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    • In Congress, Dem and GOPer Working Together to Change the NDAA | Mother Jones
      "Smith and Amash's effort comes amid a bipartisan backlash against indefinite detention that has already produced legislation on the state level. Republican-dominated legislatures in Arizona, Maine, and Virginia have passed anti-NDAA legislation. Proponents of indefinite detention argue that Congress' 2001 authorization of the use of military force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban permits the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens, even those apprehended in the United States. But the Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on the issue. Opponents counter that indefinite detention of American citizens in the United States is unconstitutional."
    • Review & Outlook: The Tea Party's Inner ACLU - WSJ.com
      The Wall Street Journal has a conniption fit about conservative opposition to the NDAA: "The ACLU tea partiers may be well-intentioned but they are woefully uninformed about the war on the terror. Their efforts would undermine executive war-fighting authority and the legitimacy of a terrorist detention and military tribunal system that has been established over many Congresses, endorsed by two Presidents and confirmed by the Supreme Court. They should stick to shrinking the entitlement state."
    • Arizona Joins Virginia in the NDAA Exodus. Is Nullification the Next New Thing? (Cutting the Gordian Knot)
      "In less than a week’s time a second state has put a foot down making it clear that it will not cooperate with Federal Law which is blatantly unconstitutional. Yesterday Arizona became the second state to pass a nullification of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)."
    • How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian's Nightmare | | AlterNet
      “The major defining feature of the Obama administration on this issue is the eagerness with which it embraced the stunning evisceration of civil rights and liberties that was a hallmark of the Bush administration, and then deepened those outrageous programs,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who is an attorney representing many Occupy protesters swept up in last fall’s mass arrests. “He has successfully counted on the acquiescent silence of the liberals.”
    • ‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth (Stephenson, Grist)
      I don’t think any “climate movement” is going to reverse the tide of history, for one reason: We are all climate change. It is not the evil “1%” destroying the planet. We are all of us part of that destruction. This is the great, conflicted, complex situation we find ourselves in. I am climate change. You are climate change. Our culture is climate change. And climate change itself is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg, if you’ll pardon the terrible but appropriate pun. If we were to wake up tomorrow to the news that climate change were a hoax or a huge mistake, we would still be living in a world in which extinction rates were between 100 and 1000 times natural levels and in which we have managed to destroy 25 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last four decades alone.
    • Chris Hedges: Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig
      “You are unable to say that [such a book] consisting of political speech could not be captured under [NDAA section] 1021?” the judge asked. “We can’t say that,” Torrance answered. “Are you telling me that no U.S. citizen can be detained under 1021?” Forest asked. “That’s not a reasonable fear,” the government lawyer said. Advertisement “Say it’s reasonable to fear you will be unlucky [and face] detention, trial. What does ‘directly supported’ mean?” she asked. “We have not said anything about that …” Torrance answered. “What do you think it means?” the judge asked. “Give me an example that distinguishes between direct and indirect support. Give me a single example.” “We have not come to a position on that,” he said. “So assume you are a U.S. citizen trying not to run afoul of this law. What does it [the phrase] mean to you?” the judge said. “I couldn’t offer any specific language,” Torrance answered. “I don’t have a specific example.”
    • America brings the ‘war on terror’ home (Wolf, Daily Star)
      "(Judge) Forrest also repeatedly asked for assurances – at least five times – that the NDAA would not sweep up people like the plaintiffs: journalists engaged in journalism and citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Again, every time, the lawyers for Obama and Panetta said that they could not give her such assurances. [...] We now have it from the U.S. government lawyers’ own mouths: This law may put journalists at risk, or at least the lawyers explicitly refused to rule out that option for their client – and, as Forrest put it, they have “one very big client.”"
    • Obama’s evolution: Behind the failed ‘grand bargain’ on the debt (Wallsten/Montgomery/Wilson, WaPo)
      "That night, Obama prepared his party’s congressional leaders. He warned Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that he might return to the position under discussion the previous Sunday — that is, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in exchange for just $800 billion in tax increases. [...] White House officials said this week that the offer is still on the table."
    • Not All Labor Leaders Happy With AFL-CIO’s Obama Endorsement (Elk, In These Times)
      “There's not a lot of choice here, that’s the sad part of this,” says Matt McKinnon, political and legislative director of the Machinists union (IAM), which is affiliated with AFL-CIO and endorsed the president earlier this year. “He’s been a disappointment in several areas, but he came through with some decent appointees.” The expected endorsement represents the reality that organized labor leaders still feel trapped in a two-party system, with a not-always labor-friendly Democratic Party on one side and a downright hostile Republican Party on the other.
    • Elections: What Are They Good For? (Swanson, War Is A Crime.org)
      Voting isn't everything. "I think Emma Goldman had a point in saying that if voting changed anything they would ban it. I think Howard Zinn had a point in saying that it doesn't matter who is sitting in the White House so much as who is doing the sitting in. The relentless ubiquitous question of how you can change the world if you refuse to engage in electoral politics strikes me as crazy. Women didn't vote themselves the right to vote. Workers didn't elect the eight hour day. India didn't vote the British out."
    • Part II Infiltration of Political Movements is the Norm, Not the Exception in the United States (Zeese, Occupy Washington, DC)
      "When the long history of political infiltration is reviewed, the Occupy Movement should be surprised if it is not infiltrated. Almost every movement in modern history has been infiltrated by police and others using many of the same tactics we are now seeing in Occupy. "
    • Critiques Of Libertarianism: A Non-Libertarian FAQ (Huben)
      "The purpose of this FAQ is not to attack libertarianism, but some of the more fallacious arguments within it. That done, libertarians can then reformulate or reject these arguments. This is also needed to help people place libertarianism and its arguments in context. It is very hard to find any literature about libertarianism that was NOT written by its advocates. This isolation from normal political discourse makes it difficult to evaluate libertarian claims without much more research or analysis than most of us have time for. Compare this to (for example) the extensive literature of socialism and communism written by ideologues, scholars, pundits, etc. on all sides. Libertarianism is scantily analyzed outside its own movement. Let's fix that."
    • UPDATED: Limbaugh's Misogynistic Attack On Georgetown Law Student Continues With Increased Vitriol (Media Matters for America)
      Always good to have a reference, this is it. "Rush Limbaugh is not backing down after widespread condemnation over his misogynistic attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University Law School student who testified before Congress recently about the problems caused when women lack access to contraception. " Multiple clips for future show and tells.
    • America's Death Squads (Davies, PDA Community/ZCommunications)
      "Barack Obama has halted the macabre parade of hooded, shackled suspects in orange jumpsuits stumbling off American planes into the tropical sunshine at Guantanamo, but he has not done so by restoring the rule of law. Instead, to a great extent, he has replaced Bush’s policy with a global campaign to simply kill a wide range of people in cold blood: terrorism suspects, resistance fighters, and anyone else added to secret lists for secret reasons. From a uniquely American “exceptionalist” point of view, killing suspects instead of capturing them is a convenient way to avoid the embarrassment of sweeping up hundreds of mostly innocent people in an indiscriminate global dragnet and then not knowing what to do with them. The dead tell no tales. Public outrage is contained within the faraway countries where the killings take place and does not cause domestic political problems."
    • Corruption in Iraq: 'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay' (Abdul-Ahad, Guardian)
      Iraq ten years after: instead of one Saddam, many little ones. "Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like his brothers. Then one day she took a phone call from an officer who said she could go to visit him if she paid a bribe. She borrowed the money from her neighbour and set off for the prison. "We waited until they brought him," she said. "His hands and legs were tied in metal chains like a criminal. I didn't know him from the torture. He wasn't my son, he was someone else.""

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Around town: stuff from my inbox

Posted by Thomas Nephew on June 23rd, 2007

  • National Geographic is commemorating World Refugee Day tomorrow at their headquarters downtown with a free party and showing of the movie God Grew Tired of Us (movie is at 4 PM).

    WHEN    : Saturday, June 23, starting 12 pm, movie at 4pm
    WHERE: National Geographic headquarters
  • Special advance screening of “NO END IN SIGHT,” winner of the 2007 Sundance Special Jury Award for Documentary, followed by a panel discussion. Admission is free, BUT you must RSVP via the above link; first come first served. About “No End in Sight“:
    The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality, and anarchy, “NO END IN SIGHT” is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness, and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003), as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts.

    WHEN: Monday, June 25, 2007, 7:30pm to 9:30pm
    WHERE: E Street Cinema, 555 11th Street NW (near Metro Center and Gallery Place metro stops)

  • Should Impeachment be on the Table? An impeachment grassroots town hall forum at George Mason University, with participants including:
    • Bruce Fein, Constitutional lawyer; Associate Deputy Attorney General, Reagan Administration; Principal, the Lichfield Group; Principal, the American Freedom Agenda; former General Counsel, FCC.
    • Lawrence Wilkerson, Chief of Staff for Secretary of State, Colin Powell; Visiting Professor, College of William & Mary; former Director, USMC War College, Quantico, VA; Colonel, US Army, retired.
    • Marcus Raskin, Co-Founder, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC; Professor, the George Washington University; author “Four Freedoms Under Siege,” and “In Democracy’s Shadow.”
    • Barbara Olshansky, Professor, Stanford Law School; former Deputy Director, Center for Constitutional Rights; Co-Author “The Case for Impeachment.”
    • Mark Levine, Host “Inside Scoop” radio, internet and TV talk show; former U.S. Congressional staff attorney.
    • Dennis Loo, Professor, Cal Poly Pomona, Co-Editor “Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush & Cheney.”
    • Barbara Bowley, Associate Professor & Director Education Services, Woodbury University; contributor “Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush & Cheney.”
    • Ron Pinchback (Moderator), General Manager, WPFW (89.3 FM), Pacifica Radio, Washington, D.C.

    WHEN: Saturday, June 23, 1-4pm
    WHERE: George Mason University Mason Hall Conference Center

  • Captain John Smith’s Shallop Docks at Mount Vernon
    …commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Captain John Smith’s extraordinary voyage to explore the Chesapeake Bay. A replica of Smith’s 30-foot “shallop” will retrace the 1,500 mile route, stopping at Mount Vernon with an exhibition that offers an in-depth look at the world of the early 17th-century Chesapeake Native American and English cultures. Created by Sultana Projects, a non-profit educational organization, on the web at www.SchoonerSultana.org.

    WHEN: June 23-24, 8am-5pm
    WHERE: Mt. Vernon

    Not necessarily going to make it to any of these myself, but who knows. Hat tips for the first three items go to Ray, Robert, and Michelle (Takoma Park Impeach Bush Cheney), respectively.

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