Re: new torture bill - Is this True?

by **4911** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:12 pm

<a href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/290906torturebill.htm">www.prisonplanet.com/arti...rebill.htm</a> "Buried amongst the untold affronts to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the very spirit of America, the torture bill contains a definition of "wrongfully aiding the enemy" which labels all American citizens who breach their "allegiance" to President Bush and the actions of his government as terrorists subject to possible arrest, torture and conviction in front of a military tribunal." and <a href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/290906sexuallytorture.htm">www.prisonplanet.com/arti...orture.htm</a> "Similarly, law Professor Marty Lederman explains: "this [subsection (ii) of the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant'] means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all." We have established that the bill allows the President to define American citizens as enemy combatants. Now let's take it one step further. Before this article is dismissed as another extremist hyperbolic rant, please take a few minutes out of your day to check for yourself the claim that Bush now has not only the legal authority but the active blessings of his own advisors to torture American children. " is this just AJ venting ?

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:44 pm

Citation of the specific language would have been helpful, but here is what Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman had to say: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,0,619852.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail">www.latimes.com/news/opin...-rightrail</a> The White House Warden This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison. ADVERTISEMENT Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed to terrorists on purpose. But other provisions of the bill call even this limitation into question. What is worse, if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials. Legal residents who aren't citizens are treated even more harshly. The bill entirely cuts off their access to federal habeas corpus, leaving them at the mercy of the president's suspicions. We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal. After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the administration's lawyers a terrible precedent. The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power. At the very least, it would encourage the Supreme Court to draw an invidious distinction between citizens and legal residents. There are tens of millions of legal immigrants living among us, and the bill encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review. But the bill also reinforces the presidential claims, made in the Padilla case, that the commander in chief has the right to designate a U.S. citizen on American soil as an enemy combatant and subject him to military justice. Congress is poised to authorized this presidential overreaching. Under existing constitutional doctrine, this show of explicit congressional support would be a key factor that the Supreme Court would consider in assessing the limits of presidential authority. ************* We already know that John Yoo thinks the President has the authority to order the testicles of children of terror suspects to be crushed. Do we really think Boosh won't use this "authority"?

by **4911** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:58 pm

...its...dazing...

by **blanc** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:03 pm

I don't live in america. are these concerns getting an airing in the mainstream media? how is this destruction of the tenets of freedom being presented?

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:25 pm

blanc, they are presenting it as no big deal. No mention of how we now live in a dictatorship. …(N)o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever, … including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions under this chapter. No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination No one is asking the question-How will an innocent person defend him/herself should they be detained? Is Boosh infallible, Godlike, he cannot make a mistake? He cannot be venal and deliberately detain innocents? I ask you- How is it not a dictatorship when the Executive can legally detain and torture people, anyone at all at the discretion of the "president" and the detainee has no legal recourse? None at all?

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:47 pm

Just found this in comment section of Glenn Greenwalds blog: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Off the current subject, but my local paper has a blurb in it about some bills passed in the wee hours last night. One of the most dangerous, when combined with both the Patriot Act and the Torture and Gulag Act gives the President control of the National Guard troops of any state in event of a natural disaster or other national emergency. The article also states that it gives the President more power to activate regular military troops on American soil, weakening the Posse Comitatus act. Have you seen these bills? Are these bills simply passed by one house or the other but not reconciled so that they are now, in fact, law? Are these bills that await the lame duck session to truly and fully turn us into a dictatorship?<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.haloscan.com/comments/glenngreenwald/115962884431307080/#34946">www.haloscan.com/comments...080/#34946</a> Cannot as of yet find confirmation, but will post as soon as I do.

by **sunny** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:12 pm

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1884351,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/usa/st...51,00.html</a> Bush faces wave of challenges to terror law Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Saturday September 30, 2006 The Guardian The Bush administration yesterday faced a raft of legal challenges to a sweeping new regime for Guantánamo that would deny court oversight to detainees in the war on terror, and would bar prosecution of US personnel for war crimes. Mr Bush is expected to move within days to sign into law proposals for the treatment and trial before military tribunals of the detainees. The legislation, approved by the senate on Thursday, is a victory for the White House over senate Republicans, who had resisted attempts to relax standards on the treatment of detainees, and depart from standard rules of evidence in their trials. The vote, which passed 65 to 34, was cast after more than 10 hours of debate. It is a boon to Republicans, who plan to campaign on their national security credentials in the midterm elections. However, lawyers for the 460 detainees at Guantánamo say they intend to launch legal challenges to what they described as a broad assault on fundamental human rights. "The fact that they are denying the right of habeas corpus is so unlawful and unconstitutional that it throws us back to before King John and the Magna Carta," said Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the Guantánamo detainees. The first cases to go before the courts are expected to be challenges to the senate's denial of the right of habeas corpus to inmates at Guantánamo, some of whom have been held for five years without charge. Despite impassioned pleas from human rights advocates - and even some Republican senators - legislators voted 51 to 48 on Thursday night to bar detainees from challenging their detention in the US courts. The measure goes even further than legislation enacted last December that would bar future habeas corpus challenges, because it would bar even those cases already before the courts from being heard. "No court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States [who] has been determined ... to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant," the legislation says. About a dozen such challenges by detainees are already pending before the courts, Mr Ratner said. "That issue will be litigated immediately," he said. Detainees' lawyers are expected to challenge other controversial provisions of the senate bill, such as the granting of a retroactive amnesty to interrogators at the CIA's network of secret prisons against prosecution for torture and other war crimes. The challenges are expected to open a new chapter in the struggle between the Bush administration and the supreme court over the president's authority in the war on terror. ************ They better hurry before another SC justice dies and Boosh puts in Alito II.

by **medicis** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:20 pm

I am willing to state that I will "purposefully and materially support" -nonviolent- hostilities against the current illigitimate, illegal and criminal government of the United States. That I will do everything in my power (limited as that is) to overthrow this current and any similar government (that attempts to abrogate the Constitution) in a nonviolent manner. And that I will do everything in my power to support the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights of the United States of America. Does that make me a criminal. NO. I think that makes me a patriot. Can any here state they would do less? We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. medicis

by **blanc** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:21 pm

glad you said that medicis, but would like to suggest that subterfuges, foresight and cunning may be necessary in any such struggle .

by **HMKGrey** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:24 pm

This stuff is terrifying. Absolutely hoffifying. Where's Joe H when we need him? I might have to move to Oz.

by **medicis** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:35 pm

Thank you Blanc. But. I think some of us will have to sacrifice ourselves to make the point. To challenge the government. To challenge the fascists. There are worse things I could do with the rest of my life.... For me, it is far to late to lay low, to avoid detection. It is probably too late for any on this list, as well. The internet is like a great 'honey pot'. And I am sure it is studied with great scrutiny. The camps are already waiting. How long before Bush finds an excuse for martial law? How long before Black Water's storm troopers begin to round folks up? Or posse comitatus violated. If we don't do All that we can at this point, how long before nothing can be done at all?

by **Seamus OBlimey** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:51 pm

Terrifying indeed! Dare I suggest that all free thinking US citizens loudly proclaim themselves as enemy combatants and challenge the fascist regime to arrest you? Wear an anti-Bush or anti-war T-shirt and hand yourselves in at the nearest police station or military base. Contact your local senator, governor, whoever and tell them you've been harbouring thoughts of resisting the neo-con takeover by using less oil, cancelling your cable tv etc. Ask if that makes you an enemy of the state. Declare yourselves as loudly as possible as enemies of that state. Otherwise when we come gunning for them we may think you complicit. Only you can decide your future. Or let someone else.

by **medicis** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:37 pm

Would anybody be interested in contributing some ideas to what a statement of resistance against the government might include? I am trying to create such a statement for my web site. What can I state that violates this new travesty of a bill but doesn't jeopardize me with respect to other law?

by **4911** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:07 pm

How bout "To The Ministry of Good Behaviour, In my ever growing passion to serve the Great Cause, I have decided to take matters into my own hands, and to rid you of the need of diverting funds from the War Effort in order to apprehend and liquidate me for daring to question the sanity of the Almighty Chancellor, will pre-emptively stuff myself into my kitchen oven and incinerate myself for the glory of the Great American Empire. I beg all progressively thinking democrats everywhere to follow my patriotic lead. It is only through the utmost sacrifice to The Global American Cause that we aid our Superior Compassionate Masters to achieve the Noble Goal of Complete and Utter Conquest and Hegemony over the inferior Races, Cultures and Economies of our fragile World. For Victory!" <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=4911>4911</A> at: 9/30/06 6:42 pm

by **Seamus OBlimey** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:18 pm

Like I just said, make yourself blatantly offensive and challenge them to enforce their laws. Be prepared to be locked up for a while and clog up the system. It won't go that far because they can't sustain it on a domestic level. These laws are for the few not you. You could go a step further and start grassing up your mates (with their permission) and get them to grass on you. Overload the system, report any slight transgression of local politicians and demand action under the new laws. Demand action against anyone who breaks those laws and they'll realise they'll have to lock themselves up. Do you realise that your army, airforce and national guard are away fighting foreign wars? So who's to stop you? The rest of the world is relying on the people of the US to show the spirit of freedom they've always proclaimed. Don't let us down now. Please.