Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

This is an unbelievable outrage for Congress to churn out on International Human Rights Day while numerous members of Congress were off in South Africa claiming to support the use of nonviolence to effect change in the world.How will the U.S. public react once the media lays bare this incredible proposal? Here’s enough money to work wonders in green energy, infrastructure, actual humanitarian aid, education, and many other areas all combined. This is an amount of money very difficult to comprehend, and it’s being dumped into such unpopular projects as the ongoing war on Afghanistan.

One has to wonder how our Nobel Peace Prize laureate, “ender” of the war, President Barack Obama might respond should Congress send him such a budget. I’m sure he’ll be hard-pressed not to assume he’s dreaming when he reads these numbers. I’m sure …

Oh, wait. What?

Obama wanted 57% to go to militarism?

Read on: http://warisacrime.org/content/murray-ryan-budget-dumps-514-military-happy-human-rights-day

The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) is very sad to hear about the death of Nelson Mandela. He was an extraordinary man, an inspiration to millions of people round the world, a wonderfully humble and forgiving man who brought so much good to the world. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and the South African people.

Nelson Mandela, a wonderful man who inspired billions of people throughout our world, has died in South Africa. In the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela used the power of non-violent protest to change our world, and through the love of his huge heart ended the tragic South African system of apartheid.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. He served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Mandela was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalized racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation.

Mandela’s focus on restorative justice rather than punishment serves as a model of effective healing to our world. He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, and used it to heal the wounds of decades of brutal racism and depravation in South Africa.

The following poem, written by Marianne Williamson, is often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela. While he did not write it, this wonderful verse perfectly captures Mandela’s approach to life.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

If anybody thought that putting Lord Blencathra, a former minister in Michael Howard’s Home Office, in charge of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee of Theresa May’s “snoopers’ charter” bill would provide a soft touch, then they were sorely mistaken.They would have done well to pay attention to the peer’s first statement as chairman of the joint committee of MPs and peers, in which he pointed out that the draft communications data bill would affect everyone in some way.

“We all email, use websites and mobile phones and this committee wants to ensure the draft bill will ensure a sufficient balance between an individual’s privacy and national security. We intend very thoroughly to examine the government’s proposals,” Blencathra said, launching the five month inquiry in July 2012.

To the surprise of some observers the MPs and peers proceeded to do just that. …

The committee was extremely high-powered. It included Lord Armstrong, a former permanent secretary at the Home Office and cabinet secretary, who had famously gone all the way to Australia in a futile attempt to block the publication of the “Spycatcher” memoirs of the former MI5 officer, Peter Wright.

Other members included former Labour ministers who had been responsible for putting the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 on the statute book, an eminent QC specialising in human rights cases, former senior Whitehall civil servants and two Liberal Democrats, Julian Huppert and Lord Strasburger, well versed in the new digital politics.

Blencathra is not alone in feeling angered by the failure of the Home Office and the security services to inform them of the extent of GCHQ’s personal data harvesting operations in its Tempora programme, while pressing for even more snooping powers: “I sat on the committee and the Home Office misled parliament by concealing that they were already doing what the bill would have permitted,” Strasburger said.

The first and perhaps most important clash between the committee and the government came when MI5, MI6 and GCHQ refused point black to engage with the MPs and peers directly: “We asked to see the intelligence service, the security service and GCHQ. Their views on the draft bill would have been helpful to us. The home secretary, in accordance with usual practice, would not permit them to give evidence even in private,” the committee revealed in their final report.

“She offered us ‘a general briefing on the threat, particularly that from international terrorism, and the security service’s role in addressing it, [which] would take place off the parliamentary estate and would be strictly informal and off the record’. We did not see that this would advance our scrutiny of the draft bill, and declined the invitation,” they added. …

Read in full: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/16/mps-peers-may-snoopers-charter