Author: Nag

Chertoff’s Prison Camps for Undocumented Families – Merry Christmas

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas (on the outskirts of Austin, Texas) is a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America. It and a smaller center in Pennsylvania are the only two facilities in the country that are authorized to hold non-Mexican immigrant families and children on noncriminal charges.

That’s right, we are now imprisoning children, forcing them to wear jail uniforms and identity badges. Land of the Free.

Not to worry, though. The imprisoned children do get instruction daily; if you count one hour of English as actual instruction. They also get, out the goodness of Chertoff’s black heart, one half hour of recreational activity, indoors, daily.

Even infants have to wear identity badges. Home of the Brave.

Who is running these dens of horror?

The Taylor jail began holding immigrant families in the summer under a contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. Williamson County receives $1 per day for each inmate held there. A spokesman for the company referred questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Antonio office.

How many children do we have incarcerated?

“the Taylor jail houses about 400 people, including about 200 children. “

Why did Chertoff set up these jails that incarcerate children? Why, out of his deep concern for families that are sometimes split up when one or more adults is jailed, they are all jailed together.

Originally, the detention facilities were touted by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff as a way to keep families together while waiting for their cases to come up for court review.

Well, they are accomplishing that goal – to the exclusion of being allowed any outside contact with the rest of the world, aside from those who have lawyers.

The children are loosing weight and there are rampant psychological problems among the detainees, most of whom were seeking asylum in the US from nightmarish situations in their countries of origin before being tossed into US prison camps.

There will be a Christmas Eve Vigil at Hutto Children’s Jail “on Dec 24, from 5-6pm, across from the entrance of the Hutto prison camp. “

The intention of this vigil is therefore two fold. (1) To bring hope in during the Christmas holidays to children and their families in the Hutto and other prison camps throughout Texas and the United States and (2) to bring further local, state, national and international awareness to their plight.

I tried, I really tried to find some happy feel good stories since it is the season to be jolly. This is what the US has become: we put babies in jail.
One last thought: Michael Chertoff is a monster devoid of human compassion. Come to think of it, so is his boss, who reminded us all a few days ago to go shopping.

Monday News Bucket

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Abraham Lincoln

Thursday News Bucket

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Thomas Jefferson

US Troops Shoot and Kill Pregnant Iraqi Woman

Coming on the heels of the Haditha Massacre, this story just tore my heart out. It’s one of those stories that I was about to post in the News Bucket, but had too much to say about it and decided to post a diary instead.

Shooting of pregnant Iraqi touches nerves

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The shooting death of a pregnant Iraqi, apparently by U.S. troops, as she was rushing to a hospital threw an intense spotlight Wednesday on the troubling issue of Iraqi civilian deaths.

Iraqi police and witnesses said the troops gunned down the woman and her cousin in their car. The U.S. military said the car entered a clearly marked prohibited area but failed to stop despite repeated signals; shots were fired to disable the vehicle, it said.

Link

The 35 yr old pregnant woman was being rushed to the hospital by her brother; also in the car was their cousin, a 57 yr old woman. The road had been recently blocked by American troops, but apparently the word had not gotten out to outlying areas. As they rushed to hospital so Nabiha Nisaif Jassim could give birth, they inadvertantly drove on the forbidden road.

The Americans said that they fired warning shots to no avail before peppering the car with the bullets that killed both women, and Nabiha’a unborn baby. Now, I’ve never been in a car racing to the hospital with a pregnant woman, but I imaging that it could be a bit tense and chaotic. No wonder they didn’t notice the American troops.

Nabiha Nisaif Jassim is survived by a husband, 36-year-old Hussein Tawfeeq, and two children, Hashimayah, 2, and Ali, 1. Tawfeeq was waiting at the hospital for his wife when she was shot.

“May God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here,” Jassim’s brother told the AP. “People are shocked and fed up with the Americans. People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only because of Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly, especially recently.”

More and more Iraqis are under the opinion that Americans don’t value Iraqi lives. It’s a refrain that I’ve read and heard over and over lately. This article goes on to give statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths and it isn’t pretty. The claims of retribution whenever an American life is lost are rampant.

“Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi told the BBC that the allegations have “created a feeling of great shock and sadness and I believe that if what is alleged is true — and I have no reason to believe it’s not — then I think something very drastic has to be done.”

“There must be a level of discipline imposed on the American troops and change of mentality which seems to think that Iraqi lives are expendable,” said Pachachi, a member of parliament.” link

In response to the Haditha massacre the US military is going to give mandatory ethics and cultural training to every troop serving in Iraq:

Haditha Response: U.S. Troops to Receive ‘Core Values’ Training

May 31, 2006 — Members of the U.S. military in Iraq will receive core values training beginning Thursday, as a result of the incident in Haditha in which American troops allegedly murdered 24 Iraqi civilians.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, will announce the new directive Thursday, assigning the training to all 130,000 U.S. troops over the next 30 days.

All service members will view a slide presentation with vignettes that highlight the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield.

The directive emphasizes professional military values, the importance of disciplined professional conduct in combat and an explanation of what to expect of Iraqi culture.

Link

This must mean that up until now, no cultural training has been received. Lack of cultural understanding is often blamed for the number of incidents involving civilians.

Will this training add more stress to an already stressed out fighting force? Kilo Company, the Marines responsible for Haditha, are on their third tour of duty in Iraq and obviously under tremendous stress. I suppose it’s better to have the training; better late than never.

The Silver Lining

One thing I see happening as a result of so much tragedy is discussion. I turned on CNN this morning to the middle of a deep discussion on battle stress and PTSD. It is healthy to carry on a national discussion of these horrible deaths and question not only why it is happening, but how we can help troubled soldiers after they come home. Perhaps it will lead to discussion on how the Bush admin is cutting money and services and increasing fees for veterans seeking help and treatment.

My heart was torn when I read the story of Nabiha Nisaif Jassim and her poor baby. That baby was about to come into the world and was cruelly slaughtered along with it’s mother. The expectant father, waiting anxiously at the hospital only to have her arrive bloody and dead, along with their unborn child. No wonder Iraqis believe that Americans don’t value any lives but their own.

Greg Palast: Armed Madhouse … little bombshells

Greg Palast has a new book:”Armed Madhouse: Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal “08, No Child’s Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.” Today on DemocracyNow!, Amy Goodman presented part one of her recent interview with Palast. After seeing it, I will be glued to my tv tomorrow, and am going to buy the book the second it comes out in June. (via Powells.com, of course)

Exerpts from that interview follow:

AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil?

GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it’s about the oil, but not for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn’t go in to grab the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we didn’t get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, “There’ll be no oil coming out of that nation.” They have to suppress oil coming out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia will collapse.

And so, what I found, what I discovered that they’re very unhappy about is a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official plan of the United States for Iraq’s oil, written by the big oil companies out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but this is exactly how they do it. It’s quite wild. And it’s all about a plan to control Iraq’s oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, “enhances its relationship with OPEC.” In other words, the whole idea is to maintain the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia.

Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down, so he had to go. It’s that simple. The neocons’ plan was to destroy OPEC and Saudi Arabia along with it, but the Saudi loving Bush clan would have none of that.
Palast reports how Hugo Chavez is offering the US $50/barrel oil. The catch? The money stays in Venezuela and is not pumped back into the US economy by buying US treasuries. That would also wreak havoc with world oil prices, and OPEC. No wonder Bush hates Chavez. You gotta love a guy who pokes a stick in Bush’s eye every chance he gets. How do you think average Americans would react to THAT juicy tidbit? Arab oil isn’t the only game in town.

In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he’s not trying to get Abdullah’s oil. Abdullah can’t drink the stuff. He’s got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the — when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush’s mad spending spree.

So yes, the Iraq war was about the oil, but sure in hell not the way I thought.

You may remember that Palast, who writes for the Observer in London, is the one who blasted open the 2000 election scandal in Florida when Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris cut tens of thousands of black voters off of Florida rolls and handed the election to Dubya. His take on the massive NSA database is diabolical and probably on target. For the coming 2008 election, lists of names to be challanged are already being circulated.They won’t need Diebold by then:

Now, it’s accepted 2000 pretty much was fixed. Well, there’s a chapter, “Kerry won.” 2004 was fixed. And the way it was done is that 3.6 million votes were cast and never counted in the United States. That’s very important to know. This isn’t Greg Palast conspiracy nut stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: Say the number again.

GREG PALAST: 3.6 million ballots cast, never counted. And that’s because they call these spoiled votes or rejected provisional ballots, 1.9 million so-called provisional ballots, and then, most of those don’t get counted. And so, whose votes don’t get counted? If it was random, it wouldn’t matter. In other words, if these were votes where the machine doesn’t record it properly, hanging chads, extra marks on a paper ballot, you had the wrong address on your absentee ballot, etc.
[snip]

And `08, so what’s happening is there is no fix of the system. In other words, just like black folk get bad schools and bad hospitals, they get the bad voting machines, which are going to kill those votes. But they’re not satisfied with just letting the ballots be thrown away. They’re going to move it along. And one of the things I discovered is the Republican Party has something called “caging lists,” which came to our — you know, just like you had Friday, the way the Yes Men capture material by using false websites, so through a false website we were able to capture Republican Party internal missives, through georgebush.org.

And so, what happened was is that they sent us a bunch of lists of literally tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters, who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these people shouldn’t vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you’ll see in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq; go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.

And that’s the beginning, and because there’s been really no action taken, they’re accelerating the system now. And the next thing that they’re going after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw two million votes cast/not counted in 2000, nearly four million votes cast/not counted in 2004, you’re going see that number massively increase in challenges to voters in 2008. And that’s what’s going back to this database story with the National Security Agency.

With Latinos in the US organizing a massive voting registration in response to Bush’s militarization of the Mexican border, I bet the NSA is quite busy making their lists, checking them twice. This interview was fascinating and I for one can’t wait for the book in June.

Fitz’s New Evidence: Rove to be Indicted???

Raw has this Jason Leopold story up and it’s a doozy.

Grand Jury Hears Evidence Against Rove

Just as the news broke Wednesday about Scott McClellan resigning as White House press secretary and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove shedding some of his policy duties, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case and introduced additional evidence against Rove, attorneys and other US officials close to the investigation said.

The grand jury session in federal court in Washington, DC, sources close to the case said, was the first time this year that Fitzgerald told the jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against Rove in hopes of having the grand jury return a multi-count indictment against Rove.
[snip]

Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said.

Fitzgerald told the grand jury that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson’s CIA status to at least two reporters.

Additionally, an FBI investigator reread to jurors testimony from other witnesses in the case that purportedly implicates Rove in playing a role in the leak and the campaign to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence lead to his wife being unmasked as a covert CIA operative.

Luskin said Rove has not discussed any plea deal with Fitzgerald.

Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin has admitted that his pudgy client is indeed still a “subject” of Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

This is a biggie, folks. I have to run… I’ll be in and out all day. Start the party without me! WooHoo, did this ever make my day!

Action: Co-Sponsor Ted Kennedy’s Wage Bill

storiesinamerica has a wonderful diary up about the minimum wage issue and how we need to support the Democrat effort to push this issue.

I can’t imagine going 9 years without so much as a one penny raise. This from the AFL-CIO Working Families site:

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act, and you can help by signing on as a citizen co-sponsor of the bill.

If you would like to help the effort by co-sponsoring this bill, here’s the link.

Still here? The working poor are still waiting for that raise…

Unemployment is Rampant no matter what Bush tells you

When the most recent unemployment numbers came out they had an aroma about them that spoke of being over cooked. While apathy still reigns in a vast number of Americans on such things as appointing extremists to the Supreme Court, or allowing Bush to wiretap our phones, the public remains realisticly pessimistic about the economy. I found those numbers that said that unemployment has dropped sounded like a lot of bull so I started poking around.

The export and import-competitive sectors of the US economy have been tanking for a long time. To keep the story manageable, let’s just go back to January 2001. The latest BLS payroll jobs report says that January 2006 is now the 61st month that the US economy has been unable to create any jobs except jobs in domestic nontradable services, most of which are low paid. Of the 194,000 private sector jobs created in January, 46,000 were in construction (and most likely went to Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal) and 136,000 were in domestic services: Financial Activities (essentially credit agencies) account for 21,000. Administrative & Waste Services account for 17,600. Health Care & Social Assistance account for 37,500. Waiters, Waitresses and Bartenders account for 31,000. Wholesalers account for 15,100.

Oh, that’s just the beginning…

In his rosy jobs report,[New York Times reporter] Vikas Bajaj does let it out of the bag that “economists estimate that the nation needs to add roughly 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.”That translates into 1,800,000 new jobs per year to stay even with population. Over the past 61 months 9,150,000 new jobs were necessary in order to prevent population growth from pushing up the unemployment rate.

How many new jobs have been created over the past five years and one month? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest revisions, a total of 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs were created over the past 61 months (January 2001 through January 2006). Add the total net government jobs created over the period for a total net job creation of 2,093,000 jobs over the past 61 months.

That figure is 7,057,000 jobs short of keeping up with population growth!

What about manufacturing jobs? Well apparently there were 7,000 created in January, but total number of jobs is 48,000 less in ’06 than in January ’05. Manufacturing engineering jobs have been bleeding out since 2001.

Here’s the real kicker. January’s official unemployment rates are supposedly at 4.7%… most economists consider an unemployment rate of 4.7% to be FULL EMPLOYMENT!!!

How can the economy possibly be at full employment if the economy is 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth!

Bush’s recovery is so anemic it’s hard to find:

Wages are up by the smallest amount in 9 years, people in this country are saving at the same rate as during the Great Depression, and the more jobs that are lost, the more Bush claims the opposite.

The only ones benefitting from this economy are the corporations and the rich. On top of that, consider that more and more people are falling below the poverty line. That means that more and more families are qualifying for government programs… those very same programs that Bush wants to cut or eliminate. More and more families are loosing their homes, their jobs, their lives. How many of these families will end up homeless because of Bush’s economic disaster? Could eventually be millions.

Bush wants you to believe that the US is currently at “Full Employment”. He wants you to believe that housekeeping jobs and flinging burgers for poverty wages and no benefits are dream jobs. The US economy is just another Big Lie. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of being lied to, abused and used by Bush. Where the hell is the media on this? Oh, I forgot, they’re all licking Bush’s soiled boots. This is population abuse.

Job Disinformation From The New York Times
Leading Conservative attacks Bush on economy
Economic Policy Institute graph on jobless recovery.
Home forclosures are creeping up in North Carolina, California, Massachusetts, Texas, and everywhere else. The ownership society, my ass.
Here’s a link to download pdf file “Missing Inaction:
Evidence of Undercounting of Non-Workers
in the Current Population Survey,” which is a great rundown on how the numbers are cooked beyond recognition. Thanks to Kamakhya, who reminded me of this report.

Ted Kennedy: “MEDICARE FOR ALL”

[From the diaries by susanhu. This was suggested by Matt Santos on ‘West Wing,” and it struck me as a brilliant solution for real Americans.]

“MEDICARE FOR ALL” WILL SAVE BILLIONS AND GIVE ALL AMERICANS THE CARE THEY NEED

Washington, DC: Today, as President Bush focuses on health care in his State of the Union address after ignoring it for five years, Senator Kennedy will put forward real health care reform that would give quality affordable health care for all Americans. America’s health care system is the most economically inefficient in the industrial world. Kennedy’s plan would fix our fractured system of care, by extending Medicare to all Americans, from birth to the end of life, while allowing any American who wishes to stay in their current employer-sponsored plan to do so. Under Kennedy’s bill, employers can tailor their health plans to provide additional services to their employees that wrap around Medicare coverage.

While doing a search yesterday, I accidentally came across this article in the American Chronicle and was floored. How come we haven’t heard a peep about this?


Here’s the basic proposal:

The Medicare for All proposal

The “Medicare for All” plan will make health care coverage available to every American by expanding the Medicare program to the under 65 population. To promote competition and choice, enrollees will also have the option of choosing any of the plans offered to members of Congress, the President, and Federal employees.

Costs will be reduced by administrative savings from moving to a Medicare-style financing system, by bringing modern information technology to health care, by improving quality of care, and by rewarding health care providers based on performance, not just on the number of procedures performed. International competitiveness and job creation will be enhanced by reduced costs and by shifting some of the burden of financing from business contributions to general revenues, as well as the healthier and more productive work-force that will result from universal health insurance coverage.

To ease the transition to the new system, coverage will be implemented in phases. In the first, coverage will be extended to individuals 55-65 and to children under 20 years old. In later phases, coverage will be extended to all other Americans not already covered under Medicare.

The article reads like a presentation of the proposal and is loaded with details, like eligibility, benefits, and savings both to the government as well as to corporate America.

This should be shouted from the rooftops. This is what the Democrats need: real proposals to flesh out the criticism. Go check it out.

Crossposted on DKos

[Update]: I changed the title to catch a few more eyes

Gonzales’s Memo: Even MORE Power for Bush

Recently Attorney General Gonzales released a 42 page legal memo to defend Bush’s domestic spying program. It seems as if he included a memo that says that Bush doesn’t need the Patriot act to continue enhanced surveillance techniques against any terror suspects in the US. Turns out he already had that authority from Congress’ OK to use force.

Who knew?

If they really believed their own bullshit, then why has Bush and his whole league of minions been screaming about renewing the Patriot Act? One could reasonably come to the conclusion that they’re making this all up as they go along.

”The USA Patriot Act amendments made important corrections in the general application of” existing laws governing searches and wiretaps, the footnote said, adding that the act was ”not intended to define the precise incidents of military force that would be available to the president in prosecuting the current armed conflict against Al Qaeda and its allies.” Hutchinson, the University of Chicago law professor, said that in trying to show that Congress gave Bush unlimited powers to investigate possible Al Qaeda plots, the administration has contradicted its arguments that it is necessary for Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act in order to protect the nation from terror threats.

”It muddies the waters,” Hutchinson said.

I don’t think that’s mud, Mr. Hutchinson.

This is so outrageous. They are not only trying to turn illegal wiretapping into a political asset, they’re also nakedly grabbing more and more power. I guess they think they can get away with absolutely anything. I want names of the Democrats who can find it in their hearts to vote no on Alito, but can’t figure out in their pea brains that this is the moment for Democrats to stand up and support a filibuster.