Yes, We Did Execute Japanese for Waterboarding

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Our country executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime we are now committing ourselves It's kind of awkward to argue that waterboarding is not a crime when you hanged someone for doing it to our troops On November 29, 2007, Sen. McCain, while campaigning in St. Petersburg, Florida, said, "Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding." Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times' truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain's statement and found it to be true.

The times they are a changing, and not for the better.

Americans know the difference between right and wrong but it seems our politicians have changed the criteria for when right and wrong is important.

Obama legal team wants to limit defendants' rights

clipped from www.freep.com The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule longstanding law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights. The administration’s action — and several others — have disappointed civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, after the Democrat’s call for change during the 2008 campaign. Since taking office, Obama has drawn criticism for backing the continued imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan without trial, invoking the “state secrets” privilege to avoid releasing information in lawsuits and limiting the rights of prisoners to test genetic evidence used to convict them.

Hear that sound? The chip, chip, chipping away of our constitutional rights? Apparently, it doesn’t matter if the president is republican or democrat we are all going to lose in the end.

Even if the court decides not to hear the case, the fact that Obama wants to overturn this means he is willing to put constitutional rights aside to get what he wants.

This is indicative of how much closer we are coming to a police state.

The public are fast losing patience with thuggish policing

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk The arrest, early on Monday, of 114 demonstrators in a school outside Nottingham on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage and aggravated trespass, long before they managed to get anywhere near the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station, smacked of intimidation; the bail restrictions then placed on them draconian and deeply unsettling in a free society And news that Ian Tomlinson, the news-paper vendor shoved to the ground during G20, died of internal bleeding rather than a heart attack, is shocking there is a wealth of video evidence online showing excessive force being used against demonstrators Yet it's increasingly clear we cannot trust the police account of events

From the author: “This (police) aggression is no doubt linked to the government's nasty habit of writing laws that prefer the convenience of security forces to the rights of free citizens. But the police are public servants, not government enforcers. Their job is to keep the peace, not clear the streets of dissent.”

This steady evolution of laws being written to favor government instead of to protect its citizenry reeks of fascist idealism: Control the masses before they can do anything that might hint at voicing their opinion.

The government’s fear stems from not being able to ‘control’ its citizens. The answer is simple, politicians should abandon their self-idealized role as ‘controllers’ and return to their intended function as public servants. Put the public’s needs first, stop lining your pockets with our money, stop setting up sweetheart deals with corporations, and listen to what the public has to say.

Tragedy of Falun Gong

clipped from www.aim.org A report by the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, entitled “Forget Not the Beijing Olympics’ Victims,” urges readers to remember that despite China’s promises to improve human rights, the Olympics ended up serving as an excuse for the Chinese government to arrest and imprison thousands of people who had shown signs of opposition to the current regime. The report includes a list of people who were arrested in connection with the Beijing Olympics, indicating where each person was arrested, and in many cases where he or she is being held. The list has the names of over 10,000 people, all of whom were arrested since 2007. The main purpose of the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group report was to “remind those who rationalized rewarding the Olympics to Beijing as an opportunity to help human rights in China that they have a responsibility to come to the rescue of those who suffered the consequences of their failed rationalization.”

The Chinese government “used the Olympics’ security as a pretext to apprehend, torture, and murder people who had already suffered prolonged human rights violations in China.

The U.S. continues to ignore China's humans rights violations in deference to its own economic interests.

Every time we buy something marked with 'made in China' we are contributing to the worsening human rights violations that directly violate pre-Olympics promises.

“Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, and human rights lawyers and defenders have been victimized and lost their freedom because of their refusal to conform to the abusive regime,” the report ends

“But those who choose to be in the same boat and rise and fall with such an abusive regime have lost their conscience.”

Tea Party Has Become a Mockery

When I first learned of 'tea parties' popping up across the country, the idea intrigued me. I envisioned a grassroots drive to allow tax payers to show our discontent with our federal government ‘gifting’ our tax dollars to any and all failed financial entity.

It was finally a chance for the American people to show our dissatisfaction against out-of-control taxation. I am behind this 100%. We are being taxed into the poor house with very little ability to stop it. That is, after all, the spirit of the original Boston Tea Party. “No Taxation without representation”.

But as momentum built the focus changed. Instead of being owned by all Americans this movement somehow became a republican platform to be used as a tool to attack a so-called “socialist” Obama agenda. No longer is it just about being overly taxed, now it has morphed into a conduit to reiterate bizarre claims about Obamas’ true birthplace and that he is really Muslim, and cable converter boxes are brain-washing devices, and that our children are to be interned in re-education camps. Crazy stuff.

I feel soiled by associating myself with what has basically been turned into a republican gripe session. But in all fairness, the loonies who are tossing around these unfounded and disproved notions are coming from the most ‘right’ of the right-wing zealots. The craziest of the bunch. The only reason these people are seeing the light of day is because the republican party is frantically searching for new leadership and evidently they are open to anyone who wants to apply.

After any contest, there is a very short time period where everyone, out of deference to the loser, allows the loser to grouse about losing. This time period after the presidential election is long past. The Democrats have been voted in and the Republicans are now playing a secondary, but still important, role. The focus now should be to help our president get America out of the mess we are in so we can ALL move forward.

The GOP should work on finding new leadership, but to place that search as your primary goal while doing whatever you can to disrupt America’s recovery is just plain self-centered. You republicans need to get over it. Because you really do look incredibly foolish and clueless.

Resist of Become Serfs

clipped from www.truthdig.com America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs

The author paints a dismal and truthful image. What we are witnessing is capitalism run amok and misplaced loyalties.

The old platitude “Money is the root of all evil” can be applied here. The government thinks it is obligated to step in and save capitalism from itself but is going about it the wrong way.

Throughout history businesses have made the proper adjustments to save themselves without the wholesale give away that Geithner and company is participating in. And isn’t it great to have other peoples money to play with?

I say let them sink or swim. Prosecute the thieves. The incompetent will fall to the wayside. We tax payers cannot endure this current course of action.

Phoenix police raid a blogger

Jeff Pataky is part of a growing number of citizens who are not afraid to expose police foul-ups, unwarranted excessive behavior, and just plain Gestapo-like tactics.

Sadly, the Phoenix police department is not unique in their use of thug-force. How does your police department compare?

It is unfortunate that good cops get grouped in with the bad cops, but they are in a better position to help identify these thugs and get them out of law enforcement.

You can read more on the Bad Phoenix Cops blog: http://badphoenixcops.blogspot.com/

clipped from badphoenixcops.blogspot.com clipped from rawstory.com In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department. Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Man detained and harassed at airport for carrying cash

clipped from www.youtube.com

This is scary stuff. A man is threatened with exposure to DEA because he is carrying a large sum of cash and refuses to explain to over-zealous TSA agents why he is carrying it or where he got it.

He repeatedly asks the agents if he is legally bound to answer their questions concerning the origin of the money and is further threatened with 'being taken downtown to police headquarters'.

TSA is getting out of control when they think they can pull an individual aside and hold him for carrying cash.

The more sinister reason for his detainment, which is revealed in the clip, is his connection with the Ron Paul campaign and the fact that Missouri law enforcement regards these individuals as 'home-grown terrorists'.

Be afraid, be very afraid.