ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

The protests against the Republican convention have barely begun but the police have already begun their crackdown against any one perceived to be involved the demonstrations. Police in the Twin Cities worked with federal officials to detain dozens of activists and conduct a series of coordinated raids on a number of locations. Among them was Democracy Now!’s Elizabeth Press who was detained, along with several others, in a house raid on the video collective, I-Witness Video. Press files a report from the streets of the Twin Cities.

But why should I care, you ask, I’m not a rabble rouser, I won’t have anything to worry about in the police state these tactics hint we’re going towards.

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

Frankly, this is hugely anti-constitutional. In the last 8 years the 4th amendment has been completely bent over the oval office desk and fucked, hard-core, and we’ve said nothing, because only “terrorists” were getting no-knock raids. (Interesting, isn’t it, that the Jews were almost the last to be persecuted by the Nazis, and the first were the communists - persecuted by the Nazis, the socialist party…) Now, our media and others who dissent against the ruling class are being ‘detained’ (the same term they use for captives in Guantanamo, right?), stripped of their rights given to us by the very founders of this country who fought against governmental oppression and intolerance.

Free speech and the right to protest and bear arms against your goverment is enshrined in the very words of the founders of our contry, these aren’t some piss-ass amentments brought to ban flag burning, these are the words of those who risked EVERYTHING to give us everything we hold dear in this country. This is being taken away from us. It will not be given back without fighting for it again. People died for these freedoms (the same freedom we’re claiming to defend in Iraq and yet denying to anyone saying the Iraq war is a bad idea). Do you want to die for these freedoms, against your fellow countrymen who think you shouldn’t have them? Someday you may.

Some may say it will never come to American vs. American for our constitution rights, but to get these rights at all it was British vs. British until they declared American sovereignity.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: On October 2, 2002, a week after John Rizzo, the acting CIA general counsel, visited Gitmo, a second senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, went to Guantanamo, attended a meeting of Gitmo staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from Gitmo, who a couple of weeks earlier had attended that training given at Fort Bragg by instructors by the SERE school.

While the training—excuse me, while the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees.When the Gitmo chief of staff suggested at the meeting that Gitmo “can’t do sleep deprivation,” Lieutenant Colonel Beaver, Gitmo’s senior lawyer, responded, “Yes, we can—with approval.” Lieutenant Beaver added that Gitmo, quote, “may need to curb the harsher operations while the International Committee of the Red Cross is around.”

Mr. Fredman, the senior CIA lawyer, suggested that it’s, quote, “very effective to identify detainee phobias and to use them” and described for the group the so-called “wet towel” technique, which we know as waterboarding. Mr. Fredman said, quote, “It can feel like you’re drowning. The lymphatic system will react as if you’re suffocating, but your body will not cease to function,” close-quote.

And Mr. Fredman presented the following disturbing perspective of our legal obligations under our anti-torture laws, saying, quote, “It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” How on earth did we get to the point where a senior US government lawyer would say that whether or not an interrogation technique is torture is, quote, “subject to perception” and that if, quote, “the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”? The Gitmo senior JAG officer Lieutenant Colonel Beaver’s response was: “We will need documentation to protect us.”

Once again the DemocracyNow!  bitches have scooped Western Civilization’s media on this subject.

On another note I like to harp about, Barak Hussein Obama Yomamadroid has done something weird (an my spellcheck only likes the Hussein part of his name. hmm.) with his presidential campaign - observe:

…by showing that he could raise large sums from small donors — 47 percent of the $263 million Mr. Obama received has come in amounts of $200 or less — Mr. Obama has made the argument that he has achieved online what the public finance system has been unable to do. And he has been freed from the necessity of spending countless hours fund-raising.

…the use of the Internet to raise campaign money at least plays into the spirit of campaign finance reform, some analysts said, and possibly does more to rein in the influence of big donors and special interests than 30 years of restrictions imposed by federal law.

If you look at the graphic on that NYT article, you’ll see that if you put the bar at $500 donation the percent jumps to 55%. McCain on the other hand only has 31% donating $500 or less - which candidate is more likely to support YOU, majority America who has less than $200 to spare for anything right now? Of course, back on DemNow!, you’ll find Nader talking trash on Obama AND McCain - and unlike both of them, he doesn’t take a penny of corporate or PAC money.  Obama is so crazy-sauce popular, he could probably dump all the PAC and Corp money and still win for President - however, that would be a bad idea - look where it gets Nader. I’m not saying it’s not honorable and the actual right thing to do, however he should do it after he wins office. Think about this for a second - sure, that’s a lot of money he wouldn’t have to campaign with, but those PACs and Corps currently supporting or at least hedging their bets with some support for Obama in hopes for future kindness might take the return of the money as a signal that he will be ‘against’ him and take that money to McCain or otherwise turn it against Obama. What would really be great is taking the Corp/PAC sums and giving them to African aids charities or support for orphan Iraqi children etc.

Nader is probably the only candidate I’ve heard in any of my readings both mentioning and quoting the US Constitution [and isn’t that a word fraught with meanings]:

Doesn’t the Constitution start with “We the people”? 

Nader criticizes Obama yet praises two possible VP picks for the Obaminator.

Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z. In his voting record, he voted against reform of the Mining Act of 1872, which gives away our hard rock minerals. He voted for a terrible class-action restriction law that the corporations wanted him to vote for. He, in many ways, has disappointed people who had greater hopes for him. He’s voted for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. He refuses to even discuss—he’s vigorously against impeachment of Bush and Cheney. He won’t even support his colleague Senator Russ Feingold motion to censure the Bush administration for systemic repeated illegal wiretaps. He—you know, he’s letting the corporate-dominated city of Washington, the corporations who actually rule us now in Washington, determine his agenda. And that does not augur well.

AMY GOODMAN: What do think of Chuck Hagel as a vice-presidential running mate—yes, the Republican senator—for Barack Obama, one of the names that’s being bandied about?

RALPH NADER: Well, he thinks for himself. And that’s about the best you can expect of a politician these days. Senator Jim Webb, Senator Chuck Hagel, they think for themselves. They’re not robotic minds. They’re not completely monetized minds. And they’re Vietnam veterans. So, in today’s politics, that puts them forward.

Nader is also the only one talking sense on Iran that I’ve seen.

Iran has not invaded anybody in 250 years. Yet it’s obviously frightened. It’s surrounded by the US military west, south, east. It’s been labeled “Axis of Evil” by Bush, who invaded Iraq after he labeled them “Axis of Evil.” We have Special Forces, according to Sy Hersh, that go in and out of Iran. What are they going to do? They talk very belligerently nationally, but they’re really scared. I mean, we supported Saddam Hussein, logistically and with materiel, in invading Iran, which took a half a million Iranian lives. They remember the shooting down of their civilian airliner years ago.

I guess if your choice is still Giant Douche or Shit Sandwich, you might as well reach for a cookie even if you fail. Good stuff. After reading his positions, I’ll vote Nader.

1. Bartender, This CPI Not So Think As You Good It Is!

Another round, please! The futures this morning spiked hard on what conventional wisdom suggests was a truly impressive Consumer Price Index print. Consumer prices in February came in unexpectedly unchanged thanks largely to 0.5% decline in Energy prices that, seasonally adjusted, turned into a 2% decline.

Consumer prices were forecast to rise 0.3%, according to the median estimate of 81 economists by Bloomberg.

Looking inside the CPI, Medical Care costs rose 0.1%, the smallest increase since March 2007. Food, which accounts for about 20% of the CPU, continued to show gains, up 0.4% increase.

The reality, however, is that this inflation measure is a lagging indicator no matter how it is sliced and diced. But credit markets are leading indicators. And while economists and market participants fight over the legitimacy of this CPI print, the credit markets continue to scream deflation.

My thought: What if the price Americans were paying in oil subsidies payed for by out tax dollars (the very same oil subsidies that we denigrate Venezuela for having) were factored into the CPI?

If you go to the first three web sites listed below, you’ll learn that the oil subsidies in the US are in the range of $20 to $55 billion per year (averaging and rounding off). The high end includes the military costs of “defending” Persian Gulf oil; the low end doesn’t.

So add that to the price at the pump and see what we get, I’m too tired to do the math right now (2am and don’t feel like decyphering the Consumer Price Codex at the moment). The above link is rather specious but I’ve had trouble coming up with hard data about oil subsidies. And you think all those taxes you pay at the pump are going to the gov and back to the roads, but it’s robbing Peter to pay Dick because all that money is at the very least going straight back to Big Oil. Conservative estimates put it at an extra 32 cents per gallon. Now, I pay about $400 bones in taxes per quarter, and in the last three month’s I’ve spent approximately $233 on gas in the last quarter (and that’s not counting cash or December, this is for the quarter ending 3/31), which, at an average of $3 a gallon ($3.41 now with Safeway discount) gives me roughly 78 gallons of gas bought in 2 1/2 month. That’s an extra $25 at the pump, so that means $25 less of my taxes going to pay for things for you and I. It’s going to help us drive our machines of war over Iraqis, and Saudi born Iraqi jihadis. Or at least a good $20 bucks worth is.

A case of the cowardice of rich folk or something more sinister, you be the judge.

Days after its Academy Award nomination, the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side was dropped by the Discovery Channel over concerns it was “controversial.” The film investigates some of the most egregious abuses associated with the so-called “war on terror,” including the US torture of prisoners. We get reaction from filmmaker Alex Gibney.

Go here to give Discovery Channel a (polite) piece of your mind. I chose Corporate Information for type of request and then I picked a random thing off the next list and sent the following:

I would like you to pass this comment on to someone with decision-making power over which movies get aired. I would like to humbly request you to reconsider you decision not to air ‘Taxi to the Dark Side.’ I think it is as important to the American people to view this controversial movie as it is for them to learn about the controversial subjects of evolution and the nature of the universe. No issue is without controversy, please do your duty by your name and help us make a Discovery.

In a scathing 10-page memo to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker this week, Manuel Miranda said the State Department is incapable of carrying out President Bush’s policies in the country because its diplomats lack basic management skills, accusing American diplomats of gross and potentially criminal negligence and incompetence. Miranda, a Bush supporter who just completed a yearlong tour as a senior legislative adviser at the Baghdad embassy, said he was stunned by what he saw in Baghdad, with professional diplomats unwilling or unable to make important decisions on staffing, implement policy or assist the U.S. military effort.

Asked about the criticism, the State Department said Miranda was “entitled to his opinions” but that they were not shared by Bush or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

And of course, those who have been there maybe one day a year since we invaded think we’re doing ‘a heck of a job.’

“We think (Crocker) and his team are doing a tremendous job under what obviously are very difficult circumstances,”

“It’s a hard job.” <– Quote from Bush during the 2004 presidential elections, about being President of the United States.

Sure, it’s a hard job, but that’s no excuse for being a royal fuckup.

We’re not jumping everytime someone walks behind us, or eye foreigners as suspiciously as we one did, and are backsliding on national security since the September 11 attacks, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said on Wednesday.

“A couple of years after 9/11 it would have seemed inconceivable that this forever-war we created could have faded from the public eye to a grumpy money-sink for an already debt-laden nation, and that we’d have started to get on with our lives after our shock wore off and our in-bred human resilience kicked in,” Chertoff told a forum at Harvard.

“I’m concerned that we are beginning to backslide,” he said, citing several areas where the United States has tried to moonwalk past issues like us being the bad guys who are torturing, falsely imprisoning hundreds of men at Guantanamo,  and kidnapping foreign citizens for torture in other foreign countries.

He said many residents, mayors and business owners are resisting the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to build a border fence on private land, land the government does not own, and does not have the owners’ permission to build on — a key part of his department efforts to stop “potential migrant workers and maids,” forcing all incoming humans to hide better, rather than opening up the borders and keeping an eye on all the people coming in, and having any non-border-crossing crossing show up as highly provocative. 

“They have business partners on the other side they would like to remain friends with, and we must make that as difficult and ugly as possible. Anyway, that other side of the fence is just dirty Mexighetto anyway, what ‘beautiful’ view would we be ruining?” Chertoff added.

 ”Business groups were pissed when we made it harder for foreigners to spend their money here. But guys, we PROTECTED you from that dirty foreign money.”

He said the U.S. government has also had difficulty tightening rules on tens of thousands of U.S. chemical plants to protect their stockpiles from terrorists who are reportedly hiding in caves exactly half the world away (Pakistan enjoys a timezone 12 hours difference from Sunny Cold California).

In congressional testimony Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden became the first administration official to publicly acknowledge the agency used waterboarding on detainees following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

So it’s admitted. More:

McConnell, the nation’s spy chief, said in Tuesday’s testimony that waterboarding “taken to its extreme, could be death; you could drown someone.” But he, too, refused to declare it illegal in hypothetical cases.

“Everything I know is it is a legal technique used in a specific set of circumstances,” McConnell said. “You have to know the circumstances to make a legal judgment,” McConnell said.

They still wont own it as torture. They still will wrangle. Here’s a good one though:

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told senators during the same hearing Tuesday that waterboarding remains in the CIA arsenal - so long as it as the specific consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

So this means that any waterboarding that was done after it was supposedly taken out of the CIA’s mainstream arsenal, the President would be directly responsible for authorizing terror, at least according to the National Intelligence Director. Of course, they still have the standard excuses, vis.

Hayden said interrogations have been conducted by both intelligence agents and government contractors interrogators but denied that the practice, as he described it, has been outsourced.

“This is a governmental activity under governmental direction and control in which the participant may be both government employees and contractors,” he said in an exchange with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

And, of course, Blackwater’s immunity to any fucking law on earth while in Iraq, and our somehow inability to revoke the immunity we granted, to known criminals, except by distinction of the law that makes them unable to be criminals despite having commited crimes knowingly.

Gareth Porter, this also comes right at the time that new documents have—newly declassified documents have revealed that the Johnson administration faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the war in Vietnam, to provide a pretext for increased bombing and increased troops there.

You’ll probably not be seeing this anywhere in major media. The shocking news that the US Government faked an act of war against itself to perpetuate it’s sold-to-the-public war in Vietnam.  What makes anyone think they have changed, after having already lied us into war?

Wiki: Simultaneously, he [Lyndon B. Johnson] escalated the American involvement in the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 in early 1968.

Sounds like a ’surge’ to me.

Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records including e-mail.

Facciola gave the White House five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain e-mails written between 2003 and 2005.

In asking that the complaints be dismissed, the Bush administration says the president’s record keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not reviewable by the courts.

The Bush administration had offered to have the government file a sworn declaration stating that the White House is safeguarding all backup materials. Instead, Facciola recommended that the judge in the case, Henry Kennedy, issue a court order because “a declaration is not punishable by contempt. In other words, without such an order, destruction of the backup media would be without consequence.”

Does anyone really think Bush wont completely get away with this? “I’m the President, Terror Terror!” and everyone will start nodding their heads sagely and he will go on to bone us once again. Then partisan accusation will be flung, judicial activism will be alleged, labels will be planted and people will spend more time defending themselves from the labels Bush has given them than actually trying to fight his illegal actions.

“A lot of Americans are anxious about the economy,” the president told business leaders in Chicago. “This frankly is not unprecedented,” he said, pointing to the recession in the early months of his administration, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and natural disasters.

“In seven years we’ve had experience in dealing with anxiety,” Bush said.

“We’ve had experience in dealing with anxiety. Every time, our economy has absorbed those shocks and dealt with then,” he said to a gathering organized by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.

I like how he points out that we’ve only had anxiety since he took office. I think this was unintentional, maybe he really believes history does start with him, the messiah-president. He also doesn’t mention that everything but the recession in the early years was preventable, if he had lifted a finger. He sure does mention anxiety a lot, like it’s a fifteen dollar word that he just learned.

We have absorbed those shocks, and dealt with them. But it’s one of those 1 step forward, 2 steps back kind of situations. Poverty and misery and apathy are good for the ruling elite, they encourage them to keep themselves in power. Look at pretty much any nation/kingdom/empire in history and see.