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Torture Accountability Requires the People to Demand It
By Kevin Zeese
Attorney General Holder Considering Appointment of Special Prosecutor But Devil is In the Details. We Need a Full-Fledged, Independent Investigation and Prosecution
Reports over the weekend indicate that Attorney General Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate torture and other abuses during the Bush-Cheney administration.
This would be a major reversal and indicates that efforts for torture accountability are paying off. We are close to success but pressure is mounting to prevent a prosecution so those who favor holding torturers accountable, including those who created and facilitated the policy, need to increase their efforts at this critical time.
How McNamara Lost World War II
by Greg Palast
It's been a good week. Robert McNamara's dead and my book, Armed Madhouse, was released in translation in Vietnam.
I don't blame McNamara for losing the war in Vietnam. After all, the good guys won. I do, however, blame him for losing World War II.
In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals. My father sat at his table, silent. He did not wear his medals.
He had given them to me thirty years earlier. I can figure it exactly: March 8, 1965. That day, like every other, we walked to the newsstand near the dime store to get the LA Times. He was a Times man. Never read the Examiner.
Crimes of Conscience
Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/07/crimes-of-conscience.html
By ddjango
Somewhere, somehow, during the past few months, we passed a final "point of no return".
If there truly was hope in the certain prospect of regime change, from the Bush/Neocon travesty to the Obama/Neoprogressive administration, it lay in the promise of confession, reconciliation, and redemption. It lay in the chance that the new presidency and a changed Congress would fully repudiate the self-destructive sins of at least two thirds of a century of dishonor, disinformation, and dissolution committed in the name and for the purposes of empire, capitalism, consumerism, and questionable "national security".
The mantra of "Change", repeated mercilessly during the presidential campaign, but in the absence of any concrete examples of what form that change would take, was no less Rovian than The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang's invocation of "weapons of mass destruction" and "terrorism". The endless repetition had its desired effect. It played not to the head, but to the gut; was not about thought, but about emotions. It was, in fact, more religious than it was political; more about fantasy than reality. It was a prayer, nothing more, nothing less.
The G8: Rudd’s self-fulfilling climate prophecy
Andrew Glikson
With no intermediate targets defined, no clean energy technology assistance given to developing countries, come 2050, a magic wand will be waved, carbon emissions will be cut by 80 percent, mean temperatures limited below 2 degrees C, and pigs will fly.
“The G8 made no firm commitment to help developing countries financially cope with the effects of rising seas, increased droughts and floods, or provide the technology to make their carbon-heavy economies more climate- friendly.” Nor did the G8 decide of a shorter-term target, despite warnings from a UN panel that they must cut emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020, to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=vn20090712072211544C404762.
Veronza Bowers, Jr. - Another Victim of America's Criminal Justice System
by Stephen Lendman
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
On September 15, 1973, Veronza Bowers, Jr. was arrested in Mill Valley, California and charged with robbery and possession of stolen property. After state charges were dropped for lack of probable cause to obtain a search warrant, the FBI arrested Bowers and charged him with the first-degree murder of National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick on August 5, 1973 at Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco.
At trial, testimonies from two government informants, Alan Veale and Jonathan Shoher, proved crucial. Both were also charged with the killing. Yet there were no independent eye-witnesses, and no evidence incriminated Bowers besides the word of these two men who had every incentive to cooperate with the Department of Justice.
Viva, Fast, March for Gaza: Lennon, MLK and X
eileen fleming
A month after President Obama admitted the situation in Gaza is a “humanitarian crisis” Viva Palestina, "the largest ever US humanitarian aid convoy is now gathering in Egypt to head across the border into Gaza on Monday, July 13. Vehicles are coming from Alexandria, the medical supplies from Cairo and the advanced party of nearly 100 US citizens is heading for the staging post of Al Arish, just before the border with Gaza.
"That group, of four buses, has, however, been stopped from crossing over the Suez Canal and into the Sinai region, which leads to Gaza. The buses, carrying people, medical aid and bearing US, Egyptian and Palestinian flags in a spirit of international cooperation, have been held at a security checkpoint and given various, conflicting reasons for why they cannot proceed to their destination at Al Arish." -Kevin Ovenden, coordinator vivapalestina-us.org.
Egypt stops Gaza-bound medical convoy
International Movement to Open Rafah Border
Egyptian authorities have refused to allow 'Viva Palestina' activists trying to carry humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip to cross into the Sinai Peninsula.
The largest-ever US aid convoy to help the people of Gaza was stopped at the Suez Canal on Saturday on its way to Al Arish, where the rest of the group and supplies will join them before heading for the border crossing into Gaza.
The activists are part of a convoy of at least 200 people -- all Americans, including Charles Barron, a New York City Councilman -- that plan to be in Gaza by July 13.
The Coup in Honduras: A Teachable Moment for Obama?
by William Hughes
“I bewail the consequences of those furious passions which seem to belong to man.” - Chief Justice John Marshall
A surreal event took place on July 7, 2009, at the National Press Club, (NPC), in Washington, D.C. Some of the representatives of the “de facto” regime in Honduras, repeatedly denied, in differing fashions, that President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup d’etat on June 28, 2009. Not long after the press conference began, however, three gutsy protesters, holding the banner, “Fuera Golpistas,” staged a brief demonstration. They insisted on injecting some reality into the proceedings. They shouted that the coup is “illegal, there is blood on your hands!” They were quickly escorted out of the room, which, incidentally, is named in honor of the late, “Free Press” icon--Edward R. Murrow.
GREENPEACE MAKES A STATEMENT - WILL OBAMA LISTEN?
Allen L Roland
Greenpeace hangs banner with picture of Obama on Mount Rushmore
Greenpeace's obvious message to Obama is we honor Rushmore's four giants of American Presidential history for their solid principles and leadership ~ not necessarily their political skills. President Obama should take heed that America now needs, more than ever, a man of firm principles and leadership versus another accomplished unprincipled politician :
Where have you gone, Barack ?
You swayed millions of Americans with your impassioned promise of government truth and transparency, single pay health insurance, clean energy and withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and you have reneged on all of these promises for political reasons.
The Continued Fleecing Of America And Its Citizens By The Financial Elites
By Emily Spence
Many people are raised with an orientation, indeed an imperative sense, that puts compassion and ethics -- ones values and principles -- as central to their dealings with others. This foundation becomes part of their identities and shapes the directions that their lives take.
One does not have to look only at charitable institutions to find this to be the case. One can see it in the teacher who works day after day against daunting odds to uplift materially disadvantaged children living in extreme slums. Further, the Girl Scouts, who devise a special project at a senior center, exemplify this mind set when they earnestly strive to bring joy to the elderly of whom many are on their last legs. Likewise, the social workers tirelessly toiling to help families whose homes have been foreclosed and the countless volunteers who gather supplies for victims of disasters typify this focus.
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