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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.""

No torture. No exceptions. Not even by the GOP.

Posted by Thomas Nephew on August 22nd, 2008

The people at “rejecttorture.org” just e-mailed to let me know that the Republican Party is soliciting input for their national platform at http://www.gopplatform2008.com.

The GOP is thus doing something similar what Obama and the Democrats did with the kind of “Listening to America” event I attended — except they’re apparently doing it all online, and calling that “the most grassroots-driven platform in the history of American politics.” They specify that participants need not be Republican to have a voice in their platform process.

Naturally, the “Reject Torture” people are urging all of us to weigh in with variations on “reject torture” and “no torture, no exceptions.” As they noted in their e-mail, the Democrats actually have “reject torture” in the draft Democratic platform,* as well as rejecting the “legal” processes that have kept torture hidden away for years –

We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. [...]

…To build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. …

So let’s take the Republican Party organizers at their word and see what happens. There’s a sign-up process - be sure to check the box next to “Attribute Ideas, so your first name and city will appear — followed by a followup e-mail from the site. Once you use the password in the e-mail to log in, you’re presented with the kind of online form similar to those used by many politicians and businesses, in which your comments are categorized by issue. Since none correspond directly to the issue of torture — surprise, surprise — the “Reject Torture” organizers suggest you categorize your anti-torture input as either “Protecting American Values: Other” or “National Security: Human Rights.”

I chose the latter, and wrote:

The United States should never torture anyone under any circumstances. To do so demeans our country as a whole, and ignores what interrogators tell us over and over again: that torture doesn’t work.

There are better ways to get information from those who have it, instead of having to follow up on every desperate lie told by someone just trying to make the pain or torment or degrading treatment stop. And there are costs and risks every time we stoop to torture: every time it happens, our country runs the real risk of making an enemy out of a bystander, loses any ability to try our true enemies fairly, and loses the respect of more of our friends around the world.

It’s time to draw the line and say “no torture, no exceptions” — not for the military services, not for the intelligence services, not for anyone.

I hope you’ll join me in sending messages like this to Minneapolis, to the Republican Party, and to John McCain.

=====
* EDIT, 8/23: Democratic platform section added. The cited parts can be found on page 49 of the document, p.54 of 56 PDF pages.

Category: Post. Tags: activism, gop, torture. Thread RSS, Comment, Trackback. Print This

4 Responses to “No torture. No exceptions. Not even by the GOP.”

Nell Says:
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:09 am
Where do I go to see what the Democratic Party platform says about torture?

OT - admin: The last several posts here have big (multiple screens’ worth) blank spaces in them. It might have to do with embedded videos. I’m using IE 6.x. (No lectures, please.)
Thomas Nephew Says:
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
OT-admin
Nell! I wouldn’t lecture you. You’re right that this post and the last one have an embedded YouTube video in them. Have these always been a problem? The prior August posts (Reformations, Legal Scandals.., No more important priority, Edwards… Off to Maine for a week) did not have videos in them. One on July 30 (Letterman interviews Jane Mayer) did. Do the prior August ones have the blank spaces? I’ve seen some service online where I can see how the site looks using different browsers, monitor resolutions and so forth. I’ll see what I can figure out.

what the Dem party says about torture
Go here, to p.49 (56 page PDF). It was pretty decent, in the same section as the parts I wrote about when I reviewed it re FISA and the Silver Spring meeting results. I’ll edit this piece to include the information.

= = = = =
[[[[5pm: Used http://browsershots.org/ to test this page and the Letterman page. That confirmed that neither embedded YouTube vids "showed up" except as broken image links under MSIE6.0 (at least for selected, normal monitor widths and color depths). But it does for Firefox 3.0 and probably others (only tested the Letterman page). I'm a little baffled -- I haven't changed anything about how I embed videos from YouTube. Maybe I need to stop putting off upgrading to Wordpress 2.6 from 2.5.1, maybe I shouldn't blockquote the embedded videos (can't imagine why that would be it though. -- will try here and test with browsershots.) Nell, if you remember that the Letterman video used to work, or earlier ones, that would help a little, esp. if they worked with this site and 3-column theme.

Anyone else having Nell's trouble? If so, leave a comment or e-mail me (thomasn528 at prodigy dot net), with mainly (a) the browser you use, plus, if possible: (b)monitor width, (c)color depth, (d)java enabled or not, (e)flash enabled or not.]]]]
Thomas Nephew Says:
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
The two other YouTube videos I embedded after the switch to this 3-column format were in the “German blogger series: Barack in Berlin” post and the “The 4th Amendment: 12/15/1791-7/9/2008?” post, also both in late July. I assume they don’t show up for you now, either; I’m wondering if they ever did. If they used to be visible to you but aren’t any more, either YouTube changed something, Wordpress changed something, or some minuscule thing I did changed something.
Nell Says:
August 30th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
The video-less August posts are just fine, no breaks or blank sections.

The Jane Mayer-Letterman post has the long blank.

Here’s something I just discovered: when I view the video-containing posts full-screen (which I never do in real life, just was testing), they line up fine, no big blanks. When I view them with a smaller-than-full-screen video, the video moves down below where the right-hand column text ends, a multi-screen blank.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you need me to test or report anything else.

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No torture. No exceptions. Not even by the GOP.

4 Responses to “No torture. No exceptions. Not even by the GOP.”

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