Paul and McCain oppose Trump's CIA pick

Rand’s rep as Senate rebel on the line - POLITICO - Burgess Everett:

May 14, 2018 - "Rand Paul is once again the talk of the Senate.... [W]ith the Senate preparing for a nail-biter on Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel, the chamber is abuzz over the latest will-he-or-won’t-he Rand guessing game. The libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator says he’s a hard 'no,' but Democrats and Republicans believe he may yet fold under pressure from Trump, as he did with Mike Pompeo for secretary of state.

""Paul had a simple answer when asked if he again can be persuaded by the president to support one of his crucial nominees: 'No.'

"'Someone who has been an active participant and enthusiast for torture is not someone who should represent America,' Paul said in an interview as he left the Senate for the week on Thursday.... In a POLITICO op-ed Friday, he criticized the CIA nominee for selectively releasing information about her record of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees and said 'that fact alone should be enough to cause the Senate [to] reject her nomination'....

"For Paul, it’s the latest test of his resolve in the face of enormous pressure from his party and the president to toe the party line....

"In February, Paul single-handedly caused a brief government shutdown by refusing to relent in his opposition to a budget deal, but then backed off before forcing a second one in March. In the case of Pompeo, he relented after being personally lobbied by the president....

"Paul does not serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hold the first vote on Haspel’s nomination. Pompeo was first taken up by the Foreign Relations Committee, which Paul does sit on, and his opposition threatened an embarrassing 'unfavorable' vote by the panel.

"For now, Haspel is short of votes for confirmation. {Democratic Senators Joe] Manchin, an Intelligence Committee member, and [Joe] Donnelly support her. But other moderate Democrats ... are not yet behind her, and neither are Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

"Though he‘s unlikely to be present for the vote, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) came out against Haspel last week over what he called her evasive responses to questions about the morality of torture, which he called 'disqualifying.' That marks one of the few times the hawkish McCain and libertarian-leaning Paul have agreed — McCain once called Paul 'wacko,' and Paul last year said McCain was 'unhinged' — on foreign policy."

Read more: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-and-mccain-oppose-trumps-cia-pick.html
'via Blog this'

Remembering 100 years of Communism

Remembering Communism | Winnipeg Sun - Hendrik van der Breggen, Providence University College,:

November 11, 2017 - "Fall 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the beginning of a grand experiment in communism. This social experiment had bitter fruit that shouldn’t be forgotten.

"Influenced by Karl Marx, the leaders of Soviet communism — Lenin, Stalin, and Co. (Comrades) — strived to create a utopian society. After taking power, the communists abolished private property and took control of the means of production (factories, farms). Their promise was that state control (a 'dictatorship of the proletariat') would be temporary. Eventually, new men and women would come into being.... A socialist heaven would finally come to earth....

"It turns out that the temporary dictatorship by the communist elite wasn’t temporary. And the Soviet experiment was a disaster.... Soviet communism’s killing of its own people makes Nazi death camps pale in comparison. Whereas 6 or 7 million died in the Nazi holocaust, ... historians estimate the Soviet death toll was 20 million, whereas Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who lived in the Soviet Union) estimates 60 million.

"Of this total, approximately 5 or more million died at a result of the Soviets’ 1932-33 deliberate starvation of Ukraine.... Millions of Soviets also died in slave labour camps (a.k.a. Gulags, made famous by Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago). Underfed and living in sub-zero temperatures, citizens were worked to death or were murdered in the woods.... [M]any Soviet citizens were simply arrested, tortured, and shot.... for criticizing government or for suspicion of being a saboteur, other times to fill government quotas....

"According to The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press 1999), other communist regimes had similar disastrous results.

• China: 65 million deaths
• Vietnam: 1 million deaths
• North Korea: 2 million deaths
• Cambodia: 2 million deaths

"In total, over the past 100 years communist regimes have been responsible for about 100 million deaths (of their own people)....

"[C]apitalist societies have done wrong, of course. (And crony capitalism is especially problematic.) Nevertheless, ... governments in capitalist societies tend to be limited in their power. They protect private property, voluntary exchange, and individual freedoms; they do not tend to murder their own people en masse.

"It remains, then, that the killing of one’s own people has been extraordinarily huge in — and a salient feature of — communist societies.... The 2008 film The Soviet Story (available on YouTube) provides additional historical perspective on the bitter fruit of the 1917 Russian Revolution — bitter fruit that should never be forgotten."

Read more: http://winnipegsun.com/opinion/columnists/remembering-communism
'via Blog this'

Decriminalize drug use & possession, medical experts urge in advance of UN session

Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs and maybe go even further - The Washington Post - Christopher Ingraham:

March 24, 2016 - "A group of 22 medical experts convened by Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet have called today for the decriminalization of all nonviolent drug use and possession....

"Their report comes ahead of a special UN General Assembly Session on drugs to be held next month, where the world's countries will re-evaluate the past half-century of drug policy and, in the hope of many experts, chart a more public health-centered approach going forward.

"In a lengthy review of the state of global drug policy, the Hopkins-Lancet experts conclude that the prohibitionist anti-drug policies of the past 50 years 'directly and indirectly contribute to lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice and the undermining of people’s right to health.' They cite, among other things:

• A 'striking increase' in homicide in Mexico since the government decided to militarize its response to the drug trade in 2006. The increase has been so great that experts have had to revise life expectancy downward in that country;
• The 'excessive use' of incarceration as a drug control measure, which the experts identify as the "biggest contribution" to higher rates of HIV and Hepatitis C infection among drug users;
• Stark racial disparities in drug law enforcement, particularly in the United States;
• And human rights violations arising from excessively punitive drug control measures, including an increase in the torture and abuse of drug prisoners in places like Mexico.

"'The goal of prohibiting all use, possession, production and trafficking of illicit drugs is the basis of many of our national drug laws, but these policies are based on ideas about drug use and drug dependence that are not scientifically grounded,' said Commissioner Dr. Chris Beyrer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a statement.

"For instance, the last time the UN held a special session on drugs, in 1998, it set itself the goal of a 'drug-free world' by 2008.

"The Hopkins-Lancet commissioners also fault UN drug regulators for failing to distinguish between drug use and drug abuse. 'The idea that all drug use is dangerous and evil has led to enforcement-heavy policies and has made it difficult to see potentially dangerous drugs in the same light as potentially dangerous foods, tobacco and alcohol, for which the goal of social policy is to reduce potential harms,' they write."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/24/top-medical-experts-say-we-should-decriminalize-all-drugs-and-maybe-go-even-further/
'via Blog this'

Appeals court: U.S. military can’t be sued for torturing civilians

New ruling: Donald Rumsfeld can’t be sued for torture. - Slate Magazine:

"Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not be sued by two U.S. citizens who were tortured by members of the military. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ... judges said that no member of our military—presumably even one who personally inflicts torture—can be sued for his related conduct in office....

"Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were Americans working for a private security firm in Iraq. When Vance became suspicious that his employer was selling weapons to groups hostile to the United States, he went to the FBI. Vance and Ertel were then fingered as arms dealers. Military personnel arrested them in 2006 and held them for several weeks.

"According to the complaint, Vance and Ertel were held in solitary confinement and subjected to violence, sleep deprivation, extremes of temperature and sound, denial of food, water, and medical care, and other abuses."

Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/11/new_ruling_donald_rumsfeld_can_t_be_sued_for_torture.html
'via Blog this'