Tag: petition for a special prosecutor

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Disco Inferno

And he was left in a room soldiers blithely called The Disco, a place where Western music rang out so loud that his interrogators were, in Qutaji’s words, forced to “talk to me via a loudspeaker that was placed next to my ears.”

I have an idea that everyone, regardless of location or nationality wants one thing more than any other in the world: to love and to be loved. I think there is a moment in everyone’s lives when they understand love, whether it is making love, holding a newborn infant, or having an honest and intimate conversation. The feeling is undeniable in these precious moments. Similarly, there is a breathtaking moment with a song that makes a positive difference in our lives.

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On January 1, 2009, a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer shot and killed 22 year old Oscar Grant in Oakland, California.

I imagine that, like me, if you’ve seen the horrific video of this, you were stunned. The officer who shot Grant, Johannes Mehserle, has resigned from his position and refused to give testimony or any interviews.

This story has haunted me since I saw the video. It is a horrible act of violence that ended the life of this young man who was remembered by those who loved him last Wednesday.

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Docudharma Tag: petition for a special prosecutor, for petition backround.

I read Answering the Past by mcjoan today, where she quotes Digby on the possibilities of holding those in power accountable for their crimes.

The crux of Digby’s view:

Sadly, if history is any indication, that is highly unlikely to happen.

mcjoan makes the point that some things are just too big and ugly to sweep under the carpet.  She also reports on what Obama said to George Stephanopoulos on This Week about Bob Fertik’s question on whether or not there will be a special prosecutor.  I found this part of Obama’s response particularly interesting:

And part of my job is to make sure that for example at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.

Now that’s a surprise.  I wonder if perchance anyone from the CIA has been yelling at Obama that if he tries to really investigate their goings on there will be a price to pay.

Could it be something along the lines of what Mark Lowenthal is warning?

“If Panetta starts trying to feed people to that commission (ed. a congressional commission), his tenure at C.I.A. will be over,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior C.I.A. official and an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

“If it happens, C.I.A. people are not going to start plotting against the president, but they are going to withdraw from taking risks, and then the C.I.A. becomes useless to the president,” Mr. Lowenthal said.

Holding those in power accountable for their crimes is an uphill battle, no one would argue that.

(Ed. note: This is written for Dkos, you guys are all great….and my, those shoes are attractive! Are they new?)



I would roll up a newspaper and smack your nose…..but newspapers are dead!

So instead I will write this spur of the moment badly thought out impulsive rant.

!!! Ha, THAT will teach you!

You are being BAD! You are being naughty! And if you don’t straighten up and fly right, you WILL go to bed with no snark tonight!

Ok Ok, As a Dad, and a past owner of many pets, and a semi-Skinnerist, I know that just yelling at you and threatening you without spelling out exactly what you have done wrong will only confuse you and cause resentment….and perhaps lead you in later years into a life of sex, drugs, and depravity.

Ooops, looks like I was too late!

But I will still explain…( …I give and give and give to you people…)

…YOU are squandering an opportunity. You are giving up an advantage. You are missing a key fact. You have not adjusted to the new reality.

(Whereas I, as per usual for people doing the scolding, am perfectly perfect in every way! Bask in my brilliance and perfectitude! Hork!)

What is this new reality, you ask? What opportunity are you giving up? This one:

You are now being listened to. And not only are you now being listened to, you are being listened to by People In Power.

Image courtesy of: www.arimelber.com

On December 30, 2008 I wrote here about Ari Melber helping to push the petition and public awareness of Bob Fertik’s great efforts at forcing the demand for a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute Bush administration war crimes to the top of the list of questions for Barack Obama at change.gov, under Additional Issues. At the time Ari had written a great article for The Nation, which was also published at Huffington post, about Obama’s Open For Questions invitation for citizen input.

Ari Melber is The Nation’s Net Movement correspondent and a writer for the online magazine’s blog State Of Change. Ari’s own website is www.arimelber.com.

Well, that wasn’t a one shot effort on Ari’s part, and he emailed me on Thursday to let me know that he’s been at it again, continuing his push as Net Movement correspondent with another article on Thursday at The Nation, Torture Prosecutor Tops 70,000 Questions for Obama on Change.Gov. His article was also graciously showcased again by Arianna Huffington at Huffington Post, yesterday.

Since all of that happened several more progressive bloggers including Digby and David Swanson have picked up on the story and it’s been spreading, finally prompting even the New York Times to relent and write about it, as Ari explains in his article below.

We’re getting somewhere folks, inch by groaning inch, but we are making an impact!

Here is Ari’s article in full on the flip:

What makes someone a leader?

When I was a little girl, I had the usual fantasies of big strong male leaders who were heroes, yeah, I mixed up leaders and famous comic-book type heroes and that was foolish — because usually heroes worked alone (usually in strange costumes) to halt villains and stuff and that’s why they were called heroes, using raw power and all.

I was married to a jazz musician who was the leader of his jazz quintet.  I found that leadership in this case was pretty much doing all the boring work of checking contracts, dealing with surly club owners and constantly making sure the musicians and singer got to the gigs on time and would show up at a rehearsal or two.  He was a good leader – the musicians dug his original compositions and his playing.  But they showed up to play, they’d do rehearsals for free, but they didn’t do all of the rest of it.

I guess my biggest leadership role in meatspace was when I managed a transcription service.  That was pretty much the same story … I had to make sure all the work was done correctly, and basically I had to allow myself to be hated a lot whenever the temp workers were in a bad mood.  Naturally, an authority figure is always a prime target for the woes we don’t want to take responsiblity for, and there I was, as I worked right alongside my transcribers.  For the most part they did respect me … but oh brother, they would sometimes eat me alive if the mood was cooking up that kind of a storm.

So to me, a leader is someone who does the work, first and foremost, who shows up and does the work.  If they do their work well, most often they find people will gather around them and pitch in.  It’s a kind of vibe, I guess.

We have leaders in our government, at least that’s what they call themselves.  I think that’s mistaken, though, as what they really are is holders of power, the power that the folks who elected them vested in them by their vote.

So they have power.  But do they lead?  These last eight years … eh, not so much.  We all know the disconnect that has occurred between our elected representatives and the folks who elected them.  And we’ve seen the grave consequences of this.

Can individual citizens be leaders?  I mean just regular folks, like us.  Can we be leaders?

I think we can and in many cases we are.

Obama announced that he has chosen Dawn Johnsen to lead the Office of Legal Counsel, the same position once held by the infamous John Yoo.

In filling four senior Justice Department positions Monday, President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counter-terrorism policies authorizing harsh interrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects.

The most startling shift was Obama’s pick of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit that’s churned out the legal opinions that provided a foundation for expanding President George W. Bush’s national security powers.

Johnsen, who spent five years at the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration and served as its acting chief, has publicly assailed “Bush’s corruption of our American ideals.” Upon the release last spring of a secret Office of Legal Counsel memo that permitted the aggressive interrogations of terrorism suspects, she excoriated the unit’s lawyers for advising Bush “that in fighting the war on terror, he is not bound by the laws Congress has enacted.”

I don’t have any special source within inner Republican Party circles. Nor do I have any particular new insight into the dynamics of how the GOP works out their policy. What I do have is the statement of the Republican minority opinion on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s “supposedly bipartisan” report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. In the minority’s mix of apologia and attack, we see the outlines of the GOP game-plan for any investigations into Bush crimes under an Obama administration and a Democratic-majority Congress.

The minority statement is endorsed by only about half of the Republican Senators on the Armed Services committee: Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, James Inhofe, R-OK, Jeff Sessions, R-AL, John Cornyn, R-TX, John Thune, R-SD, and Mel Martinez, R-FL. As you read what follows, consider that all of the above voted for the unanimously released report. According to a Washington Post article at the time, the SASC report was originally “sent to the Pentagon with no dissenting views.”

Cleaned it up, slowed down the scrolling, rearranged some images, and generally upped the quality some.

The soundtrack is a copyright free instrumental called “Transformation”.

I think it looks not too bad, for what we need it for. Let me know how you like it, or don’t like it. Either way  this is what we have!

The embed code is at Youtube, or on the flip below…

Don’t expect me to or even ask me to tell you why you should sign the petition.  

You already know why you should sign the petition. You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you why you should sign the petition.

	Click the Badge to read and sign the Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.
	Click “Get Badge” to get the html code and post the badge on your blog or website so other people can find and sign the petition too.

I’ve been gratified by the good response in the blogosphere to the Petition for a Special Prosecutor.

I believe most people, if they take even the smallest bit of time to find out the extent to which human rights abuses and crimes against humanity have occurred via torture, promulgated by this misAdministration and admitted to freely by Dick Cheney, know the right thing to do is to give them a fair trial, which means an investigation and, if proven guilty, conviction and the full penalties of the law for those who were involved,  no matter at how high a level of power.

Even the folks who have made comments saying they are against holding those in power accountable do not deny crimes took place.

Yet there are obstacles, and I’m not speaking of the usual obstacles of the media and those in power.  There are obstacles within the minds of the citizens of the United States of America.

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Political scientist Michael Haas has just published a book titled George W. Bush, War Criminal?: The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes.