Ask your friends to help save a life!
October 20th, 2008Dear ACLU Supporter,
Thank you so much for standing with us, and with Troy, as we fight to save his life. Can you ask your friends to help? They can take action by going to going to this link:
A man who is almost certainly innocent needs your help, and fast.
On Friday, September 12th, Troy Davis was denied clemency by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. It is imperative that we respectfully ask them to reconsider this unfortunate decision. They have to power to stop this indefensible execution and we must implore them to make the right decision.
Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of the murder of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail in 1991. No physical evidence links him to the crime, and he has steadfastly maintained his innocence. His conviction was based solely on the testimony of witnesses. There was no other evidence against him. Since his trial, seven people who had previously testified against Troy changed the story they had told in court.
Some witnesses say they were coerced by police. Others have even signed affidavits implicating one of the remaining two witnesses as the actual killer. But due to an increasingly restrictive appeals process, none of this new evidence has ever been heard in court.
Can you take 30 seconds and help save the life of a man who is almost certainly innocent? You can learn more and take action here:
Recipients: When you access the ACLU site, you can customize or personalize the letter content they have there to better express your own outrage if you feel the ACLU content is too polite.-Allan Greene
Takin’ it Back with Barack Jack! (For Swing voters!)
October 17th, 2008Obama Roasts McCain at Al Smith Dinner
October 17th, 2008McCain Roast Obama @ Alfred E. Smith
October 17th, 2008Gods That Failed
October 14th, 2008By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; Page A21
In 1949, a number of famous writers, among them Arthur Koestler, André Gide, Richard Wright, Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone, wrote essays explaining why they were no longer communists. The essays were collected in a volume entitled “The God That Failed.”
Today, conservative intellectuals might want to consider writing a tome on the failure of their own beloved deity, unregulated capitalism. The fall of the financial system has been so fast and far-reaching that there’s been no time to fully consider its implications for the reigning economic theology of the past 30 years. But with the most right-wing administration in modern American history scurrying to nationalize the banks, the question cannot be elided indefinitely.
What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What’s become of the glories of privatized Social Security? Of the merits of 401(k)s vs. defined-benefit pensions?
No wonder we’ve seen a disoriented John McCain wandering the moors howling about Bill Ayers. What’s he supposed to do? Admit that the Reagan-Thatcher faith in unregulated capitalism, to which every GOP presidential candidate was pledging allegiance just last winter, has collapsed? [more]
US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt
October 14th, 2008By Peter Dyer
October 15, 2008
Editor’s Note: This year, the U.S. news media cheered the opening of the $450 million Newseum in Washington, a self-congratulatory celebration of American journalism. However, rather than giving themselves that expensive pat on the back, the major U.S. media organizations might have done something to show remorse for their complicity in the Bush administration’s propaganda that justified the invasion of Iraq. As freelance journalist Peter Dyer notes, prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed such journalistic support for war crimes to be a capital offense:
October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who have written in support of ”Operation Iraqi Freedom” – the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Sixty-two years ago, on Oct. 16, 1946, Julius Streicher was hanged.
Streicher was one of a group of 10 Germans executed that day following the judgment of the first Nuremberg Trial – a 40-week trial of 22 of the most prominent Nazis.
Each was tried for two or more of the four crimes defined in the Nuremberg Charter: crimes against peace (aggression), war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy.
All who were sentenced to death were major German government officials or military leaders. Except for Streicher.
Julius Streicher was a journalist.
Editor of the vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, Streicher was convicted of, in the words of the judgment, “incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitut(ing) … a crime against humanity.” [more]
