The Rag Blog

We’ve said before that you could be next. It seems clear based on everything we’ve seen this criminal administration do in the past seven years that they are beyond the law, they will steam-roll anyone in their way, and they will jail the dissidents. You (or I) could be next.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

It Does Happen in America: The Political Trial of Don Siegelman
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration’s use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who “they could not beat fair and square,” according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so “many red flags pointing to injustice.”

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed “60 Minutes” to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental “technical difficulties” caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution’s case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for “objective journalism” in their mind.

The injustice done by the US Department of Justice (sic) to Siegelman is so crystal clear that a participant in Karl Rove’s plan to destroy Siegelman can’t live with her conscience. Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who did opposition research for Rove, testified under oath to the House Judiciary Committee and went public on “60 Minutes.” Simpson said she was told by Bill Canary, the most important GOP campaign advisor in Alabama, that “my girls can take care of Siegelman.”

Canary’s “girls” are two US Attorneys in Alabama, both appointed by President Bush. One is Bill Canary’s wife, Leura Canary. The other is Alice Martin. According to Harper’s Scott Horton,a law professor at Columbia University, Martin is known for abusive prosecutions.

What was the “crime” for which Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted? Scrushy made a contribution to the Alabama Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization set up to push for a lottery to benefit secondary education in Alabama, to retire debt associated with the Alabama education lottery proposal. Scrushy was a member of Alabama’s Certificate of Need board, a nonpaid group that oversaw hospital expansion. Scrushy had been a member of the board through the terms of the prior three governors, and Siegelman asked him to serve another term.

Federal prosecutors claimed that Scrushy’s contribution was a bribe to Siegelman in exchange for being appointed to the Certificate of Need board. In the words of federal prosecutor Stephen Feaga, the contribution was “given in exchange for a promise for an official act.”

Feaga’s statement is absolute nonsense. It is well known that Scrushy had served on the board for years, felt he had done his duty, and wanted off the board. It was Siegelman who convinced Scrushy to remain on the board. Moreover, Scrushy gave no money to Siegelman. The money went to a foundation.

As a large number of attorneys have pointed out, every US president appoints his ambassadors and cabinet members from people who have donated to his campaign. Under the reasoning applied in the Siegelman case, a large number of living former presidents, cabinet members and ambassadors should be in federal prison_not to mention the present incumbents.

How in the world did a jury convict two men of a non-crime?

Read all of this horror story, which includes a tale of Republican election theft, utter perversion of the justice system, BushCo rewards for loyal criminals, and ruin of one man’s life here.

This article has already been on European Tribune in late December, and there is an update now concerning the fact that I have registered an LLC in Washington for the purposes outlined in this piece. I will send the update along after folks have had a chance to consider the idea.

This – or something like – will be happening, so I’d appreciate any input. The update piece is essentially a draft Members’ Agreement, which spells out the legal protections, suggested relationships between membership classes, and other components of such enterprises. It has been critiqued by several people who are involved in such endeavors, and who will probably invest, so things are moving along. I can see something concretely happening this year.

One other thing – although this piece is all about and for the potential principals, this same approach can be used for almost every conceivable economic arrangement – including ‘charity’. For instance, affordable housing could be arranged via the same basic set-up. The investors would be people looking for a ‘reasonable’ return with transparent terms and conditions and real assets supporting the investment. In fact, what would you think about creating a section of TRB to ‘tag’ co-operative movement type articles and discussions?

Paul

A Real Estate Co-op – Dollar Hedge Or Lifestyle – Or Both
By Paul Spencer / The Rag Blog

More than 100 years ago, somebody (J.S. Mill? Henry George? Ricardo?) stated or implied that land is the only real (tangible) value. Far as I’m concerned, that’s pretty close to true (except that love and honor count for at least as much, even if less tangible). Land gives us the best opportunity to earn a living on our own terms. On the other hand, if we have dollars, we are participants in a system that relies on the large-scale interaction of the self-interests of untrustworthy gamesters. Now – if you can have land in concert with peer stakeholders, you have the potential advantage of larger-scale action, and your partners should be natural allies in the pursuit of added value.

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[One caveat – this is not a solicitation or a prospectus. This is a discussion of hypothetical business/personal relationships and arrangements. If some individuals express an interest in actual development of some of the concepts developed, then we will get together on another channel to discuss specific proposals.]

[Second caveat – when I bring up an example to illustrate some suggestion, you can assume that the example represents my personal preference in the matter.]

Over time, and since the inception of capitalism, land is the one inflation, deflation, stagnation, bust, you-name-it hedge. In ‘boom’ times land-price appreciation may not keep up with other investments. In ‘bust’ periods land “values” may fall in terms of some particular currency. But the value of the land is inherent: home, food source, aesthetic, psychological grounding, work site.

Co-operatives – in this case, registered as a Limited Liability Company or a Limited Liablity Partnership – give the stakeholders a scale of buying power that lone individuals of similar means cannot match. In other words there is an immediate financial advantage in terms of our means. After that, it’s all about the membership: what do they want to accomplish? What do they bring to the task?

So – what does a co-op do? What are the relationships of the members to each other? To the land? How is it funded? How are funds channeled? Protections? Duties? These are all questions that can be resolved by articles of incorporation and by bylaws. Here are a few possible answers:

It is legally registered in one corporate form or another, which form automatically defines some constraints and responsibilities. I have a copy of the Washington state LLC regulation, for instance; and, based on several readings, it appears to cover every concern that a member might have. However, it allows the membership – advised in a sense by the provisions of the regulation – to construct their own, majority-defined rules for operation and control of the organization.

The co-op can have a fiduciary function. It can be the ‘bank’ for transactions or construction loans; it can hold a fund for maintenance or for common-use construction projects; it can serve as a company for intra-cooperative distribution or for outside sales of products produced by common-ownership areas – e.g., solar- or wind-generated electrical power, agricultural produce, timber.

Members can own individual lots and the ‘improvements’ thereon. Or the co-op can own the land, and members can rent the land for purposes of – whatever the co-op registration articles allow (e.g., building a house {presumably for the member to inhabit or let}, gardening, raising llamas {they’re quiet}).

They can participate in economic activities that are generated on common-owned (co-op owned) property (e.g., growing hops and barley to brew beer, timber harvest, solar-based generation of electricity).

Members can collectively decide (in my opinion based on some kind of super-majority) what kinds of activities are appropriate to the commons. They can collectively decide on restrictions or covenants on activities and standards appropriate to the member-owned properties (again, my position would be to require some kind of super-majority basis).

There could be classes of membership, including ownership, worker, investor, renter. But the essential principle for me would be that they are essentially equitable. For instance, a long-term worker – say, a Utilities technician (for common water projects, solar generation station, common ‘geothermal’ pipe beds, wind turbines) – would be paid some standard wage, but could also gain some dollar-equivalent share of the commons value of the co-op. (This is because labor creates/adds value to the organization.) A renter might have some kind of equity relationship to the property where he/she resides, arising from all or some portion of rents paid within a formula that incorporates some measure of the owner’s prior equity – perhaps a market appraisal performed at the commencement of the renter’s occupation of the property.

An important matter – I strongly recommend that some elements of such an LLC contract should be set in perpetuity. They should not be subject to amendment or dilution by addition. For instance, if the Purpose is to create a fully democratic device to purchase, hold, and improve property in pursuit of an appropriate balance of sustainability, sustenance, and social health – well, this should not be subject to modification in my opinion.

Those are some suggestions for some elements of an organizational scheme. There are many elements to be covered in the creation of such an entity; I am just trying to demonstrate some of the considerations in order to encourage discussion.

Concretely – speaking for myself – I want to buy land in Klickitat County between Goldendale and WA Route 141 (preferably with others in an LLC). It is mostly high-prairie land with arboreal remnants from the eastern edges of the Cascades mountain range. There is water, good soil, substantial sunlight, plenty of wind, four seasons, clean air – all of the best stuff. Down the road we – or you and your friends – can talk about doing this in Umbria, New Zealand, South Africa, Romania (Bulgaria?), Viet Nam, Tasmania, Costa Rica, Wales, or ??. But we need to prove something first; we need to model this idea in some form. And western Klickitat County has everything needed to do that – plus good prices for large chunks of land.

The region of interest for me is mostly Rural Residence with a 5 acre minimum lot size (RR5). There is a subcategory that allows cluster development, as long as the lot plus the lot’s share of the commons equals 5 acres minimum. Generally, 200 to 1,000 + acres range from $2,000 to 5,000 per acre in this area, counter-respectively. So the base investment is $10,000 to 25,000 per lot. To develop water, roads, utilities – and to get started on common solar- and wind-generation systems would about double the investment. For example, if an LLC buys 300 acres total for $1 million U.S, leaves 50 acres in common ownership, then it will need 50 investor/owners @ approximately $40,000 each. The extra million would be used for infrastructure, but best practice would be to leave some part in a contingency fund, too.

[Quick aside – property of this sort goes for about $70,000 for bare land currently in this area. The infrastructure raises this to a minimum of $100,000 per 5-acre lot.]

[Second aside – look up Bend, OR to see the probable future of this area. Most people like or love Bend and the surrounding resort developments. This area is essentially the same, except closer to Portland, OR. Why hasn’t it been similarly developed? I’d say that, first, Bend is closer to California, and the phenomenon has a certain cycle of discovery and cautious growth; then a threshold is reached at which point the whole boom mentality takes over, until the area is overgrown and over-developed, and ‘smart money’ looks to the next cycle. Secondly, there is a town named Hood River, OR (located about 30 miles to the southwest of Goldendale, WA) that is the current ‘darling’ for development. It is reaching geographical saturation in several senses of the phrase. Klickitat’s time is coming, and there’s two ways to look at it from our viewpoint: 1) take the money and run, or 2) create the new paradigm, enjoy your home and community, and thumb your nose at the ‘smart money’. I’m for the second option.]

I’m posting this here, where the members appreciate the underlying concerns and can propose solutions. Plus, I will be discussing these ideas with some of my friends and relations.

One question that might arise is: What’s in it for paul spencer? The answer would be: the same share as yours at the same price. If enough people indicate interest, then I would want to charge, say, $40 per hour to draft an agreement, to coordinate the creation of the details, and to register the LLC. The invoice for this could be credited against my share of some eventual membership’ purchase price.

If we were to get some such organization going, there would also be the matter of how to draw the subdivision and how to allot the lots. Actually, there would be many details of this sort. By the end of the process, it might behoove all participants to agree quickly, or you could be buying my share for me, after all.

Just for fun, here are some samples of possible parcels from Klickitat County, Washington, U.S.A.

http://68.178.238.98/coltprintcr.asp?brn=CR1&lid=23555

http://68.178.238.98/coltprintcr.asp?brn=CR1&lid=23118

http://68.178.238.98/coltprintcr.asp?brn=CR1&lid=23288

Last items: I have been discussing these concepts with Chris Cook in the UK and a nearby friend, Steve Nieman (who is a Founding Member of an aircraft-owning co-op called Downwind Corp.). They have several strong opinions about the how-tos and what-fors. One particular matter is that they both think that all of any land that might be involved should be commonly held. A second matter is that they look more to a Founders’ group – or a Sustaining Members class – in ultimate control of any such potential LLC or LLP. I’m probably in disagreement with both points, as I am inclined to: 1) vest property rights in the owner/members, keeping some agreed portion of the total parcel for common purposes and ownership; and 2) rely on some level of full-membership supermajority assent for any changes to rules and relationships to best preserve the individual rights of members.

US: Vets Break Silence on War Crimes
By Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 28 (IPS) – U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to descend on Washington from Mar. 13-16 to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in those countries.

“The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it,” said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. “That’s left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicised incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples”, as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of “an increasingly bloody occupation”.

“The problem that we face in Iraq is that policymakers in leadership have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don’t abide by the rule of law, we don’t respect international treaties, so when that atmosphere exists it lends itself to criminal activity,” argues former U.S. Army Sergeant Logan Laituri, who served a tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 before being discharged as a conscientious objector.

Laituri told IPS that precedent of lawlessness makes itself felt in the rules of engagement handed down by commanders to soldiers on the front lines. When he was stationed in Samarra, for example, he said one of his fellow soldiers shot an unarmed man while he walked down the street.

“The problem is that that soldier was not committing a crime as you might call it because the rules of engagement were very clear that no one was supposed to be walking down the street,” he said. “But I have a problem with that. You can’t tell a family to leave everything they know so you can bomb the shit out of their house or their city. So while he definitely has protection under the law, I don’t think that legitimates that type of violence.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War is calling the gathering “Winter Soldier,” after a quote from the U.S. revolutionary Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Organisers say video and photographic evidence will also be presented, and the testimony and panels will be broadcast live on Satellite TV and streaming video on ivaw.org.

Winter Soldier is modeled on a similar event held by Vietnam Veterans 37 years ago.

Read all of it here.

Human Rights, Torture and the Presidency
By Naomi Wolf / February 28, 2008

I just flew back from Australia, where I was speaking about the erosions of our civil liberties. Believe me, the rest of the world is agog at our inaction as what makes us Americans is being set aflame; and they are more scared of what an unsheathed US could do to the rest of the world than we are.

They also get more news out in the rest of the world about these depredations than we do here in our media bubble.

For instance: As the Australian reported earlier this week, New South Wales Justice of the Peace Mamdouh Habib is suing the Australian federal government — which under the Howard administration had colluded with the US in committing various abuses against detainees and due process — for having allowed him to be arrested wrongly in Pakistan in 2001, kidnapped and sent illegally to Egypt. There this Justice of the Peace was illegally imprisoned and tortured for six months. After that the United States held him for FOUR YEARS in Guantanamo. His complaint notes that he is a law-abiding citizen who was swept up under false pretexts. “It turns out that Habib has incontrovertible proof of his good standing,” the Australian noted. “[H]e is a fully accredited Justice of the Peace in NSW.

A search of the NSW Attorney General’s Department website reveals that not only Habib, but his wife Maha Habib, is a JP.” To become justice of the peace in New South Wales, the Australian added, “you have to be NOMINATED BY A MEMBER OF THE NSW PARLIAMENT and submit to a full character inquiry, including a criminal records check by NSW Police.” (ALL CAPS mine)

Get that? A justice of the peace in a developed-world democracy. Had you heard of that?

Me neither.

This gave me chills because, once again, it is so scarily predictable: when I first started trying to alert people about the ramifications of the Military Commissions Act, and how it gives the US power to seize innocent people off the street simply by the President’s naming them ‘enemy combatants’, I pointed out that nothing would prevent the US from rendering an EU minister off the streets of Belgium — and flying him or her to a `black site’ for torture — if he or she opposed a US pipeline plan, or was prosecuting US war criminals such as Rumsfeld in the Hague. And that the clear lesson of Germany and other closing societies such as Argentina is that once those ‘disappearances’ begin, that is it; few are then brave enough to object — and at that point objection is too weak to be effective anyway.

They rendered an Australian justice of the peace — and that rendition did not even make the US news. So how can we be sure there is something so sacred about an American justice of the peace or even a judge? Say, an American judge who ruled against the Military Commissions?

This kind of leap to the next level of threat to us as citizens seems implausible to many people because they assume that there is an orderly and effective democratic response to this kind of eruption of lawlessness — (oh gosh, actually it isn’t lawlessness any more, now is it) — or, I should say, to this kind of abrupt shift to a heightened level of state sadism; Well — someone would bring charges!, one assumes. Or: someone would sue! Or: surely the ACLU would do something!

But seriously, I ask you to consider: What would indeed happen as a countermove if a US justice of the peace or a judge was rendered? The Bar Association would protest? Scary. Intimidating.

I raise this as an urgent matter in part because of a recent conference call I participated in with Hamid Khan, the head of the courageous movement of Pakistani lawyers and judges. In the call, which he made in spite of great danger to himself and probably to his family, there was a moment when he described the internecine warfare and factionalism of the opposition to Musharraf.

In his voice was the tired, frustrated sound I have heard so often in this country when groups on the left JUST CAN’T GET IT TOGETHER. No matter how urgent the need is. Whereas in Pakistan’s case they were having trouble getting the anti-Musharraf forces to act together — and there was so much at stake.

What became clear from that call is that we are fools to assume that if the government makes a dramatically violent move, which all the laws I have highlighted now make entirely possible, that anyone will know clearly what to do or how to implement what should be done in response. In Pakistan, it was clear, in spite of this powerful grassroots movement, no one had a clear Plan B when Musharraf declared a state of emergency and began rounding up the lawyers and arresting the judges. No one had an unquestioned leadership structure in place for the countermovement; no one had a subcontinent-sized phone tree or a nice big — oh, nation-sized — conference room in which to meet.

We need to consider this right now when we think about our own country: In a sudden sharp move on the part of the US government, even a `small’ one such as this imagined scenario of the rendition of a handful of US judges, there is nothing a democracy is prepared effectively to do; that is the nature of democracy. There is no War Room for democracy; no one has an organizational chart detailing who would do what; no one would have a master strategy.

When people think about the many laws that invite this kind of overreaching now in the US — the National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51), for instance, that would give the President control over all branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — in the event of an emergency — they just assume that, gosh darn it, WE WON’T TAKE IT. And it may well be that we wouldn’t want to take it and we would be willing in great numbers to run to the ramparts. But here is what I have to report to you, that the conference call made clear, and my Pakistani friend would confirm this: in a crackdown, even in the best-case scenario, NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE RAMPARTS ARE.

Read all of it here

From David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

In its March 3, 2008 issue, The New Yorker magazine has a major feature story on the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas – one of two facilities in the country used to detain immigrant families. Hutto has been the focus of a major concerted effort to bring national attention to the nature of the Hutto prison, to conditions at the facility and to bring a legal challenge against Hutto.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog


Leave No Child Behind Bars
by Margaret Talbot

In the summer of 1995, an Iranian man named Majid Yourdkhani allowed a friend to photocopy pages from “The Sa­tanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel, at the small print shop that he owned in Tehran. Government agents arrested the friend and came looking for Majid, who secretly crossed the border to Turkey and then flew to Canada. In his haste, Majid was forced to leave behind his wife, Masomeh; for months afterward, Iranian government agents phoned her and said things like “If you aren’t divorcing him, then you are supporting him, and we will therefore arrest you and torture you.”

That October, Masomeh also escaped from Iran and joined Majid in Toronto, where they lived for ten years. Majid worked in a pizza place, Masomeh in a coffee shop. She dressed and acted the way she liked— she is blond and pretty and partial to bright clothes and makeup, which she could never wear in public in Iran—and for a long time the Yourdkhanis felt they were safe from politics and the past.

Their son, Kevin, was bom in Toronto, in 1997, a Canadian citizen. He grew into a happy, affectionate kid, tall and sturdy with a shock of dark hair. He liked math and so­cial studies, developed asthma but dealt with it, and shared with his mom a taste for goofy comedies, such as the “Mr. Bean” movies. In December, 2005, how­ever, the Yourdkhanis learned that the . Canadian government had denied their application for political asylum, and Majid, Masomeh, and Kevin were deported to Iran

Upon their return, the Yourdkhanis say, Masomeh was imprisoned for a month, and Majid for six, and during that time he was beaten and tortured. After Majid was released, the family paid a smuggler twenty thousand dollars to procure false documents and arrange a se­ries of flights that would return them to Canada.

Then, on the last leg of the journey, the family ran into someone else’s bad luck. On February 4,2007, during a flight from Georgetown, Guyana, to Toronto, a passenger had a heart attack and died, and the plane was forced to make an unscheduled stop in Puerto Rico. American immigration officials there ascertained that the Yourdkhanis’ travel documents were fake.

The Yourdkhanis begged to be allowed to continue on to Canada, but they were told that if they wanted asylum they would have to apply for it in the United States. They did so, and, five days later, became part of one of the more peculiar, and contested, recent experiments in American immigration policy. They were locked inside a former medium-security prison in a desolate patch of rural Texas: the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.

Hutto is one of two immigrant-detention facilities in America that house families—the other is in Berks County, Pennsylvania—and is the only one owned and run by a private prison company. The detention of immigrants is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in this country, and, with the support of the Bush Administration, it is becoming a lucrative business.

At the end of 2006, some fourteen thousand people were in govern­ment custody for immigration-law violations, in a patchwork of detention arrangements, including space rented out by hundreds of local and state jails, and seven freestanding facilities run by private contractors. This number was up by seventy-nine per cent from the previous year, an increase that can be attributed, in large part, to the actions of Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

In 2005, Chertoff announced die end of “catch-and-release”—the longstanding practice of allowing immigrants caught without legal documents to remain free inside the country while they waited for an appearance in court. Since these illegal immigrants weren’t montored in anyway, the rate of no-shows was predictably high, and me practice inflamed anti-immigrant sentiment.

Private companies began making inroads into the detention business in the nineteen-eighties, when the idea was in vogue that almost any private operation was inherently more efficient than a government one. The largest firm, Corrections Corporation of America, or C.C.A., was founded in 1983. But poor management and a series of well-publicized troubles—including riots at and escapes from prisons run by C.C.A.— dampened the initial excitement.

In the nineties, C.C.A.’s bid to take over the entire prison system of Tennessee, where the company is based, railed; state legislators had grown skeptical. By the end of 2000, C.C.A.’s stock had hit an all-time low. When immigration detention started its precipitate climb following 9/11, private prison companies eagerly offered their empty beds, and the industry was revitalized.

One complication was that hundreds of children were among the immigrant detainees. Typically, lads had been sent to shelters, which allowed them to attend school, while parents were held at closed facilities. Nobody thought that it was good policy to separate parents from children— not immigration officials, not immigrant advocates, not Congress. In 2005, a report by the House Appropriations Committee expressed concern about “reports that chil­dren apprehended by D.H.S.”—the Department of Homeland Security—“even as young as nursing infants, are being separated from their parents and placed in shelters.”

The committee also declared that children should not be placed in government custody unless their welfare was in question, and added that the Department of Homeland Security should “release families or use alternatives to detention” whenever possible. The report recommended a new alternative to detention known as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program — which allows people awaiting disposition of their immigration cases to be released into the community, provided that they are closely tracked by means such as electronic monitoring bracelets, curfews, and regular contact with a caseworker.

The government has since established pilot programs in twelve cities, and reports that more than ninety per cent of the people enrolled in them show up for their court dates. The immgration agency could have made a priority of putting families, especially asylum seek­ers, into such programs. Instead, it chose to house families in Hutto, which is owned and run by CCA. Families wouldbe kept together, but it would mean they were incarcerated together.

[To be continued.]

Source

Ben Griffin: Former SAS, Banned Speech to Anti-War Rally

Ben Griffin speaks to World Against War rally before being gagged by UK Government

“As of 1940 hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless.” Ben Griffin, Former UK Special forces trooper

Ben Griffin, the ex-SAS trooper who this week revealed the extensive British collaboration with US rendition and torture, was served with an injunction immediately after speaking at the London World Against War rally last night. The government is trying to gag Ben to prevent any more revelations about British involvement in the US policy of kidnapping people and sending them to secret centres for interrogation and torture.

Read all of it here.

Nah … George W. Bush and his gang have been scaring us into believing that the terrorism threat is much greater than it really is, and making it dramatically worse by their actions in Iraq and other parts of the world. You’ve got two choices: (1) leave the blinders on, or (2) wake up and smell the shit your government has been piling outside your door and in your living room (via the MSM propaganda you’re fed daily).

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

The Fading Jihadists
By David Ignatius
Thursday, February 28, 2008; Page A17

Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat — and it’s already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign — should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light.

Sageman has a résumé that would suit a postmodern John le Carré. He was a case officer running spies in Pakistan and then became a forensic psychiatrist. What distinguishes his new book, “Leaderless Jihad,” is that it peels away the emotional, reflexive responses to terrorism that have grown up since Sept. 11, 2001, and looks instead at scientific data Sageman has collected on more than 500 Islamic terrorists — to understand who they are, why they attack and how to stop them.

The heart of Sageman’s message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat — and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain’s Web site puts it, the United States is facing “a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists” spawned by al-Qaeda.

The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a “clash of civilizations.”

It’s the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman’s account, it’s a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls “terrorist wannabes.” Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills.

“It’s more about hero worship than about religion,” Sageman said in a presentation of his research last week at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank here. Many of this third wave don’t speak Arabic or read the Koran. Very few (13 percent of Sageman’s sample) have attended radical madrassas. Nearly all join the movement because they know or are related to someone who’s already in it. Those detained on terrorism charges are getting younger: In Sageman’s 2003 sample, the average age was 26; among those arrested after 2006, it was down to about 20. They are disaffected, homicidal kids — closer to urban gang members than to motivated Muslim fanatics.

Sageman’s harshest judgment is that the United States is making the terrorism problem worse by its actions in Iraq. “Since 2003, the war in Iraq has without question fueled the process of radicalization worldwide, including the U.S. The data are crystal clear,” he writes. We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it.

The third wave of terrorism is inherently self-limiting, Sageman continues. As soon as the amorphous groups gather and train, they make themselves vulnerable to arrest. “As the threat from al-Qaeda is self-limiting, so is its appeal, and global Islamist terrorism will probably disappear for internal reasons — if the United States has the sense to allow it to continue on its course and fade away.”

Sageman’s policy advice is to “take the glory and thrill out of terrorism.” Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism — these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the “global war on terror,” which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world’s sense of moral outrage.

I don’t agree with all of Sageman’s arguments, especially about the consequences of a quick drawdown in Iraq, but I think he is raising the questions the country needs to ponder this election year. If Sageman’s data are right, we are not facing what President Bush called “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation,” but something that is more limited and manageable — if we make good decisions.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

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Still Pretending
By James Kunstler

The maneuvers that the big banks are making nowadays, along with their enablers at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere in Washington, really amount to little more than the old Polish blanket joke — in which (excuse my concision) the proverbial Polack wants to make his blanket longer, so he scissors twelve inches off the top and sews it onto the bottom. Only in this case, the banks are shearing x-billions of losses off the top of their blankets and re-attaching x-billions of new debt onto the bottom. This new debt, of course, goes to cover the old losses and only represents further losses-to-be-reported-later, since the banks are basically insolvent. Borrowing more money when you’re broke doesn’t make you less insolvent.

The banks can probably keep this gag running a little longer, but not without consequences. My guess is that it spins out of control in March sometime when some more hedge funds blow up and at least one big bank, perhaps Citi, rolls belly up like a harpooned whale. The game is really over, and all the playerz know it. The consequence of continuing to pretend the meta-fiasco of Ponzi endgame is fixable will be an even more shattering depression than the one we’re already in for.

We are a much poorer nation than we thought we were and the reality is just too hard to face. Nobody from the most august banker (Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) to the lowliest wanker (the WalMart inventory clerk who “bought” a house outside Phoenix with a no-money-down, payment-option, adjustable rate mortgage) can believe that this is happening. The candidates for president are pretty much assuming that vast financial resources will exist to be deployed against a range of problems. Everybody is going to be hugely disappointed.

When you introduce perversities into an economic system, they invariably end up expressing themselves as distortions. The economy that evolved the past two decades, driven by the perverse securitization of wishes and frauds, will now express itself in a stark cratering of American living standards. Incomes and jobs will vanish, massive quantities of stuff will collect dust on the WalMart shelves, the fragile infrastructures of daily life will go to shit, and there will be political hell to pay. Every attempt to avoid a straight-up workout of our massive losses, will represent another layer of perversity and more consequent destructive distortions.

Read all of it here.