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My My, did you hear the fear in that last caller's voice pleading with us like an abused wife fearing her oppressor. Release the torture pictures and lets get some sunlight on the matter. Reckoning Day is here folks. Do you want hell or the Golden Age of Peace we could have- but we won't have it with little chickens like that calling in desperation to hide the bruises and the scars. Bra rack! Brack!
Best argument I have heard on the matter is what we began with as opening comments. The rest of the world needs to know we are working thru this, just like any re taking an exam or a class or re building their character. We must show due diligence.
You can trace every social problem in this country down to poor education. We are a dumb nation as a whole. Its easier to control people if they are ignorant, America is the garden of Eden for our Corp. Fascist, that really rule this country.
Time to throw the gloves off, and fight for all the things our forefathers thought were worth dieing for.
Read Ursula LeGuin’s ‘Those Who Walk Away from Omelas’ . . . All the beauty in the Omniverse is for not if it is built up the suffering of one individual. We are a nation of laws . . . And laws are for mankind.
If President Obama thinks that public exposure is unwarranted . . . President Obama should send the pictures to Spain as they has jurisdiction over War Crimes and Torture . . .
Proof that racists tend to be incredibly stupid! The front page of today's Eugene Register-Guard has an article about two parents who got into a racially charged altercation at their son's high school over a perceived wrong. If that wasn't stupid enough, while in jail they called their minor children at home with instructions for the care and feeding of their indoor marijuana growing operation! Seems like a topic for the show! Are racists inherently stupid?
i am so saddened and now i am getting angry that evil is beginning to win. i thought good had won once we put Obama in office. it is time to STAND UP!!
. . . And the winner this years in the category of Conspiracy to Cover-up War Crimes . . . Mr. Barack Obama , President of the United States of America.
This is a big win should come as little surprise to his adoring public in the light of Obama’s lame attempt, last year, at supporting the destruction of the Bill of Rights by fleeing Washington, D.C. for the final FISA vote. Here to accept the trophy on President Obama’s behalf today is Porter Goss . . .
“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers”-Carl Gustav Jung
I think that Obama and all Americans should revisit the story of Emitt Till.
Photos matter, and the lame excuse Obama gives is just that. Inflaming hatred for America?
I think that happens more when we use drones to bomb babies than when we prosecute fellow americans for war crimes.
I think it speaks to the ethnocentric ism that dominates our country, that the President doesnt think Afghanis or Muslims are capable of understanding the difference between an endorsement of torture(i.e not prosecuting criminals) and accountability for said criminals.
Wont it look worse when it becomes glaringly apparent to the ppl we are supposed to fear, that they are held to a different standard than that which we hold ourselves too??
I think it does far more to "inflame: hatred of America by not prosecuting .
Maybe I am Crazy......
Could somebody please post the website that has the pictures that Thom has been talking about today?
FLASHBACK July 29, 2008 ..... Pelosi Claims No Bush Crime, No Cause for Impeachment
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1761
Thom,
I wrote this message to Barack Obama through the ACLU website.
Showing these photos might or might not inflame the Islamic world,
depending on the way it is portrayed. If we show how much we deplore
this kind of thing the rest of the world, which already knows what
has happened and has taken steps to bring the architects of this
new holocaust to justice.
No single man can change the laws to protect himself from committing a crime. We cannot stand by and allow committing murder to become ok by anyone.
FOR FAR TOO LONG WE LIBERALS HAVE FORGIVEN OTHERS FOR THEIR BAD DEEDS!
We should not only investigate crimes, but find out what kind of sick deseased mind could think up such sadistic acts.
Tom is speak from another age when he gives samples of Japan and Lt Calley. In this new time youth have been exposed to horrors on TV and internet, so showing executions will not get the response he expects.
And, as too many have forgotten; Obama said on more than one occasion that he cannot do what needs to be done without our help (every one of us). If we sit on our hands and do not call, protest, write and fax our representatives in DC then we will not get the results that Obama told that we can get. So, we does our campaign to stop the madness.
Tzedik. Tzedik. Tzedik . . . Justice. Justice. Justice you shall seek.
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Torture is America’s newest ugly child. Arthur Miller, in After the Fall, describes the situation exactly. We must face brutal horror, examine it, kiss it full upon the mouth and own that it is us . . . before we can get through this.
Anything else lacks humanity and violates humanity beyond its core.
Thom, Last week you read my comment on air, and said that I was the winner. What did I win?
Our country engaged in torture and now we know about it. We must demand that the torturers be brought to justice. Not only those who ordered it but those who actually did it. Because we know it was done, failure to prosecute those
responsible makes us accomplices after the fact. We can not even
claim, as the Germans did, that we did not know. We do know! Crimes
were committed in our name. Crimes against Humanity. I am sickened
that anyone can defend what was done. If there are any moral or
ethical absolutes, surely one of them is the requirement that people
(or animals for that matter) under our control, unable to defend
themselves, must not be mistreated.
After World War II we declared to the world that torture was so
abhorrent, so far outside the bounds of acceptable human behavior that
it's perpetrators needed to be prosecuted and, if found guilty,
executed. And we did so. Even though, as far as I know, there was no
specific law making it illegal.
Jack
Torture is immoral and should be illegal, whether it works or not.
If I were ever in the extremely unlikely "ticking time bomb" scenario like in the tv show "24", I would probably torture someone for information but I would then expect to go to jail for it. I would never expect that behavior to be socially acceptable or legal.
Morning class-
I see the conservatives still trying to learn how to use a computer are here. I believe President Obama is fearing for his life here or at least being told what to do by the military industrial complex. we must keep visualizing that candle of hope and continue to demand a free and open society. G-d bless the ACLU- send them some money.
Here is my diagnostic to the right. If the right wingers support not showing the pictures, then this destroys your argument that being big bad butch torturers will protect us. The military does not support torture for this reason being they have their own best interests in mind.
It is so fundamental, you hurt someone, they hurt you back, then their relatives hurt your relatives and wa la- you have perpetual war. Jesus was the bigger man and taught us to turn the other cheek in love, knowing this would end the ways of war.
Hey, B-tRoll -
Thom HATES America??!!! Nice try, dude. I guess, however, that your post puts the concept that registration keeps the trolls out in a poor light.
If you listen to Thom's show AT ALL, then you've heard his arguement re:card check and the Employee Free Choice Act, but I'll take the trouble to restare it here - IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN A PUBLIC, DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION, YOU MUST STATE YOUR INTENTION TO DO SO, PUBLICLY. You wanna vote? You go to a public building and register. You want to have a union in your work place? Sign a card that says so. You want to participate in the discussions in this forum? Tell the moderators who you are.
On the other hand, if you don't want anyone here to know anything about you, you are welcome to keep your opinions to yourself.
Jeff in Denver,
I remembered the same info. regarding Rumsfeld and his connection with Gilead. What do they say --- the simplest answer is often the truth?!
I too, find the "Economic Meltdown" peculiar but the timing, as Thom has pointed out, was not exactly as it was planned. The meltdown was not supposed to have started until Bush was out of office but in true "Bush" fashion he couldn't get that right either.
THOM, I DISAGREE!!! (from former Marine officer, honorable discharge 1969)
I have the highest respect for your mission, your clear thinking and good research, but for you to not take the time to clarify your statement, "they don't want us to trust government" so they can make the money is at best incomplete and at worst playing into "their" hands. I mean just now in one breath, after saying this several times, you used governmental officials as examples of the worst crimes! I'll give a shot at a better way to say it and then explain why it is a significant rephrasing:
"They don't want us to trust the potential of the public's ability to maintain a government that is by the people and for the people." And continue, "Instead, they want to control government themselves while trying to dismantel any populist laws that exist in government. And one way for them to keep us from protesting is to make it seem they are against government."
NOW, here is why it is important. Although as a former Viet Nam era Marine, I do understand Obama's decision to protect the troops by not showing photos, but he is wrong because the enemy knows already how ugly it is, The folks who don't really know are the people in the U.S. who might just get made enough to demand accountability for the Bush criminals. Now, consider your own position on this, and your commentes just now made about the apparent suicide of the waterboarded "witness" responsble for connecting 9/11 to the Taliban, etc. And then consider your reluctance to even TALK about the evidence surrounding Paul Wellstone's assassination (I wrote the book) or the amazing data in support of Cheney being behinid 9/11 (I am co author of the Elseveir text on this). Are these positions because you, like Noam, Amy, and so many others on the left "WANT TO MAKE SURE WE TRUST THE GOVERNMENT?" I hope you see my point my friend. In any case, keep up the good work. The fear of "conspiracy theory" does not lessen my admiration for what you are doing.But until we can wake up from the HEGEMONY that prevents us realizing the worse then working toward the best will continue.
Whooa, just now you respond to a call about the influence of corporations on government and I agree that we need to be active in government, but we can't DO this if we are not willing to understand that we cannot trust government WHEN it is controlled by corporations. So stay with that concept and please reconsider the value of talking about 9/11 and Wellstone. And while you are at it, talk about General Smedley Butler, the most decorated U.S. Marine and why no one talks about him either.
Warmly,
Four Arrows
Author, American Assassination
They aren't THE aristocracy, they're the aristocracy's puppets.
In regard to credit card companies, people who lose their jobs and miss a payment or two have more problems than they think, Once late and over-limit fees kick-in, there's no stopping the spiral of debt unless you take on the companies yourself, and that only after a period of time battling them. You could go into bankruptcy (not the best option) or go to a law firm that will charge you thousands of dollars in fees to eventually reduce your debt, or pay one of these so-called "credit counseling services"--actually collection agencies for the credit card companies--do what you could have done yourself: get deeper into debt while the credit companies haggle over payment plans. The only thing that seems to work is threatening not to pay anything at all unless they stop charging over-limit and late fees, and reduce the finance charges. Of course, you have to keep on them month after month, until they've decided that they've piled on so much debt through those additional charges that even they might think that they've beat on you long enough.
Thom you are asking for what to call republicans and I want to bring back a word to describe them and this/their wall st. class...
ARISTOCRACY
Please spread this word around, it is a great grassroots first step to helping take back America for us, the peasants