Barbara Olshansky won the biggest case of her legal career when the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 ruled that detainees at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could challenge their incarceration in federal court. Rasul v. Bush, which The New York Times hailed as "the most important civil liberties case in half a century," reined in presidential power in prosecuting the war on terror. She lays out her case against her view of the abuse of power unique to the Bush administration and how it all happened.
Here we have two clips of talks she has given about the serious problems regarding detention of enemy combatants ensuing from 9/11 and the Afghanistan War. The first video is a short 5 minute summary of some of her thoughts.
Video Length 5 Min 43 sec
But the second video is a 53 minute talk about detainees at Guantanamo and around the world, how so many wrongfully got there and what has happened in the meantime. I believe it is a very compelling, thoughtful and educational talk well worth the time.
Karl Marx predicted that the captains of industry would eventually gain all of the spoils and leave the ordinary citizen exploited. Did you see it happen? Did you miss it? Well, it just happened in America. Bet you didn’t even recognize the moment when our grandchildren’s futures were stolen, when their anticipated tax rates were destined to be close to 70% and sentenced to a lower standard of living than their parents. Oh, I’m sorry. We will have to replay that movie.
The movie starts when multimillionaire Wall Street bankers were hired by the U.S. government to fix Wall Street. After all, if you want to repair the chicken coop, you would naturally hire the fox. The foxes were given a mandate to eliminate bad loans and other troubled financial instruments. But instead, the multimillionaire Wall Street bankers working for the U.S. government began shoveling money to the multimillionaire Wall Street bankers working for the banks as fast as they could shovel. And while our Congress looked on, like deer in the headlights, sucking their collective thumbs, the Wall Street bankers threw open the vault at Ft. Knox and yelled Come on Down---The Price is Right. Right is not the proper word---free would be better.
The newspapers reported that our government had allocated $780 Billion to the banks to fix the problems. But the headlines missed the boat by $12 TRILLION. Yes, the total of the giveaways and the guarantees so far have reached $13 TRILLION. To put this in perspective, from the beginning of time until 2001, the United States had accumulated $5 trillion in debt. By 2008, the debt had doubled to $10 trillion. Now hold you hats! In one year since then, the total debt and bank guarantees have reached $23 TRILLION.
How can a country that is on the verge of bankruptcy go on such a spending spree? Tell me how a company such as Goldman Sachs, which was on the edge of bankruptcy, pay its 28,500 employees AN AVERAGE of $700,000 this year? That’s easy---they paid these obscene salaries with taxpayer money and in so doing, mortgaged our grandchildren’s future! Yes, Goldman Sachs, which was virtually bankrupt and needed tax dollars to barely survive, just delivered the largest paychecks to its employees in its 140-year history. What is seriously wrong with this picture? Want to see that con game again? OK. Look at Morgan Stanley, another bank in need of resuscitation. The Wall Street Journal reports that it is paying its 40,000 employees an average of $343,000.
Picture all of this at a time when 6.5 million Americans have lost their jobs. The royalty celebrate with caviar and champagne while ordinary citizens try to stretch to buy both food and medicine. Karl Marx was right on target.
Listen to Naomi Prins, a former Goldman Sachs director explain the massive takeover in her book, “The Big Bank Bailout Payback Bamboozle.”
If true, allegations from a variety of sources depict a betrayal of principles by the Obama administration by continuing to permit brutal torture at Guantanamo. Torture is said to continue, in spite of President Obama's assurances that it would end under his leadership.
A series of reports of regular beatings, heads being flushed down toilets, feces in the faces of prisoners, urination on prisoners and pain to the testicles by guards at Gitmo is being circulated widely, but not in the mainstream media. Perhaps this is because it is hard to believe that such harsh treatment continues in the face of such presidental commitments.
Jeremy Scahill, one of the most vocal critics of the alleged current inhumanity, is outspoken and unequivocal in his extremely passionate condemnation. But Scakill is not alone. There appear to be too many other sources of abuse to be the rantings of one wild-eyed liberal. See seven different news sources plus a Jeremy Scahill video below.
Do you know that a new type of prison, called a Communication Management Unit, has been created in the United States in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois. They are more restrictive of prisoner rights than those of the most vicious and reprehensible prisoners in a supermax prison. Prisoners moved to these CMU's, do not have the right to find out why their prisoner rights have been so severely curtailed and cannot appeal such treatment. The prison system will not reveal the names of the prisoners being treated in this manner and even access to the prisoners' attorneys is more narrowly limited.
It is reported that, because the constitutionality of CMU's was challenged in 2006, the Bureau of Prisons agreed to terminate plans to create them. But later that year, implemented them anyway. The two short videos lay out the structure and operations of the CMU's and examine some prisoner experiences. For more see: Little Guantanamo and Common Dreams
Somalian pirates have attacked and held hostage large numbers of merchant ships off the coast of Mombasa. Former Ambassador Bolton is calling for an invasion of Somalia while other are recommending killing the pirates on sight. But the real story of why this piracy is going on has not been told by the mainstream media. The root of the problem is that Somalian waters are being overfished and used for toxic dumping by at least 20 different countries. In the meantime, Somalian fishermen are slowly being put out of business for lack of fish and because of pollution. As other countries attempt to impose stricter standards on environmental safety, some of the companies take their waste to waters off East Africa which are easily accessed throught the Suez Canal. Fishermen from Mediterranian nations also find that fishing there has been lucrative. But the Somalian fishermen have been attempting to insist that fishing without a license must be stopped in order to preserve their livlihoods. But that has fallen on deaf ears. Mohamed Abshir Waldo tells the story in the video below. For More See Canada
President Obama was my wildly enthisiatic choice for President. He was clear, determined, focused and called himself a man of change. Since being elected, he has done many good things. I was elated when he was elected because I was appalled at the Bush administration's view of civil rights and torture. I thought that President Obama would change all of that. Instead, I now feel badly disappointed.
The first video below shows then-Senator Obama discussing torture. He said, unequivocally, that, "We do not torture." So why has his new CIA Director, Leon Panetta, as reported in the Wall Street Journal said, "President Barack Obama can still use his wartime powers to authorize harsher techniques, if necessary." In that video, the President said, "We do not farm out torture." Then why does Panetta say that, "If we render someone we are obviously going to get assurances from that country that the detainee will be treated humanely." Then why render them at all? Does this sound like doubletalk? It does to me.
Panetta said, "The administration is evaluating the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding and will make recommendations on which should be allowed." The President says we do not torture but the CIA says it is not sure. How can that even be a question?
Also, the Obama administration is repeating the Bush administration’s “state secrets” claim -- blocking victims of torture from getting their day in court in a critical extraordinary rendition case. And they have told a federal court that military detainees held at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their detention. And the administration is moving forward with the Bush administration’s last-minute effort to deny Mohammed Jawad -- a Guantánamo prisoner who has been held in U.S. custody since he was a teenager -- the chance to challenge his unlawful detention. To top that off, the Pentagon is now claiming that Guantomomo Bay meets humanitarian standards laid out in the Geneva Conventions in spite of overwhelming evidence of widespread torture.
Finally, the second video shows Senator Obama criticizing President Bush for using signing statements on May 10, 2008, vowing to not use them himself, but then on March 11, 2009, issued his first signing statement.
This must all be a bad dream, but I am awake and the facts are still here.
President Obama promised to restrict lobbyists from his administration. He said, "Lobbyists entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am president."
But that seems anything but the truth. The second most important job in the Pentagon, where billions upon billions of weapons systems are purchased, is to be headed by William Lynn, a recent lobbyist for Raytheon Corporation, one of the largest defense contractors in the world. It is impossible for Lynn to NOT WORK ON matters involving Raytheon and he lobbied the Defense Department.
William Corr has been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Until recently, Corr was a registered lobbyist for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. It is impossible for Corr to NOT WORK ON matters regarding tobacco and he lobbied HHS.
At the Treasury Department, Secretary Timothy Geithner has hired former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff. Patterson was a registered lobbyist until April. It is impossible for Peterson to NOT WORK ON matters regarding Goldman Sachs and Wall Street. And he lobbied Treasury.
The National Journal is reporting fourteen of the 112 White House staffers that Obama has named had been registered as lobbyists at some point since 2005. The list includes Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and Homeland Security adviser John Brennan.
The Obama administration explains that some very important minds, invaluable to the country, need waivers from the policy in order to enable the use of extrordinary talent. If this is really true, then it just shows how incestuous is the marriage between the federal government and industry. Is it, No, no, Nannette, but then let's jump into bed? But are there so few talented minds in America where only one will do? Please! Don't try to pull my chain. Is President Obama, "but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing?" Surely not. But he hasn't made a graceful takeoff of Good Ship Lollypop.
Who is Mike Connell and why is he important? Connell, a computer whiz, was involved in most of the close Bush victories in 2000 and 2004. It is hypothesized that Connell was able to sift through the voter returns in Florida, Ohio and other states after the voting was finished but before the votes were made public and could modify vote counts in that process. Karl Rove apparently threatened Connell to not disclose any of this information. It is said Connell nevertheless decided to talk to the authorities but before that could happen, Connell was killed in the crash of his private plane, in spite of the fact that he was an experienced pilot and in spite of the report that Connell canceled two earlier flights because he was worried about sabotage to his plane.
The vitally important question here is what is the real story about vote fraud and if Connell could do it, others can as well. It could have happened in the 2008 election and it could again happen in 2012 unless it is investigated and, if true, rooted out.
