thenatureofmind

Twenty Years Of Barbarism At Guantánamo

The first “high-value detainee” at Guantánamo military prison was approved for transfer a day before the detention camp marked the 20th anniversary of confining prisoners in the “war on terrorism.”

According to lawyers from Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) who represented him, Guled Hassan Duran was captured in Djibouti in March 2004. The CIA renditioned him to a secret prison site, where he was tortured and abused prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. He was designated by President Barack Obama’s review task force for indefinite detention, even though he was not charged with a crime.

Duran is a citizen of Somalia with “prior residence in Germany and Sweden.” Congress prohibited the United States government from transferring any Guantánamo prisoners to Libya, Somalia, Syria, or Yemen in 2015. Because he cannot return to Somalia, it could be several years before he is released to a country willing to accept him.  

Thirty-nine prisoners remain indefinitely detained at Guantánamo. They have been in confinement for the past 15-to-20 years without charge or trial.

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Occupy 2.0

Occupy 2.0 Demands Worksheet

Please read, discuss, copy and pass along. Check those things you agree with, put an X beside those you don’t agree with. Write in those you want that are not here. Pass it on....

Government:

1. End the militarization of police. No military equipment or military type equipment to be used by police. No pepper spray, mace, rubber bullets, tear gas or ultra sound equipment to be used against citizens exercising their constitutional rights to redress grievances by the government. 
2. The complete restoration of the protections of the 1st amendment. The end of restrictions on protests and the end of harassment of protesters by police. Police have no role as to when and where people may exercise their 1st amendment rights.
3. End the direct hiring of returning soldiers from war zones into the police force. If a soldier is hired, require a minimum 2 year training period in which their understanding of police duties and how those duties differ from military duties are learned and their progress approved by their superiors.
4. All police budgets to be subject to the same constrains as schools, medical care and hospitals. When school budgets are cut, police budgets will be cut. 
5. The establishment of a citizens truth commission to allow citizens to bring forth their stories of mistreatment at the hands of the police and courts and lawyers to represent them to redress their grievances. 
6. The restoration of the protections of the 4th amendment with respect to illegal search and seizure. An end to searches of citizens or their effects without a court order.
7. An end to spying on US citizens. An end to tapping of phones and computer communications of US citizens. 
8. End the racially based “stop and frisk” in all its forms throughout the country, 
9. Repeal the Patriot Act.
10. The establishment of a basic universal income. 
11. End the foreign wars that are draining the economy
12. Close most of our foreign military bases
13. The restoration of the constitutional war making power to the congress. No war actions to be allowed without a congressional declaration of war. 
14. Cut the military budget in half
15. End the attacks on our unions by reinstating the Taft-Hartley Act.
16. Allow ALL citizens to form unions based on a simple majority vote. 
17. Prosecute union busting in all of its forms. 
18. Appoint a national commission to completely re-write the tax code, no politicians or corporate lobbyists allowed. Remove the industry written loopholes. Craft it to favor small businesses and not large businesses. 
19. Do everything that needs to be done to make starting and running a small business as easy as possible with special loan programs and mentorship programs specifically for small businesses. 
20. Re-instate and re-write the Glass-Steagall act to prevent bubbles in the economy and prevent recessions and depressions.
21. Close the CIA and appoint a special prosecutor with a large team of investigators to uncover the illegal actions of the CIA and prosecute the criminals. Prosecute all who violated the Geneva convention on torture. Document and prosecute all illegal activities of the CIA since it’s inception. The CIA now represents an illegal unrestricted 4th branch of government that is a threat to our freedoms. It was originally chartered to gather information. It has become an illegal army making war wherever and whenever it wants without the declaration of war by the congress. 
22. An end to torture, REALLY!
23. Close Guantanamo and give it back to the Cubans.
24. A constitutional amendment to ban unlimited campaign contributions.
25. A real congressional code of ethics preventing any Senator or Representative from voting on a measure affecting one of their campaign contributors.
26. Restoration of the equal time law that specifies that all broadcast media must provide free equal time for any partisan broadcasts.
27. Eliminate the so called “political debates” being run by for profit media organizations. Have them run by non political non-profit organizations. Allow all registered candidates to participate. 
28. The establishment of special government channel(s) like C-span for public political debate. ALL candidates would have free air time and would not be allowed to buy air time on the non-government channels thus eliminating the largest political campaign expenditure significantly reducing the need for large sums of money in politics.
29. Close the capital building to lobbyists. 
30. No lobbyist shall be eligible to run for elected office for 10 years after their last paycheck.
31. No congressperson or senator shall become a lobbyist for 10 years after leaving congress.
32. The acceptance of anything from a lobbyist, even a meal shall be grounds for expulsion from the congress.
33. No bill shall be presented to congress that is not written in the congress by paid congressional personnel. 
34. End the US government war against Julian Assange and Pvt. Bradley Manning. Reward the whistle blowers.
35. End the government secrecy policies and allow the citizens to know what is really going on in government. Publish the Warren Commission report. After 50 years we deserve to know the truth.
36. End the war on illegal immigrants. No person is illegal. 
37. An end to the economic blockade of Cuba.

Environment:

37. Craft environmental policy based on science and not on corporate propaganda
38. End all fossil fuel subsidies. 
39. Stop the Tar Sands project. The negative environmental consequences of this project will affect every man woman and child on this planet. It must stop
40. Ban fracking in the entire US. It is a dirty polluting technology. Concentrating any energy in this technology delays the finding of alternative energy sources.
41. Treat alternative energy the same way we undertook the space race and the national highway system. Give it top priority.
42. Allocate money and create jobs retrofitting the older buildings in the US to make them energy efficient. 
43. Tax cars based on size: the larger the car the higher the tax. Encourage the driving of smaller cars.
44. Tax gas to the same level as Europe so that people will buy smaller cars.
45. End strip mining

Economy:

46. Tax money earned through investment at the same tax rate as real labor. 
47. Restore the top tax rates to their levels in the 1950’s.
48. Our monetary system was devised over 100 years ago before the advent of computers. Create a national commission with the best of our economists and ordinary citizens (no politicians, no lobbyists) to address the problems and inequities in our monetary system. Eliminate the Fed or Federalize it.
49. Nationalize the Banks and create many local banks which will serve local communities. Too big to fail: too big to exist.
50. Allocate money and create jobs fixing the decaying infrastructure of the US
51. Allocate money and create jobs building a nationwide high speed train system.
52. Allocate money and create jobs building better local mass transit systems. Get people out of their cars.
53. Create a WPA type project to get people back to work rebuilding the decaying infrastructure and refurbishing our public parks and creating new green spaces.

Health Care:

54. Institute a single payer health care system guaranteeing health care for all. Decouple health care from employers. Free health care for all.
55. Examine drug company pricing and allow the selling of generic drugs when necessary to lower the cost of medicines.
56. Restore the patent system to its original time frames and not allow extensions.
57. Make the “drug problem” a health issue not a police issue. Set up centers where drug addicts can get the drugs they need at low cost and provide support services for health and for drug rehabilitation. Use Portugal’s program as a model.
58. Legalize non-addictive drugs: marijuana and psychedelics

Education:

59. Free education at all of our state universities and community colleges. Make a college education affordable to all students.
60. Free teachers’ education. Pay teachers what they should be paid. Make sure that our children are getting the best education possible.
61. The establishment of a special schools act that will use government money to address the inequality of education. All schools to be funded at the same level and that level to be determined by studying those schools of countries that have the highest standard of education. Use the lessons learned to determine curricula and to address the need of students to be able to have a marketable skill upon graduation. Forget testing, put the money where the students are.

Russia versus America: A Lesson In The Abuse and Use of Power

President Obama gave the impression of an edgy street punk, intimidating everyone with his cock of the walk bravado and the threat of American military power unless we all “cooperated” with the United States. He talked of “terrible conflicts” throughout the world in the past seventy years, but never stated that the United States was the instigator of most of them, and claimed to have prevented a third world war when it is the United States that has threatened it many times in the past and, with the new threat of placing advanced nuclear weapons on German territory, threatens it now. He bragged about the cost imposed on those who chose to resist American hegemony instead of cooperating with it and claimed, with a straight face, that the order imposed by America had brought dignity and equal work for all people in the world but forgot that the one per cent have all the money while the rest of us do all the work

Russia versus America: A Lesson In The Abuse and Use of Power

“False Flag Terrorism” to Sustain America’s “Humanitarian” Agenda

In late May 2014, President Obama rolled out his foreign policy initiatives at West Point and said nothing new. Every lie he uttered is just a retread cover for the same old, same old disastrous foreign policy the US has engaged in since the cold war began shortly after World War II. The fact is Washington has been regularly practicing this same modus operandi for over sixty years.

Through constant use of false flags deceptively blaming the designated enemy of the United States, starting with the dual threat of the Soviet Union and China’s spreading Communism in the early 1950’s, then in this century fabricating the al Qaeda enemy’s spreading terrorism and now back to a revitalized cold war stopping the expansionist spread of Russia and China again, the US has been busily justifying its aggressive interventionist policy throughout the world.

“False Flag Terrorism” to Sustain America’s “Humanitarian” Agenda | Global Research.

U.S. Alleged to Join in Plot in Venezuela

Of course WE would never try to undermine a foreign government we don't like the way we did in Panama, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Honduras, Guatamala, Iran, etc.

In the latest in a series of theatrical accusations, the government here on Wednesday charged that the United States ambassador to Colombia was involved in a plot to kill President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, but it offered no convincing proof.

The accusation came as the House of Representatives in Washington passed a bill that calls on the White House to freeze the assets in the United States of Venezuelan officials responsible for human rights abuses during the government’s response to several weeks of widespread protests here.

U.S. Alleged to Join in Plot in Venezuela - NYTimes.com.

US Secretly Created Cuban Social Media Network

An Associated Press report says the U.S. government secretly financed a social network in Cuba in an effort to stir political unrest and undermine the country's communist government. 

The program evaded Cuba's Internet restrictions by creating a so-called "Cuban Twitter" text-messaging service that could be used to organize political demonstrations. 

The network reportedly drew in tens of thousands of subscribers who were unaware it was backed by the U.S. government. The Associated Press says the USAID project lasted more than two years.

AP Report: US Secretly Created Cuban Social Media Network.

American hypocrisy blisteringly exposed: long but worth seeing...

Why Is America in Decline? Chris Hedges on the U.S. Empire & Death of the Liberal Class

Henry Kissinger's Legacy of War Crimes Exposed by Secret Yale Visit

35 Countries Where the U.S. Has Supported Fascists, Drug Lords and Terrorists

The U.S. is backing Ukraine's extreme right-wing Svoboda party and violent neo-Nazis whose armed uprising paved the way for a Western-backed coup. Events in the Ukraine are giving us another glimpse through the looking-glass of U.S. propaganda wars against fascism, drugs and terrorism. The ugly reality behind the mirror is that the U.S. government has a long and unbroken record of working with fascists, dictators, druglords and state sponsors of terrorism in every region of the world in its elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged global power.  

35 Countries Where the U.S. Has Supported Fascists, Drug Lords and Terrorists