The massive shift to the right that continues to be felt in this country since the Bush Administration came into power has been well documented and indeed, we are witnessing signs of the despotic nature of the present government every day. The most obvious one is the Executive branch’s unwillingness to answer to the Legislative branch’s demands. Other signs are the stringent so-called security reforms which have come about under the umbrella of Homeland Security. This Orwellian Department was created as a means of allegedly fusing the various security and support sections of government beneath it. Furthermore, the FBI and CIA have seen a massive boost in their ability to illegally listen in on telephone conversations and read private mail, whether it be email or regular mail, to an unprecedented extent. Things that were considered to belong only to totalitarian regimes such as the incarceration and torture of prisoners held indefinitely without charges being brought against them, have become an everyday occurrence. The hijacking of the Justice Department by a rabid White House was apparently the icing on the cake.
But it didn’t stop there. I experienced first hand the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing discovery of literally hundreds of thousands of files compounded on ordinary citizens; information which was passed on to the Stasi, the ‘State security Police,’ by thousands upon thousands of informants. People were compromised by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MFS) and were forced, coerced or threatened into spying on their friends, neighbors, husbands, wives, sisters or anyone in their circle of acquaintances. The most mundane aspects of the lives of ordinary citizens were documented in a maddeningly bureaucratic manner down to the tooth-brushing habits of individuals or their breakfast preferences. It was an unfathomable infringement of the rights of the citizens of that country made possible by the gigantic network of clandestine informants that the MFS had recruited over time. This is now coming to America, as Justin Rood of ABC reports:
The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.
The FBI said the push was driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush ordering the bureau to improve its counterterrorism efforts by boosting its human intelligence capabilities.
Do not for one minute think that the above scenario, which became part of everyday life in the former German Democratic Republic under its allegedly socialist regime, could not happen in the United States. Consider that it happened there with over 95% of the population opposed to these practices, whereas the fear of terrorism which has gripped this country, driven by an administration which is using fear to bludgeon the mostly undereducated population into accepting its arguments for a need for increased surveillance, has conditioned people into believing that draconian security measures and clandestine wiretapping are a necessary part of life.
They are not. It is as unnecessary to live in fear of a terrorist attack as it is to worry every day that one might die of kidney failure. The instrument of fear is being wielded to control an already cowed population into accepting anything and everything and the non-occurrence of an event, of a terrorist attack, is being proclaimed by such media outlets as FOX News as being the success story brought about by an infringement of our rights as citizens. The America which represented freedom is slipping into a dark world of repressive government legislation disseminated by a cabal of power-hungry, despotic politicians and supported by a Justice Department which has lost all autonomy.
Articles of Impeachment should be drawn up for Bush and Cheney and Alberto Gonzales should be held accountable for perjury and thrown out of his job. Make no mistake; it is better to impeach than to sit back and allow the current trend to continue. The concern of many, that impeachment will not work because the vote will never pass the House, is erroneous. It is the constitutional duty of Congress to impeach and it is the duty of the American people to hold Congress accountable for upholding the Constitution. At worst it will stall this government and prevent it from dragging this country further into the abyss.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Rove Under Pressure
The continued hedging of the White House around the subpoenas demanded by the Senate Judiciary Committee with regards to the firings of eight US Attorneys has begun to draw fire from both Republicans and Democrats alike. The attempt by the Committee to place the White House in contempt, which has stalled due to the Justice Department pandering to the White House demands, that Executive Privilege be granted to anyone and everyone with whom Bush has shared even the smallest remark. It’s unbelievable that we have a Justice Department which bows to Executive Pressure.
Whilst Senator Patrick Leahy point blank accused karl Rove of playing a key role in the firings, Senator Arlen Specter also fired a shot across the White House bow as reported by Michael Roston of The Raw Story:
"The accumulated and essentially uncontroverted evidence is that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year," the committee's chairman said. "The evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House."
We have a runaway executive branch here that needs to be reined in with the full force of Congress and the Senate. If that means impeachment, so be it, but I cannot understand for the life of me why Bush is being allowed to jerk the entire country around and no one seems to be proactively doing anything about it. Republicans should be up in arms and every Democrat should be asking for Gonzalez’ head and Bush’s impeachment. Can anyone imagine the uproar had Bill Clinton claimed Executive Privilege during the obscenely long and ridiculously expensive, not to mention aborted, Whitewater investigation or the laughable investigation over Monika Lewinsky?
The Democrats’ fear that Impeachment will not work because the Republican Congressmen would never vote for it is not a ground to avoid applying the law as it is laid out in The Constitution of the United States. The President broke the law, is breaking the law and will continue breaking the law until he is stopped. It’s the duty of the legislative branch of government to heed the constitution and to impeach him.
Whilst Senator Patrick Leahy point blank accused karl Rove of playing a key role in the firings, Senator Arlen Specter also fired a shot across the White House bow as reported by Michael Roston of The Raw Story:
"The accumulated and essentially uncontroverted evidence is that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year," the committee's chairman said. "The evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House."
We have a runaway executive branch here that needs to be reined in with the full force of Congress and the Senate. If that means impeachment, so be it, but I cannot understand for the life of me why Bush is being allowed to jerk the entire country around and no one seems to be proactively doing anything about it. Republicans should be up in arms and every Democrat should be asking for Gonzalez’ head and Bush’s impeachment. Can anyone imagine the uproar had Bill Clinton claimed Executive Privilege during the obscenely long and ridiculously expensive, not to mention aborted, Whitewater investigation or the laughable investigation over Monika Lewinsky?
The Democrats’ fear that Impeachment will not work because the Republican Congressmen would never vote for it is not a ground to avoid applying the law as it is laid out in The Constitution of the United States. The President broke the law, is breaking the law and will continue breaking the law until he is stopped. It’s the duty of the legislative branch of government to heed the constitution and to impeach him.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Guantánamo Ruling
A legal bombshell seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the general public: in a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a federal appeals court ordered the government to turn over almost all of its information on the inmates at Guantánamo who are challenging their detention. This is a direct challenge to the Justice Department which we know, is basically controlled by the Bush administration, contrary to the law and contrary to the Constitution of the United States and which wants to limit the disclosures. It opens up the field for legal battles which will target the government’s insistence that it is allowed to keep inmates imprisoned indefinitely.
William Glaberson of the New York Times writes:
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and lawyers for the detainees.
The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”
Why the Bush administration cannot follow London’s lead and simply try people in a normal court of law or let them go if there is insufficient evidence to hold them is puzzling. Most of the 360 men still held at Guantánamo cannot even be classified as enemy combatants. The method by which the U.S. army offered rewards for tips leading to the arrest of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Iraq was a flop. It is widely accepted that most of the men turned over to the military were not affiliated with a terrorist group. However $500 in Afghanistan, which is what the military doled out for this kind of information is over two years’ pay for the average worker. Warlords would hand out bogus information on people they wanted to have removed and ordinary people gave false information about neighbors in order to pocket the cash.
Guantánamo remains a crime against humanity. This court ruling is a small step in dismantling the Gestapo-like actions of the Bush Administration in arresting and indefinitely holding human beings in conditions that would be criticized by the United States were they occurring elsewhere.
William Glaberson of the New York Times writes:
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and lawyers for the detainees.
The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”
Why the Bush administration cannot follow London’s lead and simply try people in a normal court of law or let them go if there is insufficient evidence to hold them is puzzling. Most of the 360 men still held at Guantánamo cannot even be classified as enemy combatants. The method by which the U.S. army offered rewards for tips leading to the arrest of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Iraq was a flop. It is widely accepted that most of the men turned over to the military were not affiliated with a terrorist group. However $500 in Afghanistan, which is what the military doled out for this kind of information is over two years’ pay for the average worker. Warlords would hand out bogus information on people they wanted to have removed and ordinary people gave false information about neighbors in order to pocket the cash.
Guantánamo remains a crime against humanity. This court ruling is a small step in dismantling the Gestapo-like actions of the Bush Administration in arresting and indefinitely holding human beings in conditions that would be criticized by the United States were they occurring elsewhere.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
The Women and the Children
There is a view in the West that assumes the moral high ground and in some ways it is hard to shake that off. Stories of stoning adulterous women and cutting the hands off thieves sound so very much like the Dark Ages which we, as a Western society, feel that we left behind long ago. The barbaric acts that constitute parts of Sharia law leave us shuddering at the brutality some Arabs seem to be capable of.
In the Iraq war, much has been made of the beheadings that took place mainly in 2004 and 2005. They served again to reinforce our image of the uncivilized indigenous fighters compared with our troops who regularly try and avoid civilian casualties. With the advent of alternative media possibilities such as U-Tube, the general population began getting a glimpse behind the scenes of the Western allied war machine and it probably surprised many, that pilots, for example, ask permission to engage a target and await confirmation before they destroy it. It was an indication of the laudable lengths the military goes to, to try and ensure that as few civilian casualties as possible occur. At the same time, we, as the public, are shown just how vastly outmatched the local fighting force is compared to the arsenal and technological sophistication demonstrated by the U.S. Military.
So we have on the one hand, a rag-tag group of insurgents who stop at nothing in their attempts to sway politics, public opinion or sheer terror and on the other, a super-advanced fighting force that has all the means at hand for targeting and destroying enemy targets with the ever-ubiquitous ‘pin-point’ precision. This makes us feel good. We haven’t got people on our side murdering women and children willy-nilly which puts us in the right and the enemy, where our governments want them, morally in the wrong. So why don’t the Iraqis love us?
The problem is two-fold. Firstly, there is the subjectivity of morals. I’d like to think of ethics as objective rules for living. The truth however, is that an Iraqi mother who’s child was killed by an American soldier cannot be expected to think “well they didn’t mean to kill my son.” She is angry and rightfully so. 429 people were shot dead at checkpoints by U.S. forces during the past twelve month period as reported by McClatchy Newspapers.
Those are 429 people to add to the list of Iraqis accidentally bombed, burned and otherwise killed by the coalition troops. Not a single relative of those killed will have any understanding for the presence of foreign fighters on their soil and given the nature of the Iraqi family demographic, we are talking about a lot of angry people. But still, we hold firm to our moral compass and proclaim that these ‘regrettable incidents’ could not be avoided and we are very sorry.
The second factor is that of the willful deaths of Iraqis caused by coalition troops. This again is split into those who died as insurgent fighters defending themselves or attacking Western forces and those who were murdered in cold blood. The latter of course are the ones who will sink the neo-Conservative crusade. It does not matter that we are talking about a few bad apples and it does not matter that the incidents are few and far between. Haditha is a black mark on the United States’ military occupation of Iraq. Haditha is the nail in the coffin of the ‘good guy’ argument.
The Washington Post has reported on the latest in the Haditha scandal in which marines opened fire and killed several civilians in cold blood. There is fresh evidence to suggest that the marines also knowingly murdered women and small children.
One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
"I told him, there's women and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum's response was, "Well, shoot them," Mendoza said.
The problem for the United States is, that it doesn’t matter if you kill three children or three thousand children. You become a child murderer. Just as those who are generally wont to label other groups for the actions of a few, the Iraqis will label the U.S. forces based on the actions of the marines. I have repeatedly heard the insurgents referred to as “beheaders” although surely the small number of beheadings that took place, were carried out by a few bad apples. But in our minds, from our Western perspective, many see them that way, in the same way as they will see us in the dark light of the Haditha killings, as those that came and murdered their children.
In the Iraq war, much has been made of the beheadings that took place mainly in 2004 and 2005. They served again to reinforce our image of the uncivilized indigenous fighters compared with our troops who regularly try and avoid civilian casualties. With the advent of alternative media possibilities such as U-Tube, the general population began getting a glimpse behind the scenes of the Western allied war machine and it probably surprised many, that pilots, for example, ask permission to engage a target and await confirmation before they destroy it. It was an indication of the laudable lengths the military goes to, to try and ensure that as few civilian casualties as possible occur. At the same time, we, as the public, are shown just how vastly outmatched the local fighting force is compared to the arsenal and technological sophistication demonstrated by the U.S. Military.
So we have on the one hand, a rag-tag group of insurgents who stop at nothing in their attempts to sway politics, public opinion or sheer terror and on the other, a super-advanced fighting force that has all the means at hand for targeting and destroying enemy targets with the ever-ubiquitous ‘pin-point’ precision. This makes us feel good. We haven’t got people on our side murdering women and children willy-nilly which puts us in the right and the enemy, where our governments want them, morally in the wrong. So why don’t the Iraqis love us?
The problem is two-fold. Firstly, there is the subjectivity of morals. I’d like to think of ethics as objective rules for living. The truth however, is that an Iraqi mother who’s child was killed by an American soldier cannot be expected to think “well they didn’t mean to kill my son.” She is angry and rightfully so. 429 people were shot dead at checkpoints by U.S. forces during the past twelve month period as reported by McClatchy Newspapers.
Those are 429 people to add to the list of Iraqis accidentally bombed, burned and otherwise killed by the coalition troops. Not a single relative of those killed will have any understanding for the presence of foreign fighters on their soil and given the nature of the Iraqi family demographic, we are talking about a lot of angry people. But still, we hold firm to our moral compass and proclaim that these ‘regrettable incidents’ could not be avoided and we are very sorry.
The second factor is that of the willful deaths of Iraqis caused by coalition troops. This again is split into those who died as insurgent fighters defending themselves or attacking Western forces and those who were murdered in cold blood. The latter of course are the ones who will sink the neo-Conservative crusade. It does not matter that we are talking about a few bad apples and it does not matter that the incidents are few and far between. Haditha is a black mark on the United States’ military occupation of Iraq. Haditha is the nail in the coffin of the ‘good guy’ argument.
The Washington Post has reported on the latest in the Haditha scandal in which marines opened fire and killed several civilians in cold blood. There is fresh evidence to suggest that the marines also knowingly murdered women and small children.
One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
"I told him, there's women and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum's response was, "Well, shoot them," Mendoza said.
The problem for the United States is, that it doesn’t matter if you kill three children or three thousand children. You become a child murderer. Just as those who are generally wont to label other groups for the actions of a few, the Iraqis will label the U.S. forces based on the actions of the marines. I have repeatedly heard the insurgents referred to as “beheaders” although surely the small number of beheadings that took place, were carried out by a few bad apples. But in our minds, from our Western perspective, many see them that way, in the same way as they will see us in the dark light of the Haditha killings, as those that came and murdered their children.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
None of The Above
Everyone keeps talking about a Bush legacy. Even George Bush was reportedly hunting for something he could potentially claim as a future legacy or at least some good news that he may one day be credited with a legacy, any legacy, besides that of a war-mongering, war-profiteer who sacrificed the lives of thousands, literally thousands of Americans and destroyed the lives of millions, yes, millions of Iraqis, that he set fire to the Middle East, that he ruined the image of the United States in the eyes of Muslims for decades to come for personal, ill-conceived plans which were executed in such a baffling display of utter incapability that even hard core Neoconservatives are chomping at the bit to oust him. One would be forgiven for thinking that that was it. I mean, what more can one attribute to this man, this abject failure of a President?
Let us take a step back for one second; one of the reasons that the word ‘legacy’ is being bandied around is the fact that even with eighteen months to go, the Bush catastrophe is virtually over. His complete irrelevance in the affairs of this country, coupled with the fact that the American public just wish him to go home means that people are thinking of ‘The Post Bush Era.’ They are fleeing mentally to a future without the Decider in Chief, the man who single-handedly took the United States from a super power to a laughing stock. The man who with his team of devious and defective aides and advisors, his cabinet of dishonest, disingenuous and duplicitous political renegades has managed to demonstrate to the world how to defeat the world’s most powerful army. No one really knows how the ‘Post Bush Era’ will look, but the tired and weary Americans know that it cannot possible be worse. So there is a glimmer of hope. In this context, people are wondering just what will we remember about George W. Bush?
Well one thing that will be omnipresent is the utter destruction of the Republican Party. That will be George’s other lasting legacy. Only a few months ago, the right was gloating about the utter collapse of the Democratic Party, only to see it rise and take back the House of Representatives and the Senate and with that victory, the Democrats have a chance of taking back their country and handing it back to its true owners; not the power hungry cabal of maniacs running it now, but the American people.
So it comes as no surprise, with the dismantling of the Neocon dream that Bush’s successors are floundering. How much is evident in the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll which shows that between the four leading GOP candidates for 2008, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, the public chooses “none of the above,” as reported on CNN.
None of the top candidates has a clear lead among Christian evangelicals, a critical part of the GOP base that has had considerable sway in past Republican primaries. Giuliani, a thrice-married backer of abortion rights and gay rights, had 20 percent support -- roughly even with Thompson and McCain who have one divorce each in their pasts. Romney, a Mormon who has been married for three decades, was in the single digits.
A full 25% however stated that none of the candidates running would be their choice in 2008. Isn’t that sad? That, my friends, will be the legacy of the man in the White House. He will have destroyed the GOP and their chances of leading the country for the next eight years. The image of Republicans is a party gone mad, throwing good money after bad for deluded and obtuse concepts which even the most dense red state voter questions. More of the same? No thanks! As the Giulianis and McCains walk the tightrope of backing the war whilst keeping a distance to Bush, all the while applauding his efforts enough, to make sure they garner support amongst the remaining 26% who still believe in him. We are aware only of the two-faced nature of their arguments, hip-hopping and flip-flopping to avoid being ensnared in the traps of same-sex marriage and immigration, of war in Iraq and abortion. They come across as the most disingenuous pack of inauthentic politicians one has ever set eyes on.
Entirely gone is the idea that the Republicans represent honesty and family values. From the thieving, corrupt likes of Cunningham to the page boy affairs of Rep. Foley, from Washington DC bordello stories of Senator Vitter to the Abramoff tainted White House, the Republicans have become the party of hypocrisy and scandal.
"I'm looking for a strong honest person. Do you know of any?" asks Barbara Skogman a 72 year-old retiree from Cedar Rapids Iowa, who can’t decide amongst the Republican candidates.
My answer would be “no, I don’t.”
Let us take a step back for one second; one of the reasons that the word ‘legacy’ is being bandied around is the fact that even with eighteen months to go, the Bush catastrophe is virtually over. His complete irrelevance in the affairs of this country, coupled with the fact that the American public just wish him to go home means that people are thinking of ‘The Post Bush Era.’ They are fleeing mentally to a future without the Decider in Chief, the man who single-handedly took the United States from a super power to a laughing stock. The man who with his team of devious and defective aides and advisors, his cabinet of dishonest, disingenuous and duplicitous political renegades has managed to demonstrate to the world how to defeat the world’s most powerful army. No one really knows how the ‘Post Bush Era’ will look, but the tired and weary Americans know that it cannot possible be worse. So there is a glimmer of hope. In this context, people are wondering just what will we remember about George W. Bush?
Well one thing that will be omnipresent is the utter destruction of the Republican Party. That will be George’s other lasting legacy. Only a few months ago, the right was gloating about the utter collapse of the Democratic Party, only to see it rise and take back the House of Representatives and the Senate and with that victory, the Democrats have a chance of taking back their country and handing it back to its true owners; not the power hungry cabal of maniacs running it now, but the American people.
So it comes as no surprise, with the dismantling of the Neocon dream that Bush’s successors are floundering. How much is evident in the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll which shows that between the four leading GOP candidates for 2008, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, the public chooses “none of the above,” as reported on CNN.
None of the top candidates has a clear lead among Christian evangelicals, a critical part of the GOP base that has had considerable sway in past Republican primaries. Giuliani, a thrice-married backer of abortion rights and gay rights, had 20 percent support -- roughly even with Thompson and McCain who have one divorce each in their pasts. Romney, a Mormon who has been married for three decades, was in the single digits.
A full 25% however stated that none of the candidates running would be their choice in 2008. Isn’t that sad? That, my friends, will be the legacy of the man in the White House. He will have destroyed the GOP and their chances of leading the country for the next eight years. The image of Republicans is a party gone mad, throwing good money after bad for deluded and obtuse concepts which even the most dense red state voter questions. More of the same? No thanks! As the Giulianis and McCains walk the tightrope of backing the war whilst keeping a distance to Bush, all the while applauding his efforts enough, to make sure they garner support amongst the remaining 26% who still believe in him. We are aware only of the two-faced nature of their arguments, hip-hopping and flip-flopping to avoid being ensnared in the traps of same-sex marriage and immigration, of war in Iraq and abortion. They come across as the most disingenuous pack of inauthentic politicians one has ever set eyes on.
Entirely gone is the idea that the Republicans represent honesty and family values. From the thieving, corrupt likes of Cunningham to the page boy affairs of Rep. Foley, from Washington DC bordello stories of Senator Vitter to the Abramoff tainted White House, the Republicans have become the party of hypocrisy and scandal.
"I'm looking for a strong honest person. Do you know of any?" asks Barbara Skogman a 72 year-old retiree from Cedar Rapids Iowa, who can’t decide amongst the Republican candidates.
My answer would be “no, I don’t.”
Monday, July 16, 2007
Capital Punishment - The Real Crime
The fundamental prescient case for capital punishment is that it fits the crime. The fact that almost all Western countries have outlawed it however, should tell us something about the way the death penalty is regarded. It is a backward society that executes humans in order to exact retribution. It cannot be justified by deterrence and should not be justified by revenge. The overwhelming case against it, is that should the state, any state, as has undoubtedly been the case, execute an innocent person, it has made itself accountable in the same way as a murderer – a cold blooded pre-meditated killing of a person. ‘Oops’ does not work.
So this should again be taken into account in the pending execution of one Troy Davis of Georgia. Davis was a man who may or may not have committed the crime, but that is no basis for carrying out an inmate’s execution. What is certain is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In 1989, A scuffle between two men outside a Burger King between a homeless man by the name of Larry Young and a second man had broken out allegedly over a beer. An off-duty but uniformed police officer intervened and was shot twice and died of his wounds.
A weapon was never found so police relied on eyewitnesses. A man named “Red” Coles eventually went to the police with an attorney and named Davis as the killer. Some witnesses named Coles as the killer but in the event of a homicide on an officer, police were desperate to make an arrest. Davis turned himself in to police four days later after hearing that he was being sought. The police took affidavits from several people at the scene and Davis seemed to be implicated by some of them. However, this is an example of what many of those witnesses said after the conviction as reported in the Washington Post:
The affidavit from Darrell Collins, the friend who was with Davis that night, was typical.
"I told them it was Red and not Troy who was messing with that man, but they didn't want to hear that," Collins, who was 16 at the time, said in his 2002 statement. "The detectives told me, 'Fine, have it your way. Kiss your life goodbye because you're going to jail.' After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear."
Other witnesses have since confessed to lying on their statements. So it should be clear that if the death sentenced is not overturned, there should at least be a new, thorough investigation. There wasn’t and the truth is even more uncomfortable: Martina Correia, Davis, sister tried in vain to find a lawyer who would support them as they didn’t have the means to pay for one. Some on the right might consider that tough luck.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into effect. It was passed by Congress in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing and was aimed at limiting the reasons as to why the Supreme Court can overturn death penalty decisions in the context of Timothy McVeigh’s sentence.
The court dealing with Davis’ case has now said it is to late for an appeal to be pressed. Too late? We aren’t talking about an entry for a tombola prize here. We are talking about a man’s life. This isn’t about partisan politics. This is about preventing a monumental blunder.
The death sentence remains one of the major factors which makes it hard for this country to accuse other countries of Human Rights violations. It is a barbaric practice which has no place in today’s society. The United States still suffers an inordinately higher number of murders than any other Western modern state despite its affection for capital punishment, which absolutely eradicates any basis whatsoever for the argument that capital punishment has ever, ever deterred a single person from committing a homicide.
Davis is due to be executed tomorrow. By all appearances an innocent man will be put to death by the state. Of course President Bush would have the power to commute the sentence in the light of the new evidence, but he’s unlikely to do that for an African American in Georgia who isn’t part of his personal clique.
So this should again be taken into account in the pending execution of one Troy Davis of Georgia. Davis was a man who may or may not have committed the crime, but that is no basis for carrying out an inmate’s execution. What is certain is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In 1989, A scuffle between two men outside a Burger King between a homeless man by the name of Larry Young and a second man had broken out allegedly over a beer. An off-duty but uniformed police officer intervened and was shot twice and died of his wounds.
A weapon was never found so police relied on eyewitnesses. A man named “Red” Coles eventually went to the police with an attorney and named Davis as the killer. Some witnesses named Coles as the killer but in the event of a homicide on an officer, police were desperate to make an arrest. Davis turned himself in to police four days later after hearing that he was being sought. The police took affidavits from several people at the scene and Davis seemed to be implicated by some of them. However, this is an example of what many of those witnesses said after the conviction as reported in the Washington Post:
The affidavit from Darrell Collins, the friend who was with Davis that night, was typical.
"I told them it was Red and not Troy who was messing with that man, but they didn't want to hear that," Collins, who was 16 at the time, said in his 2002 statement. "The detectives told me, 'Fine, have it your way. Kiss your life goodbye because you're going to jail.' After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear."
Other witnesses have since confessed to lying on their statements. So it should be clear that if the death sentenced is not overturned, there should at least be a new, thorough investigation. There wasn’t and the truth is even more uncomfortable: Martina Correia, Davis, sister tried in vain to find a lawyer who would support them as they didn’t have the means to pay for one. Some on the right might consider that tough luck.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into effect. It was passed by Congress in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing and was aimed at limiting the reasons as to why the Supreme Court can overturn death penalty decisions in the context of Timothy McVeigh’s sentence.
The court dealing with Davis’ case has now said it is to late for an appeal to be pressed. Too late? We aren’t talking about an entry for a tombola prize here. We are talking about a man’s life. This isn’t about partisan politics. This is about preventing a monumental blunder.
The death sentence remains one of the major factors which makes it hard for this country to accuse other countries of Human Rights violations. It is a barbaric practice which has no place in today’s society. The United States still suffers an inordinately higher number of murders than any other Western modern state despite its affection for capital punishment, which absolutely eradicates any basis whatsoever for the argument that capital punishment has ever, ever deterred a single person from committing a homicide.
Davis is due to be executed tomorrow. By all appearances an innocent man will be put to death by the state. Of course President Bush would have the power to commute the sentence in the light of the new evidence, but he’s unlikely to do that for an African American in Georgia who isn’t part of his personal clique.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
That Gut Thing
It isn’t often that one sees things taking shape with such crystal clarity. I’m talking about the language of fear, the Neo-Conservative’s number one instrument for controlling the public. The Republican right, which still believes in the Iraq war is in a quandary. Public opinion is evidently strongly against it and support for the war is flagging on all fronts. How do you restore public support for a disastrous military campaign? Traditionally, one did this by instilling fear in the populace and so, perhaps led by the inimitably corrupt Karl Rove, a murmur, which started a couple of years ago, transformed into a whisper and has emerged as a ‘gut feeling.’ The Neocons are good at ‘gut feelings.’
“Never mind what your brain says, always trust your gut,” to paraphrase the wonderful Stephen Colbert. The gradation with which this has developed into something tangible is really to be respected and so let us pass review on the evolution of this process of fear-mongering. Really, these guys have been on a roll since 9/11. But it was back in November 2005 that a secret GOP memo surfaced, expounding the theory that only a disastrous terrorist attack could restore Bush’s credibility somewhat by unifying Americans behind him. The context then was the looming mid-terms and the GOP, it turned out rightly so, were worried about losing control of one, or even both of the houses.
Fast forward to 2007 and the upcoming Presidential Election of 2008, where we have five strong Democratic candidates and four weak Republican ones. Iraq is a quagmire – even right-wingers admit that now and the question is how to restore national unity behind a Republican pro-war candidate? Well the same ideas seem to be popping up in their heads a second time around: a big bomb detonated by some Arabs would do it! Back in July, our friend Rick Santorum the one who compared homosexuality with incest, bigamy and adultery seemed to be very keen on something blowing up somewhere and said this on the Hugh Hewitt radio show:
"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view."
Between now and November? How does Rick know? Is he just hoping that something will happen, in other words, is the mother of all family-friendly, Catholic politicians wishing for a disaster? Inquiring minds want to know.
But then along came Dennis Milligan. He’s the new chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party. This is what he had to say to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on June 03, 2007:
“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,”
“All we need is some attacks….?” Please tell me he apologized for saying that. But he didn’t. In his own words, the man is 150% behind President Bush. How do you back someone 150% who has a 26% popularity rating? Only blindly, is the answer. But I digress! Now we come to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's gut. Mr. Chertoff’s gut tells us that there will be a terrorist attack on US soil in the summer. There has been much written about Chertoff’s commentary about his gut. It’s a pretty amazing gut I must say. It has the ability to predict terrorist attacks. Never mind the $50 billion spent on counterterrorism measures, never mind the several billion dollars spent on surveillance and intelligence each year, never mind the warantless wiretapping of US citizens and never mind the giant apparatus the government has allegedly now in place to predict terrorist threats – it’s all down to one man’s bowels.
I’d love to know what kind of gut feeling it was. Suddenly, the entire United States Homeland Security depends on an intestinal muscle twinge? A fart maybe? What is Chertoff thinking? Well, one thing that it does is it makes us all wonder, whether he’s right. But it’s actually a pretty smart move. If something happens, he becomes the new Billy Graham and his gut becomes famous at predicting cataclysms. Upon his death it will be preserved in formaldehyde in the Smithsonian for us all to wonder and contemplate. If he is wrong, he shrugs and says it was only his gut – the department intelligence will have not betrayed us.
But the overall effect will be this: that millions of Americans, will now again worry about a terrorist attack. Millions of Americans will be afraid. Millions of Americans will be worried and millions of Americans will be more than ever willing to undergo a clampdown and will be willing to have their rights removed. Millions of Americans believe, now more than ever, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 in some way and millions of Americans will feel, perhaps, that it is fundamentally important for the safety of this nation that more American soldiers get fed into the meat grinder that Iraq has become and that it is fundamentally important that education, arts and health care cuts are made to fund the War on Terror.
But here’s the conundrum that no one is talking about. There is a general creed amongst the Neocons, that the reason for the Iraq war is that it is better to fight “them over there” than to let “them” fight us “over here.” Now you would think, that if there is a terrorist attack on the U.S., people would think that the “War on Terror” is not working, particularly in Iraq and therefore it’s time to bring the troops back.
But the Republican Neo-Conservatives are likely to say “We cannot let up for a minute or they will strike us again – we need hasher measures and we need to redouble our efforts in Iraq.” The truth is that the Republicans know that the Democrats will lack the spine to call for a total troop withdrawal in the face of such an attack and that they will most probably join the fray in calling for stronger anti-terrorist measures all the while criticizing the Bush Administration.
The Republicans will do everything they can to claim that they, and only they, can continue to fight the “War on Terror” even if it means invading foreign countries and sacrificing the youth of America in a pointless attempt to control the Middle East for what they believe, is the ultimate good.
That is why the Rick Santorums and the Milligans of this world have been ruminating on its possibility. That is why Michael Chertoff’s gut twinged or bulged or burped its message, that there will be an attack, this summer, or this fall, or maybe next week but he’s not sure when. They can crank up the fear machine and hope to control the masses again, those masses who have slowly understood, that terrorism is not something you fight with a war. It isn’t something you throw more bodies at, something you crush with tanks or bomb with planes; it is something that is fought with education, with courage and with conviction. That’s something the Michael Chertoffs and Karl Roves of this world don’t want anyone to remember.
“Never mind what your brain says, always trust your gut,” to paraphrase the wonderful Stephen Colbert. The gradation with which this has developed into something tangible is really to be respected and so let us pass review on the evolution of this process of fear-mongering. Really, these guys have been on a roll since 9/11. But it was back in November 2005 that a secret GOP memo surfaced, expounding the theory that only a disastrous terrorist attack could restore Bush’s credibility somewhat by unifying Americans behind him. The context then was the looming mid-terms and the GOP, it turned out rightly so, were worried about losing control of one, or even both of the houses.
Fast forward to 2007 and the upcoming Presidential Election of 2008, where we have five strong Democratic candidates and four weak Republican ones. Iraq is a quagmire – even right-wingers admit that now and the question is how to restore national unity behind a Republican pro-war candidate? Well the same ideas seem to be popping up in their heads a second time around: a big bomb detonated by some Arabs would do it! Back in July, our friend Rick Santorum the one who compared homosexuality with incest, bigamy and adultery seemed to be very keen on something blowing up somewhere and said this on the Hugh Hewitt radio show:
"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view."
Between now and November? How does Rick know? Is he just hoping that something will happen, in other words, is the mother of all family-friendly, Catholic politicians wishing for a disaster? Inquiring minds want to know.
But then along came Dennis Milligan. He’s the new chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party. This is what he had to say to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on June 03, 2007:
“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,”
“All we need is some attacks….?” Please tell me he apologized for saying that. But he didn’t. In his own words, the man is 150% behind President Bush. How do you back someone 150% who has a 26% popularity rating? Only blindly, is the answer. But I digress! Now we come to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's gut. Mr. Chertoff’s gut tells us that there will be a terrorist attack on US soil in the summer. There has been much written about Chertoff’s commentary about his gut. It’s a pretty amazing gut I must say. It has the ability to predict terrorist attacks. Never mind the $50 billion spent on counterterrorism measures, never mind the several billion dollars spent on surveillance and intelligence each year, never mind the warantless wiretapping of US citizens and never mind the giant apparatus the government has allegedly now in place to predict terrorist threats – it’s all down to one man’s bowels.
I’d love to know what kind of gut feeling it was. Suddenly, the entire United States Homeland Security depends on an intestinal muscle twinge? A fart maybe? What is Chertoff thinking? Well, one thing that it does is it makes us all wonder, whether he’s right. But it’s actually a pretty smart move. If something happens, he becomes the new Billy Graham and his gut becomes famous at predicting cataclysms. Upon his death it will be preserved in formaldehyde in the Smithsonian for us all to wonder and contemplate. If he is wrong, he shrugs and says it was only his gut – the department intelligence will have not betrayed us.
But the overall effect will be this: that millions of Americans, will now again worry about a terrorist attack. Millions of Americans will be afraid. Millions of Americans will be worried and millions of Americans will be more than ever willing to undergo a clampdown and will be willing to have their rights removed. Millions of Americans believe, now more than ever, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 in some way and millions of Americans will feel, perhaps, that it is fundamentally important for the safety of this nation that more American soldiers get fed into the meat grinder that Iraq has become and that it is fundamentally important that education, arts and health care cuts are made to fund the War on Terror.
But here’s the conundrum that no one is talking about. There is a general creed amongst the Neocons, that the reason for the Iraq war is that it is better to fight “them over there” than to let “them” fight us “over here.” Now you would think, that if there is a terrorist attack on the U.S., people would think that the “War on Terror” is not working, particularly in Iraq and therefore it’s time to bring the troops back.
But the Republican Neo-Conservatives are likely to say “We cannot let up for a minute or they will strike us again – we need hasher measures and we need to redouble our efforts in Iraq.” The truth is that the Republicans know that the Democrats will lack the spine to call for a total troop withdrawal in the face of such an attack and that they will most probably join the fray in calling for stronger anti-terrorist measures all the while criticizing the Bush Administration.
The Republicans will do everything they can to claim that they, and only they, can continue to fight the “War on Terror” even if it means invading foreign countries and sacrificing the youth of America in a pointless attempt to control the Middle East for what they believe, is the ultimate good.
That is why the Rick Santorums and the Milligans of this world have been ruminating on its possibility. That is why Michael Chertoff’s gut twinged or bulged or burped its message, that there will be an attack, this summer, or this fall, or maybe next week but he’s not sure when. They can crank up the fear machine and hope to control the masses again, those masses who have slowly understood, that terrorism is not something you fight with a war. It isn’t something you throw more bodies at, something you crush with tanks or bomb with planes; it is something that is fought with education, with courage and with conviction. That’s something the Michael Chertoffs and Karl Roves of this world don’t want anyone to remember.
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