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Teach Your Children Well: There Is No Law but Might and Murder

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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 10:59 AM
Original message
Teach Your Children Well: There Is No Law but Might and Murder
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1930-teach-your-children-well-there-is-no-law-but-might-and-murder.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+empire_burlesque+%28Empire+Burlesque+-+Chris+Floyd%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

This is the lesson that the United States government -- the government of the historic progressive, Barack Obama -- taught the children of America today:

"Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and shit.

"It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

"Claw your way to the top -- by any means necessary -- and the law can never touch you.

"This is the American way."


Yes, as the Washington Post reports, the United States government announced today that there will be no penalties whatsoever for the lawyers who were ordered by their superiors, George Bush and Dick Cheney, to write memos "justifying" the tortures that Bush and Cheney wanted to unleash upon captives held indefinitely without charges, without evidence, without trial, without rights.

Dick Cheney has openly confessed to instructing his pathetic little minions, his nasty little modern-day Vyshinksys, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, to write the scraps of paper of twisted legalese meant to pre-emptively exonerate the top officials of the United States government for the unambiguously criminal actions they were to inflict upon their uncharged, untried prisoners -- some of whom had actually been purchased, like slaves, from traffickers in human bodies -- around the world. Cheney boasts openly of supporting and facilitating torture techniques -- such as waterboarding -- which have historically been prosecuted as high crimes by American authorities, and are, in fact, capital crimes under the laws of the United States today.

But on Friday, February 19, 2010, the administration of President Barack Obama declared that not only will it not prosecute the avowed and boastful perpetrators and accomplices of the capital crime of torture, it will not impose even the mildest of administrative or professional reprimands upon them. For the foulest of tortures, reaching even to murder, the government of the United States will do nothing: no investigation, no prosecution, no penalty.

I have run out of words to describe how vile this is. The mind recoils against fully comprehending the moral depravity of our leaders -- and the reeking stench of their pious hypocrisy.

"The kinge is in this worlde without lawe and maye at his own lust doo right and wronge and shall geve acomptes but to God only." Thus William Tyndale, in his 1528 work, Obedience of a Christian Man, helped usher in the doctrine of the "divine right of kings," overthrowing centuries of political, religious and philosophical thought and practice which had insisted that rulers too were fully subject to the law, as A.D. Nuttall points out. In support of the latter, he quotes Richard Hooker -- no radical, but a "profoundly traditional" churchman: "Where the lawe doth give dominion, who doubteth that the King who receiveth it is under the lawe?" (Shakespeare the Thinker, p. 140.)

But in our degenerate day, Hooker's reasonable formulation has been waterboarded into oblivion, and we are back to Tyndale's cringing doctrine. Our bipartisan kinges are indeed without lawe: no penalty, no punishment for these vile malefactors, these barbaric abusers and corrupters of our children.
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proudohioan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 11:28 AM
Response to Original message
1. I cannot even find the words........
maybe there are no more words.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 01:04 PM
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jkoyas Donating Member (1 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 01:59 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Irrational ranting
You sir are an idiot!
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 03:11 PM
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winyanstaz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 03:51 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. Oh bullshit...
Torture is against the law...murder is against the law...and torturing has been a war crime since world war two and we signed the Geneva Convention swearing to abide by those laws.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:31 PM
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winyanstaz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:43 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. changing the name of a torture that leads to death is not an excuse...
nor legal...no matter how the law is written..it is still murder.
It is wrong morally and ethically and at the very least they should be barred from practicing law.
The law should also be changed and stuck down immediately as being UnConstitutional and wrong and the laws that were in place before they wrote this unconstitutional crap.
The government has NO rights to make laws to unjustly deprive people of their lives..citizen or not...it is still murder.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:55 PM
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ThomCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:30 PM
Response to Reply #2
10. You're the one doing the irrational ranting.
There is a hell of a lot of precedent in domestic and international law to put them all in jail. We easily could have prosecuted them.

The real reason we didn't is because Obama is continuing their policies and HE and his administration would have ALSO been subject to prosecution. He's protecting himself and his own people from prosecution with this move, hoping the next administration will do the same.

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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 05:02 PM
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ThomCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 05:42 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. Okay
Below are some precedents for you.

And to answer your claim that Obama hasn't been torturing, take that up with the people released from Gito, and with the Red Cross and Amnesty International who all say that the torture absolutely did continue after Obama took office and after he claimed that the torture had stopped.

In fact, there is absolutely no evidence that the torture has stopped even today in Gitmo, in Bagram, in whatever black sites that the CIA is operating around the world. And there is no reason to believe that when the military detains people, while they are in transport to those places, they aren't being tortured.

We can't even get assurances that Retention has stopped. If retention is still happening then torture is still happening.

The idea that we are not torturing is based entirely on faith, not evidence.

Now, your precedents, to start with:

Committing torture in violation of 18 U.S. C. Section 2340A

Section 2340A (c) - does not require any overt act of torture. Instead, the statute makes it illegal for a person to conspire to commit torture. To prove the crime, the prosecutor must show that: (1) two or more persons agreed to commit or cause the commission of acts of torture, under color of law, upon persons who were in the conspirators' custody and control; and (2) the defendant knowingly joined the illegal agreement at any time. But here's the most important point: This type of conspiracy continues, as a legal matter, as long as its members are still trying to accomplish its objectives - regardless of when they committed their last overt act.


There is the UN Convention against Torture, Signed by the US under Ronald Reagan, a binding international agreement, that I can't find that the US ever backed out of as long as we are still part of the UN.
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . .

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

Article 7

1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.

Article 15

Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.

And, of course, The Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950, which still apply
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-nurem.htm

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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 06:14 PM
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ThomCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 06:28 PM
Response to Reply #17
18. You are saying two things here
1. That they can't be prosecuted unless it can be proven that they intended to cause some specific type of pain by torturing people? No. The law sited above says otherwise.

2. That they can only be prosecuted only if someone has been prosecuted before. No. That's ridiculous. Though the Nuremberg trials would certainly count as a precedent because cases have been resolved under law for torturing people, claiming they were just following orders so it was okay. That is absolutely a direct parallel situation to what we have today.

I think you seriously just don't want to SEE that any torture has been committees, or that anything can be done about it. But I wonder why that is.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 08:43 PM
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ThomCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 08:47 PM
Response to Reply #21
22. You sound like a republican.
You're using Bush's talking points!

:wtf:

Where the hell did you get that definition? The law does not require specific intent to convict someone of torture.

Nuremburg is indeed US law. All treaties are enforceable US Law.

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bemildred Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 08:50 PM
Response to Reply #22
23. Come come, he wants to nit pick, why can you not understand?
Nuremberg is indeed perfectly clear, which is why they don't want to talk about it.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 11:08 PM
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bemildred Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 08:07 AM
Response to Reply #25
32. Nuremberg IS the law. nt
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 11:03 PM
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yurbud Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 08:24 PM
Response to Reply #2
20. the law is very explicit and was ignored. Troops were sent to prison for similar actions
to those Yoo and Bybee sanctioned.
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winyanstaz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 03:49 PM
Response to Original message
5. Thats it...no more supporting Obama for me...
"But on Friday, February 19, 2010, the administration of President Barack Obama declared that not only will it not prosecute the avowed and boastful perpetrators and accomplices of the capital crime of torture, it will not impose even the mildest of administrative or professional reprimands upon them. For the foulest of tortures, reaching even to murder, the government of the United States will do nothing: no investigation, no prosecution, no penalty."

I have tried...over and over and over again to keep on giving him the benifit of the doubt that he was not another Neocon puppet.

Even when I would get angry and speak out about another thing I saw him doing...just like Bush...I would once again go back to looking for him to do right..and even defend him when I thought he was being unfairly attacked.

I have been visciously attacked sometimes for trying to hold him to his promises...but still I have forgiven the attackers because I know how bad they want to believe in him...as did I, and once again..looked for and indeed have often posted praise for when he did do things right. (Yes there have been some very good things he has done or promised.)

But this is final.

This is just SO wrong.

I will still support Kucinich, Grayson, Dean, Sanders, and all democrates that are standing up and speaking out for the people.

I will no longer support people that prop up the same tactics Bush used.

I will no longer support the people that work for the corporations and not the people.

I will not support people that sign bills into law that are unconstitutional.

I will not support people that refuse to do their duty and uphold the laws and the Constitution.

Fuck you fascist traitors all to hell.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:44 PM
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reggie the dog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:00 PM
Response to Original message
7. my students knew that already
I had students who were gangsters and said the only difference between them and the president was that the presidents set was more g'ed up, had more loot, and more guns.
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:12 PM
Response to Original message
8. This would probably be offensive
if all the other Bushish shit up until now hadn't completely turned me off. I don't even have to brace myself for the disastrous health care "reform" we're going to be fed - I am expecting the worst.
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mudplanet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 04:25 PM
Response to Original message
9. I'm not too sure I care what the "law" does to the lawyers. You can hire
any number of scumbag lawyers to tell you that torture and murder are AOK. It's not against the law to be a lawyer and a lot of lawyers are whores, pure and simple.

I would expect that they would be disbarred. This might indicate that the profession hasn't entirely lost integrity. That the Univ. of Calif. would hire one of these guys for faculty is beyond understanding.

The people that gave the orders and carried out the orders, they're the ones that need to be prosecuted.
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 09:33 AM
Response to Reply #9
34. And there are scumbags for sale for any right-wing cause
You can hire any number of scumbag lawyers to tell you that torture and murder are AOK.


Yep. And scientists to say that the climate isn't changing, and "economists" to say that we need more top-heavy tax cuts, and on and on.

Kick for this astute observation.
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Uncle Joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 07:31 PM
Response to Original message
19. Kicked and recommended.
Thanks for the thread, Demeter.
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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 09:31 AM
Response to Reply #19
33. You Are Welcome, Uncle Joe, as Always
Things like this smoke out the trolls.
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bertman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 11:16 PM
Response to Original message
26. I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment on whether this is legit or not, but from the
point of view of what President Obama's stance on this whole issue of "looking forward and not looking back" says about him, it is damning.

The President's decision to go soft on Bush and Cheney and their accomplices is just one more indication that he is more interested in protecting the imperial prerogatives of the Presidency that Bush pushed leap years forward, than he is in restoring rule of law and adherence to the Constitution.

REC.
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apimomfan2 Donating Member (19 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-24-10 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #26
27. You don't get to a Theocracy by way of Rule of Law and the Constitution.
Our "leaders" know exactly what they're doing. It's the people who haven't wised up to it yet.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #26
28. Deleted message
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bertman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 12:32 AM
Response to Reply #28
29. Of course. I had never thought of it that way. It's far better to let the lawbreakers go scot
free even if their criminality can be proved, than to risk a "sideshow". How far we have fallen.



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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 02:18 AM
Response to Reply #29
31. Deleted message
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salguine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 01:05 AM
Response to Original message
30. But it's only been a year! Bush left a mess! You want a pony! Bush left a mess! Only a year!
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Vidar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 10:07 AM
Response to Original message
35. K&R.
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johnroshan Donating Member (333 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-25-10 10:14 AM
Response to Original message
36. Disgusting.
This is just disgusting. Shows how even the giants of today are just mere mortals with their first inclination to cover their own asses instead of upholding justice and integrity.
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