on health care, expecially Dr. Quentin Young's remarks. He is President
Obama's long time physician and close friend.. He comes in, mid-cast,
with razor-sharp clarity and Pythagorean concern. -Ed
Ed
From: Barbara Deutsch
Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: making controversy where there's really none
Hello Ed,
Since over 80% of U.S. are in favor of the same sort of universal health
care for themselves, eliminating profit-taking, that Congress has;
to break the blockade that prevents this near-universal demand from being
activated, I think will require what Marc Sapir advocates --
(Care-a-van website depicts a sign being carried that says "Everybody In!
Nobody Out!" -- way to go!)
Barbara Deutsch
From: "Marc Sapir" <marcsapir@gmail.com>
Date: August 24, 2009 9:57:35 AM PDT
Subject: Mad as Hell Docs Caravan to descend on DC
Isn't it time for a new civil rights movement demanding health care as a
right?
I've signed on to the cross country Mad as Hell Docs "Care-a-Van" tour of 25
cities organized by a group of Oregon docs.
The tour begins on September 8 in Portland, Oregon; I'm meeting them in
Denver on their 10th stop. The parade will descend on Washington, DC.
September 30, we may be hopeful stretching out in a trail of hundreds of
cars filled with Single Payer supporters unwilling to be silent or to depend
upon corrupted politicos to represent our needs.
In my view the greatest weakness of the movement for health care rights as
presently constituted (the tens of millions of Single Payer advocates and
supporters) is its surrender of the initiative—by emphasis on e-mails,
letters, phone calls, and town hall meetings with members of Congress. It
makes the movement dependent upon—an appendage of--the corrupt and cowardly
political class—backed financially and organizationally by the most
retrogressive sectors—menacing the public, organizing direct action and
militancy (and potential military forces, as symbolized by gun-toting
rowdies showing up at health reform gatherings) to capture media attention
and prevent any restoration of even Keynesian balance within this suicidal
economic system. There is no alternative other than to out-organize,
out-number, and outwit them, as if it took all that to demonstrate Health
Care as the right for which it's recognized, not only on the tiny socialist
island of Cuba but in every other prosperous capitalist country.
If we don't insist on this, what public influence can we hope to have?
see www.madashelldoctors.com for map of tour events.
Tell everyone you know (and convince yourself) to join and
support Care-a-van for Single Payer as we head for D.C.
***
Hi. Nat Hentoff is acknowledged as the greatest writer/critic on Jazz,
ever. As he was a good friend of Billie Holliday, I'm amazed he's still
living and writing, straightforward and elegantly, - this time about his
second passion, civil liberties and our democrary, intertwined. Go, Nat!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23427.htm
What is the CIA Still Hiding about Interrogations?
By Nat Hentoff:
September 04, 2009 "Billings Gazette" -- A fierce debate will long
continue to swirl around former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's
long-delayed 2004 report (sprung by an American Civil Liberties Union
lawsuit) about at least some of the "enhanced" CIA interrogations. He now
says some were apparently designed "solely because they were degrading" (his
statement printed in the Aug. 24 Washington Post).
The Helgerson report was released despite strenuous objections by CIA
Director Leon Panetta.
We now know (The New York Times, August 26) that the CIA's "secret
interrogation program operated under strict rules ... managers, doctors and
lawyers not only set the program's parameters but dictated every facet of a
detainee's daily routine, monitoring interrogations on an hour-by-hour
basis."
Bush-Cheney torture policy
If we are to believe this proud declaration by the CIA, it reveals how
fastidiously the Bush-Cheney administration executed its policy of "cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment" forbidden by the international Convention
Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions (both of which we signed), our own
torture laws and the Supreme Court's 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision.
Should you doubt our torture policy existed, see actual official
government documents (including autopsy reports of suspects killed during
interrogation) in "Administration of Torture": A Documentary Record from
Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond" (Columbia University Press, 2007) by
the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh.
What is the CIA hiding? Keep in mind that of the 109 pages on the
widely discussed CIA inspector general report, 36 pages were completely
blacked out, and 30 more were largely blacked out (ABC News, Aug. 25).
Moreover, ABC's Brian Ross and Matthew Cole alarmingly disclose:
"The CIA and the Obama Administration continue to keep secret some of
the most shocking allegations involving the spy agency's interrogation
program: three deaths and several other detainees whose whereabouts could
not be determined, according to a former senior intelligence official who
has read the full, unredacted version."
Beyond the inflammatory Helgerson report, there will be much more to
come if we ever get a full-scale, bipartisan criminal investigation with
subpoena powers, not only of "the black sites" but all the way up the chain
of command to the highest-level officials and their lawyers, who have yet to
be held at all accountable for the war crimes - and that's what they are in
U.S. and international law - committed in our name.
Continuing secrecy
As for the continuing secrecy of the far from self-declared
"transparent" Obama administration, little attention has been paid to the
former CIA inspector general's recent statement in the Aug. 24 Washington
Post in which he said:
"I am disappointed that the Government did not release even a redacted
version of the Recommendations (I made), which described a number of
corrective actions that needed to be taken."
Why do Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama hide
these recommendations by the former inspector general? Because they don't
want to act on them?
At the smoldering core of what will inevitably, blazingly erupt is the
statement by a then much-respected national veteran of public service in the
January/February/March 2008 Washington Monthly:
"We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not
cross because we respect the dignity of every human being ... We are sworn
to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force ... We cannot simply
suspend these beliefs in the name of national security.
"Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in
certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a
false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the
rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we
don't. There is no middle ground."
Startlingly, the definer of these battered American values was Leon
Panetta, President Barack Obama's choice to be present director of the CIA!
But Panetta now intensely opposes even Holder's very narrow
preliminary investigation of the CIA's "enhanced interrogations." Like the
president, Panetta prefers to look forward, as the nonpareil baseball legend
Satchel Paige advised: "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you."
It's too late, Mr. President and Mr. CIA Director.
NAT HENTOFF for Newspaper Enterprise Association
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