Sunday, October 31, 2010

I don't want you to GET ROBBED ON ELECTION DAY–here’s the info you need as a WARNING

PUBLIC CITIZEN DOESN’T WANT YOU TO GET ROBBED ON ELECTION DAY–here’s the info you need as a WARNING

This is the last warning before you vote Tuesday.KAS



Issue #36 • October 29, 2010

We hope you enjoy this issue of Public Citizen's e-newsletter about the intersection of money and politics. This is part of the campaign we developed following the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting or attacking political candidates. We'll update you regularly with select news stories and blog posts, legislative developments and ways to get involved.

Stunning Statistics of the Week:
• 149: Number of independent groups that have spent money to influence this year’s elections (according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports through Oct. 25)
• $176.1 million: Amount those groups have spent on the midterms
• 10: Number of groups responsible for the bulk of that spending
• 59.9 percent: The percentage of that money that comes from undisclosed sources
Public Citizen calls on electioneering groups to disclose corporate donors
Public Citizen has sent a letter to all groups that are conducting electioneering communications or independent expenditures in the 2010 elections, urging them to disclose to the public the sources and amounts of corporate contributions they use for their campaign spending.

Disclosed corporate funds are a fraction of what is hidden, heavily favor Republicans
Tapping into what few disclosure records exist of campaign spending by outside groups in the 2010 elections, Public Citizen has identified about 200 corporate contributors to a mere 29 independent groups that have reported their funding sources to the Federal Election Commission. These disclosure records account for a very small fraction of the record-breaking campaign spending by outside groups this year, but they confirm a widely suspected trend: Corporate money is heavily favoring Republican candidates by 11-to-1.

BP, other firms called out for trying to elect climate change deniers
BP is on the offense. The company is one of more than half a dozen polluters named by Climate Action Network Europe as pouring money into campaigns for candidates who oppose climate change legislation. In a new report, CAN Europe says the support “is all the more galling because the same companies argue that additional emissions reductions in Europe cannot be pursued until the United States takes action.”

Total estimated bill for midterms: $4 billion
The latest guesstimate from the Center for Responsive Politics of how much everybody – candidates, political parties and outside groups – will spend on the midterms is $4 billion.

Citing negative ads, New Hampshire Chamber cuts ties with U.S. Chamber
Saying that it was offended by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political attack ads, a New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce has cut its ties to the national group. The Greater Hudson Chamber of Commerce is not renewing its membership to the U.S. Chamber. The U.S. Chamber plans to spend $75 million to influence midterm races. The U.S. Chamber has spent more than $1.3 million targeting Paul Hodes, the Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate in the Granite State.

Gold’s Gym franchises leave after owner donates to anti-gay conservative group
Remember the Target controversy? Seems as though political donations have landed another company in hot water. Four Gold’s Gyms franchises in the San Francisco area are leaving the brand because Gold’s owner gave $2 million to American Crossroads, the conservative group created this year by Republican strategist Karl Rove. American Crossroads is helping anti-gay candidates; the San Francisco gyms get a lot of business from the LGBT community.

TARP aided companies make big donations to PACs
Companies that received money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, some of which still owe the government money, have made large donations to political action committees (PACs), The Washington Post reports. General Motors gave $190,000 to campaigns in the past month, some of which went to support candidates who opposed TARP support for the company.

Business execs say much corporate money being spent on elections
Business executives are concerned about the pressure exerted on them to cough up money to support political campaigns, a new poll shows. What’s more, two-fifths of them say the amount of corporate money being solicited for politics is too high.

National parties open lines of credit only weeks before elections
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has taken out a $10 million line of credit and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took out a $17 million line of credit less than two weeks before the midterm elections.

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

Why does the USA Chamber of Commerce and Some Multinational Corporations not like Clinton???

Why does the USA Chamber of Commerce and Some Multinational Corporations not like Clinton??? Obama's criticism of large companies for using tax breaks to ship jobs overseas. That's it.

By Kevin Stoda, an un-coddled American—and America’s write-in Candidate for Senator in 33 states.

I just came across a series of articles that explains simply why BIG-MONEYED Americans and Corporations are behaving anti-OBAMA and anti- Progressive or Anti-Democrat this 2010 mid-term election.

It is all simply because of “Obama's criticism of large companies for using tax breaks to ship jobs overseas. That's it.”

Two sets of publications have just come out reviewing why nearly 10 out of 10 big shots with the USA Chamber of Commerce and other Financial Heavyweights are throwing money against Obama supporters this election Both say the same thing: “Obama's criticism of large companies for using tax breaks to ship jobs overseas. That's it.”

Don’t take my word for this data! Read Kevin Drum’s article in MOTHER JONES from yesterday:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/10/coddling-rich

The article is entitled: “DO THE RICH NEED CODDLING?”

Drum begins by noting, “On a substantive front, after he took office Obama continued George Bush's rescue of the banking system, boosted the economy by passing a stimulus bill, and saved untold thousands of businesses by rescuing GM and Chrysler. His healthcare reform bill was so business friendly it's a wonder the industry didn't keel over in hypoglycemic shock after it was passed. On the rhetorical front, he's taken a few modest shots at the financial industry, but not much more. So what were they all so apoplectic about?”

It seems a paradox to many Americans that the wealthiest corporations cannot take criticism for moving jobs and corporate offices overseas time-and-again. Why take all this money from the government and then try to vote it out of office by spending several billion dollars on key elections to undermine Obama?

The answer is obvious to Drum and me—THE RICH FEEL THEY NEED TO BE CODDLED AND TREATED AS ROYALTY, like the Bush family.

Drum concludes, “What's remarkable about all this is that Obama is, patently, not anti-business. All of the corporate complaints above, when you dig an inch below the surface, amount to lashing out at phantasms. However, although Obama isn't anti-business, it is fair to say that he's not especially business friendly. And after decades of almost literally getting their every heart's desire from Republican presidents and congresses, this has come as something as a shock to the corporate community. When Obama puts a tax break in the stimulus bill, it's aimed mainly at the middle class, not the rich. When he hires a labor secretary, it's someone who actually thinks labor laws should be enforced. When he says he wants to pass a healthcare reform bill, he actually does it. (Its impact on big business is close to zero, but no matter.) There's no evidence at all that Obama wants to punish big business, but at the same time it's quite plain that he cares much more about the middle class than he does about the rich.”
Drum adds, “And that's pretty hard for them to take. So they're apoplectic. On a scale of 1 to 10, he's a ten. Merely refusing to coddle the business community endlessly is all it takes these days.”

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Fan Letter focusing on Afghanistan War Costs

I would like to share this link (and email) with other bloggers concerned about the $1 million per soldie costs and $500,000 per each death costs of the Afghanistan War.

::::::::
I don't normally put fan letters on my diaries, but I will put the one below in due to its good content--content that can be shared easily. It explains the individual costs for America's major wars, including the war in Afghanistan.--KAS


Hi Mr. Stoda,

The blogosphere has demonstrated that reason, sanity and peace can prevail when allowed to thrive in sites like yours.

I just had this really interesting infographic made on the cost of the Afghanistan War. It highlights the amount of money we're spending in Afghanistan and compares it to other major American wars as well as what that money could do if it were invested elsewhere. You can check it out here: http://www.onlineschooling.net/afghanistan-war-cost .

I thought your readers might enjoy the graphic and wanted to see if you would consider posting a link to it from your blog. Let me know what you think of it.

Thanks! Pierce

Pierce Martin Content Manager pierce@sreducationgroup.org



NOTE: I personally think the numbers for the Afganistan War and others are way to low on this link from Pierce.

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS: “ATF has operated without a Director for the last four years, severely hampering its efforts to keep criminals from getti

MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS: “ATF has operated without a Director for the last four years, severely hampering its efforts to keep criminals from getting guns”

Dear Kevin,

When it comes to investigating and prosecuting the dealers who supply criminals with illegal guns, law enforcement’s hands are tied.

That’s the focus of a groundbreaking new investigation by the Washington Post called “The Hidden Life of Guns.”* It found that the federal agency responsible for cracking down on gun crime, the ATF, isn’t given the tools necessary to protect our communities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823.html

In fact, the ATF has operated without a Director for the last four years, severely hampering its efforts to keep criminals from getting guns.

More than 500 Mayors from across the country are demanding a change to this deadly situation. Join them in calling for a real commitment to keeping our communities safe.

Ask President Obama to appoint an ATF Director and stand up to illegal gun trafficking.

The ATF director is the highest-ranking law enforcement position that remains vacant. Without real leadership, the ATF is not fully equipped to stop criminals across the country from getting guns.

For example, the Washington Post found that just 40 dealers in Virginia supply 60% of guns recovered in crimes in that state. Even though most of those 40 dealers have been warned about selling to criminals, only four dealerships have had their licenses revoked.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/24/AR2010102402223.html

Guns from these dealers have been tied to 40 homicides, 60 robberies, 301 shootings, and 1,043 weapons-related violations -- and all they’ve gotten is a slap on the wrist.

Sadly, it’s a story repeating itself all across the country and why we urgently need a top cop on illegal guns. To protect our families and our communities, it’s important for supporters like you to make your voice heard today.

Send your message to President Obama: America needs an ATF Director right now.
It’s time to get serious about stopping illegal guns. Please speak out today and make sure that President Obama gets our message loud and clear.
Thanks for getting involved,
Mayors Against Illegal Guns




*Sari Horwitz and James V. Grimaldi, ATF's Oversight Limited in the Face of Gun Lobby, Washington Post, October 26, 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823.html


Meanwhile--
http://www.policeissues.com/html/gun_control_10.html

Posted 9/26/10
“MODERNIZATION” OR “EMASCULATION”?
A deceptively entitled bill seeks to weaken what little gun dealer oversight there is

By Julius (Jay) Wachtel. Imagine having been an agent for the renowned Bureau of Prohibition, those Al Capone-busting investigators whose intrepid work was glorified in the wildly popular TV series, “The Untouchables.”
Then imagine being an ATF agent today. As public memory fades of the the horrific events that led to passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 – the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy– ATF has become a convenient whipping boy for politicians of all stripes. With a majority of the Supreme Court supping at the same table as the NRA, the President’s promises to institute record checks at gun shows and resurrect the assault weapons ban seem to have the same chance of coming to pass as the ATF has of gaining a permanent Director, a position that’s been vacant since 2006 when it became subject to Senate confirmation.
But we digress. Imagine your astonishment some months ago when Senate Bill 941, a bipartisan proposal enticingly named “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Reform and Firearms Modernization Act of 2009” popped out of the blue.
Turning the page, you found that its very first section, 101, seems to propose giving ATF more power, not less. To date the agency’s only tool for disciplining wayward gun dealers has been to revoke their license. But under s. 941 there would also be fines and suspensions. On closer look, though, these new options seem mild and the exceptions many. Distinctions are made between “minor” and “serious” transgressions, and taking adverse action in even the former requires proof of “willfulness.”
Your heart skips a beat, as you know quite well what “willful” did to the GCA.
When the Gun Control Act of 1968 was first enacted the term “willful” appeared only in section 923(d)(1), an innocuous provision about qualifying for a dealer’s license. That changed with passage of the NRA-sponsored “Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986.” By embedding numerous instances of “willful” throughout the GCA (without, however, actually defining it) it sought to limit ATF’s ability to go after crooked dealers, either criminally or administratively. Here’s a comparison between the original and amended versions of section 923(e), which governs revocations:
Original: “The Secretary may, after notice and opportunity for hearing, revoke any license issued under this section if the holder of such license has violated any provision of this chapter or any rule or regulation prescribed by the Secretary under this chapter....”
As modified: “The Attorney General may, after notice and opportunity for hearing, revoke any license issued under this section if the holder of such license has willfully violated any provision of this chapter or any rule or regulation prescribed by the Attorney General under this chapter....”
Still, “willfully” didn’t prove to be an absolute bar. In your blogger’s experience, evidence that dealers concealed or otherwise disguised transactions was usually enough to establish willfulness and go after them criminally. Ultimately the Supreme Court stepped in. In Bryan v. U.S., a prosecution for unlicensed gun sales, it ruled that the term requires proving that an accused thought they were acting illegally, although not necessarily in violation of a specific law.
That’s the ambiguity that section 103 of the ATF Modernization Act seeks to correct:
...For purposes of this subsection [923(e), relating to licensing proceedings] the term “willfully” means, with respect to conduct of a person, that the person knew of a legal duty, and engaged in the conduct knowingly and in intentional disregard of the duty.
ATF would have to prove that a licensee was intentionally flouting a specific law or regulation before they could be sanctioned. Aside from the tax codes, that level of intent is rarely required in the law. It really does make ignorance an excuse. And that’s not the only mischief that s. 491 would cause.
• Section 101(b)(ii) stipulates that “...violation of a provision of this chapter with respect to 2 or more firearms during a single transaction shall be considered a single violation of the provision.” If willfully pushing multiple guns out the back door counts the same as one, then why stop at one?

• As originally enacted, GCA section 922(m)made it unlawful for licensees “to make any false entry in, to fail to make appropriate entry in, or to fail to properly maintain, any record....” FOPA eventually drained most of the sting, reducing the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor even in instances of false entry (see 924[a][3]). Section 107 of the Modernization Act would increase the wiggle room, changing “false entry” to “materially false entry,” “appropriate entry” to “materially significant entry,” and “properly maintain” to, simply, “retain custody of.”
Decades of deregulation have threatened the country’s economic stability and endangered the health and well-being of its citizens. In 2004 the Justice Department, ATF’s new home, issued a report severely chastising the hopelessly overburdened agency for its infrequent and superficial inspections of gun dealers. But instead of urging a substantial increase of staff it recommended that inspectors “streamline” their work. Just how much “streamlining” would be necessary was suggested in a 2007 article in Time, which calculated that it would take ATF’s 600 firearms inspectors seventeen years to get around to every gun dealer.
If anything, things have gotten worse. For an example of the current regulatory climate look no further than Shawano Guns. Despite years of misconduct, ATF admonishments and findings by a hearing officer and, on appeal, a District Court judge that it deserved to lose its license the Milwaukee-area gun store remained open. And when ATF finally said “no more” (see video clip) and demanded that Shawano shut its doors the same judge who once found against the store ruled that it could remain in business pending further appeals. And if that doesn’t work the owner’s nephew is waiting in the wings to take over the store, in which case everything would return to square one.
At least there’s no question about what the “modernization” crew intends. Giving ATF the illusory “authority” to levy minuscule fines and brief suspensions is nothing more than a ruse to distract from the “modernization” bill’s real purpose: to diminish, for a bit of political gain, whatever influence the beleaguered agency still exercises over the firearms industry, the public interest be damned.
Senator Mike Crapo (R – ID) and his thirty-seven cosponsors ought to be ashamed.
Did you enjoy this post? Be sure to explore the homepage and topical index!
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RELATED REPORTS
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel series on ATF Sources of Crime Guns DOJ report on ATF licensee oversight
Gun Control: Facts and Myths
RELATED POSTS
Where Do They Come From? Long Live Gun Control Gun Control is Dead
Who’s Guarding the Henhouse? Part I Part II

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Some AMERICAN WHISTLE-BLOWERS ARE DOING THEIR JOB--and apparently the Pentagon’s Worry about WIKILEAKS Material Endangering Lives is Propaganda

Some AMERICAN WHISTLE-BLOWERS ARE DOING THEIR JOB--and apparently the Pentagon’s Worry about WIKILEAKS Material Endangering Lives is almost entirely PROPAGANDA

Notes Collected by Kevin Stoda

I wish those in charge of America’s justice, bank, financing, and investment sector would whistle-blow more often. However, hopeful signs are appearing in America, i.e. showing us that courage-to-do-the-right things are increasing as a new decade takes form.

Today, all the world is abuzz with the fact that Americans working for the government are finally blowing the whistle on war crimes and failure to investigate by the Pentagon et. al., by the USA, Iran, and their allies over the past decade in Iraq. The documents come from Wikileaks.

http://wikileaks.org/

KEY QUOTE ON OF THE WEEK

One important quote from yesterday’s DEMOCRACY NOW interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is this:

Note: Julian Assuage is responding to the claim by the USA propaganda office at the Pentagon that the “bottom line is, our forces are still very much in danger here as a result of this exposure, given the fact that our tactics, techniques and procedures are exposed in these documents, and our enemies are undoubtedly going to try to use them against us, and making their jobs even more difficult and dangerous.”

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, this is the same old argument that the Pentagon has been trotting out every time there is media exposure of their abuses for the past fifty years. They tried it with the Afghan war logs. Last week, NATO told CNN from Kabul that there was not a single case of an Afghan that they could find who needed moving or protection. The Pentagon—Secretary of Defense Gates wrote to the US Senate Armed Services Committee privately on August the 16th saying that no intelligence sources, sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been revealed by this material, while saying publicly something completely different. Similarly, the Pentagon stated last week that it could find no incidents of an Afghan who had been adversely affected by this release or the injury to any US troops. The reality is that the only thing at risk here is the reputations and the jobs of those individuals who put troops in harm’s way in Iraq and who put Iraqi citizens in the middle of a civil war.
You know, late last week, the Pentagon was saying—pushing out the message that they had found 300 names in this material of people who needed protecting. But that, in fact, is misleading rhetoric. What they had found was 300 names in their internal material, which they say needed protecting. But the Department of Defense issued—confessed yesterday that in fact none of those 300 names were present in our material.
So, on the one hand, we see no credible evidence of harm being committed. We also see the Pentagon making a position that it’s not really involved in Iraq anymore. Well, we all know that there’s 50,000 US forces presently in Iraq and hundreds—over 100,000 US military contractors. So that argument can’t stand up on both accounts. But when we look to see what happened with the Afghan experience, we see no one harmed by this, apart from the reputation of an abusive organization, who is not credible, who’s been shown time and time again, not just by our work, but by others, to make statements that are simply not credible. And so, that is the lack of harm.
So then we look at the other side of the equation. What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes. We see serious consideration and calls for investigation by the top levels of the United Kingdom government. That is the correct response to the revelation of this type of material.
You know, it must be disturbing to Iraqis to see this sort of revelation, which reveals 15,000 civilian casualties that were never previously reported, 66,000 internally declared total, but 15,000 that are not present in any media report since 2003, to hear the Pentagon take such a cavalier attitude to the discovery, the public discovery, of six 9/11s, the equivalent death count of six 9/11s. And, you know, really, if the Pentagon is to be seen as a credible institution—every country needs a military to defend it, but if it’s to be seen as credible in that role, it needs to also be a responsive institution.
Do your own research on American WAR LOGS here! http://warlogs.owni.fr/
Do your own research on other American documents here! http://wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydig
NOW—if only we could get the same data on terrorists and their actions, eh? But how? on Wikileaks, of course. Submit here:

http://wikileaks.org/media/submissions.html


Here are some of the related stories released this week:

http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=7787&elq=fd6b878a57bc442687fe2b23ac4a3e6f
WikiLeaks' Releases Iraq War Logs

On Friday, the international organization WikiLeaks released The Iraq War Logs, a "huge trove of secret field reports" -- 391,832 documents in all -- from the U.S. military in Iraq. The archive is the second such cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to news organizations. The first, released in July, was a trove of 77,000 reports covering six years of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. National Security Network's Heather Hurlburt described the reports as "add[ing] a numbing amount of new, awful detail to what we already knew about the Iraq war." The documents suggest that violence was reduced from 2007 "not only because the American military committed to more troops and a new strategy, but because Iraqis themselves, exhausted by years of bloody war, were ready for it." According to the New York Times, the deaths of Iraqi civilians also "appear to be greater than the numbers made public by the United States during the Bush administration."

ABUSE OF IRAQIS BY IRAQIS: While the newly released documents "offer few glimpses of what was happening inside American detention facilities, they do contain indelible details of abuse carried out by Iraq's army and police." The Guardian reports that the documents reveal that "U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished." Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg "said the allegations of killings, torture and abuse were 'extremely serious' and 'needed to be looked at.'" Joel Wing noted that "Iraq's political parties were quick to put [the Iraqi police] to work in their internal struggle to form a new Iraqi government," with Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Movement saying "that the documents gave proof that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should not stay in office."

IRAN IN IRAQ: The reports "underscore the seriousness with which Iran's role [in Iraq] has been seen by the American military." According to the documents, Iran's military "intervened aggressively in support of Shiite combatants, offering weapons, training and sanctuary and in a few instances directly engaging American troops." Robert Farley, an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Kentucky, wrote that it is "utterly unsurprising" that Iran intervened in Iraq. "Attempting to manage the political situation in a neighboring country, while simultaneously weakening a potential enemy, is something that countries do." Iran's involvement in Iraq has not primarily been military, but rather political and economic. As Center for American Progress analysts Brian Katulis and Matthew Duss wrote in April 2008, depictions of Iran's role in Iraq as purely military "ignore an inconvenient truth: The leaders in Iraq's current government are closely aligned with Tehran and represent some of Iran's closest allies in Iraq." Iran has been similarly politically involved in neighboring Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai "said Monday that his government receives as much as $1 million at least once or twice a year from Iran," just as he said Washington doles out "bags of money" to his office.

COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES: While the documents reveal that coalition forces found traces of past Iraqi weapons programs, Wired Magazine reported that, the "war logs don't reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime," as the Bush administration had claimed existed, but that "remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained." There are no earth-shattering revelations in the new cache, but they do deepen our understanding of the war's disastrous consequences, both for the U.S. and for the region, particularly in regard to the wide-scale inter-community violence and sectarian cleansing that gripped the country in 2006-7. The violence led to the displacement of over 4.5 million Iraqis, both within and without the country, the vast majority of whom have been unable to return home, remaining displaced either inside Iraq or in neighboring countries. A February 2010 Center for American Progress report, The Iraq War Ledger, examined the costs and benefits of the Iraq intervention, and concluded "there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy. The war was intended to show the extent of America's power. It succeeded only in showing its limits."

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on Iraq War Logs, "Tabloid Journalism" and Why WikiLeaks Is "Under Siege"

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_on_iraq

In an extended interview, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange discusses the release of nearly 400,000 classified US military records on the war in Iraq, the biggest intelligence leak in US history. The disclosure provides a trove of new evidence on the number of civilian casualties, violence, torture and suffering that has befallen Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion. While the Obama administration is defending the US military’s record in Iraq, the allegations in the documents have sparked worldwide condemnation. Assange also confirmed that threats by the Pentagon would not stop WikiLeaks from releasing additional military documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration is defending the US military’s record in the Iraq war after coming under worldwide condemnation following the release of leaked secret documents that paint a graphic picture of the US occupation. The whistleblower group WikiLeaks released close to 400,000 classified US war logs over the weekend, comprising the largest intelligence leak in US history. The disclosure provides a trove of new evidence on the violence, torture and suffering that’s befallen Iraq since the 2003 US invasion. Despite US claims to the contrary, the war logs show the Pentagon kept tallies of civilian deaths in Iraq.
The documents also show the US imposed a formal policy to ignore human rights abuses committed by the Iraqi military under an order known as Frago 242 issued in June 2004, coalition troops were barred from investigating any violations committed by Iraqi troops against other Iraqis. Hundreds of cases of killings, torture and rape at the hands of the Iraqi troops were ignored. State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley rejected the accusations, saying the United States trained Iraqi security forces in human rights. Crowley said, quote, "Our troops were obligated to report abuses to appropriate authorities and to follow up, and they did so in Iraq. If there needs to be an accounting, first and foremost there needs to be an accounting by the Iraqi government itself." Meanwhile, General George Casey, who headed US forces in Iraq during 2004 to 2007, also denied that the United States turned a blind eye to prisoner abuse.
But the war logs have sparked worldwide concern and condemnation. In Britain, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the allegations were, quote, "extremely serious" and should be "properly examined." The Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises six US-allied Arab countries, urged Washington to open a serious and transparent investigation into possible crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, the United Nations chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, has called on the Obama administration to order a full investigation of the role of US forces in human rights abuses in Iraq. And Human Rights Watch said the US may have broken international law if it knowingly transferred prisoners to potential places of abuse.
The nearly 400,000 documents were provided ahead of time to the New York Times, The Guardian newspaper in London, the French newspaper Le Monde, Al Jazeera, the German magazine Der Spiegel, on an embargoed basis. They’re now available online at wikileaks.org.
We go now to London, where we’re joined by the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.
Julian, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance of these documents, how you got them, and why you decided to release them.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Hello, Amy.
Well, these documents cover the periods of 2004 to the beginning of 2010. It is the most accurate description of a war to have ever been released. Within them, we can see 285,000 casualties. That’s added up, report by report. That’s each casualty, where it happened, when it happened, and who was involved, according to internal US military reporting.
Now, looking at particular groups of casualties, we can see, for example, over 600 civilians killed at checkpoint killings, including thirty children, previously—mostly previously unreported, that three-quarters of those killed at checkpoint killings, according to the United States military itself, were civilians, and only one-quarter, according to the US military internal reporting, were insurgents.
We see 284 reports covering torture or other forms of prisoner abuse by coalition forces, covering 300 different people. We see over a thousand reports of torture and other prisoner abuse by the Iraqi state itself, many or most of those receiving no meaningful investigation. I heard in your introduction that the Pentagon claims that the Iraqi government is responsible for this, but in international law, it is the person or government or organization that has effective control that is responsible. And certainly, before the technical legal handover from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi government, it is clear that the United States and other coalition forces were the effective, legally responsible group for those. We see in the United Kingdom, Phil Shiner and his group Public Interest Lawyers, Amnesty International, and in New York, Human Rights Watch, calling for investigation and, in some cases, lawsuits against coalition forces for wrongful death.
There’s other aspects, as well. We can see the involvement of Iran in Iraq with various forms of support given to Shia groups. We can see the corruption present in the Maliki government, including what appears to be a special forces—Iraqi special forces—squad personally responsible to Maliki and not tasked by the Iraqi army itself that has been going around and strong-arming and possibly assassinating opponents.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did you get these documents, and who wrote them?
JULIAN ASSANGE: The documents are what is referred to in military terminology as "significant action reports," so those are field reports by the US Army radioed back to base of everything those soldiers and commanders considered significant. So, that is the launch of an operation; the dropping of a bomb; the arrest or detainment of persons, of which there are approximately 174,000 cases documented in this material; significant key leadership engagements, so the meetings with some key leaders and the US Army. It is, if you like, what the US Army and the Pentagon use as its raw ingredients to come up with policy and understand how the war was progressing.
Clearly this material must have come from someone or some persons within the Pentagon or within the United States military. And it’s worth pointing out that there are clearly good people in the Pentagon who were not happy with the progress of the Iraq war. And those people have chosen to provide us with this material and, presumably, have chosen to provide us with other material that we have released over the years.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break and come back to Julian Assange. He’s joining us from London, actually just across the River Thames from MI5 and MI6, where we were broadcasting from a few weeks ago, the British equivalents of the FBI and the CIA. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Julian Assange. He’s joining us from London, where he held a news conference on Saturday with his organization WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that has released close to 400,000 military documents, the largest leak in US history, about the Iraq war.
Now, Julian, I wanted to play for you some of the comments coming from the military, WikiLeaks being criticized for releasing these documents. This is what, well, the disgraced General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, who also ran special operations forces during the surge in Iraq, had to say about the Iraq war logs on the eve of their release.
GEN. STANLEY McCHRYSTAL: I think, first, the decision by anybody to leak classified information is something that—not only is it illegal, it’s also something that that individual is making judgments about the value of that information and the threat to comrades that almost nobody is qualified to make that judgment. So, if somebody leaks information that puts me or one of my soldiers at risk, I think that’s a level of irresponsibility that’s very upsetting. Then there’s the decision to release them widely. I also am not comfortable with that, either. I think that a level of responsibility towards our people needs to be balanced with any argument for a need or right to know. I can’t judge every single piece of information—I wouldn’t try to—but I would say that there has to be that balance, and there has to that level of maturity, because it’s likely that the leak of some of that information could cause death of our own people or some of our allies.
AMY GOODMAN: That was General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the US and NATO force in Afghanistan. His view was echoed by other soldiers farther down the chain of command. This is Private First Class David Service who’s stationed in northern Iraq.
PFC DAVID SERVICE: I don’t think anybody who’s managed to access classified information should share, as far as regarding the safety of the soldiers or the people it could be affecting. But when you get into—the Iraqis have been—you know, it’s a violent culture. We’ve been doing our best to help them with the problems that they’re having.
AMY GOODMAN: And back in Washington, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell also lashed out at WikiLeaks for releasing the war logs.
GEOFF MORRELL: The bottom line is, our forces are still very much in danger here as a result of this exposure, given the fact that our tactics, techniques and procedures are exposed in these documents, and our enemies are undoubtedly going to try to use them against us, and making their jobs even more difficult and dangerous.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell. Julian Assange, your response?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, this is the same old argument that the Pentagon has been trotting out every time there is media exposure of their abuses for the past fifty years. They tried it with the Afghan war logs. Last week, NATO told CNN from Kabul that there was not a single case of an Afghan that they could find who needed moving or protection. The Pentagon—Secretary of Defense Gates wrote to the US Senate Armed Services Committee privately on August the 16th saying that no intelligence sources, sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been revealed by this material, while saying publicly something completely different. Similarly, the Pentagon stated last week that it could find no incidents of an Afghan who had been adversely affected by this release or the injury to any US troops. The reality is that the only thing at risk here is the reputations and the jobs of those individuals who put troops in harm’s way in Iraq and who put Iraqi citizens in the middle of a civil war.
You know, late last week, the Pentagon was saying—pushing out the message that they had found 300 names in this material of people who needed protecting. But that, in fact, is misleading rhetoric. What they had found was 300 names in their internal material, which they say needed protecting. But the Department of Defense issued—confessed yesterday that in fact none of those 300 names were present in our material.
So, on the one hand, we see no credible evidence of harm being committed. We also see the Pentagon making a position that it’s not really involved in Iraq anymore. Well, we all know that there’s 50,000 US forces presently in Iraq and hundreds—over 100,000 US military contractors. So that argument can’t stand up on both accounts. But when we look to see what happened with the Afghan experience, we see no one harmed by this, apart from the reputation of an abusive organization, who is not credible, who’s been shown time and time again, not just by our work, but by others, to make statements that are simply not credible. And so, that is the lack of harm.
So then we look at the other side of the equation. What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes. We see serious consideration and calls for investigation by the top levels of the United Kingdom government. That is the correct response to the revelation of this type of material.
You know, it must be disturbing to Iraqis to see this sort of revelation, which reveals 15,000 civilian casualties that were never previously reported, 66,000 internally declared total, but 15,000 that are not present in any media report since 2003, to hear the Pentagon take such a cavalier attitude to the discovery, the public discovery, of six 9/11s, the equivalent death count of six 9/11s. And, you know, really, if the Pentagon is to be seen as a credible institution—every country needs a military to defend it, but if it’s to be seen as credible in that role, it needs to also be a responsive institution.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, you—
JULIAN ASSANGE: All these reports were made secret at the time that they were written. Without doubt, they—nearly all of them should not be secret now. Their time has elapsed. They’re not of tactical significance. And yet, they are still concealed. So, what is the purpose of concealing them?
AMY GOODMAN: What are the documents you’re talking about, are still concealed?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, essentially, all this material, all these 400,000 reports have been kept by the Pentagon. The only reason that the public are seeing them now is that some brave soldier or soldiers stepped forward to give us this material and get it out into the public domain, where it can shape public policy and do some good.
AMY GOODMAN: Not only Britain has responded saying they are calling for an investigation, but the latest news right now out of—out of Denmark, I believe, the—let’s see if I can find it here. The Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen promised all allegations according to which Danish soldiers may have knowingly handed over detainees in Iraq to mistreatment at the hands of local authorities are regarded as very serious. But the Prime Minister also rejected calls by the opposition to establish an independent commission to investigate the claims. Have you, Julian Assange, redacted any of these close to 400,000 documents? And how did you communicate with the Pentagon beforehand?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, so, we look at the claims made by the Pentagon last week, that they had saw 300 names in this material. That was their material. And they admitted early this week that in what we released, there are none of those 300 names. None whatsoever. So, we went through a harm minimization process, like we do with every release of our material. And we asked, back for the—back when dealing—at the time, in dealing with Afghanistan and after, for the Pentagon and the ISAF’s assistance in this. The Pentagon stated to us very clearly, including in a letter from its—from the DOD’s chief counsel, that they were not interested in harm minimization. They were not an organization that were interested in harm minimization, and they would not be assisting us. And they were only interested in, in fact, demanding, under the threat of compulsion, that we return and destroy all of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain Frago 242, the—and 039, and how US leadership might be implicated in torture?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, Frago 242 is a classified order that we managed to discover after reviewing this material. It wasn’t included in the material itself, but we managed to explore it and get it from some of our sources, that shows that—an order that the US military not intervene in these cases of Iraqi police and Iraqi officials committing torture. We can also see cases where people have been deliberately handed over to some of the most abusive groups, most abusive police groups, in Iraq, in what looks to be an intentional sort of torture laundering, a sort of internal torture rendition in Iraq.
Now, there’s an extraordinary piece of footage, which we included in the Channel 4 documentary that was released yesterday on this subject, of the chief of staff, at a press conference with Donald Rumsfeld, responding to a question by a reporter along these lines of what action US forces must take if they see torture or other forms of abuse. And the chief of staff said, "Well, they must intervene where they can," and was corrected by Donald Rumsfeld, in saying, "No, no, they don’t. They don’t have to intervene." And in fact, it turns out that Rumsfeld was right, and presumably Rumsfeld knew the existence of this order 242 much better than the chief of staff, because he had been involved in the drafting of that order.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play that interaction. We played it yesterday. But it’s very interesting. General Peter Pace, followed by Donald Rumsfeld. This is from November 2005.
GEN. PETER PACE: It is absolutely the responsibility of every US service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.
DEFENSE SECRETARY DONALD RUMSFELD: I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it. It’s to report it.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, and you’ll find, in the longer version of that clip, Pace says, "No, no, no, that they have an obligation to physically intervene." Not true. And not also subsequently re-corrected by Rumsfeld. But Rumsfeld was right. Frago 242 says explicitly that that is not to happen, that there is not to be a physical intervention. And arguably, the US, at that period, was the controlling organ in the situation. It had effective control on the ground, and so, under international law, it is the responsible party having effective control.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, I want to read for you from the Washington Post editorial in today’s paper. They write, quote, "In Afghanistan, Wikileaks appears to have put the lives of courageous Afghans at risk, by identifying them as American sources. In Iraq, it has at least temporarily complicated negotiations to form a new government.
"We are all for the disclosure of important government information; but Mr. Assange’s reckless and politically motivated approach, while causing tangible harm, has shed relatively little light."
Now, that’s not a general speaking in the United States; that’s the Washington Post. I wanted you to respond to that, but also, interestingly, Ellen Knickmeyer, former Washington Post Baghdad chief during much of the war, writes in the Daily Beast, "Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded." Julian?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, well, those statements in the Washington Post of "tangible harm" are simply false. And that’s not me making that allegation. It’s not our people making that allegation. We just need to look at what the statements of the Department of Defense have been last week and this week, that there is no Afghan civilian or anyone else that they can determine who has been harmed by release of the Afghan material; the statement by NATO in Kabul last week, that there was not even anyone that they could see that needed protecting or moving as a result of the release of that material. The Australian government has just completed a review, Australian Defense Department completed a review of that material, the Afghan release, and published a press release this morning saying that they could find no harm to individuals as a result of that material. So, the Washington Post editorial is simply untrue. So, there’s a question as to why a newspaper like that feels that they need to make untrue statements. What are they catering for?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, the Washington Post editorial also takes a different stance on the reports of deaths of civilians in Iraq. It reads, quote, "The report confirms that the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis, not by coalition forces; claims such as those published by the British journal The Lancet that American forces slaughtered hundreds of thousands are the real 'attack on truth.'" Julian Assange?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States. And I would have to say the situation is worse in tabloid journalism—craven behavior by a number of mainstream media organizations. So, let’s dissect that statement. The Lancet study did not say, in fact, who had caused these excess deaths. That was an epidemiological study, where deaths could have been caused by many different types of violence, disease and so on. Those were, if you like, the missing people in the Iraqi population.
Similarly, our material, which is told from the US perspective, probably only covers about 50 percent of US military—of military operations. It doesn’t include British operations, doesn’t include CIA, doesn’t include special forces, doesn’t include top-secret operations. But nonetheless, it sometimes touches on those, when there is a combined operation. It lists internally declared 66,000 civilian casualties between 2004 and the end of 2009, with two missing months.
And yes, the majority of those are listed as those who have been killed by sectarian violence, but it is the Iraq war and the mismanagement of the Iraq war that caused that sectarian violence. So, you know, organizations such as Iraq Body Count, which has the sort of most detailed and rigorous individual counting, as opposed to statistical surveys of death, individual cases that are recorded, it also has the majority of deaths caused—civilian deaths caused by civilian violence. But it still counts those as civilians killed by violence as a result of the war, and correctly so.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, we’re going to break and then come back. We’re speaking to Julian Assange. He’s the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, which has just posted the largest release of documents, of military documents in history. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. After we speak with him, we’ll be talking about the outbreak of cholera in Haiti.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Julian Assange. He’s the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks, which has released—well, posted at wikileaks.org close to 400,000 Iraq war logs—military documents written by soldiers, by military officials over the years—what exactly are the years? 2004 right until 2010, Julian?
JULIAN ASSANGE: That’s correct, excluding two months in 2004 that are missing for reasons we don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian, you have seen these thousands and thousands of documents. What most surprised you? Is there a story or stories, a category that has most disturbed you?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, it’s the big picture of the war, that nearly all the deaths are in incidences that kill just one or two people. A little girl on the street, who would—in a yellow dress, who would frequently go to collect candy and so on from US troops, one day a tank goes past, and for an inexplicable reason, a shooter comes out of the US tank and blows her away. There are just so many of these incidences.
You know, I spoke before about checkpoint killings. In one incident, after a car was shot up and examined, according to these internal US military reports, the man killed was a doctor delivering a pregnant woman to the hospital.
We see a very interesting example of a town of 40,000 on the Syrian border, whose population went from 40,000 to 2,000 over a year or so. And that town and that circumstance has not been reported in any—not been reported at all, that we could find in the mainstream media or, in fact, in the alternative media. There was just no reporters there as that town collapsed and people fled across to Syria.
There—you know, I like to describe the big tragedy of war, the killings on every—on almost every street corner in Baghdad, as—it’s the car accidents of war and not the bus accidents of war, that actually—
AMY GOODMAN: It looks like we have just lost Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder. Satellite just cut off to Britain. We’ll see if we can get him back, but we’ll move on to our next segment. Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, editor-in-chief. We will also provide the transcript online at democracynow.org of this whole conversation. It will be in video and audio podcast, and you can link to it. And, of course, we’ll link to the documents.


Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Watch Pt. 2 of interview here
For related stories on Democracy, click here.
• Part II: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on Iraq War Logs, "Tabloid Journalism" and Why WikiLeaks is "Under Siege"
• WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs Expose US-Backed Iraqi Torture, 15,000 More Civilian Deaths, and Contractors Run Amok
• EXCLUSIVE: WikiLeaks Prepares Largest Intel Leak in US History with Release of 400,000 Iraq War Docs
• Iraq War Veteran Who Rescued Wounded Children in 2007 Apache Attack Describes Emotional Toll of Witnessing Infamous Killings
• "This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act"–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem

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Chung Shan (or Sun Yat-sen?), Republican Founding Father of China—and a Change in the Mandate of Heaven

Chung Shan (or Sun Yat-sen?), Republican Founding Father of China—and a Change in the Mandate of Heaven

By Kevin Stoda
, Taiwan

I teach at Chung Shan Junior High School here on Beigan Island one day each week. I had had trouble remembering the name for several weeks. Today, I realized one reason why this is the case. This reason is that the name Chung Shan, the founding father of modern republicanism in China has had his name transcribed using a variety of transcription methods. However, in the West, his name is written in most western textbooks and history books as Sun-Yatsen.

I believe that this is difference in spelling and pronunciation of a very very popular Chinese name (and historical personage) is simply because the translation methods in the West at the turn of the 20th Century are no longer similar to what they commonly are now. In addition, some Chinese regions, such as Taiwan, cling to a variety of transcription methods, rather than the more popular, Hanyu Pinyin, method (adopted in the mid-20th Century in mainland China.)

This problem in transcribing modern Chinese can be seen as the rough equivalent to a modern Western Reader being given dozens of spelling differences (depending on region, countries, and township or local preference) to state the same thing, place, or name.

The best example I have of this in USA-English transcriptions is the town of Rolla (in Missouri) and the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. The pronunciation is essentially the same for both places. However, the spellings are quite different. Similarly, the city of Worcester in England is sometimes spelled in different settings the way it is pronounced: Wooster—as in Wooster, Ohio. (In the England, Worcester is always pronounced the same manner as is the name of the city in Ohio.)

CHINESE LANGUAGE TRANSCRIPTION

China had no standard transcription system until the late 19th and the 20th centuries. Finally, western Christian missionaries began to work on this issue in doing translations approximately two centuries ago. This is one reason why “[t]he second-most common [R]omanization system [for the Chinese languages], the Wade-Giles, was invented by Thomas Wade in 1859 and [later] modified by Herbert Giles in 1892. As this system approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels, i.e. it is an Anglicization, it may be particularly helpful for beginner Chinese speakers of an English-speaking background. [Over the subsequent century,]Wade-Giles was found in academic use in the United States, particularly before the 1980s, and until recently was widely used in Taiwan.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

According to one Wikipedia author, “Today the most common romanization standard for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin, often known simply as pinyin, [was] introduced in 1956 by the People's Republic of China, and later adopted by Singapore and Taiwan.” Wikipedia claims that “Pinyin is almost universally employed now for teaching standard spoken Chinese in schools and universities across America, Australia and Europe. Chinese parents also use Pinyin to teach their children the sounds and tones of new words.” However, in Taiwan a great variety of transcription methods are actually quite evident to me--and my fellow teachers at Chung Shan Junior High School.

CHUNG SHAN (or SUN YAT-SEN?) HAD AMERICAN CONNECTIONS

In Taiwan, I observe many institutions with the name “Chung Shan”—named after the leader of China’s first and only republican revolution in 1911.

http://www.csistdup.org.tw/english/a10.asp

There are dozens of medical schools, technological centers, and innumerable other location names with Chung Shan on it throughout China, Taiwan, and Asia.

http://www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Sun-Yat-Sen.html

Interestingly, most Americans today do not know that this famous Chinese Republican had been trained to a great degree on American (and British) soil, i.e. in his preparation to overthrow five millennia of Emperorship in China.

Born on November 12, 1866 in a village near what today is Macau. Sun Yat-sen (now more often known as Chung Shan—even in the West) “was sent to Hawaii in 1879 to join his older brother. There he enrolled in a college where he studied Western science and Christianity.”Later, he returned to China to study and then to practice medicine, but the Chinese regime refused to grant him a license. Soon he was involved in revolts, letter campaigns, and vocal agitation for change in his homeland. By the 1890s, Yat-sen had established a lifelong pattern—a cycle of“unorganized plots, failures, execution of coconspirators, overseas wanderings, and financial backing for further coups (hostile takeovers).”
Next, “Sun grew a moustache, donned Western-style clothes, and, posing as a Japanese man, set out once again, first to Hawaii, then to San Francisco, and finally to England to visit a former school instructor. Before leaving England, he often visited the reading room of the British Museum, where he became acquainted with the writings of Karl Marx . . . .”By 1905 he was in Japan for a second time where he found “the Chinese student community stirred to a pitch of patriotic excitement. Joined by other revolutionists such as Huang Hsing and Sung Chiao-jen (1882–1913), Sun organized, and was elected director of, the T'ungmeng hui (Revolutionary Alliance). The T'ung-meng hui was carefully organized, with a sophisticated and highly educated membership core drawn from all over China.”
“Sun's ideas had developed into the ‘Three People's Principles’—his writings on nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. When Sun returned from another fundraising trip in the fall of 1906, his student following in Japan numbered in the thousands. However, under pressure from the government in China, the Japanese government [finally] threw him out.” Worse, still, “failure[s] of a series of poorly planned and armed coups relying upon the scattered forces of secret societies and rebel bands had reduced the reputation of the T'ungmeng hui in Southeast Asia. However, Sun found that Chinese opinion in the United States was turning against his rivals. Sun visited the United States and was on a successful fundraising tour when he read in a newspaper that a successful revolt had occurred in the central Yangtze Valley city of Wuchang, China.”

Sun had learned his English by studying with missionaries in China and in Hawaii, so it is an important coincidence of history that Sun arrived back in China in 1911 on Christmas Day (December 25). Then, on January 1, 1912 Sun officially called for the founding of a Republican China. “Though the guiding spirit of the Chinese revolution, Sun was widely criticized during his lifetime. After his death he became the object of a cult (a following) that elevated him to a sacred position.”

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/civilizationsend/

MANDATE OF HEAVEN

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-137617417179659290#

I share this tale because China and Chinese have historically been interested in a concept called “the Mandate from (of) Heaven”. Sun Yat-sen’s arrival in China in 1911 marked the end of the imperial era and a new Mandate from (of) Heaven took form in China—following centuries of social decay, decadence, underdevelopment, and colonialization from Europe--and elsewhere.

http://712educators.about.com/od/teachingaboutchina/a/mandate_heaven.htm

The Mandate of Heaven is based on four principles:
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/shu-jing.html
1. The right to rule is granted by Heaven.
2. There is only one Heaven therefore there can be only one ruler.
3. The right to rule is based on the virtue of the ruler.
4. The right to rule is not limited to one dynasty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
What are the positive and negatives sides to the Mandate of Heaven for a dynasty?
1. It gives the ruler prestige and religious importance.
2. It gives the ruler supreme power.
3. It allows a new ruler to gain power quickly because everyone believes he has the 'Mandate of Heaven'.
4. The rulers power must be kept in check by virtue.
5. It justifies rebellion as long as the rebellion is successful.

As 2011 approaches--the 100th anniversary of Sun’s last return to China-- I am certain that the so-called Communist Party of China will worry daily about the fact that calls for greater Republicanism will arise again in their land. Will calls for reform in greater China turn again to revolution and a new mandate from Heaven?[1]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001185.html

Will it all end again as sadly as the Tiananmen Square events of 1989 or will things turn out differently in 2011-2012?

http://ilookchina.net/tag/deng-xiaoping/

NOTES

[1] As the selection from a writing by James Dorn (below) concerning the Communist Party’s handling of topics from the Cultural Revolution below shows, the CCP in China is not into public discussions on the past.
The CCP's monopoly on power leaves little scope for independent thought or freedom of expression, especially in the political realm. Open criticism and discussion are a threat to the CCP's supremacy. The Party's powerful propaganda department, headed by a politburo member, hides the truth by distorting both facts and language. Orwellian "Newspeak" is pervasive, from the "Cultural Revolution" and "market socialism" to the very name of the nation -- the "People's Republic of China."
The CCP does not want people, especially young people, to openly examine its past. Although the Party has called the Cultural Revolution a serious mistake and a national disaster, it has not allowed full disclosure of the facts or publication of critical accounts of that period. The reason is obvious: the Party's legitimacy would be tested and found to be fraudulent. The "mandate of heaven" would dictate a new political order based on the consent of the people -- a constitutional order of liberty. Nien Cheng, in her best-selling book Life and Death in Shanghai, describes how Party officials dodged responsibility for the violent tactics used by the Red Guards: "When there was excessive cruelty that resulted in deaths, the officials would disclaim responsibility for an 'accident' resulting from 'mass enthusiasm'." The truth about the Cultural Revolution, as historian John King Fairbank wrote, is that it "fed upon ... public dependence on, and blind obedience to, authority. There was no idea of morality's being under the law." That truth must not be forgotten.
The CCP's deliberate attempt to hide the truth about the Party's role in the Cultural Revolution, by banning books by Cheng and others and by romanticizing Mao, may protect the Party's hold on power in the short run but not in the long run. Eventually, economic liberalization, a growing middle class, and the global flow of information through the Internet will generate increasing pressure for political reform. China's new mantra should be "Seek truth from freedom." Global competition has driven China's economic development since 1978; now it is time to apply that same force to politics and to constitutional change. Truth cannot come from facts if the facts remain hidden by a supreme CCP. What China needs is freedom and transparency: a government whose power is strictly limited and whose fundamental purpose is to protect life, liberty, and property.
The major lesson of the Cultural Revolution is not that it was "fun," as a former Red Guard recently told his college-aged son. Rather, in the words of Cheng, "Unless and until a political system rooted in law, rather than personal power, is firmly established in China, the road to the future will always be full of twists and turns."
From http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3206
So, perhaps this reticence to talk-about-the-past by the CCP will lead to the downplaying of the 1911-1912 revolution’s anniversary (over the next 26 months).

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Saturday, October 23, 2010

Extremists on the Right desire us to repeat history.

The following story (below) is written by Ian Millhiser and published in American Progress.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/07/judicial_extremism.html

It describes the Ludite-like campaign to takeover American politics, society, science, and common sense. For me, it is the perfect follow-up to my writing of earlier in the week, “The Trend to Extreme Right in Europe and the USA is Explained by the Fact that the Left and Progressives are Failing to take Seriously Needs and Worries of Poor and Middle Class”
http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/the-trend-to-extreme-right-in-europe-and-the-usa-is-explained-by-the-fact-that-the-left-and-progressives-are-failing/

Extremists on the Right desire us to repeat history. Progressives need to wake up and get involved in a movement to NOT-TURN-BACK-THE CLOCK.
Doomed to Repeat History
The Right Re-embraces Lunatic Legal Arguments from the Past


SOURCE: AP
By Ian Millhiser | July 19, 2010

Spend a week listening to the right, and you’ll think the founders were all modern-day Tea Partiers. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) thinks the Constitution forbids Congress to spend federal money on programs he personally disapproves of. Justice Clarence Thomas thinks that the minimum wage, child labor laws, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters all violate the Constitution. And of course, everyone on the right thinks that health reform is unconstitutional.
It’s enough to make you think they’re just making it up as they go along. It clearly can’t be the case that every single law cherished by progressives just happens to be unconstitutional.
Yet the reality is even worse. When the right’s view of the Constitution was ascendant 75 years ago, basic protections such as a restriction on child labor were declared unconstitutional; laws banning discrimination were unthinkable; and Social Security was widely viewed as next in line for the Supreme Court’s chopping block.
America’s right now wants nothing more than to revive this discredited theory of the Constitution. These conservatives are over-reading the Tenth Amendment, a provision of the Constitution that provides Congress’s power is not unlimited. So-called “tenther” conservatives are determined to use their twisted reinterpretation to shrink national leaders’ power to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub. They must not be allowed to succeed for three reasons:
• Tentherism is dangerous. Monopolists seized control of entire industries during tentherism’s last period of ascendance. Workers were denied the most basic protections, while management happily invoked the long arm of the law when a labor dispute arose. Worst of all, Congress was powerless against this effort. And the Court swiftly declared congressional action unconstitutional when elected officials took even the most modest steps to protect workers or limit corporate power.
• Tentherism has no basis in constitutional text or history. Nothing in the Constitution supports tenther arguments. And tenther claims are nothing new. Each of them was raised as early as the Washington administration, and each was rejected by George Washington himself.
• Tentherism is authoritarian. Health reform, Social Security, and the Civil Rights Act all exist because the people’s representatives said they should exist. The tenthers express goal is to make the Supreme Court strip these elected representatives of power and impose a conservative agenda upon the nation.
The right’s quizzical lawsuits challenging health reform are just the tip of the tenther iceberg. If these lawsuits succeed, much of America’s most cherished laws could be next against the wall.
The tenther agenda
In its strongest form, tentherism would eliminate most of the progress of the last century. It asserts that the federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty, child labor laws exceed Congress’s limited powers, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses. Many tenthers even oppose cherished programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Tenthers divine all this from the brief language of the 10th Amendment, which provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In layman's terms, this simply means that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.
The tenther constitution reads each of these powers very narrowly—too narrowly, it turns out, to permit much of the progress of the last century. As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic regulations that beat back the Great Depression, and they would hamstring any attempt to enact new progressive legislation.
Killing health care
Congress’s authority is limited to the itemized list of powers contained in the text of the Constitution, and the right falsely claims that health reform does not make the list. Although Congress’s power is not limitless, it clearly permits national leaders to regulate the national health insurance market.
A provision of the Constitution known as the “commerce clause” gives Congress power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” There is a long line of cases holding that this provision gives Congress broad power to enact laws that substantially affect prices, marketplaces, commercial transactions, and other economic activity. And a law requiring all Americans to hold health insurance does all of these things.
Health reform opponents, faced with such a daunting case against their position, urge the courts to invent an entirely new limit on the commerce power. They believe the Constitution only permits Congress to regulate people who are already engaged in a particular kind of commerce. It does not permit Congress to require individuals to engage in economic activity they would not otherwise engage in, such as requiring uninsured Americans to carry insurance.
One searches the Constitution in vain for any language supporting such a novel theory, but the right’s anti-health care argument has another problem. It proves entirely too much.
Segregationists in the Jim Crow South explicitly demanded the right to not engage in commerce. Lunch counter operators wanted to not do business with black patrons. Employers wanted the right to not hire black workers. Realtors demanded the right to not sell certain homes to African Americans. If tenthers’ anti-health care arguments prevail, it’s unclear how the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters survives the purge.
For some tenthers, that may be the point. Indeed, some of the right’s leading jurists have long felt that laws such as the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act are unconstitutional.
Rolling back civil rights
Tentherism may be relatively dormant today, but tenthers dominated the Supreme Court from the late 1800s until 1937, when a majority of the Court finally recognized that national leaders must be empowered to solve a national economic crisis like the Great Depression.
Modern Supreme Court precedent dictates that the commerce clause gives Congress full authority to regulate the roads and railways used to transport goods in interstate commerce, as well as the goods themselves and the vehicles that transport them. The commerce clause also gives Congress the power to regulate activities that “substantially affect interstate commerce.” This “substantial effects” power is the basis of Congress’s authority to ban discrimination throughout the country.
Yet Justice Thomas claimed in three separate cases—U.S. v. Lopez, U.S. v. Morrison, and Gonzales v. Raich—that this “substantial effects” test is “at odds with the constitutional design.” It’s difficult to count how many laws would simply cease to exist if Thomas’s view of the Constitution ever prevailed, but a short list includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, much of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the most basic worker protections such as the minimum wage, overtime laws, and the regulation of child labor.
Many of the right’s most celebrated jurists share Thomas’s views. President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Douglas Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1987—although Reagan was forced to withdraw the nomination after NPR reported that Ginsburg had a history of drug use. Ginsburg is most famous for describing tentherism as a “constitution in exile,” and for wanting to put that rightfully exiled monarch back on America’s throne.
But Judge Janice Rogers Brown may be the judiciary’s proudest tenther. She once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” And it was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who brokered the deal that elevated Brown to the federal bench—feeding the widespread belief that McCain would have nominated her to the Supreme Court if he had been elected president.
Making elections irrelevant
The Constitution gives Congress broad authority to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” This means that elected congressional representatives—not judges—are allowed to decide what is in the federal budget. Yet tenthers believe that the Supreme Court should seize control of the budget and eliminate spending programs that they happen to disapprove of.
The fullest articulation of this vision by an elected official occurred during Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) urged the Supreme Court during those hearings to begin “some reining in of Congress in terms of the general welfare clause,” a reference to Congress’s authority to spend money to promote the general welfare.
Coburn’s plan to wrest control of the federal budget away from Congress and give it to the Supreme Court, would not only be completely unprecedented—it is also a terrible idea. There is nothing in the Constitution to guide the Court in determining which portions of the federal budget to strike down, so the justices own personal political views would inevitably drive the budgeting process.
The Constitution already has a mechanism to allow the people to reverse spending decisions they disapprove of: elections. Conservatives are simply wrong to claim that we should shift control of America’s massive economy over to unelected judges.
Tentherism is undoubtedly a terrible idea, but it is hardly unprecedented. America has seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well.
America was not founded by tenthers
Contrary to the right’s claims, tentherism has no basis in the Constitution or its history. President George Washington himself rejected tentherism early in American history, and this radical view of the Constitution gained no traction at all until fairly late in American history.
Clarence Thomas versus George Washington
Justice Thomas is probably the leading proponent of tentherism on the federal bench, but the founding generation would actually be quite shocked by his narrow view of Congress’s power to regulate commerce. Indeed, the framers viewed this power more expansively than a majority of the justices on today’s Supreme Court in many ways.
The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Morrison, for example, struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act. The Court acknowledged that Congress has broad authority over economic matters, but rejected Congress’s authority over “noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.” In other words, Morrison eliminates much of Congress’s power to regulate violent activity. But Morrison would probably render a law signed by George Washington unconstitutional.
President Washington signed “An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes,” which the First United States Congress had passed pursuant to its commerce power. The 1790 act reached far beyond economic matters, prohibiting “any crime upon, or trespass against, the person or property of any peaceable and friendly Indian or Indians,” including wholly noneconomic crimes such as assault or murder. Washington’s decision to sign this bill demonstrates his expansive view of the commerce power—a view that in no way resembles tentherism.
Many tenthers claim that local businesses that serve only in-state consumers are immune from laws enacted under the commerce power because the commerce clause permits economic regulation “among the several states,” This view was also rejected early in American history.
A New York steamboat owner argued in the 1824 case called Gibbons v. Ogden that Congress lacked the power to regulate New York’s internal waters. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice John Marshall rejected this claim.
In Marshall’s view, “Commerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior” Congress can therefore regulate “commerce which concerns more States than one,” and only those rare economic activities that have no impact on other states’ economies are beyond Congress’s reach.
Washington and Marshall’s expansive view of the Commerce power remained largely unquestioned for most of the Constitution’s first century. Indeed, the Supreme Court did not strike down a single law as exceeding Congress’s Commerce power until 1870. So tenthers like Justice Thomas will find little comfort in the early history of the United States.
Tom Coburn versus George Washington
Senator Coburn’s claim that the Supreme Court can seize control of the federal budget would also shock the founding generation. There was vigorous debate among the founders regarding the proper scope of Congress’s power to spend money, but this debate was resolved very early in the Constitution’s history, and the courts have never since questioned that Congress has broad authority over the national purse.
Recall that the Constitution gives Congress broad authority to “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” This language denotes few, if any, substantive limits on Congress’s spending power, but James Madison argued during the Washington administration that they had a hidden meaning. Madison’s early vision of the spending power dictates that federal spending is only permitted when it advances one of Congress’s other enumerated powers, such as by building a post office or funding a war.
Madison’s chief rival in the founders' debate over the spending power’s scope was Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary and a co-author of Madison’s Federalist Papers. Hamilton believed that Congress’s spending authority extends over a “vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.”
The debate between Madison and Hamilton came to a tee in 1791, when Congress passed a bill that would spend money to create the First Bank of the United States. Madison protested that the bill was unconstitutional, but President Washington sided with Hamilton and signed the bill into law.
Significantly, Madison appeared to abandon his narrow view of the spending clause by the time he entered the White House in 1809. Madison signed legislation when he was president establishing the Second Bank of the United States. Madison also appointed Justice Joseph Story to the Supreme Court, one of the strongest defenders of the Hamiltonian view of the spending clause.
The debate over the spending clause’s proper scope largely laid dormant until 1936 when the Court unanimously endorsed Hamilton’s view of the spending clause in U.S. v. Butler, a case challenging a New Deal agricultural program. Even Justice James McReynolds joined his brethren in siding with Hamilton over Madison—a telling decision since McReynolds was an archconservative who voted twice to hold Social Security unconstitutional and who liked to call President Franklin Roosevelt a “crippled son-of-a-bitch.”
Tenthers like Coburn are apparently radical even by McReynolds’ standards. Moreover, as Hamilton’s early triumph over Madison indicates, the founding generation firmly rejected the tenther view of Congress’s spending power very early in American history.
The Supreme Court’s failed experiment with tentherism
The Supreme Court briefly embraced some of the tenthers views in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the founding generation’s decisive verdict against them. The Court drastically cut back on Congress’s power to regulate commerce during this period, although it has never embraced a tenther view of the spending clause. Monopolies thrived as a result. Management was largely free to engage in the most abhorrent labor practices, and national leaders were powerless to stop them.
The Court’s brief flirtation with tentherism began with its 1888 decision in Kidd v. Pearson. Because the commerce clause permits regulation of commerce “among the several states,” Kidd determined that Congress cannot regulate activities that occur entirely within a single state’s borders, even if those activities are part of an interstate industry or otherwise impact other states’ economies.

Imagine, for example, that a Wisconsin baker imports flour from Iowa, bakes bread in Wisconsin, and then ships the bread to Minnesota. Kidd would allow Congress to regulate the act of importing the flour and shipping the bread since these activities cross state lines, but not the actual act of baking the bread. The Court explained this distinction saying that Congress could regulate transportation or even sales of products across state lines, but not “manufacturing.”
It didn’t take long after Kidd was decided for industry to figure out that it had been given a gift. A sugar monopoly claimed in 1895, for example, that it was immune from federal antitrust law, even though it had “acquired nearly complete control of the manufacture of refined sugar within the United States.” The justices happily agreed because, in their view, manufacturing sugar had nothing to do with selling sugar.
Congress quickly adapted to losing its power to directly regulate the production of goods and services by simply forbidding unwanted products from being transported, and the Supreme Court permitted Congress to do so—at least when such bans were enacted to achieve socially conservative ends.
The Court upheld a law in Champion v. Ames preventing the transportation of lottery tickets. It permitted Congress to ban the transportation of prostitutes in Hoke v. United States. And Congress was allowed to ban alcohol from interstate transit in Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Railway.
The Court’s 1918 decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart, however, revealed the justices’ distinction between regulating manufacturing and regulating transportation to be nothing more than an ideological charade. The case struck down Congress’s decision to regulate the interstate transport of products produced by child labor. In dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes slammed the Court for imposing their own conservative values upon the Constitution: “It is not for this Court . . . to say that [regulation] is permissible as against strong drink but not as against the product of ruined lives.”
Hammer was hardly the only example of tenther justices applying a double standard in order to achieve conservative results. These justices repeatedly upheld laws protecting management while striking down laws benefiting labor.
Tenther justices engaged in a decades-long war against labor unions beginning with the Court’s 1908 decision in Adair v. U.S. Adair struck down a law forbidding employment discrimination against union members because, in the justices’ view, union membership had nothing to do with commerce. When Congress attempted to improve working conditions for mining workers, the Court held in Carter v. Carter Coal that mining—like “manufacturing”—is beyond Congress’s power to regulate.
Yet when mine owners sued a mining union to prevent the union from using cutthroat tactics to organize mine workers, the Court in United Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal decided that Congress should be allowed to regulate mining workers after all.
The Court applied a similar double standard in two cases involving the meat and poultry industry. The Court upheld Congress’s power to regulate stockyards where livestock was kept prior to sales in Stafford v. Wallace. But the minute Congress attempted to improve the working conditions in poultry slaughterhouses, the Court held such improvements unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S.
The Supreme Court’s much-repeated claim that Congress has the authority to regulate interstate transportation also broke down when Congress invoked this power to protect workers. The Court struck down a federal pension system for railroad workers in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad even though it is difficult to imagine a line of work more closely connected to interstate transportation.
It’s easy to mock tenther justices as purely driven by ideology, and such mockery is justified. There’s no way to defend cases that allow Congress to protect management but not workers, or that shield monopolists but punish unions. But another, equally important lesson emerges from this age of discredited jurisprudence: judges are very bad at overseeing economic regulation.
The distinction between manufacturing and transportation may seem simple enough, but it proved completely unworkable in practice. The confusion that ensued from trying to draw a rigid line between two intimately connected activities made it very easy for tenther justices to resolve cases according to their own personal political beliefs. Fine constitutional decisions invite activist judging entirely because there are plausible arguments on both sides of the questions these distinctions raise.
This is why modern commerce clause doctrine abandoned such fine distinctions, granting Congress broad discretion over economic regulation. Indeed, our democratic Constitution demands such an approach because it is simply undemocratic to turn America’s economic policy over to unelected judges who are guided by little more than their own discretion.
This is the vision Chief Justice Marshall embraced in Gibbons when he wrote that the “wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents posses at elections” are the most robust limits on Congress’s commerce power. If national leaders want to cast aside the minimum wage, allow poor children to toil in sweatshops, and eliminate Social Security and Medicare, than they have that right. But the American people must also have the power to swiftly cast such fools out of office.
Conclusion
Democracy is not easy, and American democracy has seen more than its share of hard fought battles. Today’s progressives stared down defeat time and time again to ensure affordable health care for all Americans. Civil rights era progressives combated filibusters, racism, and lynchings to ensure that America’s promise would extend to all Americans. And New Deal progressives went up against a deeply activist Court in order to give us Social Security and the most basic workplace protections.
All of these are powerful, lasting victories—the kind of victories that elected officials do not overturn if they plan on keeping their jobs.
Tenthers understand this. They understand that the American people will not stand for an agenda that would kill Social Security, civil rights, and health reform. Sadly, that is why they want to strip the American people of their power to make such decisions and give it to a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.
Download this memo (pdf)
Ian Millhiser is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.
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FOX still claims Babies do not deserve citizenship in USA

http://www.masnet.org/main/MAS

Freedom Affirms the Integrity of the 14th Amendment While Condemning the Islamophobic Absurdity of the “Terror Babies” Slander
MAS Freedom today commented on the attempt of a group of Republican state legislators in the United States to mount a legal challenge to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

This amendment, among other laws, establishes the long-held legal principle that any children born in the United States are regarded as U.S. citizens with full constitutional protections and privileges, regardless of the legal immigration status of their parents at the time of birth. This law was upheld by a Supreme Court decision in 1898, and it is regarded as an integral part of the law that defines who is a citizen of the United States.

However, some Republican state legislators, led by State Senator Russell Pearce of Arizona and supported by Attorney Kris Kobach, are attempting to rally support for changing the 14th Amendment so that children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants would not be granted automatic citizenship. This attempt to nullify the 14th Amendment now involves Republican legislators in some 15 U.S. States, and they are apparently attempting to present this proposed nullification of the current law to the United States Supreme Court.

And to add anti-Muslim insult to this proposed constitutional injury, another Republican state legislator – State Representative Debbie Riddle of Texas – is now jumping on the national media circuit with the claim that Muslim women from outside the country are coming to the United States to give birth, and that these so-called “Terror babies” – now U.S. citizens by birth – are being whisked away to grow up as terrorists who will later re-infiltrate the country to attack the people of America. Ms. Riddle claims that she has evidence of this plot from confidential sources in the FBI, although she has been unwilling or unable to identify the source of her “information”, while the FBI has denied their knowledge of any such conspiracy against America.

MAS Freedom, along with many other national human and civil rights advocacy organizations and leaders, regards both the “anti-14th Amendment” and the bogus “terror babies” claims as exactly what they are: thinly disguised attempts to criminalize both immigrants and Muslims by seeking to challenge the very constitutional amendment that protects the freedoms of all persons born in the United States. MAS Freedom Executive Director Mahdi Bray commented that “We reject these attacks and join with other civil and human rights advocates – including political conservatives – who reject the idea that we must obey some parts of the Constitution while arbitrarily rejecting others. The rights and protections of citizenship cannot be altered because of political prejudice or outright fear and hatred of immigrants and Muslims”.

Ibrahim Ramey of MAS Freedom added that “It’s no riddle that anti-Muslim individuals and organizations are using fear and smear tactics to deepen the climate of mistrust and opposition that fuels their political objectives. But we continue to uplift the idea of faith over fear, combined with work and leadership for the political organizing and mobilization required to better empower and protect our community, and the values that we believe best represent what is good about this nation.”

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Money and Democracy in non-Progressive America 2010

Come on Progressives! Come out of the wood-work and roll over on the Bad guys, Bad Banks, Bad Businesses, and Bad Media.

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Here are some notes on public citizen on mediocre Branches of Governance in the USA in 2010. A lot of progressives will have to get out the vote to get the country back-in-shape and show BIG MONEY AMERICA & BIG MEDIA AMERICA will not always run the country.


Money and Democracy in non-Progressive America 2010



an e-newsletter about the movement to curb corporate influence in politics and restore our democracy
Issue #35 • October 22, 2010

We hope you enjoy this issue of Public Citizen's e-newsletter about the intersection of money and politics. This is part of the campaign we developed following the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting or attacking political candidates. We'll update you regularly with select news stories and blog posts, legislative developments and ways to get involved.

Stunning Statistics of the Week:
• $7 million: Amount Republican donor Bob J. Perry, who helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against presidential candidate John Kerry, has given to the conservative group American Crossroads for the upcoming election
• $4.8 million: Amount given to American Crossroads by Robert Rowling, CEO of a company whose holdings include Omni Hotels
• $15 million: Amount American Crossroads raised in 43 days
• $24.1 million: Amount American Crossroads has raised this year
FEC should investigate American Future Fund, groups say
American Future Fund, a conservative nonprofit group pouring money into the 2010 midterm elections, appears to be violating campaign finance law, watchdog groups said in a complaint filed this week with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The agency should investigate whether American Future Fund must register as a political committee, which would make it subject to recordkeeping, reporting and disclosure requirements.

Stealth PACs database unveiled
With record amounts of secret money being funneled through nonprofit organizations to influence the upcoming elections, Public Citizen has created an Internet database to track the activity. The new Stealth PACs database, available here, tracks more than 100 groups that are working to influence the elections with large contributions from corporations, unions or wealthy individuals in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That ruling gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections.

1912 Montana campaign finance law is tossed out
A 1912 Montana law banning corporations from making independent political expenditures – money spent on such things as ads to help elect or defeat a candidate – has been tossed out in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. The Montana attorney general said the state would appeal.

… Meanwhile, judge skeptical of effort to strike down Florida disclosure law
A request by a conservative Florida group for a judge to strike down a Florida disclosure law was met with skepticism. The law requires groups that support or oppose ballot measures to form political committees and disclose the identities of their donors.
"Isn't this just a little too convenient," U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle asked. "If a group of law students got together and wanted to come up with a fictitious case, they couldn't do any better."

Chamber relies on a few wealthy corporate donors
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has increasingly relied on a few major corporate donors, including Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Chevron Texaco and others, The New York Times reports. The Chamber doesn’t disclose the names of its donors, but Times reporters learned of some of them by analyzing corporate reports posted on company websites and tax filings.

Oil industry has spent $68.5 million this year on misleading ads, group says
The oil industry and its allies have spent $68.5 million on misleading television election ads, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The group looked at the spending of 13 organizations, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the National Association of Manufacturers.

Dems ask FEC to crack down on foreign involvement in elections
Fifteen Senate Democrats have asked the Federal Election Commission to update its guidelines to ensure foreign interests can’t influence U.S. elections. The request stems from concern generated by ThinkProgress, which earlier this month published a blog post saying that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has used foreign donations to buy election ads, an accusation the Chamber denies.

Money from foreign companies already goes to elections – legally
Overlooked in the flap over whether the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign donations to fund elections ads is the fact that money from foreign companies already goes to elections – and it’s legal. How? Political action committees connected to foreign-based corporations have donated money to candidates and parties – $60 million over the past decade, according to The Washington Post. The corporations include GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, both British drug manufacturers, and Anheuser-Busch InBev, based in Belgium.

Big Republican backers already planning for the next one
Big-money Republican donors are planning a retreat at a California resort in January to plan for the next election, The New York Times reports. The secretive group is assembling at the invitation of Koch Industries, which has spent millions combating climate change initiatives.

Taking his ball and going home
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito may skip the next State of the Union address, the Washington Times reports. You may recall that Alito shook his head and mouthed the words “Not true” when President Barack Obama criticized the court earlier this year for its Citizens United ruling. Apparently Alito is considering boycotting this year.

Visit www.DontGetRolled.org to learn more!