(11AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Original article, Obama’s victory for torturers, by Bill Van Auken via World Socialist Web Site:
A federal appeals court’s dismissal Wednesday of a lawsuit on behalf of victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program represents a victory for the Obama administration’s defense of torture and dictatorial executive powers.
There are those who can’t wrap their minds around why the Obama Administration has become a pariah amongst some on the left, or why the Democrats are being dragged down with the President. The fact that the Obama administration would, for all intents and purposes, support torture is one of a myriad of reasons. The failure of the Administration, and by proxy the Democrats in Congress who have done little or nothing to hold the torturers accountable, is disturbing and disgusting. It shows that the Democrats in Washington are, for the most part, mad with power: For them, just as it is with many (if not most) Republicans, the ends justify the means.
The ends, in this case, are the end of the rule of law and the end of our constitutional republic.
In a six-to-five ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the argument made by the Obama administration-echoing the position taken by the Bush administration before it-that to allow the case to go forward would compromise “state secrets” and thereby endanger “national security.”
The United States has become, in the words of Gore Vidal, a National Security State (http://www.therealnews.com/t2/premiums/329-the-history-of-the-national-security-state for an astounding video on the National Security State). The Obama Administration has continued the inexorable march toward this monstrosity. Obama and the Democrats have apparently, and deservedly, lost a great deal of their support for doing so. Perhaps they could regain that support with a dramatic reversal of policy. Don’t wait for it.
Under both administrations, the Justice Department intervened in a lawsuit that had been brought not against the government, but against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. This Boeing subsidiary organized, and profited from, the secret CIA flights in which individuals abducted by the US spy agency were transported in shackles and hoods, often having been drugged, to so-called “black sites”-secret overseas prisons where they were tortured by CIA and foreign intelligence agency interrogators.
I’ll let you read the rest of the article. Obama, and his cohorts from the military-industrial-financial complex, have thrown the American people under the bus. Their actions on torture, the economy and foreign policy (amongst many others) threaten the very fabric of the US nation. The Democrats, by tacitly (and that’s being polite) supporting the actions of Obama and his cronies, are diving headlong into the dustbin of history (a position, which a mere two years go it appeared the Republicans were headed). This insanity needs to stop if the US is to have a chance to survive as a country. It is clear that most of the current crop of politicians, and their brands of politics and policies, have to be swept away. The Republicans and Democrats, as they are now constituted on a state and national level, are not the answers.
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…. that if you heat up the connection bolts in steel girders at the same time you’re increasing their load, they eventually fail, and the beams and all their great mass drop down onto the next floor, and then things keep going down towards the center of the earth. Or that some buildings that are like chimneys behave very poorly for the interior occupants, when ignited. Every. Damned. Year.
Looks like the current administration fell into the old mindset that they can just have the Pentagon intimidate anyone or any country which disagrees with them, just like the old Bush and Cheney Crime Families did.
There has been no repudiation of the past, indeed, an embrace of it, and it seems Holder exists only to give out passes or passports to a new beginning. They meant well. They surely did. So why did we bother with the phony regime change if it were merely a matter of perceptions ?
which makes war on others on the basis of lies, kidnaps and tortures people from around the world with no legal accountability, and it’s great “liberal”, “progressive” party manages to turn these crimes against humanity into the definition of “pragtism” and even “the rule of law” (“state secrecy” laws).
The State is Organized Crime and must be abolished.
it was clear from the get-go that all this was coming when, while he was still a State Senator, and running for POTUS, that he voted for continued funding for our war in Iraq, promised to escalate, extend and expand our war in Afghanistan (which he’s certainly done), and voted for the FISA Bill. All these factors, imho, should’ve sounded an alarm.
So saying, not being able or willing to stomach either the Obama/Biden or the (heaven forbid!) McCain/Palin ticket, I wrote in my own ticket at the polls during the last POTUS election. Since people do write in their own tickets, doing write-in votes is another way of making oneself heard.