Friday, July 18, 2003

President Mandela's B'Day QUOTE OF THE DAY "Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose." - - Nelson Mandela KNOW YOUR HISTORY - JULY 18th 1918 -- Nelson Mandela's birthday Twenty-eight year prisoner,  South African President & Nobel Peace Prize-winner (1993). http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history RHINO HERE: Some great news today. All the citizen phone calling & emailing over the last days & weeks seems to have born fruit. A significant victory in the ongoing struggle for "The People's Airwaves". House panel voted to block the FCC's new media rule . Check out The Washington Post's coverage: House Panel Votes To Block FCC Here's one from Amnesty International responding to shrub's recent naming of 6 people under the "Military Order", meaning whoever's running the show at the prison camp in Guantanamo can hold the named indefinitely, without charge, or trial. Under the Military Order, the named can also be charged & tried by military commissions; executive bodies with the power to give death sentences. Currently, the "appointing authority", is Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Amnesty International USA - NEWS RELEASE, 4 July 2003 USA: Six Named Under Military Order: Another Backward Step for Human Rights Yesterday's decision by President Bush to name six detainees under the Military Order he signed in November 2001 is another retrograde step for human rights in the US-led "war against terrorism" and will further undermine the USA's claims to be a country that champions the rule of law, Amnesty International said today. "The Military Order is a fundamentally flawed document and should be revoked", Amnesty International said. "We deeply regret that the President has taken his country one step closer to running trials that will flout basic standards of justice". The six detainees have been named as people suspected of being members of al-Qa'ida or "otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States", according to the Pentagon. This means that they can be held indefinitely without charge or trial under the Military Order or charged and tried in front of military commissions, executive bodies with the power to hand down death sentences. It now falls on the "appointing authority", currently Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to determine whether or not to refer any charges that may be leveled against these six people to a military commission... Read more: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/ctt.asp?u=610577&;l=6100 27th anniversary of US Supreme Court's Gregg v. Georgia - reinstating death penalty This month marks the 27th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's Gregg v. Georgia ruling, which reinstated the death penalty. Since 1976, over 850 condemned prisoners have been executed in the United States. Currently around 3,700 await execution.    Learn more about Gregg v. Georgia: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/ctt.asp?u=610577&;l=6096 Rep. Dennis Kucinich's HR 2574 - Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2003 . On June 24, 2003, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced HR 2574, the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2003, companion bill to Senate legislation introduced by Senator Feingold (D-WI). The bills would halt executions & forbid imposition of the death penalty as a sentence for violations of federal law. Contact your reps & urge him/her to co-sponsor & support these important bills! Take Action to abolish the death penalty now: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/ctt.asp?u=610577&;l=6128 Puerto Ricans Angry That U.S. Overrode Death Penalty Ban By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times SAN JUAN, P.R., July 15 - This island, it is safe to say, hates capital punishment. It has not had an execution since 1927. It outlawed the practice two years later and wrote this antipathy into its Constitution in 1952: "The death penalty shall not exist." That is why a federal trial here, in which the Justice Department is seeking the execution of two men accused of kidnapping and murder, has left many Puerto Ricans baffled and angry.... ... People here associate capital punishment with the military government installed by the United States in 1898, after it took Puerto Rico from Spain in the Spanish-American War. That government executed two dozen mostly poor and illiterate people before the island outlawed the death penalty. Puerto Rico is also heavily Roman Catholic, and polls show that many residents oppose capital punishment on religious and moral grounds. During the protracted jury selection for the current trial, many potential jurors were rejected because they said they could never impose the death penalty... Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/national/17RICO.html?th Today's BOTTOM LINE = another memo from the "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), a group of intelligence officers who periodically provide unsolicited advice to the President. They make a lot of sense. He really ought to listen to them. VIPS' previous memo in Rhino's Blog: "Dubious Danger",  6/17/03 http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/2003/06/17.html 7:13:07 AM    comment

Intelligence Unglued Published on Monday, July 14, 2003 by CommonDreams.org MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT: Intelligence Unglued The glue that holds the Intelligence Community together is melting under the hot lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence capability will fall apart with grave consequences for the nation. The Forgery Flap By now you are all too familiar with the play-by-play. The Iraq-seeking-uranium-in-Niger forgery is a microcosm of a mischievous nexus of overarching problems. Instead of addressing these problems, your senior staff are alternately covering up for one another and gently stabbing one another in the back. CIA Director George Tenet's extracted, unapologetic apology on July 11 was classic -- I confess; she did it. It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech. But the disingenuousness persists. Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003 about former ambassador Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job. Wilson's findings were duly reported to all concerned in early March 2002. And, if she somehow missed that report, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristoff on May 6 recounted chapter and verse on Wilson's mission, and the story remained the talk of the town in the weeks that followed.... ...Recommendation #1 We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney "not guilty." His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility....We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation... READ IT ALL AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0714-01.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 6:33:55 AM    comment

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