Tag Archives: Guantanamo

John Howard, Australia’s lunatic leader

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Just what type of man is John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia? The answer is that he is the spitting public image of George W. Bush, our own lunatic president. In other words, he’s a bumpkin fool.

Here he is, pushing legislation to outlaw pornography and alcohol for all Australians. Just kidding. He’s just going to outlaw those baddies for aborigines! Aborigines face ban on alcohol and porn But only aborigines in one District! If they behave 1/2 of a year, then they can then drink and do pornography once again if Howard sez it’s OK!

Talk about blaming the victims for their problems, ay? What next? Requiring all Australian gays to wear condoms, while straights will not have that legal directive? With John Howard sniffing cane toad toxins, any ol’ thing might go down?

John Howard needs to be sent to Guantanamo for Australia’s protection it seems. He supports what Guantanamo is all about anyway, and there he can partake of the strict discipline he is in favor of for Australian aborigines and other moral defectives. He’s quite a bit defective himself.

Where does the ruling class get these guys? Tom Tancredo for President anybody?

US Military Spy on Hundreds of Antiwar Demos

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The Pentagon spied on hundreds of antiwar demos says the ACLU. Unfortunately, many activists in the proPeace crowd (and even the ACLU itself) seem to act as if they cannot draw the logical conclusions from this and act accordingly. Instead of helping publicize this reality of police and military surveillance and disruption of Peace proponents and their activism, they act as if doing so might be a hindrance and derailment of the Antiwar Movement! Therefore they run from the fight when it gets down and dirty. Isn’t that sad?

Without battling on behalf of those that might very well be the direct victims of this surveillance and rather instead acting as if they are chickens with their heads cut off who can’t come to the defense of those vilified without cause, is not helpful but harmful to the Antiwar Movement.

We must show solidarity with people when they are attacked and found supposedly guilty without due process. We must act forcefully on behalf of these people. Otherwise, we are accepting of the reality of those that want to make the whole world into one enlarged Guantanamo, where allegations need not ever be proven, but simply accepted as given fact by authority.

Activism without Solidarity is empty of content. The US military spy on hundreds of thousands of us, and we should not act as if the harm that falls upon some of us for our activism merely has innocently fallen out of the sky. If you know this, then work as if those peace activists that have been slandered are in fact innocent until proven guilty. If you do not, then in fact you are working with the saboteurs of The Movement For Peace, and not against them.

The General’s Report- General Taguba, American hero

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The General’s Report really shows how the top Pentagon command and leaders of the Bush Administration fully authorized and supported the continued use of torture on American held Prisoners of War held at Abu Ghraib. They should all be in jail.

General Antonio Taguba deserves a Purple Heart for his valor in not going along with them. Now let’s get Guantanamo closed down and the base given back to the Cuban people.

St Patrick’s Day Six plus One

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Get a lawyer! Get a lawyer! Yes, go get a lawyer! In days gone past, people would shout, ‘Get a witch doc, he will intervene for you with the Gods!’ Well, us Justice and Peace folk got a lawyer for the St Patrick’s Day Seven, and we seem just as credulous as the most primitive of people about this magician playing against the legal Gods on behalf of those criminally charged.

No need to stay together, the lawyer says. Split into two! And get another lawyer, two. Two, three, many lawyers! I’ve seen folk meekly following the worst guidance of doctors many a time before, but now I guess I will get to see pro-peace people hypnotized by their legal, uh friend, the lawyer.

Eric seems to have accepted the advice to split The Seven into Six plus One, and so has the Six. Solidarity now thrown out the wind. This is now a legal issue and stand still.

It seems, we will stand still until the court rules against The One in favor of the city and its police, that the city government had assault people who tried to walk against the Pentagon. Gone is the issue of how John O’Donnell is mere front man for how the city issues permits and tries to stifle all but Pentagon led (and fed) parades, air shows, and assemblies in this city. No counter social issues Now! It’s divisive! Eric misled the poor city of Colorado Springs. Guilty as charged. Now stay out of any parade.

What is typical here, is how this decision to split the case was made not by our group discussion, but by a lawyer or two in our midst. And perhaps a publisher, too. In fact, most of the Justice and Peace still have yet to hear about how there will be two trials, not one. So sez the lawyer and we shall follow and do. All fall down. We got the lawyer, and he will be our downfall. How often this happens when Movement activists fold up, and allow themselves to be led by the nose by ‘legal specialists’. Deals and decisions get made in secret, and input of commoners get wiped out.

Such faith! To oppose the guidance of our legal counselor would be ‘inappropriate’, they would say? Of course, what was once a political matter that needed the mobilizing of public support, has now been turned into a hidden away, private court matter with all the rules to be followed of a legal system that allows Guantanamo to happen. People who still believe in following the rules of a democracy that doesn’t really exist, also seem to be content following the rules of a legal system that only exists in skeletal remains, too.

It looks bad in the days ahead for the St Patrick’s Day Six plus One. Shaking hands and hugging the police by the ACLU (as done at their recent annual meeting) will lead to defeat in the court room, but good relations between wanna-be power brokers and power. Lawyers most often get the people beat, not saved. A ‘good lawyer’ gets the Six saved, the One beat, and the Movement down the drain. And for that, he will be thanked.

That’s the better scenario. The worst, is well worse. Solidarity would do better.

Two and a half for Scooter

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Poor Scooter, fall guy for Bush and Cheney’s record setting criminality. He got a 2 and 1/2 year sentence for something you and I might have gotten life, and yet, he will probably not even have his golf games interrupted. He now faces a likely pardon or time at a country club ‘prison’. Such disgrace!

The funniest part of the whole thing, is who gave him personal references in front of the judge. They were Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld! Write your government representatives and ask that his time be spent at Guantanamo instead. They say he looked red eyed and ashen faced when he left the courtroom. Let him look like Padilla when he comes out Guantanamo. That would teach the bum a lesson, would it not?

NATO Out of Somalia and Sudan Now!

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Last night, a nice person called me up and wanted to assure me that she and other pro-Peace activists in Colorado Springs had not called for military interventionism into Darfur when they recently met at Poor Richards. I was half asleep and there was background noise on her end of the line, so the conversation didn’t really go on for too long. But for several hours now I have been thinking of this call. What to make of it?

Actually, it brought me back to the days of when so many nice liberals (and socialists, too) were demanding that Clinton do what he wanted to do anyway. They demanded that he intervene against Yugoslavia. They always made it clear that they were not calling for NATO to bomb the living day lights out of Yugoslavia, but that is just exactly what they helped accomplish. Today a US military base stands in Kosovo, and it has been deemed Europe’s Guantanamo since American held POWs are sent there to be tortured and held in secret.

Even worse, by being complicit in the NATO and US campaign against Yugoslavia, the liberal supporters of ‘action against Milosevic’, essentially sat on their butts for 8 years, while the Clinton gang killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and spread lies that Bush later used about there being WOMD in that country, all just waiting to be used to kill millions elsewhere. Today, Iraq is occupied with American troops. Surprise!

Fast forward a few months to Africa… NATO is in Sudan, and is now being considered for use in Somalia. And this good person who called me wants to reassure me that no Peace activists are pushing that this be the case. Yes, but it is the case, so why not ask (demand) that NATO get out of Africa? Instead, what is it the ‘action’ that is actually being demanded of by ‘Save Darfur’ folk?

I just don’t get this?! They are demanding that economic war be waged against Sudan as NATO troops intervene in country after country as forces of occupation and reaction! Why in the world would Peace activists want economic ‘sanctions’ to be applied to any country in the world by Britain and the US, 2 horrible imperialist and genocidal powers?

I am going to call this woman back up and ask that she, or any of the people who met at Poor Richard’s, write to explain on this blog what ‘action’ they want, and to explain their reasoning. I just don’t get it? I would think they would be more thoughtful about asking for ‘action’, when their allies on this taking of ‘action’ are Dubya, Condi, Madelyn Albright, and Tom Tancredo. I just don’t get it? The best action that can be taken is to demand that the US and Britain, NATO and the UN just get out of all of Africa. And while we are at it, how ’bout demanding getting these troops out of the Balkans and Afghanistan, too?

The destruction of Iraq is not a US government policy aberration

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Iraq is no mere aberration by the US government. The Democratic Party would have us think otherwise, but just as top Democratic Party officials set the stage for supporting Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, they have also gone along totally with Republican policy in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Somalia, too.

There the Democrats supported policies of destroying these other countries by illegally fighting wars under false pretenses, and using proxies to do most of the fighting for the Pentagon. Nothing is different from Iraq.

The fighting in Afghanistan threatens to continue to extend itself into Pakistan. The fighting in Lebanon threatens to extend itself into Syria and Iran (especially if Israel has its way). The fighting in Somali, threatens to extend itself into renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Everywhere the Democrats follow along behind the leadership of the Republican Party, large areas of the world start to crumble into deepened anarchy, destruction, and despair.

In Afghanistan, the Pentagon is directing its most cowardly war. There, the Pentagon regularly is dropping bombs into civilian areas from thousands of feet up high. They just don’t seem to care about the ‘collateral’ damage done to innocent people, as long as Pentagon allied casualties are kept as low as possible. We cannot ‘support our troops’ in that country at all, as they have been turned by the Bush Administration into nothing more than a bunch of mass murderers.

In Somalia, the Pentagon send in troops from Ethiopia, and then has taken thousands of new prisoners to torture in hidden jails throughout Africa, all done Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo style. Close to half a million refugees have been sent scurrying out of Mogadishu alone, where most now face starvation and death by disease.

In Lebanon, much of the country still is in ruins, with cluster bombs everywhere in unknown locations for civilians to step on. Will the US give the Green Light again for Israel to start the fighting up once again? Will the US and Israel attack Iran and Syria, too? The failures of the Iraq War to do anything other than destroy are not aberrations of one Republican Administration, but is only one face of the entire fiasco of America’s bipartisan foreign policies. We need to stop all these wars now. Shame on us if we fail to act, and if we The American people don’t act, the carnage will be extended and extended and extended, all in our name. Protest is patriotic now, and sitting on our butts is not.

White House tortures 15 year old at Guantanamo then charges him 5 years later with murder!

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Everything about Guantanamo is utterly repugnant beyond belief, but the torture of children there is the worst abomination of all. The case of Omar Khadr is one example amongst many, and shows that the US government is utterly lacking in any moral values at all.

Omar was captured in Afghanistan in July, 2002,and rather than being held as a POW as should have been the case by international law, he was treated as a common criminal. Those who think the UN is some sort of great international body of peacemakers should think some about this case. The UN is totally complicit in what is going on at Guantanamo and the other US secret camps of torture. It is shameful how the UN has totally deteriorated under US domination.

Omar was only 15 when he was captured, and he has been held and tortured without any rights what -so-ever given him, for almost 5 years now. He is being charged with supposed crimes that would have been committed when he was much younger, even to times when he was less than 10 years old! Sickening. The US invaded and occupied his country, and he, a child, is now being criminally charged by the White House. He has only had the most flimsiest of pretexts at any legal representation, and besides, he is Prisoner of War, not a common criminal. This is Kangaroo Democracy and Kangaroo Court at its most banal level of total evil. Our press and our society are acting as if torturing a child soldier is somehow normal behavior by its government. It is not, and we should all be ashamed of what is being done in our name.

Other US peace activists with misdemeanor charges pending

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The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade produced a net total of 7 misdemeanor charges against 7 peace people here in Colorado Springs, but is that typical of the whole US to have this sort of thing happen? After all we are the country where human rights are respected, democracy flourishes in a garden like atmosphere, and habeus corpus is the law of the land. So let’s go to Florida now and see what produced another misdemeanor charge agianst a peacenik to be filed once again by local police?

Instead of the provocative and inflamatory KIDS NOT BOMBS sign that Marie carried, there the peacenik actually carried an even more inflamatory sign! One that demanded FOOD NOT BOMBS! How horrible is that?! These subversives need to show some respect to ordinary Americans, who just want to live in a non-violent society uninterrupted all the time by violent protesters inconsiderately spreading their messages of hate. They should just shut up and get a job.

And all the nice folk upset at the 7 charged here in Colorado Springs should also write to the mayor of the lovely town of Orlando, and let him know that they in Colorado Springs support what he is doing to keep Mickey Mouse safe in America. The nutty Leftist there is lucky the police didn’t use the stun guns on him, when his stew was stolen. Oh well, next time. This ‘peace’ thug certainly will be unable to keep himself out of trouble once again. Why don’t they pass a federal 3 misdemeanors and you are out law?

AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT! If you can’t live by the rules I’ll buy you a free ticket to Guantanamo, Peace Dudes…

Torture en mass

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Amnesty International says that the US government has been actually worsening conditions for POWs and other prisoners (many can’t even be called POWs, since they were basically sold to the US by mercenary forces) held at Guantanamo. That can be only with deliberate intent, too.

How does it feel to be part of a society led by a government that is deliberately torturing several hundreds of prisoners en mass? Good? This has been going on for 5 years now, and the American public acts as if they were a bunch of brain dead zombies. And not one leading Democratic Party presidential candidate has come out against this torture and has called for closing Guantanamo.

I am ashamed to be an American. We need to overthrow this two-faced one party dictatorship that rules over us and the world. Unfortunately most of our fellow citizens seem to be total chumps and chimps, out shopping and driving around in circles endlessly refusing to take the smallest steps to help liberate themselves. Luckily all this must eventually self destruct. There won’t be much left though.

9-11 has nothing on 2003

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I’m thinking about the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, an unimaginable aggression that yielded unspeakable suffering, speakably unsurprising. Millions of people took to the streets in 2003, an unprecedented two thousand in this city, in a desperate renunciation of our government’s blood thirst. Today as the US war machine mobilizes to demolish Iran, I wonder what has changed, where is the outcry? Where are the double-decker buses rushing to the Gulf to put human shields between the US warships and the Iranian people, lest the cowboys dare bomb white people?!

But life was simpler in 2003. We had yet to learn what a drunken, swaggering half-wit would do at the helm of the most powerful military. A half-wit propped up by malicious connivers shifting capitalism’s ultimate human-life harvester into irreverse gear.

The media likes to talk about how 9-11 changed the world. Nine-eleven was America’s first taste of violence brought home, to the tune of a Madison Avenue catch phrase. As it turns out, it was the overture. The world didn’t change until 2003.

It was a buildup to be sure, of crooked deals in high courts, back room contracts, corporate election tampering, transnational suppression of sustainability, collapse of sovereignty and law serving the people’s discretion, and the incomprehensible judicial malfeasance of Guantanamo, culminating in a climax of lunacy and self-deception with Iraq. I believe shock and awe was the dawning of awareness of the new world order: unchecked capitalism bearing arms, baring its steel molars, its black gloves and crew-cutted vacant soul, with nothing any dedicated resistance can do about it.

What was becoming evident to globalization’s victims about the race to the bottom is that the push has become a shove and they’re already trying to throw the dirt in over us.

Solidarity vs Disintegration?

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Moments of crisis always expose group weaknesses. Crises always create stress, and stress causes people to blame others and most espcially others that they have been working closely with in some shape or form. Suffice it to say, that in the 2 weeks since police attacked pro-peace participants in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Colorado Springs, many of those who oppose the continued US government occupation of Iraq have been finger pointing and second guessing each other, and otherwise fighting amongst ourselves. We have not exactly distinguished ourselves by being first in the Solidarity Department.

Meanwhile, while we have been throwing stones against each other over our interpretation of local events, the real world goes on. The US is moving to further spread the multiple wars it is already engaging in, into yet more and more countries. We face the almost immediate possibility that our government will soon drop its new generation of atomic toys onto yet one more country, most probably Iran. We have a country that has dissolved habeus corpus, and where a prisoner tortured for 5 years pleaded guilty last week, just to try to escape yet further torture while being held criminally at Guantanamo by our government. We have a country where its top ‘justice’ official, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, stands accused of lying to its top elected officials, accused of doing such by his second in command, no less. The real world, and its real events, goes on.

Unfortunately, I have found it hard to write much about these events of the last 2 weeks, simply because fellow bloggers online with me here at Not My Tribe have chosen to attack me and Brother Jonah instead of focusing on the real events taking place around the planet. Instead of closing lines in solidarity with those that oppose the US government war making, these fellow bloggers online at NMT have chosen to get themselves upset about the supposed misdeeds of me and Jonah.

Oh horrors of horrors! We talk out against capitalism in ‘tirades’, smother free speech of others, and hand out ‘provacative’ signs that endanger others just trying to have a nice stroll downtown! How nasty Brother Jonah and I have been, it seems? We even drove off a nice young man named Steve, who just wanted to express his solidarity with our cause, he said, though he opposed our methods sadly enough.

Quite frankly, I am ashamed of all of this nonsense from these fellow bloggers, one of who chose to remove himself as a contributor. I have been to multiple vigils in the last 2 weeks that have expressed solidarity with immigrants under the multiple attacks and ’roundups’ of them and their families, and vigils in opposition to the US government and its continual wars. Tomorrow, I will go to Denver and try to find a way to help organize with others, future protests against the new agressions the US government is out organizing. And Monday, it will be to attend yet another vigil against the US War Against Iraq, and also to try to get together a city wide rally to support the 7 people now facing criminal charges post St Paddy Day’s police attack. But this fellow blogger was so ashamed of what we had been doing and writing here, that he felt it necessary to stop being a co-contributor at NMT, no less! He is not with us now, because we were too ‘Either you are with us, or Against us’ for him. Shame on you, Brother Jonah for behaving so badly that this co-blogger felt this way!

Another co-blogger, also is angry about our actions engaged in recently. What better time to fight and accuse her co-bloggers here at NMT, than when she finds herself in agreement with The Gazette, in agrement that her fellow peacenics didn’t properly know how to behave themselves with the better class of people at the St Pat’s Day affair? Shame on us! But where was I now? I’m missing from photos she says! Something sinister must have been happening? Where were you, Tony?, she asked!

Solidarity versus disintegration? This is always the question when push comes to shove. It is the question that always turns up during difficult strikes. Which side are you on? Oh, but these co-bloggers say that is too much like Dubya to ask that question now! After all, the Prez too said that you are either with us, or against us. Our co-bloggers though now shout out, that we should be both with you and against you when push comes to shove! That way we can sway with how well the corporate press is manipulating the Average Janes and Joes amongst the general city population. And that way, they will not feel so extremist as to hold any one view very firmly with their co-bloggers, who are so horrible manipulative, it does seem.

All of this nonsense and accusations that has been put online recently against Brother Jonah and I is totally repulsive and shameful. It truly detracts from anybody’s desire to read us. What a mess and I apologize. Solidarity versus disintegration? I hope that Not My Tribe can get its act together, and not disintegrate? Disintegration at this moment would be particularly sad. It would happen under the pretense of being discussion though. That’s hardly what has been going on, and Solidarity would be much better.

more stories, all showing the bubble

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the one that’s fixing to bust, you know…

There’s a Chinese sideways curse, “May you always live in Interesting Times”…

• Deadly week in Iraq shows al-Qaida’s strength, mobility
• White House backs Gonzales as more Justice officials testify
• U.S. shifts trade policy, sets new duties on Chinese goods

Ok that last was sloppy cut ‘n paste, I wasn’t trying to get the China story in but it works anyway…

The ones above the Deadly Week line were about the Australian citizen who was tortured into confession in Gitmo and the British Marine who has confessed in the Iran / Blair standoff.

And the Administration (and George’s poodle) are saying, in a SURPRISE development and of course totally out of character for them, that the guy was coerced into making the statement and was being used for –get this– PROPAGANDA purposes…

Pleading guilty to end the torture

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David Hicks, the only Guantanamo torture victim to plead guilty, did so to end 5 years of unlawful imprisonment and torture. What a mockery of any legal justice or due process this charade is. The whole world should be ashamed for us Americans for allowing this Orwellian kangeroo trial to be held by our illegal and totally rotten and corrupted government. This is about the most shameful moment in my lifetime to have witnessed such abuse being done publicly, and without any sense of mass American public indignation, too.

This is why I am against calling for impeachment of George W. Bush. That is much too little and much too late. The entire Bush torture team needs to be imprisoned for their crimes, and an organized national response of apology to those tortured without due cause needs to be issued following the immediate release of all POWs and other prisoners held without any evidence or charges against them having been made.

I have never been more ashamed to be an American.

Clarifying a few terms…

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Because some have expressed disdain at the mere thought of being considered right wing apologists… aka people who wish to accommodate and justify right wing philosophy, here are a few things to remember: Catchwords and phrases, talking points, something you might see on a bumper sticker; using these will probably get you tagged as a right wing loon. And in at least some cases the tag would fit perfectly.

examples: Love it or leave it (one recently) The Police are always right, If you have done nothing wrong why would you fear the police?, Support Our Troops, These Colors Never Run.

Recycling myths like: left wing liberals were the reason we lost in Nam… FALSE. Right Wing planners like Westmoreland, Johnson, Nixon, Al Hague, and the “Super Patriots” who supported them, were much more of a coherent and consistent reason for the loss of the VietNam War by the United States. The new crop of such losers is causing America to be drawn into yet another defeat.

Also contributing much to the American loss in VietNam was the courage and resourcefulness of the VietMinh, that’s Charley to some…

For those who don’t remember anything about it, these guys used a mix of primitive and modern technologies, small arms, improvised explosives and equipment taken from American, Australian, French and South Vietnamese soldiers, tactics which were also a mix of ancient and modern, to defeat the above named governments, even against a Shock and Awe campaign of greater magnitude than the one currently being played in Iraq.

Also like Iraq, there was never a war declared between the United States and The Democratic Republic (Hanoi).

Much as it pisses off those who see the POWs as uncompromising heroes, (some were) and the Hanoi Hilton as a hellhole, (it was) it should also be remembered that the Hanoi Hilton is about a standard in third world jails. And since the North Vietnamese didn’t do a “show trial” followed by an execution every time they captured an American airman, the treatment they accorded the Americans was one hell of a lot better than that accorded to the VietCong prisoners by the Saigon government.

a lot of Americans will scream loudly that American soldiers didn’t torture captured Charleys. Given the readiness these same people have shown to rationalize torture at Gitmo and worse places, i tend to doubt that. Probably not widespread but not nonexistent either.

But on the other hand, the Saigon government DID torture and summarily execute captured “terrorists” “rebels” “insurgents”.

Leave us remind everybody that the Americans captured in North VietNam and Cambodia and Laos had exactly the same legal status as the captured Charleys had in the South. No more, no less.

It was a combination of supporting an openly repressive government and the determination and resourcefulness of the “enemy” that dashed the American intervention in SE Asia.

The same things that are now dragging down America in South WEST Asia.

Empires are destined to fall, usually very soon after they are declared to be Empires. Such as the one declared by George Bush Senior when he proclaimed a New World Order, which is being dishonorably carried on by his son, King George the Incredibly Stupid.

Another talking point is that VietNam and Iraq were fought for American freedom.

They were not, nor has any war in which America has been engaged since 1814. To say otherwise is to propagate a myth, if you believe that myth, if you know it is false but say it anyway it is ramped up all the way to a Deliberate Lie.

The military did not fight for our freedom, they did not give us our freedom, or our rights, we do NOT OWE them our obedience, or the willing surrender of our rights.

Especially annoying (not to mention stupid) is the repeated attempt to make us believe that Freedom means we are free to do as we are told, to say only what we are allowed to say, and that we have some moral obligation to support the wars started by people who have anointed themselves our “Leaders”.

Some of my fellow Christians are of the strong delusion that God has commanded us to obey George Bush because he is supposedly “OUR” King.
This particular myth was also used by the Tories to denounce the Continental Congress and the rebels in the army during the Revolution.

It was shouted from pulpits across the Colonies by pastors, who, like Ted Haggard and Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and Dobson… had sold their priesthood and their souls to a tyrant.

Here’s a quick formula to remember Shock and Awe = the use of fear as a weapon = Terrorism.

The proponents of Shock and Awe, like George and his supporters, are therefore Terrorists.

You don’t like that, try beating it out of me, and all the while try to forget that that too, is Terrorism.

Jose Padilla must be freed now

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The US public is being pushed by reaction on 2 important issues at this moment and is failing in both cases to respond anyway adequately to the challenges.

Issue #1 is Bush’s plan to war with Iran, and the US population is going about its business same as usual. That is a total failure to respond to a crisis in the making.

Issue #2 is the case of Jose Padilla, a man held for over 3 years without charges or any standard legal rights, all the while being tortured by the US government. Response of the US population over this time frame? Overall they show no indication that they care about their own rights, let alone the rights of those already imprisoned by their government!

Why does the title say that Jose Padilla must be freed now? Simple, and it is the same reason all reason all prisoners of war held by US forces in places like Guantanamo must be freed, regardless of guilt or not. When the government denies legal rights to people detained and in addition tortures them, then a just determination of innocence or guilt cannot actually then be made. So the government is left with only two alternatives, to continue the torture and illegality of its actions, or to forthright free the detained. That’s it. By denying rights to prisoners and torturing them, these 2 illegal government actions make the charges against the detained mute. A government that disregards the high ground of proper legal process, no longer has any moral authority ot detain any prisoners, let alone those held as supposed ‘terrorists’.

At this point in time, the US government under the direction of President Bush and the enabling US Congress has lost any moral authority in the taking and holding of prisoners of any type. That’s what happens when you run torture chambers. When torture is used, the government automatically sinks itself to a lower level than even any actual terrorist they might encounter in their dragnets. Why? It’s because the government itself has begun to act as the biggest terrorist out there. And since the government’s enforcement is via real people, the government itself converts itself into a collection of individual terrorists. The government becomes the principle terrorist gang at that point, and any court otehr than a kangeroo one should turn the government’s victims free.

Jose Padilla a must be freed now, otherwise our entire country becomes complicit with the government. In fact, that is really what the Padilla case is now about. The Bush Administration deliberately turned a US citizen into a vegetable much to see how the rest of us would react? And so far we are failing that test miserably, since there has been about zero US public outcry in regards to what was done. Americans now need no lessons from Germans are other nationalities about how it is that a whole nation gets turned into monsters. We can look at ourselves in the mirror and figure it all out. Free Padilla now! Do it for ourselves.

Read more about the case at Jose Padilla News

The tiers of torture inside American prisons

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It’s been ages since I saw an article in Time Magazine worth reading, but ‘Are Prisons Driving Prisoners Mad?‘ does ask the right question It even goes so far as to answer the question honestly, and then to conclude that driving prisoners insane is in nobody’s real interests. There is though another question which is, ‘Are the Prisons Deliberately Driving Prisoners Insane?’ I believe that the answer is YES, which in turn leads to yet another question. ‘Why?’

The short article in Time hints that YES, the prisons are deliberately doing what they are doing, and says that it is out of society’s relatively normal urge, which they call ’emotional sense’ to make life harsh for those who have committed brutal acts. They conclude though, that ’emotional sense’ does not make practical sense. That’s because some of these now insane prisoners get eventually released back out into society and there they are even more likely to do harm than before.

What was interesting about this relatively honest Time Magazine commentary, is that nowhere did it ever call what was going on TORTURE. It did say that examining how SuperMax prisons and isolation function to permanently injure people did open up the need for courts to examine these practices and to maybe stop them. That somehow a line had been crossed?

So what amount of torture crosses the line for Time/Life/ AOL and folks like them? Apparently they have some second thoughts about turning people into vegetables and raving psychotics through sensory deprivation? But that is just one tier of torture within America’s Gulags. You get to that tier because other tiers of torture also are in place. SuperMaxes and isolation chambers begin in stages to torture prisoners. Are the earlier stage of solitary confinement deemed normal and appropriate by Time Magazine?

Take for example, the routine separation of prisoners in America from their children and spouses? Is that not a form of torture and prisoner abuse, too. Is that not the first tier towards driving human beings insane by torture? After all, what is a norm in prisoner abuse in American jails is not the norm in many other countries. In other systems of detention, prisoners are not forced into homosexuality, nor separated from the calming effects of holding their babies and hugging their older children. Is it not a form of torture to not allow normal human contact of this type for prisoners that will, in their majority, some day return to society?

Also, is it not torture to physically and emotionally allow some prisoners to torture others. The prison administrators like to charge that this is something that prisoners do to themselves and that they are doing all they can to stop it. Does anybody really believe this? Actually, just like in our foreign wars, the ‘deciders’ in control use one group against another, and afterwards blame them all for being responsible for the mayhem that is presided over. Inside the prison, homosexuals are often used against the others as informants, and heterosexuals are used against the homosexuals. Blacks vs Whites vs Hispanics. Short timers vs lifers, and lifers vs short timers. The prison administrative gang lords it over the prisoner gangs, and the prisoner gangs fight back, but usually against each other. The forms of torture administered within the American prisons are varied and often quite camouflaged. but they are there and constant. The greatest torture in the prisons is arbitrariness. It is used as a constant stick by the legal system.

All this mayhem encouraged amongst the tiers of torture inside American prisons only goes to reinforce the excuse for having so many locked up. ‘See? We got to do it! It’s not that we are cruel, oh hell no! It’s just that they are animals!’ But that’s all really a lie.

The truth is, that America’s tiers of torture inside the prison system were deliberately put into effect because the economically elite ruling class hates the poor, hates the weak, hates the people they rob and abuse, and want to torture them. It’s no mistake at all, and they encourage a mob to support them in their own hatred towards those they despise. The torture is there, because the rulers want to break others down into dysfunctional, mentally and physically destroyed human beings. This is the same nastiness and viciousness of those that burned witches at the stake, lynched innocent Blacks, beat and whipped slaves and prisoners of the past. It’s still going on, though the forms have evolved.

The tiers of torture within the US prison system are twin to the secret rendition centers and Guantanamo where our military abuses POWs held without any due process. So the answer to Time Magazine’s question is…. Yes, US prisons are driving prisoners insane. Thats’ what torture is meant to do, and torture works.

Should we honor the torturers and their work in America, Time? You do in most of your commentaries and ‘news’. We need to stop torturing all prisoners, and not just those held by the military.

From torture to show trial: our Evil Empire conveyor belt on

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President Cheney is preparing Guantanamo show trials for this year, reports the New York Times. No hangings will happen, though a frying or two appears to be on the agenda. This ought to play so very well with the rest of the world, for sure. So, isn’t American ‘democracy’ lovely they will say? And of course it is. Condaleeza sez it so. And so it is so.

Let’s see? After being held and tortured without access to either charges or lawyers, legal procedure, or rights of any kind, that is then to be followed by a cluster fuck of show trials, judgement of the POWs by the Pentagon, and then the punishment they evidently have not yet already received. Oh, I”m sorry. I meant judgement of the ‘enemy combatants’. With a title like that, I am sure they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Or insane. They call this a jury of one’s peers…. in Alice’s Wonderland, the USA.

Taking to the streets on Thurs Jan 11

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Plenty of banners availableThough long delayed, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission is coordinating an action for January 11. We’re going to petition our Senators Allard and Salazar to end US torture and to close down Guantanamo. Cindy Sheehan is visiting Cuba to make that plea and efforts are being coordinated nationwide to call for an end to torture.

Now January 11 will be the day after George Bush’s announcement to increase troop levels in Iraq, in defiance of the will of the American people.

And of course there is the new issue of the US extra-judicial, undeclared-war bombing of Somalia.

And the new Democratic congress which has opted to abstain from discussing the war(s) until its 100 hour domestic reform agenda.

If any of those issues grab you, join us at 1pm Thursday when we’ll march from the J&P offices to Allard’s and then on to Salazar’s, followed by a car-pool to see Congressman Lamborn. Or join MoveOn and others at 5pm in Acacia Park for an impromptu rally.

The guilty among us

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Jose Padilla kept in sensory deprivation
Continuous sensory deprivation has rendered Jose Padilla effectively useless to his own defense lawyers.

A sense of optimism before the 2004 elections had me anticipating a reckoning for the perpetrators of the Iraq war. Not just the Neocon architects, but everyone who had supported their murderous, larcenous enterprise. Not just the Bush cronies in the media or think-tanks or GOP hierarchy. I fantasized that every American even smiling in pictures beside the president or a cohort would be held to account. I imagined leveling a war reparations tax on all Republicans, a stupidity tax so to speak. Make those who supported the war pay for it.

With no sea change yet in sight, I’ve lowered by sights. Save the flag waivers for later, let’s address the other foot soldiers, the foot soldiers. Our troops in Iraq are the war’s hands-on perpetrators, each and every one should be held to account. There might be no justice we can enforce as yet, but let the soldiers know it will come. It won’t be a hard case to prove. Kill indiscriminately? Violate humanitarian law? Too thick to understand right from wrong? Sorry Charley.

Support the troops. Give them a good swift reprimand.

Military prison guards at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,may have been trained to behave terribly, maybe their orders explicitly state to do terrible things, maybe they some bring stateside experience from regular US prison practice. It’s no excuse. Being ignorant of the law, being dumb at crew-cutted doorknobs, does not excuse anyone from responsibility. They are all part of the reign of terror and they will burn with it as soon as justice is given a match.

Corporate America’s micro-management addiction

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Decades ago, while working as a Seattle garment cutter where Jimmy Hendrix’s brother once worked, I observed with awe and amazement a White man, overly dressed in coat and tie, stand directly behind the seated rows of bent over Oriental women with stopwatch in hand.

He was measuring each and every fraction of a second their motions as they sewed together cut parts of skiwear. He was part of the management team’s effforts to micro-manage the workers at this factory. He would write down his observations and then they would be mathematically calculated to squeeze these women out of every ounce of their energy, for the least pennies to be paid. My thoughts back then were, Good God Almighty! This micro-management of people is sick, sick, sick!

Today, I am a proud parent of a District 11 school kid. Everyday she comes home at 2:45, angry, hostile, and upset. Why is this? The kids at this ‘excellent’ facility are being micro-managed, that’s why . No time for recess, no time for play, no time for socialization. Every second is to count.

If you might ask, I am voting for recall. My only wish is that the whole bunch of them were being recalled on that School Board. Their micro-management of kids is sick! There is no kid left behind from it, either. At the school my kid goes to, the teachers don’t even much get the chance to teach. They have a computer called ‘Success Maker’ supposedly doing that. Computers can micromanage little kids better than humans can, I guess?

All the teachers and principals are part of this micro-management, too. Even their cheerleading for the school seems totally forced. Like a Toyota production circle almost! And the kids conduct in this repressive setting becomes quite coarse. Another manifestation of the US corporate zeal for micro-management of others. Little kids even! Every second must count. We must ‘rationalize’ education! Speedup the teachers!

Last week in the New York City metro area, ecoli@TacoBell.com shut down 6 stores. But what is the New York City municipal health inspectors concerns per another article online last week? That there were sales of armadillo meat and other exotics at ethnic markets going on that were not kosher enough for them. The ethnic markets are not being micro-managed by the Health Dept. like they should supposedly be. In city across city in the US, it is next to impossible to vend food like is done in every other country around the world. The food cannot be micro-managed like at McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Burger King by the ‘health’ bureaucracy. No way to stand stop watch in hand and measure productivity, etc. Uh, I meant sanitary conditions.

Pretty pathetic is it not? All those fast food joints have kids working without sick leave, and no health inspector ever is there to micro-manage the snot coming from them onto the food while at work sick. Got to spend more time micromanaging armadillo meat instead, and I guess cuy (guinea pig), too, which is available to South American immigrants in a park of one of their barrios in that city. In other cities, just try to vend even hot dogs around town! Food not Bombs gets harassed if they give away cooked food on the streets. Unhealthy. You guys are not going to get away from being totally micro-managed by corporate America! It’s for health reasons, the authorities will all announce. Shut up and eat your triple fat burger, Buddy.

Everything is micro-managed these days. The Iraq Study Group was micro-analyzing how they could micro-manage those savage Arabs and Kurds? How can ‘our’ oil be micro-managed in that faraway land? Bipartisan unity now. Democrats and Republicans all 100% behind the idea of corporate America micro-managing other peoples. Can they not micro-manage other people? No, they are addicts, are they not? They need Micro-Managers Anonymous.

At Safeway, the clerks are told what to say. At the hospitals, nurses are told what to say. At Wendy’s, management is taking away what to say and micro-managing that from the Exit 42 Corporation located in New Hampshire. At America On Line, what to say is not micro-managed on line by Americans on line, but by micro-managed Indians on line micro-managed in Quien Sabe, India! This corporate micro-management addiction is sick!

The in thing for business, is to violate labor law and micro-mange your break time, take it away, destroy it! It’s WalMarts specialty, and ask any nurse how management micro-manages them at the hospitals? Haven’t seen your nurse come by? They’re being micro-managed over at the desk by management. To see you in person they would need to have skates on. That would go with their bundle of equipment (cellphones, buzzers,sensors, etc.) that they have to carry around, like US soldiers on patrol. All a result of micro-management of their time by the corporation. Management must always be in contact!

Computers are used to program nurses these days, as they are other workers. Aw sure, those poor machines get programmed, too. But believe it, the machines program far more people than the other way around. Cash registers force the pace. Cameras are everywhere. Micro-management is in, big time. Satelites taking down your conversations on the ol’ cell phone even. All part of micro-management addiction by the business community. Real patriots, them! And it is sick, sick, sic, is it not? These efficiency and organization nuts need some major political metamucil!

Notice the headline this week? America is NUMBER ONE in the world in number of citizens in jail. Highest in per capita percentage, too. 5% of the world’s population, with 25% of those micro-managed in jail. Oh, and it really is micro-management in US jails! See Jose Padilla? See those guys at Guantanamo? It’s no aberration, either. Go to jail, and they will micro-manage your ass. And I mean that literally, too. Go to the airport and pray, they’ll micro-manage you there, too. They got you coded, Dude. And in jail, well they got ot watch your ass. You might have some palmed Tylenol tabs up your rear a foot or two. Wouldn’t want you to get high from smoking the stuff! Now that’s true micro-management, is it not?

So what is the first thing that corporate America will say to you if you want to stop their addiction to micro-managing you? They will scream and whine and shout!

“That is socialism! Keep your liberty. Socialists want to micro-manage you, and you won’t have the freedom we allow you here! We’re against micro-management!”

Comical, is it not? Despite corporate America’s micro-management addiction, all this micro-management is to be done on you. Try to ask for it to be directed their way, and they scream and squeal like the pigs they are. They are pigs, too. They not only will micro-manage your ass, if they get a chance, but if perhaps you fall by the road side in illness or old age, they will micro-manage your processing down the conveyor belt and into the hole in the ground the funeral micro-management industry has prepared for you. They will micro-manage the prayer said in your last behalf, want it or not! Yes, the last prayer before God will process you, and then you will get micro-managed for eternity. Corporate America is just obeying God on this matter.

Corporate America is addicted to micro-management of your life, from birth to graveyard. The Christian’s God gets you then.

Reactionary Tourism

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I came across an article today that makes me really chuckle. For years now, a certain type of tourist has been going in groups to places like Cuba, the former Sandanista Nicaragua, and in earlier times, to China and the exSoviet Union. The purpose? Why to see what a revolution was really like! This type of travel by liberals and radicals earned the derisive label, ‘revolutionary tourism’ from conservatives.
 
Today, the biggest sponsor of this type of excursion for the liberal Left is through the organization ‘Global Exchange’. There are a very few other miniscule companies also that compete for liberal centavos, but Global Exchange is the big one. And head of that group, Medea Benjamin, is a diehard Democratic Party liberal voter, despite a brief Green fling. Today, she is a pilar of the Progressive Democrats of America and the Anybody But Bush mindset. So it really freaked me out, to find that Rupert Murdoch is now promoting travel that can only be described as the polar sameness to Revolutionary Tourism, which would be Reactionary Tourism, of course! What a brilliant man. Look in the travel section of his Sun newspaper chain for further details.

Well, I lied. Reactionary Tourism, as founded by Murdoch, cannot be found within the travel sections of his tabloids, but rather in the ‘news’ sections. We can probably look for Fox News to fill us in more about this reactionary way of travel in the days ahead, too. But what genius to found this idea of reactionary travel that Murdoch has had! And here are the people, Peter Worthington, noted Canadian homophobe, his noted Canadian hyperZionist father-in-law,David Frum, and that old adorable Reagan buddy, Ed Meese. Look ’em up in Wikipedia. The threee musketeers of reaction! But where to send them to?

See the luxury of Guantanamo!

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

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Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

The Path to 9 11

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In defense of ABC’s docudrama The Path to 9/11. Near the beginning, when the terrorists were taking responsibility for the 1993 WTC bombing, “Ramzi Youssef – Palestinian Terrorist” explained why they had done it: because of America’s military and economic support of Israel.

The subject of Israel and Palestine never came up again, and never came up at all on Ted Koppel’s counter-ABC-straw-man The Price of Security.

We’ve got our boot on Palestine’s windpipe, they’re flailing their arms hoping to dislodge us, and we declare a war on arm flailing. Our media runs through what options America has to be safe from arm-flailing without looking at our boots to let American citizens consider how we might tread the earth with more humanity.

The US and Israel, it’s hard to say who is the master of whom, are actively killing Palestinians in a genocidal program every bit as calculated as the Holocaust or the extermination of the Native Americans. The US supported the recent slaughter of Lebanese peoples, also considered by the international community as genocide.

The US accuses Syria or Iran of backing Hizb’Allah. Those links are sketchy compared to our sending weapons and aid to Israel and other false authorities in the Middle East. When Israel was stepping up its bombing Lebanon in advance of the nearing ceasefire, we had to speed our resupply of Cluster Bombs lest Israel run out of time to use them. The US arms and defends the self-proclaimed kings and sultans who amass great wealth from the sale of their countries’ oil while at the same time subjecting their peoples to abject poverty. Bin Laden opposed our propping up of the Saudis. Youssef decried our support of Israel in Palestine. Arabs have cause to reject US strong arm policies in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and of course Iraq. Muslims have very good reasons to reject US policy in Afghanistan, Indoneasia and the Philippines.

The least ABC could do in its mockudrama was to set the scene with the Muslim extremists’ motives, and that was it. Even though the rest of the program was re-edited because of the criticism, there followed closely law enforcement characters endlessly lamenting they needed authority for warrantless searches, domestic eavesdropping and inter-departmental information sharing. Filipino police were depicted heroically for not waiting for warrants, female border agents were lauded for using their intuitive -read racial- profiling, suggestions were made of an FBI coverup, even that Clinton’s people were helping Osama.

The irrationality-mongering was so egregious it would take forever to enumerate. The good news is that the Stephen Bochco style shaky camera, the endlessly tight closeups, the jump cuts unto incongruous details lacking context, and the frenetic action going every direction, serve really like an alarm bell going off next to your ear. It’s not conducive to critical thinking, but it’s also painfully and obviously contrived.

I draw one fundamental conclusion. The 9/11 truth seekers have been right all along. We must diffuse the 9/11 lie because the establishment yahoos, both Republican and Democrats, plan to ride this vile deception as long as they can.

By comparison, Ted Koppel’s sombre contemplative piece was full of verbal obfuscation. Koppel began his report with “by now every adult in America knows what happened on 9/11.” What an innocuous way to brush aside the fact that what happened is known, yes, and disputed! His language got no clearer as the program progressed. Lots of “clearly” this, when of course it very clearly could be unclear.

Koppel asked critical questions of such criminals as the author of the latest definition of torture and the commander of Gitmo who declined to admit that detainees had ever been tortured, but Koppel let Bush cabinet officials off with softballs and setups. Koppel let Tom Ridge appear thoughtful as to hold a mirror to himself asking what America is about, he let effete Senator Hays tell everyone that nuclear bombs can be made from items purchased at Home Depot, and Koppel let an NSA software developer appear pro-civil liberties by rejecting racial-profiling. His solution? Eavesdrop on everybody.

By assuming the role of white knight, Ted Koppel is really an effective mouthpiece for the Time-Warner machine, a major player in upholding corporate dominance. What do you think of his “point well taken” technique? As if his smilingly elusive subjects have just trumped him with something other than a quacking canard!

The good news about Koppel on Discovery is that we got a close look at the Bush operatives. They are in charge, yes, and they benefit from being presented by a charming, deep voiced newsman, but didn’t you recognize Larry, Moe and Curly right down to the haircuts? These guys are dopes! In morals, self-reflection and speech. It makes me giddy to contemplate because it’s not going to take much thinking power to take them down. Call me gullible, call me idealistic. It’ll take effort, determination and sacrifice, but it won’t take nucular-chemical-rocket science.

Wallaroo courts you say?

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Wallaby wants no part of GitmoBush’s attempts to try his “unlawful combatants” in military tribunals were cut down, finally, by the Supreme Court. So what’s our Judge Roy “Dubya” Bean to do?
 
Bush wants to have Congress redesignate his kangaroo courts as something other. As what? Wallaby courts? Wallaroos?

Wikipedia defines a Kangaroo Court as:

A kangaroo court is a ‘judicial’ proceeding that denies proper procedure in the name of expediency; a fraudulent or unjust trial where the decision has essentially been made in advance, usually for the purpose of providing a conviction, either going through the motions of manipulated procedure or allowing no defence at all.

Wallabies are just short kangaroos. But that won’t do, will it? Wallabies and wallaroos can leap over bothersome barriers, just like Kangaroos. But minor prerequisites like Habeas Corpus and Due Process do not require shorter leaps. If the Gitmo kangaroo tribunals couldn’t do it, why does Bush think another marsupial can?

Is there no penalty for assailing our constitution with the same challenge? There are laws against frivolous lawsuits, why not frivolous laws? And by frivolous I do not mean inconsequential. Civil rights are abridged, innocent people are imprisoned and laws are effectively flouted.

Thus do Bush & Co laugh all the way to the bank, and back, filling their pockets to and fro. Laws do not protect anyone if the perps have all the lawyers.