[PAA-Discuss] FW: Mideast Action Alerts
Lee Loe
leeloe at igc.org
Tue Sep 19 16:45:23 EDT 2006
I have donated to Relief and Development many times. They are a great
organization doing very good, necessary work in spite of the physical
dangers often involved. During the sanctions of iraq they were very active
in trying to help the Iraqis; I used several of their reports in the early
Iraq Notebooks. Lee Loe
_____
From: Bill Thomson [mailto:wthomson at umich.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:46 AM
To: Recipient list suppressed:
Subject: Mideast Action Alerts
Please note the several action alerts below.
Peace,
Bill
**************************************************
1) Federal Agents Raid Islamic Charity - Life for Relief and Development
2) Pardon Bush for breaking the law?
3) The Dog Ate Bush's WAR CRIMES Defense
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1) Federal Agents Raid Islamic Charity - Life for Relief and Development
Like Peter (below), I have worked with Life for Relief and Development for
many years and have found them to be of the highest integrity and
capability. -- Bill
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:23:30 -0400
From: Peter Lems <PLems at afsc.org>
Subject: IRAQ: Federal Agents Raid Islamic Charity - Life for Relief and
Development
The Associated Press is reporting that FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force
agents raided the suburban Detroit offices Life for Relief and Development -
an international Muslim humanitarian organization. It was founded in 1992 to
help people in Iraq and has provided over $50 in humanitarian relief
worldwide.
Life has been deeply involved with relief projects in Iraq as well as
educational efforts within the Muslim community in the United States. We
have worked with Life for Relief and Development on both those fronts.
Life is a member of Interaction, a coalition of more than 160 humanitarian
organizations working on disaster relief, refugee-assistance, and
sustainable development programs worldwide.
*****
Federal agents raid Islamic charity in suburban Detroit 18 September 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/18/america/NA_GEN_US_Muslim_Charity_R
aided.php
Baghdad Office of Life Raided in Baghdad 17 June 2004
http://www.afsc.org/iraq/news/2004/06/baghdad-offices-of-us-muslim-ngo.htm
Water Treatment Center
http://www.afsc.org/iraq/relief_updates/entries/water_treat_center_032003.ht
m
Interaction Home Page
http://www.interaction.org/
Life for Relief and Development Home Page
http://www.lifeusa.org/site/PageServer
### END ###
Peter Lems
American Friends Service Committee
1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia PA 19102
Tel: 215/241-7170 / Fax:215/241-7177
http://www.afsc.org/human-face/default.htm
**************************************************
2) Pardon Bush for breaking the law?
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:58:55 -0700
From: "Nita Chaudhary, MoveOn.org Political Action"
<moveon-help at list.moveon.org>
Subject: Pardon Bush for breaking the law?
This week, the Senate will vote on whether to pardon President Bush for
breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans. Can you sign
the petition opposing the Republican move to pardon President Bush for
breaking the law?
Click
<http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g&t=1
> Here
Dear MoveOn member,
This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that would pardon
President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent
Americans without warrants. According to Senator Leahy, the bill would
"...immunize officials who have violated federal law by authorizing such
illegal activities."1
President Bush broke the law, and courts are starting to agree. Judiciary
Committee Chairman Arlen Specter once said the program was illegal "on its
face." But he has now caved to pressure from Vice President Cheney, and
introduced legislation that marks a new low: the bill justifies everything
the president did. Worse, it makes it legal to wiretap Americans, in secret,
without warrants or oversight, whenever the administration wants to.2
So far, Democrats and some Republicans are holding strong against the bill,
and there are good chances to stop it if enough of us speak up. Can you sign
the petition opposing the Republican move to pardon President Bush for
breaking the law?
http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g
<http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g&t=2
> &t=2
Many legal experts agree that the president's program to wiretap Americans
who have nothing to do with terrorism violates the law. President Bush
already has the authority to wiretap suspected terroristsand we support
that. In fact, his administration can tap anyone it likes as long as it gets
an OK from a court a few days later.
Congress should be trying to hold him accountablethat's their job. Instead,
some Republicans are trying to let President Bush off the hook completely.
In fact, the legislation would give the president even more unchecked power.
Here are some quick facts about the Cheney-Specter bill:
* It allows President Bushand every president after himto wiretap
Americans indefinitely, in secret, without a warrant and without any
oversight. 3
* It effectively pardons the president for any illegal behavior by
forcing Congress to concede that he has the inherent authority to conduct
the program4something federal courts, numerous legal experts and many
leading Republicans disagree with. 5
* It completely guts FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
which has protected the privacy of Americans against illegal wiretaps for
close to 30 years.6
* It prevents any legal challenges from taking place in the public
court system. Instead, it moves all cases to a secret court, where only Bush
administration officials can argue it. 7
* It would help "immunize" any officials who broke the law in this
program from being held accountable in the future. 8
Since the program was exposed in December of last year, we've learned that
President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the
program, Vice President Cheney also personally intervened to stop telecom
companies from testifying to Congress about it, and a federal court recently
ruled the program unconstitutional.9 In an effort to protect himself from
further consequences, the president is pressuring Congress to let him off
the hook.
This is an important issue and it will help remind Americans, in an election
year, what Republicans are all aboutaccumulating power for themselves, and
trampling the system of checks and balances designed to stop that. Can you
sign the petition today?
http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g
<http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g&t=3
> &t=3
It's the Senate's job to act as a check on the president's power. If they
can't do it, they shouldn't be in Washington.
Thanks for all you do,
Nita, Eli, Jennifer, Wes and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Monday, September 18th, 2006
Sources:
1. "Today's Republican circus trick: Legislating in the Dark," Senator
Leahy, provided by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, September 13, 2006
http://www.bordc.org/threats/leahy91306.php
"NSA Whitewash Passes Judiciary Committee on Party-Line Vote," People for
the American Way, September 13, 2006
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22373
2. "NSA Whitewash Passes Judiciary Committee on Party-Line Vote," People for
the American Way, September 13, 2006
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22373
3. "Top 5 things Sen. Specter won't tell you about the Cheney-Specter bill,"
ACLU
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SpecterTop5
4. ACLU Letter to the Senate Regarding Strong Opposition to the Substitute
Version of S. 2453, the "National Security Surveillance Act of 2006" May 16,
2006
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/25578leg20060516.html
**Note: The bill has changed slightly from when this letter was written,
however the sections accepting the president's claim of inherent authority
remains
5."Judge Rules Against Wiretaps," Washington Post, August 18, 2005
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2096
<http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2096&id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g&t=4>
&id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjbntAFF_g&t=4
"On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress," New York Review of Books, February 9,
2006
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650
McCain: Bush Does Not Have "The Legal Authority To Engage In These
Warrantless Wiretaps," ThinkProgress, January 22, 2006
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/22/mccain-wiretaps-illegal/
6. "Top 5 things Sen. Specter won't tell you about the Cheney-Specter bill,"
ACLU
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SpecterTop5
7. "NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act," Wire News, September 13, 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71778-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
8. "Today's Republican circus trick: Legislating in the Dark," Senator
Leahy, provided by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, September 13, 2006
http://www.bordc.org/threats/leahy91306.php
9. ACLU Slams Senate Judiciary Committee Approval of NSA Spying Bills, ACLU,
September 13, 2006
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26722prs20060913.html
Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is
entirely funded by our 3.3 million members. We have no corporate
contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff
ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our
work, you can give now at:
http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKjb
ntAFF_g
<http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=8810-430262-YZxLh2v._gmQKj
bntAFF_g&t=5> &t=5
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
**************************************************
3) The Dog Ate Bush's WAR CRIMES Defense
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:47:42 -0800
From: The Pen <activist.gb at gmail.com>
Subject: The Dog Ate Bush's WAR CRIMES Defense
PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE TWO SEPARATE ACTION PAGES IN THIS ALERT
Call Congress NOW at 888-355-3588 or 800-828-0498
There is an apocryphal tale about a child who, having failed to perform an
assigned task, invented the most outlandish excuse for why he could not
produce the required finished work. We cannot say if there ever was an
actual child who claimed that the dog had eaten his homework. But we have
its equivalent now in the current president of the United States.
The incredible world spectacle we have is this. First, the president
demands that the War Crimes Act, the law of the land, be changed to
accommodate the crimes that have ALREADY been committed at his direction,
specifically to authorize methods of torture previously and rightfully
considered verboten. If this is not a naked admission that he has broken
the law in the most hideous way we don't know what is. Second, and at the
same time, he is demanding that new laws enacted be to hotrod the
prosecution of those he personally deems enemies of the state. What is he
trying to tell the world, that those people CANNOT be convicted of an
offense under our current law, but that he himself cannot ESCAPE conviction
under that same law for what he has done?
Shame on any member of Congress who signs on to any of this in any part.
Let us address each of these two points in turn
THE WAR CRIMES ACT MUST NOT BE CHANGED AT ALL
ACTION PAGE 1: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum500.php
If there was an Olympic event for hypocritical lying, the Bush
administration would have no peer anywhere. But perhaps the biggest honking
lie of all is that the torture of our detainees has given us any
intelligence to make us safer. Indeed, it was information extracted by
torture (of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) that was used as an EXCUSE by the Bush
and Cheney that it was so drop dead critical to attack and occupy Iraq, now
recognized by all with an honest bone left in their body as the greatest
strategic blunder in our nation's military history. It is all contained in
the Phase 2 Senate Intelligence Committee Report, which Cheney claims not to
have read himself.
Those who really know interrogation know that information extracted by such
means is BAD intelligence, notwithstanding the most extreme "ticking time
bomb" scenario the Bush regime constantly throws in our faces. But just as
they have systematically done in every other policy area without exception,
those who actually know what they are talking about have here again been
muscled out of government decision making. We are told for example that the
military JAG attorneys were held for hours in a meeting and not allowed to
leave until they signed on to the president's demands.
And now Bush directly threatens the American people by saying if they will
not rubberstamp his torture program as is, he will scuttle it. That's
exactly akin to a bank robber threatening to stop robbing banks unless we
change the laws to his specifications. Of course it has to stop. When we
have a program that is so destructive to our REAL national security it
absolutely MUST stop. Maybe then, just maybe, we could get back to
obtaining good intelligence of actual value. But Bush in his patented
flim-flam way would make it sound like his critics would have us stop all
intelligence operations to protect our families.
They have their talking point, that the law needs to be "clarified", and
they are going to keep repeating it like a broken record until we all run
screaming from the room. The problem is that they KNEW they were breaking
international and U.S. law when they did it, in the most premeditated way,
and were so warned in advance by their own attorney general in no uncertain
terms. Part of the language they would now unilaterally and retroactively
excise from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions refers to "outrages upon
personal dignity, in particular humiliating . . . " At Abu Ghraib, Bush
administration henchmen DESIGNED methods of treatment with the deliberate
intent of being maximally offensive to their Muslim victims, most of whom
were innocent of any crime whatsoever.
If war itself were not enough of an atrocity, when the depth of the horrors
of World War II came to light some to the greatest legal minds ever labored
to define in words what civilized people must forever proscribe, even in
war. And in the Geneva Conventions they succeeded. Any who dare to violate
these mutually accepted definitions of despicable behavior are guilty of war
crimes on their face. We need NOT behave as monsters ourselves to protect
our people. Such acts only lead to the remaining civilized people in the
world shunning us as pariahs, to never again volunteer the good intelligence
we really need to thwart those who mean us harm.
In fact, the Bush administration has repeatedly jeopardized intelligence
operations of REAL value to score media propaganda points. The British were
furious two years ago when they outed a very valuable mole in Al Qaeda,
thereby doing incalculable damage to our ability to stop the bad guys. And
they did it again by pressuring the British to move prematurely on the
recent airline plot, related to so-called "liquid explosives" which had no
chemical possibility of ever being operational. The case against those
plotters and their associates is accordingly weaker than it would have been
otherwise.
Keep in mind that in both the above situations informants were gained by
winning people to our side. Such intelligence losses cannot be compensated
for by stooping to torture methods which have the exact OPPOSITE effect.
DETAINEES MUST BE PROSECUTED UNDER CURRENT LAW
ACTION PAGE 2: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum501.php
The fact that the detainees HAVE been tortured is precisely the reason why
the Bush administration is so determined to deny them any rights they have
under current law to see the evidence against them, or to have any other
protections thereunder. Secret evidence means keeping also secret their own
war crimes. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. And to butcher
the law "ex post facto" (after the fact) anytime the result will not be as
we would like is to render our entire legal system of no force and effect.
It is to tell the world that we have laws of convenience only, and that they
are subject to change without notice.
There are disreputable precedents in world history, the Star Chamber,
kangaroo courts and show trials. The Supreme Court, even stacked as it is
already is with Bush beholden appointees, has ruled that the military
tribunals proposed are contrary to the Constitution itself, let alone
statutory law. The solution is not to enact further Constitutional outrages
in the Congress, perhaps in hopes of stacking a contrary deciding fifth
additional vote by the time it arrives back at the Supreme Court.
The detainees must be prosecuted under existing law. To do otherwise is to
send the loudest message possible to the entire world that we believe THEY
HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME FOR WHICH THEY CAN BE PROSECUTED. Some who were
irrefutably innocent have already been released after years of torture, and
with no apology or compensation for their ordeal. If the truly guilty
cannot be found so under current law, we have no moral standing in the world
left at all.
There's a ticking time bomb alright, but unfortunately it's our own current
president of the United States. Day by day he becomes more pugnacious and
more defiant. It is just a matter of time before he commits an atrocity in
our name so heinous that no American will ever be safe ever again anywhere
in the world, unless he is peacefully and swiftly removed from office.
And if a dog did eat his homework, it would have been a dog of war.
This alert is brought to you through the activism of James Wright, running
for the U.S. House in the 8th Congressional district, and one of the leading
progressive voices in the state of Texas. Follow the other links on the
action page for Jim's own proposals of bills to REALLY protect us.
When a brave candidate steps forward in such a district as Texas 8th, shall
we do anything to show him our support? If so, please also consider making
a donation to Jim's campaign so he can spread the call to action message on
impeachment, starting to bring our troops home from Iraq, and on so many
other issues.
DONATIONS: http://www.usalone.com/wright/donations.php
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be
ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.usalone.com/in.htm
Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function at
http://www.usalone.com/out.htm
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