Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Medical experiments conducted on torture victims

IndictBushNow

The latest shocking revelation that the Bush Administration performed medical experiments on its torture victims has caused a new wave of outrage and a demand for criminal prosecution by the New York Times, and human rights and legal organizations.

Based on a newly released physicians report the New York Times is demanding that the “White House and Congress to investigate the potentially illegal human experimentation and whether those who authorized or conducted it should be punished.”

IndictBushNow and a wide variety of organizations are working non-stop to collect evidence on all of the Bush-era crimes, take testimony, organize public events and build global pressure.

Here is the latest news:

Following a six month long investigation a preeminent physician’s organization has published a major report revealing that the Bush Administration carried out medical experiments on its torture victims. This is a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code that barred the use of medical experimentation on detainees, following the exposure of Nazi experiments during WWII.

The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) used public records showing health professionals worked under the supervision of the Central Intelligence Agency during interrogations of "war on terror" detainees after the 2001 attacks.

While bloggers may have a free-speech right to say what they want online, courts have found they are not protected from lawsuits, even if comments are anonymous. Some postings have led to criminal charges.

David G. Savage,  Seattle Times | WA

The Internet has allowed tens of millions of Americans to be published writers. But it also has led to a surge in lawsuits from those who say they were hurt, defamed or threatened by what they read, according to groups that track media lawsuits.

"It was probably inevitable, but we have seen a steady growth in litigation over content on the Internet," said Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York.

While bloggers may have a free-speech right to say what they want online, courts have found they are not protected from lawsuits, even if comments are anonymous. Some postings have led to criminal charges.

Hal Turner, a right-wing blogger from New Jersey, faces up to 10 years in prison for posting a comment that three Chicago judges "deserve to be killed" for having rejected a Second Amendment challenge to the city's handgun ban in 2009.

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"In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." Justice Louis Brandeis

4 New Items including:

• ACLU Report: Obama Continuing Bush-Era Torture Policies
• Center for Torture Accountability lists St. Thomas Professor  Delahunty as deserving probe

David Culver, ed., Evergreene Digest

Bob Englehart

Big Brother: Obama Demands Access to Internet Records, in Secret, and Without Court Review, Tom Burghardt, Global Research

A deeply conservative panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the multiple victories we had in the lower court.

Bill Quigley, Center for Constitutional Rights

We have gotten some of our best feedback from friends and allies this year on our work defending ACORN, so I am sorry to have to pass along the news that a deeply conservative panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the multiple victories we had in the lower court.

The panel somehow found that ACORN was not being punished when Congress cut off its funding based on rightwing grandstanding, FOX news rants and a video that turned out to be a lie. The court did find that ACORN had standing to sue, just not on Bill of Attainder grounds, and they sent the case back to the District Court to look at possible First Amendment and due process violations.

The Bill of Attainder provision in the U.S. Constitution says that no person or organization may be singled out for punishment by the government without benefit of a trial. The appeals court turned our argument on its head and declared that since hundreds of unspecified allied organizations might be affected by the de-funding it was perfectly legitimate since Congress did not just single out ACORN!