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Sign The Goddamn War Crimes Petition Already!

Don’t expect me to or even ask me to tell you why you should sign the petition.  

You already know why you should sign the petition. You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you why you should sign the petition.

Petition Badge Click the Badge to read and sign the Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.
Get Badge Click “Get Badge” to get the html code and post the badge on your blog or website so other people can find and sign the petition too.

Petitioning For Change: January 01 Recap

Change.org

Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration

President-elect Obama recently said, “if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law.

Attorney General-designate Eric Holder recently said top Bush Administration officials “authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance of American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the Writ of Habeus Corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants, and authorized the use of procedures that both violate international law and the United States Constitution.

The Bush administration has refused to investigate its own crimes and President Bush may issue blanket pardons before he leaves. President Obama must appoint a Special Prosecutor – ideally Patrick Fitzgerald – to fully investigate these crimes and prosecute those responsible to demonstrate that we are truly a Nation of Laws and no one – including the President – is above the law.

Bob Fertik (President of Democrats.com), New York, NY Dec 06 @ 06:02AM PST

First round voting for the Ideas for Change in America Competition closed at midnight on December 31, 2008.



This idea finished in 2nd Place in the Government Reform category and has therefore qualified for the final round. Final round voting will run from January 5th – 15th, and voting totals will be reset at zero for all qualifying ideas to ensure an equal playing field.

MEMO TO: Barack Obama

Nine Steps to Peace for Obama in the New Year

Deepak Chopra

Thursday, 01 January 2009

AlterNet via Truthout

   Steps the incoming president can take to build a peace-based economy.

   The following is a memo to Barack Obama from Deepak Chopra.

   You have been elected by the first anti-war constituency since 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected after promising to end the Korean War. But ending a war isn’t the same as bringing peace. America has been on a war footing since the day after Pearl Harbor, 67 years ago. We spend more on our military than the next 16 countries combined. If you have a vision of change that goes to the heart of this country’s deep problems, ending our dependence on war is far more important than ending our dependency on foreign oil.

   The most immediate changes are economic. Unless it can make as much money as war, peace doesn’t stand a chance. Since aerospace and military technologies remain the United States’ most destructive export, fostering wars around the world, what steps can we take to reverse that trend and build a peace-based economy?

   1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.

   2. Write into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project.

   3. Subsidize conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding.

   4. Convert military bases to housing for the poor.

   5. Phase out all foreign military bases.

   6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure.

   7. Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.

   8. Reduce armaments like destroyers and submarines that have no use against terrorism and were intended to defend against a superpower enemy that no longer exists.

   9. Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.

   These are just the beginning. We don’t lack creativity in coping with change. Without a conversion of our present war economy to a peace economy, the high profits of the military-industrial complex ensures that it will never end.

   Do these nine steps seem unrealistic or fanciful? In various ways, other countries have adopted similar measures. The former Soviet army is occupied with farming and other peaceful work, for example. But comparisons are rather pointless, since only the United States is burdened with such a massive reliance on defense spending. Ultimately, empire follows the dollar. As a society, we want peace, and we want to be seen as a nation that promotes peace. For either ideal to come true, you as president must back up your vision of change with economic reality. So far, that hasn’t happened under any of your predecessors. All hopes are pinned on you.

————    

   Deepak Chopra is acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest leaders in the field of mind-body medicine. He is the author of over 50 books, including “Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment” and “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind.”

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. TRUTHOUT HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR IS TRUTHOUT ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.

20 Days To The Bush Legacy

By David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Happy New Year? It Lies Within Each Of Us

Hat tip to Alexa at NION:

You already know the news.

If I could make you laugh, or ease your mind, I would – and I’d feel better, too.

I’m not giving up. I hope you won’t, either.

The power of peace lies within each of us.

–Willy Whitefeather

Hope, by Willy Whitefeather

MSM: “BREAKING: Ask Obama For a Torture Special Prosecutor”

You’ve gotta love MSM reporters. “I do?“, you ask. “Why?

Heh. Well, some of them anyway!



Image courtesy of: www.arimelber.com

Ari Melber is:

[…] a monthly columnist for Politico and […] a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, FOX Business, NPR and Air America, on programs including The Today Show, American Morning, Washington Journal, Power Lunch, The Live Desk, MSNBC Reports with David Shuster, The Ron Reagan Show and The Rachel Maddow Show, among others.

Melber has been a featured speaker in forums sponsored by the Yale Political Science Department; Harvard Law School, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, TimeWarner Summit; Campaign for America’s Future; Young Democrats of America; Cornell University Democrats; Columbia University Democrats; Democracy for America; New York’s Blogging Liberally; Personal Democracy Forum, [as well as] Netroots Nation and the YearlyKos netroots conventions.

[…] Melber’s writing has been widely cited by publications across the spectrum, such as the New York Times Magazine, The Week, The Washington Times, Slate, ABCNews.com, MSNBC.com, WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com, Economist.com, Wired.com, Wall Street Journal Online, National Review Online, American Conservative Online, Atlantic Monthly Online, American Spectator Online and Reason.com.

[…] his writing has also appeared in The Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Daily News, New York Daily News, New York Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Forward, Huffington Post, CBSNews.com and The Stranger, among others. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

So Ari is an educated, smart, experienced and good reporter, and Ari gets around. So what, you ask? Big deal? Who cares? Who’s side is Ari on?

Well, Ari’s on our side. Ari now writes for The Nation.

And Ari has an article up yesterday on the front page of The Nation, an article that is also the lead article at Huffington Post on their “Eric Holder: Some news is so big it needs its own page” page.

Ari’s article at The Nation is titled: BREAKING: Ask Obama For a Torture Special Prosecutor. The HuffPo version is on the top of this page.

The second link in Ari’s opening paragraph is to the Docudharma/Democrats.com sponsored Citizens Petition for a Special Prosecutor, at Democrats com.

Annus Horribilis: Looking Back

to see if I was looking back to see if they were looking back at me.

**

If proof were needed that the US constitution still worked, here it was. If proof were needed that America had expunged its original sin of racial discrimination, here it was. And if proof were needed that Americans were pragmatists, not ideologues, here it was.

By year end, it was possible for the first time to detect – rather than just to hope for – the beginning of the end of the Great Repression. The downward spiral in America’s real estate market and the banking system had finally been halted by radical steps that the administration had initially hesitated to take. At the same time, the far larger economic problems in the rest of the world had given Obama a unique opportunity to reassert American leadership, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.

The “unipolar moment” was over, no question. But power is a relative concept, as the president pointed out in his last press conference of the year: “They warned us that America was doomed to decline. And we certainly all got poorer this year. But they forgot that if everyone else declined even further, then America would still be out in front. After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

And, with a wink, President Barack Obama wished the world a happy new year.

**Niall Ferguson is a contributing editor of the FT and the author of “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World” (Penguin)

Sunday Rhythm & Balooooooze!



Percy Sledge- When A Man Loves A Woman



Wilson Pickett – In The Midnight Hour

La La La La La, We Are NOT Amused

Via RawStory…

“It was an assault,” she said. “And the president laughed it off, he wasn’t hurt, he’s very quick as you know he’s a natural athlete and ducked it, but on the other hand it was an assault.”

This video is from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast Dec. 28, 2008.

Pardon Me, Mr. Bush?

David Swanson writes today…

Yes We Can Unpardon War Criminals

Dear President Elect Obama,

On his third day in office President Grant revoked two pardons that had been granted by President Andrew Johnson. President Nixon also undid a pardon that had been granted by President Lyndon Johnson. There may be other examples of this, as these two have somewhat accidentally come up in a discussion focused on numerous examples of presidents undoing pardons that they had themselves granted, something the current president did last week. (See http://pardonpower.com ). In 2001, President George W. Bush’s lawyers advised him that he could undo a pardon that President Clinton had granted.

Much of the discussion of this history of revoking pardons deals with the question of whether a pardon can still be revoked after actually reaching the hands of the pardonee, or after various other obscure lines are crossed in the process of issuing and enforcing of the pardon. If President Bush issues blanket pardons to dozens of criminals in his administration for crimes that he himself authorized, he will probably — with the exception of Libby — not even name them, much less initiate any processes through which they are each formally notified of the pardons. He will be pardoning people of crimes they have not yet been charged with, so the question of timing is something you are unlikely to have to worry about (except perhaps with Libby).

Virtually none of the discussion of these matters ever addresses the appropriateness or legitimacy of the pardons involved or of the revoking of them. The history would appear to establish that you will have the power to revoke Bush’s pardons. I want to stress that you will also have a moral responsibility to do so and a legal requirement to do so. Morally and legally, you have no choice in this matter. When you take the oath of office, you will be promising to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Through Article VI of our Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment are the supreme laws of this land. Those laws bind you to prosecute violations, including torture and other war crimes of which Bush, Cheney, and their subordinates are guilty and which Bush is likely to try to pardon.

The Road Less Traveled: Melissa Etheridge on Rick Warren

This kind of gives me a little more open minded view of Rick Warren. Not much, mind you, but a little…

The Choice Is Ours Now

Melissa Etheridge

Huffington Post, December 22, 2008

I hadn’t heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same ‘ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways.

[snip…]

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward all men and women… and everyone in-between.

And So This Is Christmas…





John Odum had an interesting post up at OpenLeft yesterday. Good food for thought.

The Rise of the Angry Center?

Odum, December 23, 2008, OpenLeft

My thesis was that much of the reactive anger we’re seeing in blog comments every time a diarist criticizes a choice or appointment the President Elect makes is not necessarily all attributable to what Sirota calls “Dear Leaderism.” In fact, a significant portion of that anger does not share the characteristics of such a “cult of personality” at all. In these cases, I think we’re seeing hints of a new manifestation of the so-called “moderate” center in American politics – a center possessing a distinction from its previous incarnations that could have ramifications for future debate:

This new “angry centre” has found institutional voice in the ideology-versus-pragmatism discussion playing out in the media. Obama, to the fired-up centrists, is the champion of adulthood following eight years of screaming children, and it’s time for the children to pipe down and mind their manners, lest they find themselves expelled from the dinner table. This new centre is distinct from the old, even though it is populated by many of the same faces. The old centrism was quick to compromise and was largely defined by what it wasn’t (left or right).

This emerging, muscular centrism wants to be a force in its own right, defining itself, rather than being defined by the political poles. It’s basic tenets remain unchanged from the days of the Third Way, (with a more Keynesian bent, granted), but it stands eager to challenge anyone suggesting that taking a principled, centrist stand is oxymoronic.

In other words, the American centre has itself become ideological – and it’s pissed off.

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