July 15, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
The US chose to imitate the Soviet Union and we are on the road to moral and monetary bankruptcy. Today there is a spate of Soviet-style news about torturing children prisoners. The cold blooded tapes of the 15 year old boy tortured at Gitmo has hit the airwaves. Arrest the torturers and the political bosses who opened Gitmo so they could torture people! Also, there is horrific torture of children in Iraqi prisons run by our allies. Sickening. Just sickening. And there is that million name 'terrorist' list. Maybe we should have a 'million terrorist march' like the 'million men march'?
Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.
The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.
If these clowns crowding our benches love the Soviet Union and Stalin so much, why don't they leave? Go back to the USSR. Oops. It died. The costs of restricting, holding down and crushing everyone is very costly. Doing this while invading many nations is even more costly. The Soviet Union went bankrupt, you idiots! Gah! And why on earth does 'the Land of the Free' want to be 'The Gulag Archipelago'?
These betrayers of our Constitution should all be impeached! Of ALL THINGS, our Revolutionary forefathers were absolutely clear about in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is matters concerning holding people in this nation for indeterminate times based on 'enemy of the state' status. And all the rules inhibiting the power of the state to burst into our homes, looking for guns or drugs, or to spy on us: HELL, THIS IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE REVOLUTION!!!
Well, Congress and the Presidents have toiled long and hard to undo huge hunks of the Constitution such as the parts about Congress being in charge of the coinage and debts, just to mention one very glaring example. The Constitution didn't just grant powers, IT LIMITED POWERS. Very earnestly and sincerely and religiously. It was hyper-important to the Founding Fathers who are rolling in their graves so much, they are causing earthquakes in China.
U.S.: Torture, murder at Iraqi juvenile prison
American investigators probing allegations of torture at an Iraqi-run juvenile prison in Baghdad found clear evidence earlier this year that Sunni children had been murdered by their Shiite captors, according to a lead officer on the investigative team."The security detail came in literally as they were cleaning the blood from the floor - they had just killed two Sunni kids," said Lt. Col. Craig J. Simper, a Judge Advocate General Corps officer from the Utah-based 419th Fighter Wing, who helped arrange the inspection. "The explanation was that these guys were trying to escape, but our investigation concluded that they were actually scheduled for release."
As part of an ongoing effort to transfer control of traditional government functions, the U.S. military is seeking to put more prisons and prisoners under regional leadership. But Iraq security experts say that, in some cases, the result of decentralization has been inadequate funding, training and oversight over detention operations in several Iraqi ministries, including the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which has responsibility for Iraq's juvenile detention facilities.
Nothing but disgusting news. This nauseates me. The photos infuriate me. This is so wrong on every level. We created this situation. We took over Saddam's horrid torture cells and made them infamous. Then we handed off this Soviet legacy to the Shi'ites. Great. And our moral degradation continues as we smack our lips over the idea of attacking Sudan because of the ICC which is an illegal, obscene organization set up by the victorious empires to harry, harass and harangue small nations we want to invade and control.
The ICC should be investigating Gitmo and arresting Bush. Bush prances about the planet acting up like a drunk monkey and no one arrests him. He won't go out in public in this nation so we have no opportunity to arrest him. But the ICC could have done this. They refused because they are beasts, not humans.
You Tube video of child torture by US and Canadian officials:
After a long legal battle, the lawyers for Omar Khadr have won the right to release interrogation video taken while at Guantanamo Bay. He was 16 years old.He can be heard crying for help. Thanks to Al Jazeera for the video.
The evil Canadian torture monster is shown the boy's damaged body. Coldly, this evil man hisses, 'You have good medical care. I don't care about this.' Arrest that Canadian, ICC! Arrest all the soldiers who tortured this child! When the poor boy weeps, the chill in the room is very similar to the lack of humanity we saw in Nazi concentration camps. Good grief, what are we? The Khmer Rogue? On ABC today, the announcer could barely show the slightest feeling about this latest example of Soviet-Union atrocities. Ho hum, the child killed Americans attacking the place he was in that was thousands of miles from the USA. This was classic 'revenge' brutality the Founding Fathers forbade: the child was the son of someone the US wanted to arrest. Instead, they only got the poor kid so he was basically tortured for information about his father! GAH. Totally Nazi. This is just too disgusting.
Video of Yoo justifying the new Soviet Union of the USA. Arrest him. Instead, he is teaching people in California to be good Nazi prosecutors. ICC, this monster is easy to find and arrest. Just come to the USA, we have a long list of people to be arrested. I thank you all in advance. If necessary, bring some soldiers with you, heh. Black helicopters. That will scare the pants off of the right wingers here.
Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names
The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list."Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."
Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.
"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."
And the Watch list grows. Time for some Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado' and his 'short little list'.
Another take on the famous song, updated with modern 'misses':
And the Lord High Executioner song:
Destroy the destroyers. 1,2,3, go.
Posted by: CCQ | July 16, 2008 at 01:34 AM
This child torture is a low as it gets. These people are capable of anything. Do we hear anything from Obama about this? No?
I did a little "study" on the black helicopter thing. The thing about the black helicopters is not that they are black, but that they appear to be completely without markings. Some say they are really very dark green. (See a link below about that.)
Alex Jones had a big block of stories about these helicopters flying over Denver (and Florida) in great numbers. People have said it was all a joke, "black helicopters"!!! However, this liberal-seeming (I'm not sure of their political stance) group of video camera toting activists called "We Are Change" actually went to Denver to film these helicopters. This group seems very credible to me. They just find stuff like this and go out and get it on video. And they were practically screaming that their videos were being systematically taken down.
I did a fairly extensive search of the web for black helicopter videos, which only got me one link, which purported to be YouTube, but had a "non-YouTube" look. When I went to play this video, my seriously sophisticated script blocking software (Firefox with NoScript) went crazy in ways it never had. It would not let me even try to play the video unless I totally disabled it, which I declined to do! The "list" of very suspicious scripts was three pages long. But I have finally come upon a real YouTube link that works for now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdsjsQKqSTI
(It took a LOT of time to find it.)
One very strange website seems to have a lot of information about these helicopters:
http://100777.com/node/713
With all this awfulness going on, I just came upon something a little humorous; Jim Cramer has finally flipped! (“Sell everything. Nothing’s working!”) Here's the link:
((----- Copy & Paste - W/O The Line Breaks -----))
http://moneynews.com/streettalk/cramer_sell_stocks_now
/2008/07/09/111259.html
Posted by: blues | July 16, 2008 at 05:44 AM
I remember back before the "start" of the Iraq debacle (they just "start" all by themselves) I was (for some odd reason) being treated to a dose of Rush Limbaugh's weird rant, and there was talk of torture in the air. The concept was being germinated by some evil cartel.
The odd thing was that Rush was struggling to find the memo on this particular topic, so he had to just wing it. He chewed on it for a quarter of an hour, and then concluded that we couldn't do torture because that [approximate quote, not quite paraphrase] "would make us as bad as the terrorists." A lot of degeneration has set in. Children? Seven years ago I would not have even believed it. This kind of scum comes only from the very bottom.
Posted by: blues | July 16, 2008 at 06:49 AM
The history of the US massacre of Indian children rises to one's mind here.....
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 16, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Just a comment of Blues analysis. This does not come from the bottom. Ever heard the saying "the fish rots from the head down"? It aptly applies to the fact that those who run governments and rule people are the ones who initiate corruption and torture. You are right Elaine, I too thought of the massacre of Indian children and women. This all seems to be a theme in this country. The days of the Barbarians re-visited.
Posted by: Carolyn Damon | July 16, 2008 at 12:03 PM
The Irish Potato Famine rises to mind, too.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 16, 2008 at 07:55 PM
Elaine, I would be forever indebted if you would also discuss the arrest, torture and organ harvesting of the Falun Gong by the Chinese Communists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
I have a friend from Singapore who says that it is basically a set of exercises, but it is associated with the Chinese Nationalists that lost the battle with the communist Mao and had to escape to Taiwan.
Hundreds of them are protesting in Wellington New Zealand to stop this.
But now the US has frozen arms sales to Taiwan to help the Chinese Communists finish exterminating the nationalists.
This will be an immense crime against humanity and it will not be broadcast due to our TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS of debt to the communists.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_imposes_arms_sales_freeze_on_Tai_07162008.html
"The United States has frozen on arms sales to Taiwan following concerns expressed by China, top US military commander in Asia Admiral Timothy Keating said Wednesday."
Oh, and I just could NOT HELP WONDERING how the France New Wire got this AMAZING one hour lead on breaking the following story in 1972? Hmmm, can anyone think of a fancy winery in France? Chateau Laf...
http://www.afp.com/english/afp/?pid=history
"On September 6th, AFP breaks the news of the Israeli hostages' deaths at the Olympic Games in Munich an hour ahead of the rest of the media. On November 22nd, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times sign-up for distribution of AFP news in the U.S. "
Posted by: GK | July 17, 2008 at 08:43 AM