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Flashback: Bush Says He Approved Torture. What About Sexual Torture?
Troutfishing
Dailykos.com
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:23 EDT
 |
| ©Unknown |
A Friday ABC interview confirms: Bush "approved" of the torture techniques ABC's Wednesday story detailed. But ABC fails to mention even more severe torture techniques that were implemented by Don Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone - did George W. Bush give Rumsfeld the authority to implement what became known as "Copper Green" ?
Did George Bush sign an NSC document authorizing sexual torture methods, then delegate to Rumsfeld authority to implement those sex-torture methods ?
That's the real question, this new ABC story is only the prologue...
ABC news has developed a new component of the torture story almost in perfect sync with my Thursday post on torture which stressed that because Bush is head, as president, of the National Security Council, of course he would have known of the overall gist of the "NSC Principals" White House meetings on torture policy because, regardless of whether Bush sat in on all meetings or not, all major NSC decisions and policy formulations have go to Bush's desk for final approval, his signature. Bush is, indeed the "decider".
Once again, ABC News has pushed the White House torture program scandal further along and once again the story is embedded in a false frame.
And, the techniques discussed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Powell, Rice and Ashcroft were not the worst of the torture techniques in question. ABC's story discussed on level of torture severity but there was another level expressed through a secret program implemented by Don Rumsfeld and his operative Stephen Cambone: "Copper Green". That program resulted in, as After Downing Street details, child rape.
So here's the REAL question ABC's story fails to confront and which was raised almost four years ago in the New Yorker by Sy Hersh's may 15, 2004 story "The Gray Zone" : Did George W. Bush delegate authority to Rumsfeld to implement a second, even more severe torture regime ?
Did George W. Bush delegate to Donald Rumsfeld the authority to implement psycho-sexual torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere ?
As Sy Hersh's story described:
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
In the March 2008 edition of Vanity Fair, in a story titled The Green Light, Philippe Sands lays out a very similar groundwork, and if George W. Bush is not directly implicated let me say this - I know of no major media publication in America that has, so far, run that charge up the flagpole.
As Sands writes:
"The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a "trickle up" explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration"
ABC's team, Jan Crawford Greenberg, Howard L. Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue, landed an exclusive interview with president George W. Bush, who seemed unperturbed and unrepentant about the torture program he had ultimately spawned. The story breaks little ground, past details revealed last Wednesday by ABC, except to make crystal clear the fact that George W. Bush "approved" of torture methods prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
RESOURCES:
An extensive torture timeline, courtesy of the Cooperative Research Commons
A deep history of psychological torture techniques, courtesy of dKos member Valtin
Torture is wrong & it doesn't work, says interrogation expert.
J-7/Tarpon Springs, Florida--I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family of the deceased Ms. Palfrey. This writer never met Jeane--as she liked to be called by friends--and I only spoke with her a few times telephonically--our correspondence occurred through the Internet. That doesn't make this any easier to write.Jason… let’s put it like this, the bastards aren’t going to take me alive. Of course, anytime that you want to do an interview – I will make myself available. However, I doubt that I will be doing any interviews once I am in D.C., for the trial. –Best, Jeane
-----Original Message-----
From: jasonleopold@hotmail.com [mailto:jasonleopold@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:40 AM
To: jeanepalfrey@sprynet.com; 'Justice League'
Cc: myboigie@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: "D.C. Madam trial scheduled for April 7th" (Jeane Palfrey)...
Jeane
I have no doubt that you will prevail. Your fighting spirit is infectious. I am in the process of setting up my own shop. I will actually be in DC for your trial and would love to get you on camera theb for the new nesit if possible.
Best
Jason
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
-----Original Message-----
From: "Jeane Palfrey"
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:25:30
To:"'Justice League'"
Cc:,
Subject: RE: "D.C. Madam trial scheduled for April 7th" (Jeane Palfrey)...
Bil… thanks for the kinds words. If USA’s can’t file racketeering charges, then who can? More specifically, who filed them in my case? -Jeane
-----Original Message-----
From: Justice League [mailto:spbiloxi00@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:11 AM
Cc: jason leopold
Subject: Re: "D.C. Madam trial scheduled for April 7th" (Jeane Palfrey)...
Good Morning Jeane:
Thanks for your update and concerns in your case. I am copying Jason. I will post your email on my blog and on the Newsinkling.org. Jason and I know that you are innocent. Just remember. This is a battle of a much corrupted justice system. And we are with you on the long haul no matter what happen. Keep in mind that your case is in the hands of 12 jurors. You are innocent until proven guilty.
Also, I wanted to bring this to you and Jason. I was watching a webcast of the House Judiciary Committee hearing that was held on Tuesday about the matter of the procedures of a Special Prosecutor. There were two panels of attorneys that were experinced attorneys that dealt with a Special Prosecutor or was a Special Prosecutor or Independent counsel. I watched carefully to the last person to testify in the second panel: USA and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. One the committee asked this question to Fitzgerald that was interesting:
Cannon: Distinction between special counsel and normal prosecutor.
Patrick Fitzgerald: One common misunderstanding is that we didn't follow DOJ guidelines. I was bound by those guidelines. Many of the procedures I was the decision maker. When you prosecute as USA, you have to follow the guidelines. In an ordinary case, USA has an awful lot of power. In many cases, the volume of our cases, we can bring charges that will imprison people with out possibility of parole. No wiretap without DOJ, no immunity for witnesses, no govt appeal or attorney or member of the media. USAs can't file racketeering charges.
I found the last part of Fitzgerald's statement about racketeering charges interesting. And I appreciate him explaining what the role of as an USA. His statement is a very clear indication on why certain USAs were fired, why certain USAs were selected as interims, and what role within the WH and AG played in allowing certain charges to stick on certain individuals for political and personal means, and finally the handpicking of certain judges in certain cases. It would be interesting on how much power [especially USA Taylor] the selected USA interims with the DOJ by the WH. Here is the link of the webcast. Fitzgerald's testimony is about 15 minutes toward the end: 2:20.52
http://judiciary.edgeboss.net
Bil [Monique Rawlings]
On 2/28/08, Jeane Palfrey > wrote:
My and defense counsel's various efforts the past 17 months to resolve the charges levied against me by the Department of Justice have been unsuccessful. Therefore, a full-jury trial is scheduled to take place on April 7th, in Federal District Court, in Washington, D.C.
I intend to defend myself vigorously against the charges of racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy. I will call witnesses to testify on my behalf about the legal, sexual nature of my former business – Pamela Martin & Associates. These witnesses likely will be culled from the existing research – conducted over the past 8 months - by a variety of press/media, bloggers and interested third parties.
It should be noted ALL charges are predicated upon the seldom utilized Travel Act, which allows the Government to claim jurisdiction for ANY crime – including misdemeanor offenses such as prostitution – when state lines are crossed. In the course of regular business operation in the Washington, D.C. area, state lines are crossed routinely by any number of businesses, including escort services. In fact, all one has to do is quite literally cross the street in hundreds, if not thousands of locations in the vicinity to cross a state line.
The Travel Act is important here because – unlike the state misdemeanor crime of prostitution – the Travel Act can be used to satisfy the requirement of an SUA (specified unlawful activity), which must be in place in order for the Government, not only to claim jurisdiction, but to be able to charge racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy. Federal law recognizes dozens of SUAs. Normally, such activities involve murder, treason, rape, kidnapping, drug trafficking, white slavery, extortion, embezzlement, etc and subsequently are utilized to support broader crimes like racketeering and conspiracy.
Perhaps, it also should be stated (and clarified) the racketeering charge is based in part upon the belief my previous business – to this day - is an ongoing criminal enterprise. Pamela Martin & Associates ceased to exist the day phone service was disconnected by me, in August of 2006. Any/all affiliated parties went their separate ways, at this time. The money laundering charge has been built upon the fact that payment transaction was done through the U.S. Mail.
Since I did not live in the Washington, D.C. area, during the 13 year period, PM&A was a viable concern – there realistically was no other logistical way for the women in my employ to send agency revenue onto me. Lastly, conspiracy – from what I have been able to ascertain – ostensibly occurs when two minds agree to commit a crime. Strangely, a person also can conspire with himself/herself, without the inclusion of a second individual.
Without doubt, I am in the fight of my life.Unfortunately, the Government will not capitulate, nor will I in this extremely bizarre case; one,where no person other than myself–including all former clients and escorts-is being charged with any crime here. Technically the Government has been successful in making the charges against me work on paper.
As a result, I have no choice- nor have I ever had any alternative - but to fight on and clear my name via the facts of the case, particularly since - if convicted, federal sentencing guidelines allow for a maximum sentence of 55 years imprisonment. Realistically, it has been calculated I would receive 8 to 10 to 15 years. Nonetheless for me at age 51, such a harsh penalty would be tantamount to a virtual life sentence – stripping me of some of the most productive years remaining in my life.
Jeane Palfrey
There's an image I have of Blanche Palfrey finding her daughter's body, hanging in the shed outside of her residential trailer. It's an image that should stick in the minds of all the "Johns," the privileged ones, forever. This is the real face of our elected (and appointed) representatives, and Republican Senator David Vitter is hardly alone in all of this. This is the face of lawlessness, a profoundly sexist patriarchy...it is the face of a homegrown American Fascism.
This political and economic system uses women like Deborah Jeane Palfrey and her former escorts to facilitate government contracts. When things get uncovered, the press acts as gatekeepers, and they throw them away through prosecution. Jeane, I hardly knew you, but you didn't deserve this ending. I have to wonder what the dirty political prosecutors told you about sentencing, and whether it contributed to your decision to kill yourself. Your story will be told, and what I've learned in all of this will become public. This I vow.
Follow up information:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA : CRIMINAL NO. 07-046 (JR)
:
v. ::
DEBORAH JEANE PALFREY, :
:
Defendant. :
JOINT SUGGESTION OF DEATH AND ANTICIPATION
OF MOTION FOR ABATEMENT OF PROSECUTION
The United States of America, by and through its attorney, the United States Attorney for the
District of Columbia, in consultation with and with the concurrence of counsel for defendant, Preston
Burton, herewith files this joint suggestion of death. The parties file this suggestion on information
and belief that defendant, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, died on or about May 1, 2008. Once the certificate
of death is received, the parties will jointly move to abate the prosecution.
A defendant’s death is a basis for abatement of all prosecution proceedings from their
inception. Durham v. United States, 401 U.S. 481, 483 (1971); United States v, Asset, 990 F.2d 208,
211 (5
th Cir. 1992) (death of defendant before entry of judgment abates prosecution ab initio); UnitedStates v. Oberlin, 718 F.2d 894, 896 (9
th Cir. 1983) (similar holding); cf. United States v. Pogue, 19F.3d 663 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (death pending direct appeal abates prosecution); Howell v. United States,
445 A.2d 1371, 1373 (D.C. 1983) (quoting Howell).
In light of the apparent recent death of defendant and in anticipation of the resulting joint
motion for abatement of prosecution, the parties request that the Court stay the need for either party
to file any pleadings that are coming due for a response in the interim. Furthermore, defense counsel
requests that he be authorized to contact the defendant’s family and representatives of her Estate in
Case 1:07-cr-00046-JR Document 312 Filed 05/02/2008 Page 1 of 2
2
connection with matters related to the criminal and civil forfeiture proceedings before the Court. The
United States does not object to defense counsel’s request.
Respectfully submitted,
JEFFREY A. TAYLOR
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
DC Bar No. 498610
/ s /
Daniel P. Butler
DC Bar No. 417178
Catherine K. Connelly
Mass. Bar No. 649430
William R. Cowden
DC Bar No. 426401
Assistant United States Attorneys
555 4th Street, N.W.
(202) 353-9431, 616-3384
Washington, D.C. 20530
/ s /
______________________________
Preston Burton, Esq., D.C. Bar No. 426378
ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFF, LLP
1152 15
th St., NWWashington, D.C. 20005
(202) 339-8400
See also:
By MITCH STACY – 2 hours ago
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The woman known as the "D.C. Madam" apologized to her mother and sister in suicide notes, saying she couldn't bear going to prison and saw killing herself as the only "exit strategy."
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running an elite Washington prostitution ring, wrote to her mother that she could not "live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what you and I have come to regard as this 'modern day lynching,' only to come out of prison in my late '50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman."
The notes were released by police Monday.
Palfrey, 52, hanged herself with a nylon rope Thursday in a shed outside her mother's mobile home in the Florida Gulf Coast community of Tarpon Springs, northwest of Tampa. Her mother, 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, discovered the body.
Deborah Palfrey was convicted of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. She denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.
She was free while she awaited sentencing on July 24 and had been staying with her mother.
Her suicide appeared to have been planned for days. The note to her mother was dated April 25, nearly a week before she killed herself. Police said the notes were found on a night stand in the bedroom where she'd been staying. One of the notes said, "Do not revive. Do not feed under any circumstances."
In the note to her younger sister, Bobbie, Palfrey expressed her love and told her to "be strong for mom."
"Also, you must comprehend that there was no other way out, i.e., 'exit strategy,' other than the one I have chosen here," she wrote. "Know I am at peace, with complete certainty, I believe Dad is standing watch — prepared to guide me into the light."
Also Monday, police announced that the medical examiner's office officially ruled Palfrey's death a suicide by hanging. A toxicology report is pending.
Her death last week had sparked widespread Internet chatter among those who speculated that someone killed her to keep her from identifying more prominent clients of the escort service.
"Tarpon Springs Police Department detectives, after following up on several investigative avenues have not discovered any new evidence which would indicate anything other than a suicide by hanging in this case," spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Young said.
Palfrey's mother and sister identified her handwriting in the suicide notes, Young said.
A federal jury convicted Palfrey on April 15 of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering. Prosecutors said she ran the prostitution service for 13 years. The trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses but did not take the stand.
Palfrey had vowed that she would not go to prison, even telling a Washington writer that she would commit suicide first.
Roosevelt had also attempted packing the Supreme Court, a move he was appropriately criticized for and stopped from doing. Yes, the good-old-days of accountability, it makes the heart swell, just like a Sousa march.
But it should be reflected on that if there had been polls in 1932-33, it's likely that Herbert Hoover would have won the lowest approval rating of any American president, not Harry Truman or George W. Bush. Who cares? The Republicans were the minority party for five decades. There is no better indicator than that, and this was a time when people still voted in reasonable numbers.
For five decades, the American public knew full-well that allowing a Republican majority into government would spell another economic disaster borne out of the GOP's inherent tendencies towards wanton excess and their desire for a lack of oversight in the economy (something they and the Libertarians share in their respective doctrines). Welcome to that disaster. We've collectively forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression, the down-side of losing the WWII generation to the attrition of mortality. The wheel turns.
Truman's push into the Korean peninsula during the early-1950s would never have happened without the 1949 elections that swept Republicans into Congress; representatives like, red-baiting alcoholic Joe McCarthy, segregationist Strom Thurmond, and the demagogue Richard M. Nixon whose "unpopularity" record the current president has broken, flooded into the House and the Senate. Their aim was to wreck the New Deal, which didn't work, but they scored significant victories by pushing us into unnecessary wars. Then came the repression of McCarthyism and the stagnation of the Eisenhower years. Democrats shared the blame in most all of this then, just as they do now.
Yet, without Republicans pushing the postwar Red Scare, starting with affairs like the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers scandal, the Rosenbergs, and accusing anyone who didn't tow their aggressive foreign policy line as being "soft on communism," there would have been no Korean War (1950-1953), Cuban Missile Crisis, or even a Vietnam War. Imagine the social spending that would have been possible had these conflicts never occurred. We can't.
Iraq is part of an old game: divert the potential for meeting social needs with out-of-control military spending, all thanks to the same whipping-up of fear we've seen today. These same tactics still apply, which is why we're often "treated" to the GOP's flimsy-argument that they're somehow "stronger on national security," a notion that doesn't deserve serious comment or analysis.
Dramatically, the current president of the United States enjoys less popularity than Socialist President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. This is because Americans are understanding the the source of the majority of their current problems--the price of gasoline, rampant unemployment, an illegal war costing hundreds-of-millions every day, runaway foreclosures, no reasonably socialized medicine, etc.--originate from the extra-legal policies of the Bush administration and the GOP.
The ultimate source, however, is the economic sector, the big-big rich who both parties truly serve. The majority of the public understands this, and doesn't care for it. Action and participation in the democratic process have been the only real remedies. The public appears to finally be grasping this fact after 30+ years of being politically comatose. While it's rarely reported, the anger is most strongly directed at Congress, for her inaction.
Like any mother who allows her children to be beaten by a demented patriarch, Congress is suffering under even lower approval-ratings than the president. The answer as to the "whys" is a simple one: the public wants Congress to rein-in the president and either force a resignation, or move forwards onto full-impeachment, including that of the vice president. It's commonplace for physically-abused children to blame the other parent more than they blame the actual aggressor. Not doing anything to prevent or end abuses when one actually can constitutes aiding and abetting. Not deciding is deciding.
Irregardless of current congressional inaction in our disabled system of checks and balances, Americans are becoming much more vocal about their disapproval of politicians in-general:
There is no single explanation for why the percentage who decline to give an opinion of the president's job performance is lower now than in the past. However, one hypothesis is as follows. When Gallup polled in the Truman and Nixon years, respondents may have been more likely to say they didn't have an opinion in lieu of saying they disapproved of the president. In other words, respondents who did not approve of the president's performance--rather than flat-out saying they disapproved--may have simply told interviewers they didn't have an opinion.
Today, as the percentage of "no opinion" responses to the presidential job approval question has declined, Americans appear to be more willing to give a negative response, resulting in the situation in which Bush's disapproval rating is at a record high while his approval rating is not at a record low. ("Bush's 69% Job Disapproval Rating Highest in Gallup History," Gallup, 04.22.2008)
The president is also less popular than the Saudi regime--amazing considering the fact that the American public is generally aware that 17 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The reality is that people are being affected directly by the rapidly rising costs, a result of the high price of oil.
Most stunning is the fact that a majority of Americans look to Communist Cuba as being more reasonable and supportable than the current administration occupying the White House. This wholly contradicts the mainstream media's portrayal of what Americans think, but only a fool would accept their picture. The majority of Americans are weighing how other systems provide for their citizens, and their attitudes overall are far-left. Most importantly for the present: a whopping 69% now feel that we were all lied to to get us into a war in Iraq. Better late than never. War crimes have no statute of limitations. Not even a presidential pardon can make that go away, never.
The Beef, 04.22.2008: http://www.gallup.com/poll
Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death. (By contrast: The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74; the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).
It’s like a perfect storm of right-wing policies: The War on Drugs, women’s liberation by way of imperialism, and “freedom” at the barrel of a gun.
Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can’t keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can’t keep her much longer. Khalida’s father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It’s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he’s losing far more than money. “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah.
In the last six months alone, over 250 women have committed suicide in the country, according to Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). IRIN News, August 21, 2007
The vast majority of the world’s opiates originate in Afghanistan. To fight drug production, the solution has been to target individual farmers and destroy their crops — without offering them any other option for survival. And the U. S. keeps mucking it up. We offered farmers other crops (wheat, etc), but once it was grown there weren’t enough buyers (I guess we didn’t think that far ahead).
And it’s not just farmers who are suffering because of these policies — it’s girls.
Angiza Afridi, 28, has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar’s 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55- year-old man to pay off an older uncle’s opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. “This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit,” says Afridi.
Even so, the results of her survey shocked her. In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they’re old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. “These poor girls have no future,” she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.
Gul Ghoti is on her first visit home since her wedding six months ago. She says it’s a relief to be back with her father and mother in their two-room mud-and- brick house, if only temporarily. “My heart is still with my parents, brothers and sisters,” she says. “Only my body is with my husband’s family.” She says she personally knows of two opium brides who killed themselves. “One of the girls had been badly beaten by her husband’s brother, the other by her husband,” she says. Ghoti says she’s considered suicide, too, but Islam stopped her. “I pray that God doesn’t give me a daughter if she ends up like me.”
The life expectancy for adults in Afghanistan is 43.
Almost half of all children are not enrolled in primary school.
Only eight percent of girls attend secondary school.
More than half of all children under 5 are suffering from moderate to severe stunting.
Only 34 percent of people in Afghanistan have access to adequate sanitation facilities.
For every 100 people in Afghanistan, 5 have a phone.
One has internet access.
Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death.
(By contrast:
The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74;
the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).
We're Sitting In at the House Judiciary Committee Office Right Now by David Swanson Page 1 of 1 page(s) | | |    |
http://www.davidswanson.org
DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.
I have posted a WAR CRIMES and IMPEACHMENT swicki, please feel free to put in your additions. You can install it and add to it on your site.
I refer you to this item as well:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ladybroa_080326_water_is_not_a_basic.htm
Many of the basic international law is contained in Jordan Paust's paper as regards crimes against humanity.
And please honor us and all future generations by signing these petitions:
Article available free at: http://www.law.utah.edu/_webfiles/ULRarticles/150/150.pdf
bourse / /n. (also Bourse) a stock exchange, esp. in Europe. ~Canadian Oxford Dictionary
Only bimbos believed Bush when he said it was WMD's that made him attack, invade, occupy and massacre Iraq. Most of us thought it was to steal Iraq's oil, but we were only partly right. What totally terrorized the tyrannical Texan tycoon was when Saddam played the oil bourse card in November, 2000. When Saddam started selling Iraqi oil in euro's, he jeopardized greenback hegemony as the world's supreme foreign exchange transaction currency. If this brilliant idea catches on, it will trigger the total collapse of the USA economy. The oil grab is a sideshow. The main feature is the oil bourse.
The Neocon global domination agenda is engendered by the denomination of global oil transactions in greenbacks. America prints out the bucks that are required for the purchase of oil, and the world has to produce stuff they can sell to get the bucks they need to buy oil. Printing Monopoly 'fiat' money only costs America the paper and green ink, so the USA dollar has been fattened on oil-enriched chicken feed since Tricky Dick delinked the buck from the bullion. The oil bourse scheme could so seriously setback US suzerainty that Saddam got stomped to smithereens. Krassimir Petrov, who teaches international finance in Bulgaria's American University, warns "should the Iranian Oil Bourse gain momentum, it will be eagerly embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar." Saddam was just the first wavelet in the coming tsunami. On March 20, 2006, Iran will start selling oil in euros.
Here's what the Bush cabal's Neocon Global Hegemony Manifesto, written in September 2000, has to say:
"At present the United States faces no global rival. America's grand strategy should be to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible. There are, however, potentially powerful states [read Europe, China, India] who are dissatisfied with the current situation and who wish to change it, if they can, in directions that would endanger the relatively peaceful, prosperous and free condition the world [read USA] enjoys today. Up to now, they have been deterred from doing so by the capability and global presence of American military power [read terrorist menace]. But as that power declines, [read currently being defeated in Iraq] relatively and absolutely, the happy conditions that follow from it will be inevitably undermined."
The latest Neocon ramp-up rhetoric for attacking Iran is a dreary fearmongering rerun of the same old lies that launched Bush's disastrous Iraq-attack. The same old WMD drumbeat is now rattling to attack and destroy Ahmadinejad's nascent civilian nuclear program. Bush will fail to get IAEA support to forward his Iran-sanctions feint to the UN Security Council, so there won't be any UN 'coalition of the willing.' Russia and China aren't interested, and Bush's Ambassador to India, David Mulford, has just ruined the nuclear carrot that Bush so carefully waved at India to get them to toe the US line. India has its nukes already, and hooking up the pipeline with Iran is more to their interest. This all makes a preemptive American or Israeli attack all the more likely, and the Neocon's insane desperation is such, that such an attack might just go nuclear.
Bush has stated that "All options are on the table.The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country." Freaky Dick's office has tasked STRATCOM to draw up a plan which includes a large-scale air assault on Iran using conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Condoleeza Rice says that "time had run out for talking to Tehran." John Bolton says that Bush "has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable." Newt Gingrich, who won't rule out a run for the presidency in '08, said, "If we don't have a very serious systematic program to replace the government of Iran, we're going to live in an unbelievably dangerous world. This is 1935 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we've seen." Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel was preparing to protect itself if international diplomatic efforts failed to convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.
When the Neocons conquered the White House in 2000, the U.S. surplus was approximately $5 trillion. That's all gone and the domestic deficit now stands at somewhere around $500 billion. The world's largest debtor nation owes $8,193,150,090,487.56 as of this morning, and the American debt is mushrooming by over a billion a day. Foreigners hold 48 percent of the U.S. Treasury bond market, 24 percent of the U.S. corporate bond market and 20 percent of all U.S. corporations. With "W" walloping US whack like that, why in the world would anyone want dollars?
Here's how the Neocons hoodwinked and swindled the world:
From the Third World Traveler website, Sohan Sharma, Sue Tracy and Surinder Kumar wrote,
"Oil can be bought from OPEC only if you have dollars. Non-oil producing countries, such as most underdeveloped countries and Japan, first have to sell their goods to earn dollars with which they can purchase oil. If they cannot earn enough dollars, then they have to borrow dollars from the WB/IMF, which have to be paid back, with interest, in dollars. This creates a great demand for dollars outside the U.S. In contrast, the U.S. only has to print dollar bills in exchange for goods. Even for its own oil imports, the U.S. can print dollar bills without exporting or selling its goods. For instance, in 2003 the current U.S. account deficit and external debt has been running at more than $500 billion. Put in simple terms, the U.S. will receive $500 billion more in goods and services from other countries than it will provide them. The imported goods are paid by printing dollar bills, i.e., "fiat" dollars."
Here's the Neocons worst nightmare:
China has more than $800 billion reserved in a giant stack of basically green, ink-smeared paper. When Iran starts selling its oil in euros, why wouldn't China just go ahead and convert that stack of paper to euros and use real money to buy oil instead? In January 2002, Canada unloaded nearly 20% of its gold stocks in exchange for euros, thereby bringing its euro holdings to the equivalent of about US$14 billion. That's about 42 percent of the total US$33 billion in foreign deposits and securities held by the government. Just 2 years previous, euros accounted for the equivalent of about US$7 billion of Canada's reserves, only 23 percent of the total. The gold sale reduced Canada's U.S. dollar share to 55 percent from 75 percent. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is brokering barter deals for trading oil with 12 Latin American countries thereby cutting out the USA cut. At the OPEC summit in September 2000, Chavez delivered the report of the "International Seminar on the Future of Energy." One of its key recommendations was that "OPEC take advantage of high-tech electronic barter and bi-lateral exchanges of its oil with its developing country customers." That would be the end of dollar hegemony over OPEC oil transactions.
The War Resisters League calculates that the cost of the US military runs about $643 billion annually. This obscene military expenditure, which supercedes the total of all other combined global military expenditures, is responsible for 80% of the American debt. When the world stops propping up the debt-ridden USA dollar, that will end the Neocon global domination project and the world's worst terrorist menace. This much, "W" clearly understands, and so too, apparently, do his quisling war-mongering Democrat counterparts. The Neocon oil-mens cabal has an even clearer understanding of Peak Oil, and its equally ominous implications for the American economy. This quote from Investment Banker Matthew Simmons—a key advisor to the Bush Administration and Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force and the Council on Foreign Relations: "What peaking does mean, in energy terms, is that once you've peaked, further growth in supply, is over. Peaking is generally, also, a relatively quick transition to a relatively serious decline at least on a basin by basin basis. And the issue then, is the world's biggest serious question."
In this horrific context, it's not too difficult to understand why the Bush Neocon cabal is preparing to risk all to go on a global oil-stealing spree, and to attack Iran, perhaps even with nukes. It's also easy to understand the cringing wimp-ass non-response of the Democrats. There's no way America can win, and America's got everything to lose. As Gavin R. Putland puts it, "If this oil-currency-war theory is a delusion, the U.S. administration can easily discredit it—by declaring that the USA has no objection if oil exports to the Euro Zone are denominated in euros." The crash of the USA economy will wreak global economic catastrophe. Paradoxically, that crash is this world's only hope for evading global ecological catastrophe. We should support Iran's oil bourse. Bring it on!
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Ingmar Lee is a Canadian freelance writer currently living in Pondicherry India. He is appalled and embarrassed that Canada has elected a Bush-lackey Neocon creep for Prime Minister.
ANKARA TDN Parliamentary Bureau
Turkish Parliament yesterday discussed the results of the military's cross-border operation into northern Iraq in a closed session, which sparked a domestic debate between the brass and the opposition parties.
According to Turkish Constitution, the content of the closed sessions can only be made public ten years after the meeting was held. No reporting of its content can be made.
The meeting was called by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) that slammed both the government and the military for an early withdrawal from northern Iraq, saying that they gave into pressure by the United States.
Cemil Çiçek, deputy prime minister, responded to the criticism of the representatives of CHP's deputies Onur Öymen and Şükrü Elekdağ. Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)'s Gündüz Aktan and Democratic Society Party's (DTP) Hasip Kaplan voiced their party's views during the session.
See also:
http://pma.com.tr/PROFILE.html
And my own article:
Resisting the EmpireJoseph Gerson | March 20, 2008 Editor: Emily Schwarz Greco | |||
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