Daily Archives: 7 December 2010

The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks

open quote WikiLeaks has never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted for one or convicted of one. A consensus of legal experts agree that prosecuting the organization or Julian Assange for any of its leaks would be difficult in the extreme. Despite those facts, look at just some of the punishment that has been doled out to them and what has been threatened: close quote

[There is a better list on Salon, with links and pics.]

-Paypal freezes WikiLeaks Account
-Australia cancels Assange’s passport
-Swiss bank freezes WikiLeaks founder’s legal defense fund
-Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks
-Seattle-based software company, Tableau removed charts links to by Wikileaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s statement.
– former Canada adviser claims Julian Assange should be assassinated
– WikiLeaks should be designated a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ Rep. Peter King fumes

open quote Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them — all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority. They’ve blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange’s legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them “Terrorists” even though — unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things — neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.

This is all grounded in the toxic mindset expressed yesterday on Meet the Press (without challenge, naturally) by GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said of Assange: “I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done an enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” As usual, when wielded by American authorities, the term “terrorist” means nothing more than: “those who impede or defy the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy.” Anyone who does that is, by definition, a Terrorist. And note McConnell’s typical, highly representative view that if someone he wants to punish isn’t a criminal under the law, then you just “change the law” to make him one.

But that sort of legal scheming isn’t even necessary. The U.S. and its “friends” in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in “law.” That’s what the lawless, Wild Western World is: political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of “law.”

. . . .

People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?

. . . .

Yahoo News!’ Michael Calderone has a very good article documenting how major American media outlets — as always — snapped into line with the authorities they serve by ceasing to use the term “whistle-blower” to describe WikiLeaks. close quote (Read more from salon.com)

Bloomberg’s Organ Snatchers

open quote New York City may soon be a very dangerous place to die — and not only because of high estate taxes.

If Mayor Mike Bloomberg has his way, anyone suffering a heart attack will get responses from Emergency Medical Technicians…and special organ donation teams ready and waiting to take your organs should you conveniently not survive.

Equally barbaric and depravingly insensitive — nearly criminally indifferent — is the proposal to have doctors ready to swoop in on the deceased’s loved ones within minutes to ask for the organs.

And there’s little difference in practical terms between the government letting you die and pressuring your relatives to give you the organs, and a private third party brokering a sale of organs like one rabbi in New Jersey whose commerce in kidneys got him indicted by federal prosecutors who consider selling organs to be a federal crime. (Please – no New Jersey jokes — at least in New Jersey the organ brokers are candid enough to sell kidneys and do not pretend to be doing a public good.)

Such insensitivity was more the hallmark of truly barbaric cultures like the Aztecs, who would play sports involving kicking around the head of a vanquished opponent. This proposal shames those of us who treasure our commitment to human life — and to fundamental equality under both the eyes of a Supreme Being, and the Fourteenth Amendment. So much for America as an advanced nation.

All of this is under the guise of “helping” people…and if you are in cardiac distress you would be providing the help the most!

This dangerous proposal puts ordinary suffering City residents at the peril of having to trust that their paramedic is there to save them, not to go shopping for organs for a friend or family member. No regulation can prevent a paramedic from making his own warped triage assessment of you — oh, this one will die anyway, let’s see if his pancreas works because Uncle George has pancreatic cancer and needs a transplant.

The simple saying used by investigators and prosecutors — “motive and opportunity” — is also true here. Self-proclaimed saviors will have both the motive and opportunity to let you die in order to give your organs to someone else they prefer.

This warped and dangerous mentality was on display earlier this year, when New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (who ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General) proposed an “opt-out” requirement for New York drivers, who under his proposal would become subject to automatic organ harvesting upon death unless they opted out by checking off a box on their driver’s license. Thankfully, Brodsky’s bill languishes in Albany. close quote (Read more from ericdixonlaw.com)

CIA kidnaps, tortures German citizen, tries to keep him prisoner they discover he’s innocent

I hate the James Bond image of the CIA. I think any violent organization with the power to conceal its mistakes will be reckless, barbaric, and grossly incompetent.

open quote Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan. At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.” Dana Priest furnished the core of this account in an excellent 2005 Washington Post story. Other aspects have been slowly confirmed by German criminal investigators. By studying El-Masri’s hair and skin samples, for instance, they were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen. Throughout this process, El-Masri’s account of what transpired, part of which he wrote up as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, has consistently been vindicated. close quote (Read more from harpers.org)

In Quest for ‘Legal High,’ Chemists Outfox Law

open quote ANTWERP, Belgium—When the housing market crashed in 2008, David Llewellyn’s construction business went with it. Casting around for a new gig, he decided to commercialize something he’d long done as a hobby: making drugs.

But the 49-year-old Scotsman didn’t go into the illegal drug trade. Instead, he entered the so-called “legal high” business—a burgeoning industry producing new psychoactive powders and pills that are marketed as “not for human consumption.”

Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine—a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin. close quote (Read more from online.wsj.com)

According to my friend, esoteridactyl, this wouldn’t fly in the U.S. because substances are banned based on their effect, instead of on their chemical composition.

Argentina recognizes Palestine

open quote Argentina has recognised Palestine as a “free and independent state,” just days after neighbouring Brazil announced that it would “legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people for a secure, united, democratic and economically viable state co-existing peacefully with Israel”.

Hector Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister, said on Monday that the Latin American nation officially recognised Palestine according to its 1967 borders and hopes for peaceful solution to Palestinian-Israeli conflict. close quote (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)