Obama reply

Senator Obama's reply to an email I sent regarding news last week about keeping the Guantanamo prisoners in small boxes/cells for extended lengths of time.


Dear L__:

Thank you for contacting me regarding this Administration's use of inhumane interrogation practices. I appreciate knowing of your concerns.

This issue has been the subject of heated legal debate for quite some time now. The United States is a nation born out of a struggle against tyranny, and our Constitution asserts that the rule of law applies to all men and women, and all branches and agencies of government. Time and again, America has triumphed because of the sharp contrast we draw to tyranny. In those battles, our allegiance to our values and the rule of law has been our greatest weapon.

Today, we are engaged in a new kind of battle. And the debate in which we have been engaged since September 11, 2001, is how we are going to respond to the shadowy, stateless, terrorist enemies of the 21st century. Tragically, the Bush Administration has too often chosen to respond to this enemy by abandoning our greatest weapon, by ignoring the values and laws that it deems inconvenient. Violating international treaties we ratified and U.S. laws that protect us, the Bush Administration has used excessive secrecy, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and "enhanced interrogation techniques" like simulated drowning that qualify as torture under any reasonable reading of the law. For a nation with a history marked by the torture of hundreds of American soldiers in Vietnamese prisons, it is troubling to think that any lawmaker views the practice of torture as effective or justified.

When the Senate conducted debate on the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for FY 2006, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who endured years of torture as a POW during the Vietnam War, offered an amendment to the bill that requires all military interrogations to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual’s standards for humane treatment and prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of any prisoner detained by the U.S. You may be interested to know that the Army Field Manual 34-52, Chapter 1, explicitly states:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the U.S. Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation . . . as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. . . . it also may place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk.

We know that torture does not work. We know that torture violates our laws. And we know that when we detain suspects without trial or ship them off in the dead of night to countries where we know they’ll be tortured, we compromise our own security and weaken our ability to press for human rights and the rule of law in despotic regimes. On this issue, former Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded: “Torture is torture is torture. It is unacceptable. It is not the way you treat human beings.”

I was proud to vote for Senator McCain’s amendment, which passed by a vote of 90-9 with clear support from both political parties. I am also a proud co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to restore habeas corpus rights, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 (S. 185). In light of the CIA’s confirmation that videotapes depicting brutal interrogation techniques were destroyed, I was heartened that the House and Senate passed the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill and included a requirement that subjects CIA interrogators to the same guidelines included in the Army Field Manual. However, the President vetoed this legislation on March 8, and unfortunately the House failed to gather enough votes for a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

As you may know, on June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the habeas rights of the remaining detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This recent decision is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. I commend the Court's decision, and will continue to advocate for oversight and inquiry into the Administration's detainee policy to ensure that the very values we are fighting to defend are protected and upheld.

L__, thank you again for writing. I hope you will stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator

Myanmar / Burma: disaster x disaster

Help is needed! and it appears its not getting through. Just sent this Amnesty form email and also printed out a letter to mail there... but by the time they get it -it will probably be TOO late.
This "junta" government or whatever you want to call it is EVIL.

While Snr-Gen Than Shwe and the top generals selectively pick and choose what aid to accept from foreign nations, they are stalling on issuing visas to the UN and other international aid workers.

The UN said the junta’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country was "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work, even as survivors of a devastating cyclone waited for food, shelter and medicine. Observers said Than Shwe is making all the major decisions about foreign aid workers. Eric John, the US ambassador to Thailand, said that if the junta delays visa application to aid workers one more day, more people will die.

I sent an email also earlier today to my former colleague Allan M. who is Burmese. He lives in San Francisco. I hope his family is OK. What a tragedy!

Martin Luther King Day - 2008 - Where is the Love?

I heard MLK's great speech on WBEZ on the way back from my chiropractor appointment this morning: Beyond Vietnam speech . Absolutely mesmerizing. (text here) .... I'd never heard it before. I want to hear it again! It was a political speech he gave exactly one year before his death. It focused on Vietnam, but it was so so relevant for today. His predictions seem to have come true:

The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

.....
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just."

Listen to the WHOLE thing!

It was definitely one of those driveway times when you just can't pull yourself out of the car because you don't want to miss one single word. Where are our leaders? Who could do this today? Why do only politicians have a soapbox to stand on, ....

With my sister, we do a 15 minute music session for the 2nd -5th graders before their Sunday school classes. Yesterday we decided to have them listen to Springsteen's version of "We Shall Overcome" and sing it together. I also had downloaded a 3-min snippet .mp3 of Dr. King explaining the significance of this song in civil rights history. So I think it was surprising to some of them to actually hear his voice. I wish we had had more time to do more,.. it was a little out of the ordinary lesson for them. But whatever! That's the teacher's prerogative!

I wanted to play this Black Eyed Peas video too, but we didn't have time!

"Mouth, .... meet Money"

I did my end of the year tax-deductable donations today to:

Amnesty International

Heifer International

Project Peanut Butter

Northern Illinois Food Bank


I also re-found my password to Kiva so I found out that $25 trial loan I did earlier this year for Mary Ochoa in Equador was paid back and I can reloan it forward. But their website was too busy today. Apparently there has been lots of publicity from the Today Show and Frontline recently. Check it out!

AI Urgent Action - Raheleh Zamani

Emails sent via their website: (so Easy)

Your message was sent to:
Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

I urge you to commute the death sentence of Raheleh Zamani, whose execution is now scheduled for around January 2, 2008 after it was postponed on December 19, 2007. Raheleh Zamani was sentenced to death in October, 2005 for the killing of her husband. She is also the mother of two children, aged five and three.

I urge you to bring Iranian legislation in line with your international human rights obligations, so that people sentenced to death for murder have the right to seek pardon or commutation of their sentence from the state. The details of Raheleh Zamani’s trial and any appeals, including how the judge determined that she had committed pre-meditated murder, must be made public. I also ask for clarification of reports that her execution has been postponed to allow her to raise the money needed for the payment of diyeh.

I recognize that the government of Iran has a right and a duty to bring to justice those suspected of criminal offenses, but I must state for the record my unconditional opposition to the death penalty, as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and violation of the right to life. Please do everything in your power to prevent this most egregious offense, and commute the death sentence of Raheleh Zamani.

Sincerely, L.____Z______
address

With a Copy to:Iranian Interests Section
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei
Director, Human Rights Headquarters of Iran Mohammad Javad Larijani

Good news -update on "Girl from al-Qatif"

Regarding an earlier post about the rape victim in Saudi Arabia. Good news: The king has pardonned her.

So I think its safe to say that international outcry works! I hope my letters had some small part to help in this:

The case sparked international outcry, especially after the court more than doubled the sentence last month to 200 lashes and six months prison in response to her appeal.

Or at least it did in this case. I think this is a major advantage of the ability of news to spread far and wide so quickly. Injustice like this just can't be hidden in a closet ( or jail cell - to be less figurative). There is a video link on that page with journalist Lisa Myer's report, that features two women human rights activists, including one from AI. If the "rulers" in a backward country have even ONE shred of decency, there is always hope that you can appeal to that one shred, and keep them from thinking of themselves as outside the court of public opinion.

Yeah!

Amnesty Global Write-A-Thon - 7 Letters

December 10, 1948

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights


Written and stamped today, regarding 5 issues and cc'd to the Embassies.

Sami al Hajj, USA/Guantánamo

Fathi el-Jahmi, Libya

Ma Khin Khin Leh, Myanmar

Shi Tao, China

Peacekeepers for Darfur

Girl from al-Qatif

From CNN.com... this is so outrageous!

The sentence resulted from an incident in March 2006, when the woman, then aged 18 and engaged to be married, and an unrelated man, were abducted from a mall in Qatif, Saudi Arabia by a group of seven men. She was later raped.
In October, the men were convicted and sentenced to between two and nine years in prison for the assault. She was convicted of violating the kingdom's strict Islamic law by not having a male guardian with her at the mall.
The woman was originally sentenced in October 2006 to 90 lashes -- but when she appealed that sentence, the court more than doubled it to 200 lashes.
A court source told Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper, that the woman's sentence was increased after the woman spoke to the media about the case.

done, 5 envelopes, $4 worth of stamps, totally worth it

Burma

Email from Avaaz.org today:

French oil giant Total (which also owns ELF and FINA) and U.S.-based Chevron (which also owns Texaco, Caltex an Unocal) have been operating the Yadana natural gas pipeline in southern Burma since the early '90s.The junta takes in an estimated $450 million a year from the Yadana project alone--and uses that money to maintain its brutal control, while most people in Burma live in dire poverty. To keep their profits flowing, Chevron and Total lobby hard in the U.S. and Europe against government measures to support a democratic transition in Burma.For companies like this, it's all about the bottom line. We must show them that if they keep backing the Burmese dictatorship, they will lose their customers--by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, even by the millions.

Here's Total's response from their website.

Ugh, I wish we didn't have to buy gas At ALL

"The Coup at Home"

Frank Rich NYT
" We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon. "

Re Pakistan: I was feeling exactly this last week. Depression. I decided to join Amnesty International's letter writing campaign (Urgent Action network). This was on their list for last week. I went to the post office on 11/6 and bought $48 worth of 90 cent international stamps so I will have all the supplies to send letters to dictators to voice my displeasure at their actions whenever the mood strikes me. (So there!!) So I copied their suggestions for letters, made a template and sent them to President Pervez Musharraf, the Minister for the Interior, the Minister of Law, Justice and Human Rights, and copies of these 3 to the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC. I don't really have any dillusion of grandeur about the effectiveness of ONE letter from me asking them to not harm the HR actvisits they have put under house arrest, but I do believe that there is a really small chance thousands of letters from across the world may make a difference. I hope so... anyway it makes me feel better.