, guilt by association has no place in the hallowed US legal system.
Following KSM’s torture-induced 'insights', Dr. Siddiqui was listed by Bush’s Justice Department as one of the seven most dangerous al-Qaeda operatives in the world. A mother of three equipped with a lethal ability to 'thin-slice' your cognitive personality in seconds. If alleged association and a healthy interest in neuro-psychology are the definitive hallmarks of a 'terrorist operative,' then Malcolm Gladwell better start making some phone calls to Crane, Poole and Schmidt.
A culture of falsehoods
Face it, we all know that since 9/11, there have been numerous false "terror" alerts and lies leading to the capture and torture of hundreds of innocent individuals - and the heinous treatment we have all witnessed to from Abu Ghraib. Additionally, we are supposed to believe that multi-war criminal, Colin Powell, was "fooled" by faulty intelligence so much so that he paved the way for the invasion of Iraq by his false testimony at the UN but we are also supposed to unquestioningly believe the US intelligence apparatus when they lie about others such as Dr. Siddiqui.
In any case, in a bizarre scenario - to make a very long story short - Dr. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared for five years from 2003 to 2008, resurfacing in Ghazni, Afghanistan with her oldest child, a son who was then 11. She claimed that for the years she was missing, she was being held in various Pakistani and US prisons being tortured and repeatedly raped. Many prisoners, including Yvonne Ridley, maintain she was incarcerated in Bagram AFB and tortured for at least part of the five missing years.
After Dr. Siddiqui resurfaced, she was arrested and taken to an Afghan police station where four Americans - two military and two FBI agents - rushed to "question" her through interpreters. The FBI and military, claim that they were taken to a room that had a curtain at one end and that they did not know that Dr. Siddiqui was lying asleep on a bed at the other side of the curtain. As you read below it will become blatantly obvious that personnel involved from both institutions totally fabricated their stories.
This is the Americans' version: They entered the room and one of the military dudes said he laid his weapon down (remember, they were there to interrogate one of the top most dangerous people in the world), and Siddiqui got up, grabbed the weapon, yelling obscenities and that she wanted to "kill Americans." All 5'3" of her raised the weapon to fire and she fired the rifle twice, missing everyone in the small room - in fact she even missed the walls, floor and ceiling since no bullets from the rifle were ever recovered.
Then one of the Americans shot her twice in the stomach "in self-defence." It was shown at the trial that her fingerprints were not even on the weapon. The only bullets that were found that day were in Dr. Aafia's body. How many stories of military cover-ups have we heard about since 9/11? I can think of two right away without even trying hard: Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch.
Hopeless injustice
Dr. Aafia's side is this: After she was arrested, she was again beaten and she fell asleep on a bed when she heard talking in the room she was in so she got out of the bed and someone shouted: "Oh no, she’s loose!" Then she was shot - when she was wavering in and out of consciousness, she heard someone else say: "We could lose our jobs over this."
Even with no evidence that she fired any weapon, she was convicted (the jury found no pre-meditation) by a jury and sentenced to the aforementioned 86 years. It's interesting that the Feds did not pursue "terrorist" charges against Dr. Siddiqui because they were aware that the only evidence that existed was tortured out of KSM - so they literally ganged up on her to press the assault and attempted murder charges.
Even if Dr. Siddiqui did shoot at the Americans, reflect on this. Say this case was being tried in Pakistan under similar circumstances for an American woman named Dr. Betty Brown who was captured and repeatedly tortured and raped by the ISI - here in the states that woman would be a hero if she shot at her captors - not demonized and taken away from her life and her children.
I believe Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a political prisoner and now the political bogey-woman for two US regimes.
In Pakistan, the response to her verdict and sentencing brought the predictable mass protests, burning of American flags and effigies of Obama and calls for Pakistan to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui. They know who the real criminals are and who should be in prison for life! At present, Hilary's state department harps on about 'soft power' and diplomacy, but what better way to quell US distrust in the Muslim world than to try such cases with due diligence and integrity.
In the US, not many people know about this case. Obviously many people were Hope-notized by the millions of dollars poured into the Obama PR machine - and believed when he said that his administration would be more transparent and lawful than the outlaws of the Bush era.
I guess they were mistaken.
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Specialist Casey A. Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since then, she has been an activist for peace and human rights. She has published five books, has her own Internet radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cindy lives in Oakland, CA, and loves to spend time with her three grand-babies. You can learn more about Cindy at Peace of the Action.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Last month, Nowak's predecessor called for a similar investigation regarding an additional WikiLeaks release [JURIST reports]. The request involved war crimes allegedly committed by Taliban [CFR backgrounder], US and British forces in Afghanistan. Unlike the US, Afghanistan is a party to the Rome Statute [text, PDF], giving the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Afghan territory. Earlier this week Chairperson of the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) [official website] Claudio Grossman [official profile] urged nations to "reconnect with the values" of the Convention Against Torture and increase efforts to combat torture [JURIST report]. Grossman stated that the need for heightened measures is particularly important in emergency situations where interrogators have little time to gain information from captives. The UN claimed that reports of rights abuse were found worldwide and that countries have grown increasingly apathetic to the use of torture as an interrogation technique.
GOP Plan Dramatically Reduces Social Security Benefits, Actuary Finds : Information Clearing House: ICH
By Sahil Kapur
October 22, 2010 "Raw Story" - - A high-profile Republican budget plan would slash Social Security benefits in the long-run -- perhaps even by up to half of what they are now, the program's actuary concluded in a new study.
The Chief Actuary of Social Security analyzed a proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP's ranking member on the budget committee, who could become its chairman in January, and found that new entrants in the US workforce could see massive decreases in their payouts upon retirement.
It was unveiled Wednesday by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, less than two weeks before an election in which Democrats have elevated Social Security into a major campaign issue.
"The new analysis reveals that these proposals result in benefits cuts ranging from ten percent to as high as 50 percent," Pomeroy said in a statement. "As I talk to seniors today about stretching their Social Security benefits with no cost of living adjustment in sight, they would not agree with describing cuts of this magnitude as 'modest'."
The Ryan "Roadmap for America's Future," the plan that was analyzed, has 13 co-sponsors (all Republicans). GOP leaders, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) have declined to fully endorse it but haven't disavowed it, either.
A high-profile Republican budget plan would slash Social Security benefits in the long-run -- perhaps even by up to half of what they are now, the program's actuary concluded in a new study.
The Chief Actuary of Social Security analyzed a proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP's ranking member on the budget committee, who could become its chairman in January, and found that new entrants in the US workforce could see massive decreases in their payouts upon retirement.
It was unveiled Wednesday by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, less than two weeks before an election in which Democrats have elevated Social Security into a major campaign issue.
"The new analysis reveals that these proposals result in benefits cuts ranging from ten percent to as high as 50 percent," Pomeroy said in a statement. "As I talk to seniors today about stretching their Social Security benefits with no cost of living adjustment in sight, they would not agree with describing cuts of this magnitude as 'modest'."
The Ryan "Roadmap for America's Future," the plan that was analyzed, has 13 co-sponsors (all Republicans). GOP leaders, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) have declined to fully endorse it but haven't disavowed it, either.
6 Months Since BP Oil Spill, Writer and Environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams Asks "Where Is Our Outrage?"
JUAN GONZALEZ: Six months ago, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and triggering the worst oil spill disaster in US history. The explosion leaked over 200 million gallons of oil, which is nearly five million barrels of oil, into the Gulf of Mexico and fouled coastlines in Louisiana, Missis
sippi, Alabama and Florida.
With the Macondo oil well now sealed, the spill is no longer in the headlines, and last week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Gulf was once again, quote, "open for business." But much of the oil that gushed out of the blown-out well remains dispersed deep under the sea, and scientists are still unclear about the long-term effects of both the oil and the chemical dispersant on marine ecosystems.
AMY GOODMAN: Six months since the spill, lawmakers have been slow to take action and the House’s spill response bill remains stalled in the Senate. On Wednesday, three environmental groups sued BP, accusing the British oil giant of violating the Endangered Species Act. The suit, brought by Defenders of Wildlife, Gulf Restoration Network and the Save the Manatee Club, notes that at least twenty-seven endangered or threatened animal species live in the Gulf region, including five species of endangered sea turtles and fou
r species of endangered whales.
In a moment, we’ll be speaking with the acclaimed writer and environmentalist Terry Tempest Wiliams, who spent two weeks traveling the Gulf Coast this summer. She has written an extended piece about the stories she heard on her visit to what she calls the world’s largest offshore oil disaster. Her piece is called "The Gulf B
etween Us," and it was published in the November/December issue of Orion magazine. She is the author of several books, including most recently Finding Beauty in a Broken World and The Open Space of Democracy. She’ll be joining us from Salt Lake City, Utah, after this break.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Terry Tempest Williams, writer, environmentalist. Her books include Finding Beauty in a Broken World and The Open Space of Democracy. Her latest piece in Orion magazine, an extended reflection on the BP oil spill, called "The Gulf Between Us."
Terry Tempest Williams, welcome to Democracy N
ow! from Salt Lake City. You went to the Gulf on this six-month anniversary. What are your reflections about what happened April 20th? I’ll never forget it because it was Earth Day.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: That’s right. I think it changed all of us, who were paying attention. And, Amy, I just want to thank you for your program, first of all, that we can even have this conversation.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Reflections. It’s—yeah, you know, we hear that five million barrels of oil were released from the Macondo well. We know that [ 362] miles were oiled in four states, 400 species of animals threatened from this, 400 controlled burns that killed hundreds of sea turtles and untold numbers of dolphins and sea mammals. We’re told that it’s over, that the story is gone, as is the oil. And what I can tell you in reflecting over six months is that the oil is not gone. The people are still there, and they’re getting sicker and sicker.
And I just think it’s really important that, at this anniversary of six months, that we begin to really hear from the people on the ground. And that’s what my purpose was. You know, I have a pen. I’m a writer. I was home in Utah thinking, you know, what can I do? And I had to go. I had to see it for myself. So it was about ground truthing. It was about bearing witness. And I don’t think bearing witness is a passive act.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Terry Tempest Williams, this is an extraordinary piece, as you talk about and you relate basically the words of a variety of people on the ground. And I was struck by one particular passage, when you were interviewing a Margaret Curole, and she says to you, "Here’s the truth. Where are the animals? There’s no too-da-loos, the little one-armed fiddler crabs. Ya don’t hear birds. From Amelia to Alabama, Kevin never saw a fish jump, never heard a bird sing. This is their nestin’ season. Those babies, they’re not goin’ nowhere. We had a very small pod of sperm whales in the Gulf, nobody’s seen ‘em. Guys on the water say they died in the spill and their bodies were hacked up and taken away." And she goes on to say, "Fish are swimming in circles. Dolphins are choking on the surface. It’s ugly, I’m tellin’ you. And nobody’s talkin’ about it. You’re not hearing nothin’ about it. As far as the media is reportin’, everythin’s being cleaned up and it’s not a problem." Tell us about some of these—
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: That’s the power of Margaret Curole.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. What about some of the other stories?
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: You know, what I love about the voices in this piece, the voices in the Gulf that I heard, the people in place, standing up, standing for their home ground, was exactly that kind of passion, that kind of truth telling.
Margaret Curole and her husband Kevin are Cajun. They’re shrimpers. And they talked about how there’s two alternatives in the Gulf: you either shrimp or you work in the oil fields. And, you know, I learned something from them. I have been against, you know, deepwater drilling, and they were talking about the moratorium, how it needs to be lifted so that people can eat. So, it was through Margaret that I really began to see the complexity of this situation.
I love her feistiness. She, with an artist friend, created on the beach at Grand Isle human bodies that spelled out messages, which they took pictures of and texted to Congress, to the governor, to BP executives, to everyone in power they could think of. The three messages laid out in bodies were "Never again," "Paradise lost" and "WTF." What I can tell you about Margaret is that she received calls from the BP claims department saying to back off. She was taken to lunch by two agents from Homeland Security. And this is serious. And she said, "They want me to shut up, and I will not."
Another story, she told us if we wanted great Cajun food—and that we couldn’t understand this story unless we ate—to go to Becky Duet’s deli in Galliano, which is where they’re from in southern Louisiana. We went to Becky Duet’s deli, called Jordan’s, named after her son. It was 10:00 at night. The lights were still on. We walked in. She said, "The grill is closed." And then she proceeded to tell stories, that in Cajun country they’ve always viewed themselves as rich, that the bounty is from the waters, that as long as you had rice, beans and bread and had a chicken neck that you could throw into the bayou, you were wealthy. Just a few weeks ago, I received a note from Becky, who’s become a good friend. She said, "We’re starving, Terry. There are no fish in the waters. And any fish we would see, we would not eat."
These are the stories that are coming out of the Gulf. These are the stories that we’re not hearing from the media. I think about a group of women in gated communities in Alabama, just off of Mobile Bay, Orange Beach. These women took the situation into their own hands, because no one was responding. They had water samples taken, four, from very wealthy areas. The fourth one on Dauphin Island blew up and was deemed inconclusive. These women—Robin Young, a captain, Lori DeAngelis and her husband Mike—their blood tests came back high in cadmium and benzene. They’ve had chemically induced pneumonia. These are the stories, again, that we’re not hearing.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Terry Tempest Williams, writer and environmentalist. Her latest piece is in Orion magazine, called "The Gulf Between Us: Stories of Terror and Beauty from the World’s Largest Accidental Offshore Oil Disaster." Terry, tell us about Jerry Cope and Fish Camp Landing, the gated community in Orange Beach, Alabama.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Yeah, those were the women I was referring to. I met Jerry in March of 2009 at the climate action in Washington, DC. I call him a guerrilla journalist. While I was down there, he was there also with Charles Hambleton, one of the producers and members of the crew that you see in the film The Cove. They had heard about the bodies of dolphins being taken to dumps, refrigerated to Mexico. They wanted to do an investigative witnessing, if these stories were true. Jerry, in the three weeks that he was out on the Gulf, he also came down with chemical-induced pneumonia, ended up meeting these activists, these women in the gated community, and Robin Young among them, who started this organization called Guardians of the Gulf. It was there that he really saw on the ground, as did I, you know, what the situation is. These women were calling, as I said, for water samples, air samples, blood tests, to really show the seriousness of the public health issues. And again, these are the stories that we’re not hearing—upper respiratory disease, lots of skin infection, rashes.
When I was there, they were having to drain the swimming pools, because children were being sick. And, Amy, it just—it made you sick. You’d go down to Gulf Shores, and here were these seemingly pristine beaches, this Corexit green, this ungodly color, women, mothers, you know, overburdened, 110-degree heat. Their children were playing in the waves. It was like there was no connection between what was in the water and what was seeping into their children’s skin. I mean, the stories are heartbreaking.
We walked down the beach several miles to the Gulf Island National Seashore, again what seemed to be white pristine beaches. There had just been a thunderstorm. It was this eerie color of the water again. You half-expected the water to burst into flames with lightning strikes. Just then, a BP bus pulled up. Thirty workers, some of them in hazmat suits. We started talking to them, saying, "Well, it doesn’t look like there’s oil here." Two of the workers, African American men in their twenties, smiled and said, "Can we tell you that we just took out 2,000 pounds last night? We work from dusk to dawn under the cover of darkness."
JUAN GONZALEZ: You also talk about what’s—
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: That’s a ton of oil—I was just going to say that was a ton of oil taken out in a 100-yard swatch. Again, these are the stories we’re not hearing. I just talked to Robin yesterday, and she was saying that five minutes she had tar balls the size of baseballs. And, you know, you go down a foot, and that’s where the oil still remains.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You also talk about those workers and the boat captains that are still working for BP and some of the illnesses that they’re being exposed to, and also that their clothes are being confiscated while at same time BP is telling them that they probably just have dermatitis?
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: That’s right. The doctors don’t even know how to treat these diseases that are coming forward. Mike DeAngelis, married to Lori, both of them are captains. Lori runs a dolphin education cruise. She hasn’t been able to go out, because their boats have been registered for Vessels of Opportunity, because they needed the money, quite frankly. You know, these are people that are working-class people. Mike, as a captain, when they registered their boat, was getting paid $1,200 a day, $200 for extra crew members. And what were they doing? Nothing. There was a joke around the Gulf that you’re on BP time: being paid for doing nothing.
One of the most moving stories was really flying with a barefoot pilot named Tom Hutchings. In the American Southwest, we would call him a coyote. Again, an activist, he was taking people, as a volunteer for SouthWings, anyone who would go with him, to fly over the Macondo well site. We went with him on Day 100. Upper right-hand corner of the New York Times, you know, remember the article that said most of the oil is gone, 80 percent. You remember a week later, Carole Browner of the Obama administration said 75 percent gone, poof, Mother Nature is doing her job. What I can tell you is that as we flew out to the Gulf to what they call "the source" to see the Deepwater Horizon rigs, for as far as we could see, for as wide as we could see, for as long as we could bear it, oil. All we could see was oil. I mean, it’s just—I wonder, where is our outrage? And I was saying to Tom, this brilliant pilot, you know, that must have made twenty, thirty, forty flights at his own expense, "Why isn’t this story being told?" And he was saying that most of what we’ve heard has been shore-based knowledge. I mean, there were rivers of oil as wide as the Mississippi itself. Stunning. When I asked him what has stayed in his mind most in terms of his witnessing, he said that when they were burning the oil off the surface of the sea, he remembers on the edge of the flames seeing a pod of dolphins, side by side by side by side, watching, simply watching the ocean burn.
I think the other untold story are the dispersants. We know, thanks to Congressman Markey from Massachusetts, that after the EPA said, "Please, please," to BP, "find another dispersant that is less toxic," what we know now is that our Coast Guard, the United States Coast Guard, gave BP seventy-four exceptions in forty-eight days. And that’s the untold story. And I think that’s where so much of this illness is rising from. And we hear from the scientists, two inches of oil on the bottom of the sea. The scientist Samantha Joye said it’s a "graveyard for the macrofauna" and that the Gulf is dying from the bottom up. And again, that’s what I wanted to see, is what are the stories from the ground up, from the people who live there? Again, witness is not a passive act.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And as you mention, this is not just a regional catastrophe, but this fall a billion birds will migrate from, of course, North America through the Gulf of Mexico and the area, and the impact could then obviously spread for the bird population throughout the hemisphere.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: That’s correct. And as we speak, as you say, a billion birds migrating through the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi Delta sees 70 percent of our waterfowl. You know, I think that’s the other untold story that touched me so deeply, was the beauty. It’s still there, against all odds. The Gulf is still there. And you fly over and see these beautiful islands, these islands beaded with birds, pelicans, skimmers—the feathered skimmers, not the boats—piping plovers, who are endangered. You know, we’d fly over and see, you know, these extraordinary manta rays, twenty-five-foot wing span, 3,000 pounds, looking like black angels on the turquoise water. It’s such an extraordinary landscape. I had no idea. And I think what’s interesting—and I do have faith in Obama’s commission, that’s saying, let’s look not at the protection of putting more levees, more canals, that cut up the system, the ecosystem, but let’s think about, really, restoration, even a full restoration project of the Mississippi Delta, the Mississippi River itself. And that’s where I see the hope.
AMY GOODMAN: Terry Tempest Williams, we want to thank you very much for being with us, writer, environmentalist. Her books include Finding Beauty in a Broken World and The Open Space of Democracy. Her latest piece was just published in Orion magazine on the six-month anniversary of the Gulf oil spill. It’s called "The Gulf Between Us." She was speaking to us from Salt Lake City, Utah.
RADICAL RIGHT
A Lifetime of "You're On Your Own"
More than seventy years ago, the Supreme Court abandoned a brief, disastrous experiment with "tentherism," a constitutional theory that early twentieth century justices wielded to protect monopolies, strip workers of their right to organize and knock down child labor laws. This discredited constitutional theory is back -- with a vengeance -- endangering Medicare, Social Security, the minimum wage and even the national highway system and America's membership in the United Nations. For the first time in three generations, the right is fielding a slate of candidates convinced that any attempt to better the lives of ordinary Americans violates the Constitution -- while a number of sitting lawmakers such as Reps. John Shadegg (R-AZ) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) are already actively pushing tentherism from within the Congress. Make no mistake, this agenda threatens all Americans, from the youngest schoolchild to the most venerable retirees.
SLAMMING SCHOOLHOUSE DOORS: Tentherism's core tenet is that the 10th Amendment must be read too narrowly to permit much of the progress of the last century. Thus, for example, because the Constitution doesn't actually use the word "education" -- it instead gives Congress broad authority to spend money to advance the "common defense" and "general welfare" -- Senate candidates like Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sharron Angle (R-NV) claim that the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional. That means no federal student loan assistance or Pell Grants for middle class students struggling to pay for college, and no education funds providing opportunities to students desperately trying to break into the middle class. And that's hardly the worst news tenthers have in store for young Americans. Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller wants to declare child labor laws unconstitutional -- returning America to the day when ten-year-olds labored in coal mines.
THANKLESS LABOR: Tenther candidates have even worse plans for working age Americans. Miller and West Virginia GOP Senate candidate John Raese both claim that the federal minimum wage is unconstitutional -- a position the Supreme Court unanimously rejected in 1941. If you're a person of color or a woman or a person of faith than you are also out of luck, because Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul agrees with Justice Clarence Thomas that the ban on employment and pay discrimination is unconstitutional (don't try to get a meal on your lunch break either, because both men feel the same way about the ban on whites-only lunch counters). Significantly, the constitutional doctrine which supports the minimum wage is the same one which supports child labor laws and bans on discrimination, so when a candidate comes out in opposition to any one of these laws, it is likely that they oppose all of them. To top this all off, Alaska's Miller even claims that unemployment benefits violate the Constitution, so Americans who are unable to find work in the new tenther regime will simply be cast out into the cold.
AN IMPOVERISHED RETIREMENT: Social Security may be the most successful program in American history. Without it, nearly half of all seniors would live below the poverty line. Yet, because words like "retirement" don't specifically appear in the Constitution, tenthers think that Social Security is forbidden. Indeed, Social Security has not just been labeled unconstitutional by specific GOP candidates, the Republican Party's "Pledge To America" embraces a tenther understanding of the Constitution which endangers both Social Security and Medicare. Tenthers respond to claims that they would abolish America's entire safety net for seniors by pointing out that state governments could still create their own retirement programs, but such a state takeover of retirement programs is economically impossible unless America forbids its citizens from retiring in a different state than the one that they paid taxes in while working. Some tenther candidates have also suggested that Social Security can survive so long as it is privatized, but privatization would impose significant new risks on seniors, create new administrative costs, force benefit reductions and cost more money than the present system. In other words, the right has a simple plan for American families: making sure that everyone at the dinner table is completely on their own.
Current bugaboo - and it does affect me - is the potential to have Social Security GUTTED. Let us NOT return to the Stone Age!!
So I will post more than a few links and comments about this in upcoming days.
The Center for American Progress is doing a fabulous job explaining how this REGRESSIVE action is propelled by a right wing agenda - and also on the implications of a repel of our RIGHT to benefits.
Please, please access the link to get the full (horror) story.
All the important links one should/must read here.
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SAN ANTONIO -- Gastroenterologists may want to be attuned to signs of possible abuse or trauma among their patients, a researcher suggested here. Subtle signs -- a rectal exam that provokes tearfulness in a patient, for instance -- may indicate psychological issues that could complicate treatment for GI problems, said Douglas Drossman, MD, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Drossman has been studying the link between abuse and GI disease for the last 20 years and summarized his work at the annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology. Delivering the American Journal of Gastroenterology lecture at the meeting, Drossman also offered advice on how fellow clinicians can address the issue of prior abuse and trauma to get patients the help they need to improve outcomes. "Being a gastroenterologist, it's not our responsibility to ask about abuse history in someone coming in with GERD, a GI bleed, or liver disease," he commented. "We're asking about it when we think that information would make a meaningful difference in outcome by identifying and treating it." Researchers have long known of an association between stress and gastrointestinal symptoms, but have only recently begun to understand the mechanisms at work between stressful life events like abuse or trauma and more serious GI problems. Drossman said the first line of evidence linking the two came from epidemiologic studies that found a higher-than-expected association of abuse history in patients with GI symptoms. Other epidemiological data have found an association between a history of abuse and poor health status in general, and that patients with prior trauma had more pain and a higher number of doctor visits. Over the past 10 years, researchers have been able to get a more profound understanding of this association with the help of brain imaging, Drossman said. He and his colleagues have been able to show that irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients who had a history of abuse had greater activation of the cingulate cortex, an area associated with pain processing. These IBS patients indeed reported greater pain, Drossman said. Other data from an Institute of Medicine report on Gulf War veterans also found an association between war trauma and the development of IBS, he added. "IBS may be facilitated by psychological stress," he commented. The question, Drossman said, is how to translate knowledge of this link into clinical practice -- acknowledging that asking patients about past abuse and trauma is not easy. However, he has identified factors that may reveal abuse, making it easier for clinicians to broach the subject. One clue, he said, may be a GI patient who presents with trust issues or feelings of vulnerability, shame, or loss of control during a visit. "Those kinds of feelings, the more you see of them, the more you think about it," he said, referring to a potential history or abuse. Other hints of past abuse or trauma may manifest themselves in physical problems, including chronic abdominal pain, morbid obesity, or eating disorders. Patients troubled by past traumas may also have a record of multiple procedures and hospitalizations for their symptoms, he added. But one of the biggest clues to past abuse may come from patient reactions to procedures like rectal exams or colonoscopy. "If we see an unusual response like tearfulness or agitation, we really should think about the link," he said. He cautioned that the greatest problem is figuring out how to break the ice and ask the tough questions. "It's easy to do that if you're doing a colonoscopy and the patient has an emotional and dramatic response," he said. "Then it's easy to say, 'I see you don't feel comfortable, has something like this happened before?'" Physicians can emphasize that evidence has shown that these issues can affect the way they manage their conditions. "It's about being gentle, and giving them the opportunity to tell you what they want to tell you," he said. "If they don't want to talk, you can register that information and say, 'If you want to talk about it, I'll be available.'" Physicians should have a psychiatrist colleague for patient referrals. Walter Coyle, MD, of the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif., said many gastroenterologists aren't doing a good job of asking about past abuse and trauma. "If you do, you have to deal with the consequences of opening that door," he said. "It's not easy to ask, but I think you've got to, because there is so much abuse out there." |
And really that is about it.
FACEBOOK doesn't cut it and this unwieldy TOME needs editing.
Due to Web Marshall being turned on where I was writing, I could not access these pages for the past YEAR. However, as of yesterday when I was at long last able to side pass that oppressor and get some good new posting tools installed, my enthusiasm cup runneth over.
I'M BACK !!
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.