It ain't over yet.

“Citizens, in these difficult circumstances that our country is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to relinquish the office of the presidency and has instructed the Supreme Council of the armed forces to take over the affairs of the country.”

- Mubarak resignation text

So, an American backed dictator has resigned. By American tradition in its sphere of influence, its the dictator's spy chief with his close ties to the CIA that takes over from the 'President'. From the Austrailian ...

FORMER Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib says he was tortured by Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman, who is seen as a possible successor to embattled President Hosni Mubarak.

Mr Habib last night told The Weekend Australian it would be a disgrace if Mr Suleiman became leader of Egypt given his personal role in overseeing the torture of terror suspects in the 1990s.

"This guy is an agent for the United States and the CIA. If Australia supports Suleiman, they are supporting torture and crime," Mr Habib said.

Yep, the perfect American friend. Both Mr. Suleiman, and the Australian government who's been a steady backer and supporter for American torture and crime.

"I was sitting in a chair, hooded, with my hands handcuffed behind my back. He came up to me. His voice was deep and rough. He spoke to me in Egyptian and English," Mr Habib writes. "He said, 'Listen, you don't know who I am, but I am the one who has your life in his hands'."

Mr Habib writes that Mr Suleiman had told him that he wanted him to die a slow death: "No, I don't want you to die now. I want you to die slowly. I can't stay with you; my time is too valuable to stay here. You only have me to save you. I'm your saviour. You have to tell me everything if you want to be saved. What do you say?"

When Mr Habib said he had nothing to tell him, he says Mr Suleiman had said: "You think I can't destroy you just like that?"

Sure, Thomas Jefferson would have just loved this guy.

They had taken Mr Habib to another room and then Mr Suleiman had said: "Now you are going to tell me that you planned a terrorist attack. I give you my word you will be a rich man if you tell me you have been planning attacks. Don't you trust me?"

Mr Habib had replied that he did not trust anyone.

"Immediately he slapped me hard across the face and knocked off the blindfold; I clearly saw his face," Mr Habib writes.

Mr Habib alleges Mr Suleiman said: "That's it. That's it. I don't want to see this man again until he co-operates and tells me he's been planning a terrorist attack."

And gee, you wonder where all these phony terror alerts that never mean anything come from? They come from the Suleiman's of the world, working under orders to find more terrorist confessions.

We've become the Spanish Inquisition. Wouldn't Thomas Jefferson be so proud of us. This 'our guy' in Egypt. When our dictators finally get toppled by popular resistence, the first thing that happens is that the CIA's best friend in the country gets named its new ruler.

In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:

"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).

"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."

-- Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Yep, that's change we can believe in. And, oh, by the way, those 'Clinton-era' torture policies described above is what Barrack Obama reinstated as his torture policy when he reversed the Bush era executive orders. The above describes torture under Obama as well.

The US is now mouthing support for elections. While at the same time already starting to claim that a government that includes the popular Muslim Brotherhood is unacceptable. For now, those words are mainly coming from the pro-Israel sections of Congress, which of course is almost all of the Congress. But just watch, very quickly that little caveat will quickly become US policy.

We support elections in Egypt. As long as the 'right' people win. The US has always supported elections in Egypt. Even when 99% of the people were voting for Mubarak, he was the 'right' guy in the eyes of the US and Israel. So, the US always supported his 'elections' in Egypt. Now, the US is supporting new 'elections' in Egypt, so long as they are supervised by the Egyptian Army with its close ties to the US military, and by the CIA's torturer in Cairo.

But, right now, the real power in Egypt is the people in the streets. They've discovered what the rest of the world seems to forget, most of the time. That, when the people go into the streets in their masses. When the people start to speak with unity, no government, no army, no dark spies and their evil torture chambers can hold them back. The American-backed Mubarak dictatorship has killed over 300 of its citizens in trying to stem this flood of popular opinion. But, even murder hasn't stopped this wave.

And, that power in the streets won't be happy with the US's rent-a-torturer in Egypt being named their new friend who's going to lead them to democracy. At least that's the feeling I get from the other side of the world. We shall see, but this doesn't look like its over yet. As much as the US might now plead for 'stability' and 'order', the people have Egypt have re-discovered Thomas Jefferson's truth ... that power resides with the people. And that it will be they the people who will decide what happens next in Egypt.

It ain't over yet.

english.aljazeera.net is a source for continuous reporting on events in Egypt.

Surprise?

If you get your news from CNN, then the Egyptian uprising is a total surprise.

However, if you've used the link on the left to go to the Socialist Worker website, you'd have found this story six months ago.

Beginning of the end? by Mostafa Omar. Published on Socialistworker.org, June 6, 2010. Part 3 of a series.

THE COMBINATION of rising strike levels, increased workers' militancy and popular enthusiasm generated by Mohamed ElBaradei's campaign for democracy has begun to change the political equation in Egypt. This is also altering a class balance that has been intact more or less for at least 35 years--since the defeat of the last round of workers' struggles in the mid 1970s.

and ...

A number of international factors are also adding to the state of instability in the country and helping to fuel additional fronts for struggle against the regime.

The most important factor in this regard is Israel's continued attacks on the Palestinian people. Egyptian society in general has swung in support of the Palestinians in the last 10 years since the beginning of the second Intifada. The years 2000, 2002, 2006 and 2009 witnessed mass demonstrations to support Palestinians.

In recent months, thousands of college students and workers have protested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to expand settlements in East Jerusalem and also denounced Egypt's complicity in the three-year-old siege of Gaza. Muslim Brotherhood students have called on the government to open the border for jihadists to go fight in Gaza.

Plus, millions continue to feel bitterness and humiliation over the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its continued occupation there and in Afghanistan.

Mubarak, who is an ally of both Israel and the U.S., is increasingly viewed by many as, at best, a helpless buffoon in the face of the forces of empire, and, at worst, a conniving and willing collaborator.

The key is to realize that you are better informed if you use parental blocking features to block CNN, MSNBC, FAUX and all the other corporate 'news' channels from your tv. Keep this out of your house. It may seem contrary, but you'll find you are better informed.

Egypt - "It is over"

From "Death Throws of a Dictator", by Robert Fisk, Independent

Their crews, in battledress and smiling and in some cases clapping their hands, made no attempt to wipe off the graffiti that the crowds had spray-painted on their tanks. "Mubarak Out – Get Out", and "Your regime is over, Mubarak" have now been plastered on almost every Egyptian tank on the streets of Cairo. On one of the tanks circling Freedom Square was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagi. Earlier, I had walked beside a convoy of tanks near the suburb of Garden City as crowds scrambled on to the machines to hand oranges to the crews, applauding them as Egyptian patriots. However crazed Mubarak's choice of vice-president and his gradual appointment of a powerless new government of cronies, the streets of Cairo proved what the United States and EU leaders have simply failed to grasp. It is over.

The US of course, is on the wrong side of history. The great progressive, Hillary, is desperately trying to support and prop up the US' dictator.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes clear in TV interviews Sunday that the United States is not demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. She also backs away from earlier threats to pull Egypt's billions of dollars in aid.

Hillary says she wants democracy, but she also wants the dictator, who would massively lose any fair election, and who's only in office because of rigged elections, to stay in power. Hillary's idea of 'democracy' is to have the military step forward. Interesting how the US' idea of democracy always involves armies and 'democracy' at the point of a gun.

"We are urging the Mubarak government, which is still in power; we are urging the military, which is a very respected institution, to do what is necessary to facilitate that kind of orderly transition."

Notice of course that the one thing Hillary does not call for in her idea of a 'democracy' is free and fair elections. This is the lady that apparently a major part of the Democratic party's supporters view as a great 'progressive'.  And as usual, the policies she supports are severely reactionary.  Such as favoring a military coup ("what is necessary") in a country, but not supporting free and fair elections.  The nice thing about the name of the Democratic party is that the word 'deluded' has such a nice alliterate ring to it ... as in "deluded Democrats", who apparently view Hillary and Obama as 'progressive'.  If supporting military coups over free elections is 'progressive', then I don't want to be a 'progressive'.

Meanwhile, if you go to CNN, you don't see anything like Mr. Fisk's excellent reporting. However, if you read CNN's "latest developments" page, and read between the lines in the way that citizens of the Soviet Union learned how to do, what you see is many stories of Americans fleeing Egypt on the last planes out. Of course, CNN's "latest developments" won't tell you why. The obvious fact that an American dictatorship is collapsing can not be mentioned. Instead, the story carries the obligatory CNN quote from the Israelis about what is happening in Egypt. That's "news" according to American corporate TV ... whatever the Israelis say. Along with cheering for the army to come in and shut down democracy.

But, what you won't get from the network of CNN reporters, who apparently are stationed at every Israeli government building, is the reporting from the street that says the Army is already changing sides and supporting the people instead of their dictator. For that, you need the wonderful Mr. Fisk.


Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has been blocked in Egypt. Just like it is in almost all of the US. And, soon, the US Congress will consider Sen. Lieberman's bill to give US Presidents a "Mubarak Kill Switch" to shut down the internet should democracy ever start to erupt at home. Until that happens, you can watch coverage of events in Egypt at english.aljazeera.net.

Of course, a wise man, who's birthday we now kinda-sorta honor with a national holiday (if you can get off work that day), once tried to warn us about being constantly on the wrong side.  Obviously, in 43 years, we've failed to listen.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, April 4th, 1967, Riverside Church, NY city.

Mr. Obama copies Rev. King's speaking rhythms, and likes to claim connections to the Rev. King. But surely, if the occupant of the White House was a successor to Dr. King, then we would see America on the 'right' side of a revolution for the first time in a very long time.   No matter the shade of skin pigments on the surface of Mr. Obama, within he's a strong supporter of a "thing-oriented society".  His actions show this time after time, no matter what words he speaks.  The skin coloration of American presidents may have changed.  But, we are still on the wrong side.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."  We've gone from five years to five decades after JFK, but those words still haunt us.

Sometimes you see yourself

The Guardian (UK) is also reviewing and publishing some of the WikiLeaks cables that relate to Egypt. They of course show total private US support for the dictatorship.

But, what struck me was this fragment of a cable about police brutality.

"Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence"

That of course is standard fare on American TV. Our TV channels are full of 'detective heroes' who 'beat up suspects' to collect evidence. Heck, I wonder if by mistake someone at the embassy was just seeing a re-run of American tv cop shows on Egyptian TV?

So, what does that say about the way the police 'ubiquitous use of force' has pervaded American culture? What was notable about Egyptian TV in an embassy report, is commonplace here.

The old saying about a frog in a pot of boiling water comes to mind.   You know, the one about how it doesn't notice if the heat is increased slowly. What about police violence in the US? Our TV certainly shows signs of a 'ubiquitous use of force'. A scan of any local paper seems to reveal story after story.  In Denver, it appears that the cops practice for American Gladiator by beating up citizens.


The frog doesn't realize he's in a pot of boiling water. Are we similarly incapable of recognizing that we live with a violent police? Just how hot has the water gotten, around us poor American frogs?

Try typing 'police beat' and the name of an American city into Google, and watch the hits fly.  Here's a sample of what you get for Denver.

And, could you tell the one photo of the Egyptian police from the other photos of the Denver police?

How quickly they fall.

Hard to tell what's going on in Egypt, but there are increasing signs that this government might fall. Most telling are the mentions in the Guardian Breaking News blog (see link in post below) that the police and military are siding with their fellow people against the dictator.

2.32pm: Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, gives this detailed account of how protesters overwhelmed police in Alexandria today.

After prayers, the protesters came out of a mosque and started shouting slogans. They were saying "peaceful, peaceful" and raising their hands. They were immediately attacked by police in an armoured car firing teargas. Fierce clashes started then, with exchanges of rock throwing. About 200 police faced about 1,000 protesters. The clashes lasted for nearly two hours. Then a much larger crowd of protesters came from another direction. They were packed in four blocks deep. Police tried to hold them back with teargas and rubber bullets, but they were finally overwhelmed.

Then the police just gave up, at about the time of afternoon prayers. Protesters gave water to police and talked to them. It was was all peaceful. Hundreds of protesters were praying in the street.

Now walking down to downtown Alexandria, the whole road is packed as far as we can see, people shouting slogans against [Hosni] Mubarak and his son Gamal. Asking others to join them. It is a very festive atmosphere. Women in veils, old men, children, I even saw a blind man being led. And there are no police anywhere.

There is one lesson that activists should learn from all of this. A country can look stable, or at least repressed. The discontent bubbles beneath the surface when the state police kick in the doors of any dissidents. But, the discontent is still there. And, when the people sense that there is a real chance for real change, they will pour out into the streets in their millions.

The key is not to make the mistake of thinking that the lack of signs of public protest, which are repressed by raids and arrests by the state police forces, represent the lack of discontent amongst the population. The discontent is just hidden when state censorship and state police raids on dissidents keep it from being public. But it doesn't mean its not there.

The fall of the Soviet Union surprised everyone with the speed with which it progressed. Now we are seeing again how quickly can change as the pro-American dictatorships across the Arab world are starting to collapse as the people realize that change might actually be possible.

The Arab Street

The most important story in the world seems to be the protests in Egypt and other countries. A dictator has already fallen in Tunisia.

For years, people have been wondering when this would happen. The attitudes and policies of governments like the one in Egypt have been so opposed to the beliefs of the people that this has always been like California's big-one. Everyone could always see the tensions that could lead to a break, the only thing everyone didn't know was when it would happen. We could just possibly be seeing that 'big-one' right now.

The Guardian (UK) has a breaking news page with the latest news from Egypt. Today is a key day, with the crowds in the mosques for Friday prayers. See Breaking News at ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-live-updates

The problem can be seen in the statements from Israel. They praise the Egyptian dictatorship, and say they expect the Egyptian police to bloodily put down the people in the street.

Former envoy Gideon Ben-Ami predicts events in Egypt will not follow the same trajectory as the recent popular uprising in Tunisia, where the longtime dictator was ousted and fled the country. Ben-Ami says the Egyptian security and intelligence services "know how to resolutely take care of things when they feel under an existential threat as they already have begun to do".

Given the tactics of Israeli security, such a statement sends shutters up one's spine.

On the other hand, the Guardian page is reporting the beginnings of Egyptian military units refusing to kill their fellow citizens to prop up a dictatorship. Never a good sign for those who keep their Swiss bank account numbers close at hand in case of a sudden need to flee.

11.14am:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jan/27/egypt-protests#block-22 @gamelaid, a lawyer and executive director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, has tweeted that some army units in Suez are refusing to support the crackdown against the people.
Live blog: Twitter

The orginal tweet was in Arabic, so apologies for the translation if it is not 100% correct:

URGENT Suez: reports that some army units refused to support the police to confront the demonstrators, and the acceptance of other units, and did not intervene until now

All in all, not a good week for pro-American dictators.

BTW, Egypt's dicatorship appears to have cut off the Internet in Egypt. In the great and free USA, Sen. Lieberman and Pres. Obama want the authority to do the same here whenever they declare the need. I guess they are jealous of Mubarak.

The rise and fall of political popularity

After the midterms, and with the beginnings of the new Congress, there are of course many musings about the rise of the Republicans and the fall of Obama. Or, as Obama and the Democrats seem to rebound while anointing themselves with the blood of their fallen Congresswoman from Arizona, there are more musings about these latest shifts. It was Alexander Cockburn over at Counterpunch.org that got me thinking about this with his recent column.

The Republicans have lost their ’mo, at least for a while. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

Meanwhile Obama is looking more chipper than he has in the whole of the last year, a unifier at last, acting presidential as he triangulates just as Bill did in 95 and the years thereafter. Clinton and Gore “reinvented government” and Obama vows to do away with irksome regulations (like storing long form birth certificates securely) that hold America back.

Yet, all of this misses the bigger picture.

Both of today's political parties run much better in the opposition. There's good reason for this. Both parties serve essentially the same class of society. That being the class that can afford to give the maximum amount to campaigns, or far more to parties or political committees or such. Both political parties run their successful campaigns based on the large amounts of money that they can get from this class of people. The winner of almost any election can be guessed on watching which party or candidate does a better job of getting the money from this class.

This means the party that takes power is committed to the interests of the very small group of people who can afford to give $4,000 or $10,000 or a whole lot more to campaigns. And the unspoken part of this is that when a party takes power, they are committed to working against the interests of most of the rest of America.

Thus, the party that is in power will always be unpopular. The party that is in power is deliberately shafting the majority of Americans to serve the interests of the small class that funds their campaigns. Therefore, the party that is in power is unpopular with the majority of Americans.

The party in power will support wars. The wars make huge amount of money for the suppliers of war material. The wars make huge amounts of money for the bankers who loan the money to fight the wars. Meanwhile, millions of Americans spend their life in military service, and we've managed to kill more Americans in their wars than Osama Bin Laden did on 9-11. With tens of thousands more maimed or psychologically damaged when the do come home.

We just saw the Democrats work on 'health care reform'. The one thing that was clear from day one is that the profits of the big health corporations were certain to be at least protected and more likely enlarged. Single payer, the popular choice of a majority of Americans, was ruled off the table from the beginning. A vague 'public option', almost certain to be underfunded by future Congresses, was tentatively proposed. It was also the first thing pulled out of the bill in a very strange debate where the Democrats constantly changed the bill to suit the big health corporations to get Republican votes that they never got anyways.

And of course, no matter which party is in power, whatever Wall Street asks for, Wall Street gets. Wall Street says they need hundreds of billions of our public money to stay solvent, the Congress races to see who can support the bill soonest. Wall Street just committed the greatest fraud in the history of man, stealing trillions of dollars of real estate equity worth from most Americans one solid investment, their home, and no one goes to jail. A sham reform bill passes, but the bill is such a loophole ridden sham that Wall Street cheered its passage.

No matter which party wins an election, these policies stay unchanged. And all of them are detrimental to the interests of most Americans. Most Americans don't want their children coming back from wars maimed or in body bags. Most Americans didn't want to be the mandated customers of the most hated corporations in America. Most Americans didn't pay their taxes wanting that money to be handed over to Wall Street bankers to make sure the bonus checks never even slowed down.

All of this is to the harm of ordinary Americans. And, ordinary Americans are aware of this. They know their lives seem to get harder every year. They don't like it when the only jobs for their kids are in the military. Which isn't a great surprise since that's the part of the budget that always goes up no matter who's in power. Ordinary Americans know their health insurance costs more and more, and they know how their claims are denied when they try to use it.

So, the party in power is always declining in popularity. Meanwhile, the party out of power basically lies to the people and pretends to be on their side. Thus, the party out of power will always rise in popularity.

Both of our political parties only find political traction when they are in the 'opposition'. This explains the Republicans rapid rebound from their total rejection by the voters in 2008. It also explains why President Obama is quickly acting as if he's now even more powerless than he claimed to be before. The Republicans control the House. The Democrats control the Senate and the White House. The worst that should play out for the Democrats is as grid-lock. But instead, we've seen Obama quickly claim that he's now out of power. Of course, he did this by surrendering to the Republican agenda by making sure that the Bush tax cuts for the rich stay in place, and that the Patriot Act gets extended even further. Of course, neither of those is a real surprise to the people who noticed that the Democrats mostly supported both of those measures with their votes while voice their pretended opposition to Bush.

At some point, you have to ignore the details of which horse is a nose ahead or a nose behind. Instead, you have to notice the course the horses are running. This course runs in a direction that benefits a few. And most of the rest of us pay the cost. We pay higher taxes, but get little or nothing back from the government in return. We pay more and more for 'health care', and have to fight more and more to get the health care we need. And the body bags and maimed young people keep coming home from our wars. The horses run this same course no matter which horse is in the lead.

The US is not a democracy

SecDef Gates, with the apparent support of President Obama, has openly declared that the US is not a democracy.

Gates: Public opinion can't sway Afghan commitment

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can't let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan.

Gates says it's the responsibility of leaders to focus on the public interest and the long-term implications of U.S. involvement in the region.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Americans to view the country's effort in Afghanistan as aimed at protecting their families and their future.

Gates and Clinton spoke Thursday at the White House following President Barack Obama's remarks on a newly finished classified report on the Afghan war.

Its very simple, in a free country that is a democracy, public opinion does matter. Because in a free democracy, power resides with the people. Government officials exist only to represent the will of the people and to execute (ie, the executive branch) the will of the people.

When government officials stand up and tell you to your face that public opinion does not matter, then what they just told you is that you do not live in a free democracy.

Note that the remarks followed President Obama's at the same event. Which most likely means that they were pre-approved by the White House. And if not, Mr. Obama certainly didn't grab a microphone and object to these anti-American, anti-democracy statements. Remember, Mr. Obama could call Mr. Gates into his office and fire him at any time. Cabinet officials only serve at the pleasure of the President. If Gates isn't fired for saying this, then its the same as if Obama says it.

Gates and Obama .... the USA is no longer a free democracy.

The USA needs a democracy movement. Are there any unused colors left? The Turquoise movement? The Puce movement?

The Torture of Bradley Manning

The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention By Glenn Greenwald

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.

...

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.

...

In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture." By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."

For that reason, many Western nations -- and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses -- refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence. "It’s an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit." As Gawande documented: "A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered." Gawande explained that America’s application of this form of torture to its own citizens is what spawned the torture regime which President Obama vowed to end:

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. . . .

This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. . . . Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement . .

We don't use piano wire and electrodes. But that doesn't mean we don't torture. Read the quote by John McCain again. We, as a nation, are subjecting this young man to torture that crushes the spirit. That's always the saddest thing when one sees interviews with torture victims. The psychological scars that it leaves for a lifetime.

And all of this because the young man actually believes in freedom and democracy. Freedom means that power resides with the people. The rulers only represent the people. But a free democracy can not exist without the people knowing what the rulers are doing. Without that knowledge, any elections or other mechanisms by which the people choose their rulers become charades without meaning. Its the knowledge of what the government is doing that allows a free people to decide to approve those actions, or to make changes to reject them. When the government hides this information behind a veil of secrecy, they are staging a coup that removes the power from the people and places in the hands of the officials who decide what the citizens get to know.

One could say that 98% of the American people voted in favor of parties that support the torture of Bradley Manning, the arrest of Julian Assange, and the censorship and suppression of Wikileaks. But is this truly the opinion of the American people, when the very documents that Wikileaks is allowing the world to see show just how completely the policies of this government differ from what their official version tells the American voters?

The American people consistently tell pollsters that they oppose torture. They consistently say they want our soldiers home from the wars. The American people consistently oppose the commission of war crimes. Yet, the same citizens vote for political parties and candidates who conduct torture, and keep the wars and all their inherent crimes going and going and going.

Which leaves this as the question. Are we seeing that the American people lie to pollsters about their opposition to torture and these wars? Or, are we seeing elections that simply show how completely they are lied to by their politicians and government? Do 2% of the American people oppose torture? Or do some 60% of the American people oppose torture?

We can only know the answer to that question if the American people know the truth about their government. Bradley Manning acted in support of freedom and democracy in the most fundamental way possible. In response, this nation that prides itself as the champion of freedom and democracy is subjecting him to soul crushing torture. Instead, we should be giving Bradley Manning a medal.

BTW, at times in the last few weeks, typing Wikileaks.org into your browser has only revealed the censorship policies of the US government, as all you would get was a Site Not Found error. If that happens again, you can find wikileaks, by using a site like this one that will forward you on to one of wikileaks many and moving locations around the world. Or, as of today, this site has a list of wikileaks mirrors around the world. The links on the left of this site have been updated to point to this services.

When you see that Site Not Found error, you may think Wikileaks has been defeated. But remember, the one thing they really, really don't want you to know is that there is resistence everywhere. Wikileaks is alive and well. But they could use your support and a donation if you can give it.

Corporate Prisoner

Lawyer Cites Visa, MasterCard as Assange’s Release Delayed

British Judge Howard Riddle may have approved Julian Assange’s release on bail, but the WikiLeaks founder remains held for at least another 48 hours over a pair of rows with the Swedish government and America’s major credit card providers Visa and MasterCard.

The Swedish government has appealed Assange’s release on grounds that he poses a flight risk. The judge’s terms of release would require him to submit to a curfew, electronic tagging, and to report to the police every evening.

But perhaps the bigger problem is that the assorted supporters of Assange who are putting up the 240,000 pounds in bail are being told that they have to put up the entire amount in cash, because Visa and MasterCard have barred contributions to WikiLeaks.

According to Assange’s lawyer, who insists that the detention is turning into a show trial, he was told credit cards could not be used for the bail. Visa and MasterCard denied having put any bar on making payments to the British court system.

The 48 hour delay in Assange’s release for the appeal appears to be little more than a formality, as Judge Riddle has expressed annoyance at Swedish lawyers’ refusal to produce any evidence against Assange in their extradition request. The struggle to come up with all that money in cash might take a bit longer.

So, lets see ... just so I understand this.

There's no evidence to hold Mr. Assange. The British judge is criticizing Swedish officials for their 'refusal to produce any evidence against Assange'.

But, Mr. Assange is still in jail. Apparently because Visa and MasterCard want him in jail.

The rather obvious question would seem to be, if there is no evidence produced against Mr. Assange he, why is he forced to produce 240,000 British pounds in order to gain his freedom? For a fair and just legal system, the rather obvious course to take when there is no evidence against a prisoner is to release them. Instead, despite the lack of any evidence, Mr. Assange is forced to surrender 240,000 in cash, and then submit to harsh restrictions that force him to check in with authorities every day.

Gee, I wonder what they do when they actually have evidence against someone?

The way this is going, when someone shows up with the required 240,000 to gain the freedom of the man against whom there is no evidence, they'll probably be arrested just for carrying so much cash. After all, if you don't use Visa and Mastercard and instead carry large sums of cash, you are automatically regarded as suspicious and a probably criminal.

Welcome to the world where the banks run everything. If Visa and Mastercard want you in jail, then you stay in jail. Who cares about courts? Who cares about evidence? Who cares if you have friends who have the where-withal to meet this ridiculous bail amout? Visa and Mastercard want him in jail, so they refuse to process the payments. Thus, Visa and Mastercard appear to have a final veto on anyone being released from jail.

Hopefully, someone leaks the diplomatic cables between USA and Sweden and Great Britain over this fiasco. It seems rather obvious that indispensable nation that promotes freedom around the world is responsible for both the weak charges against Assange as well as this farce in the British courts.

And, aren't you glad you elected Obama and got so much change from what Bush would have done in this situation? Ever get the feeling that Obama spends his days staring at a sign on his desk that reads "What Would Dubya Do?" before making every decision?

Love those around you. Give them love this holiday season, instead of gifts. And if you do feel the need to buy them something, pay with cash. Don't use your Visa or Mastercard. Pay with good old fashioned cash, and hit them where it hurts them.

Update: Now its apparently the British government overturning the ruling of its own judge and deciding to arbitrarily keep Mr. Assange in prison. This is why the colonies decided that some sort of basic ground rules in the form of state and federal constitutions were a necessity to secure real libery.

Which reminds me. We just had Bill of Rights day. A celebration of the time when the ruling elite of this country gave in and allowed the people of this country to have a Bill of Rights. In exchange with, we the people of this country allowed the government to form and gave it certain powers to protect and secure our liberties. Remember that without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution would never have been approved.

The Bill of Rights are not optional guidelines to be enforced only when convenient. Instead, these are the rules set by the American people for the US government as the essential conditions for the very existence of the US government.

Obamaland

Lets take a look at the nation's priorities after two years in Obamaland.

-- Bush's tax cuts for the rich are good and should stay in place. The Democrats didn't make any serious effort to repeal these, not even when they temporarily held a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. No surprise, since most of these Democrats are millionaires themselves.

-- Defense spending rises the first two budgets. Now the Democrats appear to be fighting to keep it as high as possible. It certainly does not seem to be viewed as a place to cut the deficit.

-- Same goes for 'intelligence' spending, and that giant bucket of corporate pork known as the Dept of Homeland Security.

-- Wall Street gets anything they want. When they say they need hundreds of billions of dollars, they get it. When they say they want the Fed to take over all the bad debt that the Wall Street pryamid schemes created, the Fed is glad to do so. No one gets prosecuted for a con that turned non-verified signature loans into AAA rated securities. No serious reform of Wall Street.

-- For everyone else who might want a hand in this worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, everyone gets a cold shoulder. Oh, the defecit is so bad that there's no help available. And now, we get the good news that we have to give away our retirements to corporate America to pay for all the billions that get spent everywhere else.

The rich are spending a lot of money on TV ads and bought columnists and editorials about the 'deficit' right now. And of course, its anything that doesn't benefit the rich, like Social Security and Medicare, that has to be jetisoned to solve this so-called crisis.

But hey, here's an alternate deficit reduction plan.

-- Put taxes back to where they were before Bush Jr took office.
-- End the wars. That's hundreds of billions a year of 'off-budget' money we can save.
-- Cut back on Defense, Intelligence spending, and on Homeland Security.

On Defense, we spend more than the rest of the world combined. And most of the rest of the top ten are our allies like England and France. We spend way, way, way too much on our military.

On Intelligence, these are the people who didn't see 9-11 coming. And who didn't see the fall of the Berlin Wall. From Iraq to Iran, our 'intelligence' community mainly seems paid to produce what the White House wants to see. Surely we can just outsource the writing of these fictional intelligence estimates to some Indian tech writers online and save some money here.

On Homeland Security, that's mostly just pork. Here's an example for your holiday travel ... those big full body scanners that take the naked pictures of you in the airports. Thing is, they don't work. Oh, they cost millions and millions of dollars. So somewhere out there is a company that's happen to have gotten the contract, probably with the help of a well-paid, uh, well-contributed to, congress-critter. But, they don't detect non-metal stuff like explosives all that much better than metal detectors. The tech has been around for 20 years, and no one thought this would work until it became someone's highly intrusive pork barrel project. You are being virtually strip searched to improve some corporation's profits and to keep contributions flowing to some congress-critter. Have a happy holiday in corporate America. Surely there's some deficit trimming to do this tree.

-- End corporate welfare and close corporate tax loopholes.

Now, I'm not the CBO, so I can't score such a plan. But, I'm guessing all of the above provides plenty of cuts to the deficit, and at the same time frees up enough money that we can have some real stimulus to those of us who don't get million-dollar wall street bonus checks.

And of course, its silly to be trying to cut the deficit in the midst of a depression in the first place. That's so Herbert Hoover. But that's today's Democrats. Herbert Hoover would be right at home in this modern Democratic Party.

Europe knows how to respond

Over 50,000 Students Protest in London over Planned Cuts to Education Funding

Europe knows how to respond when the government wants to drastically harm people's lives in order that the bankers can make more money.

An estimated 52,000 students took to the streets of London on Tuesday to protest government plans to increase university tuition fees while cutting higher education funding by 40 percent. The demonstration was one of the biggest student protests in decades and the largest turnout against the British government’s austerity measures that were announced last month. We speak with Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent.

Johann Hari ....

Now, we know from history that bad leaders can be stopped from doing even more terrible things by public pressure. You know, one of the examples I used is Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were both presented with programs—with proposals by the Pentagon to launch a nuclear strike on Vietnam. And we know from the classified minutes that have now been released, they didn’t do it, not because they thought it was a bad idea, but because, as Lyndon Johnson said it, "Can you tell me how long it would take for the protesters to break over the White House wall and lynch their president if I did that?" So we know very clearly from history, the more you protest, the more obstacles you put in the way of bad leaders doing terrible things. Now, I have no doubt all those Vietnam protesters who went out felt they had failed. And it’s true they couldn’t do enough to stop the killing of three million Vietnamese and 56,000 Americans. But those people who went home from that protest thinking they had failed had in fact prevented a nuclear war. I think that’s a really good example of how protest has effects that we may not realize at the time, but it has a huge ripple effect that can be very positive for years afterwards.

Obama needs to look out of his window and see a few million pissed off Americans.

And, next election, Obama and the Democrats need to see Americans moving away from their pro-war, pro-wall street political party. Haven't we had enough of this yet?

We need politicians that will look out for ordinary working Americans, instead of always doing whatever the Pentagon and Wall Street wants him to do.  And that sure as heck ain't the Democrats.

So we know very clearly from history, the more you protest, the more obstacles you put in the way of bad leaders doing terrible things.

And speaking of bad leaders doing terrible things, keep reading below.

The Real Obama

Now that the mid-term elections are done, and Obama and the Democrats can drop their fake pretensions of not being Republicans, we now see Obama's agenda.

-- Cut Social Security. He wants to raise the retirement age and cut cost of living increases.
-- Cut Medicare.
-- Cut corporate taxes
-- Leave the Bush tax cuts in place
-- Extend the war in Afghanistan by another three years.
-- End middle-class tax breaks.
-- Cut public television.

Obama Deficit Commission Criticized for Proposals to Slash Social Security, Medicare
Axelrod: Admin to Accept Extension of Bush Tax Cut for Wealthy
U.S. to Extend Afghan Pullout Deadline to 2014

Oh, the Democrats will run their usual scam, in that they'll say its those awful Republicans who are making them do this.

So, lets see. When Obama and the Democrats had both Houses of Congress, they did nothing. They didn't expand social security benefits, they didn't expand medicare, they didn't lower the retirement age. They didn't raise corporate taxes. They didn't end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama and the Democrats didn't even try to do any of these things. Basically, they kept the Bush era policies rolling along as best they could in the face of the mass public opposition that had elected the Democrats.

Now, the Republicans take control of one house of the Congress, and suddenly Obama turns over control of all policy to the Republicans. Remember how the Senate can block anything with a filibuster? Apparently Obama feels that the current majority in the Senate can't even slow down the Republican majority in the House.

The key thing to realize is that the Democrats do not oppose the Republicans. When the Republicans are in power, the Democrats don't filibuster and don't stop anything that the Republicans want to do. When the Democrats are in power, they protect Republican policies and then try to do their best to let the Republicans do whatever they want to do.

If you want to solve the deficit, here's a short list.
-- stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year on the wars. That's a sizeable percentage of the trillion dollar a year deficit.
-- Cut the trillion dollars a year that we spend on 'defense'. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on 'defense'.
-- Stop giving Wall Street trillions of dollars any time they ask for it.
-- End the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy.
-- Stop the Republican policies of always cutting corporate taxes.

Obama of course will try to duck the blame for this. But, he's the one who appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to lead a commission to cut the deficit. He picked a Republican who's always wanted to see anyone who's not a millionaire starving in the streets. And he picked a Democrat who's on the board of Morgan Stanley.

This might not be the final deal. But of course, today's Democrats who always stick it to working people will 'compromise' with the Republicans. So, they'll give the Republicans most of what they want. Then the Republicans will reject the deal, and then Obama will give them most of the rest of what the Republicans want. All of this will occur while Obama and the Democrats try to get everyone to believe the strange message that we need to vote Democrat to stop this. They'll be hoping that no one notices that we voted Democrat and this was what we got.

This is Obama and the modern Democrats. Get out your magnifying glass to try to tell the difference between Obama and Ronald Reagan and Herbert Hoover. And as usual, the Democrats were just lying their rears off in the last election, because they sure weren't spending millions of their wall street dollars telling the people that this is what the Democrats were going to do.

The Democrats’ broken promises

The Democrats’ broken promises by Phil Gasper

What this picture leaves out is the social role of the Democratic Party and the interests that it ultimately serves. Politics is not a pure battle of ideas. It is a struggle between different social classes to defend and advance their interests and to determine who will control how society is run. While the Democrats have historically represented themselves as the party of working people and oppressed minorities, in reality they are tied to protecting the interests of corporate America and the capitalist system just as much as the Republicans are, despite their differences in ideology. It is this and not primarily a failure to craft the right message that explains the broken promises.

There is also one other crucial factor that Lakoff and others like him ignore. While consciousness has moved to the left in the United States, that has not yet cohered into a political movement that can mobilize large numbers of people to fight for a progressive agenda. In the absence of such a movement, there is no pressure on the Democratic Party to enact reforms that will benefit working-class Americans rather than big business. When such movements exist, as in the 1930s and 1960s, politics can shift very rapidly to the left. It is no coincidence that it was during these decades that the most important gains were made by workers, the poor, racial minorities, and other oppressed groups.

For those who are angry at the Democrats’ for their broken promises, the solution is not offering better ways of packaging the party’s message, but building an independent movement on the ground that can fight both for immediate reforms and pose the vision of a different kind of society in the future.

Change

On election night, every time I turned on the TV, what I heard were Democrats coming up with one excuse after another for their election defeat. I heard about 'enthusiasm gaps'. I heard about how historically the party in power loses mid-term elections. I heard long discussions about why the Democrats 'get-out-the-vote' efforts didn't seem to work.


But there was one word conspicuously absent from these discussions. "Change". You remember that word, don't you? Two years ago, Mr. Obama always spoke from a podium with the word "Change" plastered onto the front. Mr. Obama stood underneath giant banners that read "Change". Mr. Obama's speechwriters seemed to have the competitions on how many times they could put the word "Change" into his speeches.


And, if you want to know why the Democrats just went down in defeat, the word "Change" is the answer. Mr. Obama and the Democrats ran for office promising "Change", and they failed to deliver. Even worse, Mr. Obama and the Democrats failed to even try to deliver.

The sad thing is that the best politics for Mr. Obama and the Democrats would have been to be very aggressive in trying to deliver "Change". With that strategy, if the Republicans were to try to block this popular President, then that would have set the Republicans up as being the party going down to an historic defeat in these elections.

Instead, the Democrats adopted the same Republican policies that had ruled the country since Mr. Obama's favorite President, Ronald Reagan. This combined with a massive spin effort to try to fool their base into believing that they really had delivered "Change". But with the bizarre notion that somehow everyone had missed this fact.

The Democrats apparently based this campaign on the assumption that the American people are stupid. I heard one Democrat analyst talking about how Mr. Obama and the Democrats had cut everyone's taxes but weren't getting credit for it. This assumes the American voters are stupid. Does he think that no one notices how much they pay in taxes when they file every April? If our taxes had gone down by any significant amount, does he think we are all too stupid to have noticed? Somewhere down in the decimal points, he's probably factually correct. Maybe our taxes did go down. But not so much that anyone could notice without pulling out last year's tax return and getting out a magnify glass to see the "Change".

Meanwhile, an antiwar majority in America has tried in two straight elections to end the wars by voting Democrat. Anti-war America elected a Democrat majority in Congress to end the wars in 2006. Then they sent Mr. Obama and even more congressional Democrats to Washington in 2008 for the same purpose, to end these wars. Instead, what they got was first the Democratic congress serving to guarantee Mr. Bush's war funding. Then they got Mr. Obama expansions of these wars in Afghanistan and into Pakistan. Then just before the election, they got raids on antiwar activists, and talk just before the election of sending 'hunter-killer teams' into Yemen. In other words, "No Change."

Americans had been telling pollsters for years that their biggest issue was health care. The Democrats had always twisted this into trying to insure a few more of the uninsured. A worthy cause, but only a fraction of the health care concerns that Americans have had. This redirecting of the issue ignores all the problems with insurance companies denying care and coverage. And it ignored for-profit hospitals charging $3 for an aspirin or $20 for a bag of salt water.

What the Democrats did once they were in Washington was to immediately take any real health care reform off the table. Instead, the Democrats made it very clear that protecting the profits of some of the most hated corporations in America was their top priority. After all, Obama alone had gotten $30 million from big health corporations in the last election. So, the CEO's of those companies were getting private meetings to plan health care 'reform' in Mr. Obama's oval office, while advocates of single-payer were being led out of the Democrat's congressional hearing rooms in handcuffs.

What we got handed to us as 'health care reform' was instead a plan to help corporate profits at the expense of the health and wallets of Americans. The Democrats passed a four year ban on any reform of health insurance. That's just the opposite of what the "Change" the voters were asking for. The American voters were not asking for the Democrats to prevent any health care reform for four years. And American voters were certainly not asking to be forced into becoming mandated customers of the very corporations from which they were crying for help and protection.

Last night, the Democrats were on the television talking about how they aren't getting any credit for their reforms. I'd say the Democrats were getting exactly the credit they deserved.

Meanwhile, another fact that the American voters keep telling pollsters is that they think corporations and Wall Street have too much power in America. Again, the Democrats did just the opposite. The first week in power in January 2009, the Democrats ran around telling everyone that we had to pass bailouts of hundreds of billions of dollars for Wall Street. Remember how that just had to be passed on a Tuesday, because if we waited until Thursday to open our treasury to the Wall Street robber barons then we would all be doomed?

Then we saw the Democrats pass a 'Wall Street reform' bill that was so loophole ridden and useless that Wall Street cheered when it passed.

And in this election, where voters were telling the pollsters the obvious fact that in the middle of the biggest "downturn" since the Great Depression that their biggest concerns were the economy and jobs. The Democrats responded to this by giving Americans the economic policies of Mr. Obama's favorite President, Ronald Reagan. The Democrats gave hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars to Wall Street in the hopes that some of this might trickle down to the rest of us. Then, when Americans asked for some real stimulus or job creation programs, Mr. Obama told us that all the money was gone, that we had a big deficit, and that ordinary Americans were going to have to be responsible for their own recovery.

Given all of that, is it any surprise that the American voters rejected this bunch of Democrats yesterday?

None of this was coming from the mouths of the Democrat spin machine on the television last night. We heard of all sorts of reasons why the Democrats lost. But the one thing that they would not say is that the Democrats had lost because they had failed to deliver the "Change" they'd promised.

Overall, I feel that last night was a major victory for the progressive movement and the left in general. It may not seem like it with the Republicans in charge of the House, but look at it this way. The Democrats will certainly run on "Change" again. In a country where a majority of the voters have been telling pollsters that they think the country is moving in the wrong direction for decades now, its become standard operating procedure for politicians to run on "Change". We even get the strange sight of incumbents running on "Change" because the idea is so popular with the voters.

So maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep within the bowels of the corporate Democrat political machine, maybe a smart analyst is thinking the thought that maybe the next time the Democrats get power, that they should actually deliver some real "Change".

That's the good news. In the long run, last night the American voters took a positive step forward towards actually getting some "Change" by defeating the politicians who had failed to deliver what they had promised. We were not getting any "Change" today no matter who won last night's elections. But, with this defeat of the politicians who had failed to deliver, we sent a powerful message that tells future politicians that they had better plan on delivering the "Change" that they so easily promise in every election.

Which Party Supports You.

In American politics, usually the question is what party do you support. But, in a representative democracy, the question should be, which party supports you and supports what you believe?

Remember, if you vote Democrat or Republican and they win, you get exactly what they promised you. Which is more war and a government that serves corporate America a whole lot more than it serves you.

Issue Position Comparison --

Issue	Green Party	Republicans	Democrats
Invasion and Occupation of Iraq	Oppose	Support	Support
Patriot Act	Oppose	Support	Support
Invasion of Afghanistan	Oppose	Supported	Supported
Kosovo War	Opposed	Supported	Supported
Military Budget	Reduce	Increase	Increase
Israeli Occupation of West Bank and Gaza.	Oppose	Support	Support
Global Warming - Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions	Support	Oppose	Oppose and Failed to Act.
Right to Choose	Support	Oppose	Support (?)
National Health Insurance	Support single-payer national health insurance	Oppose	Oppose
Clean Water	Support	Oppose	Weak Support
Death Penalty	Oppose	Support	Support
Labor: Wages and Unions	Support	Oppose Workers	Minimal Support
(Global) Corporate Power Trade Agreements and Institutions (NAFTA, FTAA, CAFTA, WTO)	Restrict	Expand	Expand
Real Campaign Finance Reform & Publicly Financed Elections	Support	Oppose	Oppose
Electoral Reforms & Democracy	Support	Oppose	Oppose
2000 Florida Election - Congressional Investigation	Support	Oppose	Oppose
Reform the Presidential Debate Commission	Support	Oppose	Oppose
Strict Standards on GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms)	Support	Oppose	Oppose
Corporate Agriculture	Oppose	Support	Support
Drug War	Oppose	Support	Support
Telecommunications Deregulation - Giveaway of public broadcast spectrum to private companies.	Opposed to Deregulation	Supported	Supported
Bank Deregulation and Banking Reform	Opposed to bank deregulation.	Supported bank deregulation.	Supported bank deregulation.
Increased Accounting Oversight	Always Supported	Oppose	Opposed until the Enron scandal broke.
Other issues on which most Republicans and most Democrats agree -- and Greens disagree	Plan Colombia The bombing of Iraqi civilians Refusal to ban landmines Privatization of prisons, other public services and resources Severe penalties for marijuana Big corporate mergers and Wall Street bail-outs Forest logging giveaways Powerful agribusiness lobbies instead of family farms Uncontrolled bio-engineering Increased wiretaps and other surveillance The Defense of Marriage Act
printable version | more details

Like most things with the Green Party, the website where this came from seems to be a bit out of date. The last 'news' article is from 2006.

Of course, most of the items still seem relevant today. You just notice that the website talks about Bill Clinton and Al Gore and John Kerry instead of Barrack Obama. The faces and the names change, but the issues don't. And, it also tells you that 4 years of Democrats in control of Congress and 2 years of Democrats having the White House as well have led to absolutely NO CHANGE in these issues.

But, it does mean that a few more should be added to the list.

• The Green Party opposed the Israeli attack on aid ships on the open sea. The Democrats and Republicans verbally attacked the humanitarians bringing aid.
  
• The Green Party supports Wikileaks and the release of the truth that the US government and military knows about our wars. The Democrats and Republicans do not and want prosecutions of those who've told American citizens the truth.
  
• The Green Party opposes having Obama's FBI kick in the doors of anti-war activists. The Democrats and Republicans order the raids and do not speak in opposition.
  

And that's just what comes from the top of my head. Feel free to add other differences in the comments section. :)

As usual, the Arabs knew

The Shaming Of America
By Robert Fisk

As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims.



Only we could pretend we did not know. Only we in the West could counter every claim, every allegation against the Americans or British with some worthy general – the ghastly US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt and the awful chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, come to mind – to ring-fence us with lies. Find a man who'd been tortured and you'd be told it was terrorist propaganda; discover a house full of children killed by an American air strike and that, too, would be terrorist propaganda, or "collateral damage", or a simple phrase: "We have nothing on that."



Of course, we all knew they always did have something. And yesterday's ocean of military memos proves it yet again. Al-Jazeera has gone to extraordinary lengths to track down the actual Iraqi families whose men and women are recorded as being wasted at US checkpoints – I've identified one because I reported it in 2004, the bullet-smashed car, the two dead journalists, even the name of the local US captain – and it was The Independent on Sunday that first alerted the world to the hordes of indisciplined gunmen being flown to Baghdad to protect diplomats and generals. These mercenaries, who murdered their way around the cities of Iraq, abused me when I told them I was writing about them way back in 2003.

And, as I said below, the interesting question is this .... if everyone in the Arab world knew about this, then exactly who was the Pentagon keeping this secret info from? The only answer is the American citizens. And in a system where the citizens represent the sovereign power of the nation (the constitution begins with "We the People"), that's a very undemocratic and anti-American act. Withholding information from the American people is in effect a coup that steals the rightful power of the American people by deciding what the citizens know and what the citizens don't know.

But, written in bleak militarese as it may be, here is the evidence of America's shame. This is material that can be used by lawyers in courts. If 66,081 – I loved the "81" bit – is the highest American figure available for dead civilians, then the real civilian mortality score is infinitely higher since this records only those civilians the Americans knew of. Some of them were brought to the Baghdad mortuary in my presence, and it was the senior official there who told me that the Iraqi ministry of health had banned doctors from performing any post-mortems on dead civilians brought in by American troops. Now why should that be? Because some had been tortured to death by Iraqis working for the Americans? Did this hook up with the 1,300 independent US reports of torture in Iraqi police stations?

Such freedom. The Iraqi puppet government bans any investigations into dead bodies brought in by American troops. And the US military issues orders banning any investigations into allegations of torture or killings by the Iraqi government. And by such beaurocratic measures, we created a hell in Iraq that Iraqis have always told us was far worse than anything under Saddam.

We still haven't got to the bottom of the WikiLeaks story, and I rather suspect that there are more than just a few US soldiers involved in this latest revelation. Who knows if it doesn't go close to the top? In its investigations, for example, al-Jazeera found an extract from a run-of-the-mill Pentagon press conference in November 2005. Peter Pace, the uninspiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is briefing journalists on how soldiers should react to the cruel treatment of prisoners, pointing out proudly that an American soldier's duty is to intervene if he sees evidence of torture. Then the camera moves to the far more sinister figure of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who suddenly interrupts – almost in a mutter, and to Pace's consternation – "I don't think you mean they (American soldiers) have an obligation to physically stop it. It's to report it."



The significance of this remark – cryptically sadistic in its way – was lost on the journos, of course. But the secret Frago 242 memo now makes much more sense of the press conference. Presumably sent by General Ricardo Sanchez, this is the instruction that tells soldiers: "Provided the initial report confirms US forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted unless directed by HHQ [Higher Headquarters]." Abu Ghraib happened under Sanchez's watch in Iraq. It was also Sanchez, by the way, who couldn't explain to me at a press conference why his troops had killed Saddam's sons in a gun battle in Mosul rather than capture them.

Or, try this .... type "Salvador option" into a search engine and see what it turns up for round about 2004. I haven't done it yet, but I remember Rumsfeld and others talking about using the "El Salvador" option in Iraq. This of course meant a repeat of the torture and death squads that the US had unleashed upon El Salvador back when Rumsfeld was serving Obama's favorite president, Ronald Reagan. I suspect there's an evil correlation between those references and the increase in torture and death squad activity we now have documented in these Iraqi war logs.

So Sanchez's message, it seems, must have had Rumsfeld's imprimatur. And so General David Petraeus – widely loved by the US press corps – was presumably responsible for the dramatic increase in US air strikes over two years; 229 bombing attacks in Iraq in 2006, but 1,447 in 2007. Interestingly enough, US air strikes in Afghanistan have risen by 172 per cent since Petraeus took over there. Which makes it all the more astonishing that the Pentagon is now bleating that WikiLeaks may have blood on its hands. The Pentagon has been covered in blood since the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, and for an institution that ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 – wasn't that civilian death toll more than 66,000 by their own count, out of a total of 109,000 recorded? – to claim that WikiLeaks is culpable of homicide is preposterous.



The truth, of course, is that if this vast treasury of secret reports had proved that the body count was much lower than trumpeted by the press, that US soldiers never tolerated Iraqi police torture, rarely shot civilians at checkpoints and always brought killer mercenaries to account, US generals would be handing these files out to journalists free of charge on the steps of the Pentagon. They are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told.

We've seen the spectacle of a baseball player being charged with lying to Congress over steroid use. Well, now we have very good evidence of much more serious lies being told to Congress. Lies that have killed many human beings, including 4000 plus American soldiers killed in Iraq. Is our Congress investigating these awful lies? Or, is our Congress attacking Wikileaks for exposing these lies? If you don't like the answer you get to that question, then don't vote for an incumbent.

They are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told.

Must See TV

Today's Democracy Now! is focusing primarily on the Wikileak's posting of the Iraq War Logs. This is must see TV.

WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs Expose US-Backed Iraqi Torture, 15,000 More Civilian Deaths, and Contractors Run Amok

Early in the show, there's a fascinating interview with an Iraqi citizen on the streets of Baghdad. He says what's rather obvious, in that everyone in Iraq already knows this. That its important that there is documentation and evidence of these crimes, but that everyone in Iraq already knows this. That everyone in Iraqi has had people detained and beaten and killed.

If everyone in Iraq already knows what's in these documents, then why is is so important that they be kept secret? Because there's evidence of war crimes in these documents. The UN's chief investigator of torture is already calling on the Obama administration to seriously investigate the facts that are already in the US government's documents. And if there's justice in the world, then that's just step one towards a more serious international investigation.

These documents undermine the war here at home. Here in America, most people have basically been lied to about this war. These are the facts that the American people are not supposed to see. The American people aren't supposed to see how the US condones torture. The American people aren't supposed to see how its soldiers gun down people on the streets from helicopters. The American people aren't supposed to see the horror that we've brought to Iraq.

These documents call into question the very foundations of the Iraq war. First we were lied to and told that we had to invade Iraq to get rid of Saddam's WMDs. Then, when President Bush was doing his comedy act of looking under chairs for the WMDs, the story changed to one where we were in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq.

Really? If we are there to defend the civil rights of Iraqis, then why does the US have an official policy of looking the other direction when they found that this happened? If we are there to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, then why do we have an official policy to ignore reports of torture and abuse when the torture and abuse is being done by our puppet government and our puppet army?

See this show before you vote. Listen to the Obama's administration official spokesperson, and the way he attacks the people who release the truth, and defends the torturers and killers. That's the Democratic party policy. Attack anyone who reveals the truth. The Obama administration has been more aggressive than any previous president in prosecuting those who leak embarrassing facts that they want covered up. The Obama administration continues to attack Wikileaks. I guess that's the part of the FBI that isn't kicking in the doors of antiwar activists. Then the Obama administration is denying that any wrong has been done. The Obama administration is defending the torturers and the killers.

If you vote Democrat, so are you. Please don't vote Democrat. For your own soul, don't be a defender and enabler of torture. Please don't vote Democrat.