The East India Company’s first corporate charter was granted in 1600 for a period of fifteen years. The company struggled to advance its trading and turn a profit initially but by 1609, business was picking up and King James I renewed the charter in 1609, for an indefinite period of time.

Imperialism worked like it always has and the corporation was able to expand toward many different places and grow bigger and richer. Thanks in large part to the stockholders and other rich people, deregulation of the company proceeded to occur over the years.

Monopolies were imposed soon enough. Another company was briefly set up by the government to try to compete, but they soon argued that there really was no strong competition against the company, so the companies merged.  

There’s no possible way to fit all of this in one post. I’ll start here and write a series summarizing the trial and what I predict will happen. I’ll start with some background for the trial.

First let me make clear, I’m not a lawyer. I’m just an interested gay person who thinks this trial will affect all our lives. I don’t even live in California. I’m pretty inquisitive and if I say something, I’ve researched it quite a bit, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wrong. I’m not completely confident that I’ll get all the legal aspects right and if anyone wants to comment to correct errors, please feel free.

Two gay couples in California, one male couple and one female couple, attempted to get married in California, but were denied a marriage license since Prop. 8 had passed, limiting marriages in California to one man and one woman. They decided to combine their cases and sue the Governor and the Attorney General, along with a few others in federal court. Kristin Perry is the name on the case, so it is called Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

It’s just been discovered that more abortions happened in 2009 than were previously known. This is a shocking revelation, compounded by the fact that there is no outrage over this. Nobody in the so-called pro-life movement is bothering to discuss this revelation.

I’m sickened.

I would think that pro-life organizations would want to stop these people from doing this to our country. Abortion is murder, right? These people are being allowed to do this because of an erroneously decided Supreme Court decision! I mean, the judges were clearly being activist when they decided it. This decision supposedly allowed more “freedom” to people but what it really does is allow more people to commit abhorrent acts under the guise of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This is obviously not what the people who wrote that amendment intended.

And it’s not even for the stupid “health” of the mother.

Just look at some of these people who are doing this:

By the end of Dec. 2008 as announced Circuit City Filed Bankruptcy, they promised to keep all

stores open for the holiday season, but afterwards, they plan on closing 155 stores nationwide.

Aborted. Just like that.  

In December 2007, the Washington Post reported on the first CIA agent to openly admit the government used torture. John Kiriakou says that the CIA used waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah, and that it worked.

Recall that it was later reported that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

Kiriakou said:

“It was like flipping a switch,” said Kiriakou, the first former CIA employee directly involved in the questioning of “high-value” al-Qaeda detainees to speak publicly.

In an interview, Kiriakou said he did not witness Abu Zubaida’s waterboarding but was part of the interrogation team that questioned him in a hospital in Pakistan for weeks after his capture in that country in the spring of 2002.

He added:

The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.

“He said that Allah had come to him in his cell and told him to cooperate, because it would make things easier for his brothers,” Kiriakou said.

God wanted him to co-operate so his brothers wouldn’t be tortured as well. Man the CIA is good.

Except

“What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts,” he writes. “I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence.”

But never mind, he says now.

“I wasn’t there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.”

[…]

But after his one-paragraph confession, Kiriakou adds that he didn’t have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn’t.

So one of the main arguments trotted out to claim that torture works was a lie. This isn’t surprising given all the lies from the previous administration. This guy was all over ABC News and other places “admitting” his story to anyone who’d listen and telling us that torture worked. Waterboarding saved lives.

It was just another campaign to make us believe lies the government wanted us to buy.  

It’s awkward times for bigots these days. With Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal Prop. 8 trial, it’s clear that the way gay issues are discussed is changing for the better. Homophobia is on trial.

Even the words we are using are different. There’s a well-known gay marriage campaign called “No H8.” No hate. The name itself implies that opposing gay marriage is hateful. This is where we are now in this country. Homophobes are required to define their positions and then defend them through facts, logic and empirical arguments.

This is not working out so well, to say the least.

Finally, when forced to confront their beliefs, witnesses have either dropped out, relied on dated stereotypes not based on facts, or converted mid-cross-examination.

Witness this exchange from a few minutes ago (Please excuse the length of this, it’s needed to explain the questioning:)

Here, “Boise” is Boies. The livebloggers are typing so quickly so forgive their typos. DB is Dr. David Blankenhorn, defense witness.)

Boise. Are you aware of any study that shows that children of gays and lesbians have different worse outcomes than straight?

B: No. May I add?

Boise: It is not okay for you to volunteer any information. You can give speeches when your counsel has you.

Boise: Have you given a lot of thought to DPs?

B: Yes.

Boise: I asked you whether it was your view if DPs contribute to deinstitutionalize marriage? Yes, No. I don’t know.

B: Yes, they could.

Boise: Let’s try to get your view regardless of what you said before.

B: I believe it’s possible they could do so.

Boise: You say it’s possible. Anything is possible. Do you say it’s likely that they do so?

B: I believe

J: Counsel is entitled to an answer to his question. There’s a question and then an answer. That’s the way the process works.

Boise: Do you believe that DPs that are open to opposite sex couples are likely to speed deinstitutionalize of marriage.

B: Yes.

Boise: How about only open to ss?

B: Significantly less likely to do so.

Boise: Opposite sex couples over 62?

B: Significantly less likely.

Boise. You know that ss couples are raising children?

B: Of course!

Boise: Hundreds of thousands?

B: I don’t know.

Boise: Did you attempt to find out how many?

BLB: Yes.

Boise: Approximately how many?

B: I don’t know.

B: I believe that adoption of ss marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children.

I wrote this months ago on my blog but since DADT is still being implemented I figured I’d post here.

—

Some retired military people decided to write an article for the Washington Post saying that they don’t want to serve with gays.

In doing so, they came up with perhaps the most. Freudian. title. EVER. Seriously. They should’ve just titled it, “Dudes, stay the fuck away from my ass!” But I guess that might appear to be homophobic or something. Wouldn’t want that.

So, the former president of the United States has just admitted to torture:

George Bush has defended his decision to allow the use of torture on terror suspects in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

This is unbelievable. Torture is an illegal crime and the former PRESIDENT is defending it and making tons of excuses. He says it saved lives. He says it was completely necessary.

He’s not being as forceful as Dick Cheney and he won’t use the word torture.

He mentions these unnamed confessions it produced. I do not recall reading anything about legitimate confessions produced by torture. Every single confession has been questionable. KSM confessed to the 9/11 attack as well as a lot of others that he either had no involvement with, or the plots didn’t actually exist in the first place.

The Republicans and Harry “honorary Republican for the week” Reid have been arguing that it’s terrible, awful for terrorists to be allowed into the country in order to go straight to maximum security prison. Ignoring for a second that terrorists are allowed free rein over the country as long as they’re Christian and white and therefore can’t be racially profiled, I have other problems with this.

First of all: 9/11. Terrorists didn’t just come here. They came here and hijacked planes from American airports. After this happened, Republicans panicked about immigration. Most of the 9/11 hijackers got here legally.

Then: the anthrax attacks. Not only were terrorists here but they were never even discovered. They’re probably still somewhere around. awesome.

Third: remember the freaking FLIGHT SCHOOLS?

There were al Qaeda flight schools in the United States for years, and the FBI and others had been investigating them for years. And the Republicans, who I guess care a lot about American safety, openly mocked President Bill Clinton for saying Osama bin Laden was a threat and tried to say it was a case of “Wag the Dog.” So while the president was trying to fend off terrorists from attacking us, Republicans were denying that such a threat existed.

And now we’re letting them control the message and Harry Reid is saying that we will never, ever allow terrorists on American soil. Because the Republicans are so tough and manly and THEY never did.

Last week, the F.B.I. acknowledged the existence of a memorandum written last summer in which an agent in its Phoenix office urged his superiors to investigate Middle Eastern men who had enrolled at American flight schools and who might be connected to Mr. bin Laden.

This article is really interesting for a lot of reasons. The FBI knew of this, which isn’t surprising. The government, who’s saying now that they kept us safe all this time, wasn’t prepared to keep us safe.

The Phoenix memorandum, along with the disclosure this week that President Bush was warned in August of the possibility that Al Qaeda might be planning hijackings, have been seized on by lawmakers as evidence that the government missed signals of the coming attacks.

The disclosure they’re referring to of course is the PDB titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US” and talked about using planes. I feel so safe! And if you think that, hey, well, at least they started torturing after 9/11 which kept us safe, you should read this:

Mr. Murad, who was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and convicted in New York[…]Murad’s confession formed a basis for an analysis prepared for United States intelligence agencies in 1999. The analysis warned that bin Laden terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.

So they found out about the threat of bin Laden not from torture but from actual investigative work and interrogations.

The article goes on to note that his confession is on video.

These flight schools were in the US as well as other countries, here’s one that trained terrorists in Florida:

Officials at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach confirmed Thursday that the FBI has sought information on Waleed Al Sheri, 25, who graduated in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical science — the four-year school’s commercial pilot training degree.

The FBI is also investigating Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Al Sheri, 23. Law enforcement sources said they were looking at a possible family link between Marwan and Waleed Al Sheri.

So think about that next time Republicans talk about never allowing terrorists here.

In another case, they outright admit that they suck:

(CBS)  Law enforcement officials say the government kept hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta’s roommate from entering the United States on at least four occasions but didn’t track his money transfers that led directly to the eventual hijackers.

[…]

But they added the CIA had no information before Sept. 11 linking him to terrorism.

Nonetheless, experts said Bin al-Shibh’s actions highlight the challenges in stopping future terror attacks.

His repeated failed efforts to enter the country did not trigger an investigation. And there was no effort to track his finances.

When Bin al-Shibh failed to enter, Moussaoui was sent in his place and made it into the country with $35,000 in cash and a plan to train to fly jetliners, officials say.

They found all of this out, by the way, using legal means. It was just after the fact. They used FISA warrants and monitored foreign conversations. They tracked money and wire transfers. They even found videos made by these people discussing these events.

It gets worse:

A State Department official said Wednesday there is still no mechanism, even in the aftermath of Sept. 11, to flag a foreigner who is turned down repeatedly for visas for suspicions like those that surrounded Bin al-Shibh.

Also this guy was planning on heading to a Minnesota flight school. That’s where his replacement, Moussaoui, was picked up.

This is also quite terrifying, these are the people named by intelligence officials in 2002 who were giving information to stop terrorist attacks:

Officials identified the three others as Abu Zubair, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, and a man known by his nom de guerre, Riyadh the Facilitator. Abu Zubaydah has been extensively interrogated since his capture and has provided important information, American officials say. Interrogation of others in custody have provided new insights into Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, they add.

Well with what those people are saying, I’m SURE we can prevent attacks. Or something. And nothing they’re saying is a lie and nothing our administration is saying is a lie.

Remember Cheney’s “pretty well confirmed” statement that has been mentioned over the years and was most recently reiterated during Rachel Maddow’s takedown of Cheney?

Dick Cheney: ‘Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that — it’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don’t know at this point, but that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.’

(Meet the Press, 2001)

Well, um:

They add that they have not received any corroborating evidence to support an initial report from Czech intelligence that Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. Many intelligence and law enforcement officials now say they do not believe the meeting took place.

Oh. So, didn’t happen. And remember, though most of the information that was given to the 9/11 Commission was extracted through torture – that was done specifically to GET a link – they found no link:

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration’s main justifications for the war in Iraq.

[…]

But the report of the commission’s staff, based on its access to all relevant classified information, said that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation. In yesterday’s hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding.

Despite trying really hard to manufacture a link it did not even fool the 9/11 Commission, the CIA or FBI. And this was under the guise of keeping us safe. SAFE. Really.

And they blatantly lied:

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein “had long-established ties with al Qaeda.” Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq.

Feel safer yet?

Back to the New York Times:

American officials believe the disruption has helped prevent about half a dozen — and possibly many more — Qaeda plots in the last year. Officials say that when Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda’s operations chief, was captured in Pakistan in March he had several plots in the works, including at least one that was imminent.

IMMINENT! Wow. We almost all died from an imminent plot. Except that it didn’t happen.

Speaking of imminent, their ineptness is apparent here:

The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told AP.

Right okay.

Here’s more:

Law enforcement officials said in retrospect the FBI believes it should have accelerated the suggested check of U.S. flight schools after Moussaoui’s arrest but does not believe it would have led to the hijackers.

Maybe so.

This is how bad the problem was, even though it was being ignored:

At least one hijacker on each of the four planes was trained at a U.S. flight school, Tucker said. The Times said authorities believe 27 suspected terrorists received pilot training.

Seems like a small number, I guess, but these are people who never want ANY TERRORISTS on US soil. Because that’s bad. If they’re jailed anyway. If they’re free to do whatever, we’ll just be idiots.

And then, this:

Ashcroft said numerous promising leads were being followed up. “The Department of Justice has undertaken perhaps the most massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in this country,” he said. Ashcroft said all possible federal personnel and resources have been committed to the investigation, including thousands of agents and support personnel.

Ooh! And I guess now we’ve seen the results of this investigation by the DoJ. Tortured false confessions, expansion of federal powers even when information was obtained through legal means, ineptness at almost every level, allowing some plots to go unsolved and some terrorists to go without trials – which could lead to more discovery of more information, torture and homicide and all that stuff, and whatever else we don’t know about yet.

All of that happened but none of it made anyone safer and it conclusively made it more difficult to keep America safe. And they’re worried about prisoners.

(Cross posted from over at teh kos)

“But it’s enhanced interrogation…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But investigations would be a witch-hunt…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But prosecutions of Republicans would be bad politically…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But most Americans don’t support torture investigations…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But Pelosi lied…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But the CIA SAYS Pelosi lied…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But Democrats knew too…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But the lawyers were just giving legal opinions…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But the Bush administration really thought they were protecting America…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But a ticking time bomb…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But it would be bad for terrorists to know our tactics…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But President Obama is unAme-”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But John McCain doesn’t think we should prosecute and he was tortured.”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But how bad were these techniques really?”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But they’re terrorists…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But dunking them in the water…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But prosecuting a policy decision…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But Democrats and Republicans BOTH…”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

“But this might get some high ranking people currently serving in trouble in both parties.”

We tortured and it’s illegal.

It’s illegal. It’s torture. It’s not allowed. We prosecute torturers.

Simple.