The Rag Blog

A reminder that today is the day george bush will sign the Military Commissions Act (aka, the Torture Act). Please wear your “No Torture” armband.

Canucks in the Crossfire
By Paul Richard Harris
Oct 16, 2006, 16:27

[snip]

Canada is not operating alone in Afghanistan; it is there as the lead in a NATO invasion of the volatile southern region of Afghanistan. A few months following the NATO invasion (in late 2005), then prime minister Paul Martin spoke to Canadian troops in Kandahar and told them the goal of the occupation was to “create a democratic, prosperous, modern country that can be a model in this part of the world.” In fact, however, the occupying forces have brought widespread misery, death, destruction to the area where they claimed they planned to ‘paint schools and drill water wells’.

Read all of it here.

The numbers do add up
The attempts to rubbish the Lancet study on the massive Iraqi death toll are devious hack-work.
Daniel Davies
October 12, 2006 02:00 PM

[snip]

This is the question to always keep at the front of your mind when arguments are being slung around (and it is the general question one should always be thinking of when people talk statistics). How Would One Get This Sample, If The Facts Were Not This Way? There is really only one answer – that the study was fraudulent.[1] It really could not have happened by chance. If a Mori poll puts the Labour party on 40% support, then we know that there is some inaccuracy in the poll, but we also know that there is basically zero chance that the true level of support is 2% or 96%, and for the Lancet survey to have delivered the results it did if the true body count is 60,000 would be about as improbable as this. Anyone who wants to dispute the important conclusion of the study has to be prepared to accuse the authors of fraud, and presumably to accept the legal consequences of doing so.

Read all of what he has to say here.

Marine Corps Issues Gag Order in Detainee Abuse Case
The action has lawyers worrying they could be punished for defending Guantanamo clients.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
October 15, 2006

“In one fell swoop, the government is gagging a defense lawyer and threatening retaliation against a whistle-blower,” Ahmad said. “It really points out what is wrong with the detainee legislation that Bush is scheduled to sign on Tuesday: It permits the abuse of detainees to continue, immunizes the wrongdoers and precludes the detainees from ever challenging it in court.” (emphasis added)

Read the rest here.

As we posted recently, the Pentagon and other government agencies are closely tracking anti-war activities in the US. Over the last few days, the American Civil Liberties Union has been making this information and, especially, the materials upon which it is based, available on its Web site. Here is an excerpt of what they say:

The Government Is Spying on Americans

The actions of the president, his administration, and these agencies are part of a broad pattern of disregard for the rule of law in the name of national security. The ACLU is calling for investigations and full disclosure of records to determine if oaths of office were broken or federal laws violated.

Read it all here.

What about all those purple fingers?
By: John Amato on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 12:10 AM – PDT

I guess all those elections didn’t really matter after all.

Read it here.

“But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5th talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that — dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described.” – Condoleeza Rice, Capital Report, CNBC (6/3/2003)

Thanks to our Friends at Today in Iraq for the remembrance.

Lawyer Gets 28 Months for Aiding Terrorist
She Faced 30 Years for Helping Imprisoned Client Communicate With Followers
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, AP

“The end of my career truly is like a sword in my side,” She said in court Monday. “Permit me to live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously.”

Read it here.

… Shoot at Them Dangerous Canajians !!! I mean, how many terrorists have tried to swim Lake Michigan? Send these guys to the Potomac where they might do some good.

U.S. Firing Plans for Great Lakes Raise Concerns
By MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times

The notion is so unusual that it prompted United States diplomats to negotiate with Canadian authorities in order to agree that it would not violate a 189-year-old treaty, signed after the War of 1812, limiting arms on the Great Lakes.

Read the rest of it here.

Click on the image, print it (landscape mode; then it’ll be long enough), preferably in colour, then cut it out. It’s your armband for tomorrow and can be stapled or paper-clipped to hold it.

No more war. No more torture. No more Bush Administration.

On Tuesday, October 17, at 9:35 a.m., President Bush will sign the Military Commissions Act (S. 3930) at the White House. In response, Tuesday is No Torture In Our Name! Day.

WEAR ORANGE – Wear orange armbands with “NO TORTURE” written on them.

SILENCE + TORTURE = COMPLICITY

“Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the ‘intelligence’ that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?”
Ariel Dorfman, “Are We Really So Fearful?”

YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS NOW CODIFIED TORTURE. The new law does not prohibit the government from using “alternative interrogation techniques” that include sleep deprivation, extreme cold, personal degradation, waterboarding (simulated drowning), “temporary” disablement, and psychological disorientation. The new law grants George Bush the sole authority to decide what torture is. Abu Ghraib and the secret renditions were horrible. But to take the next step and write such practices into law is even worse — qualitatively worse.

Your government has officially shredded constitutional promises of basic and fundamental rights to due process — taking a huge step towards replacing the rule of law with the arbitrary rule of men. The new law will give the president the right to hold people indefinitely without charging them, and without review from the courts, nullifying habeas corpus rights. Congress has now passed legislation that denies defendants the right to see evidence used against them, and allows the use of “evidence” gained through torture. It forbids anyone to invoke the Geneva Conventions in any civil case or habeas corpus proceedings undertaken against the U.S. government, and, according to some experts, it may also forbid this in criminal cases.

Your government – which already holds over 14,000 people overseas without charges — has dramatically expanded the scope of who it can detain to include people anywhere in the world, including within the U.S. People can now be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” simply for providing what the president decides is “material,” including financial or indirect support for hostilities against the U.S.

Your government is rewriting the law on crimes against humanity to exclude itself, incurring the contempt and hatred of people all over the planet.

Few in Congress made anything but the most token show of opposition , as leading Democrats let Bush set the agenda, staying silent when it mattered, refusing to filibuster, then voting no only when the die was cast.

This unprecedented legalization of torture is part of a package coming from the Bush regime. That package includes an atrocious, nightmarish occupation of Iraq and now the ominous threat of war against Iran. It includes an assault on critical thinking and serious motion toward a theocracy. It includes the criminal response to Hurricane Katrina. It includes a systematic attack on women’s reproductive rights, and the demonization of gay people and denial of their basic human rights. It includes the scapegoating of immigrants and severely repressive new legislation aimed at them.

And it gets worse with every passing week. As the call for The World Can’t Wait–Drive Out the Bush Regime states: “The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.” With this legalization of torture, who will now deny that? The stakes are clearly enormous.

If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?

THIS MUST HALT! This entire package must be repudiated, and the whole direction of this country must be reversed.

There is a way to act against this onslaught, effectively. There is a vitally important step to take now to begin driving out this regime and reversing this nightmare direction:
Join in raising the demand to DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME.

“The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.” — From the call “The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!”

Debra Sweet
National Coordinator, The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime