1. 16 Apr



    Gitmo Is Killing Me

    Gitmo Is Killing Me

    By SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL

    image

    ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.       

    I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

    I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

    I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

    When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

    I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

    Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

    I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

    I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

    There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

    During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

    It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

    When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

    The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

    I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

    Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

    I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

    The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

    And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

    I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

    <nyt_author_id>

    Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.

    I thought our President promised (6 years ago) to close this place?!

    (Source: The New York Times)

     

  2. 26 Mar


    The Affordable Healthcare Act is the frosting on the cake, the cake is still rotten to the core. Healthcare for profit is a death panel. Pay me or die.  Welcome to the Fascist States of Wall Street Bankers (USA). VOTE LIBERTARIAN. END THE FED. END THE WAR. END THE POLICE STATE. 

    The Affordable Healthcare Act is the frosting on the cake, the cake is still rotten to the core. Healthcare for profit is a death panel. Pay me or die.  Welcome to the Fascist States of Wall Street Bankers (USA).

    VOTE LIBERTARIAN. END THE FED. END THE WAR. END THE POLICE STATE. 

    (Source: scatteredaesthetics)

     

  3. 9 Mar


    DOWN WITH TYRANTS. END CRONY CAPITALISTS LIKE THESE AND VOTE LIBERTARIAN. 

    DOWN WITH TYRANTS. END CRONY CAPITALISTS LIKE THESE AND VOTE LIBERTARIAN. 

    (Source: antithisandthat, via fukozawa)

     

  4. 19 Feb


    WAR IS BIG BUSINESS. VOTE LIBERTARIAN. 

    WAR IS BIG BUSINESS. VOTE LIBERTARIAN. 

    (Source: scatteredaesthetics)

     

  5. 24 Jan


    Here is an uncomfortable pop quiz: Who has killed more children, Adam Lanza or Barack Obama? We’ll hold off on the answer for a few paragraphs while we look at the state of governmental excess &#8212; including killing &#8212; in America. But you can probably guess the correct answer from the manner in which I have posed the question. We all know that the sheet anchor of our liberties is the Declaration of Independence. The president himself quoted Thomas Jefferson’s most famous line in his inaugural address earlier this week. He recognized that all men and women are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The president would no doubt like to modify the word “created” to read “shall be maintained,” since his presidency seems dedicated to keeping us equal, not in terms of equality of rights and opportunity but of outcome. He has dedicated himself to using the coercive power of the federal government to take from those who have and give to those who don’t. Under the Constitution, charity is a decision for individuals to make, not the government. This forced egalitarianism was never the purpose of government in America. When the people in the original 13 states gave up some of their personal liberties to create their state governments so they could perform the services that governments in the West do, and when the states themselves gave up some of their liberties to create the federal government of limited powers to address the issues of nationhood, they never authorized government to impose taxes to transfer wealth to those who lack it or need it. This may sound harsh, but there is simply no authority in the Constitution for the feds to tax Americans or to borrow money in their names to rebuild private homes in New Orleans or at the Jersey Shore. And there is no moral authority for that, either. If folks want to give money to those whose properties were damaged by natural disasters and lacked adequate insurance coverage, they are free to do so, but nowhere does government have the authority to compel us to do so. This shows how far we have come from the Constitution the Founders gave us. They “constituted” a government of limited powers, and they did so because they wanted the government to protect our freedoms, since they understood that personal responsibility and freedom &#8212; not government handouts &#8212; are the soundest routes to prosperity. Hence, they limited the government because they knew the lessons of history. And those lessons informed them that often it is the government itself that is the greatest threat to personal freedom. One hundred years ago, during the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson turned the concept of limited government on its head. They argued that the Constitution could be disregarded because the federal government possesses unlimited powers to address the people’s needs. Barack Obama is their ideological heir. As their heir, he is not only the head of the executive branch of the federal government, but he is also the head of one of the two dominant political parties. That political party has dedicated itself to making certain killing legal. The Democrats have continually celebrated the abominable decision of the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade, issued 40 years ago this week. They have championed abortion for the past 40 years. They have assaulted the greatest and most fundamental of human rights: the right to live. In doing so, they have succeeded in causing the government to permit the killing of more than 50 million American babies in their mothers’ wombs in the past 40 years &#8212; for the sake of convenience and sexual activity without consequence, in a manner that is antiseptic and lawful. And no one hears the babies’ cries of pain or anguish. The president himself has more directly killed about 176 children in Pakistan by the use of CIA drones. These drones have been dispatched by him alone &#8212; not pursuant to any congressional declaration of war. At least two of these murdered children were Americans. But since the cameras were kept away, since all of this takes place 10,000 miles from America, and since the survivors are legally and politically helpless, no one here hears the Pakistani children’s cries of pain and anguish. One of the reasons we have the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms is to enable us to resist a drone sent to the path of our children by shooting it down, no matter who sent it. But you can’t stop a drone with a BB gun. Hence the need for serious firepower in the hands of ordinary Americans &#8212; to give tyrants pause and to stop tyrants when they don’t pause. The president wants to use Lanza’s horrific slaughter of 20 babies in a public school in Connecticut with a stolen gun as an excuse to restrict the freedoms of all law-abiding gun-owning Americans, any one of whom would have stopped Lanza in a heartbeat with a lawful gun, before the police could, had they been in that school. Now back to our pop quiz: Who has killed more children, Lanza or Obama? Does a president with blood on his hands have any moral standing to infringe upon the natural right to self-defense of those whose hands are clean? Would you sacrifice your liberty to defend yourself and your children so that the government can kill whom it pleases? The answers are obvious. Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S.

    Here is an uncomfortable pop quiz: Who has killed more children, Adam Lanza or Barack Obama? We’ll hold off on the answer for a few paragraphs while we look at the state of governmental excess — including killing — in America. But you can probably guess the correct answer from the manner in which I have posed the question.

    We all know that the sheet anchor of our liberties is the Declaration of Independence. The president himself quoted Thomas Jefferson’s most famous line in his inaugural address earlier this week. He recognized that all men and women are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    The president would no doubt like to modify the word “created” to read “shall be maintained,” since his presidency seems dedicated to keeping us equal, not in terms of equality of rights and opportunity but of outcome. He has dedicated himself to using the coercive power of the federal government to take from those who have and give to those who don’t. Under the Constitution, charity is a decision for individuals to make, not the government.

    This forced egalitarianism was never the purpose of government in America. When the people in the original 13 states gave up some of their personal liberties to create their state governments so they could perform the services that governments in the West do, and when the states themselves gave up some of their liberties to create the federal government of limited powers to address the issues of nationhood, they never authorized government to impose taxes to transfer wealth to those who lack it or need it.

    This may sound harsh, but there is simply no authority in the Constitution for the feds to tax Americans or to borrow money in their names to rebuild private homes in New Orleans or at the Jersey Shore. And there is no moral authority for that, either. If folks want to give money to those whose properties were damaged by natural disasters and lacked adequate insurance coverage, they are free to do so, but nowhere does government have the authority to compel us to do so.

    This shows how far we have come from the Constitution the Founders gave us. They “constituted” a government of limited powers, and they did so because they wanted the government to protect our freedoms, since they understood that personal responsibility and freedom — not government handouts — are the soundest routes to prosperity. Hence, they limited the government because they knew the lessons of history. And those lessons informed them that often it is the government itself that is the greatest threat to personal freedom.

    One hundred years ago, during the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson turned the concept of limited government on its head. They argued that the Constitution could be disregarded because the federal government possesses unlimited powers to address the people’s needs. Barack Obama is their ideological heir. As their heir, he is not only the head of the executive branch of the federal government, but he is also the head of one of the two dominant political parties.

    That political party has dedicated itself to making certain killing legal. The Democrats have continually celebrated the abominable decision of the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade, issued 40 years ago this week. They have championed abortion for the past 40 years. They have assaulted the greatest and most fundamental of human rights: the right to live. In doing so, they have succeeded in causing the government to permit the killing of more than 50 million American babies in their mothers’ wombs in the past 40 years — for the sake of convenience and sexual activity without consequence, in a manner that is antiseptic and lawful. And no one hears the babies’ cries of pain or anguish.

    The president himself has more directly killed about 176 children in Pakistan by the use of CIA drones. These drones have been dispatched by him alone — not pursuant to any congressional declaration of war. At least two of these murdered children were Americans. But since the cameras were kept away, since all of this takes place 10,000 miles from America, and since the survivors are legally and politically helpless, no one here hears the Pakistani children’s cries of pain and anguish.

    One of the reasons we have the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms is to enable us to resist a drone sent to the path of our children by shooting it down, no matter who sent it. But you can’t stop a drone with a BB gun. Hence the need for serious firepower in the hands of ordinary Americans — to give tyrants pause and to stop tyrants when they don’t pause. The president wants to use Lanza’s horrific slaughter of 20 babies in a public school in Connecticut with a stolen gun as an excuse to restrict the freedoms of all law-abiding gun-owning Americans, any one of whom would have stopped Lanza in a heartbeat with a lawful gun, before the police could, had they been in that school.

    Now back to our pop quiz: Who has killed more children, Lanza or Obama? Does a president with blood on his hands have any moral standing to infringe upon the natural right to self-defense of those whose hands are clean? Would you sacrifice your liberty to defend yourself and your children so that the government can kill whom it pleases?

    The answers are obvious.

    Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S.

     

  6. 18 Jan



    Unlearn, rethink, and educate yourself. It is not the responsibility of the oppressed to teach you how our society has been constructed to benefit only a certain kind of people, but a decent human being. Understand how to lesson the suffering of others. Stand against crony capitalism. Wake those around you and evolve yourself. Teach your(our) future to protect our liberties and freedom. Stop feeding into a system of corruption and greed. Peace comes from the people who control their government in a republic by voting and being active in politics. Remember that the constitution was written to protect its people from its government. Remember that America was founded in a time where big government proved once again that it cannot function without tyranny. History is fact, and its a Fact that socialism (big government) fails over and over. Remember that the holocaust happened and thousands of people were massacred while millions around the world simply watched. Tie history together with today and see how it’s starting to repeat itself yet again. Only those who fight for freedom, deserve it. Protest, get angry! Revolt against any politician who believes they’re above the law and votes against what they took an oath to protect. War is big business and we are all literally paying into it because apathy has become the new notion in a time where Information is so easily dismissed and over looked. Government is a disease which spreads itself in the name of a good intention.
    — Johnny Marie
     

  7. 16 Jan


    All hail King Obama. Americas dictator.  This is what you voted for. THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT APPLY TO HIM. 

    All hail King Obama. Americas dictator. 

    This is what you voted for. THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT APPLY TO HIM. 

    (Source: demnewswire, via hoboanarchy)

     

  8. 7 Jan



    What if our foreign policy of the past century is deeply flawed and has not served our national security interests? What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others and has nothing to do with us being free and prosperous? What if propping up oppressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel? What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan is directly related to the hatred directed toward us? What if some day it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, or Afghan people are killed or displaced? What if we finally decide that torture even if called “enhanced interrogation technique” is self destructive and produces no useful information and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil? What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy? What if all war time spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing? What if we finally see that war time conditions always undermine personal liberty? What if conservatives who preach small government wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government? What if conservatives understood once again that their only logical position is to reject military intervention and managing an empire throughout the world? What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests? What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empire eventually destroys all great nations? What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq? What if a military draft is being planned for, for the wars that will spread if our foreign policy is not changed? What if the American people learn the truth that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security and that it never changes from one administration to the next? What if war and preparation for war is a racket serving the special interests? What if president Obama is completely wrong about Afghanistan and it turns out worse than Iraq and Vietnam - put together? What if Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression? What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes in protecting America? What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded? Nothing. But what happens if my concerns are justified and ignored? Nothing good
    — 

    Dr. Ron Paul  

    “Truth is reason in an empire of lies”

     

  9. 3 Jan


    Taxed to DEATH. 

    (Source: scatteredaesthetics)

     

  10. 31 Dec



    …….The Fiscal Cliff’s Hidden $1 Trillion Tax Hike to Pay for Obamacare

    tradethecycles:

    The Fiscal Cliff’s Hidden $1 Trillion Tax Hike to Pay for Obamacare (and Obamacare Takes/Robs $716 Billion from Medicare from 2013-2022)  

    It still AMAZES me that the Obama administration has successfully diverted its attention of this entire nation away from the huge TAX thats about to begin tomorrow on January 1st 2013. While Liberals and Democrats are thrilled about Obamas legislation, ‘Obamacare’ they fail to bring the attention to the most important detail of this new legislation. That $80 BILLION a year from the top 2% will ‘fix’ Americas debt problem. Liberals and democrats believe that taxing a country out of debt is a good idea? Sadly, the couldn’t be more wrong. So while Obamacare is gunning for the so-called ‘rich’ the truth is the majority of this tax will have the most impact on the middle class. AKA you me, and everyone we know. Small business owners prepare for an ever bigger recession in 2013. 

     

  11. 20 Dec



    When Bill Clinton was president, he hosted a White House conference on improving public high schools. In a press conference, he said “our children” (they’re always the State’s and not the parents’) must learn to settle their disputes without fighting. Violence, he said, is not the way. During the press conference, he was dropping planeloads of bombs on the Serbians.

    In his press conference the other day, Obama said that “we” (the State) most oppose “a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.” Damn right. Call the Pentagon and the CIA and order them to stop murdering Muslims. How many millions of innocents has the US killed in its career of aggressive wars? We were even told by Madeline Albright that starving and sickening to death 500,000 Iraqi school children was “worth it.” Obama did not mean his sort of violence, of course, nor the hundreds of guns that surround him and the royal family 24/7. Nor did he mean his funders in the movie and TV business. He meant the peaceful, self-reliant people who do not trust him or any part of government, from local police to federal death squads.

    — Lew Rockwell
     

  12. 17 Dec


    DEC 17, 2012&#160;  &#8216;Sandy Bill&#8217; Becomes Mini Auto BailoutThe legislation to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy has been turned into something of a mini auto bailout, according to those familiar with the Obama administration&#8217;s request. The request includes millions of dollars worth of cars, to be paid for by the federal government.  MORE HERE&#8230;

    DEC 17, 2012  

    ‘Sandy Bill’ Becomes Mini Auto Bailout

    The legislation to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy has been turned into something of a mini auto bailout, according to those familiar with the Obama administration’s request. The request includes millions of dollars worth of cars, to be paid for by the federal government. 

    MORE HERE…

     

  13. 13 Dec


    Syria Propaganda Looking a Lot Like Iraq Propaganda. 


    WAR IS BIG BUSINESS! END THE WAR. YOU WANT PEACE? VOTE FOR IT. VOTE LIBERTARIAN. 

     

  14. 15 Nov


     

  15. 14 Nov



    We need an intellectual awakening.
    — Ron Paul