June, 22 2011, 09:42am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Matt Daloisio – 201-264-4424, daloisio@earthlink.net
Frida Berrigan - 347-683-4928 frida.berrigan@gmail.com
Activists Respond to Congress and the White House Failng to Close Guantanamo
Congress takes the Obama Administration's lack of leadership on Closing Guantanamo as an opportunity to keep it open. American Citizens march and vigil, still believing that Torture, Abuse and Indefinite Detention Are Wrong!
WASHINGTON
On Thursday, June 23rd, members of Witness Against Torture, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), Amnesty International and other groups will embark on a March of Shame, walking between the institutions in Washington DC that continue to be responsible for unjust, illegal, and immoral American policies and conduct.
Beginning at the White House at 11am, the anti-torture activists will dress in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods that are now emblematic of the policies of torture and abuse that the Obama administration inherited from President Bush and has further entrenched. The group will solemnly process to the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol.
The demonstrators will call on all branches of government to close Guantanamo, end indefinite detention, repudiate the Military Commissions, and resist any effort to reauthorize torture in the form of "enhanced interrogations." The procession takes will take place as the House of Representatives takes floor action on a version of the 2012 defense appropriations bill that keeps Guantanamo open, undermines US Federal Courts, and attempts to expand indefinite detention.
"I am marching because the United States continues to violate both the law and human rights," says Beth Brockman from North Carolina. "President Obama's promises on Guantanamo and the rule of law have proven meaningless, and now steps are being taken to keep Guantanamo open forever."
"The whole system is broken," says activist Jeremy Varon of Brooklyn, New York, who teaches history at the New School University. "Every political institution in this city is culpable, starting with the Executive. Now Congress has gotten into the act, working to make Guantanamo permanent and enshrining military detention and trials."
Witness Against Torture is being joined in the March of Shame by Amnesty International, which hopes to draw attention to the case of torture survivor Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen rendered by the United States. Amnesty is calling on the White House and Congress to apologize to Arar and to ensure accountability for the US government's use of torture.
Witness Against Torture will vigil at the Department of Justice on Wednesday (6/22) and Friday (6/24) from noon to 2pm. These demonstrations are part of a week of activities organized by the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition International, culminating in a vigil in front of the White House on Saturday, June 25th from 7am to 7pm.
Witness Against Torture demands:
* Close the prison at Guantanamo Bay;
* Free all prisoners who have been cleared for release, ensuring their safe resettlement and providing asylum in the U.S. for those unable to go elsewhere;
* Produce charges against all other prisoners and prosecute them in U.S. courts;
* Open all detention centers to outside scrutiny. That includes accepting the oversight of the International Committee of the Red Cross of all facilities; and
* Conduct a comprehensive criminal inquiry against all those who designed and carried out torture policies under the Bush administration.
For more information, please visit:
Amnesty International
www.amnestyusa.org/apologize
Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition International
https://tassc.org/blog/
Witness Against Torture
https://www.witnesstorture.org/
Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners and condemn torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action. For the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the group held a daily vigil at the White House, encouraging the new President to uphold his commitments to shut down Guantanamo.
LATEST NEWS
Booze Hound! Lina Khan, Not Done Yet, Targets Nation's Largest Alcohol Seller
"The FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," said one advocate.
Dec 12, 2024
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, alleging that the nation's largest alcohol distributor, "violated the Robinson-Patman Act, harming small, independent businesses by depriving them of access to discounts and rebates, and impeding their ability to compete against large national and regional chains."
The FTC said its complaint details how the Florida-based company "is engaged in anticompetitive and unlawful price discrimination" by "selling wine and spirits to small, independent 'mom-and-pop' businesses at prices that are drastically higher" than what it charges large chain retailers, "with dramatic price differences that provide insurmountable advantages that far exceed any real cost efficiencies for the same bottles of wine and spirits."
The suit comes as FTC Chair Lina Khan's battle against "corporate greed" is nearing its end, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announcing Tuesday that he plans to elevate Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at Demand Progress Education Fund, said Thursday that "instead of heeding bad-faith calls to disarm before the end of the year, the FTC is taking bold, needed action to fight back against monopoly power that's raising prices."
"By suing Southern Glazer under the Robinson-Patman Act, a law that has gone unenforced for decades, the FTC is doing what our government should be doing: using every tool possible to make life better for everyday Americans," she added.
According to the FTC:
Under the Robinson-Patman Act, it is generally illegal for sellers to engage in price discrimination that harms competition by charging higher prices to disfavored retailers that purchase similar goods. The FTC's case filed today seeks to ensure that businesses of all sizes compete on a level playing field with equivalent access to discounts and rebates, which means increased consumer choice and the ability to pass on lower prices to consumers shopping across independent retailers.
"When local businesses get squeezed because of unfair pricing practices that favor large chains, Americans see fewer choices and pay higher prices—and communities suffer," Khan said in a statement. "The law says that businesses of all sizes should be able to compete on a level playing field. Enforcers have ignored this mandate from Congress for decades, but the FTC's action today will help protect fair competition, lower prices, and restore the rule of law."
The FTC noted that, with roughly $26 billion in revenue from wine and spirits sales to retail customers last year, Southern is the 10th-largest privately held company in the United States. The agency said its lawsuit "seeks to obtain an injunction prohibiting further unlawful price discrimination by Southern against these small, independent businesses."
"When Southern's unlawful conduct is remedied, large corporate chains will face increased competition, which will safeguard continued choice which can create markets that lower prices for American consumers," FTC added.
Southern Glazer's published a statement calling the FTC lawsuit "misguided and legally flawed" and claiming it has not violated the Robinson-Patman Act.
"Operating in the highly competitive alcohol distribution business, we offer different levels of discounts based on the cost we incur to sell different quantities to customers and make all discount levels available to all eligible retailers, including chain stores and small businesses alike," the company said.
Peterson-Cassin noted that the new suit "follows a massive court victory for the FTC on Tuesday in which a federal judge blocked a $25 billion grocery mega-merger after the agency sued," a reference to the proposed Kroger-Albertsons deal.
"The FTC has plenty of fight left and so should all regulatory agencies," she added, alluding to the return of Trump, whose first administration saw
relentless attacks on federal regulations. "We applaud the FTC and Chair Lina Khan for not letting off the gas in the race to protect American consumers and we strongly encourage all federal regulators to do the same while there's still time left."
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Senate Prepares for NDAA Vote, Progressive Caucus Says It Is 'Past Time' to Slash Pentagon Budget
"This legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Dec 12, 2024
As Senate Democrats prepared to move forward with a procedural vote on the annual defense budget package that passed in the House earlier this week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus outlined its objections to the legislation and called for the Pentagon budget to be cut, with military funding freed up to "reinvest in critical human needs."
CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said following the passage of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2025 (H.R. 5009) that "it should alarm every American taxpayer that we are nearing a trillion-dollar annual budget for an agency rampant with waste, fraud, and abuse."
Jayapal, who was one of 140 lawmakers to oppose the package, emphasized that the Pentagon has failed seven consecutive annual audits.
Despite being the only federal agency to never have passed a federal audit, said Jayapal, the Department of Defense "continues to receive huge boosts to funding every year. Our constituents deserve better."
As Common Dreams reported last month, more than half of the department's annual budget now goes to military contractors that consistently overcharge the government, contributing to the Pentagon's inability to fully account for trillions of taxpayer dollars.
The $883.7 billion legislation that was advanced by the House on Wednesday would pour more money into the Pentagon's coffers. The package includes more than $500 million in Israeli military aid and two $357 million nuclear-powered attack submarine despite the Pentagon requesting only one, and would cut more than $621 million from President Joe Biden's budget request for climate action initiatives.
Jayapal noted that the legislation—which was passed with the support of 81 Democrats and 200 Republicans—also includes anti-transgender provisions, barring the children of military service members from receiving gender-affirming healthcare in "the first federal statute targeting LGBTQ people since the 1990s when Congress adopted 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and the Defense of Marriage Act."
"This dangerous bigotry cannot be tolerated, let alone codified into federal law," said Jayapal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the legislation "has some very good things we Democrats wanted in it, it has some bad things we wouldn't have put in there, and some things that were left out," and indicated that he had filed cloture for the first procedural vote on the NDAA.
The vote is expected to take place early next week, and 60 votes are needed to begin debate on the package.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of exorbitant U.S. military spending, said in a floor speech on Wednesday that he plans to vote no on the budget.
"While middle-class and working-class families are struggling to survive, we supposedly just don't have the financial resources to help them," he said. "We just cannot afford to build more housing, we just cannot afford to provide quality childcare to our kids or to support public education, or to provide healthcare to all."
"But when the military industrial complex and all of their well-paid lobbyists come marching in to Capitol Hill," he continued, "somehow or another, there is more than enough money for Congress to provide them with virtually everything that they need."
Jayapal noted that the funding package includes substantive pay raises for service members and new investments in housing, healthcare, childcare, and other support for their families.
"Progressives will always fight to increase pay for our service members and ensure that our veterans are well taken care of," said Jayapal. "However, this legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction."
By cutting military spending, she said, the federal government could invest in the needs of all Americans, not just members of the military, "without sacrificing our national security or service member wages."
"It's past time we stop padding the pockets of price gouging military contractors who benefit from corporate consolidation," said Jayapal, "and reallocate that money to domestic needs."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Dems Urge Biden to Limit Presidential Authority to Launch Nuclear War Before Trump Takes Charge
"As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled," wrote Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu.
Dec 12, 2024
Two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday, urging him to place more checks on potential nuclear weapons use by mandating that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike.
The letter writers, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), argue that "such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A president could order a nuclear launch only if (1) Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check on executive power or (2) the United States had already been attacked with a nuclear weapon. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine."
The two write that time is of the essence: "As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled."
The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war (though presidents have used military force without getting the OK from Congress on multiple occasions in modern history, according to the National Constitution Center).
During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons policy was produced, speed was seen as essential to deterrence, according to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last year that makes a similar argument to Markey and Lieu.
"There is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War's dominant knife's-edge logic," he wrote.
While nuclear tensions today may not be quite as high as they were during the apex of the Cold War, fears of nuclear confrontation have been heightened due to poor relations between the United States and Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine, among other issues. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use not long after the U.S. greenlit Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied long range weapons in its fight against Russia.
This is not the first time Markey and Lieu have pushed for greater guardrails on nuclear first-use. The two are the authors of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, a proposed bill first introduced in 2017 that would bar a U.S. president from launching a nuclear first strike without the consent of Congress.
"We first introduced this act during the Obama administration not as a partisan effort, but to make the larger point that current U.S. policy, which gives the president sole authority to launch nuclear weapons without any input from Congress, is dangerous," they wrote.
In their letter, Markey and Lieu also recount an episode from the first Trump presidency when, shortly after the January 6 insurrection, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley ordered his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from Trump.
But Milley's ability to intervene was limited, according to Lieu and Markey, because his role is advisory and "the president can unilaterally make a launch decision and implement it directly without informing senior leaders." They argue this episode is a sign that the rules themselves must change.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular