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GITMO TRIALS RIGGED TO END IN CONVICTION?

by ThePete 2:15 pm 2008-02-21

Here’s another gem from http://DemocracyNow.org/. On yesterday’s show, they reported on the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions who told the Nation magazine that there was no way any of those six guys accused of taking part in the 911 attacks would get a fair trial. Here’s a bit from the show’s transcript (get the whole thing here: http://www.democracynow.org/…guantanamo ): "The 9/11 trials for the six Guantanamo prisoners charged by the Pentagon last week with conspiracy to commit war crimes might have been rigged from the start to rule out the possibility of any acquittals, this according to the latest statements to The Nation magazine from Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions.

Colonel Davis recounted a 2005 meeting with the Bush administration-appointed Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the prosecutions and the defense for the tribunal process. Haynes said, “We can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions”

Colonel Davis resigned from the military commissions in October 2007, saying the system had become ‘politicized’ and he could no longer be effective. His latest statements to The Nation magazine offer the most pointed evidence of the military commission’s bias and undermine the Bush administration’s claims of ensuring fair trials for the accused."

Weeee! This is the biggest thorn in my side regarding all of this "Post-911 Thinking" going on. In one of our country’s founding documents we make the statement that all humans are equal, right? I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what is accepted, right?

Well, the exact phrasing is: "all men are created equal."

Please note: it doesn’t say that all "Americans" are created equal.

Therefore, EVERY human on the planet deserves the same rights as any American citizen.

So, even if these six guys in Gitmo are guilty of what they are accused of, they STILL deserve a fair trial! I don’t care if they’re criminals, war criminals or "enemy combatants" (whatever the hell those are). They should still get fair trials and the same rights any other human gets.

If we don’t provide what we promise how can anyone outside of the US trust what any of us say?

Now, to me, this doesn’t sound like the trials are rigged. However, if the guys in charge of the trials say something like "there can be no acquittals" you have to admit, that screams "unfair bias" all over the damn place.

Just a sidenote here: there have been no convictions for the 911 attacks. There have been just a handful of convictions of terror suspects involved in other attacks not on US soil. We’ve invaded two countries and ended hundreds of thousands of lives in the interest of catching terrorists, yet we can’t seem to convict hardly anyone in a court of law.

How much you wanna bet those six dudes in Guantanamo have exactly nada to do with 911?
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by ThePete 2:15 pm 2008-02-21 In TheNews, Politricks, ThePete.Com, TheWars | Tags , , , , | $ |

Oklahoma 911/The War On Terror License Plate

by ThePete 1:53 pm 2008-02-04

I can’t believe I, of all people, missed this story last August, but I did. I stumbled across a post about it a week, or so, ago (here: http://enews.org/…ights.html ) and I felt like I had to make a bigger deal out of it. Have a look at that ugly, horrible sample plate. If you own a car in the fine state of Oklahoma, you can decorate your car with this thing for just $37 (http://www.tax.ok.gov/…45.html)...

…If you want to.

WHY you’d want to is beyond me. The post I linked to above, written by a guy calling himself "Espresso Sucking Pavement Dweller" or ESPD for short, is all about the lousy design of the plate. ESPD is right–the black on red banner is hardly readable (it looks like it says "944" to me) and the clipart used for the Towers look like completely different buildings. He makes a few other points, including one about how others will criticize this license plate for reasons other than design.

Let me be one of those people. Let’s begin:

1) Since when do you have license plates memorializing terrorist acts? Isn’t it a little ghoulish to use the deaths of those 3000 people on 9/11/1 as advertising for a war?

2) I’m of the belief that America is stronger than a few thousand Muslim extremists. We can handle anything they can throw at us and the idea that we need to fight "The Global War On Terrorism" seems like over-dramatizing the threat of Al Qaeda and terrorism, in general. If you look at the statistics, cars, cancer and AIDS each kill more people every year than terrorism (more: http://thepete.com/…0-points/).

3) Oklahoma is fighting the war on terror? How’s that, exactly? What does Oklahoma have that Al Qaeda wants?

4) As I mentioned in point 1, this plate is just an advertisement for a war–for killing people. Has "The Global War on Terrorism" brought us Bin Laden or even a single conviction on actual terrorism-related charges? So far it seems like this whole thing hasn’t meant–well, I could be off color, here, I’ll just suggest you refer to the acronym for "The Global War On Terror" only remove the "Global."

As Super Duper Tuesday is tomorrow and the next presidential election is in seven months, don’t let 911 and mentions of the wars, Al Qaeda and other fear-mongering scare you into voting for one person or another. Vote with your head–not your fear.

Do I think we should go after Al Qaeda? Definitely. They do want to kill some of us. However, a war on a few thousand people with no country, no army, no nukes, and no obvious hierarchy seems like blatant, soulless, overkill. Plus, it’s just what they want us to do.

Who knows? Maybe Bin Laden will see this license plate and give up. But I’m thinking it’ll just make us snobby cityfolk point and snicker.
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by ThePete 1:53 pm 2008-02-04 TheCultureJam, ThePete.Com, TheWars | Tags , , , | $ |

911 Whistleblower Talking Again

by ThePete 6:27 am 2008-01-10

Above is a screencap of part of the very first post I wrote about Sibel Edmonds way back in 2004 (http://thepete.com/…efore-911).

As a translator for the FBI, Edmonds says she saw hard evidence in the days after 911 that there were warnings that 911 was going to happen. When she tried to tell people about this, Ashcroft legally gagged her. She eventually got fired and she’s been trying to get her story out sideways ever since–that was almost four years ago.

She was quiet for a long time (or maybe it was just that the media wasn’t covering her), but now she’s spoken to http://TimesOnline.co.uk/ and to BradBlog.com–why to only them? Because, essentially, no one else will listen.

Here are some links if you’re interested:

All of my posts on Edmonds:
http://thepete.com/index.php

A CBS story from August 2004 on her:
http://www.cbsnews.com/…6954.shtml

The Times Online article about/with her from January 6, 2008:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…137695.ece

BradBlog.com’s piece on her from two days ago:
http://www.bradblog.com/

Finally, Edmonds’ own website:
http://www.justacitizen.com/

Please check this stuff out–if only to learn about it for yourself. But if you are as concerned as I am, please pass on this story to other folks.

Seems there are a lot of well-known-names that are involved in allowing nuclear secrets to get out and, essentially, allowing 911 to happen.

Weee, nothing like some conspiracy crap to make your morning exciting!
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by ThePete 6:27 am 2008-01-10 In TheNews, TheBig Brother, ThePete.Com | Tags , , , , , | $ |

10 Points

by ThePete 6:00 am 2006-01-02

Here are 10 points to start off your new year on the right, er, center foot.

1) More than 2000 American soldiers have died during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) more have been both mentally and physically wounded. Tens of thousands (over one hundred thousand?) of Iraqis have died during the invasion/occupation with countless more mentally and/or physically injured.

2) On 911 3000 Americans died with hundreds of thousands more mentally and/or physically injured.

3) No less than 37,000 people have died in car accidents every year since 1995 (source: www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/) in America, alone.

4) Lung cancer killed 157,630 Americans in 2002, the most recent year statistics are available. (source: www.cdc.gov/lungcancer/statistics/index.htm)

5) Worldwide, roughly 3 million humans died in 2005 thanks to AIDS. (source: www.avert.org/worldstats.htm)

6) While statistics vary wildly depending on who you talk to (+-thousands), the highest estimates have the human race losing, on average, 3,227 lives a year for the past five years to terrorism, worldwide. (according to RAND/MIPT numbers, 2001 and 2004 saw more than 4000 deaths for obvious reasons - 911 and Iraq) (source: www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/intlterror.html)

7) According to the UN Ambassador from Sri Lanka, Prasad Kariyawasam, it will take $2.1 billion to give 150,000 Sri Lankans their homes back, post-tsunami. $500 million has been dispersed of the required money in the first year after the tsunami hit. (source: www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/28/1457235)

8) At the start of 2006 the war in Iraq has cost Americans in excess of $230 billion. (source: nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182)

9) In 2004 projections estimated that the 2004 presidential election would cost more than $1 billion–this includes not only administration of the election itself, but also the advertising and general expenses of the candidates. (source: www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/2004/04spending.asp)

10) You are more likely to die of AIDS, lung cancer, or in a car accident than you are in a terrorist bomb. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government could have paid for the complete reconstruction of Sri Lanka several times over ($2.1 billion), bribed Saddam Hussein into stepping down ($50 million? $100 million?), AND STILL had tens of billions of dollars left over to sink into a cure for AIDS, cancer and ways to make our roads and cars safer.

Why are you afraid of terrorists when cars are ten times more likely to kill you?

Hell, AIDS is a thousand times more likely to kill you…

by ThePete 6:00 am 2006-01-02 In TheNews, Politricks, TheCultureJam, ThePete.Com, TheWars | Tags , , , , , , , | $ |

TheBlurb: "How can one talk about life without saying sometime it's going to end? It makes the value of life all the more precious."
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