Gitmo: Uncle Sam’s half billion dollar gulag for 40 political prisoners

President Biden announced a review of America’s military prison at Guantanamo Bay, with the aim of closing it.

Good luck with that Joe. Your former boss Obama announced the same goal upon entering the White House 12 years ago. Congress said ‘absolutely not’, terrified that some of the 781 imagined bad guys scooped up in criminal U.S. war zones and sold to Uncle Sam for bounty, might terrorize America’s Super Max prisons. Or worse, be sent home to plot another 911 style attack.

Gitmo was set up by President George W. in 2002 in response to processing all those poor Muslim souls sold to Uncle Sam for greenbacks. In a bitter irony it was located on the Cuban land we stole after ‘liberating’ the Cubans from Spain in 1898. Such land grabs after senseless wars are now illegal but America simply shrugs and continues its theft. Better to keep undesirables on stolen land off shore far from the Homeland.

In 2006, the Supreme Court declared that the military commission set up to process the prisoners violated the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Congress did a workaround with its Military Commissions Act, allowing our gulag to go on.

That doesn’t satisfy the world community of human rights and humanitarian organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross and the UN who all condemn America’s descent into grotesque treatment of suspected undesirables.

Nineteen years on America continues its debasement of every precept of justice for the 40 remaining prisoners. Just one has been convicted of terrorist activities. Eleven have been charged but will never be tired. Twenty-eight have never even been charged.

For this madness we taxpayers pay $530 million per year. The congresspersons and their allies supporting Gitmo should pay every dollar. If so, they might miraculously grow a conscience and close Gitmo.

McCarthyism born 71 years ago today

On February 9, 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, a totally unfit public servant, struck gold with a speech before West Virginia Republicans. He charged that 205 commies were infesting the State Department. His fellow Republicans knew he was once again playing the fool, lying viciously to get attention and further his floundering career.

But McCarthy had struck gold with the press and the public, vaulting him atop the GOP effort to retake the White House and Congress. Famed political cartoonist Herblock pictured Joe straddling vats of tar, coining the phrase ‘McCarthyism’ to describe the slash and burn political tactics forever associated with McCarthy.

Seventy-one years on McCarthyism survives with smears of communism, socialism, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters hurled at those seeking economic, racial and political justice by those channeling the sad, anti Democratic legacy of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy

Justice requires prison for Trump

Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life. The most horrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed in my 76 years didn’t occur till today…on television. It was the prosecution case for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump.

It magnified beyond all doubt the enormity of his crimes, first against our democracy; then in furtherance of that dastardly crime, the Capitol insurrection that got 7 people killed, including 3 police. One hundred forty other police were injured, many seriously.

Their incredible bravery and professionalism no doubt kept Congresspersons certifying the election Trump was trying to overthrow, from being injured and killed.

Impeachment conviction will forever brand Trump a traitor to American democracy. It will forever ban him from holding public office.

But it is not enough.

Donald Trump should be criminally prosecuted after the verdict is rendered. If convicted he should be imprisoned. Anything less is a signal that there is no true justice for such monstrous crimes he committed to what we realize now…is a fragile experiment in democracy.

Nuland’s ‘Yats is the guy’ makes Nuland ‘Not the girl’

President Biden should withdraw his nomination of career diplomat Victoria Nuland to the third highest State Department office. It’s more appropriate to call her a career warmonger.

She spent much of the 1990’s in the State Department helping the U.S. interfere with Russian politics and foreign policy. This includes engineering the election of the disastrous Boris Yeltsin as president and promoting encroachment of NATO up to Russia’s borders.

New century, new targets for Nuland. From 2000 to 2009 she promoted regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq via senseless war as policy advisor to Dick Cheney and NATO ambassador. Hundreds of thousands dead in wars not needed made no dent on Nuland’s conscience.

In 2011 she advised Secretary of State Hillary to promote murderous regime change in Syria and Libya adding more hundreds of thousands to her kill list.

Undaunted, in 2013 and 2014 she served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Along with war hawk buddy, Senator John McCain, she promoted regime change against duly elected Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych, causing him to flee for his life. Thousands more Ukrainians from Nuland’s machinations weren’t so lucky.

But her 25 years under the radar of U.S. warmongering was outed during a leaked recorded call to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She told him ‘Fuck the EU’ and ‘Yat’s is the guy’, referring to her efforts to install pro West pol Anseny Yatsenyuk to replace Yanukovych. And she succeeded.

But a quarter century promoting regime change and senseless war is a quarter century too much. If Biden doesn’t retire her, his Democratic Senate should vote her down.

America still suffers from cult of presidential reverence

My favorite grammar school month was February. It gave us 2 holidays 10 days apart to honor first and 16th presidents Washington and Lincoln.

Of course, both holidays were more than meaningless as far as understanding American history. They hindered learning the harsh dysfunction of much our story by essentially venerating all the white men who served as president as being special from their exalted status as president.

The whitewashed history of American presidential malevolence didn’t teach us about Washington’s slaveholding, Andrew Johnson’s virulent racism that helped end Reconstruction and eventual re-enslavement of Southern Blacks, to name just a few critical omissions.

Enshrining presidents on currency, public buildings is bad enough. But defiling a South Dakota mountain by blasting away its natural beauty to create likenesses of 2 slaveholders and a virulent warmonger just to entice tourists is grotesque.

Hollywood spent $5 million in the 40’s to make a fortune venerating the aforementioned Johnson and virulent 20th century racist Woodrow Wilson. Entertainment yes; history no.

It’s no wonder we can’t cut cruel, criminal, amoral ordinary humans down to size just because their sociopathy fueled their ascension to the presidency.

We blew our chance 1974 when we allowed Richard Nixon to escape impeachment by resigning; then issued him a full pardon for crimes related to his efforts to fix his 1972 re-election?

Sound familiar?

Two hundred thirty-two years after Washington took the first presidential oath finds America still grappling with the cult of presidential reverence. After a defective human being incites an insurrection, getting 5 people killed in a treasonous effort to remain president, his party, along with nearly half the electorate want to move on without a whiff of accountability.

America must end its peculiar cult of presidential personality which prevents their impeachment, running again for the presidency; indeed being arrested, indicted and prosecuted for crimes we unwittingly encourage them to commit.

Illinois should follow Oregon to decriminalize hard drugs

Illinois waited for 10 other states to legalize recreational cannabis before doing so in 2019. Now with a hundred million annual cannabis tax dollars resuscitating Illinois’ pandemic ravaged economy, sensible Illinoisans are pondering ‘What took ya so long?’

But Illinois can snare second place for decriminalizing hard drugs, following the progressive state of Oregon, which implemented its humane policy yesterday. Coppers can no longer arrest folks for possessing small amounts of heroin, meth, LSD and oxycodone. Offenders just get a non life/career threatening $100 ticket, or better yet, a health assessment leading to addiction counseling.

Oregon will use some of the $133 million (and growing) in annual taxes it receives from recreational weed to fund the new counseling services.

Decriminalizing minor possession of hard drugs will not bring in a gold rush of new taxes that legalizing recreational pot did. But it will reduce cost and clog to our already overburdened criminal court system. It will also, no doubt, reduce the number of poor souls relegated to a downward life spiral from current inhumane legal treatment by providing proper medical treatment instead.

If Illinois tries harder….it can be No. 2.

Uncle Sam no like no nuke treaty

January 22, 2021, was a momentous day in the cause of a nuclear free world. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became effective 90 days after ratification by Honduras, the fiftieth nation required under negotiations of the disarmament working group of the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly kicked off the effort 4 years ago in a 68 to 22 vote to negotiate nuclear prohibition.

Sadly, the U.S. and its other 8 nuclear colleagues boycotted the vote and all 22 nay votes were U.S. allies taking orders from Uncle Sam. The treaty now makes nuclear weapons, like chemical and biological weapons, proscribed by international law.

TPNW prohibits states from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, acquiring, possessing, or stockpiling nuclear weapons. Signatories are barred from transferring or receiving nuclear weapons, control over such weapons, or any assistance with activities prohibited under the Treaty.

It’s understandable the U.S. would oppose banning nuclear weapons when it’s about to embark on a trillion dollar upgrade of our aging stockpile of 5,800 nukes. The U.S. called the nuclear prohibition effort ‘unrealistic’.

What’s unrealistic is the survival of mankind with America leading the race to nuclear Armageddon.

If today’s Republicans were around in 1860…

We could have avoided the Civil War.

On the other hand, the Peculiar Institution might still exist in the South.

Republicans of courage; Republicans of cowardice

Sixty-seven years ago Republican Senators took a principled stand to discipline their out of control colleague, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. For 4 years McCarthy had run amok, charging thousands of loyal Americans of being pro Soviet communists or simply fellow travelers. Many were fired, had their lives destroyed; some committed suicide.

McCarthy was simply waging war on American democracy for personal gain. By early 1954, patriotic Senate Republicans had enough. As majority party they introduced a resolution to censure McCarthy for bringing discredit upon the Senate. Democratic Minority Leader LBJ told his members to simply shut up and let the Republicans conduct the debate. McCarthy was so flummoxed he accused his Republican colleagues of carrying communist water. When the vote came down December 2, 1954, 22 Republicans, half of the 44 voting, joined all 45 Democrats to censure McCarthy. The GOP initiative and large bipartisan vote sealed McCarthy’s fate.

Seven decades later House Republicans faced a similar dilemma with a crazed colleague, newbie QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Greene, linked to death threats against Democrats and promoting Trump’s treasonous efforts to overturn Trump’s re-election defeat. In a closed door party caucus, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy (no relation to Tail Gunner Joe), engineered a non-apology apology from Greene that kept his caucus from disciplining her. Some gave her a standing ovation.

Blowing their chance to expunge the unpatriotic stench from the GOP, Democrats moved to strip Greene of her committee assignments, essentially neutering her as an effective congressperson. Just 11 of 212 Republicans joined all 219 Dems to certify Greene’s descent into congressional disgrace.

After the December 2, 1954 vote, Republicans returned the party to the decency President Eisenhower demanded. Yesterday, Republicans voted to keep the Republican Party in the grip of traitorous Trumpism and the lunacy of QAnon acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene.

After surviving attempted coup, why is Biden still supporting coup in Venezuela?

President Joe Biden apparently hasn’t learned the lesson of Trump’s January 6, deadly attempted coup to keep him from his duly elected presidency.

In one of his first forays into foreign affairs, Biden continued America’s 3 yearlong effort to oust elected socialist Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, replacing him with America’s designated sock puppet Juan Guaido.

American educated and devoted capitalist Guaido declared himself Venezuelan president January 23, 2019, shortly after Maduro was inaugurated for his second term. Sound familiar?

Seeing a chance to oust the hated socialist Maduro, after 20 years of failure to remove his socialist predecessor Hugo Chavez, Uncle Sam immediately recognized Guaido’s attempted soft coup.

To further interfere in Venezuelan electoral politics, the U.S. indicted Maduro on drug trafficking charges, offering a $15 million reward for his capture. Worse, we likely backed a crazed, Bay of Pigs style invasion last May, hatched in the U.S. and headed up by 3 former Green Berets, two of who were captured along with 15 Venezuelan nationals. Not captured were 8 invaders who died trying. But the real killer has been American sanctions which humanitarian organizations cite having killed tens of thousands of poor Venezuelans.

Attempted coup victim Biden will maintain the murderous sanctions, continue to recognize U.S. pal Guido as Venezuelan prez, and refuse to talk to elected President Maduro.

Uncle Sam has monumental patience in its grisly regime change efforts. Twenty years for Venezuela is a pittance of those employed to topple the communist government of Cuba….60 years and counting.