Our Call to drive out the Bush regime lays out an indictment of the crimes this regime is committing here and around the world, and shows the fascist direction in which this society is headed. What follows is an online teach-in based on the 7
"YOUR GOVERNMENT" statements that begin our Call. This teach-in below is still under construction, so check back later for more.
(Click on "your government")
YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.
YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.
YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
(Read the rest of the Call to drive out the Bush regime)
YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.
Although George W. Bush has said that the US knew Iraq trained al-Qaeda members in making bombs, poisons and deadly gases, and that an alliance with terrorists would allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints, no evidence of this statement has ever been produced. Colin Powell told the UN this alleged training took place in a camp in Northern Iraq.
The area he indicated was later revealed to be outside of Iraq’s control and patrolled by Allied war planes.
Dick Cheney said that it was believed that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons, while CIA reports up to 2002 showed no evidence for his claim.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he knew where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were located: “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.” Needless to say, no such weapons have been found east, west, south, and north somewhat.
In George W. Bush's 2003 state of the union address he claimed that Iraq was trying to import uranium from Niger, supposedly to enrich it and advance a nuclear program. The documents that purported that claim was false, and the former head of the CIA has said that information should have never been included in the speech.
The Bush regime has stated that Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. This claim was based on a single source which has yet to be named and is contradicted by the statement made by British prime minister, Tony Blair, who said that Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.
The Bush regime wants everyone to believe that Iraq was responsible for the September 11th attacks. The main basis for this claim was a supposed meeting between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Czech intelligence later concluded that the Iraqi’s meeting was not, in fact, with Atta.
The death toll for Iraq, as it slides into civil war, is a MINIMUM of 39,942, with deaths per day rising from 20 to 36 in the third year of the occupation. American deaths total 2,588 since the beginning of the occupation.
To date, the Iraq war and occupation has cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $301,678,000,000.
The use of white phosphorus in Iraq was said to have been originally only for illumination at night. When that information was proven false by an Italian documentary featuring the images of dead Iraqis killed by white phosphorus, the US military had to retract its statement, saying it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants. This weapon ignites on contact with oxygen, burns through the skin and won’t be extinguished unless it is deprived of oxygen. While an international treaty restricts its use, the US is not a signatory to the treaty.
The US military has been accused of unthinkable war crimes: The rape and murder of a fourteen-year old girl in Al-Mahmudiyah, south of Iraq; The massacre of twenty-four unarmed civilians in Haditha; Eleven civilians in Ishaqi forced into the corner of a room, with their hands bound, and shot by US troops. These atrocities and many more are not the result of a few bad apples. Rather, the very nature of this unjust war and the orders given from the highest levels of government are to blame.
Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary general, declared that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal. The invasion was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter.
US-led forces in Iraq have attacked population centers. There were two major offensives on the civilian town of Fallujah in 2004, as well as on al-Qaim, Tal Afar, Samarra and Najaf. These attacks have resulted in many civilian casualties and massive destruction of the urban physical infrastructure, reportedly cutting off vital necessities including water and medical supplies. These siege tactics are prohibited under Article 14 of the Second Protocol of the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran—drawing up targets, collecting information inside the country, and participating in intensified planning for a possible major air attack.
In regards to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Bush regime declares that we are witnessing the widening ripples of September 11, 2001. This is the truth turned upside down. This campaign began with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and now threatens war against Iran, a major target of today’s US-sponsored Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel’s actions can’t be understood without taking this context into account.
Sources:
Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq
http//www.alternet.org/story/16274/
20 Lies About the War
http//www.transnational.org/features/2003/RangwalaWhitaker_20LiesWar.html
“Iraq Death Toll in Third Year of Occupation is Highest Yet”
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php
US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the US has said.
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stm
Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree: Military Training and Atrocities
http//www.counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html
“Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan”
http//www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1305708,00.html
“NGO Letter to the Security Council on Iraq”
http//www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unrole/2006/0519iraqletter.htm
“The Iran Plans”
http//www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact
The interests behind Israel’s attack on Lebanon, and the interests of the people.
http://rwor.org/a/056/israelattack-en.html
Also check out:
Read the first chapter of Larry Everest's book Oil, Power, & Empire.
Prevailing in Iraq- Slideshow on the realties of the Iraq War.
YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.FACT SHEET:
Since January 2002, the United States has been holding men virtually incommunicado at the United States Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without access to any fair and adequate legal process. The U.S. Department of Defense continues to maintain strict control over the information released about its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.
The Bush administration claims that current prisoners of war and supposed al Qaeda prisoners are Enemy Combatants. They are using this terminology to refer to alleged terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Iraq so that no protected status or rights apply to the captured under international or domestic law. Because everyone captured in a war is supposed to be protected by the Geneva Conventions, rejecting the prisoner of war categorization and replacing it with an "Enemy Combatant" category violates international law.
POW status gives the occupying country the right to detain the captured, but not to coerce the prisoner to divulge information through force. Prisoners are to be considered POWs until there is a special hearing at which a tribunal can make a decision that they are not POWs. The Bush administration has refused to follow these procedures in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The United Nations Convention Against Torture (signed by almost every country in the world including the U.S.) states that torture cannot be used under any circumstances. At Kandahar and Bagram (Afghanistan) prisoners were beaten, shackled, repeatedly deprived of food, and kept on their knees for sixteen hours at a time (a "stress" position.) Prisoners on their way to Kandahar were dressed in orange jumpsuits, shackled at arms, legs, and waist, forced to wear blacked out goggles and ear coverings, and forcibly transported on a plane for 24 hours--unable to use the bathroom. They had to lie in their own feces and urine without knowing where they were going.
At Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, torture is:-Psychological (such as not letting prisoners know when or if they will ever be released, putting them in isolation camps where prisoners are stripped and their heads shaved, humiliating prisoners through mocking religious beliefs such as making Muslim prisoners eat pork and look at each other's naked bodies),
-Physical (holding prisoners in dog-run cages exposed to the elements, forcing prisoners to endure temperatures of 110 degrees, sleeping on concrete floors with scorpions and rat infestations, experiencing beatings by the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF), dealing with sleep, bathroom and food deprivation, being put in stress positions such as forced kneeling chained to a ring in the floor for hours at a time).
Recently released detainees from Guantanamo have stated that they were interrogated as many as 200 times each. Especially in terms of the conditions of interrogations, this much questioning is psychologically devastating.
Prisoners in Guantanamo came from Afghanistan, but were also abducted from Indonesia, Zambia, Azerbaijan, Germany, Morocco, Gambia and Pakistan, and not always from combat situations.
Prisoner hunger strikes have persisted since February of 2002, especially in order to protest for rights to fair hearings.
In the first year and a half since Guantanamo opened, eighteen individuals made 28 suicide attempts. The suicide attempts were among 350 "self-harm" incidents reported by the military in 2003, which included 120 "hanging gestures". Also disturbing was the coordinated mass suicide attempt in August of 2003 involving ten prisoners. This form of protest followed Major General Geoffrey Miller taking of command at Guantanamo, with a mandate to acquire even more information from prisoners accused of having associations with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
In June 2006, three detainees finally succeeded in killing themselves - a Yemeni and two Saudis who had participated in various hunger strikes committed suicide. Harry Harris, camp commander at the time, said: "They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
Similar interrogation procedures to those at Guantanamo are used at Abu Ghraib--detainees are hooded with wires with electrical currents attached to their hands, forced to simulate sexual acts, naked, with other male prisoners, led on leashes by soldiers, attacked by vicious dogs, etc.
Former head of Abu Ghraib, Janis Karpinski, has testified that a memo signed by Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was posted in the prison, with a list of "harsher interrogation techniques" to be used and a handwritten note by Rumsfeld: "make sure this happens!"
A report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba in the New Yorker states that these acts of torture "perpetuated by the soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, 800th MP Brigade, and also by members of the American intelligence community" include breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water onto naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, in one instance actually to bite a detainee.
The report Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade listed the following abuses: Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; writing
"I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture with him; a male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; taking souvenir photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
The problems at Abu Ghraib were not hidden from officials--but many reports of torture were not followed up on. Abuses could have been prevented by General Karpinski had the reports been acted on as they came out (commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, now testifies against the Bush Regime on the Bush Crimes Commission. Read her testimonies on torture at Abu Ghraib on the web at http://www.bushcommission.org/?q=node/31).
Although practices such as sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, stress positions, and the use of dogs are now barred by the U.S., Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told in a Senate hearing on May 12, 2004 that these techniques had been approved at the Pentagon.
Amnesty International states in 2004 that: "Full accountability, of persons at all levels of the chain of command, including officers in the armed forces, Central Intelligence Agency personnel and private contractors, with no hint of scapegoating of low-level soldiers and reservist officers, is crucial…. The problem does not begin or end at Abu Ghraib. The rule of law and promotion of security and human rights demand that daylight be shone onto all US detention policies and practices."
---
SOURCES
http://www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0411.carter.html
http://www.amnesty.org/
"Guantanamo: What the World Should Know", By Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray
http://www.ccr-ny.org
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5068228.stm
"Tortured Truth", Moazzam Begg
YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
FACT SHEET:
(1) "Inside the United States, the most radical departure from law as we know it is President Bush's claim that he can designate any American citizen an 'enemy combatant' – and thereupon detain that person in solitary confinement indefinitely, without charges, without a trial, without a right to counsel."
"We have gone back to a pre-Magna Carta medieval system, not a system of laws, but of executive fiat, where the king – or in this case the president – simply decides…I' going to throw you into some prison. You are not going to have access to a lawyer or anybody else, or even know if there are any charges against you, or if you will ever be released from this prison."
"By November 2001, the police and FBI had already arrested and detained by some estimates up to three thousand Muslim or Arab non-citizens in the United States. These people were not even suspected of terrorism; they were merely non-US citizens who had allegedly violated some immigration procedure. Many of these people effectively disappeared in US jails; a number were beaten and ultimately deported."
Regarding the basic illegality of the Guantanamo interrogation camp located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:
"These interrogation camps were outlawed by the Geneva Conventions in 1949, and are quite similar to the German [Nazi] World War II operations that lead to the ban."
[Source: Ratner, Michael, and Ellen Ray. Guantanamo – What the World Should Know. White River Jct., Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004.]
(2) "'They're removing the checks and balances on federal law enforcement and the executive branch by the federal courts,' [ACLU's chief lobbyist in Washington] Murphy said."
[Source: Lancaster, John. "Attacks Mute the ACLU’s Voice." Washington Post, 28 September 2001. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0928-03.htm.]
(3) "Said Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, '
[This] is what the McCarthy era was all about. We overreacted, finding guilt by association and putting people under suspicion not for what they did, but for their identity.'"[Source: Leonard, Mary. "Risk To Liberty Feared in Proposed Legislation." Boston Globe, 24 September 2001. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0924-02.htm.]
(4) Legal experts and defense attorneys say that the government is deliberately abusing Material Witness Statutes (used in grand jury investigations) to arrest and hold thousands of people in unprecedented numbers without explanation or charges and for unknown duration:
--"'Before Sept. 11, 99 percent of the material witness orders would have never been issued,' said [defense attorney Stanley] Cohen. Now 'there isn't a federal judge in the United States, when faced with a ... sealed secret evidence assertion to an affidavit, that is going to say 'denied.'"
--"'all it takes is an accusation, and they can make your life horrible, and you spend thousands of dollars trying to prove your innocence.'"
--"'…many of the people who have been swept up in these immigration sweeps are persons who previously had been identified as political activists in their respective communities who had immigration issues.'"
[Source: Jakes, Lara. "Lawyers Worry About Secrecy Being Used in Roundups." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 October 2001. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/42648_detain13.shtml.]
(5) "The USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the government to monitor, search, detain or deport suspects and gives the Justice Department more power to detain immigrants without charges. Also in November 2001, the government stopped saying how many people it has detained related to the Sept. 11 attacks."
[Source: Milbank, Dana. "In War It's Power to the President." Washington Post, 20 November 2001. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1120-01.htm.]
(6) "[Center for Constitutional Rights] legal director Bill Goodman told IPS, 'Shortly after 9/11, the Department of Justice detained approximately 2,000 Muslim men, primarily from the Middle East and South Asia. Not one of these men was ever found to have been guilty of any form of terrorism, or even linked to terrorism.'"
--"These men were held for many months longer than necessary, in solitary confinement, often physically abused and under degrading conditions. The government fought tooth and nail against any judicial oversight of what was going on."
--"'This was the beginning of what has been shown to be the U.S. policy of indefinite detention without due process, often involving torture,' he said."
[Source: Fisher, William. "Post-9/11 Dragnet Snares Class Action Lawsuit." Inter Press Service, 25 January 2006. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0125-04.htm.]
(7) "In September 2001, [former Attorney General John Ashcroft] ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly."
-- MKB v. Warden (Case No. 03-6747) only became publicly known because of court docketing error.
[Source: Richey, Warren. “Secret 9/11 Case Before High Court.” Christian Science Monitor, 30 October 2003. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1030-07.htm.]
(10) The Bush administration's trampling of the Constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen: Yasser Hamdi.
--"The Pentagon announced that it would begin making arrangements to allow Yasser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen, access to a lawyer after more than 20 months of incommunicado military detention…."
-- The Pentagon insisted that access to a lawyer was only being granted "as a matter of discretion and military policy," not to comply with any requirement of domestic or international law. Indeed, the Pentagon maintains that its decision for Hamdi should not in any way 'be treated as a precedent' to be used in any other such 'combatant' case."
-- The Pentagon's decision to grant Hamdi "access to counsel after nearly two years did not commit the administration to providing any more than that - for example, international law protections for the treatment of prisoners of war, or constitutional requirements that he be afforded notice of any charges against him and an opportunity to be heard by an independent court."
[Source: Pearlstein, Deborah. "Detained at the Whim of the President." International Herald Tribune, 10 December 2003. http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1210-06.htm.]
(11) U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was detained in a military prison without charges for years. The Supreme Court refused to hear Padilla's appeal in April of 2006. According to a leaked document, Bush intends to have GOP Congress enact legislation to continue to assert un-Constitutional presidential powers regarding detainment of terrorist suspects---powers that the Supreme Court has already ruled against.
--"In shifting Mr. Padilla to civilian custody, the government said that it reserved the right to re-designate him as an enemy combatant and send him back to military custody. His lawyers argued that for that reason, the Supreme Court should hear his case."
--"'Nothing the government has yet done purports to retract the assertion of executive power Padilla protests,' Justice Ginsburg said [in her dissenting opinion], adding that 'nothing prevents the executive [branch of government] from returning to the road it earlier constructed and defended.'"
[Source: Greenhouse, Linda. "Justices Decline Terror Case of a U.S. Citizen." New York Times, 4 April 2006. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0404-08.htm.]
--"That is, effectively, what the administration's draft of new rules for the military detention and trial of terrorism suspects would do…It seeks to have Congress write into law essentially the same procedures for military trials that the high court just said were illegal. That is, terrorism suspects still could be excluded from the courtroom, evidence could be withheld from the defense, and the Geneva Conventions — which the Supreme Court explicitly said must apply, would be circumvented."
--"More chilling is that the draft makes clear that the president wishes to impose these conditions upon any American citizen he calls an 'enemy combatant'."[Source: Cocco, Marie. "Bush is After Our Rights." Daily Camera (Boulder, CO), 2 August 2006. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0802-28.htm.]
YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
Selected Articles Online:
Esther Kaplan: On the Trail of the Christian Right, an interview with Esther Kaplan, conducted by Sunsara Taylor for Revolution newspaper
Rabbi James Rudin: The 'Christocrats' Are Here - an interview on Buzzflash.com
How the GOP Became God's Own Party, by Kevin Phillips
A Way To Understand What's Going On: The Two Pats, And Andrew Sullivan... And Cornel West by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party
Book Recommends:
Contempt: How the Right Is Wronging American Justice, by Catherine Crier
With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House, by Esther Kaplan
The Truth About Right-wing Conspiracy....And Why Clinton and the Democrats are No Answer, by Bob Avakian (available at revcom.us)
The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us, by James Rudin
Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres
American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips
The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era, by Bob Avakian (available at revcom.us)
YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
Listen to audio of testimonies by Ted Glick, Tom Goldtooth and Daphne Wysham from the Bush Crimes Commission on Global Warming and the Destruction of the Global Environment.
YOUR GOVERNMENT moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
Fact Sheet:
[pdf available]
On his very first day in office, George W. Bush reinstated a global "gag rule" on abortion. This gag rule, called the Mexico City Policy, stipulates that non-profits must scrap all services relating to abortion in order to keep any U.S. money for international family planning (coming through the relief agency USAID). He later extended this policy to all international family planning programs[1]
In the developing world, the Mexico City Policy means that the number of illegal or "back-alley" abortions increase dramatically, because without funding, many clinics must shut their doors (a clinic serving over a quarter million people in Kenya closed after USAID funding was withdrawn.) There are 20 million illegal procedures performed each year, and 70,000 deaths annually from illegal abortion procedures[2].
In November of 2003, the Bush regime signed the "partial-birth abortion" (a non-scientific term made up by the pro-life movement) ban into law, implementing the first-ever nationwide ban since abortion became legal with the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
The Dept. of Justice, under John Ashcroft, has requested the records of women who have received abortion services[3].
Seven states, including Illinois, Louisiana, and Kentucky have either trigger laws to ban abortion immediately if Roe v. Wade is overturned or have statements of policy that display the same intention for immediate bans.
Extreme pro-life activists have been appointed to fill important positions throughout the Bush Regime. Anti-choice governor Tommy Thompson heads up the department of Health and Human Services, abstinence-only advocate Alma Golden runs the nation's family planning program Title X, and anti-choice/Christian fundamentalist doctors opposed to contraception and all forms of abortion (even the morning after pill, which is not in fact an abortifacient) make key decisions delaying or preventing access to celebrated new contraceptives and abortifacients while they disproportionately dominate FDA advisory boards[4].
Although it is unconstitutional and currently being challenged in the Supreme Court, Congress passed, and Bush signed into law, a Federal Abortion Ban in 2003. This ban would outlaw abortions as early as 12 to 15 weeks in pregnancy.
Experts consider the fact that the Bush Regime has stacked the Supreme Court with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. (refuses to state his views on women's right to choose) and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. (has a record of hostility toward women's rights and privacy rights) ominous, and that these appointments leave the states one more Bush judicial appointment away from prohibiting abortion[5]
The Centers for Disease Control, a (government) agency under HHS, has recently reclassified all women as "pre-pregnant" and recommends that physicians hold standards of prenatal care above other health concerns for women, celebrating pregnancy as the ultimate achievement and goal for women[6].
In March of 2006 South Dakota banned all abortions except those performed to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions provided in this law for cases of rape or incest. The law was passed "in hopes of drawing a legal challenge that will cause the US Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 decision legalizing abortion."[7]
The Bush regime has passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which gives a fertilized egg legal status distinct from woman. This law is a clear threat to the foundations of Roe v. Wade.[8]
[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20010123-5.html
[2] Esther Kaplan, "With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right."
[3] "The War on Women: A Pernicious Web", Planned Parenthood special report, www.plannedparenthood.org
[4] Esther Kaplan, "With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right."
[5] Stateline.org, June 22nd 2006
[6] Washington Post, May 16th 2006, page HE01
[7] CNN.com, "South Dakota Bans Most Abortions," March 6th 2006
[8] "The War on Women: A Pernicious Web"
For Further Info:
PBS's Frontline- "The Last Abortion Clinic In Mississippi"
Audio of Dr. Alan Berkman, Columbia University on Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights from the Bush Crimes Commission.
Book Recommend: How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page
YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
FACT SHEET:
10-term Republican incumbent Rep. Richard H. Baker from Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." after Katrina hit New Orleans.
Tapes of White House video-conferences about Hurricane Katrina with emergency officials show that President Bush was fully aware of the threat posed to New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. He claimed to be "fully prepared" for the crisis. The tapes make it clear that he personally received serious warnings of what could happen if the levees protecting New Orleans gave way. However-four days after the storm hit he told reporters: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Then he allowed the National Guard to descend on the city of New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
These orders mainly applied to the thousands of poor Black people who were labeled "looters" to the rest of world while merely attempting to survive the disaster by obtaining food, water and other supplies.
Although the majority of New Orleans residents were Black before Katrina hit, mostly only well-off white people have been allowed or able to return to the city. The federal office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, plans to raze half the low-income housing units in the city and replace them with more "mixed-income" housing. Only 20% of the 5,000 mostly Black families that lived in public housing in N.O. have been able to return since the Hurricane.
U.S. based firms Halliburton and Bechtel Halliburton Corp., previously headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State George Shultz and ex-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, respectively, have won billions of dollars in regular and no-bid contracts for work in Iraq from the U.S. government. Haliburton is the biggest single government contractor in Iraq This sort of unimpeded war profiteering is indicative of the deep rooted greed of the Bush Regime.
The Washington Post reports that the practice of turning to private contractors for a broad range of military logistics operations dates to a study commissioned by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to conduct the study and then hired the company to implement its own plan. Cheney became chief executive of Halliburton, Brown and Root's parent company, in 1995 and remained there until 2000, when he left to run for the vice presidency.
The legislature and the Bush regime as a whole are currently attempting to ban same-sex marriage on a nationwide level through the Federal Marriage Amendment, a constitutional amendment that would also ban civil unions and marriage-related benefits such as the ability to file jointly on taxes. This attempt, which would increasingly stigmatize gay couples in society, is a blatant manifestation of the disregard and outright hatred for the LGBTQ community which prevails under the Bush Regime.
The Bush regime has also passed the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which defines marriage as a legal union of one man and one woman. This way, federal law can never be interpreted otherwise. Under the DOMA, the Federal government refuses to recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions, even if state law, like in Massachusetts, recognizes those unions.
(so the military can force prisoners to masturbate and sodomize one another, yet there will be no same same sex unions?)SOURCES:
-"New Orleans poor blacks charge racism over housing", 27 Jun 2006 22:02:59 GMT…Source: Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27243525.htm
-"Some GOP Legislators Hit Jarring Notes in Addressing Katrina", Charles Babington, Saturday, September 10, 2005; Page A04
-"Bush was given Katrina warning, tapes reveal", March 3, 2006, The Guardian
-"Racist 'Shoot to Kill' Policy in New Orleans: White versus Black 'Looters'" http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PIN20050908&articleId=901
