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CORRUPTION UPDATES 130

Posted: November 12, 2007, Draft edition

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1) The Articles linked below were Abstracted from the sources cited. After the abstract there's analysis and commentary, links to related articles, and a link to the database with suggested search terms.

Mukasey's reply draws more fire

The attorney general nominee declines to call water-boarding torture, as Democrats on Senate panel had sought.

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, October 31, 2007;

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mukasey31oct31,0,5098334.story?coll=la-home-nation

WASHINGTON -- Atty. Gen.-designate Michael B. Mukasey, adopting a middle ground on an issue that has become central to his nomination, said coercive interrogation methods, including a form of simulated drowning, were "over the line" and "repugnant." But he declined to say whether he thought so-called water-boarding was a form of torture that would be illegal in all cases.

The water-boarding issue flared earlier this month at Mukasey's confirmation hearing, where he said he was unfamiliar with the technique -- even though it had been widely publicized and discussed in the wake of prison scandals in Iraq and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The answer struck lawmakers as an evasion, and threw a wrench into the nomination process. All 10 Democrats on the judiciary committee wrote Mukasey a week ago, asking him to make a clear-cut statement of opposition to water-boarding and to describe it as illegal.

Administration officials have declined to discuss specific interrogation methods they might be using. Equating water-boarding to torture could also have stark practical consequences: It would make it a crime under U.S. law and expose American interrogators to prison time.

"Mukasey was nominated to be the chief law enforcement officer, not the nation's ethics advisor," said Jennifer Daskal, U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "He should not be confirmed if he cannot say that water-boarding, a form of mock drowning that has been prosecuted as torture since 1902, is illegal."

"As described in your letter, these techniques seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me, and would probably seem the same to many Americans," Mukasey wrote. "But hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."

"Any discussion of coercive interrogation techniques necessarily involves a discussion of and a choice among bad alternatives," he said. "I was and remain loath to discuss and opine on any of those alternatives at this stage."

Late Tuesday, the White House released Mukasey's responses to the other questions.

In them, Mukasey indicated he would not be willing to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of politicization of the department under Gonzales, including the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year. The issue is part of an internal probe being conducted by the department's inspector general.

Biden had asked Mukasey whether he would appoint a special prosecutor in the event that the inspector general uncovered potential criminal conduct by Gonzales or other personnel.

Mukasey indicated he believed those charges could be handled by department's own personnel rather than an outside investigator. "I believe that the members of the department have the integrity and ability to discharge whatever responsibilities they may have in this matter," Mukasey responded.

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What's Really Going on Here?

It's 1984 in America: Up is Down, Torture an open tool of State

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., November, 2007

The point where torture begins is where physical and mental coercion begins, not where organ failure and death occur, as this criminal administration has contended. Torture includes deprivation of heat, food, adequate clothing, sleep, basic physical comfort, and what would be considered by civilized people to be the most basic necessities for life. Torture is the infliction of intentional pain.

Waterboarding is miles beyond the border of the mundane tortures of denying warmth, food, and sleep that we routinely inflict on our kidnap victims.

Realize that as Mukasey will not say torture itself is torture, the freezing, starving, beatings, and hog-tyings that were ignored Congress will continue unabated.

Congress did not even attempt to define the most simple form of torture: the systematic denial of the most basic human needs of existence. Instead, they allowed Mukasey to deny that the all of the basic tools of torture up to, and including waterboarding, were acts of illegal torture only if the circumstances in which they were employed was illegal.

Mukasey's previous testimony indicated that he agreed with bush, cheney, gonzales, hsu, and a flood tide of traitors, that the president had magic powers, the powers of a "unitary president," that were not only omitted from the Constitution, but are violations of the separation and limitation of powers defined by the Constitution.

Such is Mukasey, and it says as much about the Democrats as it does about the man the Democraps confirmed to cover and continue Bush's criminal seizure of power.

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 123, Oct 18, 2007, 2nd article on the page, Mukasey Endorses Expansive Presidential Authority

Good page of torture/illegal search articles, CORRUPTION UPDATES PAGE 119

mukasey links

Torture  links

 

Search the Corruption Database under

Illegal Searches

Kidnapping

Torture

US Attorney

Politicization

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2) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Senate Confirms Mukasey By 53-40

Historically Low Tally for New Attorney General

 

By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writer and

Friday, November 9, 2007; A01

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110801890.html

 

A divided Senate narrowly confirmed former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey last night as the 81st attorney general, giving the nominee the lowest level of congressional support of any Justice Department leader in the past half-century.

The 53 to 40 vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate, and it reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power.

He avoided defeat only because a half-dozen Democrats voted in favor of the appointment along with Republicans and Democrat-turned-independent Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.).

The other Democrats in favor of the confirmation were Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Thomas R. Carper (Del.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.).

Mukasey has also pledged to review the Justice Department's controversial legal opinions on torture and detention policies, and he will have to cope with the outcome of a series of internal investigations into alleged misdeeds by Gonzales and his aides.

Feinstein and Schumer, whose support for Mukasey on the Judiciary Committee allowed the nomination to proceed to the Senate floor, made no apologies for their yes votes, portraying them as pragmatic decisions aimed at improving the Justice Department.

Seven senators, including those running for president, did not vote. The late-night tally was thrown together unexpectedly after daylong negotiations between GOP and Democratic leaders.

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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

Torture, Kidnapping, Illegal Searches, Unitary President, all confirmed by Democrap confirmation of Mukasey

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., November , 2007

Feinstein Liberman, and Schumer are going to save us from having no leadership at Justice, by providing an Attorney General who will continue to support the crimes of a criminal government.

The Democrats are ok with that. They have been since the first moves towards Bush's open seizure of illegal power under the unwise, if not unconstitutional, patriot and war powers acts they granted him.

Pelosi kisses his black ass while liberman and fiendstien hold bush's ass cheeks apart.

Bush and the Democrats have shit in the mouth of our democracy, with the willing assistance of the corporate media.

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Also See:

The Democrats are as great corporate whores, and enemies to our Constitution, as are the Republicans.

 

Search the Corruption Database under

Democrats

 

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3) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Waterboarding is torture - I did it myself, says US advisor

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Published: 01 November 2007

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3115549.ece

When the US military trains soldiers to resist interrogation, it uses a torture technique from the Middle Ages, known as "waterboarding". Its use on terror suspects in secret US prisons around the world has come to symbolise the Bush administration's no-nonsense enthusiasm for the harshest questioning techniques.

Although waterboarding has been considered torture for over a century and the US military is banned from using it, controversy over its continuing use by the CIA may be about to derail the appointment of President Bush's candidate for US Attorney-General.

In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".

Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject.

 

"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

The CIA director Michael Hayden has tried to defuse the controversy. He claims that, since 2002, aggressive interrogation methods in which a prisoner believes he is about to die have been used on only about 30 of the 100 al-Qai'da suspects being held by the US. Meanwhile, a CIA official told The New York Times waterboarding had only been used three times. The Bush administration has suggested that the interrogation of al-Qai'da's second-in-command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was a success thanks to the technique, and used this to justify continued aggressive interrogations of suspects in secret CIA prisons.

While US media reports typically state that waterboarding involves "simulated drowning", Mr Nance explained that "since the lungs are actually filling with water", there is nothing simulated about it. "Waterboarding," he said, "is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death."

Mr Nance said US troops were trained to withstand waterboarding, watched by a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a backup team. "When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt," he added. "Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American."

 

'I felt I was drowning and I was in terrible agony'

Henri Alleg, a journalist, was tortured in 1957 by French forces in Algeria. He described the ordeal of water torture in his book The Question. Soldiers strapped him over a plank, wrapped his head in cloth and positioned it beneath a running tap. He recalled: "The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. 'That's it! He's going to talk,' said a voice.

The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed."

From: Alleg, Henri, The Question, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln: 2006; original French edition © 1958 by Editions de Minuit

 

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Torture

 

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4) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Book Review: Torture Taxi: Extraordinary Rendition in the Crosshairs

 

Toward Freedom, 9-6-07

Written by Glenn Brigaldino

 

http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1116/1/

 

Back in late 2001, Swedish police had arrested Mohamed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza as suspected terrorists and were in a hurry to deport them rather than have them claim refugee status. Lacking their own logistics of rapid deportation, the Swedes welcomed the offer from a US-based plane operator to make available a Gulfstream jet marked N379P. The plane’s hooded US crew picked up its unwilling passengers and flew them to Egypt, where both were detained, interrogated and tortured. Two years later al-Zery was released without charges; in a closed-door trial, Agiza was convicted to 25 years in prison for membership in an outlawed Islamic organization.(1)

Since then, the pattern of detaining suspects and flying them off in planes shrouded in secrecy to countries where they can be tortured without impunity has become a standard procedure in the US-led war on terror. Personal rights are suspended on the US government's clandestine extraordinary rendition flights, or "Torture Taxis", as Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson call the planes in their new book. "Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights" is an investigative journey into the surreal world of Washington's hidden torture sites around the world.

While the US has always used the CIA to track down, abduct or kill foreigners it perceived to be national security threats, after 9/11 the practice was greatly expanded in terms of number of captured suspects. Furthermore, many suspects are now being transferred to third countries rather than to the US. There, people are often interrogated under torture for the purpose of extracting information. Justice is no longer of concern under this US-instigated and funded program of "extraordinary rendition."

Authors Paglen and Thompson

Journalist A.C. Thompson and military geographer Trevor Paglen have systematically investigated the CIA program for more than two years. Part investigation and eyewitness account, part documentary and recording of disparate incidents, "Torture Taxi" is a shocking and thorough account of US Government initiated and sanctioned crimes. The book uncovers a chain of events that has led mostly younger men of Arab descent to being abducted, disappeared and tortured at the behest of the CIA. About a dozen black-and-white photographs, mostly by co-author Paglen, illustrate some of the hidden associations.

The logistics of carrying out the extraordinary rendition program are sophisticated. Equally complex webs of legal deceit and dubious business practices are cast to try and keep the rendition program out of the media spotlight. Front companies in suburban towns like Dedham, Massachusetts allow the CIA to operate formally legitimate businesses such as Premier Executive Transport services. Premier can go about its business of making available Gulfstream jets to the CIA rendition program, in broad daylight or in the dark of night. The program stretches across international locations: from the Nevada desert to P.O. boxes in Massachusetts, on to a distant Polish or Romanian village, with stopovers in Egypt and then, perhaps onward to one of the twenty or more black sites in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

Along the way, kidnapped suspects are taken on board, handcuffed, sometimes hooded then interrogated and tortured. Human rights activists and other democratic citizens will appreciate the meticulous efforts made in this book to record the activity of the secretive flights and the airplanes involved. Letters and official documents prove how flight registration numbers are routinely changed in an effort to avoid public attention. Yet flight logs and recorded plane sightings by plane spotters have been creatively combined by the authors of "Torture Taxi." The book ensures that at least the interested public can get a clear glimpse of how the rendition program systematically operated from within US-government agencies, mostly the CIA.

By pulling together the seemingly unconnected information and reports about the rendition program, "Torture Taxi" has succeeded to present a fairly coherent picture of how the Bush administration has eroded civil and legal rights of detainees. Earlier this year the European Parliament denounced "the lack of co-operation of many member states and of the Council of the European Union with its investigation into the flight program." It goes on to regret that "European countries have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees."

 

Internationally, the rendition program has been anything but good press for the Bush administration. Amnesty International has put forward some clear recommendations to the US including to

- Ensure that anyone held in US custody in any part of the world can exercise the right to legal representation and to a fair and transparent legal process;

- Disclose the location and status of the detention centres where Muhammad Abdullah Salah al-Assad, Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah and Salah Nasser Salim ‘Ali Qaru were held between October 2003 and May 2005;

- Disclose the identities and whereabouts of all others held in secret locations and their legal status, and invite the ICRC to have full and regular access to all those detained;

- Release all detainees in US custody at undisclosed locations unless they are to be charged with internationally recognizable criminal offences and brought to trial promptly and fairly, in full accordance with relevant international standards, and without recourse to the death penalty;

 

In July of this year, Bush moved to counter criticism of US methods in the treatment of terror suspects and issued an executive order to supposedly bring CIA agents back into compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Bush has consistently denied any use of torture by US officials, preferring to use the term "enhanced interrogation measures." However, criticism from around the world over the "extraordinary rendition" of suspects to secret CIA prisons and countries – such as Syria where torture is practiced – may have forced Bush to act.

To those suspects who get hauled away to places like Afghanistan, it matters little if they find themselves in a military prison or an actual black site, one of the unofficial detention centers or secret facilities all around the world, usually run by the CIA. As Paglen and Thompson discovered in Afghanistan, black sites may officially be operated by the "host’ countries: behind the barbed wire, US contractors and CIA agents play ‘advisory roles’, or much worse. Increasingly, it is easy for the Department of Defense to offer "real estate" to the CIA, possibly also to use for black sites. The French journal Le Monde Diplomatique reported that the Pentagon is literally everywhere, owning and occupying huge swathes of territory across the entire world.

 

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 91, 3rd article on the page, Secret resistance to American Fascism Rises in CIA

Search the Corruption Database under

Kidnapping

Illegal Detentions

Unconstitutional Presidential powers

 

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5) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Cageprisnors:

Mass Rendition, Incommunicado Detention and Possible Torture of Foreign Nationals in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia

 

PDF by Reprieve

March 22, 2007

 

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/070321HOArenditionreportfinal.pdf

 

Background

Many of the victims were among hundreds of people arrested in joint US, Kenyan and Ethiopian operations on the Kenyan/Somali border in December 2006 and January 2007. They were initially transferred to detention facilities in Kenya where they were held without charge for up to three weeks.

Reprieve and Cageprisoners are deeply concerned for the fate of 63 prisoners believed to be held in secret detention in Somalia and Ethiopia, apparent victims of a mass rendition operation from Kenya involving nationals of at least 16 states: Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Eritrea, France, Kenya, Oman, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sweden, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Yemen. Among the 63 are least four women and six children. The 63 prisoners were apparently transferred with no observance of any judicial process, and are at serious risk of torture.

Then, in January and February 2007, according to flight manifests secured by Reprieve and Cageprisoners, 63 of these people were transferred from Kenya to Somalia. There appears to have been no judicial process or oversight of any of these transfers.

Further reports suggest that some if not all of these individuals were in turn transferred from Somalia to Ethiopia in February 2007. The reports indicate that the prisoners were transferred without any due process and are being held without charge. Many are being held incommunicado.


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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

BUSH LAWLESSNESS SPREADS TO KENYA:

EXTRA-JUDICIAL HOLDING-TRANSFERING PRISONERS OK BY US

(originally written march 16, 2007)

Bush's crimes, his lawless use of American power, here and around the world, in pursuit of his endless “global war on terror,” has given solace to tyrants and dictators around the world.

Bush's international crimes have justified the use of arbitrary authority by harsh governments and dictators around the world. A dictator need only employ the word “Terror,” and the rule of law, political dissidents, and factional opponents, magically disappear.

America is providing a new role model of international relations and propriety, based on lawless brutality. It is a lawless brutality based on what they can get away with, and makes democracy and the rule of law irrelevant. Bush's fight against terror is terror, and fans the fires of violence. This was not unexpected.

Ignoring global human rights naturally follows the destruction of our Constitutional rights and democracy. We have secretly supported death squads for a Century. Bush has not just exposed these crimes, he has exposed our political system for what it is.

Bush has broken through the tired facade of American Justice, to show the world what we really are, rather than what we say we are. Bush's lawlessness, while mouthing the terms democracy and freedom, has established a new global standard of political hypocrisy. This has been taken up by dictators and tyrants around the world.

The world has a new role model and standard for international lawlessness. Bush's new legal standards, of arbitrary authority and violence, is spreading around the world.

The United States' example of illegal kidnappings, torture, illegal extraditions, and endless unlawful detentions, have destroyed our credibility, undermined our alliances, and angered people around the world. Bush has damaged, if not destroyed, the spread of democracy around the world, degraded the state of human rights, and made extra judicial violence an acceptable tool for our allied governments around the world. This will engender increasing global instability into the foreseeable future.

Kenya is the just the latest example of how countries around the world are following our lead by dropping the rule of law from their domestic and international relations.

Bush's crimes encourage, not discourage, resistance and violence against tyrannical governments around the world.

Terror bred Terror, and now it's breeding more.

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Also See:

Corruption Updatesv 41, 6th article on the page, BUSH LAWLESSNESS SPREADS TO KENYA:Kenya defends transfers, absolves U.S.

Corruption Updates 72, 4th article on the page, Sudan is our Bitch, Genocide tolerated in name of fight against "Terrorism"

 

Search the Corruption Database under

Africa (12 abstracts)

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6) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007

 

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955

 

 

Introduced:        Apr 19, 2007

Sponsor:           Rep. Jane Harman [D-CA]

Status:  Passed House (Bipartisan support.) Oct 23, 2007

 

`SEC. 899A. DEFINITIONS.

 

`For purposes of this subtitle:

 

`(1) COMMISSION- The term `Commission' means the National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism established under section 899C.

`(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

`(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term `ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.

`SEC. 899B. FINDINGS.

 

The Congress finds the following:

`(1) The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism.

`(2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.

`(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

`(4) While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States.

`(5) Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.

`(6) Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts.

`(7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion.

`(8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.

`(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.


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THE COMMITTEE SAYS:

American Revolution Outlawed by Congress:

Congress declares a Monopoly of Power and Wealth, not freedom, and demands you will obey and serve us or be outlawed and killed

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., November , 2007

Let me state this right now: The US Government has been hijacked by criminals, is in violation of every section of the Constitution, and must be reformed by peaceful means if possible, or removed by any means, including violence, if necessary to restore our inalienable rights as citizens of the United States.

The means and methods required to defeat our criminal government are personal decisions, dependent on each individuals moral and ethical limits.

By my recoking, Harmon has just declared our revolutionary forefathers are criminal, and their right of violent resistance against tyrannyl illegitimate. Harmon just defined herself as an enemy to the revolution that created the country she is now betraying with her obnoxious law.

I now see that violent resistance to King George, Hitler, Stalin, and Bush and corporate fascists like Harmon have been criminalized through history in exactly the same way: Any serious resistance to the consolidation and maintenance of unchecked power, in this case our corporate fascist government, is made a crime.

Just as Bush has declared anyone who fights our global empire a "terrorist," Harmon and Congress have criminalized domestic dissent.

Harmon, and our corporate fascist government, are greater enemies to American freedom than King George the Third ever was, and Osama Bin-Laden could ever be, and deserve death as much as did the British troops and royalist traitors who served the criminal authority of aristocratic pretensions against our democratic revolution.

Now the corporate aristocracy that leads our corporate fascist state, represented by Harmon and the Dems, are criminalizing resistance to their criminal government.

So I give a loud "Fuck You" to Harmon, and the rest of her cohort of corporate fascist bitches, of demacraps and repugnants who are unified in their defiance of Jefferson's pronouncement, in our Declaration of Independence, that,

...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principals and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

My form of government is the American Constitution. The one Harmon, and the rest of our corporate politicians, have shit upon.

The actual basis of the present American government is expressed by Harmon's domestic terror law.

Her law demonstrates that Harmon, like the rest of her fellow Democraps, share, and have unified with the Repugnant under the common assumption that their political duopoly, and their corporate sponsors, will rule us in defiance of the fundamental, named principals of our Constitution.

Harmon's law legitimizes defining domestic resistance to the white boy (and girl) mafia that rules this country as "terrorism," and empowers government agents to infiltrate and manipulate the will of our citizens.

Harmon's proposal actually legitimizes a domestic security apparatus to alienate, marginalize, and criminalize political opposition to the duopolopy of the corporate dominated republicratic party that somehow passes as democracy and controls our political .

Harmon is a tool of the same system of corporate fascism that empowers bush, is an enemy to our rights, and spits in the face of the ideals of our Revolution, and the Constitution that once gave our country legitimacy.

To avoid even greater disasters than the one Harmon, Bush and their corporate parties have brought us to, we must return our elections, candidates, and representatives to the control of the voters. If this is not possible, it is our duty to remove these corporate criminals by any means necessary.

Personally, my only goal is to reestablish and secure the inalienable rights of our citizens under a limited government which rises from the people.

Today, the voter's influence in elections is swept aside by corporate bribery. Today, the only viable candidates are the ones funded by corporate bribery, and we invariably get saddled with Bitches like Harmon and Billery, and whores like Bush and Cheney.

As long as our politicians can be bribed and bought by corporate wealth, the basis of our government, and the political power it exercizes, are criminal acts of illigitimate pretenders to authority. As long as our corporations and special interest continue to short circuit the power of our citizens, we cannot call ourselves a democracy, as the political will and power of our citizens have been subordinated to raw wealth and power.

We have been robbed of our democracy, and our once free government is an enemy to the rights and freedoms of our citizens, and people who hunger for freedom around the world.

The real victims of Harmon's sinister law are the young idealists that FBI agents and informers have been encouraging to violently overthrow our corrupted regime. Ever read Orwell's 1984? Our all powerful state, like Orwell's, maintains a spiders web of faux resistance cells to capture and crush dissent.

The short list of links below demonstrate what I am talking about: The FBI is currently sending evangelicals of revolution into society to whip up dissent, and arrest those they rile up.

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Also See:

Man Gets 30 Years in Pipeline Plot

 

 

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

 

(11-06) 12:55 PST Scranton, Pa. (AP) --

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/11/06/national/a121305S92.DTL&type=printable

 

A man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday for plotting to help a supposed al-Qaida operative blow up U.S. oil pipelines and refineries.

Michael C. Reynolds claimed he had been trying to root out terrorists on the Internet, but was convicted in July of providing material support to terrorists and other charges.

Reynolds, 49, was arrested after authorities said he tried to meet a purported al-Qaida contact about 25 miles from a motel in Pocatello, Idaho, where he had been staying. The contact was actually a judge from Conrad, Mont., who was working for the FBI.

Musician in Terror Case Gets 15 Years

 

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

The Associated Press

Wednesday, November 7, 2007; 3:15 PM

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110701737.html

 

NEW YORK -- A New York jazz musician who pledged to teach martial arts to al-Qaida members was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday by a judge who said it didn't matter that no one from the terrorist group was actually involved in the case.

Shah's lawyers had said he should get leniency because the plot originated when a government informant enlisted him to help al-Qaida, taking him away from an otherwise law-abiding life.

Before he was sentenced, Shah, 44, asked the judge for mercy.

"I guarantee you will never see me again, judge, unless it's on the television playing (music) with someone," said Shah, who plays bass.


Corruption Updates 118Case Against Muslim Group Rests, With Defense Still Denying Hamas Ties

Corruption Updates 118, Alleged eco-terror plot is described

 

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7) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Ex-Worker at AT&T Fights Immunity Bill

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

NYT, November 7, 2007

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/us/07nsa.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print

 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — When Mark Klein, then an AT&T technician in San Francisco, stumbled on a secret room apparently reserved for the National Security Agency inside an AT&T switching center, he hardly expected to be caught up in a national debate over the proper balance between American civil liberties and national security.

But four years later, Mr. Klein’s discovery has led to a spate of class-action lawsuits against the nation’s largest telephone companies. The threat posed to the telecommunications industry by those suits has prompted the Bush administration to push Congress to grant companies legal immunity for their secret cooperation in the N.S.A.’s program of eavesdropping without warrants. With many Democrats in Congress seemingly willing to grant the legal protection, Mr. Klein has come to Washington to fight back.

Mr. Klein, 62 and now retired, will begin meeting Wednesday with staff members on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to try to persuade them to put a brake on the immunity legislation. He says the phone companies do not deserve the legal protection.

I think they committed a massive violation not only of the law but of the Constitution,” he said. “That’s not the way the Fourth Amendment is supposed to work.”

Mr. Klein was responsible for maintaining Internet switching equipment near the secret room, and said he was stunned to discover that special “splitter” equipment had been installed in his area to route copies of all Internet traffic diverted through his lines into the secret room.

“What I saw is that everything’s flowing across the Internet to this government-controlled room,” he said.

Later, Mr. Klein obtained three AT&T documents that he said revealed the computer and equipment design for the room — documents that the company maintains he kept improperly after leaving AT&T in 2004. Those designs, according to Mr. Klein and other telecommunications specialists who have reviewed them, would give the security agency. the ability to sift and reroute international and domestic communications and data from the AT&T lines to another site.

...the Justice Department has sought to block them by using the “state secrets privilege.”

“The physical apparatus gives them everything,” Mr. Klein said, adding, “A lot of this was domestic.”

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Also See:

Corruption Updates 88, 12-16-05, Bush Authorized Domestic Spying

Corruption Updates 88, 5-15-07, Spying on the Home Front

Corruption Updates 104, 8-17-07, Gonzales and Card: Ballcarriers for End Run around the Constitution

Corruption Updates 99, 8-5-07, Congress rolls over: Passes illegal law granting Bush unconstitutional powers

 

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8) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Roadblock for Telecom Immunity

Senate Judiciary Leaders Resist Leniency for Surveillance

 

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, November 1, 2007; A06

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103103126_pf.html

 

In a blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat and Republican expressed reluctance yesterday to granting blanket immunity to telecommunications carriers sued for assisting the government's warrantless surveillance program.

Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), had said that before even considering such a proposal, they would need to see the legal documents underpinning the program, which began after Sept. 11, 2001, and were put under court oversight in January.

On Tuesday, the committee was given access to some of the documents. But Leahy said yesterday that he had a "grave concern" about blanket immunity, saying that "it seems to grant . . . amnesty for telecommunications carriers for warrantless surveillance activities."

The activities seem to be "in violation of the privacy rights of Americans" and of federal domestic surveillance law, he said, noting that he is still "carefully considering" what is in the documents.

The immunity provision sought by the White House would wipe out about 40 lawsuits that accuse AT&T, Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel of invading Americans' privacy and constitutional rights by assisting the government in domestic surveillance without a warrant.

The Senate intelligence committee approved the provision two weeks ago as part of a larger bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs some aspects of domestic surveillance. The Judiciary Committee will take up the bill next.

Immunity "is designed to shield this administration from accountability for conducting surveillance outside the law," Leahy said. Dismissing the lawsuits would eliminate "perhaps the only avenue" for "an honest assessment" of the legality of the warrantless surveillance program, he said.

Specter agreed that the "courts ought not to be closed" to such lawsuits. "If, at this late date, the Congress bails out whatever was done before -- and we can't even discuss what has been done -- that is just an open invitation for this kind of conduct in the future," he said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the immunity provision was one of "two big issues" she had with the bill, and she suggested that limiting damages might be an alternative. She noted that the lawsuits could cost carriers as much as $30 billion in penalties -- a problem if taxpayers were to pick up the tab.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein told the committee that immunity was a question of "fairness" for the carriers. He also said that proceeding with the cases risks the divulgence of classified information. The government has invoked a claim of state secrets to stop the litigation. "If we don't prevail with state secrets," Wainstein said, "then there's no guarantee that that information is not going to get out. In fact, even just the filing of lawsuits and the allegations made can actually end up . . . compromising sensitive sources and methods."

"Oh, really?" Specter replied. "Allegations in a lawsuit from people who are plaintiffs who don't have any inside information?"

"Yes," Wainstein said.

 

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What's Really going on here?

Dems about to Betray the Constitution Again

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., August 7, 2007

Rather than impeaching Bush, as patriotism, duty, and our Constitution requires, Pelosi and the Dems have instead joined him in his domestic and international crime spree.

Domestically, the Dem Congress just passed this patently unconstitutional domestic spying bill, which is a crime on its face, and an abomination in its details.

The Dems tolerated Bush's domestic spying when they were in the minority, and have not just continued to fund it, but have given Bush's criminal claims the pretense of legal cover.

These traitors must be taught that neither party, no matter how rich or powerful they are, has the right to suspend, or make any law that contravenes the Constitution.

Internationally, the Dems continue to fund Gitmo. The Dems continue to fund the system of secret CIA prisons around the world, where Bush is doubtlessly authorizing the torture of his kidnap victims until they admit their already pre-determined guilt.

Following Bush's incompetent lead, all the Dem candidates for president have agreed that American troops are going to be in Iraq for a long long time. And the Dems in Congress continue to fund a war without any goal or foreseeable end.

Remember, the Dems started, and perpetuated the Vietnam War from beginning to end. Not a ray of sunlight can pass through the difference between the Dems and Repugs on illegal domestic spying, funding the war, globalism, and most importantly, on funding their parties and elections with vast amounts of corporate special interest money. Neither party is financed by the voters, neither party runs our country for the welfare of its citizens, and both parries are equally responsible for the breakdown in our democracy.

The policies that emanate from both parties are closer to each other that to the needs or beliefs of the American people they are supposed to represent.

Today, the greatest threat America faces is domestic, not Osama or the "terrorists." The enemy can be easily identified in this country, and around the world.

Just look for the people who say, "We are taking away your rights to protect you."

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9) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Senate Panel Balks at Telecom Immunity

 

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/10/31/national/w145303D37.DTL&type=printable

 

WASHINGTON (AP) --

The top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the nation's courts may be the only way to determine if the White House violated wiretapping and privacy laws when it eavesdropped on Americans without court orders.

Legal protection for the companies is a top priority for President Bush, who has vowed to veto any eavesdropping bill that does not provide it.

At issue is the interception of American e-mails and phone calls from 2001 to 2007. The so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program was conducted without the consent of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees intelligence agencies' eavesdropping inside the United States.

The Senate Intelligence Committee provided immunity in its version of a new eavesdropping bill. It bars civil lawsuits against telecommunication companies if the attorney general and national intelligence director certify that the companies acted on written orders approved by the president.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he would agree to immunize telecommunications only if there is an effective way to scrutinize the Bush administration's secret surveillance program.

"The lawsuits ... are perhaps the only avenue that exists for an outside review of the government's program, an honest assessment of its legal arguments, especially as the Congress has for years been stonewalled on this program," Leahy said at a committee hearing Wednesday.

The committee's senior Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, said the courts are best equipped to rein in presidential powers. "In the long history of this country, the courts have done a much better job in protecting civil liberties than has the Congress from an overreaching executive branch," he said.

Four former Justice Department officials who tried to block a Bush administration surveillance order in a dramatic 2004 showdown at then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside all endorsed telecommunications immunity this week in a letter to the Judiciary Committee.

"Given our experiences, we can certainly understand that reasonable people may question and wish to probe the legal bases for such intelligence activities," states the letter signed by Ashcroft, James B. Comey, Patrick F. Philbin and Jack Goldsmith. "The best place for that examination and debate is not in a public lawsuit."

The White House has just this week granted the Senate Judiciary Committee access to the legal opinions and authorization letters justifying the program, which Leahy's committee has sought for the last two years after the program was exposed by The New York Times.

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Also See:

Washington Post, August 3, 2007; Senate Passes Bush Spy Bill: Illegal Bush Search Bill ok with Senate Dems

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Immunity for Telecoms May Set Bad Precedent, Legal Scholars Say

Retroactive Protection Could Create Problems in the Future

 

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, October 22, 2007; A05

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/21/AR2007102101041.html

 

When previous Republican administrations were accused of illegality in the FBI and CIA spying abuses of the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, Democrats in Congress launched investigations or pushed for legislative reforms.

But last week, faced with admissions by several telecommunication companies that they assisted the Bush administration in warrantless spying on Americans, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee took a much different tack -- proposing legislation that would grant those companies retroactive immunity from prosecution or lawsuits.

The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees.

As part of a surveillance package approved Thursday by the Senate intelligence committee, some telecommunications companies would be granted immunity from about 40 pending lawsuits that allege they violated Americans' privacy and constitutional rights by aiding a warrantless surveillance program instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But civil liberties groups and many academics argue that Congress is allowing the government to cover up possible wrongdoing and is inappropriately interfering in disputes that the courts should decide.

The American Civil Liberties Union has campaigned against the proposed Senate legislation, saying in a news release Friday that "the administration is trying to cover its tracks."

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said in a statement last week that classified documents provided by the White House "further demonstrate that the program was illegal and that there is no basis for granting retroactive immunity to those who allegedly cooperated." His office declined to elaborate on the records, which were reviewed by a Feingold staffer.

Retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., said he is concerned about the precedent that a new immunity provision might set.

"The unfortunate reality is that once you've done it, once you immunize interrogators or phone companies, then it's easy to do it again in another context," Hutson said. "It seems to me that as a general rule, retroactive immunity is not a good thing. . . . It's essentially letting Congress handle something that should be handled by the judiciary."

 

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Today's Headlines

1) Mukasey refuses to call Bush Torture Torture

2) Dems confirm unitary president, torture, and and all of Bush's crimes through Mukasey Confirmation

3) Navy Seal testifies before Congress: Waterboarding is torture

4) Book: Torture Taxi reveals us system of kidnapping, secret prisons, and torture

5) US organizing mass kidnappings in Kenya and Somalia

6) Harmon the Traitor sponsors police state act outlawing our revolutionary forefathers

6b) Govt agent promotes "terror," man gets 30 years

6c) Govt agent promotes "Terror," man gets 15 years

7) ATT tech Klein testifies that ATT assisted criminal govt to capture all domestic american communications

8) Fiendstien working to protect telecoms from criminal and civil consequences of stealing our rights

9) Senate pretending to "protect our rights." They are locking the barn after the cow got out

10) Giving criminal telecoms the same immunity as torturers: Welcome to the Corporate Fascist State