Pledge Your Commitment to Denounce Torture With Amnesty Inter.

[hiley]

Sign our Petition Letter and Pledge Your Commitment to Denounce Torture


As part of the Denounce Torture: Stop It Now! initiative, Amnesty International USA is hoping to have at least 250,000 people living in the United States sign a special statement against torture. Amnesty International USA will use this petition letter in our efforts to show the Bush Administration, Congress, and others that those living in the United States are strongly opposed to torture and ill-treatment in all circumstances.

snip---

Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are despicable, immoral, illegal and always wrong. The highest authorities in my country should publicly denounce these acts in the strongest possible terms, and never utilize them, not least in my name.

Governments around the world should not only condemn but prosecute to the full extent of the law any of these acts by our own agents, whether in this country or anywhere else we have control. No one should be held in secret, beyond the eyes of the law, where such acts can flourish.

Governments around the world should not return anyone anywhere where such acts are known to be routine or
snip----
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/petition/Index.asp?id=30
Be the 7869th to sign!




Just about 2 days ago, maybe 3 I was the 189th to sign, look how it has grow. Let's push to more people !
Show the World And Dictator Bush those living in the United States are strongly opposed to torture and ill-treatment in all circumstances.

Solidarity
hiley

Show him how many think he is a fascist !

[AlamoDemoc]

1. Thanks...signed and delivered

kick

[hiley]

7. Thank you, AlamoDemoc Please tell everyone it's still happening!

Amnesty: Torture continuing in Iraq
by
Wednesday 27 April 2005 9:40 PM GMT

Pictures of tortured prisoners surfaced a year ago
Amnesty International has said there are signs of fresh torture and sexual abuse in Iraq by prison authorities.
The human rights group on Thursday also blasted the United States for failing to launch an independent investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a year after images of abused detainees first shocked the world.
Snip---
A year after the scandal broke, only five of seven US guards have been punished.
New torture cases
"The US government must set up an independent inquiry into all aspects of the USA's 'war on terror' detention and interrogation practices," Khan said.
Snip----
Amnesty also said there were new reports of torture carried out by the new, US-trained Iraqi security forces.
In February, three men died in custody after being arrested at a police checkpoint, it said.
The bodies "were found three days later, bearing clear marks of torture from beatings and electric shocks", it said.
Snip----

It cited one former prisoner, Ali Safar al-Bawy - an Iraqi resident in Sweden - describing how he was given an electric shock while held captive for three weeks in July last year. The man also alleged that a child prisoner had been sexually abused by Iraqi guards.
Snip---
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F5C8C42F-4A93-4E97-9166-5F96036E6098.htm
Update on number of signitures:Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 7998th to sign!

[stellanoir]

2. signed

thanks for posting

[hiley]

3. ...

Be the 7891st to sign!

[libpunkmom]

4. signed-with pleasure!!!

[hiley]

6. libpunkmom

I love your Avatar !
Welcome to DU !
:hi:

"You Must be the Change you Wish to see in the world"

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

http://www.gandhiproject.org/project/project.html
solidarity
hiley
Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 7980th to sign!

[hiley]

5. THE GRAY ZONE

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed,inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."
Rudolf Hoess,
the SS commandant at Auschwitz.


***"One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms."***—Bush, press availability in Monterrey,
Mexico, Jan. 12, 2004


Thanks to ImageShack for http://www.imageshack.us>Free Image Hosting

Look at the pictures again ! Remember them and talk about them to everyone, even fundies...
New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/online/slideshows/pop/?040510onslpo_prison


THE GRAY ZONE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.Issue of 2004-05-24Posted 2004-05-15
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”
The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American
Snip---
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism
http://www.ericblumrich.com/14.html

The Iraq war and occupation are illegal and Dictator Bush should be tried for war crimes and all of his Administration as well.
solidarity
hiley

Edit to add this: Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 7984th to sign!

[hiley]

8. Be the 8199th to sign!

Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 8199th to sign!

[hiley]

11. Amnesty International Wants U.S. Officials Arrested and Investigated

Amnesty International Wants U.S. Officials Arrested and Investigated

By Bob Dart

05/26/05 "Cox News" - - WASHINGTON - Amnesty International USA urged foreign governments Wednesday to use international law to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged American "architects of torture" at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups have been interrogated.

snip--
Click on this link to see video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8956.htm

"If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them," said William Shulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the international human rights agency.

In its annual report on "The State of the World's Human Rights," Amnesty International said the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "has become the gulag of our times" and accused U.S. officials of flaunting international law in their treatment of detainees.

There is no statute of limitations on crimes such as torture, Shulz said.
snip---
So for years to come, the director warned, "the apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998."

Gen. Pinochet, a former dictator of Chile, was arrested on an international warrant issued by a Spanish judge while Pinochet was in England receiving medical treatment.

snip---
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8956.htm

[BamaBecky]

9. signed, kicked, & recommended! Don't know what number I am?

:yourock:

[hiley]

14. Bama good to see you today !

I hope you go and see the video at Information Clearing House if you have not seen it ! The story is there with a little of what William Shulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the international human rights agency has to say while you view the video.

My favorite part is :

There is no statute of limitations on crimes such as torture, Shulz said.

So for years to come, the director warned, "the apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998."

snip---
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8956.htm

Bush and company will pay one day !

Edit to add new number : Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 8251st to sign!

[BamaBecky]

15. Cool....lets send them on vacation!...n/t

[BamaBecky]

16. How do you find out what number you are?....n/t

[hiley]

17. I don't know except before you sign it the number shows,look

Right under where it says Read the Letter.


http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/petition/Index.asp?id=30

Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 8261st to sign!

I keep refreshing the page to get new number, a little obsessive but I really want the torture and all of it stopped !

[BamaBecky]

19. When I signed, I didn't know to look, it will be a mystery! n/t

[hiley]

30. look here Bama

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1816414
hugs,
hiley

[Blue_In_AK]

10. I forgot to notice, but I must have been the 8219th n/t

[hiley]

12. Blue_In_AK Thank you up in Alaska

I am in Arkansas !
All the pics I have seen of Alaska are breath-taking ...
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/petition/Index.asp?id=30

Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 8229th to sign!


:hi:

[Blue_In_AK]

13. Come and visit sometime...

And, yes, I will ALWAYS support anything Amnesty International sponsors. They are the one "charity" I have been donating to for longer than I can remember.

[hiley]

18. Amnesty International is the best & I like Human Rights Watch too

Would love to visit Alaska, my nephew has been there several times , he is very adventurous.
This is who he works for now http://www.oars.com/



This is one of my favorite pictures from Alaska......



Edit to add New Number on the Petition:Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 8305th to sign!

[dzika]

20. Thank You! nominated.

Thanks for posting the link. Here is a short video clip of Scott McClellan's insincere response to the Amnesty charges.

May 25, 2005

Video - PBS News Hour: "Amnesty International Blasts U.S.", McClellan responds

McClellan doesn't even seem to believe himself.



Video in Real Media format (2 minutes)

Video in Windows Media format (2 minutes)

[Blue_In_AK]

22. Dzika, I haven't told you

but I love the work you do providing the links to these things. You rock. :toast: :yourock:

[hiley]

24. DZIKA I have been dying to have that clip !

Thank you, thank you so much !
Great for the "collection" right ?

Scott what a weasel !

I just gathered up a list of link's for someone on another thread and I am going to put them here, cause it took me a while to go get all of them even though there were in my favorite's.
Maybe, other's will like some of them.
Hopefully, there are some you have not seen before.

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050204132153814#top
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php
http://www.911closeup.com/
http://www.lib.ecu.edu/govdoc/terrorism.html
http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5100.xml
http://911truthradio.com/
http://justacitizen.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/framingarabs.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11bushbooker.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/schoolvideo.html
http://www.rinf.com/
http://adbusters.org/home/
http://bad.eserver.org/
http://www.killradio.org/
http://www.lyingmediabastards.com/
http://www.watchingamerica.com/
http://innworldreport.net/index.htm
http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm2/genx.php?name=home
http://democracynow.org/

The Power of Nightmares - Part I

Baby It’s Cold Outside”

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

This is a must watch documentary - Broadcast BBC 2 10/20/04 - Written and Produced by Adam Curtis
snip----
Transcript:

VO: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

VO: This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

< OPENING TITLES: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES / THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR[br />
Part One: BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE ]

VO: The story begins in the summer of 1949…




http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm
snip---
VO: In the early ‘70s, Irving Kristol became the focus of a group of disaffected intellectuals in Washington. They were determined to understand why the optimistic liberal policies had failed. And they found the answer in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss explained that it was the very basis of the liberal idea—the belief in individual freedom—that was causing the chaos, because it undermined the shared moral framework that held society together. Individuals pursued their own selfish interests, and this inevitably led to conflict. As the movement grew, many young students who had studied Strauss’ ideas came to Washington to join this group. Some, like Paul Wolfowitz, had been taught Strauss’ ideas at the University of Chicago, as had Francis Fukuyama. And others, like Irving Kristol’s son William, had studied Strauss’ theories at Harvard. This group became known as the neoconservatives.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, many of them couldn’t get academic jobs, and the political science and philosophy faculties were not terribly friendly to those of a conservative or moderately conservative disposition. And the truth is that a lot of people who ended up in Washington started out as academics. I did; Paul Wolfowitz did; and decided they probably didn’t have very good prospects in the academy. What we all had in common, I think, was a certain doubt about what once seemed a kind of great certainty and confidence in liberal progress. The philosophic grounds for liberal democracy had been weakened. So I think Straussians who came to Washington, they didn’t think of themselves as Churchill or Lincoln, let me assure you, but they did that, you know, there’s something noble about public life, and about politics, and they tried to make a contribution in many different areas.

VO: The neoconservatives were idealists. Their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a way of uniting the people, by giving them a shared purpose. One of their great influences in doing this would be the theories of Leo Strauss. They would set out to recreate the myth of America as a unique nation whose destiny was to battle against evil in the world. And in this project, the source of evil would be America’s Cold War enemy: the Soviet Union. And by doing this, they believed that they would not only give new meaning and purpose to people’s lives, but they would spread the good of democracy around the world.

snip---
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm

The Power of Nightmares Part II
Part II: The Phantom Victory
Part 1 Here - Part III Here
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1038.htm

Featured Video & Audio
From the Freespeech TV Program library
Shocking and Awful Series is the best
on this page/to me anyhow
http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm2/genx.php?name=featured_videos

[BamaBecky]

21. Here is another thread on torture

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1508094#1508209">Another thread on torture

:patriot:

[hiley]

25. Bama link

no worky\:shrug:

I will look around.
hiley

[BamaBecky]

33. Try this one

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3746917#3746929">here

[suffragette]

23. Thanks hiley. Signed n/t

[EFerrari]

26. Thank you, hiley!

:kick:

[hiley]

32. sfexpat2000

Hope you had a wonderful Anniversary Week End !
Congratulations to you and hubby !
looky here some intereting links and quotes...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1816414
This rose has been up a couple times this week end but it is beautiful.


Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 9503rd to sign!

Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are despicable, immoral, illegal and always wrong. The highest authorities in my country should publicly denounce these acts in the strongest possible terms, and never utilize them, not least in my name.

Governments around the world should not only condemn but prosecute to the full extent of the law any of these acts by our own agents, whether in this country or anywhere else we have control. No one should be held in secret, beyond the eyes of the law, where such acts can flourish.
snip---
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/petition/Index.asp?id=30

[Swamp Rat]

27. Kick and recommended!!!

[hiley]

31. Swamp Rat look at the links through this

thread here and some of the quotes, you may like to use them.
I hope.
Solidarity


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1816414

Edit for new number Remember Amnesty needs 250,000 !
Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 9505th to sign!

[Shallah Kali]

28. Remember Moral Authority? Remember the GOP denouncing Clinton

saying his actions with Lewinsky damaged America's moral authority? heh. I can't understand why their heads haven't exploded from containing such vast amounts of hypocrisy.

[hiley]

34. Shallah, thank you and their heads should explode from hypocrisy

Update on number

Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 10294th to sign!

[Zhade]

29. Done.

Kick.

[hiley]

35. Zhade thank you !

Reuters - Fri May 27, 1:17 PM ET
The U.S. military has launched an investigation into the death of an Iraqi inmate who was shot on May 27, 2005 at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib jail, where a prisoner abuse scandal erupted last year, an army statement said. The brief statement gave no information on the circumstances of the shooting. A U.S. soldier stands guard in front of the main gate of Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in this

Edit to add current number of signitures for AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Please take action now by signing the statement! Be the 10309th to sign!


http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/petition/Index.asp?id=30

[Theduckno2]

36. Signed. Missed exact count, but over 12,000....

People view the U.S. as a place where a federal investigation is started over an exposed breast, but a report on prisoner torture and abuse is just deemed "absurd". Please show the world we do care and be the next to sign.

[ConsAreLiars]

37. Anyone who supports torture should indicate so by NOT signing

this statement. I oppose torture, especially by "my" gov't, so I signed. I think it is something we all need to take a stand on. So everyone should sign, or not, and at least take a stand by making that choice.

[NMMNG]

38. I was #12176 to sign

:thumbsup:

[VOX]

39. Done.

Kick. :kick: