Election Year

[Len Colby]

An even better example of how we are raped and seem to enjoy it:

The 1992 election-for the first, FIRST time it would seem we'd have a choice between the two parites of the same...ok so Perot was a quirky lil fella, but for once it seemed as though people were actually excited about a viable choice between the parties of same.

The same week tha Perot took the lead in most polls, he dropped out. I don't think we ever got a good reason why or the REAL reason why. Of course when he re-entered the race he was doomed, and he and everyone else with half a wit knew it. Yeah, it's a free country, you can vote for whoever you want, as long as it's a D or R.

(anything anti-semetic here Len?)

Not anti-Semitic but highly inaccurate, by the time Perot pulled out of the election he was in distant third place, his campaign failed due to his own missteps. Even Morrow admitted to this recently after long debate, use the forum's search function.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Contrast how the media treated Golden right-democrat Clinton with how they tore down Dean between December 27 and the Iowa primary The Dean hit was not the scream. It was the six weeks before the election. He at one point insinuated he was going to speak out about the media hit, but never did. I think he may well have been an op, similar to Gene McCarthy in 1968: control the anti-war vote but make it ONLY middle class with no working class support so later it is easy to fold into the pro-War Cold War consensus fold.

Of course RFK was an entirely different matter and was getting renegade unions to break from the Humphrey national union leaders, not that the CIA would ever notice a thing like that. Then RFK was shot in the head, but hey it was just the last time a Democrat was redistributive and strongly anti-war, why would the left or anyone here care about that. Another indication of why left-gatekeeping is the critical variable not just for the left but for the entire political spectrum.

These elections are entirely rigged, the only thing to argue about it the number of ways. Political assassinations are signposts. They might not be the sole cause of corruption but if ANY of them are ignored, it produces a distorted, schizoid view of reality that makes it seem like elections are possible even when these historical conspiracies are never acknowledged, or socially mediated so that it becomes shared history, the only real kind.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Re The Uncoolest Assassination:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoRG5cMrfIk the best part starts at the end of this youtube and then continues onto part 2 and 3. Hank Hernandez and Many Pena were CIA and LAPD. One reason these fake elections can still be taken seriously is that the cause and effect of them are broken up among audiences. How can so many be interested in the JFK but nobody is interested in this one, which is so much simpler and potentially with greater ramifications? How and why are these audiences fragmented? The RFK hit in conjunction with the MLK and JFK one form a clear picture of a path heading in the direction of todays Other Republicans. Were I the CIA I would want to break up and fragment these audiences so that the cumulative long term direction of them all would not be discussed by large groups of citizens. My strategy would be to form separate groups of assassination fetechists for each distinct assassination, so the tree wouldhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoRG5cMrfIk become more topical than the forest. Then the game keepers of the forest could more easily deal with the assassinations with ridicule.http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=youtube%20the%20polka%20dot%20dress%20girl&tnr=21&vid=5021959796162864&l=583&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fvideos%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D5021959796162864%26id%3Dd7f5b1598943366f3207833b8c004f5a%26bid%3Dq8KYBbjla2zMlg%26bn%3DThumb%26url%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.youtube.com%252fwatch%253fv%253dFoRG5cMrfIk&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFoRG5cMrfIk&sigr=11a9c1hcf&newfp=1&tit=RFK+Assassination%3A+The+Girl+In+The+Polka+Dot+Dress+%28Part+1+of+3%29 Part 2

part 3

Edited May 27, 2012 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Guest Tom Scully]

How does this thread come to be on this forum asking the questions asked on it, when a close read of another thread on this forum should make it clear we in the U.S. are way past the concerns and pleas raised in this thread. (By the way, here is where we were, BEFORE we voted for change.:

Jan 21, 2007 Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont questions Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the "extraordinary rendition" of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, to a Syrian prison where he was tortured for over a year.

...and, after we voted for CHANGE:

...........................

http://www.salon.com...dge_complicity/

Monday, Apr 23, 2012 09:53 AM EDT

The Supreme Court is asked to decide if governnment officials can be held accountable for torturing a US citizen

By Glenn Greenwald

Two of the most under-discussed afflictions in American political life are inter-related: (1) the heinous, inhumane treatment of prisoners on American soil (often, though certainly not exclusively, Muslim political prisoners), and (2) the virtually complete abdication by subservient federal courts in the post-9/11 era of their duty to hold Executive Branch officials accountable for unconstitutional and otherwise illegal acts in the War on Terror context. Those two disgraceful American trends are vividly illustrated by juxtaposing two events, which I happened to be reminded of yesterday while looking for something else; first, from a January, 27, 2007, article in The Washington Post:

The prime minister of Canada

apologized Friday to Maher Arar and agreed to give $9 million in compensation to the Canadian Arab

, who was spirited by U.S. agents to Syria and tortured there after being falsely named as a terrorism suspect.

Arar, 36, a former computer engineer who was detained while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and imprisoned in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months, said after the announcement that he “feels proud as a Canadian”. . . .

“We cannot go back and fix the injustice that occurred to Mr. Arar,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in issuing the formal apology in Ottawa. “However, we can make changes to lessen the likelihood that something like this will ever happen again.”

The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned over the affair, and the government has pledged to increase oversight of its intelligence agencies. . . .

The financial compensation settles a claim Arar made against the government for having provided exaggerated and false information to the United States that identified him as a terrorist suspect. Harper said the amount “is within this government’s realistic assessment of what Mr. Arar would have won in a lawsuit.” His attorneys also were awarded about $870,000 in legal fees.

“The evidence is clear that Mr. Arar has been treated unjustly. He should not be on a watch list,” Harper said.

And then this Christian Science Monitor article from June 14, 2010:

A Canadian citizen has

lost his bid to hold US officials accountable

for their decision to label him an Al Qaeda suspect and deport him to Syria where he was held without charge for a year and allegedly tortured during US-directed interrogations.

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the case of Maher Arar, who was born in Syria but had lived in Canada since his teens. . . .

Arar filed a lawsuit in the US seeking to hold American officials accountable for their actions. . . . To date,

the

US government position on Arar has been to insist that Arar has no legal right to seek to hold American officials accountable for his ordeal.

In denying review of Arar’s case, the high court lets stand a 7 to 4 ruling by the full Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That court found tha

t because of “special factors” involving national security, Arar’s lawsuit should be dismissed

.

The reason that’s so striking even several years later is it shows just how corruptly deferential American federal courts are to the Executive Branch when it comes to Muslims. One of the most amazing statistics of the last decade: not a single War on Terror victim — not one, whether foreign or American — has been permitted to proceed in an American court in an effort to obtain compensation for illegal treatment by the U.S. Government; instead, American courts have unanimously dismissed those cases at the outset, without reaching their substance. Even when everyone knows and admits that the U.S. Government abducted a totally innocent person and shipped him off to Syria to be tortured, as is true for Arar, American federal judges shut the courthouse door in his face, accepting the claims of the Bush and Obama DOJs that to allow the victim to obtain justice for what was done to him would be to risk the disclosure of vital “state secrets.” They accepted this Kafkaesque secrecy claim even after the Government of Canada published to the world a comprehensive report detailing what happened to Arar......

In terms of gross travesties, it’s difficult to top the federal court treatment of Maher Arar. But the judicial treatment of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla comes close. Padilla was detained in 2002 and publicly accused by Attorney General John Ashcroft of being a “Dirty Bomber.” But rather than accuse him of any crimes in a court, the Bush administration declared him to be an “enemy combatant,” put him in a military brig in South Carolina for the next two-and-a-half years without charges, prevented him from any contact with the outside world (including even a lawyer), and subjected him to severe torture. When they finally indicted him almost three years later — only in order to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from ruling on whether the President is permitted to imprison U.S. citizens on American soil without charges — they did not charge him with anything having to do with a “dirty bomb,” but instead filed glaringly trumped-up charges based almost entirely on a membership application he filled out to join Al Qaeda (he was not charged with any plots to engage in violence). He was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison on top of the 5 years he was already encaged, only to have the Obama DOJ successfully appeal and convince an appellate court that the sentence was too lenient.

For the last several years, Padilla, represented by the ACLU, has been attempting to hold accountable six Bush officials responsible for his torture by suing them for violations of his Constitutional rights. But, needless to say, the Obama DOJ — led by the President who, when he announced his candidacy, proclaimed that “the era of Scooter Libby justice will be over” — has insisted that, unless Congress explicitly decrees otherwise, these officials are immune from lawsuits even when they knowingly authorize the torture of an American citizen on U.S. soil. And federal courts — also needless to say — have thus far accepted that claim and barred Padilla from suing. Today, the ACLU filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review these dismissals, and it’s worth highlight a couple parts of that brief. Here, for instance, is the question which the ACLU is asking the Supreme Court to answer:

In what kind of country is that even a question? Even more so, in what kind of country do courts answer that question in the negative, as two separate American courts thus far have? As the ACLU explained, it is literally difficult to imagine a more extreme expression of full-scale immunity for government officials than shielding them even when they engage in conduct this patently illegal:

When it comes to shielding grave War on Terror crimes from all accountability, most critics have focused — rightfully so — on President Obama’s decree that even Bush-era torturers should not be subjected to criminal investigation. But that’s been only one of the many ways that the Obama administration has entrenched the consummately dangerous principle that even the most notorious crimes are beyond the reach of the law when committed by high-level government officials. But none of those ignominious efforts would succeed if the U.S. federal judiciary had even a fraction of the courage and integrity which the Founders envisioned life-tenured judges would exercise.....

..................

............................

http://ccrjustice.or...20Complaint.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

NASSER AL-AULAQI,

on his own behalf and as Next Friend of

Anwar Al-Aulaqi

Al-Zubairi Street

Al-Saeed Center

Sana'a, Yemen,

Plaintiff,

v.

BARACK H. OBAMA,

in his official capacity as President of

the United States (et al)

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500;

6. Plaintiff seeks a declaration from this Court that the Constitution and

international law prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings outside of

armed conflict except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent

threats of death or serious physical injury; and an injunction prohibiting the targeted

killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi outside this narrow context. Plaintiff also seeks

an injunction requiring the government to disclose the standards under which it

determines whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.

http://web.archive.o...on/7200064.html

September 14, 2010

The Associated Press:

"The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to kill him and he is captured alive in Yemen....

....Another option, given al-Awlaki's increasingly violent sermons and his collaboration with al-Qaida's propaganda efforts, would be charging him with supporting terrorism. But that charge carries only a 15-year prison sentence, leaving the administration open to questions about how the president can authorize the CIA to essentially impose the death penalty for such a crime....

....If the Justice Department decides to charge al-Awlaki, it's likely he would not be indicted. Rather, charges are more likely to take the form of an FBI complaint. That's because an indicted suspect automatically gets the right to an attorney if he is captured, making it harder for authorities to question him.

http://emptywheel.fi...siders-charges/

By: emptywheel Tuesday September 14, 2010 6:30 am

....In other words, this doesn't appear to be an effort to finally use due process before targeting an American citizen with assassination. Rather, it seems to be more about closing off legal options to that American citizen.

Update: Here's the joint ACLU/CCR statement on this:

Our organizations have long stated that if the government has evidence that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is involved in terrorist activity, it should present that evidence to a court – not authorize his execution without charge or trial. Now, months after the government announced its intent to kill Al-Aulaqi, it may finally bring charges against him. This would be a step in the right direction. The constitutional guarantee of due process relies on the critical distinction between allegations and evidence. If the reports that charges may be brought against Al-Aulaqi are true, the fact that it has taken the government this long – months after having announced his death sentence – suggests that, in this case, the government's allegations were far ahead of its evidence.

While bringing charges against Al-Aulaqi based on credible evidence would be a step in the right direction, it would not mean that he could now be targeted for killing without trial. It is well established that the government cannot use extrajudicial killing to punish people for past acts, but only to prevent grave and imminent threats. A criminal charge for past crimes does not provide a license to kill.

We continue to believe that the courts must play a role in establishing legal standards for when the government can take the life of one of its own citizens without charge or trial. For that reason, we will continue with our litigation."

http://www.newyorker...-al-awlaki.html

October 5, 2010

Should We Kill Anwar Al-Awlaki?

Posted by Amy Davidson

...Greenwald asks Sullivan how he knows that al-Awlaki is a terrorist at all. Sullivan is pretty scornful of this one. He cites speeches and documents and dates—he refers readers to Wikipedia—and asks,.....

In my first post on this thread, I attempted to show how far the U.S. has descended, how far distanced from the rule of law our government and courts have pushed us. It was a warning you that you might have bigger fish of your own to fry than full disclosure of the U.S. government about the details of the assassination of JFK. Now, your government is giving in to the threats from the U.S. government after your courts committed the unforgivable deed of holding officials of your government accountable for aiding the U.S. in imprisoning and torturing a U.K. resident guilty of no provable crime.:

http://www.telegraph...hamed-case.html

Hillary Clinton made security help 'threat' to David Miliband over Binyam Mohamed case

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, warned David Miliband that America would consider cutting security co-operation with the UK if a British court releases information about a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, two judges have been told.

By John Bingham

6:45PM BST 29 Jul 2009

Mrs Clinton personally told the Foreign Secretary that the US government would consider the dramatic step if a short summary of the treatment of Binyam Mohamed is placed in the public domain, the High Court was told.

A hearing was told that the move could cause "serious harm" to Britain's national security and potentially put the lives of British citizens at risk.

Karen Steyn, representing Mr Miliband, told two senior judges that members of the Obama administration, including Mrs Clinton, had made clear that intelligence sharing between the two countries "would" be reconsidered if the court went ahead with plans to publish the information.

The high level intervention follows a protracted legal wrangle over whether a seven-paragraph summary of Mr Mohamed's treatment at the controversial camp on Cuba, drafted for inclusion in a High Court judgment last year, could undermine national security if it were to be published.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones reluctantly agreed to leave the passage out of the judgment on August 2008 because of evidence from Mr Miliband of a potential "threat" to cut off security co-operation if the classified evidence was made public.

Related Articles

• MI5 accused of torture cover up in Binyam Mohamed case01 Aug 2009
  

It later emerged that this was based on communications between the Government and the outgoing Bush administration. The claims were the first time the threat has been attributed to senior members of Mr Obama's administration. Mr Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay and has already published detailed evidence of the treatment of some detainees there.

As a result the judges reopened the case earlier this year and have been considering an application from parts of the media to finally place the information, which is based on US intelligence evidence, into the public domain.

Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian who was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994, was detained in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism and then "rendered" to Morocco and Afghanistan.

He alleges that he was tortured by his captors before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004 from which he returned last year.

At a hearing in London on Wednesday, Guy Vassall-Adams, representing the media, argued that keeping the information secret would provide a "veto" to the alleged perpetrators or human rights abuses.

But Karen Steyn, representing Mr Miliband told the court that the Foreign Secretary was convinced that publishing the redacted paragraphs would seriously threaten the "unique" intelligence sharing relationship between Britain and the US, despite the change in administration.

"The conversations that he has had with the US Secretary of State are part of the information that he has taken into account in forming that assessment," she said.

In lengthy and heated exchanges, Lord Justice Thomas repeatedly pressed Miss Steyn on whether Mr Miliband had been told personally that a warning had come directly from the Obama administration.

Insisting that there could be no "wriggle room" on the issue, the judge said: "He (Mr Miliband) understands the position of the US government is that it would risk the intelligence relationship with the United Kingdom with the result that there would be a serious risk to the national security of the UK and that would endanger the men, women and children of the United Kingdom – that is really what Mrs Clinton is saying according to the Foreign Secretary?"

Miss Steyn said that Mr Miliband had made it "absolutely plain".

The judge ordered a transcript of the hearing to be sent to the Foreign Secretary directly to give him an opportunity to make clarify what he meant.

At a press conference in Washington later alongside Mrs Clinton, Mr Miliband said: “Our two countries have a uniquely close intelligence sharing relationship.

“It is a relationship which is based on deep trust and a fundamental principle is that we do not disclose each other’s intelligence publicly.”

Mrs Clinton refused to comment directly on proceedings in the High Court, saying that: “The issue of intelligence sharing is critically important to our two countries and we both have a stake in ensuring it continues to the fullest extent possible.”

Edited May 28, 2012 by Tom Scully

[Malcolm Ward]

Barry,its getting the same everywhere.Labour ousted the Tories in 1997 but put a Neo Liberal in power by the name of Tony Blair.Labour is no longer a party of the poor,its just another Neo Liberal party as is the Conservative,LibDems,Republicans and Democrats.

Big business rules the world.Mayer Amschel Rothschild, http://en.wikipedia....chel_Rothschild is getting his wish of a One World Government.

Most businesses and economies are going global.Banks take over countries without firing a shot.

Perhaps I'm being over sensitive but this sounds suspiciously close to 'Da Jooz are taking over the world' theories.

Perhaps a bit sensitive Len.I believe big business is taking control of our Governments,by means of political lobbying,buying Senators or Members of Parliament as the case may be.Some corporations have bigger budgets than a few small countries.Government does not seem to care about the little people anymore.

So no,I don't believe Da Jooz are taking over the world.

I quoted Rothschild,as he is quoted has saying he wanted to be the most Powerful Man in the world.Rothschild may have been a Jew,but I see no Jewish take over.

I am not anti semitic,nor a racist,nor a bigot etc.I am quite laid-back really.But I don't like the way the world is heading.Not so much,for my sake.My sands of time are running out in my hourglass.But I worry,for my children,for my grandchildren.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Malcolm Ward

[Len Colby]

An even better example of how we are raped and seem to enjoy it:

The 1992 election-for the first, FIRST time it would seem we'd have a choice between the two parites of the same...ok so Perot was a quirky lil fella, but for once it seemed as though people were actually excited about a viable choice between the parties of same.

The same week tha Perot took the lead in most polls, he dropped out. I don't think we ever got a good reason why or the REAL reason why. Of course when he re-entered the race he was doomed, and he and everyone else with half a wit knew it. Yeah, it's a free country, you can vote for whoever you want, as long as it's a D or R.

(anything anti-semetic here Len?)

Not anti-Semitic but highly inaccurate, by the time Perot pulled out of the election he was in distant third place, his campaign failed due to his own missteps. Even Morrow admitted to this recently after long debate, use the forum's search function.

So now you rely on Morrow for your research. Jesus you are a genius. I should know better than to engage you in any kind of conversation. You are a tar baby. And yeah, I know the implications of that one. Don't you EVER get tired of being Len? We do.

Is English not your 1st language? Do you not know what 'even' or 'admitted' mean? Morrow was also under the delusion that Perot was leading when he quit but after being beaten over the head with facts admitted error. The 'Not Ready for Primetime' candidate was a distant 3rd when he folded his tent.

EDIT - Typo see below.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Len Colby

[Len Colby]

Barry,its getting the same everywhere.Labour ousted the Tories in 1997 but put a Neo Liberal in power by the name of Tony Blair.Labour is no longer a party of the poor,its just another Neo Liberal party as is the Conservative,LibDems,Republicans and Democrats.

Big business rules the world.Mayer Amschel Rothschild, http://en.wikipedia....chel_Rothschild is getting his wish of a One World Government.

Most businesses and economies are going global.Banks take over countries without firing a shot.

Perhaps I'm being over sensitive but this sounds suspiciously close to 'Da Jooz are taking over the world' theories.

Perhaps a bit sensitive Len.I believe big business is taking control of our Governments,by means of political lobbying,buying Senators or Members of Parliament as the case may be.Some corporations have bigger budgets than a few small countries.Government does not seem to care about the little people anymore.

So no,I don't believe Da Jooz are taking over the world.

I quoted Rothschild,as he is quoted has saying he wanted to be the most Powerful Man in the world.Rothschild may have been a Jew,but I see no Jewish take over.

I am not anti semitic,nor a racist,nor a bigot etc.I am quite laid-back really.But I don't like the way the world is heading.Not so much,for my sake.My sands of time are running out in my hourglass.But I worry,for my children,for my grandchildren.

Fair enough, this forum has attracted a few 'da Jooz are taking over the world' type, most focus on the Rothschilds.

[Len Colby]

Is English not you 1st language?

Come on now, Len.

D'oh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdeLUA0Fms

EDIT - Video added!

Edited May 28, 2012 by Len Colby