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james m nordlund | 1 Oct 2005 01:10
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ACLU: Tell Your Senators to Stop the Vote Promoting a Top Torture Official

ACLU: Tell Your Senators to Stop the Vote Promoting a Top Torture Official

Dear Friends,

Once again, while privates and sergeants get marched off to jail, another
top architect of the federal government’s torture policies is about to get
a big promotion.  Former White House lawyer and current senior Tyco
attorney Timothy Flanigan has been nominated by the president to be Deputy
Attorney General.  His nomination is now before the Senate Judiciary
Committee.   

As deputy to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Flanigan
participated in the development of policies that removed protections for
torture and abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. custody, paving the way for
the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere.  

Take Action! Urge your Senators to oppose moving forward on the Flanigan
nomination unless Attorney General Gonzalez first appoints an outside
special counsel for torture prosecutions.

https://action.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=293&page=UserAction

If the Senate confirms Flanigan, he will be the direct supervisor of ALL
federal U.S. Attorneys.  With his former boss Alberto Gonzales in the
number one spot, the nation's top two law enforcement officials will have
both played important roles in the torture and abuse scandal.

To guarantee a fair and comprehensive review of the full extent of the
government’s violation of the rule of law, Congress must demand an
independent investigation of those decisions and the officials involved
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shniad | 1 Oct 2005 01:16
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Crime and no punishment (sanctions in Iraq)

http://MondeDiplo.com/2005/09/08oilforfood

Le Monde Diplomatique	  September 2005

Crime and no punishment 

By Alain Gresh 

The United States Congress is angry about a scandal. It is alleged that from
1996 to 2003 the United Nations oil-for-food programme enabled Saddam
Hussein to misappropriate hundreds of millions of dollars. Certain senior UN
officials, particularly the man in charge of the programme, Benon Sevan, are
said to have pocketed large kickbacks, and it is claimed that foreign,
especially French, politicians took similar advantage of the system. These
are serious accusations that warrant detailed investigation. But it must be
immediately pointed out that there is a wealth of public documentation on
the operation of the programme since 1996. It contains all the relevant
information, including lists of all items supplied to Iraq in each six-month
period.

Those lists, like all details of Iraqi transactions, were drawn up
meticulously by the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee, made up of
council representatives and operated by consensus. No decision could be
taken without endorsement by the US which, together with Britain, vetoed
contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the grounds that certain
products might be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, which we
now know were a figment of the imagination of US strategists. The programme
was subject to strict monitoring: if there were breaches, the US bears at
least as much responsibility for them as the UN (1).
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shniad | 1 Oct 2005 01:15
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Malevolent fantasy of Islam (Bernard Lewis)

http://mondediplo.com/2005/08/16lewis

Le Monde Diplomatique	  August 2005

Malevolent fantasy of Islam 

By Alain Gresh 

Few people had heard of Frits Bolkestein until recently. But then, before
the referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty, the media began
to run scare stories about a mythical Polish plumber poised to come west and
undercut honest French workers. Bolkestein, who is the European commissioner
for the internal market, is the author of a directive that would allow, for
example, a Slovak, working in France for a Slovakian employer, to be paid
Slovakian wages. Some supporters of a yes vote presented Bolkestein’s
proposal as a gesture of solidarity towards east European workers and
dismissed those who opposed it as narrow-minded nationalists. Bolkestein
might have been surprised to find himself identified with proletarian
internationalism: in the early 1990s he was the first politician in the
Netherlands, a country which had been associated with tolerance, to assert
that the values of Muslim immigrants were incompatible with those of his
country.

Bolkestein, speaking recently about Turkey’s proposed membership of the EU
and “migratory pressure”, warned: “If this comes about, the liberation of
Vienna in 1683 will have been in vain” (1). He said Europe had stopped
“them” at Poitiers, and at the gates of Vienna. Europe would stop them
again. To demonstrate the danger, he quoted the historian Bernard Lewis:
“Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century” (2).
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shniad | 1 Oct 2005 01:15
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Reuters says U.S. troops obstruct reporting of Iraq


http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005
-09-28T184442Z_01_YUE867434_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true
Reuters      September 28, 2005 

Reuters says U.S. troops obstruct reporting of Iraq

By Barry Moody

London - The conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq, including increasing detention
and accidental shootings of journalists, is preventing full coverage of the
war reaching the American public, Reuters said on Wednesday.

In a letter to Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, head of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Reuters said U.S. forces were limiting the ability
of independent journalists to operate.

The letter from Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger called on
Warner to raise widespread media concerns about the conduct of U.S. troops
with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the
committee on Thursday.

Schlesinger referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby
professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or
illegally abused by U.S. forces in Iraq."

He urged Warner to demand that Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that
best balances the legitimate security interests of the U.S. forces in Iraq
and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under
international law".
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shniad | 1 Oct 2005 01:16
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Venezuela moves reserves to Europe


http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8CUNLQO0.htm?campaign_id=apn_h
ome_down&chan=db
The Associated Press	 September 30, 2005

Chavez: Venezuela moves reserves to Europe

Caracas, Venezuela – Venezuela has moved its central bank foreign reserves
out of U.S. banks, liquidated its investments in U.S. Treasury securities
and placed the funds in Europe, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said
Friday. 

"We've had to move the international reserves from U.S. banks because of the
threats," from the U.S., Chavez said during televised remarks from a South
American summit in Brazil. 

"The reserves we had (invested) in U.S. Treasury bonds, we've sold them and
we moved them to Europe and other countries," he said.

Chavez, a sharp critic of what he calls "imperialist" U.S.-style capitalism,
has often criticized foreign banks for the power they wield in international
financial markets at the expense of poorer countries. 

Chavez again proposed the creation of a South American central bank that
would hold the foreign exchange reserves of all the central banks in the
region. 

"I'm ready right now with the Venezuelan central bank ... to move $5 billion
(euro4.15 billion) (of Venezuelan reserves), to a South American bank,"
Chavez said.
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shniad | 1 Oct 2005 01:15
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U.S. has sanctioned torture for too long


http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-ophar234442343sep25,0,2934111.story?c
oll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Newsday     September 25, 2005

U.S. has sanctioned torture for too long

By Jennifer K. Harbury

As the United Nations intensifies its scrutiny of torture practices in Iraq,
many Americans feel outrage and confusion. 

How could this have happened? The truth lies in the realities that led to
the Katrina disaster. The horrors are not new, but long-term and
deep-rooted.

The photographs of Abu Ghraib torture practices left many of us with a
chilling sense of deja vu. Anyone who survived torture in Latin America or
lost a loved one to death squads there, remembers these techniques. We also
remember the U.S. participants. Although our government leaders insist that
the recent abuses were acts of a few "bad apples" - young MPs out of control
- we can only shake our heads. We have heard it all before. While our young
soldiers face prison time for following orders, those who authorized and
ordered the torture continue to violate our laws with full impunity. Why?

Given the extraordinary flow of disclosures, confirming the use of identical
U.S. torture practices throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the "bad
apple" defense is coy at best. It is impossible for so many soldiers to
dream up identical techniques by coincidence. We are dealing with official
policy, not individual excess. Legal responsibility goes all the way to the
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james m nordlund | 1 Oct 2005 18:43
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WITNESS Actions: Dec 5 Benefit Concert Hosted by Peter Gabriel, etc..

New Video - Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border
Dear James,

For more than a decade, the southern border of the U.S. has resembled a
war
zone. Aggressive, military-style actions by the Border Patrol have made
human rights abuses everyday events in border communities. Alongside this
official militarization, armed vigilante groups have harassed border
crossers and communities, but their numbers were relatively limited until
recently. In April 2005, a new group called the "Minuteman Project" became
a
national media darling when several hundred recruits gathered in Arizona
to
patrol the border. Only months later, they are expanding their activities
into California, Texas and several other states throughout the country.

Leaders of the Minuteman Project have been very skillful at portraying
themselves as no more than a well-meaning "neighborhood watch group." They
have been featured on many major television and radio programs and have
been
welcomed by the governor of California. Their racism and xenophobia are
rarely explored, nor their legality publicly challenged. In the coming
months, it is essential that opposing voices be heard and actions taken to
counteract their growing influence.

"Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border" exposes the ugly
anti-immigrant politics that lurk behind the Minuteman Project - and shows
the continuum between official border militarization and vigilante action.
This video was shot by human rights activists and residents of border
communities. It tells the story of border tensions from the point of view
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james m nordlund | 1 Oct 2005 18:58
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More Sample letters to Sens., Repr. + Editors on corruption, etc. :)

All,

Good Day.  Thanx for posting and responding!  I hope you and yours are
well and will continue to be.  Sample letters to Senators, Representative
and Editors  :)

Subject: Rep. DeLay Indicted: Tell Your Rep: Stop the corruption TODAY
Dear Representative,

"We, the people...", have watched while Tom DeLay has been admonished more
often by the ethics committee than any sitting member of Congress yet has
remained the most powerful leader in the House.  The Congressional ethics
process failed us.

Now, "We, the people...", are demanding a sweeping overhaul, to get rid of
the corruption and influence-peddling by special interests, which has been
the hallmark of DeLay’s leadership. We need an independent ethics process
that actually investigates corruption in a nonpartisan way, a total reform
of lobbying laws, and stronger campaign finance regulations. 

Thank you for your attention to this most serious matter, and I look
forward to receiving your response.  Lest "we" forget, if you don't
exercise responsibility, its Siamese twin sister, freedom, will wither, as
well. Sadly, now, it first needs to be exorcized before its exercised. 
Enjoy an autumnal eve' as you can.  Copy, share, as you will.  Viva la
evolution!   reality   Thanks.

Matutinally Yours,           (your name, address, phone #)

Subject: Stop giveaways to the very rich, NO Repeal of Estate tax!
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Richard Menec | 1 Oct 2005 19:44
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Re: WITNESS Actions: Dec 5 Benefit Concert Hosted by Peter Gabriel, etc..

The Minutemen are not only a problem on the southern border.  Today they are
kicking off the de facto militarization of most of the northern border as
well (see below):

Standing United Against Border Militarization
Saying NO! to the "Minutemen"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WHO ARE THE MINUTEMEN?

Historically - a militia organization which aided in the violent theft of
Indigenous lands and the genocide of the first peoples of what is now
known as the U.S. In its latest incarnation, the Minuteman project was
begun on April 1, 2005 under the pretext of regular U.S. citizens taking
charge of securing the border against "illegals". On that day, Minuteman
founders James Gilcrist, Chris Simcox and 857 volunteers began a 30-day
patrol of a 23-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border near Tombstone.
About ½ of those volunteers were prior military and about 2/3 were armed
with handguns. Their goal? To set "not only an example for other Americans
to follow, but a precedent we hope will have a lasting effect on how
border security is viewed for generations to come."

In groups of 4-8 and often armed, they patrol the border in order to
report on the movement of those crossing the border. They have also sent
out a national call to recruit informants on "illegal aliens", their
employers and anyone engaged in what they call "identification fraud" -
promoting a true police state.

Gilchrist has said that critics- including President Bush- who call his
(Continue reading)

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David Mcreynolds | 2 Oct 2005 07:34
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The Invention of Porno Torture

I've no doubt that we would have seen the same thing if the Democrats had
been in power,
but there is a special irony that this "Christian administration" has give
us this contribution
to the art of torture. The question many ask is when do we hold Donald
Rumsfeld accountable?

David
>
> CounterPunch - Sep 28, 2005
> http://www.counterpunch.org/khan09282005.html
>
>
> The Invention of Porno Torture
>
> Not One Victim Was Called to Testify
>
> By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN
>
> Lynndie England, the Army private photographed holding a naked Iraqi by
> a dog leash, has been convicted leaving behind a nagging question: how
> far up does the responsibility go? By no means is Lynddie England alone.
> She is the scapegoat of a larger US Torture Establishment. A related
> question that demands scrutiny is the widespread use of porno torture.
> Photos and stories emanating from Abu Gharib and Guantanamo, the
> military prisons that would live in infamy, reveal that American
> soldiers, CIA interrogators, and military contractors, all have
> engaged in porno torture against Muslim detainees. Unofficial stories
> circulating on the internet are beyond belief. But even official
> acknowledgement, though exposing only tip of the iceberg, furnishes
(Continue reading)

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Gmane