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Support U.N. Economic Crisis World Conference

Based on the global capitalist economic crisis which is wreaking havoc on the lives of hundreds of millions of people world wide, United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto-Brockman is organizing an urgent Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, to take place on June 1-3 at the United Nations in New York City. This international gathering, sometimes called the G-192 because every member nation of the UN will participate, is virtually tenfold the participation of nations in the G-20. This summit of world leaders will for the first time give an equal opportunity to those who represent the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, those who are suffering the most but who have been left out in the decisions which have caused this systemic failure, to express their people’s needs to the world and make known their suffering caused by arbitrary acts and excesses of rich nations. The powerful financial institutions that have long been entrusted to manage national and global financial and economic systems have failed. It is time to give all the others a voice and a choice.

Never Again

The reason we must keep the torture issue alive is not to exact a small measure of comeuppance from the Bush administration zealots who bent the law till it screamed, but to alter the course of history.

Thus the filing of disciplinary complaints a few days ago against 12 Bush administration lawyers, who crafted the quasi-legal justifications that made waterboarding a household word, has significance well beyond the case for their disbarment. This action, taken by a coalition of citizen organizations — from the ACLU and Vets for Peace to the Libertarian Party of West Virginia, 200 groups in total, claiming a membership of more than a million people — represents, as I see it, American citizens’ furthest reach of patriotic sanity.

The Bush sins are unoriginal. We’ve always done torture. We’ve always been at war with a dehumanized (and usually dark-skinned) other, whom we have simultaneously attempted to kill and, in our armed righteousness, “save.”

Priorities

Is it important to counter the CIA's lies about what it told a handful of congress members when? Of course it is. It's important to expose every bit of the secrecy imposed by all agencies and departments of what we still rather goofily call the "executive" branch. This is a branch of government that has openly flouted subpoenas for years, and assisted others in doing so. The chairman of the senate judiciary committee is now afraid to subpoena Jay Bybee, or - probably - to blow his nose, without the approval of what we still call "the executive," the individual who's supposed to faithfully execute the laws of congress. (Prove me wrong, Senator Leahy, make my day!)

The march of folly, continued

To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. “The March of Folly,” by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things -- how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession -- and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a “process of self-hypnosis,” Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of “The March of Folly” to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

Gaza disowned: the Pope, Israel and "reconciliation"

“Gaza is not on the Pope’s itinerary, nor will it be. There will be no change in these plans. But I’ll say it very clearly, the Pope is absolutely not going to Gaza.”

Such were the astounding comments made by the Pope’s spokesman in Israel, Wadie Abunasser, prior to Pope Benedict XVI visiting Palestine and Israel.

As if there was no massacre in Gaza, no families entirely slaughtered, no human rights violated to match the record of the most grisly of crimes in modern history. As if Gaza were a mere irritant in the annals of human suffering. More, as if there were no Catholic flock in Gaza. To clarify, there are actually nearly 2,000 Catholics in Gaza, apparently not important enough for the ‘cut’.

Six days to Free Aun San Suu Kyi

After 13 years of detention, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been jailed again on trumped up charges by the brutal Burmese regime. Call on UN Secretary General to secure her and all political prisoners' release. Burma's democracy leader and Nobel Peace prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been locked up on new trumped up charges, just days before her 13 years of detention was due to expire. She and thousands of fellow monks and students have been imprisoned for bravely challenging the brutal military regime with peaceful calls for democracy. Risking danger to speak out for their jailed friends, Burmese activists are demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners and calling on the world to help. We have just six days to get a flood of petition signatures to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon calling on him to make their release a top priority -- he can make this a condition of any renewed international engagement. Follow the link to sign the petition, and forward this email on to friends to ensure Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners are freed. Burmese activists will present the global petition to the media on May 26th:

Applying the lessons of Nuremburg to the USA in 2009

The Opening Statement of Chief Justice Robert L. Jackson at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in 1945 states in part:

    "And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn, aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment." (emphasis added)
Today’s news points out that Democrats were briefed by the CIA, to a decidedly uncertain extent, on the torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, This is by the CIA’s own admission, in a letter linked to at this article.

Released to the public

http://mattbors.com

76 members of Congress oppose staying in Afghanistan forever

Imagine if Spain indicts Gonzales, Bybee, Haynes, Yoo, Addington, and Feith, but the United States fails to extradite them and in fact appears guilty of having harbored and possibly even employed them at good salaries. Then suppose -- use your imagination! -- that Spain invades and occupies the United States. Now, imagine that seven years later we still aren't happy with being occupied by Spain, and the people of Spain oppose their own government's crimes and follies. Wouldn't it be decent and appreciated if some crusading Spanish legislators were to propose a piece of legislation requiring that within the next seven months their nation produce a plan to eventually someday withdraw all of its troops from our country?

George & the Water Board

George W. Bush has been compared to Curious George the monkey for many years, but the comparison didn't quite fit until now. Every Curious George story must include these plot elements:

1. The man with the yellow hat shows George something irresistible, asks him to leave it alone, and then wanders off.

2. George resists everything except temptation and causes all kinds of trouble.

3. Someone makes the bizarre claim that George has done more good than harm, gives him a prize.

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