Tag: war crimes

H.Res 383 – Demand Accountability for 8 years of Bush/Cheney (Action!)

Crossposted at DKos

A troll on DK beat this diary up pretty bad and killed the thread. If anybody can give me a rescue it would be greatly appreciated.

Please, rec this diary up on DK if you can, so that others may see it as well

   If you don’t support warrantless wiretapping, The Patriot Act, torture or any of the other high crimes and War crimes committed by the Criminal Bush Junta you might be interested in H.Res 383.

    H.Res 383 was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA9) and is designed to act as a Congressional oversight bill that would establish a select committee to review national security laws, policies, and practices. Better yet, this committee would have power of subpoena.

    If the House Leadership pushes this bill and the House Rules committee allows for open hearings and gives this bill a closed rule barring amendments, we could well be on our way to full investigations of Bush/Cheney and their policies crimes.  

Weekly Torture Action Letter 17 – AG Holder, Do The Right Thing!

Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s ongoing letter writing campaign for torture accountability. For those who have not been following this series how it works is as follows: every Monday the Dog writes a letter to decision makers urging accountability for the Bush Administrations State Sponsored Torture program. The Dog also provides the links to contact the decision makers. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to either use the letter as a jumping off point or to cut and paste it (adding your name) and send it off. The whole point of this campaign is to keep the issue of accountability for torture alive until we get the action the Rule of Law requires.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Sneak Preview! How to take down Bush/Cheney

    This is a SNEAK PREVIEW for all you Dharma Bums who want action and accountability for 8 years of War Crimes, High Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

    If you want to host a War Crimes Accountability series diary let me know. I will be posting these myself until someone wants me to pass the baton to them. E-mail me at [email protected] if you are interested, or say so in the comments below.

    Let me know if you think this is an effective course of action, or if you have any other thoughts or ideas to share.

Cheers

    This diary will be published at 10a.m. tomorrow morning on Orange. Please be there to rec it up, as well as to call for Justice!

Dear Dharma Bums, I submit for your consideration and approval a plan to bring the Bush/Cheney Administration to justice.

   If you don’t support warrantless wiretapping, The Patriot Act, torture or any of the other high crimes and War crimes committed by the Criminal Bush Junta, please use the contact information below to demand justice for War Crimes. Contact Speaker Pelosi and the Representatives of the House Rules Committee today and ask them to support H.Res 383.

    H.Res 383 was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA9) and is designed to act as a Congressional oversight bill that would establish a select committee to review national security laws, policies, and practices. Better yet, this committee would have power of subpoena.

    Below the fold you can find the Contact Information for Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi and the members of the House Rules Committee to which H.Res 383 has been referred, as well as the AG’s Office and White House. Call or write to let them know that you support H.Res 383 and accountability for Bush/Cheney era War Crimes.

Israel to hire pro-Israel “Internet Warriors”

Israel, upon seeing that its war crimes are decidedly unpopular, has decided to fight back by hiring people to go into the blogosphere and make comments supportive of Israel’s tactics.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articl…


The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.

Gotta love that, a “warfare” squad.  Sure, it’s a war.  It’s a war against the truth, that is.

The article continues:


The sad truth is that had Israeli citizens believed that their State is doing the right thing, they would have made sure to explain it out of their own accord. Without being paid.

Foreign Ministry officials are fighting what they see as a terrible and scary monster: the Palestinian public relations monster. Yet nothing can be done to defeat it, regardless of how many foolish inventions will be introduced and how many bright communication students will be hired.

The reason is that good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved. Yet nonetheless, the Foreign Ministry wants to try to change the situation. And they have willing partners. “Where do I submit a CV?” wrote one respondent. “I’m fluent in several languages and I’m able to spew forth bullshit for hours on end.”

Here we call that “putting lipstick on a pig”.  

I wonder what term they have for it there.

I would like someone to post this over at Dailykos and watch the heads explode of the dozen or so noise-makers who already seem to be doing this there.   You know who they are if you’ve ever seen any comment that in any way DARES to criticize the actions of Israel, no matter how godawful those actions may be.

Rats getting that sinking feeling

Crossposted at daily kos

From http://thinkprogress.org/

    This is the beginning of the end.

    NOW IS THE TIME TO YELL LOUDER!

    YELL LIKE YOU’VE NEVER YELLED BEFORE.

    The ship is sinking.

    Watch the rats look for a place to hide.

    Now, what do we need to do to give the Monsters of the Bush/Dick years that push right off the edge?

    Comments below will provide more details.

Riders On The Storm Open Thread

Riders On The Storm

POV: “The Reckoning.”

Please take a minute to mark your calendar for this coming Tuesday, July 14th, so you can watch PBS’s new documentary on the International Criminal Court, “The Reckoning.” The documentary should air at 10 pm in most areas, but check here to see your local listing.  

Obama Picks His War Crimes Ambassador

 

Well this would be a good sign, but it seems to me like a hollow gesture from the Obama administration. The New York Times reports on the Lawyer picked for the U.S. war crimes post.

Note that isn’t ‘U.S. war crimes’, but a U.S. ambassador coordinating policy for war crimes perpetrated by others in the international community.

The White House has nominated Stephen Rapp, a well-known figure in international criminal law, to be ambassador at large for war crimes issues.

The ambassador at large, who works for the State Department, coordinates American policy on a variety of legal issues, including the response to international courts and tribunals and to grave violations anywhere of international human rights law. The Obama administration, which has signaled its belief in a strong American role in upholding international law, is expected to give new weight to the office.

Too bad that in America, war crimes can only happen by the other guy. What we need, Mr. Obama, is a war crimes lawyer to prosecute the Americans who ordered and perpetrated the war crimes. But then, the president is too busy looking forward rather than holding Bush, Cheney, et al accountable for their war crimes.

Upholding international law begins at home. It is far past time to bring our own war criminals to justice.

Weekly Torture Action Letter 16 – Dear Friends And Family

Welcome to the Dog’s on going letter writing campaign for torture accountability. Most Monday’s we write to the decision makers in the nation in order to prod them in the right direction on the issue of torture. How it works is the Dog provides the letter and the links and you provide the action by either cutting and pasting the letter or writing your own.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

“HE KEPT US SAFE”

THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN CHARACTER

THE “CRINGING WIMP” GENERATION

For years we hear little else, “But he kept us safe.”  The “but” refers to bankrupting the country, stealing elections, suspending Constitutional Rights, poisoning the air and water and turning the country over to racketeers from oil, drug, insurance and crooked financial services……….

Mr. President, The Dead Cry Out For Justice

The Dog usually writes in the 3rd person, but this is too serious a topic for that. That bit will be back tomorrow.

Dear Mr. President;

I write you on Torture Accountability day to ask in the names of those whose voices have been silenced for justice. I write today in the names of the men in the CIA Inspector Generals report who died while in our custody and under interrogation. This report was prepared five years ago now, and in this report the IG forwarded eight cases for criminal investigation to the Department of Justice. Since that time no action has been taken on deaths of these men. Mr. President, this can not be allowed to continue.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Hypocrisy on Iran

Gotta love it that the corporate media is so unified in their outrage over the Iran situation.  

Where was their outrage when Israel massacred 1400 civilians in Gaza?  

This piece by Margaret Kimberley sums it up in a sad and devastating way:


In December 2008 Israel began what can only be described as a massacre in Gaza. More than 1,400 Gazans were killed so that Israel might inflict collective punishment on a civilian population, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. They were not even allowed to flee and save their lives, instead even hospitals and ambulances were targets in Israel’s efforts to kill as many Gazans as possible.

“The corporate media are quite selective when they decide who deserves our sympathy.”

Just as they prevented civilians from fleeing, the Israeli government did not permit the world’s news organizations to enter Gaza. The American media conducted incomplete coverage of the crisis without even pointing out that the Israeli government prevented them from doing their jobs. They didn’t exhort their readers and viewers to remind Israel that “the world is watching” them. There was no campaign to use Twitter as a tool to protest the killings and defend the Gazans right to live.

The United States Congress did not pass resolutions condemning the Israeli government. Neither Democrats nor Republicans exhorted then president elect Obama to speak out on behalf of the Gazans. Editorial pages did not criticize his silence and tacit approval of a truly horrific human rights violation.

In contrast, congress rushed to condemn the Iranian government, allegedly on behalf of the Iranian people. Their hypocrisy is breath taking. During the presidential campaign, Senator John McCain composed his only little ditty, “Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” in a horrendous disregard for human life. Now he attacks Obama for not speaking out against the government of Iran.

“The U.S. Congress’s hypocrisy is breath taking.”

Throughout 2006 and 2007 both houses of Congress passed resolutions which condemned Iran as a terrorist state and were meant to begin the process of authorizing war. Many of these same house members now claim to care, by a 405 to 1 vote margin, about the people they previously had been willing to kill.

It’s no accident why.  It’s not random.  The U.S. government has been funding covert operations within Iran to help destabilize Iran’s government.  


Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.

The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Hersh, US Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of so-called “high-value targets” who may be captured or killed.

So this major media orgasm over the protests in Iran are the culmination of what the Covert Ops people hope is a successful overthrow of the Iranian government.  

That is why it’s getting so much coverage, and getting things like a 405 – 1 vote of approval by the United States Congress.

Anybody remember the way we tend to treat other protestors?

Anger Mounts After U.S. Troops Kill 13 Iraqi Protesters

Yeah, how dare they protest an illegal invasion of their country?  Fuckers.  

And do you think anyone in America read about this sort of thing?


“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy …

Where was all the grand twittering then?

And even though in Gaza entire villages were literally wiped off the map, our American “leaders” didn’t say a word.  Their support for the war criminals of Israel was unwavering, the reality of the crimes by the Mouthpiece Media kept hidden.

As Margaret Kimberley says:


The corporate media behave in a fashion that requires us to question everything they present to us as fact.

Ain’t that the truth.

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