Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

The US has already changed rules so that they do not even need evidence of a crime to hold detainees at Camp X-Ray. I think flouting the Geneva conventions is idiotic and wrong. There should be protections for people captured during military operations.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International criticised that as a “pick-and-choose approach” amounting to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Two prisoners who protested at their uncertain fate by refusing to eat for 30 days were force-fed 2,000 calories a day through nasal feeding tubes for 10 days.

They were returned to the prison cells but still are not eating and probably will be taken back to the hospital in a few days for more forced feeding.

Some links from Antiwar.com:

1. 9/11 Was a Boon for the CIA
2. Al-Qaeda Inmates ‘Outwitting Interrogators’ I found this story funny. I like how despite the ad campaign and patriotic exhortation ‘military intelligence’ is still an oxymoron.
3. Gore Vidal: CIVIL LIBERTIES The New War on Freedom Give me liberty, or give me … what? Security?
   The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 such military incursions since 1945 initiated by the United States.

Here’s a good Chomsky interview on 4/8/02 regarding the situation in the mideast and Israel. You can list to it in Real Audio here.

Something fishy is going on at Harvard. Half of all grades are A and A-minus, and nearly all Harvard seniors are graduating with honors.

Last year, a record 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors, a Globe study found, compared with 51 percent at Yale and 44 percent at Princeton.

A Harvard education, while expensive and a badge of the elite, doesn’t seem to mean much in reality.

From the folks at cleancampaigns.org: Remember to vote ‘yes’ on Proposition 1: Austin Fair Elections Act (for austinites only) Election Date: Saturday May 4th, 2002 Early Voting starts April 17th. The measure will provide campaign financing for local candidates for less than a nickel a week per voter..which is around $2.60 or so a year. Not a bad idea. I first heard about this when I went to a show benefitting the Austin Green Party.

George sent me a good link today regarding reports of members of Al-Qaida and Hezbollah operating inside Ecuador. Wow, what a surprise the US would suggest something like that. Of course, it’s complete bullshit. If I knew Hezbollah worked for the US I might believe it. In this case, consider the source, Richard “the killer” Armitage. Richard Armitage, one of the many vermin currently infesting the highest levels of government, is most famously known for illegally selling missiles to Iranian terrorists during the Iran-Contra scandal. Maybe he does have a nose for where terrorists are hiding. He has, after all, done business with them in the past. Illegal arms sales are not his only sin. He was investigated by President Reagan’s Commission on Organized Crime (1984) for alleged links to gambling and prostitution.

The real reason islamic terrorists have suddenly been discovered in Ecuador has to do with the Ecuadorans lack of enthusiasm for Bush’s ‘war on terror’. They have balked at the US using airfields in Ecuador to prosecute ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. If this keeps up you can expect a change in government in Ecuador.

1. More on the resurrected Iran-Contra gang:

   
   “Bringing all these people who are so associated with a polarised ideological crusade that committed human rights abuses threatens to rekindle that partisanship,” said Reed Brody, legal director of Human Rights Watch in New York. “What is very unfortunate is that history has revealed American complicity in serious atrocities in the 1980s and, in effect, all these nominations may serve to rewrite history and rehabilitate a very unfortunate period of our history.”
   

2. Pakistan’s ISI and 9-11: ISI is Pakistani Intelligence. Remember how Pakistan contributed significant aid to the Taliban? Turns out the head of ISI, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, came to the US on September 4, 2001 (week before WTC attack) and met with high-level US officials.

   
   Mahmoud’s meetings on two separate missions with the Taliban were reported as a “failure.” Yet this “failure” to extradite Osama was part of Washington’s design, providing a pretext for a military intervention which was already in the pipeline. If Osama had been extradited, the main justification for waging a war “against international terrorism” would no longer hold. And the evidence suggests that this war had been planned well in advance of September 11, in response to broad strategic and economic objectives.
   

3. The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
4. The Bush Family 1920 – 2001 Ongoing Connections To Terrorism And Killing
5. From The Guardian: Friends of terrorism Bush’s decision to bring back Otto Reich exposes the hypocrisy of the war against terror

Some stuff I’ve come across today as I pored over the day’s news.

1. Bush’s Betrayal of Democracy On the coup in Venezuela.
2. The CIA and the Venezuela Coup Hugo Chavez: A Servant Not Knowing his Place by William Blum.
   
   Consider Chavez’s crimes:

   Branding the US attacks on Afghanistan as “fighting terrorism with terrorism”, he demanded an end to “the slaughter of innocents”; holding up photographs of children killed in the American bombing attacks, he said their deaths had “no justification, just as the attacks in New York did not, either.” In response, the Bush administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador.

   Being very friendly with Fidel Castro and selling oil to Cuba at discount rates. …

   The United States has endeavored to topple numerous governments for a whole lot less.
   

3. The Mysterious Death Of An Enron Exec Conspiracy? Cover-up?
4. Russia Says It Uncovers CIA Spy Ring CIA trying to steal military technology. Is this the free market at work?
5. Tax Treaties With Small Nations Turn Into a New Shield for Profits Big business shell games…avoiding taxes while you get hit with them.
6. FBI Whistle-Blower on 9-11 Cover-Up?
7. Hamid Karzai, US stooge, heads to Rome to retrieve former Afghan king. Karzai trying to save doomed puppet government. I’m impressed by the independence of the Afghan people. I guess it comes from living in such a harsh land.

With all this crap with the US and the ‘war against terror’, and with the ludicrous foreign policy of the US it might be worth reading ‘War is a Racket’ by General Smedley Butler once more.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

The US is building air bases around Iraq in advance of their plans for invasion. Why doesn’t the US declare war any more? War language is invoked, but it is never formally declared. I don’t get it.

This has been a pretty good week for news, what with the Bloomberg/NORML thing and now this article:

Copyright bill universally rejected

Washington — A digital-copyright bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last month has inspired howls of protest from consumers and high-tech firms who say it could slow technological advances and dictate how consumers listen to music or watch videos at home.

Well connected lobbyists and everyday users alike have flooded Congress with faxes and e-mail over the past several weeks to lodge complaints against the bill, which would prevent new computers, CD players and other consumer-electronics devices from playing unauthorized movies, music and other digital media files.

Sen. Ernest Hollings’ bill is backed by media firms such as The Walt Disney Co. These companies fear fast Internet connections and an array of digital devices such as MP3 players and CD burners will encourage consumers to seek free copies of hit singles and new movies.

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