Harry Pollard wrote:
Brad,
I think the long list of Americans who have been
incarcerated without due process should be publicized.
Gee! I'm flattered to be given this assignment, but I
can't remember how I earned it.
So I'll do what I can to contribute, quoting
from Information Clearing House (today's newsletter):
Charge Him or Release Him
Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned
Without Trial or Charges for 3 Years and 19 Days
Here's another quote from ICH, which I
would argue shows the problematicity of
general principles:
"Individuals have international duties which
transcend the national obligations of obedience…
therefore [individual citizens] have the duty
to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes
against peace and humanity from occurring."
- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950
Now all of us know that George W Bush and all the
advocati foeti would completely agree with
this statement -- even though some of us
would not agree with them in our agreeing
with the same statement.
It doesn't need citation (read Friedman in the NYT today)
that Guantanimo is becoming an avatar of Gulag. 500
souls held incommunicado and without being
charged with any crime, just because Rumsfield thinks
it's a good idea to keep them out of circulation. Rumsfeld
has explicitly said that the American people don't understand
the new demands of new challenges: the American
people still think that persons detained should be charged
with a crime and tried for it and found
guilty and punished, or else be released. That,
according to Rumsfeld, is no longer the way to do things.
And he even smirks to drive his point "home".
I have not been keeping a "log" of those detained without
being charged. One -- yes, all of 1! -- American citizen
did get released from military detention a few months ago,
but the reason appears basically to have been to keep his
case from actually coming before The Supreme court
[I can't find him in my files at the moment -- my indexing
techniques are not good enough!].
So, this Memorial Day, let us remember all the "disappeareds"
of all times and nations, including those currently in
the American Lubyanka (it doesn't have a name
and it doesn't have a fixed physical domicilage -- it's
"virtual" so to speak...)
And, lest someone snap back at me: "The United States isn't
killing or torturing people at anywere near the level of Hitler
or Stalin", I say: Are we to measure ourselves by the standard
of persons and nations far less blessed than our own? Or
are we to demand:
From those to whom much has been given
(e.g., 2/3 the world industrial capacity in 1945,
and the great mass of its top scientific PhDs, too --
an economy not decimated but vastly enhanced
by the war!),
Much should be expected.
I think it is also time to quote once again from Hermann Broch,
who spoke of WWI Europe in terms that all too well
fit our own situation:
A community of life that has ceased to
justify its existence --
A so-called society devoid of force, but filled with
evil will, that drowns itself in blood and chokes on
its own poison gasses
Oh, yes, and "DU", too....
Perhaps we are living in The Last Days: Bush and his
fellow travellers being the Antichrist.
\brad mccormick
Perhaps you could start with a dozen or so.
Don't go back to Lyndon's infiltration of Viet-Nam war
protest groups - just those over the last few years.
Harry
*******************************
Henry George School of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042
818 352-4141
*******************************
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Brad McCormick, Ed.D.
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 11:37 AM
To: Karen Watters Cole
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The most profitable consumer goods
yet (prayers?)
Karen Watters Cole wrote:
If it wasn't for the line of succession, one could
understand someone
lamenting that that hand-grenade malfunctioned in Georgia
--
damned Soviet forced-labor state industries that only
produced junk!
Oh, God forbid, no. We do not want anything to happen to
Bush2. May he have
nothing more than knee problems until after Jan. 22, 2009.
At least when JFK was shot, there wasn't this concept of
world terrorism,
although the Cold War dynamics still applied. Same prayer
for ex Prez Ford,
Carter, Bush1 and Clinton.
In the event there is even a thwarted attempt on his life,
we would not only
have a vindictive, validated Cheney and an unleashed
Rumsfeld, but we are
highly vulnerable to martial law in the event of an
assassination, never
mind the Shadow Government in the event of another major
attack.
Yes, maybe Bush is like a cheap plane ticket:
Since it makes the traveller stop and switch planes en route
it takes
them a bit longer to get where they're going. (And where
one
has no rational hope of stopping something bad from
happening,
any delay is an opportunity for something unexpected to
felicitously intervene.)
There are two kinds of military takeovers that could happen
in the
United States, and you have described the more likely one
(the neocons
taking
over the military to impose "martial law", which would,
likely,
largely consist in Robert Borkean marital law [Remember Bork
saying there
is no constitutional right to privacy?]. Can't you just see
it: MPs
confiscating contraceptives from pharmacies and the FBI
breaking into people's houses to search for them in people's
medicine
cabinets?
But I still have a fantasy of a different kind of military
takeover: That
the U.S. military would get so fed up with being impressed
[aka
hijacked...] by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Rice-...
regime
into doing things they know are bad, not just for the
country but
also for the military itself, that they
itself would take control, getting rid, among others but
surely among the first, of Mr. Rumsfeld.
What a shame Colin Powell doesn't hear his country's call
[get
that man a hearing aid!]....
America's calling, [General Powell],
You know what it's all about....
Is there something we can do to save the land we
love....
(--popular song, ref. lost)
\brad mccormick
Nixon's paranoia was nothing compared to this inner circle.
Give 'em credit for manoeuvering "us" into a
situation where heads we lose and tails they win.
These are the
people who floated the idea of using cable installers and
appliance
repairmen acting as homeland security spies. The end
justifies the means in
this crowd, and the trampling on constitutional checks and
balances would be
severe, perhaps fatal. The Dept of Homeland Security just
got approval in a
rider attached to the budget omnibus bill and signed by
Bush2, to waive any
and all laws along the borders, ostensibly to construct
security fencing and
police against infiltration, but that could easily be
redefined and extended
now that it is law.
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--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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