August 2009 archive

Morning Joe Defends Bush/Torture. The GOP is scared, and for good reason

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Memo: Attach Bush to torture = make them defend both.

    Though Morning Joe doesn’t say Bush’s name, I think we should, and Democrats will use this to pursue justice and Destroy the GOP. I consider it a great instance of killing two birds with one stone.



    Republicans will say this will damage the President’s popularity in polls, they will justify and lie and say anything to avoid owning this issue, but the fact is that the law was broken, and I believe this is the beginning of a well timed plan to get the ball rolling now, and then use it against the GOP for maximum effect.

More below the fold, and a call to action . . .  

Docudharma Times Tuesday August 25

Shackles and blindfold for freed detainee on his way home



By Jonathan S. Landay, Hashim Shukoor and Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan – A young Afghan held for six years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejoined his family in southern Kabul late Monday, ending an odyssey that came to symbolize many of the problems of the Bush administration’s war on terror detention policies.

Mohammed Jawad, who may have been as young as 12 when he was arrested in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers, pronounced himself “very happy” but tired after a day in which he arrived in Afghanistan on a U.S. military flight – in shackles and blindfolded, according to his lawyer.<

Diving Deep for a Living Fossil



http://topics.nytimes.com/top/…  

For 33 years, Peter A. Rona has pursued an ancient, elusive animal, repeatedly plunging down more than two miles to the muddy seabed of the North Atlantic to search out, and if possible, pry loose his quarry.Like Ahab, he has failed time and again. Despite access to the world’s best equipment for deep exploration, he has always come back empty-handed, the creature eluding his grip.

The animal is no white whale. And Dr. Rona is no unhinged Captain Ahab, but rather a distinguished oceanographer at Rutgers University. And he has now succeeded in making an intellectual splash with a new research report, written with a team of a dozen colleagues.

Do to work commitments  I will be unable to  provide my usual contribution from Wednesday August 26 until Saturday August 29. I regret any inconvenience this may cause.    

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

2009 Poems:  Dreamcatcher


Designs on a Better World

Moving

Moving

to a new spot

a new home

if it can be

means new neighbors

new trials

tribulations

sometimes

with always the thought

that dangers can lurk

that have been cast aside

for the past nine years

Fitting in

is not always easy

for those

of alternate shape

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–July 31, 2009

Military wants more troops, Feingold wants exit timeline

American military commanders have been steadily repeating the message that more U.S. troops may be needed in Afghanistan, while the support for the open-ended war is diminishing by the American people and some members of the U.S. Congress despite President Obama’s saying Afghanistan is a ‘war of necessity‘.

The New York Times reported, “American military commanders with the NATO mission in Afghanistan told Obama’s chief envoy to the region this weekend that they did not have enough troops to do their job, pushed past their limit by Taliban rebels who operate across borders.”

Then on Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) told the Appleton Post-Crescent editorial board that now a timeline for a military pullout from Afghanistan is needed.

WTFF?? The Fed is trading in derivatives????

What the fucking fuck???  Say it ain’t so!

Zero Hedge is reporting that the Fed has been betting its shit on the big crap table.

One-point-some-odd trillion in March alone.

Box cars working, people.

WTFF??

If true, this is government on drugs, flying saucer, four-way-window-pane.

I’m not gonna tell you who wrote this

I just read this over at http://www.cryptogon.com, which is a great site.   He doesn’t tell you who wrote it either, but he links to it.   It’s succinct but covers the bases, and is brutally to the point.

In short, it might be the best thing I’ve read regarding the current disastrous situation in this country.  

It’s titled “Common Sense 2009”


The American government — which we once called our government — has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “economic royalists,” who choose our elected officials — indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment’s hesitation, they took our money — yours and mine — to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don’t care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as “useless eaters.”

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

“A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.”

There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: “And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis — the Great Depression — was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy.”

This is nonsense.

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did — knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) — was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight — and we’ve all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.

The “Bad Apples” are scared!

While the newly released CIA Inspector General report, as redacted as it is, has raised eyebrows with the techniques used during interrogations, I found some items that raised MY eyebrows:

231.  During the course of this Review, a number of [CIA] Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of, recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC Program.  A number of officers expressed concern that a human rights group might pursue them for activities.  Additionally, they feared that the Agency would not stand behind them if this occurred.

232. One officer expressed conern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some wanted list to appear before the World Court for war crimes stemming from activities.

Another said, “Ten years from now we’re going to be ‘sorry we’re doing this … [but] it has to be done.” He expressed concern that the CTC Program will be exposed in the news media and cited particular concern about the possibility of being named in a leak.

Glenn Greenwald has a great article on this issue.

Argentina: Zanon belongs to the workers

Orignal article, written by the workers of Zanon-Sindicato Ceramistas in Neuquén, Argentina and subtitled “After 9 years of struggle we have achieved the definitive expropriation of our factory.” Via In Defence of Marxism.

After 9 years of struggle we have achieved the definitive expropriation of our factory.

The path taken by the workers at Zanon would not have been possible without previously seizing our union representation from the trade union bureaucracy.

No. 258 – CIA contractor killed person in interrogation

In the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General’s 2004 report on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (PDF) is this passage stating “inhumane… detention and interrogation techniques were used”. In addition, a CIA contractor killed “an individual” at Asadabad Base in Afghanistan “while under interrogation” in June 2003.

258 . (TS Unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques were used referred to the Department of Justice (DoJ) for potential prosecution. incident will be the subject of a separate Report of Investigation by the Office of Inspector General.

unauthorized techniques were used in the interrogation of an individual who died at Asadabad Base while under interrogation by an Agency contractor in June 2003. Agency officers did not normally conduct interrogations at that location the Agency officers involved lacked timely and adequate guidance, training, experience, supervision, or authorization, and did not exercise sound judgment.

The argument had been no one died while being interrogated tortured, but the OIG’s report contradicts that. Not only that, but “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques were used”.

At the time the Abu Ghraib photos became known, the NY Times identified the person killed at Asadabad as Abdul Wali.

The third death under investigation at the C.I.A. occurred in Afghanistan in June 2003. The dead man was named Abdul Wali, a former local commander who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980’s and turned himself in to American forces last June in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan. He died while being interrogated by an independent contract employee of the C.I.A.

Wali surrendered to the U.S. and was then killed by a CIA contractor named David Passaro. According to the News and Observer, he is serving eight years for beating Wali resulting in his death.

GOOD NEWS! Accountability: Holder to name Special Prosecutor for torture, and how Dems will use it

      Crossposted at progressiveelectorate.com

(I’d just like to state clearly, this is not a rebuttal to the diary posted by Something the Dog Said, rather, consider it a differing opinion)

From WaPo

Prosecutor to CIA Abuse Allegations

by abuse allegations, they mean torture.

More!

From a Daily Kos diary

Breaking: “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House

    Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.

“You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year,” a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.    

and this on the heels of news this weekend

From isria.com

9 GOP Senators ask Holder for Mercy for Bus/Cheney

    Now, this is the key part of the news, because I do not think a 1/4 of the GOP Senate would put their necks out to save some no-name underlings.

    I think this is going all the way to the top, and, in my new found attempt to look at things in a glass half full view.

    Therefore, I give you my belief, as of now, that the ball is now rolling, it will build and build, and by the summer of 2010 going into 2012, America WILL lead to Bush and Cheney themselves.

    More below the fold

There Must Be a Reason…

How NOT to conduct honest research.

Fox911

Sociologists representing four major research institutions have published a study in the journal Sociological Inquiry examining how we support our false beliefs. They examined the false belief of many voters during the 2004 general election that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the Saudi/Al Queda attacks on September 11, 2001.

These researchers concluded that the false beliefs were not caused by lies told repeatedly by the Bush Administration, the New York Times, WaPo, FoxNews and assorted other mainstream media in print, broadcast, cable and radio, but reflected a mere quirk of the individuals’ own personal need to justify a war that was already being waged. Is this yet another example of dishonest publicly funded research, bought by historical revisionists instead of Big Pharma this time?

The researchers named their study “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification,” and claim that their findings offer a serious challenge to democracy. The inference from that claim being, of course, that regular people are just too damned stupid and dishonest with themselves to justify letting them vote. Wow.

While it is a trivial observation that people tend to believe what they want to believe, and seek out information sources that support and/or confirm their already-held beliefs, I am certainly not convinced that Ph.D. sociologists should have so pointedly ignored the facts in this particular case of “What’s Wrong With WingNuts?” It was the Bush-Cheney administration that invented the lies, started the war, and was backed up in that false propaganda effort by the mainstream media establishment. Seems like giving political liars and media propagandists a free pass on misleading the public does serious damage to the credibility of erstwhile social science research!

Four at Four

No Cheney accountability, Holder doesn’t “go there”
Holder limits CIA probe to narrowest of scope

  1. The Washington Post reports Holder is set to appoint prosecutor for narrow investigation of CIA terror interrogations.

    Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.

    Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

    Durham’s mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

    The NY Times reports President Obama did not interfere with Holder’s decision on the CIA torture investigation. However, Obama continued to say he prefered to be forward looking.

    The Washington Independent reports Civil liberties groups prepare a delicate message on the CIA probe. The limited scope is a severe setback.

    Worse than doing nothing at all” was how Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, described Holder’s possible decision to stop an inquiry at low-level interrogators…

Four at Four continues with Obama makes subtle and minimal changes to Bush detainee and rendition policies, and updates from Afghanistan and Iraq.

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