http://allyoucangreen.com/2009/10/15/take-a-lighter-flight/

Campaign musical goodness.

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Articles of Impeachment

of

President George W. Bush

and

Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. – - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the “Supreme Law of the land” under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an “enemy combatant.”

10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed “terrorist.”

17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.

I love mountains. I always have. I’ve been going to the mountains since I was a wee little lad, specifically the Smokies, the Blue Ridge, & the Appalachians. Being from Florida, mountains were not an every day sighting. You had to drive 10 (or more) hours to see any good mountains, such as in North Carolina which is riddled with these majestic examples of contour, texture, & habitation. That’s where my family & I ended up every year a few chosen times a year. The mountains. The Smokies. The Appalachians. We love mountains.

Well, it’s a good damn thing we didn’t decide to pick West Virginia…because their mountains really do suck (don’t believe me?).

A massive dragline, dwarfed by the huge scale of the operation, at work
on a mountaintop removal operation near Kayford Mountain, W.Va
Photo by Vivian Stockman, Oct. 19, 2003

How majestic. Excellent job destroying something that only took 300 million years to create. Well done section 515(c)(1) of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and thank you President King George W. Bush, Massey, and all ye who defend this practice and continue to rape our 300 million year old mountains in the name of coal. This is the 21st century, why can’t you innovate like everyone else has.

What does President Bush have to do with this? Everything. The Bush administration has declared war on mountains and the people who live there. Seriously.

So what do you, the average American citizen, have to think about this? It seems you do think about this. A September 2007 survey conducted by the Civil Society Institute found that 65% of Americans oppose the Bush Administration’s proposal “to ease environmental regulations to permit wider use of ‘mountain top removal’ coal mining in the U.S.” The study also found that 74% Americans are opposed to the expansion of MTR coal mining in general, and that 90% of Americans agree that more mining should be permitted only after the United States government has assessed its impacts on safety and the environment.

Most of the links are inline [click4yourself], so click away and learn as much as you can about this eXtremely important, relevant issue that has everything to do with you, your children, and the future of environmental protection. It took these beautiful mountains 300 million years to create themselves for you to enjoy, so a few hours of education and a few more of action to stop this hideous crime is not much to ask in return.

Some Useful References

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Wikipedia
(and much more here)

mountain justice summer
vbs.tv (toxic west virginia series)
stop mountaintop removal

Some Great Videos

Toxic West Virginia

Christians for the Mountains

i love them mountains (so does woody)

Mountain Wars

It’s been almost a month since I’ve had time to blog about anything, and probably won’t again any time soon due to some priorities I have to finish up. But this morning I watched the ACLU TV’s dissent again (as seen on LinkTV), and felt compelled to say something.

This time I felt a bit more sick to my stomach after seeing it than last time. I keep thinking about these normal Americans whom only wanted to peaceably exercise their right to express how they felt about what their country was doing. In the midst of exercising this right, some were arrested without charges, some shot with wooden bullets by assaulting officers only to have surgery to repair the permanent damage, some held in filthy cages inside a pier for more than 2 days like vicious animals, some arrested for wearing t-shirts opposing King George, one harassed as if he were a terrorist for simply being poetic, and most confined to what’s referred to as free speech zones, which in itself is a complete violation of freedom on public property.

It’s hard to describe here in plain text what this is all about. The episode tells the stories of everyday Americans who were exercising their right to free speech and dissent, only to be harassed or arrested. This happens every day. This happens at every peaceful rally. It happened at Berkeley in the 60′s…but this type of thing was ‘never supposed to happen again’. The founding father’s of this country founded this fine country on dissent. This country was built by the people who wanted change. Every major social step was sparked by people, not politicians. Politicians are merely seat warmers. Without you, they don’t exist. Where are you? Where are we? The social balance is off. Washington gives orders to suppress, and their loyal servants follow to ensure people do as they are told. Are we OK with this? We don’t want thousands, we don’t need hundreds of thousands. We need millions. We need people to see & hear the truth, regardless of political preference.

A picture says a thousand words. If you have access to LinkTV, then keep your eye out for ACLU’s dissent episode. If not, join the ACLU TV’s producer’s club and get a FREE copy of the DVD. Why? I’ll let Lewis Black tell you why.

To see the trailer, click here
To see the viewer’s guide, click here
Listen to Amir Sulaiman’s poem
Watch some archival footage of dissent
And check out some extras…Historical, RNC Protest and RNC Artist

So what’s the point? It’s all in the title.

American gestapo.

: a police organization employing underhanded and terrorist methods against persons suspected of disloyalty.

Imagine that your life, as you know it, disappears in the blink of an eye. War, violence or fear for your family’s safety force you to flee your home. After hours or even days of a torturous journey, you find shelter far away, in a squalid tent. You are dependent on handouts of food; possibly have no clean drinking water or access to health care that prevents outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, hepatitis, malaria, and other diseases.

Not a pretty picture, right? But the fact is that millions of people around the world, in countries big and small, people of all ages and many nationalities, have been living in such desolate and precarious conditions for years.

These people are called refugees.

This is their story.