RNC Unified the People Against a Common Enemy

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The Republican National Convention will soon be history, but the resonance of what occurred in Tampa may live on for a long time. For the first time in decades, police and protestors found a common ground and mutual respect. Now, that’s something that the élites who met to plan their divisive foreign and internal policies and to continue and expand the influence of their party of exclusion, can’t be at all happy about. There are still a few people out there who haven’t forgotten the plethora of crimes committed by the Bush Administration, even though many people who questioned 9/11 and the aggressive wars launched by the USA against countries that had nothing to do with it were marginalised and written off as kooks, some are still able to make themselves heard and are still fighting for those responsible for everything from the Guantánamo detention centre to the Bush torture programme to be brought to justice.

Although a majority of the American people are too scared to stand up and protest, a growing number of Americans feel that they have nothing to lose and that it’s time to take their country back from the rich élites who have gutted the American Dream for the many and have destroyed the USA’s image. Many Americans are waking up; they realise that there isn’t any real democracy in the USA and that both parties are exactly the same. Despite this, the US Republican Party has been classically and unapologetically the party of rich white elitists, so, it’s now become the focus of protests by protest groups and the majority of Americans who’re truly suffering.

One of these groups, Code Pink, a predominantly-female anti-war group, has attempted to make citizen’s arrests of various members of the previous Bush Administration for years, but there’s a lack of legal entities willing to bring charges against entrenched political figures, came out in force at the RNC in Tampa. Code Pink’s methods may seem to be questionable, and some might even call them outrageous, but they’re effective in getting attention, and, then, using the attention to get their message out, in particular, their attempts to stage what Americans call a “citizen’s arrest”. Along with the Occupy Movement and over 40 other protest groups, they descended on the “Convention of the Élite”, who gathered in Tampa to select an already chosen candidate, to ogle beautiful women stripping in front of them, listen to speeches, to plan policy demonising Russia and other “evil” countries, and to pat each other on the backs and tell each other how wonderful they are.

Code Pink was very active at the RNC, for example, at a speaking engagement tied to the Republican National Convention, members of Code Pink protested outside of the venue whilst Condoleezza Rice was speaking inside. The protestors carried handcuffs and said they had come to arrest the former Secretary of State for war crimes. The Co-Director of Code Pink Rae Abileah and Code Pink Member Colonel Ann Wright, US Army (retired), managed to enter the building where Rice was holding her speaking engagement and disrupt her speech regarding “compassion”. At the beginning of the speech, the Colonel stood up and shouted, “You can’t be compassionate, and kill people in a war of choice, the war in Iraq!” Then Ms Abileah stood up and shouted, “The blood of Iraqi children is on your hands!” Then, guards escorted the women from the building. Code Pink later confirmed on Twitter that the activists tried to prevent Condoleezza Rice from making a political speech.

The group also managed to pull off one of the most successful disruptions of their 10-year existence by infiltrating and getting through the intense security of the Republican National Convention and disrupting a speech by the vice presidential contender Paul Ryan. The group also heckled Rick Santorum, pulling off more than the Occupy Movement and the other protest groups who’d also gathered to protest at the RNC. According to Code Pink, they’ve “become famous for confronting the warmongers, whether in the halls and hearing rooms of Congress, the national conventions of both the Republicans and Democrats, George Bush‘s fundraisers, the publicity tours of Karl Rove, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and others and even at Nancy Pelosi‘s house”.

Code Pink compiled a long list of Bush-era war criminals, it’s available on their website, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Stanley McChrystal, George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove, John Bolton, Michael Chertoff, John Ashcroft, I. Lewis Libby, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, and George Tenet. They call for the arrests of all of the aforementioned. What’s more, according to Tighe Barry, an actor and a Code Pink activist, in an interview with VOR, the group approached and attempted to carry out a citizen’s arrest on all of the individuals on their list. Although the group is active regarding some of the most serious issues of our times, their tactics, such as the wearing of costumes designed to look like female genitalia, some say does not help their credibility and is actually insulting to women, others say this helps them get attention.

An organizer with Occupy the RNC, a local group that assisted and coordinated all of the groups that have come to protest the RNC, including Occupiers from all over the USA, said there were few if any incidents of violence between the peaceful protestors and the police. The organiser, Amos Miers, even said that, on Thursday, the Occupiers at the Occupy camp ran out of food and water and the Tampa Police themselves brought the Occupiers dozens of cases of food and fruit and dozens of bottles of water. Code Pink activist Tighe Barry also had many kind words for the police, who’re reported to have prepared for the worst, and who he said behaved professionally and without the use of violence or excessive force. Miers said that, according to police, they’d been told that they would be going up against violent anarchists and violent protestors and that the police were surprised at the peaceful and temperate nature of the Occupiers and the other protestors.

The Republican National Convention is coming to a close, and barring last minute and unexpected events, the RNC has accomplished one thing, for the first time in recent memory, the so called 99 Percent were looked after and have even found common ground with the police and the authorities, who until now appeared to be solely the servants of the One Percent.

31 August 2012

John Robles

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_31/RNC-unified-the-people-against-a-common-enemy/

Editor’s Note:

It doesn’t surprise me that the coppers acted like decent men… they’re working-class Joes, too. They’re not of the Affluent Effluent, and we shouldn’t act as though they are. They have eyes and ears… and brains. The One Percent’s actually losing its grip… and everyone knows it. The coppers aren’t ogres… let’s face it; if you got thrown in the drunk tank Saturday night, you probably deserved it.

BMD  

US Court Upheld the Use of Torture

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The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco rejected the suit of American José Padilla, against John Choon Yoo, the author of the Bush administration’s policy on torture. In a statement, filed in 2008, Padilla demanded that the court acknowledge that the use of interrogation methods approved of in the so-called Torture Memos penned by US Justice Department staffer John Yoo violated the US Constitution. In 2009, a district judge rejected John Yoo’s plea for immunity, allowing a further case review. However, the case review led to the rejection of the claim. Once again, this situation pointed up that the torture of prisoners remains a pressing problem in America. Even if the Padilla case is a legacy of the Bush era, we shouldn’t forget that Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promises to do away with the use of torture as policy.

Chicago police arrested José Padilla, a former gang member who accepted Islam in prison, in May 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorist conspiracy. According to a US executive order, US officials considered Padilla an enemy combatant, automatically depriving Padilla of the possibility of having his case heard in civil court. The authorities placed him in a military prison, where they used torture, including sleep deprivation, the use of psychotropic drugs, and prolonged solitary confinement. John Yoo’s (then, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General) memo approved of these and other methods of “influencing” prisoners.

Padilla received a sentence of 17 years and four months imprisonment, which was much milder punishment than the prosecution demanded. Notwithstanding, Padilla said that the 3½ years he spent in military custody without charges caused serious damage to his mental and physical health. When he submitted his claim against Yoo, he demanded a symbolic compensation of one dollar. However, as the Court of Appeals decision demonstrated, Padilla’s hopes for justice didn’t fly. The court decided to dismiss the claim, stating that at the time John Yoo wrote the memo, the concept of torture in US law wasn’t clearly stated. In addition, the court ignored the plaintiff’s statements that the physical conditions at the military prison and that the torture inflicted on him caused considerable damage to his health.

Despite the fact that Padilla elicited little sympathy as a terrorist accomplice, one can’t help but notice that the line of conduct of the American government is highly questionable. To reject his claim, the court resorted to well-known bureaucratic tricks. Don’t forget that any American can face charges of abetting terrorism; this isn’t just a relic of the Bush era, it’s true today, too. Once again, recent scandals involving the FBI‘s use of entrapment to enmesh people proved that it’s much easier to find oneself in a military prison than one realises. A striking example of this was the arrest of Kalifah al-Akili, a Pittsburgh resident, who managed to send a letter to human rights organisations that told them of his victimisation by a conspiracy of government agents. It is worth noting that in an interview in The Guardian, former FBI informant Craig Montell said that the Bureau used spies to shadow Muslims and to attempt to create artificial terrorist plots.

Be that as it may be, once you’re in a military prison you’ve virtually no chance of avoiding torture. As shown by numerous examples, the situation hasn’t changed much since the international scandal caused in 2004 when the American media outlet CBS reported on the abuse of prisoners in military custody at Abu Ghraib, where people were humiliated, beaten, and tortured with electric shocks. After all, if the court satisfied Padilla’s claim, it could create a very undesirable precedent for the US government, therefore, the court’s decision to reject the prisoner’s claims are hardly a surprise to anyone. At the same time, one should note that these methods could only promote an atmosphere of mistrust towards the authorities and ultimately foster the growth of extremist tendencies amongst certain groups of Americans.

5 May 2012

Vladimir Gladkov

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_05_05/73867816/

Editor’s Note:

If you had told Ike Eisenhower, Jake Javits, Rocky, Barry Goldwater, or Gerald Ford that the Republican Party would unashamedly and publicly defend torture and “preventive detention”, they’d be aghast and rightly so. “That’s NOT American! That’s what the Nazis did!” Oh, I forgot… King Rush and Queen Ann call them “Republicans In Name Only!” Oh, dear… my bad! I have to remember… only Republicans AFTER Slobberin’ Ronnie (the Father of the McJob and the Defender of the McMansion Set) count… and, then, only some of them (the ones with impeccable records of sucking up to the teabaggers or their equivalent).

Barack Obama isn’t perfect by a long shot… but he’s not even a tithe of what Willard Romney and his beetle-browed heavily-armed Born Again Storm Troopers would do, if given half the chance. Mr Gladkov wrote, it’ll “foster the growth of extremist tendencies amongst certain groups of Americans”… yes, the over-armed rightwing kooks and ignorant bubba yahoos. That’s what we have to fear, and that’s why we need to re-elect the President. An imperfect centrist democracy or a Radical Right semi-theocracy (with the Born Agains having veto power)… what do you want? VOTE this November…

BMD