Tag: Congress

The Constitution corrupted, Part I

Posted on by kathiemm
Hate crimes victims data
Graphic by Abram Samuelson, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Seven more deaths (including the gunman) and four more wounded in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Why? Racism, hatred, anger, fear, frustration, propaganda, the easy availability of weapons, and the corruption of the United States Constitution.

Pseudo-conservative, pseudo-Christian, pseudo-moral right-wing extremists have been able to convince too many people that the United States Bill of Rights was written solely for them.

Their claims appeal in particular to the increasing number of people who see the American dream escaping them, who struggle to make a living in a society where wealth seems to abound, and who wonder why they can’t have it all.

The propaganda giants are only too happy to create scapegoats.

Imagine what it would be like if the Bill of Rights were re-written by the power-hungry right-wing minority that would like everyone to believe that our basic rights should be interpreted as follows:

Amendment I. Congress shall make no laws interfering with the right religion; Congress shall not interfere with the freedom to spread lies and hatred and to incite to violence; Congress shall not interfere with the right of people to assemble peacefully as long as they are the right people.

Amendment II. Nobody shall interfere with the right of disaffected vengeful people to bear arms in order to kill anyone who disagrees with them (or is the wrong color or the wrong religion or the wrong nationality).

Amendment IV.  People have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures unless they are the wrong people.

These are NOT the original Amendments to our Constitution—the Constitution that our public officials swear to uphold. (See the correct wording.)

In the next post, I will consider how some of the other Amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been corrupted by seekers after power who have no interest in human rights or democracy–only the pursuit of their own interests.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

“Give the military whatever they need and more” (Cost of war, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue the series by guest author Neta Crawford. Part 2 picks up on the question of why it so difficult to accurately assess the true costs of war.]

First, there is a tendency to focus on what has been appropriated by Congress specifically for the war, with the consequence that the larger costs of war in Iraq are either missed or downplayed.

Dollars and dollars and dollars
"Artwork" with 20 Dollar Bills by selbstfotografiert, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 license

Specifically, many tallies focus on Congressional appropriations to the Department of Defense for the Iraq war, most of which were authorized in special emergency or supplemental appropriation, not included in the regular Pentagon “base” budget appropriations.

Others rightly include war related appropriations to the Veterans Administration and the State Department and US Agency for International Development (AID).  One of the most sophisticated of these analyses, by Amy Belasco of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) totals appropriations to Pentagon, State/USAID and the VA at $806 billion from 2003-2011.

But overall Pentagon appropriations and spending increased over the war in large part due to the Congressional desire to give the military whatever they needed and more.

Winslow Wheeler, of the Center for Defense Information, estimates that the base budget increase attributable to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is more than $600 billion over the last 10 years (whether one counts in current or constant dollars, and that matters).

If Wheeler is right or even right by half, then the share of the increase in base appropriations to the Pentagon that can reasonably attributed to the Iraq war is between $190 billion and $380 billion.

The second reason the official estimates are low compared to what the war will actually cost is the tendency to forget how the Iraq war was financed — almost entirely by deficit spending.  If one calculates the interest on debt for just the Pentagon, State, and VA appropriations, using the amount appropriated according the CRS, for the Iraq war already paid, the total is about $117 billion.

Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org

A day that should live in infamy

Posted on by kathiemm

January 12, 2012, is the 10th anniversary of the day when terrorism suspects were subjected to indefinite incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, generally in the absence of any charges or trial.

U.S. authorities admit to the detention of 779 detainees, at least 12 of whom were younger than 18 when detained. Eight died while in detention, six purportedly by suicide.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the detainees “had the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention,” but by then over 500 of them had been transferred out of Guantanamo, according to an Amnesty International media briefing, 16 December 2011. Wonder why?

Most Americans have probably heard that detainees at Guantanamo were subjected to many forms of assault identified as torture in international law, plus what the military calls “soft torture”—for example, incessantly blasting the prisoners with loud rock songs such as (please pardon the shocking verbatim quote) “Fuck Your God.”

Think of waterboarding, hanging victims by their wrists for hours, terrifying them with vicious dogs. What would you want to do if someone did that to your friends, or family, or members of your community?

A boston.com article about President Obama on January 22, 2009, said that “He signed executive orders to shut down the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center within a year and to ban harsh interrogations…” The article also reported that Obama’s incoming director of national intelligence, Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, told Congress that the detention center is “a damaging symbol to the world [and] a rallying cry for terrorist recruitment and harmful to our national security.”

Good ideas, but the detention center still has more than 100 prisoners. Time for a change? This coming Wednesday, January 11, will be a National Day of Action to Close Guantanamo; there will be nonviolent actions across the country, with a major demonstration planned in Washington, DC. Please support these efforts in mind and heart if not in action.

For additional resources, see:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Ban the bomb again!

Posted on by kathiemm

“…the end of nuclear tests is one of the key means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

Those words are from the Preamble of the United Nations Resolution designating August 29 as International Day against Nuclear Tests.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5PRZh_C0e4

Please take the time to watch this brief dramatic video about the events leading up to the U.N. General Assembly’s unanimous decision on December 2, 2009.

It includes information and powerful images about the 2000+ nuclear tests conducted before the first test ban treaty.

Despite the significance of the August 29 commemoration, global stockpiles of nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear power production, still have the potential for ending most life on earth.

However, there are also signs of hope:

  • Regional treaties have led the southern hemisphere of the world to become almost entirely free of nuclear weapons.
  • On February 2, 2011, President Obama ratified the New START, a landmark nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
  • Progress has been made towards incorporating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into international law; however, to achieve this status, it must be ratified by the 44 “Annex 2” states that possessed nuclear research or power reactors at the time of the original treaty negotiations.

BUT, as of August 16, 2011, there were nine nations from that group that still have not ratified the CTBT: China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States.

Some strange bedfellows here? What do you make of this group?

Do you know where your representatives in Congress stands on the START treaty? On the CTBT? On nuclear power? If you don’t, shouldn’t you find out?

And don’t forget the power of one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QzjqOl2N9c&feature=related

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology