tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833518530559679192.post8360710546085703811..comments2023-09-29T08:07:48.323-07:00Comments on oneheartforpeace: Human Rights Watch: 62-page report : "No Questions Asked..."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833518530559679192.post-66141428254260910232010-06-30T08:27:23.701-07:002010-06-30T08:27:23.701-07:00A note just came in from one of the most Active an...A note just came in from one of the most Active and Effective US peace/justice activists which is also from The Velvet Revolution...<br />Here are several ways our efforts to RESTORE the constitution and our hard and ongoing work for justice and relief from torture/war are working. <br /><br />SEE: www.RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com <br /><br />KEEP ON KEEPING ON - THE GOOD WORK<br />Is GOOD Indeed...<br /><br />Wed, June 30, 2010 10:01:08 AM<br /><br />Two Big Victories For Our Campaigns!]<br />...<br />From: <br />David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org<br /> <br />Two Big Successes For Our Campaigns!<br />The DISCLOSE Act Passes The House And Don Siegelman’s Political Prosecution Overturned.<br /><br />House Passes DISCLOSE Act<br /><br />Last week, as part of our Protect Our Elections campaign, we asked you to contact Congress with calls and letters demanding passage of the DISCLOSE Act to mitigate the corrosive influence of unlimited corporate money on our elections. Partisans, including the Chamber of Commerce and the Tea Party Express, had spent millions to defeat the bill yet we persisted in our quest to get it passed. And on the day of the House vote, you answered our call surpassing over 8000 calls and letters to win the vote! Congress members say that we really helped to make the difference. Thank you.<br /><br />The Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement blasting the vote: "The Democratic majority in the House jammed through a piece of legislation that clearly violates the Constitution, as well as basic principles of fairness and equity. The Supreme Court calls it 'viewpoint discrimination,' and every first-year law student knows that it's illegal."<br /><br />Please make sure to let your friends know that we have succeeded so far but the fight is not over. We have to get this through the Senate too. And if you have not yet signed on the petition, please (find it) and do so:<br /><br />Don Siegelman’s Criminal Conviction Vacated By Supreme Court<br /><br />Several years ago, we launched our Restore Justice At Justice campaign to urge the Department of Justice to reverse the political prosecutions of the Bush Administration. The poster child for these prosecutions is Don Siegelman who was personally targeted by Karl Rove because he was a popular Democrat in the South. The Court of Appeals last year threw out some of Siegelman’s convictions but let several stand under the “honest services” statute.<br /><br />But yesterday, in a one sentence order, the Supreme Court vacated the convictions of Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy, remanding the case to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration in light of a decision from last week that undermined convictions for “honest services.”<br /><br />In short, the Supreme Court held that federal prosecutions for “honest services” should only take place in clear cases of bribery, something that is not present in Siegelman’s case, where he was accused of appointing a political donor to a job after he donated to a state education fund. So now the Court of Appeals will get to apply to new honest services standards to Siegelman’s case and, if it does so fairly, will have to reverse the convictions.<br /><br />Again, we want to thank all of you for helping us with our campaign to correct the injustice against Siegelman and all those targeted by the Bush DOJ. Thousands of ordinary citizens signed on to the campaign. If you have not yet done so, go to <br /><br />www.RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com and do so.CNhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10877484524704475807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833518530559679192.post-88007459417647884392010-06-29T12:38:47.371-07:002010-06-29T12:38:47.371-07:00BY JESSE JAMES DECONTO - Staff Writer North Carol...BY JESSE JAMES DECONTO - Staff Writer North Carolina<br /><br />CHAPEL HILL -- Running a group of insurance companies, J. Adam Abram works to help people make the best of bad situations.<br /><br />And that's what he'll do next week as an official observer at a military commission hearing for Noor Uthman Muhammed, a Sudanese citizen held at Guantanamo Bay for the past seven years.<br /><br />"I'm not making a judgment about whether people are innocent or guilty," said Abram, CEO of the James River Group. "I think we want to treat people around the world the way we would want to be treated. How comfortable would we feel if one of our soldiers was in a like circumstance?"<br />Quantcast<br /><br />The military says Noor was a weapons instructor in the late 1990s at the Khalden Training Camp in Afghanistan and was captured in Pakistan in 2002 at the home of a senior al-Qaida operative.<br /><br />"He's accused of buying a fax machine for Osama Bin Laden," Abram said. "He's not accused of ever having fought against U.S. troops."<br /><br />Thirty years ago, Abram made his living as a freelance journalist in the Triangle, covering military trials like the murder case against Jeffrey McDonald at Fort Bragg and the conviction of Vietnam deserter Robert Garwood at Camp Lejeune.<br /><br />Since then, he has built a career in business, but he still wants to contribute to the free flow of information, especially after several veteran journalists were recently banned from the Guantanamo courtrooms because they released the name of a military interrogator who had already identified himself in a Canadian newspaper.<br /><br />"These are very experienced reporters who have been following these trials very carefully and reporting on them from the very beginning," Abram said. "Banning these reporters is going to limit the information and diminish the quality of the information that the public has about this."<br /><br />Abram plans to blog about the trial at humanrightsfirst .org and triangle .com .<br /><br />"I think it's really important that as much information as possible be provided about these commission hearings so that people can come to understand whether or not they're fair," he said. "Without observers or reporters there, they would in essence be happening in secret."<br /><br />Whom the U.S. detains<br /><br />Abram serves on the boards of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and of Human Rights First, which he'll represent in Cuba.<br /><br />Headquartered in New York, Human Rights Firstuses pro bono litigation and other forms of advocacy to fight for the rule of law against government abuses around the world. Abram first got involved before the 2008 election, as the organization crafted an updated agenda for global human-rights protection.<br /><br />Abram's observation at Guantanamo Bay will be limited to the four-day hearing next week. He'll fly from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Monday and return by military aircraft on Thursday evening. Another observer from Human Rights First may replace him at future hearings.<br /><br />The week's hearing could center on whether the Pentagon should be allowed to reassign the military defense lawyer that has represented Noor for the past seven years. Noor's military commission could spend more than a year reviewing the classified evidence against him before the trial ever begins. So far, Abram is not convinced the case is very strong.<br /><br />"As a matter of policy, does the United States mean to go all around the world and arrest and detain people who may not like us but aren't actively fighting us?" he said. "That'd be a lot of people."<br />jesse.deconto@newsobserver.com or 919-932-8760<br /><br />Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/29/556363/observer-will-keep-sunshine-on.html#ixzz0sGvLpWBgCNhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10877484524704475807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833518530559679192.post-69549488605589018072010-06-29T10:35:58.688-07:002010-06-29T10:35:58.688-07:00Londoners protest US renditions
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 0...Londoners protest US renditions<br />Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:10:35 GMT<br /><br />The London-based Guantanamo Campaign has held a protest in front of US embassy building in London to voice solidarity with the tens of thousands of victims of extraordinary renditions.<br /><br />Under former US government, the practice of "extraordinary rendition" was used to apprehend and detain foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism.<br /><br />The agents used to arrest and secretly transfer a suspect to prisons run by foreign intelligence agencies in countries know how to torture, or to CIA-run "black sites".<br /><br />Those suspects experienced unspeakable horrors under detention. They used to keep them in squalid conditions where many of them faced interrogation under torture, including water-boarding, electrocutions, beatings, extreme isolation, and psychological torture.<br /><br />The London protest was organized to mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.<br /><br />Human rights organizations and civil liberty campaigners have called for an independent inquiry into the UK's role in torture and rendition in the course of the so-called US-led war on terror. They estimate that between 40,000 to more than 200,000 people have fallen victim to rendition practices so far.<br /><br />The London-based Guantanamo Campaign said “Prisons such as Bagram {in Afghanistan} continue to grow in size and stories of torture and abuse, including those involving the British security services, continue to emerge. This illegal practice and international complicity in it must end."<br /><br />Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford, chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers Liz Davies, Ilyas Townsend from Justice for Aafia Coalition and Joy Hurcombe of Brighton Against Guantanamo addressed the gathering in front of the US embassy building.<br /><br />The British government has also been lashed out at by Amnesty International for its complicity in a host of "grave human rights violations" since the September 2001 attacks in the US.<br /><br />The Amnesty cited "credible evidence" in a March report that the UK government was involved in torturing, unlawful detention, rendition, and covering up of victims lawsuits against interrogators.<br /><br />ML/HE<br /><br />Press TV Find more at nogitmos dot org/newsCNhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10877484524704475807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833518530559679192.post-1907054406835779002010-06-29T10:11:42.680-07:002010-06-29T10:11:42.680-07:00More news at http://www.nogitmos.org/news
News Di...More news at http://www.nogitmos.org/news<br /><br />News Digest for June 29, 2010<br /> <br />06/29 / Andy Worthington / Obama’s Moral Bankruptcy Regarding Torture<br /> <br />06/29 / Jesse James Deconto / News & Observer (North Carolina) / Observer will keep sunshine on Gitmo<br /> <br />06/29 / Press TV / Londoners protest US renditions<br /> <br />06/29 / Roger Cuthbertson and Coleen Rowley / Twin Cities Daily Planet (Minnesota) / Sad clouds hang over St. Thomas Law graduation<br /> <br />06/29 / Rahael G. Satter / Associated Press / Under pressure, UK promises torture guidelines<br /> <br />More news at http://www.nogitmos.org/newsCNhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10877484524704475807noreply@blogger.com