Spinoza,
I may be an idiot, but you have, in post after post, attacked Israel, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and Israel’s right to exist.  You have paralleled the Moslem world’s arguments against Israel—which, in many camps seek the extermination of all Jews.

I don’t disagree that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has been, at times, shameful and stupid, but the treatment of Palestinians by their fellow Arabs has been far worse. And, of course, that’s forgotten and ignored.

Back to thread on torture.

No, I’ve never been tortured, but I have had injuries so severe that had they been willfully inflicted I might have said anything. I cannot imagine someone inflicting that on someone else DELIBERATELY!

I still remember a plane slipping and getting a chunk of cedar siding under my thumbnail, back to the joint.  It was there for an hour with me practically retching in agony until, in the ER, the doc filled it with lidocaine.  That was 29 years ago, but I remember it like yesterday. I also remember it took months to fully heal. It’s a classic torture—and I can see why.  But deliberately doing it to another human being? And legalizing it???  Only the immoral Mad King George and his Merrie Fascists, who’ve never experienced anything like that, could do it.

I’ve experienced accidents even more painful since then—I’m sure many of you have too.  Can you imagine willfully doing that to another person?

My hair stands up on end, witnessing the demise of the american dream picking up steam day to day. I emigrated to Europe in the 70´s and became a german citizen in 1996. It hurt a little back then to renounce my american citizenship (the decision was purely pragmatic, as I live and work here and my family and friends are all here), but this pain residue is vanishing. I seem to have been a little prophetic, as I have been foreseeing this downfall for years now. That it would be actively forced by the president, I couldn´t imagine. It won´t be long now until (sadly) I´ll have to say: “Thank God I´m not an American!”.

re:  big demonstration in Washington

I’m on. I think we should have a 30’ tall very wildly funny and loud Bread & Puppet type puppet representing Bush, maybe Stephen Colbert could be that operator, on a very loud address system.

I have a little film of a giant production like this at a park in Finland or Denmark. Who will do Cheney, the others? Will Addington be the puppet master? Way up in the sky, say in a blimp, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. What actors and comedians and writers would LOVE to do this?

Get speakers like ...!

The analysis in many of the posts here re the Bushies’ shamelessly authoritarian agenda is unassailably just and accurate. Sadly, the conclusions drawn from this analysis represent a failure of nerve, a refusal to follow premises to their logical conclusions.

Why all the shock and awe about the Bushies’ adding yet another brick in the wall of a fascist regime? The assault on our democratic safeguards and insitutions was, ideologically, well in place before the 2000 election. Anyone looking at the history of this administration should have been able to see that this latest move was inevitable.

While the disciplined and organized Christian right and the neocon propaganda machines (and those lesser Diebold machines) helped the Republicans commandeer all branches of government, progressives settled back into listening to their morning editions of NPR while trying to stir up sufficient will to do what they always do in such situations: protest, but ever so civilly.

The hard, inescapable fact is that progressives, with their sense of fair play, their faith in reason, their committment to Working Within The System (having foresworn the embarrasingly ardent revolutionary fantasies of the 60’s), their sentimental embrace of electoral Folk Wisdom (so far a rather dicey proposition), simply aren’t prepared to fight with psychopathic thugs on the order of Bush, Cheney, and the other neocon gangsters.

Coupled with this is the fact that too many progressves are unwilling to risk what are essentially coventional aspirations to success and comfort(don’t rock the boat too hard, don’t raise your voice above a polite whisper) to have any real impact on electoral politics. Take to the streets? Peaceful demonstrations are duly noted and ignored, while the anarcho-nihilist guerillas like those window-smashers at the 1999 WTO conference are seen as bad PR for
the “responsible” Left.

By all means, assemble peaceably to Send a Message to Bush on October 5. Such symbolic, self-congratulatory gestures are by now an exercise in pure nostalgia, harking back to a time when we could still pretend that the Voice of the People actually had some kind of impact on our rulers.

That time has passed. The civil-rights marchers who gathered in Washington in the 60’s at least knew the Johnson administration could be embarrased. Nothing embarasses the Bushies (although they become angry and defensive when their latest folly is exposed—-a different thing altogether).That’s because in order to be embarassed, you must have the capacity to grasp the reality of others outside your narrow sphere of interests. Boy-in-the-Bubble Dubya has made a career out of denying that capacity, and is ably abetted by Cheney, Rice, and their fellow crooks.

This current junta and their obedient slaves on the Right will continuee to do whatever must to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in this country. Meanwhile,  progressives will continue to wistfully quote passages from their high-school civics textbooks on the glories of the Republic and fantasize that what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” can still somehow be salvaged.

The only way to deflect American history from its current course is to engage in the kind of large-scale actions that got us started in the first place. But that would entail abandoning any lingering belief in the continued viability, or very existence, of our “democratic” foundations. This would, in political terms, represent a crisis of faith that most Americans could not accept, much less survive.

Call it tough-minded realism or cynical despair, but the conclusion is unavoidable:it’s over. So, let’s get over ourselves, too. Empires come and go and there’s no reason we should be the exception to the general rule of decline and fall.

Wish I could say I was surprised by what’s going on. Our Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves right now….

>>>Nothing ever changes.
Whenever anything bad happens, it always comes back to “Blame the Jews”. <<<<

Idiot, no one is blaming the Jews. I didn’t write about the Jews and you must be referring to the Cook article I posted.  The Jews might be the Chosen People but that doesn’t mean we can do no wrong. What we have done to the Palestinians is horrible, reprehensible and we have to stop and apply restoritive justice.

The Likudnik/NeoCon/Fascist ideology has been a disaster for the Jews and we need to get back to our humanist roots.

The last mass demonstration was by Americans of Latino background protesting the new immigration rules and regs.

This is much, MUCH bigger than that, so when is the next big demonstration in Washington to PEACEFULLY ASSEMBLE TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES?

Put half a million or a million people on the Mall, all saying “PRESERVE THE CONSTITUTION, THE BILL OF RIGHTS, DUE PROCESS AND HABEAS CORPUS”, and do it BEFORE the election and watch’em sweat!

I, for one, will go.  Now all we need are at least 499,999 more!

Peaceful assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances.  Have a million do it and even Mad King George will to listen (or at least pretend to).

PASS IT ON… ( Re-Written )  Declaration of Independence

Elaine Cassel @ Civil Liberties Watch July 4 th 2003 http://blogs.citypages.com/ecassel/

” A Daring Declaration of Independence
  No surprise that I have intelligent readers.  But the creativity and ambition of some is a delightful discovery.  Read this 21st century -  ( Re-Written )  Declaration of Independence.  Author Roger Drowne EC ( From USA, Earth ) Dares you to “sign and Send” it. ” to the White $$$ House, Your Reps…

continued at…

http://www.rogerart.com/Re Written D of C.htm

It’s too much. In the face of overwhelming odds such as these in terms of insurmountable bureaucratic slog and mass media derailment, I keep thinking the only answer is art. Screw trying to ‘prove’ what’s going on or get the snakes to tell the truth, it just doesn’t work that way when you’re dealing with this depth of crap.

It might be that only informed ‘fiction’ can make the exponential leap neccessary to get the truth out, to motivate the kind of radical shift neccessary right now. Our comedians, musicians, actors, directors, storyspinners, artists, academics and inventors need to get together and brainstorm, man.

Why do you think neocon strategists like David Horowitz and Lynne Cheney have been targeting exactly these people? Educators/Academia, the Press, Hollywood, the Arts. Just like in other times such as this, HUAC days for one, only this is a lot worse.

Get your thinking caps on.

For years I have came to the conclusion that candidates with less campaign contributions from fat cats are better than those connected with big donors. Why? Usually they are not leashed by special interests.

I agree with Spinoza (“The Democrats are very bad but still better than the Republicans.”) and the suggestion to place your vote ELSEWHERE entirely is a good one.

The Greens or Libertarians or even Independent candidates offer relief from the ravages of both the major parties. I suggest that perhaps there’s an argument that the PARTY SYSTEM itself is a major part of the problem.

Candidates, once elected under a party banner, are under control of the whip. They vote as they’re instructed to vote, or they’ll wish they had. That’s not DEMOCRACY as I understand it.

When I send, AND PAY FOR, representatives to attend the House or Senate ON MY BEHALF I want them free to VOTE AS I and MY FELLOW CONSTITUENTS WISH or AUTHORIZE THEM TO VOTE. They should take their marching orders from no one else but their constituents. The Administration, including the President should take their marching orders from OUR REPRESENTATIVES, not the other way around. As it now stands I might as well vote for Winnie-the-Pooh for all the good it does. I do like to dream, don’t I?

I simply don’t understand what has paralyzed the brains of the current crop of Senators and Congressmen/women. For all the good they’re doing they might as well not be there. When “our representatives” lose their collective minds, as they current crop surely has, what then?

Clearly, our system of government needs an overhauling before it’s too late.

Sad! Sad! Sad!
Ugly! Ugly! Ugly!
Evil! Evil! Evil!

Codifying torture is, at best, a halt in the natural progression of human civilization. At worse, it is a regression of civilization backwards. And the sad irony is that the U.S.A. under evil Bush and gang, is leading this backward trend in civilization. The era of neofascism and brutal police state is formally upon us with these evil laws.

This is a time when the living would envy the dead! I am one who would rather die right now than having to live through this and feeling helpless to stop this ultimate evil!

Nothing ever changes.
Whenever anything bad happens, it always comes back to “Blame the Jews”.

We’ve just watched our Congress hand over our government to the fascists, and what does Spinoza do?
Blame the Jews!

Sure, it’s clothed in terms of Israel, and US policy of ensuring the most Democratic state in the mid-east remains so.
But nothing ever changes—Blame the Jews!

Fundamentalists see the Israel as the sign of the 2nd coming:
Blame the Jews!

And every time I hear this I KNOW you think Hitler screwed up because he didn’t finish the job of exterminating every Jew on Earth.

Israel’s existence is an EXCUSE for the evils of the Middle-East, not the cause of them.  Had she never been created, the mess there would be just as big, if not bigger.

If she was exterminated tomorrow, the mess in the Middle-East would only get worse.

There are over a billion people who are Arabic in ethnicity, occupying territory far greater than the United States.  How can all their problems be caused by a state half the size of New Jersey with something like 5 million people?

No, it’s never been anything but a scapegoat for the corrupt, despotic rulers of all of Israel’s neighbors. And since Stalin re-defined Marxism to, by definition, include anti-Semitism, every Marxist since has subscribed to it.

That doesn’t mean the invasion of Lebanon wasn’t illegal and certainly ill-conceived (I guess the Bush team planned it) but I do not accept that a nation created by the UN, that has been THE most successful nation and successful democracy in the Middle-East, with the most liberty EVEN FOR PALESTINIANS is an illegal state.

I’m not saying that Israel has treated its Palestinian citizens fairly over the years. She hasn’t. But compared to EVERY OTHER NATION in the region, the Palestinians were better treated by Israel than any other of their fellow Arab brethren.

Nobody EVER condemns Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. for their rotten treatment of Palestinians, they just
Blame the Jews!

Hypocrits!

Never before have I been as ashamed and disgusted to be an American as I am today. As we struggle to supposedly spread the ideals of freedom and democracy around the globe it is ironic and frightening that the US administration and the Congress, apparently with the support and blessings of many many Americans, are vigorously curtailing those ideals at home.

As a US citizen living abroad, travelling frequently to SE Asian Muslim countries because I am married to a SE Asian Muslim, I am now fearful of travelling back to the States. Suppose I have given money to a charity there where someone on the board has a name similar to someone on a terrorist watchlist, or is a relative of a suspected terrorist. I could actually then be defined as an unlawful enemy combatant and be held indefinetly.

Thank god I have dual nationality and can live elsewhere. In the meanwhile I will put my absentee ballot to good use.

Why and how things are getting more dangerous and why we have to fear the march of the Brown Shirts.

http://www.jabberwonk.com/flinker.cfm?cliid=h2xcp

What do we need to do?  The Democrats are very bad but still better than the Republicans.  We have to hold our noses and vote for them if it means we can get some committees that would allow a little sunshine into the government.  Still we also have to show opposition to the ultra right wing control of this country.  So it probably makes sense to support protest parties such as the Greens or the various minuscule socialist parties. The most sensible organization that I see at this point is the World Can’t Wait people which aims at creating a zeitgeist toward a revolutionary situation. The fact is that fascism is fairly well entrenched in this society.

I live in NYS and so I will vote for the Green candidates in the hope they will get enough votes to get a permanent line on the ballot. That alone would move the zeitgeist to the left.  Everyone should study the worldcantwait.net position as it would do the most in the struggle against fascism. 

All out October 5th

September 28th will go down as one of the saddest, most shameful days in our country’s 230 year old history! With Congress’s vote to accept Bush’s Detainee Treatment Act, this precious republic of ours, hard-won by the blood of countless heroes, dissolved into a POLICE STATE! This rogue President of ours was handed carte blanche SOLE power to designate anyone anywhere in the world an “enemy combatant”; to suspend the foundation of our criminal law, the writ of habeus corpus, to be able to detain that person indefinitely without charges or redress of his imprisonment; to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, ONLY as they are determined “applicable” by the President! The Geneva Conventions, which were approved by Congress many years ago became the law of our land, and, according to that law, any attempt to alter the Conventions is a felony by itself! Most despicably, the drive to get this law (RETROACTIVE to 9/11) passed before the November elections (when the Repubs. might lose one of the Houses of Congress) serves to immunize the President, members of his administration, and those involved in all the illegal practices of the past four years from any future prosecution for war crimes (of which there have been many!) Even more astonishing in stupidity, this GOP Congress granted Bush immunity from any court challenges to his decisions on what constitutes torture or on the “applicability” of the Geneva Conventions!
Folks, weep for the demise of our country! Bin Laden didn’t destroy us; our own leaders have!

I’d like to ask every smug patriot out there who thinks they’ll be safer now that we’ve legalized torture one question: what happens to the torturers when this madness finally runs its course - and it could be years!  The “lucky” ones will find work in Syria or Egypt or some other place where torture is a cottage industry.  But what of those who don’t find a job in their “line of work?”  Do you think they’ll settle back into a nice, cozy 9 to 5 desk job?  Or are we inadvertently creating the next generation of serial killers, rapists, murderers and child molestors?  How safe will the patriots feel then?

Please read the complete article and act: including circulating it widely

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15156.htm

A Personal Declaration of Independence

I refuse to accept as my government actions by the current administration and its obsequious servants, the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate.

By William A. Cook

“If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic … It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.” (President George W. Bush, Sept. 15, 2006 report by AP’s Terence Hunt)

09/29/06 “Palestine Chronicle”—- -Citizens of the United States of America bear an awesome responsibility to maintain control of their government’s behavior since that government derives its powers from the consent granted it by the citizens. When the government ceases to act in accord with the dictates of the respective consciences of its citizens as determined by its foundational documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—, when it violates the established principles that give this nation legitimacy before the nations of the world through mutually accepted agreements, charters, and conventions, when it abrogates the inalienable rights granted the citizens by the Creator, when it declares unequivocally that the citizens cannot dissent with an action or actions taken by the government, then it is the right and the duty of the citizen to “alter or abolish” that government.

For the past five years, the present government of the United States, including the Executive branch, the Congress and the Senate, has committed a “long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object (that) evinces a design to reduce them (the citizens) under absolute despotism.” As a citizen of these United States for 70 years, I refuse to be ruled by a tyrant who imposes despotic, autocratic control on the citizens of these United States through a series of clandestine actions that usurp the rights of the people.

I refuse to accept as my government actions by the current administration and its obsequious servants, the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate, that include

spying on its citizens without their knowledge or consent, an action contrary to existing law;

elimination of personal privacy through the Patriot Act, an action that presumes culpability, not innocence until proven guilty;

preemptive invasion of other nations determined by the unilateral judgment of an all powerful executive that eviscerates the power of the peoples’ representatives;

acts of extrajudicial execution and the abandonment of rule by law thereby making the President, in effect, judge, jury and executioner;

acts of torture and the unilateral infliction of “acceptable” torture techniques thus casting America before the world as an amoral nation beholden to no international agreement and placing at risk the soldiers who defend it;

imposition of illegal actions of war instituted through an orchestrated control of lies communicated to the citizenry thereby negating their democratic right to know that they might vote in accord with their conscience;

levying an incredible tax burden on the citizens to pay for the consequences of these lies that will cost them and their children dearly for decades to come while corporations reap a windfall of profit from closed bids and corruption;

infliction of a forced military occupation on a nation against the desires of its people and enabling that occupation to use illegal weapons of war contrary to the Geneva Conventions thus implicating its citizens in acts against humanity;

development of diverse nuclear weaponry in direct violation of the UN Charter even as it decries other nations for attempting to acquire their own nuclear weaponry;

acceptance, indeed, complete complicity and support of the barbaric and genocidal actions of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine, and most recently, and most deplorably, the abandonment of all pretense to the behavior of a civilized nation through its almost unanimous acceptance of a resolution written by the American Israeli Political Action Committee to endorse the Israeli state’s wanton destruction of the state of Lebanon.

These are not the actions of a democratic state; these are the actions of an autocratic state, an amoral state, an arrogant state that rules by force and acts more ruthlessly than the “extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective,” negating by its actions the unthinkable comparison the President decried.

For six years I have tracked the deception of this government as it surreptitiously acted to acquire more and more power by instilling in the American people the fear necessary to propel the autocrat to absolute power. Fear suppresses individual inquiry even as it enables control of the people, ostensibly to provide protection for them. Fear creates victims, especially in the minds of those who have not been violated. It is the unknown, what might be that metastasizes into the mental slave, the compliant citizen who marches to the drum of those who would control a society. It is the instrument of tyrants and dictators.

This government hobbles its citizens by using fear to manipulate their belief in end time prophecy, by implanting fear of imminent threat from “Islamofacist” fanatics, and by immersing the people in a false sense of “victim hood” that links them with the state of Israel as the only “friend” in the mid-east suffering from the same terrorist scourge. It is time to dispel this fear that enslaves. It is time to declare that this government no longer serves the people, that, indeed, it surpasses in its behavior “the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.” It is not the “compassion and decency of the American people” that is in question; it is the absence of “compassion and decency” in this administration that is at fault.

It is time to withdraw recognition of it as the government of these United States.

Please read the entire article.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the standard dictatorship of Mussolini or Stalin. The US government has eyes in places Stalin could only have dreamt. In fact, we may be even further in over our heads that we thought only months ago. Bush Co. doesn’t need neighbor spying on neighbor, although they would like it very much, and have tried their hand at this. More effectively, they have opted to launch a new brand of high tech military spy satellites that use infrared and other advanced technologies with higher than average resolution just this last summer and continuing into early 2007. this is not to be confused with another set of satellites
being launched concurrently to be a part of the continued and newly restarted ‘Star Wars’ program also sleighted for early 2007.

Just how does this fit in with this newly passed legislation?

One doesn’t need to guess to far as to what will happen when they start pointing this technology not at Afghanistan, but the good old continental US using this legislation as the enabler.

“Big Darkness Come Soon”
Hunter S. Thompson said shortly before his death:
“It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgivable sin in America…Beyond that, we have lost the respect of the world and lost two disastrous wars in three years. Afghanistan is lost, Iraq is a permanent war Zone, our national Economy is crashing all around us, the Pentagon’s “war strategy” has failed miserably, nobody has any money to spend, and our once-mighty U.S. America is paralyzed by Mutinies in Iraq and even Fort Bragg…The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world. The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives…Big Darkness Come Soon.”

No need to wonder. It’s about power and no accountablility. They are working our government like a corporation. They have all the power and non of the accountability. God help us.
Welcome to fascism.
I wonder if they’ll pick me up for saying that. Now they legally can. Think about it. I hope you’re happy Repubs.

I really thought that when McCain and the others stood up against the indefinite detention and torture bill, it was going to implode. It was almost there, just teetering on the brink. And then they caved. What made them do that? Were they pressured, coerced, threatened? It’s hard to figure out McCain, particularly when you remember his background of being imprisoned and tortured in Viet Nam, and the fact that he has a son serving in the military. It not only makes his own experience seem like a dream, but it also puts his own son in danger.

It’s almost as if there are some forces at work in the background that make all decent and humane behavior impossible.

And the “get out of jail free” card that it hands to past, present and future torturers is scary as hell.

The Bush administration must be the only people on the planet who have trouble figuring out what cruel and degrading treatment of human beings is, or what defines torture, as if a fraction of an inch this side of the line is acceptable.

The only acceptable stance is to be so far on this side of the line that defines torture that you can’t even see it, that you are never anywhere near it.

If our system of government and morality is superior to the enemies—then why has Bush refused to use our laws and moral standards to convict our enemies?

Why does Bush insist that there MUST be two seperate forms of democracy, morality and justice: one for white christians and a totally seperate one for brown skinned muslims?

The Democrats had a opportunity to deeply brand Bush with torture during this short debate, but instead they cowered in the cloak room. A few news conferences with abu-grahib videos in the background and shrieks of raped children could have defined the argument much clearer than legal niceties. “This is the man you want to define torture?” should have been the argument. Will I see a Democratic party with spine in my life time?

time to set up the parallel government, like the one in Mexico.
The first act of President Kerry would be to authorize all these disgruntled generals and CIA guys to raid the artificial govt. in Washington, arrest bush and all the coporate nazis and fundamentalist kleagles and so forth ( the entire republican party as well-to hell with you nazis )and for good measure, clear out and bomb icons of theirs like wal-marts, strip malls and gated communities. we’ve been needing this for a while, now we HAVE TO do it.

The U.S. is now officially an dictatorship. Anyone on he street can be picked up and locked up, without legal recourse, and they dont have to tell anyone. This is what happened in Argentina, all under the guise of law and order and security.

The U.S. no longer has any credibility on any subject related to human rights. The moment its leadership opens its mouth about human rights, the world will laugh at us.

I wonder if it ever was about human right or just a political tool.