Truth Is Behind the Lies People Tell Themselves About Their Empire

Source: Al Jazeera Witness "Four Days in Guantanamo"

A lot of angry responses to the satirical video my husband and I made about the rationalizations people tell themselves in order to continue to support their naked emperor, and some of them mistook us for actual Obama supporters. Stuff Obama Supporters Say has 13,000+ views after a couple of days on YouTube, and 100+ comments in a lively debate where it was posted to Common Dreams (thanks, Abby Zimet).

As one critic of the video put it, "But some of those things are true." In celebration of the success of stop SOPA/PIPA blackout day yesterday, I have used the Internet and yes, Wikipedia, to unearth some nuggets of truth alluded to in the video. It was our intention to lampoon those in denial; the ugly facts of detention in Guantanamo or Bagram, where our tax dollars support the torture of kids as young as 15, are out there just waiting to be discovered. But the mainstream media feed in the U.S. will, as a matter of policy, not help people discover many facts. Instead, it will enable the skewed priorities of valuing organic gardening over drone attacks on civilians.

Inverted priorities have been typical of affluent imperial citizens throughout history. What did "good Germans" mainly do to support the Nazi's genocidal plans? They looked the other way.

Quite possibly they were afraid -- and rightly so -- of becoming the victims of indefinite detention.

Feeble thinkers, they believed that the rule of law was not important to them, because they were not criminals (or Communists, or trade unionists, or terrorists, etc.). A basic failure to understand why the writ of habeas corpus is the cornerstone of equal access to justice goes hand in hand with the failure to understand why the rights outlined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution are worth struggling to uphold.

Source: Mother Jones article on Iranian government's plan to send Obama a pink toy model of the U.S. drone that landed in that country last month.

If I don't see any drones patrolling my skies (yet) then they must not be a problem for me -- right?

Source: http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com reprint of Al Jazeera article UK: Campaigners Seek Arrest of Former CIA Legal Chief over Pakistan Drone Attacks

(Obama thinks he is such a good father, he can joke around with his pals about ordering Predator drone strikes against boys that might be interested in his daughters.)

And who is Bradley Manning anyway?

Logan Price, a 27-year-old activist, said he went up to the president and asked why he hadn’t addressed the concerns of the protesters. “I thought that Bradley Manning was the most important whistleblower of my generation..."

Source: Politico

( Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images / March 14, 2011 ) via CODEPINK blog PINKTank

Winter Catalog: Sh*t Obama Apologists Say

The above is a joke. 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The report below, on the other hand, is one small part of what's really going on as we head into 2012, which is sure to be a wild ride.

From Al Jazeera: "Romania's PM warns protesters on fifth day."

Boc's message came as more than 1,000 people braved freezing temperatures to rally in central Bucharest on Monday, chanting "Freedom" and waving banners that read: "Hunger and poverty have gripped Romania".

Smaller protests also took place in nearly 12 other Romanian cities.

People of all ages

Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer, reporting from Bucharest on Monday, said the protests have brought people of all ages to the streets. "It's safe to say there's a broad cross-section of society joining these protests.."

 Rock on, 99%. Chris Hedges thinks you are the reason that NDAA passed. In Truthdig:

I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

Text of Hedges’ Legal Complaint

Guantanamo And Bagram Are Torture Prisons Funded By U.S. Taxpayers

Sign Close Guantanamo With Justice here, and learn more. Source: Center for Constitutional Rights.

It has now been ten years since the indefinite detention center at Guantanamo was established, ostensibly to conduct the "war on terror." Failing to close the notorious torture prison (see guard Chris Arendt's testimony above for details) is a broken promise made by candidate Obama, at the rotten center of denial employed by the complicit, who cover their eyes and ears in order to keep supporting him.

Last month our corrupted Congress passed and our corrupted president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, re-funding the military machine for another year AND making it illegal to release detainees who cannot be convicted of acts of terror due to lack of evidence. Your taxes will continue to feed them -- except that right now they are on hunger strike to mark the 10th anniversary of this particular island in the gulag archipelago -- as they will not be returning to their families, or to residence in a host country. Ever, apparently. It is gruesomely fitting that the legislation refusing to allow these men to be released was packaged with a law enabling the U.S. government to indefinitely detain anyone, anywhere, if deemed a threat by whichever warlord happens to be in the White House at the time. RIP, habeas corpus.

When the purpose is justice, wrongfully imprisoning a children's humanitarian relief worker is a tragedy. When the purpose is intimidation and the display of brute force, locking up Lakhdar Boumediene works as well as does keeping alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for months before a day in court. The message your government is sending you: Be frightened, be very frightened -- you could be next.

Obama may have inherited Guantanamo, but Manning and the torture prison at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan are all his. In recent days U.S. mainstream media have largely ignored an investigative report of torture and indefinite detention at Bagram -- funded by you and by me, unless you've figured out how to resist paying war taxes.

Source BBC: "Afghan investigators have accused the US Army of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, saying inmates had reported being tortured and held without evidence.

Today I wish I were in Washington DC to join my CODEPINK sisters, Amnesty International and others who are paying attention, to form a human chain around the White House, dressed in the iconic orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo.

A decade of torture in the beautiful setting of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thus commemorated. Since I cannot be there, I will instead offer this beautiful rendering of the Cuban song Guantanamera, meaning "woman of Guantanamo," superbly performed by Celia Cruz. My mother used to sing this song when I was a child. To the lost innocence of a girl who once believed in the words of the U.S. Constitution -- and to my fellow citizens who still hold to their belief that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, innocent until proven guilty -- I offer an additional verse?

You broke my heart when you tortured
The beautiful ones, and the bad ones.
You broke my heart when the young soldiers
Had to watch all this being done.
How could our Constitution
ever stand for something like this?
If there is such a thing as a court,
I hope all you torturers stand before it.

Guantanamera...oh women of Guantánamo
And may the indigenous
grandmothers save us.

Bring our war $$ home from Bagram, and Guantanamo, and the rest of the torture archipelago.