Side to Side

By Chris Pratt
COTO Report

We live in a country where corruption and secrecy are so pervasive, so systemic, so evil and so vast that even progressive thinkers are becoming overwhelmed, discouraged and desperate for some positive energy (including me).

It is easy to see why. There is not a facet of our lives that has not been touched by one of these organizations or concepts and in a negative way: FDA, EPA, FBI, CIA, NSA, UFOs, DOD, Homeland Security, NASA, the Fed, IMF, World Bank, WTO, BIS, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Carlyle Group, Skull and Bones, Free Masons, Illuminati, globalization, 9/11, war, terrorism, military industrial complex, Patriot Act, NDAA, destruction of the constitution, loss of Habeas Corpus, rendition, torture, indefinite detention, loss of civil liberties, “kill lists,” HAARP, chemtrails, predatory capitalism, nuclear, coal, oil, fracking, pollution, global warming, and on.

US contractor can sue Donald Rumsfeld for alleged Iraq torture, judge rules

By Associated Press in Washington
Guardian.co.uk

An American former military contractor who claims he was imprisoned and tortured by the US army in Iraq has been allowed by a judge to sue the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages.

The man, an army veteran whose identity has been withheld, worked as a translator for the US marines in the volatile Anbar province when he was detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a US military facility near Baghdad airport dedicated to holding “high-value” detainees.

Scalia Sets Standard for Massive Mortgage Fraud Class Action Law Suit

Citing recent Supreme Court decisions as well as Executive Orders issued by Presidents Bush and Obama, Michael Collins looks closely at the fraudulent Mortgage Electronic Registration System, showing a pattern of judicial and executive corruption.

By Michael Collins

There hasn’t been much in the way of justice for the average citizen for quite a while. Often, those accused of crimes cannot afford adequate representation and are subject to “let’s make a deal justice.” If you’re unfortunate enough to be sued or party to a divorce proceeding, you soon learn that the court system is an entitlement program for attorneys, not a civilized means of settling disputes. (Image)

The last decade has been devastating for what many thought were inviolable fundamental rights.

Ignorant Certainty

By Robert C. Koehler

Now that the end of the world didn’t happen, I can’t stop thinking about it. What chutzpah, what a diminished worldview, not simply to make such a prediction, but — even more incomprehensible, to my relentlessly self-questioning mind — to know you’ll be among the saved.

In 1011, a guy like Harold Camping would probably have been able to generate more panic than bemusement. A millennium later, with science taught in the public schools and all, we have a little more collective resistance to such thundering certainty leaping from highway billboards. I confess, however, to feeling a deep, reptilian tug last Friday morning, as I saw the sign — SAVE THIS DATE, MAY 21, 2011, CHRIST IS COMING — while driving through eastern Wisconsin. Yikes, that’s tomorrow.

10 Indications the United States Is a Dictatorship

By Activist Post

For a people to be free, they must first be honest with themselves, their government, and the world at large. History is filled with stories of free nations that fell under the spell cast by their governments who exploited the threat of terror.

In fact, numerous presidents in American history already have used various specific threats to sidestep their Constitutional restraints. Today we are entering a nebulous world where our “enemy” cannot be defined, has no particular allegiance to one country, and is able to adopt new leaders at will. Rather than encourage a sense of resilience and independence in its citizens, America has chosen to amplify the terror threat in order to concentrate power in the hands of the State. The very first signpost on this historically familiar road to tyranny is an atmosphere of hate, suspicion, and vindictiveness. It first begins as an outwardly directed aggression and then rather abruptly turns inward upon itself.

The good news is that freedom is won and lost in our hearts and minds. It is for this reason that we must state the obvious: we have clearly passed through the first “atmospheric” stage of approaching dictatorship, and have now entered the second — the open behavior of a dictatorship in the United States.

Wikileaks Guantánamo files: Torture, kidnapping kids, elderly and others

By David Leigh, James Ball, Ian Cobain and Jason Burke
The Guardian UK

• Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts
• Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held
• 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release
• Interactive guide to all 779 detainees

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America’s controversial prison camp in Cuba.

Obama administration preparing executive order to authorize indefinite detentions

No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. ~ Magna Carta

By John Burton
WSWS

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order, scheduled for release early in 2011, which authorizes indefinite detention without charge of prisoners currently held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new order means that the prison will remain open, or that these prisoners will be transferred to permanent locations in the US.

The prisoners would be given a “periodic review” of their imprisonment in a procedure that makes a mockery of due process and basic democratic rights.

Sen. John McCain Authors Bill to Detain Americans Indefinitely without Trial

By Allison Bricker
The Smoking Argus

WASHINGTON D.C. – The man once held as a P.O.W. and tortured after his A4E-SKYHAWK jet was shot down during the Vietnam War has authored a bill entitled, “S.3081 – Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010” which thus far has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill outlines the process by which Americans may be held indefinitely, without notice of their Miranda Rights, and without ever being charged with a crime. Worse detainment of an individual according to the legislation is authorized by mere suspicion that the individual did or seeks to harm any asset of the United States government or any civilian target.

A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully

By Marc Ambinder
The Atlantic

Why is the national security community treating the “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration’s choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.

The case Liz Cheney doesn’t want you to read about

Innocent man helped by Gitmo Attorney: the case Liz Cheney doesn’t want you to read about

By Conor Friedersdorf
True/Slant

Every so often, 42-year-old Fouad al-Rabiah took leave from his four kids and a longtime desk job at Kuwait Airways to help those less fortunate than him. In 1994 he did relief work in Bosnia. He spent part of 1998 working with the Red Cross in Kosovo. In 2000 he flew to Bangladesh, where he helped deliver dialysis fluid to hospitals. And in 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan, intending to provide humanitarian relief when he wound up in the custody of the United States military. In that chaotic year, our troops came across lots of foreigners in Afghanistan, some of them traveling abroad for entirely innocent reasons, others engaged in jihad against the American war effort.

It took until the summer of 2002 for Mr. al-Rabiah to be visited by a CIA analyst and Arabic expert. “He wasn’t a jihadi, but I told him he should have been arrested for stupidity,” the CIA agent told New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer in an interview. Ms. Mayer’s book The Dark Side goes on to explain that two National Security Council staffers — senior terrorism expert General John Gordon, and legal adviser John Bellinger — sought to brief President Bush about reports that an innocent man was being held at Guantanamo Bay. Before they could reach President Bush, however, they were intercepted by David Addington, legal counsel to vice-president Dick Cheney, who said, “No, there will be no review. The President has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it!”

Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American Citizens, Too

By Chris Floyd

I wrote a piece here a few days ago on a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, in which the justices agreed with the passionate plea of the Obama Administration to uphold — and establish as legal precedent — some of the most egregious of the Bush Administration’s authoritarian perversions. This was the gist of the ruling:

The Torture Memos: The Case Against the Lawyers

By David Cole

1.

On Monday, August 24, as President Obama began his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, his administration released a previously classified 2004 report by the CIA’s inspector general that strongly criticized the techniques employed to interrogate “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects at the CIA’s secret prisons.^[1] The report revealed that CIA agents and contractors, in addition to using such “authorized” and previously reported tactics as waterboarding, wall-slamming, forced nudity, stress positions, and extended sleep deprivation, also employed a variety of “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented” methods.

Obama’s plan for underage detainee

By Jason Leopold

Obama cooks up legal excuses for the 12-year-old whom Bush forces kidnapped and imprisoned back in 2002. To avoid an upcoming habeas corpus hearing, Obama’s team will criminally charge Mohammed Jawad. Looks like the Constitution lawyer from Harvard has contempt for the concept of “speedy trial.”