Pat yourselves on the back DUers

[wtmusic]

You've faxed, you've emailed, you've called. You know important parts of the Geneva Convention (probably by heart). You understand, truly understand, why this law is illegal--why it violates not only the Conventions but the Constitution itself. You understand why it's brutal, barbaric, and unnecessary, and why it will not stop the "war on terror", but guarantee that it will continue indefinitely. You understand what they don't understand, just like you understood in March of 2003 what they STILL don't understand.

Take out your checkbook and write a fat check to the ACLU. We're not done yet--this law needs, deserves, and will get a legal challenge. Then take a deep breath. You are joined not only by others in our community but by most of the civilized world. Nothing that happened this week is for a lack of compassion or heart on our part.

Good, good work. :thumbsup:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Congratulations. We had zero effect.

:party:







ACLU :thumbsup:

[bullimiami]

6. Zero effect because the fascists dont care and our side has too many

defectors.

sad state of affairs.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. A travesty.

[uppityperson]

2. ACLU is needed more than ever.

[truebrit71]

3. I just gave to Amnesty International...

...just about the only organisation that gives a shit and does something about torture...

[City Lights]

9. Thanks for the reminder!

I got something from them the other day, set it aside for later, and then forgot :dunce: about it. I just dug it out and will send a donation later. :-)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. I am exhausted, I stopped doing work to do just that, and I am still sick

sick at heart at what my country has become. my head hurts. I'm gonna have a scotch. and another. And make it a tripod so I am more stable.
damn. damn. damn. damn. DAMN!

[meganmonkey]

5. And get in the motherfucking streets!

Announcing a Day of Mass Resistance:

OCTOBER 5, 2006

BRING THIS TO A HALT!

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.

We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this. There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight. There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it. And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history. Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop. The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined.

The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

http://www.worldcantwait.org/

[il_lilac]

10. Dreaming of 5 million people

nationwide, protesting, demanding, standing up for truth and peace. Please tell me our country still has this in them and this is not a farfetched daydream. :-(

[meganmonkey]

11. We won't have a chance unless

you and every sane person you know gets out there

:patriot:

[wtmusic]

13. Thanks for info -- locations at link:

http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2418&_event=14

[bonito]

8. Right! it's not over, not ever!

I don't have a check to write, caregivers don't get paid, but I can get some stuff together for ebay! toward our legal eagles at the ALCU!

[wtmusic]

12. .

:thumbsup:

[mmonk]

14. Yep, we fought the good fight. You need to be proud

you stood and fought this administration as much as you could and more than the few elected dems that sold us and their colleagues out. Rove would be in trouble if you were elected to office.

[mhatrw]

15. Don't just pat yourselves on the back and write a check. EDUCATE!

We are 100% in the right on this one and our opponents (in both parties) are 100% in the wrong.

We need to explain this to everyone who will listen in every available venue!

Stupid, ignorant and apathetic people are obviously the target demographic for this cynical political embrace of totalitarianism. "Terrorists Don't Deserve Any Rights" is their battle cry. And I guess that battle cry sounds pretty good to anyone who is completely ignorant of the entire history of Western judicial systems and who lacks even the slightest capacity to think critically about the difference between being accused of a crime and being guilty of it. Yes, it physically pains me to have to explain political concepts so simple and fundamental as why totalitarianism is bad and why the rule of law is good to adult US citizens. But still we have to try!

Here is my attempt to frame the argument do that even the grade school kid of a freeper can understand it:

Nobody cares about the rights of guilty murderous terrorists, other than their rights to be raped in prison or put to death. But every person who actually has an inkling of what it means to be American, who actually understands the freedoms that make our country great must care about the rights of the accused. Because, as the McCarthy communism scare and the Salem witch hunts have taught us, being accused of something is surely not equivalent to being guilty of it.

Take Brandon Mayfield, for instance. Here's a guy who was accused of being involved in the Madrid bombings. He was arrested, and if he had been found guilty, a lot of promotions would have been in line for the FBI supervisors and federal prosecutors who brought him to justice. But the man was 100% innocent, and so 19 days after he was thrown in prison to wide acclaim, a judge dismissed his case.

Would you have preferred this US army veteran father to remain behind bars to this day? Indefinitely? Perhaps you would have liked to have seen this man executed for his sin of being an accused terrorist? Is your America's new motto to be, "It is better for a thousand innocent men to be put to death than for a single guilty terrorist to live"?

Now consider that most suspects accused of terrorism are arrested in the planning stages. They are arrested (and then perhaps charged) before any actual physical crime is committed. They are accused of plotting terrorist acts rather than actually committing them. The arrests of dozens or even scores of such suspects are accompanied by the resplendence of 24/7 media hoopla and huge rounds of public cheering for our intrepid protectors. Then, invariably, a number of these suspects are later released because they simply got caught up in the wide dragnet and there is no prosecutable case against them. But suppose we were to change the laws so that none of these individuals had any rights to a fair and speedy trial or even to be seen by a judge. Suppose we instead kept all of these suspects imprisoned indefinitely, even ones who were wholly innocent. Suppose we tortured all of them and then allowed our government to produce secret evidence and "evidence" extracted under torture against these suspects in secret courts.

Would you still be able to recognize the country you live in? Can you?

Now consider that every time one of these highly publicized terrorism busts go down, the political popularity of the FBI, our federal justice system and even the President himself goes up. Consider the incentive for abuse when all any of these people have to do to increase their public popularity is to stage another "highly successful" terrorist network bust with whichever poor patsies they feel like targeting this month. Even if you think our current administration is beyond reproach and would never even broach such a heinous scheme, consider a future administration in which a dishonest politician (oxymoron?) were President or a dishonest person headed the FBI, DOJ or Department of Homeland Security. Would you really put it past every single previous, current or future contender for these positions of power to "wag the dog" during a period of scandal or unpopularity by staging a fake anti-terrorism bust? Would you really put this past Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, every Bush and every Clinton? Without our court system to evaluate merits of the charges against the suspects, what would be the incentive for any less than scrupulous politician to refrain from such behavior?