ya think?

[click image]

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I miss the McClelletron 2000, don't you?

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love, 99
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today in that hopey changey thing not working out for us

[click image]

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Of course we already knew all this, right?

Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
by David Corn
Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST

A WikiLeaks cable shows that when Spain considered a criminal case against ex-Bush officials, the Obama White House and Republicans got really bipartisan.

In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. An April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.

Soon after the request was made, the US embassy in Madrid began tracking the matter. On April 1, embassy officials spoke with chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who indicated that he was not pleased to have been handed this case, but he believed that the complaint appeared to be well-documented and he'd have to pursue it. Around that time, the acting deputy chief of the US embassy talked to the chief of staff for Spain's foreign minister and a senior official in the Spanish Ministry of Justice to convey, as the cable says, "that this was a very serious matter for the USG." The two Spaniards "expressed their concern at the case but stressed the independence of the Spanish judiciary."

Two weeks later, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the embassy's charge d'affaires "raised the issue" with another official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The next day, Zaragoza informed the US embassy that the complaint might not be legally sound. He noted he would ask Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney general, to review whether Spain had jurisdiction.

On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who'd recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy's charge d'affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.

The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido's opposition, noting that "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case."

Still, this did not end the matter. It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of "universal jurisdiction." Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case.

The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration's failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there's been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away.

Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.

Spectacular.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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oh, definitely bogus, planted, state department cables, suuuure

[click image]

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Someone mentioned how good propaganda is always mixed in with a healthy portion of truth to give itself more credibility. Well, then, they've seriously outdone themselves this time....

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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a clockwork

[click image]

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Fancy a bit of the old in and out...? Or would you prefer it all in one?

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love, 99
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where's beach impeach?

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Hmmmmm?

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love, 99
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i'm sick of obama's ugly mug on my blog

[click image]

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But my big question here is: How does this differ from the Dubya Administration? I'm trying to think. I might be able to give GP Yoo higher marks for patience and smoothness and innovation. Dub's gang totally flunked those. But these qualities are all being put in the service of a fascist police state, so these marks are SO nothing to brag about.

Dubya told Oprah he's proud he didn't sell his soul for the sake of popularity. GP Yoo very clearly did. Of course, Dub didn't have to because his father did it for him, but, still, he can be proud of that... being him....

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Plus, did you ever think we could have a worse Department of Justice than Dubya's? No? Well, we sure managed it lickety split, and if you go so far as to listen to the NPR report, keep a puke bag or well-lined waste basket handy. You're going to need it. When did we get a statute of limitations on TORTURE?

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love, 99
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good grief

[click image]

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Good morning.

Treasury Shields Citigroup as Deletions Undercut Disclosure
By Bob Ivry - Oct 25, 2010

The late Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman asked the U.S. Treasury in January 2009 to identify $301 billion of securities owned by Citigroup Inc. that the government had agreed to guarantee. He made the request on the grounds that taxpayers ought to know how their money was being used.

More than 20 months later, after saying at least five times that a response was imminent, Treasury officials responded with 560 pages of printed-out e-mails -- none of which Pittman requested. They were so heavily redacted that most of what’s left are everyday messages such as “Did you just try to call me?” and “Monday will be a busy day!”

None of the documents answers Pittman’s request for “records sufficient to show the names of the relevant securities” or the dates and terms of the guarantees. Even so, the U.S. government considers the collection of e-mails a partial response to an official request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. The Justice Department in July cited an increase in such responses as evidence that “more information is being released” under the law.

President Barack Obama vowed to usher in a new era of open government. On Jan. 21, 2009, the day after his inauguration and a week before Pittman submitted his FOIA request, Obama directed agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA.”

Limits of Transparency

The saga of Pittman’s request shows that the promise of transparency has its limits when it comes to the government’s intervention in the financial industry, which at its peak reached $12.8 trillion in commitments. From the 2008 Bear Stearns Cos. rescue to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing in 2010, the Obama administration has delayed disclosures and defended its right to secrecy in court, said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch Inc., which describes itself as a conservative foundation.

“This is an unprecedented crisis for open government,” said Fitton, whose Washington-based organization says it sued the Bush administration 48 times over disclosure issues. “When it comes to the bank bailout, the Obama administration has made a decision to err on the side of secrecy.”

The Justice Department, which oversees disclosure for the executive branch, is “working specifically to encourage agencies to be as transparent as possible and release as much as possible,” said Melanie Ann Pustay, director of the department’s Office of Information Policy. “We view our efforts as an ongoing process.”

Openness Aids Recovery

More openness concerning the causes of the crisis and the government’s response would help the economy recover, said Joseph Mason, a finance professor at the Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

“Investors who don’t have information are investors who refuse to place funds in markets,” Mason said. “If we want investment and economic growth to resume, we want to be forthright about what happened. The longer we keep investors in the dark, the longer that low economic growth will persist.”

The public has a particular interest in transparency regarding the government’s unprecedented intervention in capital markets because of its sheer size, said U.S. Representative Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He called the Obama administration “woefully inadequate” at fulfilling its promise of transparency.

Right to Know

“At a time when the role of government and more specifically the Treasury Department, through bailouts and stimulus, is responsible for administering trillions of dollars, there couldn’t be a more important time to uphold the American people’s right to know,” Issa said in an e-mail.

On Jan. 28, 2009, Pittman asked Treasury officials for details related to guarantees the agency had provided on securities held by Citigroup, American International Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. Among other things, he asked for any contracts with outside firms hired to calculate the assets’ values.

In its response, Treasury said AIG didn’t participate in its Asset Guarantee Program. Likewise, despite some negotiations, the government and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America “never entered into a definitive agreement,” the response said.

Citigroup’s Largest Shareholder

That left Citigroup, in which the U.S. government was the largest shareholder as of Oct. 1, according to regulatory filings. Taxpayers’ stake, 12.4 percent, was three times the second-largest investor’s.

In the 560 pages of e-mails exchanged in the last two months of 2008 and January 2009, Treasury employees and their colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discuss with attorneys the department’s $20 billion investment in New York- based Citigroup and the $301 billion in guarantees. Both followed an initial $25 billion investment in Citigroup through the Troubled Asset Relief Program in October 2008.

The Treasury Department also released 169 pages that included a “Securities Purchase Agreement” between the bank, the agency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The document had previously been disclosed in a Jan. 16, 2009, Citigroup regulatory filing -- almost two weeks before Pittman sent his request.

Exemptions Cited

The department held back 866 more pages, saying each was exempt from disclosure on one of four grounds: trade secrets, personnel rules and practices, memos subject to attorney-client privilege and violations of personal privacy.

Treasury also cited the trade-secrets exemption in responding to a separate, similar FOIA request by Bloomberg News for details about Citigroup’s segregated bad assets. In that response, 73 of 104 pages were completely blacked out except for headings. Only six pages -- the cover, contents, a boilerplate list of legal disclosures and a paragraph titled “FOIA Request for Confidential Treatment” -- were free of redactions.

The department’s reply to Pittman’s request will count statistically as a “partial response,” in government reports, said Hugh Gilmore, Treasury’s FOIA public liaison. The response “adhered to the rules, regulations, U.S. attorney general guidance and relevant case law that govern FOIA,” Steven Adamske, a Treasury spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Right of Appeal

People who aren’t satisfied with federal agencies’ responses under FOIA can appeal to them first, and then file civil lawsuits in U.S. District Court to try to force more disclosure.

Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, sued the Fed over another Pittman FOIA request that sought the names of banks that took emergency loans from the central bank. The company has prevailed in U.S. District Court and on appeal. The Fed, which has not released the information, has until tomorrow to decide whether to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.

Like the Treasury Department, the central bank cited the exemption for trade secrets, known as exemption 4, in withholding details about borrowers. Its lawyers argued that disclosing the banks’ identities would put the institutions at a competitive disadvantage and make them less likely to seek emergency loans in the future.

In an Aug. 24, 2009, ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in Manhattan disagreed.

‘An Inherent Risk’

“The risk of looking weak to competitors and shareholders is an inherent risk of market participation; information tending to increase that risk does not make the information privileged or confidential,” Preska wrote. The Fed “would seemingly sweep within the scope of Exemption 4 all information about borrowers that anyone throughout the entire marketplace might consider to be negative. The exemption cannot withstand such inflation.”

Pittman’s request for the Treasury Department records spent months in limbo, according to discussions with the agency’s employees. He had waited about 10 months for a response when he died on Nov. 25, 2009. Shortly afterward, Michael Galleher, an attorney working on contract for the Treasury Department, called Bloomberg News, asking where he could send the responsive documents. Attempts to return Galleher’s call failed; he couldn’t be found at the agency.

A December call to Gilmore, the FOIA liaison, was returned by Daneisha White, a FOIA officer, who suggested calling Michael C. Bell, the FOIA manager in the Office of Financial Stability. Bell referred questions back to Gilmore.

Meanwhile, that month, Citigroup repaid $20 billion of its bailout money and terminated the asset guarantees.

Searching for Records

Gilmore called back in January, saying Galleher had left the agency at the end of 2009. He and his colleagues would search for Pittman’s FOIA documents, he said, because they weren’t sure where they were.

In April came a call from Galleher. He said that he had returned to work at Treasury’s FOIA office, that he had the relevant documents for Pittman’s request and that he would send them that week.

“I need to clear the old requests,” he said.

The office where Gilmore works, which has the equivalent of 26 fulltime employees, handled 890 FOIA requests in fiscal 2009, according to Treasury’s annual FOIA report to the attorney general. It had 1,766 requests pending at year’s end.

Government bureaucracies often aren’t staffed enough to respond adequately to requests for public records, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia. In addition, she said, they’re simply not motivated to disclose.

‘Disappointed? Yeah’

“Agencies get in far more trouble for releasing information than they do for not,” she said. “Am I disappointed in the Obama administration? Yeah.”

In May, Galleher reported that he would have something to send soon. He said the same thing in June, and then in July. Part of the holdup was caused by the governmentwide practice of giving private companies a chance to object to the disclosure of requested documents, he said. Doing so ensures that companies continue to cooperate with the executive branch by providing records without fear they’ll be made public without review, said Pustay of the Justice Department.

Neither Citigroup nor the Treasury Department would discuss which redactions, if any, the bank sought on Pittman’s request. Shannon Bell, a spokeswoman for the bank, declined to comment.

“We have no obligation to explain how much of Citi’s recommendations we accepted and in what ways we decided to differ,” Adamske, the Treasury spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Second-guessing the government’s response to the financial crisis is not useful, said Wilbur Ross, the New York billionaire who runs the private-equity firm WL Ross & Co.

“As far as I can tell, there is no evidence of any impure motivation in connection with any of the big decisions,” Ross said in an e-mail. “To me that is the issue, not whether you or I would have come to the same conclusion.”

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Piling up links:

I like the tag line....

Disempowered, disgusted, demoralized....

What the filthy polemicizing accomplishes....

RT interviews Julian Assange....

Democracy Now! really interviews Julian Assange....

Heh, no shit, Sherlock....

Nothing to see here, move along....

Vive la France....

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love, 99
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read my lips: no more torture

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It's true. It's crystal clear that Obama's purpose was not to stop it, but to eliminate it as an issue.

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love, 99
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today in that hopey changey shit

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President Yoo's zombie fascism plods forward into the third millennium.

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love, 99
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a little teaser of justice after years and years

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Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, black sites, how many secret bases, Argentina, Central America, everywhere... what do we care?

US judge bans Guantanamo witness
Court delays start of the first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee citing irregularities with state witness.
Last Modified: 06 Oct 2010 16:04 GMT

The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot call their star witness.

Lewis A Kaplan, the US district judge, blocked the government on Wednesday from calling a man who authorities said, sold explosives to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the defendant.

Defence lawyers say investigators only learned about the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a secret CIA-run camp overseas between 2004 and 2006.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

The government immediately asked for a delay of the trial, which had been expected to begin with opening statements on Wednesday, so that it has time to appeal the ruling, should it decide to do so.

The judge sent a pool of 66 jurors home until Tuesday, but not before warning them to avoid following the case on the news or discussing it with anyone.

Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The judge issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which Hussein Abebe, the witness, testified about his dealings with authorities.

"The government has failed to prove that Abebe's testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani's coerced statements to permit its receipt in evidence," Kaplan wrote.

The defence had asked the judge to exclude Abebe's testimony on the grounds that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress.

On that point, Kaplan said, "Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody. It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced."

The judge noted that he had previously rejected defence motions to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was deprived of a speedy trial and that his treatment by the CIA was so outrageous as to require termination of the charges.

How much of this does it take?

I guess we can set our stopwatches on the prosecution's appeal.

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OR JUST WAIT FOR THEM TO COME FOR US....

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THEN try to stave it off....

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love, 99
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impeach genghis ponzi yoo

[click image, OR LISTEN]

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Or everybody start praying for the fucker's enlightenment.

Whatever. But DO it.

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No really....

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love, 99
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is that my monitor or a hole in the ground?

[click image, if you want the status on wars and torture]

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I took off both pairs of glasses so you could see the great improvement in my eye situation today. I had to keep them on to find the button to push to snap the shot, hold it right there and take off the glasses with my other hand.

I put on my farmin' and plantin' and drivin' Hispanic men into gales of unrequited lust groans... well and not just Hispanic men... overalls. For some reason my overalls—covered with tao symbols and peace symbols and any number of cool silk patches of things like eyes and flowers and stains and material worn to mush from decades of use—turn on yer basic generic male of the lascivious stripe; to wit: nearly all of them. It's goofy because I originally bought them for the precise reason that they would discourage lascivious thoughts in all comers. They were my uniform in Central America, being huge and loose and covered in the good kind of pockets for cash and passport, everything that needed to stay on my person at all times, and deflect attention from a lone woman traveler. They were a smashing success for practical purposes, but an abysmal failure in the deflecting attention department. I was wearing them while finally receiving the dispositive instruction in the TRUE amount of agua pura required to ward off heat stroke at Tikal from a group of German experts. All Germans abroad are experts in everything. When in doubt, FIND A GERMAN. Anyway, I'd been certain three gallons a day would be more than enough, but they illustrated vividly to me that I'd stop panting and puffing and reeling my way around the ruins if I'd simply drink two more gallons of water. A revelation. Who'd've thunk it.

I put my overalls on today so I can grope my way down the street in search of a sighted wealthy socialist gentleman to buy me a new pair of EYES.

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love, 99
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scary quakers that burp good

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We are not savages!

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And I haven't the strength to even do a separate post for this....

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so badger the wuss into prosecuting the lot of them or shaddap

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I am SICK of them throwing this heinous shit in my face and NOTHING decent coming of it. It's like an anesthesiologist pricking your feet every few minutes to make sure yer still OUT COLD.

Somebody get me a nice hefty truncheon. I'll FIX this. I swear.

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yeah, right, suuuuure....

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You know damn well the Commander in Chief could have done this himself on 20 January 2009. Instead he ordered up a shitload more drones from the war profiteers. And you'll pardon me if I feel like telling you this is a load of crap, because it's nearing election time and they will try to act like perfectly shiny murderating fucks until the polls close. Then the slaughter will double or triple or worse. We know this drill. The same people who have been running it straight along are still running it and the whole playbook is blinking neon in our eyes.

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Same deal. Pure PR, not a lick of truth to it. Detainees are STILL being tortured, and it seems only Fudd, damn his unspeakably despicable hide, is the ONLY one honest enough to just brag about it... which... Jesus... is, IN FACT, an improvement over lying about it and covering it up... cold no-kind-of-comfort as that is.

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i don't think you understand

[click image, video playlist, documentary, not exactly comprehensive, still too fairy tale, 45 minutes]

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This guy, Spotted Eagle, was a Sans Arc chief who helped Crazy Horse and Gall and Two Moons thump Custer at Greasy Grass. Most people believe the fairy tales about that battle, "Custer's Last Stand". Sitting Bull didn't fight in that battle. He was sort of the head chief of the encampment—and arguably of the various branches of the tribes—no longer an active warrior. All those tribes were camped together there—some who had stayed free, and some who had left the reservations because they were being starved—in defiance of orders from Washington to clear them out, keep them from bankrupting any more railroad barons. They were there together to hunt, but knowing there would be troops trying to stop them. The pig Custer went for their women and children, intending to use them as shields so as to force the men not to fight.

Bad move.

We can't be blamed for having it wrong about the Little Big Horn, even if we should have known the history books were bullshit, because accounts of the battle by the victors disagree with each other wildly and then when you add in all the fanciful ideas of the people trying to chronicle it... yikes... a mess. But I guess all the forensics they've been doing on the battlefield has started to clear up some of the confusion. There may not have been a "last stand" at all, just thousands of warriors rising up as one and overwhelming the troops. Chasing down and killing the ones who were fleeing.

I guess I'm so interested in mentioning this because I want you to think about what you would do when they came to herd you into a concentration camp, keep you from costing the plutocrats, interfering with their profit. It's been on my mind. And it's even heavier on my mind now that the Senate has dumped so many people off unemployment benefits. First they dump you out of your job and then they dump you off any means to even eat. Don't give me the bit about food stamps, because try using them to fill yer belly when you don't have a kitchen. Not impossible, but practically so, close enough to being entirely too hungry too much of the time. Seems to me the situation is just about parallel. Who are the true humans? The troops? The people herded? Or the warriors who feed their families, despite being ordered out of the means, and kill who comes to harm them?

Our little sort of half a supermarket, here in bumfuck nowhere, has just taken to locking the doors on one side in the evenings because of the huge uptick in thefts. Little kids are coming in and trying for liquor and cigarettes, items that can be sold, no doubt by their parents, for the most return on their efforts. Little kids don't go to jail for stealing from the grocery store, but adults do. The store owners think this will funnel all activity past the checker nearest the other doors, lower the take. First they padlocked the cigarettes for real, so you can't just grab them and bring them to checkout yourself, and now this. Next they won't be leaving the huge bins full of produce out all night when they're having their big sales. They never bothered to haul them all in at closing time because nobody took them. I think this is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better... everywhere.

People need to start thinking about WHO they are. Wasichu? Victim? True human?

Don't lie to yourself.

And start thinking about the real American heroes. There were very many with their priorities on straight. One of them is staring out at you from some hundred and forty years ago. They did not just lay down and let the barons railroad them with their hired killers. Sitting Bull may not have fought in this one, but he fought off many, many wasichu for many, many years before guys like Spotted Eagle and Crazy Horse and Gall and Two Moons came out for their last great victory. They are still alive. Everyone knows who the murderating fucks were and who the heroes were... and everyone knows what happens when you don't defeat the murderating fucks.

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oh, andy, i hope you're not holding your breath

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Andy Worthington is a saint. He NEVER stops trying to end the plight of detainees left at Guantánamo. He's a damn hero, and Obama is a total shit.

Poor widdle impotent dictator....

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stringing us along

[click image]

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Little puffs of vapors....

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oh, everything

[click image, audio, 45 minutes]

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Scott Horton of Harper's talks with Scott Horton of AntiWar about lots and lots of stuff. The flotilla massacre, the ignoble treatment of Helen Thomas, and, oh, torture.

Harper's Scott is fence sitting, doing his sound-even-tempered-about-it thing, which by now is BULLSHIT, but he says some good stuff in here anyway.

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Actually, some hours later, I'm losing my feeling of equanimity about Harper's Horton's lawyerspeak. I notice that lawyers, after about the age of 45, become incapable of speaking like PEOPLE anymore, EVEN when not in the office, let alone court. They turn determinedly sophist in there somewhere and can't seem to bust out of it. I've been trying manfully to endure this crap out of him, whether in interviews or on his blog, because he's dealing with important stuff, but he's pissing me off more and more with this... and it's making it so I'm going to have to stop wasting time on him.

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I saw it trying to happen to me and I got the fuck on out, and that's before I started in with the Zen stuff. I can not condemn people for needing their incomes so badly they can't cut their noses off despite their faces QUITE to the extent I do, as I have too many times to count anymore, but IF they are going to stay chained to that income, it is their DUTY not to let this happen, despite the pressure... or they're NOT worth anyone's attention.

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For Immediate Release, June 10, 2010

Twenty-Seven to Go on Trial for Protesting the Obama Administration’s Failure to Close Guantanamo, Plan for Indefinite Detention, and Refusal to Prosecute Torture

Contact:

Jeremy Varon — M: 732-979-3119 — varon@aol.com
Helen Schietinger — M: 202-344-5762 — h.schietinger@verizon.net

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday, June 14 twenty-seven will face trial stemming from arrests at the U.S. Capitol on January 21, 2010 — the date by which President Obama had promised the closure of the Guantanamo detention camp. The human rights activists will hold a press conference outside the courthouse defending their protest, condemning the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush policies, and explaining their use in court of the “necessity defense.” The press conference will be held Monday, June 14th at 8:30 am, across from the Federal District Courthouse (333 Constitution Avenue, NW).

On January 21, twenty-seven people dressed as Guantanamo prisoners were arrested on the steps of the Capitol holding banners reading “Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” Inside the Capitol Rotunda, at the location where deceased presidents lie in state, fourteen activists were arrested performing a memorial service for three men who died at Guantanamo in 2006. Initially reported as suicides, the deaths may have been — as recent evidence suggests — the result of the men being tortured to death (see Scott Horton, “Murders at Guantanamo", March 2010, Harper's).

“The continued operation of the prison camp at Guantanamo is unacceptable,” Matthew W. Daloisio of Witness Against Torture. “If Guantanamo was a foreign policy liability and stain on the rule of law on day one of the Obama presidency, it surely is eighteen months later.”

“The deaths at Guantanamo show how barbaric US policies have been,” says Helen Schietinger, a defendant in the trial. “We are still waiting for accountability for those who designed and carried out torture policies under President Bush. Obama can’t restore the rule of law if he doesn’t enforce the law.”

The human rights activists plan to mount a “necessity defense” before Judge Russell Canan. “We will be arguing that we broke the law only after exhausting all legal means of opposing a much larger crime—the indefinite detention, mistreatment, and torture of men at Guantanamo and other US prisons,” says Jerica Arents of Chicago, Illinois, another the defendants.

The January protests were the culmination of a twelve-day fast for justice and an end to torture organized by Witness Against Torture in Washington, DC. More than 100 people participated in the fast and daily actions throughout the nation’s Capital.

Futile Gesture #38,423....

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don't act so shocked

[click image]

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I swear, people everywhere gettin' all huffy about it... because it's all point-at-Bush again... but, but, er, 44 seems to have been continuing the policies of 43. I'd think we'd've learned by now to just drop the finger-pointing and pick up our pitchforks.

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