Five New Reasons (and One Old One) Why We Must Close Guantanamo Now

(Alternet.org) - A surprising poll shows that by wide margins, Americans don’t want to see Gitmo shut down — here’s why it should be closed forever.

Splashed on the front page of USA Today this week were the surprising results of a poll finding that a wide majority of Americans now oppose the closing of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. “By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantánamo shouldn’t be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states,” USA Today reported.

USA Today’s poll results present a major political challenge to President Barack Obama, who has repeatedly vowed to close the detention camp by early next year, and who already faces a battle over Gitmo with Congress.

How could it be that after such an endlessly devastating era of high-profile lawlessness, torture, rigged trials, and prisoner deaths — and years after Bush officials themselves acknowledged the need to shutter the prison camp — a majority of Americans want to keep it open?

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2009 ]

Coalition Vows to Press Congress and Obama for Immigration Reform

(Alternet.org, New America Media) - The Reform Immigration FOR America campaign announced its plan to get enough votes to pass desperately needed changes in U.S. immigration policy.

A new coalition launched a campaign yesterday in the nation’s capital to press Congress for comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.

The Reform Immigration FOR America campaign announced its plan to garner enough votes to pass what it says are needed changes in U.S. immigration policy.

“Two hundred seventy nine votes, 218 in the House; 60 in the Senate,” said Ali Nourani, executive director of the National Immigration Reform, referring to the number of votes needed to send legislation to the desk of President Barack Obama. Obama’s signature, in effect, would be the 279th vote, and should the vision of the coalition hold sway, the legislation would introduce dramatic changes in U.S. immigration policy.

Key concerns include family reunification, the harshness of enforcement raids, border security, and effective means to address undocumented workers. There are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

“It’s not realistic to remove 12 million people from our communities,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, referring to calls by some for mass deportation. Podesta said the cost of such deportations was too high and that other alternatives would be well received by this Congress and the new administration.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet, Khalil Abdullah, New America Media. Posted June 5, 2009 ]

Obama Administration Targets Environmental and Animal Rights Activists as Eco-Terrorists

(GlobalResearch.ca) - What began under George Bush continues under Barack Obama - targeting dedicated activists with “one of today’s most serious domestic terrorism threats,” according former FBI Deputy Assistant Director of Counterterrorism John Lewis before a Senate panel in May 2005. Called “eco-terrorism,” it grew out of the 2001 USA Patriot Act that created the federal crime of “domestic terrorism” and applied it to US citizens as well as aliens.

In his February 2002 testimony before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, James Jarboe defined eco-terrorism as:

“the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”

As a result, innocent people are targeted, accused, convicted and sentenced to hard time for constitutionally protected non-violent environmental activism or supporting animal rights. The so-called AETA 4 are four recent ones and face prosecution under U.S.A. v. Buddenberg for conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism.

On February 19 and 20, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo and charged them with conduct relating to protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting, and leafleting - constitutionally protected rights under the First Amendment, but no matter.

In a February 20 press release, the FBI called the four “animal rights extremists suspected of terrorizing University of California researchers (and said they) used force, violence, or threats to interfere with the operation of the (U of C) in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.” More on that below.

The FBI cited specific “threatening incidents” beginning in October 2007:

– on October 21, 2007, demonstrating outside a U of C professor’s residence in El Cerrito, CA; wearing bandanas to hide their faces; trespassing on his front yard; chanting slogans; and accusing him “of being a murderer because of his use of animals in research;”

– on January 2008, demonstrating outside the private residences of several U of C researchers; dressed in black and wearing bandanas to hide their faces; marched, chanted, and chalked “defamatory” comments on sidewalks outside their residences;

– on February 24, 2008, “attempted to forcibly enter the private home of a Santa Cruz U of C researcher; when her husband opened the door, a struggle ensued and he was hit by an object;” one of the individuals charged then yelled, “We’re gonna get you;” and

– on July 29, 2008, “a stack of flyers titled ‘Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition’ was found at the Cafe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz;” they contained names, addresses, and telephone numbers of several U of C researchers and said “animal abusers everywhere beware we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse;” the defendants were charged with producing and distributing the fliers after which “two firebomb attacks outside researchers’ Santa Cruz homes (occurred), both of which are still under investigation by the FBI.”

Most often, what the FBI and DOJ charge and what, in fact, is true is highly divergent. In this case, the AETA 4 did nothing more “criminal” than exercise their First Amendments rights, and, in so doing, neither threatened nor terrorized anyone. Like many other instances in a post-9/11 environment, and often earlier, the FBI and criminal justice system targets innocent victims, portrays them as criminals, manipulates evidence against them, prevents defense attorneys from access to any called “classified,” uses dubious paid informants, and scares juries to convict. As a result, numerous victims of injustice languish behind bars as political prisoners, some serving life sentences despite having committed no crime.

That was true under George Bush and a Republican Congress and is no different under Barack Obama and a Democrat one. Enough police state laws were enacted to convict the most saintly if authorities wish to do so. And it’s happening with greater frequency by manufacturing terror threats. The dominant media trumpet them. Both parties use them for political advantage and try to silence dissent. They also make false claims to convince the public that dangerous “terrorists” are being arrested, charged, tried and convicted.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Stephen Lendman, Global Research, June 5, 2009 ]

China Corners Over 90% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals

(GlobalResearch.ca) - China has cornered 97% of the world market for rare earth metals, according to Byron King (the Times Online puts the number at 95%, and the Financial Times puts the number at “over 90%”).

What are rare earth metals? Most people define them as including the following 17 metals:

Cerium
Dysprosium
Erbium
Europium
Gadolinium
Holmium
Lanthanum
Lutetium
Neodymium
Praseodymium
Promethium
Samarium
Scandium
Terbium
Thulium
Ytterbium
Yttrium

Some people also include some or all of the Actinide Series elements as rare earths. The Actinides include:

Actinium
Americium
Berkelium
Californium
Curium
Einsteinium
Fermium
Lawrencium
Mendelevium
Neptunium
Nobelium
Plutonium
Protactinium
Thorium
Uranium

As the Times Online notes:

“The weight and magnetic properties of rare-earth metals have made them important for wind turbines, essential to hybrid cars, and indispensable if the world ever hopes to covert to fully electric vehicles…”

Don Burbar, the chief executive of Avalon Rare Metals, said: “The crux of the matter is that there are now a lot of technologies that can’t work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply. China has positioned itself to retain control, and meanwhile politicians around the world do not appreciate how the supply side of green technology works.”

As mining analyst John Kaiser writes:

“In the case of rare earth oxides, we’re looking at a situation where the Obama Administration would like to see clean energy replace gasoline-based energy in transportation fuel. The Chinese are thinking along similar lines because they don’t want to be dependent on foreign oil supplies any more than the United States does. Rare earth oxides go into these super magnets that are a key part of these hybrid and electric cars. The Japanese, the Europeans, and North American carmakers would like to commercialize the production of hybrid cars, but they are afraid to do so because all the rare earths right now come out of China . And China has said “we would like all the manufacturing to be done in China and we’ll sell it to the rest of the world.” Well, that puts everybody at the mercy of China . So now there’s a scramble afoot to look for these deposits outside of China and never mind that China could flood the market with their rare earth oxides. The end users are thinking we need to have security of supply for these rare earth oxides so we’re not at the mercy of political machinations by a country like China . And see this article from the New York Times on China’s buying spree in Australia.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Washington's Blog, Global Research, June 4, 2009 ]

Obama’s Cybersecurity Plan

(GlobalResearch.ca) - With billions of dollars in federal funds hanging in the balance, President Barack Obama unveiled the Cyberspace Policy Review May 29 at the White House.

During his presentation in the East Room Obama said that “America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity” and that efforts to “deter, prevent, detect and defend” against malicious cyberattacks would be run from the White House.

How this debate is being framed however, has a familiar ring to it. Rather than actually educating the public about steps to prevent victimization, state prescriptions always seem to draw from the same tired playbook.

First, issue dire warnings of an imminent national catastrophe; second, manufacture a panic with lurid tales of a “digital Pearl Harbor;” third, gin-up expensive “solutions” that benefit armies of (well-paid) experts drawn from officialdom and the private sector (who generally are as interchangeable as light bulbs however dim).

As Wired magazine’s “Threat Level” editor Kevin Poulsen said during a panel at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington June 3, “the threat of cyber-terrorism is ‘preposterous’,” arguing that “long-standing warnings” that hackers will attack the nation’s power grid is so much hot-air. Poulsen contends “that calling such intrusions national security threats means information about attacks gets classified unneccessarily.”

While the president claims the new office “will not include–I repeat will not include–monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic,” and that his administration “will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans,” the devil is in the details and when they’re added together “change” once again, morphs into more of the same.

As with all things Washington, lurking wraith-like in the background, amidst bromides about “protecting America” from “cyber thieves trolling for sensitive information” are the usual class of insiders: the well-heeled corporations and their stable of retired militarists and spies who comprise the Military-Industrial-Security Complex.

Take Dale Meyerrose, for example. The former Air Force Major General served as U.S. Northern Command’s Chief Information Officer. After a stint at NORTHCOM, Meyerrose became Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Information Sharing for U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, the former NSA Director and ten-year executive vice president at the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Tom Burghardt, Global Research, June 4, 2009 ]

The Rwandan Genocide: Result of a Carefully Planned Military Operation

(GlobalResearch.ca) - Arusha, Tanzania, 12th May, 2009

OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA AT KIGALI

OBJECT: The denunciation of the discriminatory actions and intentions of the Rwandan authorities.

Your excellency, President of the Republic,

The detainees of the ICTR, signatories of the present document have judged it necessary to react to your racist and discriminatory intentions announced by several Rwandan personalities on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan “genocide”, celebrated on Nyanza hill, a Kigali the 11th of April 2009. The Rwandan government stated that 5,000 people were taken from the Official Technical School (ETO) at Kicukiro, the 11th of April 1994 and were then massacred at Nyanza hill. Those who stated this were Charles Muligande, M. Simburudi, president of the IBUKA Association which represents the Tutsi survivors of the “genocide” the deputy mayor of Kigali and Dr. Augustin Iyamuremye, senator and former chief of the civilian intelligence services in the Rwandan government of 1994.

We think that the things said do not take any account of the truth or the reality of the history of our country, but instead, have as the purpose of terrorising, intimidating and humiliating the Hutu people of Rwanda who are globally accused of having planned and committed a “genocide” against the Tutsis. Our reaction is motivated by the fact that the RPF regime wants to wipe from the history of Rwanda, the revolutionary period that liberated the people of Rwanda from the yoke of a feudal monarchy and that ushered in national construction once the country achieved its independence. The ultimate objective of the RPF is clearly to erase the history of Rwanda and the benefits of the republican period to better support their false thesis according to which the Hutus only marked the history of the country with barbarism and “genocide” of the Tutsis. It is a vision both false and divisionist and it is clear that, by propagating it, you have abandoned the interests of the Rwandan people.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: GlobalResearch.ca, June 3, 2009 ]

Shawn Buckley’s radio interview on Sustainable Futures

(NHPPA.org) - On March 26th, Shawn Buckley did an interview on the state of NHPs in Canada with Ryan Fletcher from the radio program Sustainable Futures. The interview is now ready for download. The interview spans three episodes. To download and listen to each episode, click on the following links:

• Episode 29
• Episode 30
• Episode 31

For more information on Ryan Fletcher or Sustainable Futures, please visit: www.unconformed.com and www.myspace.com/melodiesinmind.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: NHPPA.org, June 3, 2009 ]

Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney

(GlobalResearch.ca) - America has lost her soul, and so has her president. A despairing country elected a president who promised change. Americans arrived from every state to witness in bitter cold Obama’s swearing in ceremony. The mall was packed in a way that it has never been for any other president.

The people’s good will toward Obama and the expectations they had for him were sufficient for Obama to end the gratuitous wars and enact major reforms. But Obama has deserted the people for the interests. He is relying on his non-threatening demeanor and rhetoric to convince the people that change is underway.

The change that we are witnessing is in Obama, not in policies. Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney.

Obama has not been in office four months and already a book could be written about his broken promises.

Obama said he would close the torture prison, Guantanamo, and abolish the kangaroo courts known as military tribunals. But now he says he is going to reform the tribunals and continue the process, but without confessions obtained with torture. Getting behind Obama’s validation of the Bush/Cheney policy, House Democrats pulled the budget funding that was to be used for closing Guantanamo.

The policy of kidnapping people (usually on the basis of disinformation supplied by their enemies) and whisking them off to third world prisons to be interrogated is to be continued. Again, Obama has substituted a “reform” for his promise to abolish an illegal policy. Rendition, Obama says, has also been reformed and will no longer involve torture. How would anyone know? Is Obama going to assign a US government agent to watch over the treatment given to disappeared people by third world thugs? Given the proclivity of American police to brutalize US citizens, nothing can save the victims of rendition from torture.

Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government’s legal argument that “sovereign immunity” protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate US law and constitutional protections of citizens. Obama’s Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Global Research, Paul Craig Roberts, June 3, 2009 ]

The Dark Side of Plan Colombia: How the U.S. is Subsidizing Death and Drug Trafficking on Stolen Lands

(Alternet.org, The Nation) - As Congress prepares to debate new Plan Colombia funding, it’s time to investigate how money for biofuels is linked to violence and bloodshed.

Research support for this article was provided by the Puffin Foundation Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with additional support from Project Word, a Massachusetts-based media nonprofit organization.

On May 14 Colombia’s attorney general quietly posted notice on his office’s website of a public hearing that will decide the fate of Coproagrosur, a palm oil cooperative based in the town of Simití in the northern province of Bolívar. A confessed drug-trafficking paramilitary chief known as Macaco had turned over to the government the cooperative’s assets, which he claims to own, as part of a victim reparations program.

Macaco, whose real name is Carlos Mario Jiménez, was one of the bloodiest paramilitary commanders in Colombia’s long-running civil war and has confessed to the murder of 4,000 civilians. He and his cohorts are also largely responsible for forcing 4.3 million Colombians into internal refugee status, the largest internally displaced population in the world after Sudan’s. In May 2008, Macaco was extradited to the United States on drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism” charges. He is awaiting trial in a jail cell in Washington, DC.

Macaco turned himself in to authorities in late 2005 as part of a government amnesty program that requires paramilitary commanders to surrender their ill-gotten assets — including lands obtained through violent displacement. Macaco offered up Coproagrosur as part of the deal.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org, Teo Ballvé, The Nation. Posted June 2, 2009 ]

200 Executions and Counting: Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Cruel Death Tally

(Alternet.org) - Today marks the 200th execution under Perry, a record even deadlier than George W. Bush’s tenure. What’s the matter with Texas?

At roughly 6 p.m. tonight, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will make history when he presides over the 200th execution of his tenure. It’s a chilling achievement, one that dwarfs that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who famously signed off on 152 (with a little help from his friend, then-legal counsel Alberto Gonzales).

Barring a most unlikely twist of fate, there’s little doubt that Terry Lee Hankins will be dead by sunset. For death-penalty enthusiasts, this is cause for celebration; Hawkins — a self-described “non-caring monster” who shot his wife and children in their sleep — is held up as a poster child for state killing. One appellate prosecutor for the Texas Attorney General’s office, Georgette Oden — who recently joked on her blog that when asked at cocktail parties “So, what do you do?” she likes to boast “I kill people” — wrote: “He’s my best example of the kind of person who deserves the death penalty.”

People like Oden would love to claim that all the people on death row are so cartoonishly deserving of death. But the past 25 years have painted a far more complicated picture, one that has shown the death penalty to be fraught with error, corruption, racism and prosecutorial misconduct.

Perry should know. His years in office have been marked by last-minute commutations, controversial executions and some 35 DNA exonerations of wrongfully convicted prisoners. In Harris County, which sends more prisoners to the death chamber than any other jurisdiction in the country, an ever-evolving scandal over its dilapidated and mismanaged forensics crime lab has provided an alarming backdrop to innocence claims by Texas prisoners, leaving little question that countless prisoners have been sent to prison — and death row — on tainted evidence.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2009 ]