prepare for atrocity

i contend that we the public only know a portion of the illegal and unethical (not to mention immoral) behavior ongoing within this bush administration. it is clear to me, at least, that bush is not telling us the whole story. his actions suggest he has much to hide, and that what he is hiding is potentially much worse than what we already know. to make matters worse, his party has lined up to defend him pretty much down the line, so that it is impossible to get a real investigation into the behavior of this republican administration. congress' job is to act as a check on the powers of the executive. instead, it has acted as an enabler, allowing the president unprecedented power, both through legislation and through inaction. this makes "president" bush something resembling a king, with his political cronies doing nothing to stop it. their lust for power has blinded their ethics and morality, so that are mere puppets of a corrupt regime. who will save us from this horrible fate?

from senator durbin (d-ill.)

Thank you for contacting me about our nation's policies regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other detention centers around the world.

I share your concerns about this important issue. In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush Administration made it clear that it was prepared to bend some of the time-honored rules of warfare when it came to the treatment of prisoners, creating a secret detention system outside the strictures of domestic and international law.

In its detention and interrogation policies, the United States should hold itself to the same high moral values that our nation stands for in other circumstances. Certain Administration policies regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners are not only inconsistent with our moral values, they risk increasing the danger to our own soldiers. Our troops are safer when we adhere to the highest standards of civilized behavior rather than lowering ourselves to the standards of our enemies.
The alternative -- actions such as those revealed in the photos from Abu Ghraib -- risk fueling the insurgency in Iraq and put our soldiers in that nation at greater risk.

In conjunction with Senator John McCain of Arizona and other Senate colleagues, I introduced an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Appropriations bill that reaffirmed our nation's long-standing obligation not to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and required that the treatment of detainees comply with the Army's Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. The Senate overwhelmingly approved this amendment, and it has been signed into law. I also cosponsored an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Authorization Act that would establish an independent commission on the treatment of wartime detainees in U.S. custody. Unfortunately this amendment was rejected by the Senate in a party line vote.

When the President signed the legislation containing the McCain amendment prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the President also issued a "signing statement" laying out his interpretation of the new law. The President's signing statement signaled an intent to view the prohibition on torture narrowly. The statement prompted a response from Senators McCain and John Warner of Virginia, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, making clear that the Congress specifically declined to include a Presidential waiver of the restrictions in the legislation, and noting that the Armed Services Committee intends to strictly monitor the Administration's implementation of this law.

Our commitment to principle, even during difficult times, has made America a special country. We must not allow the depravity of our enemies to cause us to abandon our nation's most fundamental values. Torture, indefinite detention without recourse to legal proceedings, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are inconsistent with the principles of liberty and the rule of law that underpin our democracy. I will continue to work to ensure that our laws –- and the core values upon which they are based -- do not fall by the wayside as we act to defend our national security in a time of war.

a message to the democrats

i have no confidence in the democrat party. in fact, i can't find any politician out there today who reflects my views. i have no one to support. this is disappointing. it is not very democratic.
but then, we're not a democracy.
what really troubles me about the democrats is their total lack of leadership. their inability to get anything done. the republicans have unity, they have party leadership, and they have a direction. it may be the wrong direction, but they're going somewhere. they have ideas, and as such they control policy debate. i see the democrats protesting, i hear them complaining, but i don't hear or see them proposing any solutions or alternatives. the republicans are mired in scandal--now is the time to strike--yet i don't see any democrats making a move. no one is standing firm and proposing a different direction for america. no one is standing tall and making a mark.
it disappoints me.
the democrats have a chance to take the power back, and they're squandering it.
the party is shifting to the left, catering to activists and nutjobs. this is not the way to win elections. you can cater to your hardcore extremists if you show leadership and direction, if you can also persuade the center that you have a vision and it is in their best interests to follow it. this is what the republicans have done, and despite bush's malfeasance and the rampant corruption and sleaze of their party, they're still in charge. the failure of democrat leadership has allowed the right to put two conservative judges on the supreme court. it has allowed the right to mire america in an ugly war. it has allowed the right to screw up the budget, curtail liberty and civil rights, and push a very un-democratic religious agenda on america. in short, the failure of democrats to lead, to stand for something, has allowed the republicans to severely damage this once-great nation. the america in which i live is not the one i dreamed it would be when i was younger. it is not the land of the free, or even the home of the brave.
it is the republicans' fault for doing this to us, and the democrats' fault for not stopping them.

as it turns out, no one respects democracy anyway

i don't understand. i thought we were supposed to support democracy. yet when a foreign country elects a government not to our liking we demonise it and threaten to cut off support and diplomatic ties with it. we did this with arafat before, and now we're going to do it with hamas. nevermind that, unlike arafat and his corrupt fatah party, hamas was popularly elected and proposes to cut corruption and run an efficient, effective government. maybe such a thing is not in israel's interest, as an efficient, effective palestinian government would have to be taken more seriously, and might one day earn it the right to be heard in international forums, or at least when it comes to negotiating a solution to the ongoing conflicth with israel. personally, i can't defend this behavior, punishing voters for electing a government. it's not like it hasn't happened to us, or won't in the future. if we were dumb enough to elect a corrupt, abusive, power-mad government, do we still deserve to be punished for it? maybe we should be encouraged to vote better next time. maybe our government should be published, but not the voters.

personally, aside from their vow to destroy israel, i think hamas might be a better government than the republican party is right now. we'll see, but if it can cut corruption it's already a step up on the republicans. if it can avoid invading foreign countries without provocation or legitimate cause, then it's two steps up. if it can make palestine a well-governed country, well, then it does deserve respect.

who, besides iran and maybe china, will give it to them?

the republican party: violating you since 2002

senate republicans prove once again they don't give a shit for your rights and liberties.

of course the u.s. rejects the un's claim of torture. what do you expect them to say: oops, sorry, forgot about that one. thanks for pointing it out. we'll try to do better next time.

duh.

the president is our enemy

i don't believe in capital punishment, i don't believe in torture. i don't believe in treating other human beings in that way.

i believe the government always goes further, always oversteps its bounds, than we know. given that, want what we know about what the present government has done, i suspect some pretty horrible things have happened in the past five years, things that no american should ever be involved with. things people just should not do.

the problem with all of this, though, is bush's self-justification. he says in times of war the president has special powers to bend the laws in able to successfully prosecute the war. i can't disagree with that. however, that's based on the premise of a war against a defined enemy, i.e. a country, and a certain amount of national, if not global, support for this war. it is based on the idea that the war will conclude at some point, probably not very far in the future.

this 'war on terror', which i'm not sure congress has officially validated, is not this sort of war, as the enemy is amorphous and not at all eager to show itself. we're not fighting another country (though other countries do have involvement in this problem), but instead we're fighting a large and wide-ranging group of people who we can't pin down. this isn't a war, it's a change in lifestyle. it's not something that looks to be temporary, or even avoidable. the liberties bush takes with our rights and protections have no foreseeable end, and that is a problem.

i might be willing to accept limited freedom of movement and speech for a year or two, i might be able to accept questionable wiretaps for a short period of time if a) they were approved legally through fisa, and b) they were related to known national security risks. with the war on terror, b is tough to support. with gwbush, a has been bypassed. this sickens me.

violation of my civil rights, invasion of my privacy, and being told what to think/believe/say appalls me. restrictions on my personal freedoms appall me. i don't like this president, and i hate what he's doing to america.

when this government tortures, it's your fault

more american torture. yes, your government is cruel.

yes, some of these people are wrongly accused.

yes, you could be there too.

gwbutthead and his cronies don't care, if they think you're a threat to their hegemony.

swiped from the economist

The hidden killer
Feb 9th 2006 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

Many of the terrorists' victims have not stopped coughing

Two days after the World Trade Centre's towers collapsed in September 2001, Christine Todd Whitman, then the boss of America's Environmental Protection Agency, announced that “EPA is greatly relieved to have learned that there appears to be no significant level of asbestos dust in the air in New York City.” The city heaved a collective sigh of relief—but it has been coughing ever since.

On February 2nd, Deborah Batts, a Manhattan federal judge, blasted Ms Whitman and her agency for repeatedly and knowingly misleading the public into believing the air was safe in the days after the attacks. The collapsing towers released a cloud of hazardous substances, including fibreglass, Freon, mercury, lead, 130,000 gallons of transformer oil and some 2,000 tons of asbestos.

By the next day the EPA already knew that tested air samples contained asbestos levels four times higher than its own danger threshold. Separate studies conducted by other government agencies and independent researchers all found frightening levels of asbestos in homes and workplaces. Yet the EPA and Ms Whitman (a former New Jersey governor), encouraged thousands of New Yorkers to return to their schools, homes and offices.


The EPA, federally mandated to clean up the insides of buildings, passed that responsibility to the still reeling and ill-equipped city of New York. The methods used by the city, though inadequate, were endorsed by the EPA. The agency meanwhile used the latest technology to clean, very thoroughly, its own downtown building. Four and a half years later, Lower Manhattan has yet to be cleaned properly. Even the EPA's internal watchdog criticised the response in 2003.

Judge Batts makes these points in an 83-page pre-trial opinion for a class-action lawsuit filed by students, workers and residents of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who say they were exposed to hazardous materials and polluted air. The judge, who described Ms Whitman's assurances as “conscience-shocking”, ruled that she was not entitled to immunity just because she was a public official.

Ms Whitman and the EPA are appealing that decision. It would allow the plaintiffs to continue their suit and to seek monetary damages. Their lead lawyer, Sherrie Savett, says the class-action suit hopes to achieve a proper cleaning for Lower Manhattan, the setting up of a medical monitoring fund and damages for those suffering.

Whatever the merits of the suit, there is plenty of evidence of continuing pain. Babies born after the attacks had significantly shorter gestations and smaller head circumferences, and were underweight. Thousands of New Yorkers are battling respiratory problems, and such diseases may take years to reveal themselves.

Interestingly, on the same day that Judge Batts issued her opinion, a ruling on a similar case filed by firefighters and soldiers went in Ms Whitman's favour. A judge ruled that rescue and clean-up workers were not entitled to sue, in part because the EPA and Ms Whitman made a distinction between risks to workers at Ground Zero and the risks to everyone else. Scores of rescue workers have developed respiratory illnesses and cancer, and the deaths of two emergency response workers and a police detective have been blamed on breathing problems related to the many hours they spent searching for victims.

criminals in power

do we have a treasonous vice president? it wouldn't surprise me, but it won't mean anything unless they get him before the november elections. even an indictment against cheney would be meaningful.

man are the republicans corrupt. these people who condemend bill clinton for fooling around with an intern, they're taking money for favors and breaking laws and ethics left and right. i suppose this is what happens when your president doesn't understand the difference between morals and ethics, and despite calling himself a 'born-again christian' still believes in killing people. we're being run by a kakistocracy, and it makes me sick.

or is it a kleptocracy?

a letter from naral pro choice, replicated here for you

Wal-Mart - the nation's largest retail pharmacy - has been
denying millions of American women the opportunity to prevent
unintended pregnancy. The store refuses to stock the
"morning-after" pill, a back-up birth control option that
prevents pregnancy after sex.

With your help, NARAL Pro-Choice America has been fighting this
policy from every angle:

:: In the past year, our activists have generated 75,000
messages to Wal-Mart headquarters, asking the retail giant to
reverse its policy.

:: Our affiliate, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, recently
joined three women plaintiffs who announced a suit against
Wal-Mart for not stocking the morning-after pill.

:: And just last week, we signed onto a letter with Planned
Parenthood Federation of America, the National Organization for
Women, the National Council of Women's Organizations, and
WakeUpWalMart.com, urging Wal-Mart to change its policy (click
here to read the statement
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/0dLRNvK1BmpI/).

Our efforts are starting to pay off. On Friday, a Wal-Mart
spokesperson told the Associated Press, "Women's health is a
high priority for Wal-Mart, so clearly there are broader
considerations and we are giving this a lot of thought."
[Associated Press, 2/3/06]

We have to continue to push Wal-Mart to end its discriminatory
policy once and for all. Help us convince Wal-Mart that they can
only make women's health a priority by stocking the
morning-after pill. Click here to send a message to Wal-Mart
today
http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/walmart_ec_0206/wi3g8g5405k7mk3?.

You can also call Wal-Mart on their toll-free line at
1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278). Use our sample script:

"I ask that Wal-Mart reverse its policy on denying emergency
contraception, also known as the "morning-after" pill, to women
across the country. I hope you will reconsider your policy and
make your customers' health - and rights - your top priority.
Thank you."
--------------------------------------------------

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about our
effort to get Wal-Mart to stock the morning-after pill.

http://prochoiceaction.org/join-forward.html?domain=can&r=b1LRNvK1AzC-

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
NARAL Pro-Choice America's Choice Action Network at:

http://prochoiceaction.org/can/join.html?r=b1LRNvK1AzC-E

our president hates us

bush budget targets fucking you in the ass. be ready.