There is so much to repent for.

    Lets start with this.

No U.S. Senators were willing to engage in a filibuster against the new
authorization of torture. As the article below makes clear, some of us
reading this email may some day face torture that this bill authorizes,
because the president or a committee in the defense dept. can
arbitrarily decide that our dissent from their policies constitutes
material aid to terrorism. This is a major step toward eliminating
everything people in the West have been fighting for in way of civil
liberties and human rights since the Magna Charta and certainly since
American patriots fought for freedom in 1776. Yet our elected
representatives capitulated in order to be “realistic” given their fear
of being labeled “soft” on terror. Please read the article below on
what is at stake. The author hopes the Supreme Court will do something
to overturn it, apparently unaware of the degree to which that Court
itself reflects the same subordination to right-wing visions of
presidential power as the Congress.

All 100 Senators voted for
a budget that gives $448 Billion to the Pentagon to continue the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet many of us will end up voting
for these same Senators, thus ratifying their vote to continue war.

Or take the vote of many Democrats as well as Republicans to spend over
$1 billion to build a 700 mile fence along the US-Mexico border, a
fence that will push immigrant workers trying to cross the border to
get jobs that were eliminated from Mexico and Central America by the
Clinton and Democratic-backed “free trade” measures of the 90s. So now,
to keep them out, the fence will push many of them deeper into the
desert, and more of them will die because of it.

And then there
is the continuing rejection of steps that could bring peace to
Israel—by the Israeli government itself. Please read the article below
from today’s Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel.

   
    Here is what you can do:

•    Participate in a non-violent way in the October 5th mobilization against the war. Go to
http://www.worldcantwait.org/ to find a demonstration near you.
   
•
Demand that every Congressional or Senatorial candidate seeking your
support explain why they didn’t filibuster against torture, war
funding, and the fence in the Senate, or use other techniques in the
House (sit-ins, blocking the normal order non-violently, or at least a
massive walk out and refusal to participate in the vote).
•   
•
*If you happen to be going to Yom Kippur services tonight or tomorrow,
please download and take with you the High Holiday supplement and use
it—it will make the process of repentance much more real to you.
•    http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0609/frontpage/high_holidays_download
•   
•
Join and become active with the Network of Spiritual Progressives to
help us build an alternative way of thinking to that which allows
Democrats and Republicans both to act in these humanly destructive
ways. www.spiritualprogressives.org,

• Create an evening
gathering at your home and invite friends, coworkers, members of your
community, your church/synagogue/mosque/ashram, your professional
colleagues or members of your union, and show them the Spiritual
Progressives
dvd or video tape—and have a discussion with them about the kinds of changes
that are needed in American politics. Don’t wait till after the election to boo-hoo:
Act
now. Contact Allyson@tikkun.org or 510 644 1200 (we’re closed on Yom
Kippur, Monday the 2nd, but open on Tuesday and thereafter).
If
you haven’t gotten your Members’ Manual in the mail, you probably
haven’t yet joined or haven’t renewed your membership in The Tikkun
Community or The Network of Spiritual Progressives. Please help us save
paper and money that we will otherwise have to spend sending you letter
appeals—join or renew now at
        www.tikkun.org or www.spiritualprogressives.org.  Membership comes with a o
        one year subscription to Tikkun magazine.
•   
•    Send this email to everyone you know, and post it on your websites

And
then, after reading all this, go to the bottom and re-read the prayer
for forgiveness–a necessary component of what we need to do to stay
centered as spiritual progressives.

AND PLEASE FORGIVE US FOR SENDING LONG EMAILS!!!! WE KNOW MANY PEOPLE WILL

NOT TOLERATE READING SOMETHING THIS LONG, AND YET….TRYING TO SUMMARIZE

PLAYS INTO THE HANDS OF THE DUMBING=DOWN THAT IS CENTRAL TO HOW THE

POWERFUL KEEP THEIR CONTROL OVER ALL OF US. 

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Sayonara to Checks and Balances?

By
Aziz Huq, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted September 30, 2006.

"Checks and balances" has a nice ring. But it’s a currency that doesn’t go a long way in Washington today.

The
Military Commissions Act of 2006, of MCA, passed by the House and
Senate is a wholesale assault on the idea of a limited government under
law.

It will be taken by the Bush Administration as a blank check
to torture, to detain indefinitely without just cause, and to trample
the values that win America respect in the world. From tomorrow,
counter-terrorism is the "land of do as you please" for the President
and the wise men of the Defense Department — those savants who brought
you Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving (at least if you’re a jihadist).

The
MCA comprehensively assaults two ideas: The idea of checking executive
power by laws. And the idea of a separate branch of government ensuring
those limits are respected. These are the basic tools of
accountability. The MCA frontally attacks both of these — although
only time will tell whether it succeeds.

How does the Military Commissions Act assail checks and balances? Consider the key issues of detention and torture.

The
MCA says nothing explicit about the detention power. Indeed, I would
argue that nothing in the legislation ought to be read to imply

Here’s
how the Addington play for detention power will work. The opening
definition of the Act describes elaborately what an "unlawful enemy
combatant" is. Why? The term is a neologism. The laws of war do not use
or define this term. Indeed, it is a mutation of a phrase used in a
subordinate clause of a 1942 Supreme Court opinion. Nothing else in the
Act directly turns on this definition–although only an "alien unlawful
enemy combatant" can be subject to trial by military commission. So why
bother with the elaborate definition? And why extend the definition to
U.S. citizens as well as non-citizens?

Back in 2004, the Supreme Court, in the now well-known Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision,
stated that an "enemy combatant" captured in hostilities could be held
for the duration of those hostilities. The Court made very clear it was
talking about only the limited context of the ground war in
Afghanistan, not some amorphous and unending "war on terror." But
Addington et al. will, however, take Hamdi’s sanction of detention–and
extend it far, far beyond Hamdi. It will be a detention power that applies anywhere and anytime.

There
are two ways in which you — citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka
or Timbuktu — can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

The
first way is if you engage "n hostilities" or "purposefully and
materially support" hostilities. This sounds reasonable enough until
you realize that no-one has the slightest clue what it means to "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. Do you need to intend to aid the hostilities? Or is it enough to intend to give
the support? Would purposely giving to a charity that then gave money
to Hamas count, even if you knew nothing about the Hamas? What about
writing an editorial that gave "aid and comfort" to the enemy — say,
by criticizing the Administration’s Iraq policy?

The second way
is — if it’s even possible — more dangerous: You are designated an
enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal — the Potemkin
proceedings jerry-rigged at Guantánamo — or you are designated by
"another competent tribunal" created by the Defense Secretary.

It’s
the latter that catches in the throat, because the MCA does not define
what Rumsfeld’s "competent tribunal" must look like. Rummy himself with
the always-fair-and-impartial Addington? Five Syrian torturers (like
the ones to whom the U.S. sent the hapless Canadian Maher Arar)?
A bunch of guys who flip coins for your liberty? Sure, why not? The MCA
doesn’t stop the executive from using any of these, provided Rumsfeld
gave them power and hence made them "competent."

At least for
non-citizens, moreover, that would be that: For the first time in U.S.
history, an Act of Congress singles out a group of
persons–non-citizens–and deprives them of any right to challenge
their detention wherever they are picked up. No non-citizen would, the
MCA seems to say, be able to challenge this detention. And while
citizens are certainly entitled to a hearing, the Government will fight
tooth and nail to make sure this hearing doesn’t allow any effective
inquiry into the facts on which a detention is based. So no judicial
review — and no accountability.

The same dynamic is at play in
the anti-torture rules. The MCA alters a criminal statute called the
War Crimes Act, which imposed criminal sanctions for certain violations
of the laws of war.

Until recently, the United States could
proudly point to a long history of supporting a universal ban on
torture, and to a strong record in ensuring that those who in fact
tortured did not escape accountability. No longer. Now a gamut of
horrendous kinds of treatment will be non-criminal — and, the Bush
Administration will argue, within the discretion of the President.

Start
with the substantive anti-torture rules themselves (which cover both
torture and the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment). The MCA contains
an incredibly complex and convoluted set of definitions. Despite all
the cant about clarity, the rules no longer in plain English — as they
were in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions — and they are so full of holes they might have been tortured themselves.

Here are three examples of the duplicitous ambiguity of the MCA when it comes to torture and abuse.

First,
"cruel and inhuman" treatment is defined as acts that cause "severe or
serious" pain. We know "severe" is worse than "serious" because
"severe" is used to define torture (yes, we’ll get there in a moment). But then "serious pain" is defined as "bodily injury" that causes "extreme
physical pain." So "serious" pain is only "extreme" pain? Isn’t extreme
worse than serious? It would seem so–but the MCA is deliberately
confusing and circular.

And why the reference to bodily injury?
Does that mean that hypothermia and long-time standing and those other
wretched "enhanced" techniques more fitting for Stalin’s gulags than
American facilities are not criminal? Well, yes, I reckon it does.

Second,
in another convoluted section, "serious mental pain" is defined in
terms of "non-transitory" harms. Thus, if a CIA agent threatens to kill
a detainee, or to rape his spouse and his children — all
long-recognized as forms of torture — that’s not torture; it’s not
even the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment.

Finally, the
torture statute itself. Almost unnoticed, the Bush Administration has
gutted the no-torture rule. It has added the requirement that a person
"specifically" intend to cause the pain that amounts to torture. This
technical change–foreshadowed in the August 2002 OLC memo — has
tremendous implications. It means that any government agent who says
his goal was to get information, and not to cause pain, hasn’t tortured no matter how bad the things he does. If the person water-boards or knee-caps a person, or buries them alive, if it’s to get information — well, that’s just dandy.

Once
again, it’s not just the substantive rules that have been assailed:
It’s also the mechanisms to ensure the rules are followed. Under the
MCA, there is no accountability for torture. The MCA cuts off courts’
power to hear claims of torture by aliens held as "unlawful enemy
combatants." And it vests the President with power to interpret the
relevant laws of war. So if he says that "cold cell" and sexual abuse
are not "cruel and inhumane," that’s the end of the matter.

There
are two reasons for hope. First, any reading of the Act that reaches an
untrammeled detention power may be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court
in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush
— in what one day will be called "famous footnote 15" — strongly
hinted that even non-citizens captured overseas have Due Process
rights. Combined with another clause of the Constitution called the
Suspension Clause, this means the unchecked detention power and the
jurisdiction-strip are likely unconstitutional.

Second, even if
the War Crimes Act has been amended, the Due Process Clause also ought
still to protect detainees held overseas: Torture is un-American. It’s
also unconstitutional–and that doesn’t change depending on where it’s
done. Moreover, the law of war, embodied in the Geneva Conventions, is
clear: There is no "specific intent" requirement for torture. Countries
— whether it’s the United States or North Korea — cannot unilaterally
define down the rules against torture.

"Unchecked and unbalanced" government — I argue at length in a forthcoming book—
is antithetical to American government. The MCA is also anathema to our
best traditions. We must hope it is our traditions that win, and not
the selfish partisan posturing that animated this week’s votes.

Aziz Huq is co-writing a book on national security and the separation of powers called Unchecked and Unbalanced, to be published by the New Press.

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Operation Peace for the Winery