Court Of Impeachment And War Crimes: March 2007

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Imbush Peach

We The People Radio Network

An interview with Naomi Wolf about the 10 steps from democracy to dictatorship!

Stop The Spying Now

Stop the Spying!

Saturday, March 31, 2007

IMPEACHMENT: The mechanism to deliver The Orange Message of Impeachment from "We The People"




















IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF GEORGE BUSH AND DICK CHENEY;

IT IS TIME FOR US TO SPEAK OUT TO THE CONGRESS, GOVERNORS AND ALL OTHERS WHO CAN IMPACT THE PROCESS.

THIS GOVERNMENT CAN EITHER DO THE WILL OF “WE THE PEOPLE”, OR ALL CURRENT ELECTED OFFICIALS CAN BE DENIED ALL FUTURE SUPPORT, MONETARY AND AT THE POLLS.


President George W. Bush – E-mail the President or Vice President; call or write the White House; or extend an invitation to the President, Vice President, Mrs. Bush, or Mrs. Cheney. This site tells you how.

U.S. Senators – Search for your senators by name, state, or congressional class; and visit their websites, send them an email or locate their mailing address.

U.S. Representatives – Find contact information for your U.S. representative by typing in your zip code, send them an email or locate their mailing address.

State Governors – Select your state to access e-mail, telephone, and postal contact information for your governor, send him/her an email or locate their mailing address so that you can encourage that your state officially join the ranks of those against the continuation of the war, and those prepared to exercise the Constitutional Right to move for the Impeachment of The President and Vice President of The United States of America.

State Legislators – Search for state legislators and topical legislative information, by U.S. states and territories, so that you can encourage that your state officially join the ranks of those against the continuation of the war, and those prepared to exercise the Constitutional Right to move for the Impeachment of The President and Vice President of The United States of America.

City Mayors – Search for local Mayors so that you can encourage local Mayors and City Governance bodies to take action against the continuation of the war, and those prepared to exercise the Constitutional Right to move for the Impeachment of The President and Vice President of The United States of America.

Contact Anti War and Pro Impeachment Organizations – Search for updated news, coming public events and aid, advise and resources to make the voice of “We The People” heard, loud and clear. 773,000 entries, 100 screen pages.

MY PERSONAL MESSAGE POSTED AND SENT:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

In the November 2007 elections, “We The People” sent you, “our elected leaders”, and a clear and simple message.

We want you, (and we don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent), to end the War in Iraq NOW! We want the President and Vice President of this nation Impeached for their every well documented violation of this nation’s laws and Constitution, and for their violations of International Law for which they must be brought to justice as the War Criminals that they are.

We don’t want, don’t believe your current pretense of solutions, all of which we are well aware are preconditioned by political posturing, manipulation and calculation. We are sick and tired of your antics that are supposed to pass for service to this nation.

We are neither uninformed nor stupid. Your actions have to presume both, and that is an insult. No explanation for your foot dragging and failure to act will find acceptance.

Set a date for withdrawal and mean it. If the President Vetoes your actions, “We The People” will hold accountable at the polls any and all who vote to sustain his veto. Do not hide behind the excuse of how difficult and divisive an act of Impeach is. The appointment of a Special Prosecutor to perform all of the initial evidentiary collection will facilitate the matter and in large part dispense with all of the political theater that you people are disgustingly inclined to. We don’t need it; we don’t want it.

This administration has done severe damage to our Constitutional system and your inactions and concessions disgrace you. You are all guilty to one degree or another of misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance in office. I do not care if want to hear that or not. It is a fact; so get over yourself, accept it, move on and redeem yourself by having the courage to do what is simply right with having to calculate what you think the political fall out will be.

I assure you, that your failure to act decisively on these two matters will have political consequences beyond your ability to calculate or image. Forget all of your consultants, managers and media manipulators, because “We The People” are accustomed to all your verbal lint, negative campaigning, character assassination, campaign innuendo and sickening appeals. We are tired of all the howling media punditry that is supposed to pass for some sort of stimulant for a national discourse. We know that garbage does rise above the level of bird cage lining tabloid paper or that which we flush down the toilet.

You are not listening; you have totally lost touch with the public. You and all of your expensive consultants, “experts”, pollsters, and media manipulators are living in a “Beltway Blinders” dream world, more akin to an opiate induced state than just simple wishful thinking.

If you read my short blog biography you will find I am an active participant in the process, and that at the local and state level, I may have served many of you without your notice or knowledge as part of the vast apparatus of today’s campaigns. I know how it is done because I have done it all time and again in the hope that good and effective leadership can be found and placed in the White House and the halls of Congress.

Never have I felt as betrayed in my life as I do at this moment. The White House comprises a collection of cohorts and cronies cranking out a climate and culture of corruption and contagious corrosion designed to seduce and sedate the people of this nation and at the same time render, you the members of Congress, as laughable fumbling figure heads, ineffective and impotent agents for change or action.

What you and all of you expensive apparatchiki do not understand in your clueless unwillingness to listen, (you have to send so much time in explanation, excuses and spin that do not have the time to listen, given only to those actions you believe will serve your perpetuation and the preservation of your jobs), is that the drug like haze of the Bush pill bottle of fear tablets is empty, our heads are clearing and our strength is returning.

The appeal, intoxication and seduction of Bush Brand post 9/11 “Patriotism” has worn off. We see clearly now, that we, (me and you) have all been used and abused by an administration of would be dictators or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

And as the fog has lifted, we have found the words of Sinclair Lewis emblazoned on the sunrise horizon and etched like the stark glow of burning charcoals in the night, that: “When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag carrying a cross.” If you cannot listen, at least open your eyes! America stands in greater peril than it did in the tragedy of Nixon. If the Impeachment of Bill Clinton was warranted, then the Impeachments of George Bush and Dick Cheney are mandated. But the truth of this matter goes much farther.

Having recently attended a meeting of renowned Attorneys and famed Constitutional scholars in Georgetown, the conclusions reached in the session were frightening. They were in summary: (1) George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are guilty of a litany of Impeachable offenses, (2) George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are guilty of violations of American Law to such an extent that they could and should be indicted as common criminals, (3) Despite American’s inherent attitude of exclusion, the President, Vice President and other cabinet level subordinates, past and present are War Criminals by all standards of International Law and should be held to, and brought to justice as was Saddam Hussein.

There is a thought so foreign to the American mind that it hard for most folks to even begin wrapping their thoughts around it in any sort of serious discussion/conversation…but the facts exist and can be documented, and as you a member of Congress must renew your embrace of the concept that no one is above the law, so we as a nation must realize, that just because we are The United States of America, that does not entitle us or our leaders to “the right” to commit acts of International criminality with the assumption that we/they can/will escape, evade accountability. This administration has gone so far that, that presumption is now invalid!

This administration has lived by adage of: “Manipulate the message; manipulate the masses.” That time is over. It is time for “We The People” to deliver the message, the message that we will tolerate or countenance the conduct of this administration one day longer, and we will accept the refusal of you, the members of Congress, to honor your sworn duty to defend and up hold The Constitution of The United States of America! Failure to do so renders you guilty as collaborators in the most corrupt government in the history of this nation.

Distortions, deceptions, lies and spying, wanton disregard of our laws, deliberate, premeditated, calculated…My God, what is it; is there an unwritten understood among yourselves level of tolerable, permitted, acceptable criminality that applies to no other citizen of this nation but members of the Executive and Legislative branches of our government, sort of “an understood, unwritten, spoken of only in your congressional club, code of necessary, convenient, expedient cesspool law”.

Bush seems to be scrambling to consolidate dictatorial powers before his administration comes crashing down around him. According to the Washington Post, Bush has moved to implement the recent bill that abrogates habeas corpus, authorizing military trials of so-called "enemy combatants". The US District Court in Washington has been summarily notified that it no longer has jurisdiction in such cases and may no longer consider "... hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba."

He has changed in house counsel in anticipation of Impeachment charges, left Attorney Gonzales hanging, spinning in the wind on the matter of a wholesale “Purge of Federal Prosecutor/Attorneys, as a step in a Fascistic policy of seizure of the Federal Judicial system in the completion of establishing “The President’s Judicial system.

For thirty-one (31) years I stood before classrooms of American young as an Instructor of American History, because I loved this nation, its history, its promise, respected the anguish, suffering and sacrifices of those who came before and bequeathed to us a wondrous land of which we are now the responsible Stewards, obligated in turn to pass this nation into the next generations hands in good health.

Should I still be standing before classes today, and if those students ask any of the following questions; I would in clear conscience and integrity be obligated to the following truthful answers:

1) Is the Congress of The United States fulfilling its’ responsibilities and obligations to the people of the United States? The Answer would have to be…NO!

2) Are the President and Vice President guilty of Unconstitutional Act? The Answer would have to be…YES!

3) Have the President and Vice President broken other laws of this nation, or simply refused to obey them? The Answer would have to be…YES!

4) Have the President and Vice President lied to this nation, the congress, the world? The Answer would have to be…YES!

5) Have the President and Vice President sent 1,000s of young Americans to their deaths in an illegal war? The Answer would have to be…YES!

6) Are the things that the President and Vice President have done, so serious that they would be considered “Criminals” in an American Court of Law. The Answer would have to be…YES!

7) Are the things that the President and Vice President so illegal that they ought be put on trial and sent to prison? The Answer would have to be…YES!

8) Have the President and Vice President been guilty of misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance and the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors in office for which they should be, must be, Impeached? The Answer would have to be…YES!

9) Have the President and Vice President been guilty of “War Crimes”, Crimes against Humanity by International law for which they should be held accountable and for which they could be executed like Saddam Hussein? My Answer would have to be…YES!

10) The why is the Congress not doing anything but fighting with each like a bunch of children? My Answer would have to be…Because they are playing politics, trying to keep their jobs, win in the next election and that is more important to them than you or me, and they just don’t want to admit to the damage that that has been done and the disgrace that has been heaped on the name of The United States of America!

11) The what must we do? My Answer would have to be…we must continue to let them know what we think everyday, and if they do not listen then we will have to take to the streets in protest until America is brought to a stand still and the Congress is forced to do what the people want done. And when that is done we cannot stop because we will need to see to it when we vote again, that every member of the Congress who would not do what is morally and legally right is never elected to office again.


Sincerely, One American committed to Justice and the proposition that no one is above the law…no one!

cc:
All members of The House of Representatives
All members of The United States Senate
The Governors of The 50 States
The Editors, and Letters to The Editor Desks of all major newspapers.


Now let us turn our attention to the remainder of the steps you can take in moving the Congress, stopping this war and restoring our democracy to good health before it is too late.

http://www.thousandreasons.org/reasons.php

Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leaders in Congress say impeaching Bush is "off the table." We must change their minds!

Our plan is simple: we will form Impeachment Committees in all 435 Congressional Districts to persuade all of our Representatives to support impeachment.

Help us Impeach Bush by taking the following 4 steps:

1. Join (or create) an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District.

2. Collect petitions and handwritten letters.

3. Build support for impeachment by holding an educational town forum, writing letters to the editor, etc.

4. Meet with your Representative, deliver the petitions and ask them to Impeach Bush.

More detailed instructions are below.

1. Join (or create) an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District (existing committees here)

Login to Democrats.com

Add your street address to your profile so we can find your Congressional District (if you don't see your address and Congressional District, click "Change Personal Information" to add it)

Click the "Local" button in the navigation box at the upper left to check for the latest announcements in your Congressional District (also County and State)

Look for an announcement of an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District. If you do see one, reply to it and say you want to help.

If you do not see one:- click the link to "create forum topic" - for subject, enter "Impeachment Committee" - for forum, choose "Impeachment - Congressional District Organizing"- for topic, choose
"ImpeachForChange"- for subscriptions, click the box if you want to get an email when someone from your district replies- for local, choose "Congressional District"- in the body, identify your Congressperson by name (if you don't know click here)- add the address of their District Office by searching for their name here and clicking their name and looking under "Contact Information" for the "District Office"(note: newly elected Members will not have offices until January)- Propose a time and place when local activists can conveniently meet - we suggest Saturday at noon at the busiest place in town, but another time and place might work better for your group

2. Collect petitions and handwritten letters (click printer-friendly version below to print this page)

download our petition form

print as many copies as you'll need (19 signers per page)

bring clipboards and pens

bring blank paper for handwritten letters

bring an ironing board for letter writing (optional)

wear impeachment buttons or anti-war buttons

stand in a safe location that gets a lot of foot traffic (but don't block anyone)

as people approach you, ask them in a reasonably loud voice if they would like to sign our petition to impeach Bush

if they say yes, hand them the clipboard and pen and thank them
tell them you will email them when you get home so they can sign our full petition online and email it directly to their Representative and get a personal reply

ask them if they have another minute to write a personal letter that you will hand-deliver

here is a simple letter they can copy or modify: [Date] Dear Rep. X, I urge you to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney for violating the Constitution and breaking the law. I am particularly upset that they:- lied about Iraq to start a war- allowed torture of prisoners- gave corrupt no-bid contracts to their rich friends- wiretapped our phones and emails without a warrantSincerely,[Name and address]

when it's time to leave, find a copy shop where you can make copies of the petitions (not handwritten letters)

bring (or mail) the original petitions and letters to the Representative (you can call in advance to get the name of the District Manager and schedule a brief visit)

keep the copies to keypunch the emails (only) into our petition invitation form

the keypunchers should login and click here:
http://democrats.com/impeach-petitionand look just below the message for the "send to friend" link

the "send to friend" page lets you keypunch up to 20 email addresses, one per line

copy/paste all the emails and save them in a convenient document (Email distribution list, spreadsheet, or Word document) for future organizing in your community

press "submit"

this will email each person and invite them to sign our petition

3. Organize a Town Hall Meeting

4. Write letters to the editor and op-eds and call radio and TV talk shows because Representatives pay attention to the issues people are raising in the local media.

5. Schedule a district meeting with your Representative

Your Representative spends some work weeks in Washington and some at home.


Designate one well-spoken person to call the District Office and request a meeting with a group of impeachment supporters to discuss why impeachment is absolutely necessary.

Each member of the group should read and bring one book or serious article on impeachment and prepare a couple of sentences for the meeting summarizing the most important argument in that book or article.

The group should meet for coffee an hour before the meeting to discuss who will say what and avoid duplication.

The person who scheduled the meeting should be the first to speak and thank the Representative for the meeting and then let each person say their name and neighborhood

One person should take notes

The key questions to ask are:

Do you agree that invading Iraq on the basis of lies is an impeachable offense?

Do you agree that allowing prisoners to be tortured is an impeachable offense?

Do you agree that wiretapping countless innocent Americans without a warrant is an impeachable offense?

Do you agree that nullifying laws with signing statements is an impeachable offense?

If you agree that one or more are impeachable offenses, what will it take for you to publicly support impeachment?




Tuesday, March 27, 2007

IMPEACHMENT: Media Accountability: San Francisco Chronicle, Plus a Graphics Extravaganza




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































WE FACE THIS NONSENSE ALL TOO OFTEN!

A.N.S.W.E.R_Answers The San Francisco Chronicle


Open Forum

War protest crowd count too low
Richard Becker
Monday, March 26, 2007

Printable Version

Email This Article

Click On The Graphics for Full Screen views (11 x 11_DPI=72 to 100)




The Precinct Master May Be Reached at:



OPINION


WHILE TENS of thousands of spirited anti-war marchers were still entering the San Francisco Civic Center on Sunday, March 18, ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Coalition organizers got word that a Chronicle reporter covering the event had already determined that only 3,000 people were present. The San Francisco march was part of a worldwide day of protest against on the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


Mainstream media undercounting of progressive demonstrations is nothing new, but this one had a magician's touch.

With just a few keystrokes, a reporter made 90 percent of Sunday's crowd disappear, hundreds of whom have since expressed their outrage. Typical was the comment by one angry participant: "The Chron's numbers were only off by about 1,000 percent."


We don't know why The Chronicle published such a shocking undercount, but we do know that the first line of the Monday Chronicle's report stated that just 3,000 people marched in San Francisco on Sunday -- fewer, oddly enough, than took to the streets in many U.S. cities.

It wasn't just people in the Bay Area who were misinformed by The Chronicle's article; the Associated Press spread The Chronicle's ludicrous number across the country.


A Chronicle reporter claims to have counted 3,000 people in the march. He agrees that it took 50 minutes for the entire march to pass a fixed point as it made its way along Market and McAllister streets. This does not make sense.


If people are walking at a moderate pace in pairs, 60 people will pass a fixed point in roughly one minute. That would translate into 3,000 people in 50 minutes. But the march wasn't made up of people marching in pairs.


Many photos and video footage show the marchers were 20 to 30 across, filling wide streets. If The Chronicle maintains that just 3,000 people joined the march, and the march took 50 minutes to pass a stationary point, then only two or three rows of marchers would have passed a fixed point in a minute, making the average pace of the march about one step every 20 to 30 seconds. That is impossible.


As TV news reports showed, it was a very dense, fast-moving crowd. ANSWER organizers counted an average of 600 to 650 people passing per minute on McAllister St. between Hyde and Leavenworth, from 1:42 p.m. to 2:32 p.m. Many people also attended the opening or closing rallies without participating in the march. At the peak of the rally, the Civic Center was about two-thirds full. According to a 2003 Chronicle article, police estimate that the Civic Center holds 42,000 people. As in every similar demonstration, thousands of people who marched didn't join the closing rally.


A Chronicle photo in the March 19 edition belied its own crowd estimate. It shows just part of the packed center section of the Civic Center early in the rally. When the photo was taken, the march was still entering the plaza.


There are other factual inaccuracies in the article. Most notable is the assertion of a stage speaker "telling the crowd it was 3,000 strong." As program manager, I can state definitively that that is not true.


This is what actually happened: When informed of The Chronicle's gross undercount, I took the microphone to say that there were tens of thousands participating, and that The Chronicle estimate was both ridiculous and demeaning. Those gathered expressed thunderous agreement. This was the only mention of "3,000 people" from the stage. The reporter, in a serious journalistic error, turned its meaning upside down.


Once again, The Chronicle failed to quote organizers on our crowd estimate -- or anything else. In fact, no mention was made of the sponsoring organization, the ANSWER Coalition. Perhaps some reporters believe that stages and sound systems spring out of the ground for anti-war rallies, and that thousands of hours of volunteer labor doing logistical work and political organizing are irrelevant to a growing movement.


Unlike corporate events, where official spokespersons are invariably quoted, reporters covering progressive events frequently ignore representatives of sponsoring organizations.

This practice continues despite a pledge made by Chronicle editors to do otherwise after last May's huge immigrant rights march sparked a similar controversy. When tens of thousands of people come together to engage in collective free-speech actions, they have the right to expect that their message and very presence will be reported on in a fair and objective manner.


Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER -- Act Now to Stop War & End Racism Coalition.


For more information and photos of the march, http://www.actionsf.org/.


This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Antiwar movement sets the record straightRead ANSWER's Op-Ed in the SF Chronicle below


*Please forward widely to your email lists, friends and family*


San Francisco front banner, March 18(Photo: Bill Hackwell)


After a week of pressure exerted by angry people in Northern California, the San Francisco Chronicle agreed to publish an Op-Ed by the ANSWER Coalition that tells the truth about the March 18th demonstration in San Francisco. The demonstration, like others around the country, was a sign of a growing antiwar movement. You would never have known it from reading the San Francisco Chronicle report.


Background information


On the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, people took to the streets in more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns.




The largest demonstrations took place in Washington, DC at the March on the Pentagon, in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles, all initiated by the ANSWER Coalition and co-sponsored by a wide array of progressive organizations.




These demonstrations reached people in the U.S. who had never participated in a protest before and also included many Iraq war veterans, active-duty service members, family members, and veterans of other wars.


This resurgence of the anti-war movement, and the breadth of its makeup, signifies a sharp turn by the public against the war. But just as tens of thousands were marching in these major city demonstrations, the corporate mass media were fine-tuning their atrocious coverage and providing huge undercounts.



As we all know, mass demonstrations have a major ripple effect. Many who are not there learn about the actions and seeing a vibrant anti-war movement feel that they too can be a part of it. A number of major media outlets across the country made tens of thousands of people disappear from the demonstrations and provided often hostile, misleading and false coverage.



San Francisco crowd shot, March 18(Photo: Peter Maiden)


This isn’t the first time the media has attempted to rewrite the reality of a major political protest.

As many will remember, when the ANSWER Coalition organized the first major national demonstration against a looming war in Iraq on October 26, 2002 that brought 200,000 people into Washington, D.C., NPR announced the number to be in the hundreds.



Deluged with phone calls and letters, NPR was forced to issue a correction.


The New York Times said the demonstration was in the “thousands.” Only after it received thousands of angry faxes, phone calls and emails, did the New York Times write a second article a few days later stating that the anti-war movement had been “invigorated” by a massive turnout.




On the weekend of March 17-18, among the most egregious coverage was the “crowd count” put out by the San Francisco Chronicle for the March 18 rally. The Chronicle article on the march, which was picked up the Associated Press and distributed worldwide, reported that just 3,000 people participated -- less than 10% of the number who actually marched.





The reporters claimed to have “counted” the march, and to back up their ludicrous number, falsely asserted that the march organizers had “announced” the same number from the stage. The Chronicle report provoked hundreds of angry emails, calls and letters to the editor in the next 48 hours.


Under growing pressure, the Chronicle agreed to publish an Op-Ed written by the ANSWER Coalition in yesterday's newspaper (Monday, March 26).



This is an important victory, one that was only achieved because of many people taking action to express their outrage. It must also be said that publishing the Op-Ed is a step, but it does not mitigate the damage done by the wide distribution of the Chronicle false report.


Our movement must create and strengthen our own media, while continuing to pressure the corporate media to tell the truth about the growing antiwar struggle in the United States.


Please read ANSWER's Op-Ed, which is available by clicking this link. Please send this Op-Ed to every one in your email address book, and forward it to other email lists.


Please take a moment to donate to support the important work of the ANSWER Coalition. You can make a much-needed donation right now by clicking on this link.



A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalitionhttp://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=CmXMSMCEyubH7lvidJiQFg..http://us.f372.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dc@internationalanswer.org National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389