A Definitive Article on Mississippi's Initiative 26

It was at this point that I intended to feature a Mother Jones article on what the implications of Initiative 26 would be in respect to birth control. However, thanks to a dear reader I can put before you a far more definitive source, not just on the subject of birth control, but of the implications as a whole that this bizarre and extreme proposal would conjure up.

Vote No on 26, Mississippi - Here is why

On November 8th, 2011 in the General Election for Mississippi, there will be three Ballot Initiatives to vote on. 26 - to redefine "person" in our constitution, 27 - to require voter ID (ie disenfranchise voters) and 31 - to restrict the use of eminent domain. The full, actual text of 26 is below. Vote No on 26, Mississippi!

I've put a lot of thought into this initiative. I've tried to keep this updated with the most recent developments. There is a lot of information, so please bear with me and read this through. Where I have supporting documentation, there are links within the text that are blue and underlined.

First, a video.

Rather than embed the video in question, a video I might add, that by its (simple) nature is reminiscent of another, simple message for simple people, that featured many years ago in the next door state of Alabama. But this is but a digression.

No, rather than the featured video, have a look at this one, again linked from the article, but one I would have thought that gives a far starker warning to just what 'Personhood' actually means in real terms in the States that have already enacted this legislation.

The intrusion, by hospitals, prosecutors and law enforcement is absolutely staggering, so much so that I had to replay the clip again to have it confirmed that such nightmare scenarios had indeed come to pass.

Of all the clips that I have ever watched that warn of the effects of religious extremism, nothing but nothing comes close to this one. And this I remind you, is in a country where having a social conscience (socialism) is seen as one step removed from the totalitarianism of a Stalinist state.

I don't know what analogy would best describe what is depicted in these few short minutes, but whatever anyone might choose, they would have to end in, totalitarian state.

The events that are happening in these states is truly frightening, so much so, viewing of this clip should be made mandatory.

The "Personhood" initiative only defines the word "person" in the Mississippi constitution as "every human being from the moment of fertilization." If you think this is an anti-abortion bill, think again. It says nothing about outlawing abortion. It says nothing about outlawing the morning after pill. It says nothing about anything else. All results of the bill will have to be figured out by the police arresting people and the courts deciding what the change to the definition of person means. It might not even outlaw abortion. It might have lots of other, perhaps unintended, consequences.

For instance :

Birth control pills and IUD pregnancy prevention methods would be outlawed by the 'personhood amendment' (because they prevent a fertilized egg - which would instantly become a fully legal 'person' - from attaching to the uterine wall as a rare third stage effect, but it still happens), further increasing these numbers. The "yes" group claims otherwise, even though their own board member, Dr. McMillan says, "I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions." (see the 'lies exposed' link further down for more details)

I have come to believe that the wording of i26 actually targets IVF to put it out of business.


Drinking and smoking during pregnancy would go from just being risky to becoming criminal negligence. Women who have miscarriages would have to endure investigation for possible criminal charges, from negligence up to and including murder. You think not? There is already legal precedent - 15 year old Rennie Gibbs was charged in Mississippi with Depraved Heart Murder in December, 2006 after a miscarriage. (see pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

A commitment to pre-embryonic personhood would require us to investigate these miscarriages to ensure that no foul play was involved in the loss of these persons. This does not necessarily mean that all women experiencing miscarriages would be prosecuted; however, our legal framework requires an investigation when there has been a loss of life.

26 leaves no exception for rape. more

Jesus and Mo.

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Amy Goodman Democracy Now: Colleagues of Slain Kansas Abortion Doctor George Tiller Continue His Fight for Reproductive Rights

If you ever wondered why I take such an interest in this issue, well first and foremost, I honestly believe that it should be every woman's right to choose whether she carries a foetus to term or not.

I consider the social/economic implications of a woman or girl being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. And those social/economic consequences are by no means trivial, but I'm sure I don't have elaborate on those.

Lastly, and least it must be said, (for now) is the imposition of a biblical morality that has no place in a modern society. There are rich and powerful factions that are working to such ends, the ultimate goal of these extremists being the establishment of the Theocratic States of America, or some such, who want to rule America under biblical law.

Not only that, the social/economic class that wants to impose this morality, is invariably so far removed and above those, who would have the will of the sanctimonious imposed on it. Which as you can well imagine, is about as far away from a democracy as you can get. An occidental Iran if you will. Women's reproductive rights only being the thin end and start of this particular brand of totalitarianism.

Plenty more in the sidebar under the various tags.

Update and an endorsement I guess, of what I've just been rattling on about.

Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All - and What We Can Do About It

Advance copies now available

Also available for Kindle at Amazon and Nook at Barnes&Noble

Publication Date: February 15, 2012
At no time in American history has the United States had such a high percentage of theocratic members of Congress-those who expressly endorse religious bias in law. Just as ominously, at no other time have religious fundamentalists effectively had veto power over one of the country's two major political parties. As Sean Faircloth argues, this has led to the crumbling of the country's most cherished founding principle-the wall separating church and state-and presages yet even more crumbling. Faircloth, a former politician and current executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, moves beyond the symbolism to explore the many ways federal and state legal codes privilege religion in law. He goes on to demonstrate how religious bias in law harms all Americans-financially, militarily, physically, socially, and educationally. Sounding a much-needed alarm for all who care about the future direction of the country, Faircloth offers an inspiring vision for returning America to its secular roots Reviews RDF

Colleagues of Slain Kansas Abortion Doctor George Tiller Continue His Fight for Reproductive Rights

A federal judge has blocked the impact of one of the laws aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, ordering Kansas to restore federal family planning funds to a clinic that claims it suffered "collateral damage" from the law because it would be forced to close, leaving 650 mostly low-income patients without access to reproductive healthcare services. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, and the unaffiliated Dodge City clinic, are challenging a law requiring the state to first allocate Title X funds to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics. This is just the latest development in Kansas, which saw the murder of one of its staunchest supporters of women’s access to abortion: Dr. George Tiller. For more, we are joined by Julie Burkhart, who worked for eight years with Tiller before he was killed in 2009. She is the founder and director of the Trust Women Foundation and PAC, which focuses on protecting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, as well as the rights of the physicians who provide these services.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Kansas City, right on the border between Kansas and Missouri, an area that is ground zero in the push to reduce women’s access to reproductive services, and specifically abortion.

The music you just heard was from Kansas City native, by the way, Charlie Parker.

After the passage of Roe v. Wade, Kansas had 27 abortion providers. Now it has three. All three of those clinics were targeted by a barrage of bills that passed during the last legislative session in Kansas. This was the session that saw the rise of Republican Governor Sam Brownback after Democrat Kathleen Sebelius left to become President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Well, just yesterday, a federal judge blocked the impact of one of the laws aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood. He ordered Kansas to restore federal family planning funds to a clinic that claims it suffered "collateral damage" from the law because it would be forced to close, leaving 650 mostly low-income patients without access to reproductive healthcare services. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and the unaffiliated Dodge City clinic are challenging a law requiring the state to first allocate Title X funds to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics. They argue that under the Supremacy Clause, Kansas cannot impose further restrictions on a federal program. Congress created Title X of the Public Health Services Act to promote family planning services to low-income patients, because it found the lack of access to birth control services exacerbates poverty.

This is just the latest development in Kansas, which saw the assassination in 2009 of one of its staunchest supporters of women’s access to abortion: Dr. George Tiller. The 67-year-old doctor was shot as he attended services at his Wichita, Kansas, church. In a related development, an ethics panel recommended last week that former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline have his state law license suspended over his conduct during criminal investigations of abortion providers, including Dr. Tiller, saying he was "motivated by dishonesty and selfishness."

For more, we’re joined by Julie Burkhart. She worked for eight years with Dr. George Tiller before he was killed in 2009. She’s founder and director of the Trust Women Foundation and PAC, which focuses on protecting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, as well as the rights of the physicians who provide these services.

Even today, our condolences on losing your friend, Dr. Tiller. You were with him days before he was killed in 2009? Transcript

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California Prisons: I wouldn't Put These Blokes In Charge of My Dog

Assuming I had one.

Mean, petty, vindictive, and possessed of infinitely more authoritarian attitude than brains, that I'll guarantee.

Mind you, the inmates are just as bad, if they had a brain between them they would put aside the infantile gang culture, bury their differences and join together to face the common enemy, the Department of Corrections. They might actually achieve a bit of something that way.

Gangs! I ask you, I gave up gangs when I gave up short pants.

What are they measuring here, his hight or his IQ?

Prisoner Health Deteriorates as California Clamps Down on Hunger Strike
by Julianne Hing
13/10/2011

Inmate health is deteriorating as prison officials clamp down on a hunger strike throughout California state prisons that’s entering its third week.

Inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison have been calling on prison officials to improve prison conditions and reform discipline policies that they say lead to the unfair and indefinite isolation of inmates into the notorious supermaximum security wing of the Security Housing Unit.

After staging what they thought was a successful hunger strike over the summer, inmates restarted their strike on September 26 out of frustration with the slow pace of talks between inmates, their advocates and prison officials. This time around though, prison officials have clamped down on the strikers, classifying the strike as a disturbance and removing visitor privileges for those who are participating. Inmate advocates say that prison officials have used new tactics, like blasting the air condition on in the middle of the night for prisoners, to retaliate against them.

They remove their property, and they’ve taken absolutely everything away from them, and even the ones that just went on the hunger strike just a week have been told they’re not going to get their property back until the whole thing is over,” said Dolores Canales, whose son John has been in the SHU for ten years.

“They’ve been punished and the [California Department of Corrections] is treating this like a disturbance as if there were a work strike, but it’s a peaceful protest.”

Prison officials confirmed that those who’ve been identified as organizers of the hunger strike have been moved to the so-called Ad-Seg unit, but say that their tough response to hunger strikers is motivated by concern for the safety of other inmates. Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that prison officials were taken aback by the second hunger strike.

“We’re frankly a bit puzzled as to why they started this action,” Thornton said. “After the first one, we fixed our inconsistencies. Everything we said we were going to do that we could do, we did, and everything we said we could look at we did.”

One of inmates’ top demands has been that the CDCR do away with a policy that allowed prisoners to confidentially label other prisoners as gang members in exchange for removal from the SHU. The policy, inmates said, gave prisoners the wrong motivation to unfairly and often inaccurately inform prison officials. The prison is evaluating this policy, Thornton said, and it’s currently going through an internal review with a wardens’ advisory group that should come up with a draft by next month.

Thornton said that unlike the first hunger strike, prison officials were given no notice that there would be a round two this fall. “This time around we are taking a different approach because we have done everything we said we were going to do,” Thornton said. “Engaging in this kind of disruptive activity is a violation of state law now.”

“If this wasn’t a crisis before, it’s been exacerbated by the health conditions of inmates and now you have the CDCR not responding positively to mediation and to the demands of prisoners,” said Isaac Ontiveros, an organizer of the Prisoner Hunger Strike network, a coalition of inmate advocate groups.

Ontiveros said that this time around, legal advocates for inmates had been locked out and that there had been no conversation between inmate advocates and prison officials. Thornton confirmed that there was no dialogue happening.

At its height, the hunger strike was said to be up to include 12,000 inmates, according to prisoner advocates’ estimates. But both sides say prison officials’ security measures against inmates have pushed some participating inmates to relent. “It’s been an attempt to freeze them out, as it were,” Ontiveros said. For some it appears to be working. As of Wednesday, 497 inmates in four prisons were participating in the hunger strike, including 68 in Pelican Bay, Thornton said.

For Ontiveros and Canales, their concern is the deteriorating health of inmates. According to Ontiveros, one participating striker at Pelican Bay had to be taken to an Oregon hospital after suffering a heart attack. Thornton, who would not comment on inmate health care, said the CDCR will continue to treat the hunger strike as a disturbance.

“They’ve endured this already for so many years,” Canales said. “We’ve heard from some prisoners throughout the state who have said they are going to go all the way and going to hold out to the end until change comes.” ColorLines

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Women's Reproductive Rights: America The Next Nicaragua

Generally speaking, men shouldn't be within a hundred feet of issues surrounding women's reproductive rights. Politicians shouldn't be within a thousand yards, and US politicians shouldn't be within a thousand miles of them. Because there is a no more disingenuous festering bowl of pus on this earth than the American politician.

One only has to remember the case of Terri Schiavo to have that confirmed. For those not familiar with that appalling spectacle; Terri Schiavo was a cabbage, a carcass kept functioning by purely artificial means. A carcass that is until she became cause celebre and political tool for every cheap huckster in congress. Congress in actual fact being recalled to make cheap politics over the affair. George Bush cut short his holiday to fly back to Washington to get involved, that should tell you enough, fuck me! he didn't manage to do that when Louisiana was drowning.

And the bottom line to all this, when they finally autopsied the woman? She had an atrophied brain the size of a walnut, she had been clinically dead for years. Government involvement in the Terri Schiavo case

Watch these three short clips and then tell me that men should debate women's issues. Nor for that matter, batshit crazy evangelical, concerned vaginas for America




Frist Diagnosing Terry Schiavo on Senate Floor

George W. Bush Discusses Terri Schiavo: Today millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo. Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's families. I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life. The most solemn duty of the American President is to protect the American people.

George W Bush on the value of life!

Michele Bachmann refers to Terri Schiavo as a "healthy" woman. The audience clearly disagrees.

Do I need to highlight the involvement of Satan's spawn in all this, the Holy Order of misogynist arse bandits, boy buggerers extraordinaire? No, one only has to read the Nicaragua post to lay the blame at the right door.

Congress Contemplates Brutal Anti-Abortion Law
By Rick Ungar
Oct. 12, 2011

In what would be a major and potentially deadly change in American healthcare policy, The House of Representatives will take up H.R. 358 —The Protect Life Act—this week. The bill would permit federally funded hospitals to refuse abortion services even to women who would likely die without the procedure.

As the law currently stands, hospitals are required by EMTALA to provide emergency care to anyone who walks through their doors. If a hospital is unable or unwilling to perform a necessary procedure, it is obligated to stabilize the patient and then transfer the individual to a facility that can perform the procedure and agrees to do so. As a result of the EMTALA requirements, the 600 plus Catholic hospitals in the nation who are unwilling to perform abortions on religious grounds, even in life-threatening circumstances to the mother, are obligated to transfer that patient in need of such a procedure to a hospital that agrees to perform the required operation.

If The Protect Life Act were to pass, this would no longer be the case. Hospitals that do not care to perform abortions, for whatever reason and even when the procedure is required to save the life of the mother, would be legally permitted to simply do nothing.

While one might anticipate that hospitals refusing to perform abortions would transfer a patient in life-threatening circumstances to a facility willing to perform the abortion, I wouldn't be so sure.

In 2009, a Phoenix-based Catholic bishop excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride, an administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital, for authorizing an abortion in the case of a woman who was suffering from pulmonary hypertension and was likely to die without the procedure. In stating his reasons for this extreme act, the Archdiocese issued a statement saying, in part:

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic.

Given this line of thought, should The Protect Life Act become the law, it seems unlikely that such a Catholic institution would voluntarily send a patient over to another facility knowing that an abortion was going to take place.

And the bill doesn't stop at allowing hospitals to let mothers face death. It would also deny federal funding to a health care plan that offers to pay for abortion services even in life-threatening circumstances.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice-president for communications at Planned Parenthood, summed it up quite nicely:

This is just a demolition derby for women's health care. To first say, 'We won't even treat you if you show up needing a life-saving abortion,' and then to eliminate health insurance that might have saved your family from bankruptcy is a real one-two gut punch to women in these tough economic times.

So, how is it that the sponsors and backers of this bill happen to be the same people who constantly rail against government intruding in our lives yet would now empower medical facilities to allow a woman to die if their respective religious beliefs do not match up?

Demolition derby, indeed. motherjones

Related: Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil by Arthur Silber

- - -

A re-up from October 2007

"Here there is a lot of religiosity but only a little Christianity." : Nicaragua

Why I hate Religion, chapter Six Hundred and Sixty Six.


Last November it became a crime for a woman to have an abortion in Nicaragua, even if her life was in mortal danger. So far it has resulted in the death of at least 82 women. Rory Carroll reports on the fight to have the law changed

González was not stupid and did not want to die. She knew her chance of surviving the butchery was small. But being a practical woman, she recognised it was her only chance, and took it. The story of why it was her only chance is an unfolding drama of religion, politics and power that has made Nicaragua a crucible in the global battle over abortion rights. This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.



Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the ban but added that women should not suffer or die as a result. "In this regard, it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy."more

And with those words washed his hands of all moral obligation to women.

it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy."

It's Nicaragua you disingenuous fuckdog, the second poorest country in Latin America.

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Martin Luther King: A Time to Break Silence

A fine speech in seven parts one part.

A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

James Russell Lowell

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence

h/t ICH and transcript h/t zzahier for the uploads.

It's not hard to appreciate, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, that this, along with others I imagine, was an extremely dangerous speech, contributing no doubt to King's subsequent assassination one year later. I thought to look into King's assassination and see if there was any light shed on who ordered his execution. Although too late for me to take in the details tonight, I shall leave this link to more or less the first sight I dropped on that might elucidate things a little.

Unread then. http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/king.htm

Update: Democracy Now Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words Includes a good proportion of this and other speeches.

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John Pilger on The 'Getting' of Assange The Guardian and The US Justice System

''much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt if not lawless''

As John Pilger wades into the Guardian and New York Times, rightly giving them all the stick they deserve, reminding us along the way that both papers are in essence little better than the redtops. Both being so much a part of the established order and champions of the status quo as befits any organisation whose days of glory are past.

Given then that a good deal, though far from all of Pilger's article is taken up on these two papers, some might not consider that the one liner I have chosen above, as being the essential part of his essay.

But it is, it is the very essence, the vital part in fact, if your name is Julian Assange, because it is fundamental to what should now be our greatest concern. That the United States of America should never be allowed to get into its rancid clutches, the person of Julian Assange.

It must never come to pass, never ever. Because should such an occasion arise, Assange will disappear into the US prison system as quickly as the past disappeared down Winston's memory hole. Assange, just like the past, quite literally will never to see the light of day again. (Article to follow)

We have witnessed the treatment dished out to Bradley Manning by the ever vindictive mother and father of all hypocrisy, a country gone rogue, or should I say Nation, Nation under God. One Nation under God where the rule of law counts for absolutely nothing. One Nation under God where civil and human rights are valued just as equally. Yes we have all been witness to the treatment that God's Nation has dished out to Bradley Manning; what on earth might Julian Assange expect? More's the point, what kind of treatment might Assange expect if the US categorise him as ''Terrorist?'' (Again, article to follow)

But it is that very same treatment of Bradley Manning that may yet be the saviour of Julian Assange. Whereas I don't hold much hope out for Assange at the hands of the crimson robed, bewigged relics of the past that represent the head of our own judicial serpent, he might, as Pilger points out, fair better with the European Court of Human Rights, because I think it is inevitable that this is where Assange will ultimately end up. Because again as John Pilger notes:

Should Assange win his High Court appeal in London, he could face extradition direct to the United States. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like its predatory military, American jurisdiction recognises few boundaries.

And the European Court reference:

The "paranoia" is shared by the European Court of Human Rights which has frozen "national security" extraditions from the UK to the US because the extreme isolation and long sentences defendants can expect amounts to torture and inhuman treatment.

Skulduggery abounds here, and from many quarters.

The ‘getting’ of Assange and the smearing of a revolution
By John Pilger
6th October 2011

The High Court in London will soon to decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson QC, counsel for the defence, described the whole saga as "crazy". Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer. Both the women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed in Britain.

However, it is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a "grave danger" to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a Temporary Surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. The founder and editor of WikiLeaks, who published the greatest leak of official documents in history, providing a unique insight into rapacious wars and the lies told by governments, is likely to find himself in a hell hole not dissimilar to the "torturous" dungeon that held Private Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower. Manning has not been tried, let alone convicted, yet on 21 April, President Barack Obama declared him guilty with a dismissive "He broke the law".




This Kafka-style justice awaits Assange whether or not Sweden decides to prosecute him. Last December, the Independent disclosed that the US and Sweden had already started talks on Assange's extradition. At the same time, a secret grand jury - a relic of the 18th century long abandoned in this country - has convened just across the river from Washington, in a corner of Virginia that is home to the CIA and most of America's national security establishment. The grand jury is a "fix", a leading legal expert told me: reminiscent of the all-white juries in the South that convicted blacks by rote. A sealed indictment is believed to exist.

Under the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, Assange should be protected, in theory. When he was running for president, Obama, himself a constitutional lawyer, said, "Whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal". His embrace of George W. Bush's "war on terror" has changed all that. Obama has pursued more whistleblowers than any US president. The problem for his administration in "getting" Assange and crushing WikiLeaks is that military investigators have found no collusion or contact between him and Manning, reports NBC. There is no crime, so one has to be concocted, probably in line with Vice President Joe Biden's absurd description of Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

Should Assange win his High Court appeal in London, he could face extradition direct to the United States. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like its predatory military, American jurisdiction recognises few boundaries. As the suffering of Bradley Manning demonstrates, together with the recently executed Troy Davis and the forgotten inmates of Guantanamo, much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt if not lawless.




In a letter addressed to the Australian government, Britain's most distinguished human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who now acts for Assange, wrote, "Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions... it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged."

These facts, and the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice, have been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, perfidious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet held isolated, tagged and under house arrest - conditions not even meted out to a defendant presently facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife.

Books have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the assumption that he is fair game and too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. On 16 June, the publisher of Canongate Books, Jamie Byng, when asked by Assange for an assurance that the rumoured unauthorised publication of his autobiography was not true, said, "No, absolutely not. That is not the position ... Julian, do not worry. My absolute number one desire is to publish a great book which you are happy with." On 22 September, Canongate released what it called Assange's "unauthorised autobiography" without the author's permission or knowledge. It was a first draft of an incomplete, uncorrected manuscript. "They thought I was going to prison and that would have inconvenienced them," he told me. "It's as if I am now a commodity that presents an incentive to any opportunist."

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has called the WikiLeaks disclosures "one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years". Indeed, this is part of his current marketing promotion to justify raising the Guardian's cover price. But the scoop belongs to Assange not the Guardian. Compare the paper's attitude towards Assange with its bold support for the reporter threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for revealing the iniquities of Hackgate. Editorials and front pages have carried stirring messages of solidarity from even Murdoch's Sunday Times. On 29 September, Carl Bernstein was flown to London to compare all this with his Watergate triumph. Alas, the iconic fellow was not entirely on message. "It's important not to be unfair to Murdoch," he said, because "he's the most far seeing media entrepreneur of our time" who "put The Simpsons on air" and thereby "showed he could understand the information consumer".

The contrast with the treatment of a genuine pioneer of a revolution in journalism, who dared take on rampant America, providing truth about how great power works, is telling. A drip-feed of hostility runs through the Guardian, making it difficult for readers to interpret the WikiLeaks phenomenon and to assume other than the worst about its founder. David Leigh, the Guardian's "investigations editor", told journalism students at City University that Assange was a "Frankenstein monster" who "didn't use to wash very often" and was "quite deranged". When a puzzled student asked why he said that, Leigh replied, "Because he doesn't understand the parameters of conventional journalism. He and his circle have a profound contempt for what they call the mainstream media". According to Leigh, these "parameters" were exemplified by Bill Keller when, as editor of the New York Times, he co-published the WikiLeaks disclosures with the Guardian. Keller, said Leigh, was "a seriously thoughtful person in journalism" who had to deal with "some sort of dirty, flaky hacker from Melbourne".




Last November, the "seriously thoughtful" Keller boasted to the BBC that he had taken all WikiLeaks' war logs to the White House so the government could approve and edit them. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the New York Times published a series of now notorious CIA-inspired claims claiming weapons of mass destruction existed. Such are the "parameters" that have made so many people cynical about the so-called mainstream media.

Leigh went as far as to mock the danger that, once extradited to America, Assange would end up wearing "an orange jump suit". These were things "he and his lawyer are saying in order to feed his paranoia". The "paranoia" is shared by the European Court of Human Rights which has frozen "national security" extraditions from the UK to the US because the extreme isolation and long sentences defendants can expect amounts to torture and inhuman treatment.

I asked Leigh why he and the Guardian had adopted a consistently hostile towards Assange since they had parted company. He replied, "Where you, tendentiously, claim to detect a 'hostile toe', others might merely see well-informed objectivity."

It is difficult to find well-informed objectivity in the Guardian's book on Assange, sold lucratively to Hollywood, in which Assange is described gratuitously as a "damaged personality" and "callous". In the book, Leigh revealed the secret password Assange had given the paper. Designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables, its disclosure set off a chain of events that led to the release of all the files. The Guardian denies "utterly" it was responsible for the release. What, then, was the point of publishing the password?

The Guardian's Hackgate exposures were a journalistic tour de force; the Murdoch empire may disintegrate as a result. But, with or without Murdoch, a media consensus that echoes, from the BBC to the Sun, a corrupt political, war-mongering establishment. Assange's crime has been to threaten this consensus: those who fix the "parameters" of news and political ideas and whose authority as media commissars is challenged by the revolution of the internet.




The prize-winning former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook has experience in both worlds."The media, at least the supposedly left-wing component of it," he writes, "should be cheering on this revolution... And yet, mostly they are trying to co-opt, tame or subvert it [even] to discredit and ridicule the harbingers of the new age... Some of [campaign against Assange] clearly reflects a clash of personalities and egos, but it also looks suspiciously like the feud derives from a more profound ideological struggle [about] how information should be controlled a generation hence [and] the gatekeepers maintaining their control." johnpilger.com

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Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Updated

3rd update: I had the misfortune a few nights ago, to watch this forty five minute testament to homophobia and hate. And make no mistake, that's exactly what it was, pure hate.

Such hatred that can only be found in the ignorant and backward, especially when the flames for such hatred are fanned by the equally ignorant and backward Evangelical Christian missionaries of America. Who incidentally, don't have a Christian bone in their bodies, whatever one of those might be; Christian bones, not bodies.

I don't want to delve into all the talking points that the documentary raised, but I will make mention of one thing. Towards the end of the documentary, film maker Mariana Van Zeller, asks Scott Lively, Why Uganda? His reply was the usual blah blah, albeit said somewhat sheepishly, picking up on Van Zeller's implied but unasked question.

It doesn't take a great leap of faith to disregard Lively's blah blah, and come up with the answer that Uganda, complete with its ignorant and backward Christian sheep, was that just like the fertile soil of the country itself, so too were its adherents of the Christian faith, equally fertile, where the seeds of homophobia and hatred, once planted, flourish at an alarming rate.

It is without doubt, that Uganda and its people are ignorant and backward. Why else would such stories as these be so easily sourced on the Net?

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda BBC 15m clip. (Grisly)

Witchdoctors Arrested After Decapitated Woman Found findingdulcinea.com

Uganda - Child Sacrifice Scourge - Witchcraft wunrn.com

Experience tells us that we can never look to these men of God for the truth, for to expect the truth would be too anomalous from people whose whole life is spent living a lie. But perhaps if there were to have be any element of truth in Scott Lively's reply to the question, why Uganda he might have said: Because its so ripe for the picking, or alternatively, I just love shooting fish in a barrel.

I had wanted to bring you an embedded version of the film, by uploading the download I have to Youtube. but for reasons I won't bore you with, the clip has given me all kinds of problems.

The documentary itself, Missionaries of Hate, is quite a rare bit of film online, however I managed to track down a stream in three parts that can be viewed here. Alas, and for a change from some of my recommendations, where I carry the disclaimer ''UK only I'm afraid'' this is the complete opposite, and for copyright reasons is unavailable in the UK.

Perhaps someone outside the UK would click the link and please let me know if it can be viewed at all. It is available however for download at the link below. One link on the blog and another in the comments section, and both links good.

Another clip that gave me problems, was the four minutes of film from Orwell's 1984, depicting the Two Minutes Hate, did you get that? But for entirely different reasons than mentioned previously. Those problems in the form of, and pray forgive my slipping into a bit of West Cork vernacular, because sometimes nothing else seems to fit the bill as describing the two people that uploaded the clip to Youtube, as miserated. Choosing as they both did to disable the embedded feature, it's not as though they made the thing is it? Even an appeal by me for one individual to enable the embedded falling on stony ground. As I say, miserated.

No harm, where there's a will there's solicitor as they say, I captured the thing and then re-upped it to Youtube, embedded enabled, and it can be viewed below.

Why I felt the Two Minutes so important to the post, is that viewed in conjunction with certain parts of Missionaries of Hate, it becomes a bit of a job to differentiate between the two. The only difference being, one is fiction, and the other ain't.

I shall include a few pictures of the main players at the bottom of the page. I do this in order to get the best out of the post, explained here, (Japanese Embassies Around The World) but an online gallery of Uganda's Righteous Rogues, can be found here.

Unedited

_

1st update: This is becoming an ever increasingly topical subject. I shall try and find a few links on the morrow.

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2nd update: Here you go, Rachel Maddow has it all in eight minutes, the murder of gay activist, David Kato, inspired no doubt by, Scott Lively, Richard Cohen and ''The Family.''

The word ''Family'' in any US organisation, being a euphemism for a Jesus loving LGBT hate group.

Previous: Michele Bachmann and The Rise of Neo Nazi Candidates

Missionaries of Hate (2010)




Correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Uganda, where many question whether the growing influence of American religious groups has led to a movement to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

As an anti-gay movement spreads across the continent, gay Africans and their families face an increasingly uncertain future of isolation, imprisonment or even execution.

The film makes it much easier to understand why the general Ugandan public is so eager to send their peers to jail. If the most prominent spiritual leader in your community made it his life purpose to convince you that there were people coming to eat your poop and recruit your children, you would be against them too. They are only hearing one side of the story and it is the origin of their information that is truly infuriating.

Although Ugandan leaders are deeply offended by the notion, the facts definitively show that American evangelists have played a central role in defining the nation’s hard line against sexual minorities. The documentary focuses on American evangelist Dr. Scott Lively, who is widely credited with installing the dominant notion that homosexuals are after your children.

When asked if he condemns the legislation, Lively says that he condemns the death penalty aspects of the bill, but that overall the bill is a “lesser of two evils” compared to the prospect of having American gay activists do to Uganda what they have done to America.

Visit http://fuckcopyright.blogspot.com/2011/09/missionaries-of-hate-2010.html for streaming or download links and trailer. Or just visit the most remarkable activist site you are ever likely to come across.

Somebody beat me to this one, saved me a job at least.

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American Pot Calling Iran Kettle Black: US Hikers

Which given America's infinite capacity for hypocrisy, comes as no great surprise.

It's BSF here (before sparrow fart) so I haven't as yet watched the Democracy Now clip, but given my Jose Padilla post of two days ago, I thought this a very apt article.

Update:

Having watched the clip, quite lengthy, some twenty odd minutes, it becomes essential viewing, to truly appreciate that America doesn't have a moral leg to stand on. And Iran? Moral and Iran don't belong in the same sentence.



Bloggers. If you want to increase the size of Democracy Now's default player, change the 300 part of this code to whatever you require. You are watching this at 640.

embed_show_v2/300/2011/

What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran
By Glen Greenwald
Sep 26, 2011

Two American hikers imprisoned for more than two years by Iran on extremely dubious espionage charges and in highly oppressive conditions, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, were released last week and spoke yesterday in Manhattan about their ordeal. Most establishment media accounts in the U.S. have predictably exploited the emotions of the drama as a means of bolstering the U.S.-is-Good/Iran-is-Evil narrative which they reflexively spout. But far more revealing is what these media accounts exclude, beginning with the important, insightful and brave remarks from the released prisoners themselves (their full press conference was broadcast this morning on Democracy Now).

Fattal began by recounting the horrible conditions of the prison in which they were held, including being kept virtually all day in a tiny cell alone and hearing other prisoners being beaten; he explained that, of everything that was done to them, "solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives." Bauer then noted that they were imprisoned due solely to what he called the "32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran," and said: "the irony is that [we] oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility." After complaining that the two court sessions they attended were "total shams" and that "we'd been held in almost total isolation - stripped of our rights and freedoms," he explained:

In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.

We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.

[Indeed, as harrowing and unjust as their imprisonment was, Bauer and Fattal on some level are fortunate not to have ended up in the grips of the American War on Terror detention system, where detainees remain for many more years without even the pretense of due process -- still -- to say nothing of the torture regime to which hundreds (at least) were subjected.]

Fattal then expressed "great thanks to world leaders and individuals" who worked for their release, including Hugo Chavez, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, Mohammad Ali, Cindy Sheehan, Desmond Tutu, as well as Muslims from around the world and "elements within the Iranian government," as well as U.S. officials.

Unsurprisingly, one searches in vain for the inclusion of these facts and remarks in American media accounts of their release and subsequent press conference. Instead, typical is this ABC News story, which featured tearful and celebratory reactions from their family, detailed descriptions of their conditions and the pain and fear their family endured, and melodramatic narratives about how their "long, grueling imprisonment is over" after "781 days in Iran's most notorious prison." This ABC News article on their press conference features many sentences about Iran's oppressiveness -- "Hikers Return to the U.S.: 'We Were Held Hostage'"; "we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten" -- with hardly any mention of the criticisms Fattal and Bauer voiced regarding U.S. policy that provided the excuse for their mistreatment and similar treatment which the U.S. doles out both in War on Terror prisons around the world and even domestic prisons at home.

Their story deserves the attention it is getting, and Iran deserves the criticism. But the first duty of the American "watchdog media" should be highlighting the abuses of the U.S. Government, not those of other, already-hated regimes on the other side of the world. Instead, the abuses at home are routinely suppressed while those in the Hated Nations are endlessly touted. There have been thousands of people released after being held for years and years in U.S. detention despite having done nothing wrong. Many were tortured, and many were kept imprisoned despite U.S. government knowledge of their innocence. Have you ever seen anything close to this level of media attention being devoted to their plight, to hearing how America's lawless detention of them for years -- often on a strange island, thousands of miles away from everything they know -- and its systematic denial of any legal redress, devastated their families and destroyed their lives?

This is a repeat of what happened with the obsessive American media frenzy surrounding the arrest and imprisonment by Iran of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, convicted in a sham proceeding of espionage, sentenced to eight years in prison, but then ordered released by an Iranian appeals court after four months. Saberi's case became a true cause célèbre among American journalists, with large numbers of them flamboyantly denouncing Iran and demanding her release. But when their own government imprisoned numerous journalists for many years without any charges of any kind -- Al Jazeera's Sami al-Haj in Guantanamo, Associated Press' Bilal Hussein for more than two years in Iraq, Reuters' photographer Ibrahim Jassan even after an Iraqi court exonerated him, and literally dozens of other journalists without charge -- it was very difficult to find any mention of their cases in American media outlets.

What we find here yet again is that government-serving American establish media outlets relish the opportunity to report negatively on enemies and other adversaries of the U.S. government (that is the same mindset that accounts for the predicable, trite condescension by the New York Times toward the Wall Street protests, the same way they constantly downplayed Iraq War protests). But to exactly the same extent that they love depicting America's Enemies as Bad, they hate reporting facts that make the U.S. Government look the same.

That's why Fattal and Bauer receive so much attention while victims of America's ongoing lawless detention scheme are ignored. It's why media stars bravely denounce the conditions of Iran's "notorious prison" while ignoring America's own inhumane prison regime on both foreign and U.S. soil. It's why imprisonment via sham trials in Iran stir such outrage while due-process-free imprisonment (and assassinations) by the U.S. stir so little. And it's why so many Americans know Roxana Saberi but so few know Sami al-Haj.

An actual watchdog press is, first and foremost, eager to expose the corruption and wrongdoing of their own government. By contrast, a propaganda establishment press is eager to suppress that, and there is no better way of doing so than by obsessing on the sins of nations on the other side of the world while ignoring the ones at home. If only establishment media outlets displayed a fraction of the bravery and integrity of Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who had a good excuse to focus exclusively on Iran's sins but -- a mere few days after being released from a horrible, unjust ordeal -- chose instead to present the full picture. Salon

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