Jen's Green Journal

Last year's Military Commissions Act of 2006 was a disgrace to the values we claim to hold in this country. Congress, including our own "Democrat" Jim Matheson, voted to give King George  the power to imprison anyone, anytime for no reason whatsoever. Think you are protected because you are an American citizen? All King George has to do is declare you an "enemy combatant" and then you can be held indefinitely -- no charges brought against you, no trial, no opportunities to even see a lawyer.

Now that there is a Dem majority in Congress, it's time to reign in the excesses of power abuse by the executive branch and get rid of that law.

From True Majority:
"Tell your Representative to Restore our Constitutional rights to habeas corpus.

    http://action.truemajority.org/campaign/habeas_corpus
 
Maybe it sounds like a legal technicality, but the habeas corpus right is pretty simple, and pretty important. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC called it "the right of anyone who’s tossed in prison to appear in court and say 'Hey, why am I in prison?'."¹  Without that right, people get thrown into places like Guantanamo Bay for years with no evidence other than the say-so of a bounty hunter collecting his $5,000 fee.² And legal experts say the law is written so that anyone, U.S. citizen or not, could get that treatment if they run afoul of the President.³
 
It's hard to write about even the basic facts here without sounding overly-dramatic, but this is how it is. One of the reasons we fought the Revolution was so that a king could not imprison people without a court hearing. Taking away that right is not protecting America, it's dismantling it.
 
Congressman Nadler is trying to add language to an existing bill which would restore habeas corpus. If that fails, he promises to bring it up again, as an amendment. If that fails, there are new bills waiting which would undo the damage of last October's "Military Commissions Act." Send your message now to tell your Representatives to do what it takes to restore this cornerstone of American democracy.

Matt Holland
TrueMajorityACTION Online Director

1 - The death of habeas corpus - MSNBC.com

2 - The Shame of Guantanamo – Washington Post Writers Group

3 - Challenging the Military Commissions Act, Jurist, October 04, 2006

For More Information:

Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States:
 
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” [italics added]

Who's Really Locked up in Guantanamo?"

6 years of working with rubber stamp Senators and Congress people has given Georgie boy the idea that he can get away with this bit of Orwellian nonsense:



W Pushes Envelope on US Spying

"Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington."

Okay 110th Congress, it's time to reign in this guy's over-developed sense of entitlement and dictatorial dreams. This would make a good first task to prove to the rest of us that Dems won't roll over and play dead when it comes to our civil liberties.

In other words: Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and tomorrow we will alway have been allied with Eurasia. I wonder if those 50% stalwart GOPs in Utah will notice the difference?

(not sure that the claim "Democrats: A New Direction for America" can be made. Maybe "different direction", but until we give 3rd parties even playing ground, it's just going to be going back and forth between the two increasingly corrupt parties (although one is significantly more corrupt than the other) until the end of our nation.)

Thanks to Part of the Plan for the vid.

Is this how the Ministry of Truth began?
Strategic Torture from the Ministry of Love

Welcome to 1984

Thank you AT&T, Verizon and Bell South for your loyalty to Oceania the United States.



Working Assets wanted for questioning by the Ministry of Love. Please focus your next 2 minutes hate on the following:

George "War-Hungry" (and anti-poor people) Bush attends a wreath laying ceremony for peace-loving Mahatma Ghandi -- could there be any two people in history more opposite each other than these two? My guess is he's there as a favor to the Ministry of Truth to promote the idea that "War is Peace".

The Bush Admin is at it again -- they've been issuing subpoenas to various search enging companies demanding records of searches. All the companies except for Google have complied with the subpoenas, there's no record of which companies have be subpoenaed.

Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests

Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

Mountain View-based Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records.

The claim is being made that this is to enforce child protection laws. I find it hard to believe that this is the only reason that they want this information. After all, the Bush administration is getting quite a reputation for being dishonest -- I can't count the number of lies I've heard from this government. Not only that, but this admin has shown that it doesn't take civil rights of it's own people seriously.

This looks like a gateway case -- start with something that people have a hard time arguing with, like the protection of children -- then chip away until you can data mine for citizens who are researching the crimes of the government in general and Bush & Co. in particular, or building files on folks planning peace events.

I say, go Google! Thanks for standing up for what is right. Keep up the good fight!

The ACLU has filed suit to stop Bush's illegal spying:

'"President Bush may believe he can authorize spying on Americans without judicial or Congressional approval, but this program is illegal and we intend to put a stop to it," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "The current surveillance of Americans is a chilling assertion of presidential power that has not been seen since the days of Richard Nixon."'

Funny that our gov thinks that pacifists are such a big threat. Quaker groups have been the target of the recent spying, as they have in times past.

"Given the history, I'm not surprised [about the recent surveillance of Quakers], but it is outrageous," McConnell says, noting that the Chicago office where he works has evidence that over the years Chicago police and the FBI have spied on and infiltrated his organization's protests at presidential inaugurations and military recruiting offices. "There are real threats out there," he says, "but it does not come from groups engaged in lawful public protest whose goals are publicly stated."'

I never would have thought groups that teach non-violence and pacisfism could be considered such a threat -- it must be the threat of peaceful ideology that's so dangerous to our corrupt government.

So let's see how close we're getting to the (apparently) prophetic novel with this (by no means comprehensive) list:

Big Brother is Watching You/Freedom is Slavery:

• Patriot Act
• Bush & Co. Spy on Americans
• Homeland Security opening and reading mail -- the newest addition to the list
  

War is Peace

• Lying about the real reasons for the Iraq War
  

Ministry of Truth/Ignorance is Strength

• Jeff Ganon & similar scandals
  
• "Liberal" media failing to report, under reporting, or delayed reporting of many of these Orwellian tactics used by Bush & Co.
• FCC deregulation
  

Ministry of Love

• Guantanamo Detentions
• Abu Ghraib and other prisoner torture abuse scandals
• the disappeared and detained people swept up after 9/11

Two Minutes Hate

• Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage, O'Reilly, et al.

Inspired by SOS: Students for an Orwellian Society

Please feel free to add more by commenting.

I like reading wertz 's LiveJournal. He's a much better writer and political analyst than I am. He wrote today on the despotism of the Bush admin. and I just want to pull a few quotes that I think are really important. The full post can be found here.

"They have now rendered unto themselves the power to a) spy on, b) apprehend, c) imprison, d) torture, and e) disappear any citizen they see fit and can execute the entire process without a shred of oversight or accountability. Is there a better definition of despotism? Anyone?

The "9-11 changed everything" defense is still no excuse for the continuing infringement of due process. As every judge, lawyer, legislator, libertarian, or borderline fan of freedom in the world will tell you, if you don't like a law, you work to change it - you don't just break it. Why does Team Bush keep arguing as if critical needs cannot be secured except through illegal means? Have they even tested that proposition?"

snip

"Indeed, one might begin to wonder if the administration hasn't already been infiltrated - at every level - by people pursuing agendas of personal gain or ideology, people who can be corrupted and who can, under cover of national security, work to subvert the national interest and defraud the public purse. Indeed, I have seen some compelling speculation that Team Bush has already been manipulated by such foreign interests. At any rate, the combination of greed, stupidity, self-righteousness, and secrecy cannot possibly end well - can it?

Equally troubling in relation to Pentagon and FBI domestic surveillance, is the absence of known terrorist leaning militias and white supremacist groups. How is it possible, particularly after the Oklahoma City bombing, that such groups avoid scrutiny? Are they being "protected"? If Quakers and gay rights organizations are enemies of the state, are fringe religious zealots and armed militias friends of the state?"

As been stated so many places, why impeach for lying about a blow-job and not for these many worse crimes? It's time to make impeachment a priority. The Green Party is calling for impeachment (among others). Besides contacting our reps to demand impeachment, we can also can keep pressure on the issue by following the example of the Freeway Blogger -- his/her visuals and strategic placement are an inspiration -- this is something that everyone can do, even on a smaller scale.

 

 

When I was a kid my parents, trying to instill patriotism, told me a lot of stories.

There was the one about how in the US the legal system is the best in the world, even if not perfect. People aren't thrown in jail without trial and never heard from again or tortured.

I was told we a had a free press that didn't lie to us, like the press in the USSR that published propaganda.

I was told that in some countries the government spied on it's own people, but not here.

The last few months it's become well known that the USA isn't above any of those crimes that my parents assured me were practices in other less free countries.

I can't count how many times I was told that while the US isn't perfect, it's the best country on the planet. I haven't traveled all that widely, but I was surprised to find in my brief visits to Canada, England and (even more briefly) in France, that those countries seemed just as free as(and in a few cases, free-er than)the US.

When I was a kid I remember feeling awed that I lived in the best country on earth. The conclusions that I began to have were that I must be very special and have a special destiny to be born here.

I would watch the Olympic medal totals and took each one the US earned to mean that we were a chosen people. Even when East Germany or the USSR had more, I put it down to their athletes having an unfair advantage by being supported to train full time.

I became very wrapped up in the idea of my country's, and by extension, my special-ness. It took quite a bit to get me to look at reality -- some history, some awarness of US domestic and foreign policy, some personal experience of the world.

There are a lot of people that need to hold on to that feeling of special-ness. They keep telling themselves that we are the chosen nation, God blesses us, others hate us for our freedoms -- all to convince themselves that they are more important than someone else somewhere else.

It's a dangerous way of thinking. It's blinds some people to the evil that is perpetrated by our government, which in turn gives our government a blank check to do what it will. It makes some people not only complacent about war, but cheerleaders, eager for a battle that most of them won't be fighting.

With all the news recently showing just how corrupt our government is, will there finally be an end to the self-brainwashing mantra of, "The US is the best there is"? Will we finally be able to look at ourselves honestly without fear of being labeled "un-American"? Or will we hear it more often and louder as folks try to drown out the bad news that there's a lot we need to work on to make this country one to be proud of? I hope it will help us to see ourselves for the flawed country that we are, so that we can get busy changing things for the better.