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RSN: Shouting Fire in Crowded Theatre, President Courts Votes With Lies |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 25 October 2018 12:31 |
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Boardman writes: "The madness of the day is this: thousands of peaceful migrants are headed toward the US to seek humanitarian asylum and the US president reacts by inciting panic, rage, and hate. The president warns hysterically of a 'national emergency' as his deceitful ranting works like a self-fulfilling prophecy, stoking a real emergency from the fevered imaginings of his soul-deep bigotry."
A caravan of more than 1,500 Honduran migrants moves north after crossing the border from Honduras into Guatemala on Monday in Esquipulas, Guatemala. (photo: John Moore/Getty)
Shouting Fire in Crowded Theatre, President Courts Votes With Lies
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
25 October 18
The fact that this president has been so obsessed with immigrants and immigration as a key component of his message, from the day he announced his desire to become president of the U.S. in 2015, should not make any one of us surprised that he’s using the caravan, essentially, to further advance his well-established line against immigrants by demonizing them, by dehumanizing them.
… we should not be surprised—if I regret one thing, it’s that there is no strong counter-narrative from the Democratic Party about an event like this caravan or migration altogether. And I believe that that’s a flaw that we need to deal with and find a way of fixing in the U.S.
– Oscar Chacon of Alianza Americas on Democracy NOW, October 23
 he madness of the day is this: thousands of peaceful migrants are headed toward the US to seek humanitarian asylum and the US president reacts by inciting panic, rage, and hate. The president warns hysterically of a “national emergency” as his deceitful ranting works like a self-fulfilling prophecy, stoking a real emergency from the fevered imaginings of his soul-deep bigotry.
The migrant caravan has been demonstrably peaceful. Mexicans along the caravan route provide food, water, and support. The caravan is estimated at 7,000 people of all ages, mostly whole families. No one has even tried to make an accurate count, but it’s reasonable to believe most of the migrants are fleeing from Honduras.
Honduras presents another face of the present madness, but a much older, bipartisan, imperial face. The US has been kicking Honduras around since before the US government in Honduras was just an extension of the foreign policy of the United Fruit Company. The current state of Honduras as a country that terrorizes its own population dates from the Reagan presidency, when ambassador Negroponte was running Salvadoran death squads out of Tegucigalpa. There followed a brief and uneasy Honduran flirtation with democratic government and an excess of national independence that came to an abrupt end in a military coup. Satisfied with that outcome, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton officially certified that no coup had taken place (wink wink), and that the US would continue helping the Honduran government to militarize itself, a policy that continues today. The US is happy with the state of affairs, but Hondurans by the thousands can’t find a safe and decent way to live there, so they head north, much to the annoyance of our el Presidente, who, in a remarkably obtuse response, threatens to cut off US military aid to Honduras.
However demagogic politicians may misrepresent this caravan, it has literally nothing to do with illegal immigration. The president falsely claims the people in the caravan are trying to come into the US illegally. They are not. These are asylum seekers. They have standing under international law to seek asylum in another country. The irony is that they’re seeking asylum in the country most responsible for creating the conditions that drove them from their homes.
A sensible leader with a human concern for other human beings might have seen something like this coming, since it’s been happening more or less twice a year for decades. To be fair, the current caravan is one of the larger ones, but still not the largest ever. But the US doesn’t act in good faith when it comes to immigration. The US has a legal obligation to process claims for asylum fairly and promptly. Instead, the US uses force to keep migrants in Mexico, leaves them exposed at border crossings for days, understaffs asylum courts whose backlogs are out of control, and kidnaps children from their parents in a thuggish attempt at deterrence. Now the US president is threatening to meet peaceful asylum seekers at the border with military force. And he’s lying about the migrants, providing no evidence to support his lies:
Go into the middle of the caravan, take your cameras and search. OK? … You’re going to find MS-13. You’re going to find Middle Eastern. You’re going to find everything. And guess what. We’re not allowing them in our country. We want safety. We want safety.
And more of the same demagoguery with no support in fact at another campaign performance, where he refers to a caravan that is more than 1,000 miles from the US border, where it might arrive in late November or much later:
That is an assault on our country and in that caravan you have some very bad people and we can’t let that happen to our country…. I think the Democrats had something to do with it.
The president’s rhetoric is of a piece with official Republican bigotry in defense of white people. His surrogates accuse George Soros of funding the caravan, of course. Examples of hate speech abound at the state and local level, wherever there are Republicans running scared. The two Republicans indicted for corruption, Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California, have made especially racist appeals to get re-elected. And when they’re not overtly bigoted, Republicans are busy lying about policies no Democrat supports (open borders, more crime). When called out for their dishonest tactics they whine about civility.
Legitimate coverage of the caravan reveals no gang members, no Islamic terrorists, no violent people at all. Oh yeah, what about the internet coverage of those “Mexican Police Officers Brutalized by Members of a Migrant Caravan?” It’s a lie peddled by people on Facebook and Twitter without reliable sourcing. Turns out the police were brutalized several years ago (2011, 2012, 2014), but by Mexican students and teachers, not by any immigrants in any caravan (as documented by Snopes). The false meme purveyors are presumably the Republican equivalent of Russian bots. One of those spreading this garbage online was Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In Mexico, official treatment of the caravan is civil and helpful. Popular response has been mixed, but mostly sympathetic along the caravan route. One Mexican along the route, Ana Gamboa, offered a more sensitive, textured response than anything we’ve heard from the US president:
The only thing I can say to people is that they should be more human, that we should look into our hearts and imagine ourselves in the migrants’ shoes, because it isn’t easy, what the migrants are doing. We Mexicans like to criticize Donald Trump for the way he treats Mexicans in the United States, and now we’re acting just like him. We don’t have any walls on our border, but sometimes we ourselves are the wall.
Americans are all too often swayed by fear of imaginary threats. The migrant caravan is an imaginary threat. It’s easy enough to find the facts about this caravan at this time. It’s probably easier to find the falsehoods and the lies, given the media megaphone attached to the presidential tweeter. Once more we’re at the perennial crisis of American democracy: whether enough voters will both learn the truth and vote on it.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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RSN | Not So Fast: In One Rural Town, Trump Experiences Slippery Foothold |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49394"><span class="small">Jessica Allee, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 25 October 2018 12:31 |
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Allee writes: "The president has been using this midterm tactic across the country in an effort to shore up support for Republican control of the House. It seemed that even the small town of Carbondale would not be spared the appearance of a comb-over in diapers."
Anti-Trump protest in Carbondale, IL. (photo: IGD)
Not So Fast: In One Rural Town, Trump Experiences Slippery Foothold
By Jessica Allee, Reader Supported News
25 October 18
Residents are confronted with the hate and fear that a Trump visit brings to a rural town on the southern edge of the Midwest
 n extremely tight and hotly contested race for House Representative in Illinois’s 12th is stirring up waters in the state. Incumbent Republican Mike Bost is reported to be virtually tied with rival Brendan Kelly, a Democrat with much of the same credentials. However, Bost will be getting a helping hand from the White House this week as Trump visits to boost his chances of winning re-election. The president has been using this midterm tactic across the country in an effort to shore up support for Republican control of the House. It seemed that even the small town of Carbondale would not be spared the appearance of a comb-over in diapers.
Carbondale is a small town in the southern portion of the state. It lies on the murky borders between the Midwest and the historic South. Home to Southern Illinois University, it has a rich history of resistance to racism, and a legacy of inclusion at the university. It also enjoys robust communities of activists fighting for social and environmental justice and immigrants’ rights. Great efforts have been made here to defend the humanity of the poor and minorities in this region known as Little Egypt.
So when city communication about a potential visit from President Trump was leaked this Friday, active residents went into full resistance mode. Leading the initial response was City Council member Adam Loos, who drafted a defiant resolution for consideration at the upcoming council meeting. The resolution stated that the City of Carbondale should unequivocally reject Trump and make it clear that he is a fascist persona non grata: “the proper term for politicians who gain and maintain power by scapegoating and demonizing racial and ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, and immigrants is ‘fascism.’” Social media started buzzing with support for the resolution, and local citizens talked about exercising their voices in favor of the resolution at the council meeting. Unfortunately, by the end of that business day, the city’s mayor, Mike Henry, canceled the meeting, citing the potential for “civil disobedience … from both the side supporting the visit and those against it.”
What was odd about Mayor Henry’s stated reason for canceling the council meeting was that no one on the left was talking about disruption. An organizer at Flyover Social Center (a community space “dedicated to freedom, dignity, and equality”) reported that the call to city council in support of Loos’s resolution didn’t happen until 11 p.m., well after the mayor had canceled the meeting. Was Henry in fact shutting the meeting down because the city sees public feedback as “civil disobedience?” Or was he shielding his sources on potential right-wing threats from the general public?
The timing of the cancellation was also critical, given that the city council was about to make an important decision regarding a proposed solar project on a historically toxic superfund site, which is located in a disenfranchised African-American neighborhood. Convenient timing. More egregious was City Manager Gary Williams’s statement that Trump’s visit would hopefully coincide with an announcement about the city being awarded federal grant money, and how this was politically motivated. “Considering the regional economic impact of our multimodal project and the White House’s favorable policy toward infrastructure projects, we believe that it’s a real possibility that if he comes, he could make the announcement to further enhance Rep. [Mike] Bost’s value to the region.” If the timing of Trump’s stump speech and the grant announcement coincide, this is a clear tactic to bolster support for a threatened incumbent Republican.
Residents rallied around the shutdown of the meeting and called for a city assembly in its place. However, with the mayor’s opaque comments, there was also a question of fascist right-wing backlash. Communities began to receive contact from extremist organizations and Trump supporters. On Saturday morning the Flyover Social Center received a business card from the Patriot Front, an ADL-recognized fascist and white supremacist group known for torch marches. In this same weekend, the center also received an email threatening violence against Latinx people.
Bost’s office confirmed on Sunday that Trump is coming for a public rally. However, the location has now been shifted to a nearby airport, fifteen minutes away in the town of Murphysboro. Trump won’t even need to leave the airport as he stumps for the Republican in a hangar. Some see this location shift as a win for Carbondale’s progressives. However, many others know it is only a bait-and-switch strategy to keep the fascist spectacle alive just down the road.
Hundreds of people joined on Tuesday night for an energized assembly on the steps of Carbondale’s Civic Center. Councilman Loos read the resolution aloud and the crowd made a unanimous vote to pass it. Whether binding or not, it was a significant stance in rejecting the president and the negative values he represents. Numerous organizations were represented, with speakers talking on a range of topics from environmental and racial justice to immigrants’ rights, transgender rights, and veterans’ rights. Oneida Vargas, a DACA recipient and senior at SIU Carbondale, shared her family’s experience of coming to the US, saying: “We are undocumented, not because we want to be, but because we don’t have a path to citizenship.” Bonnie Burton told the The Southern Illinoisan about Representative Bost’s unwillingness to meet with his constituents in the region and asked if he “wants to protect us from Satan, why is he bringing Trump here?”
The answer to this question is simple. Trump no longer feels welcome in metropolitan areas, which are solid blue or at least leaning that way. Even the more conservative suburbs are seeing a decline in support for the president. Jenna Johnson wrote in The Washington Post that Trump is focusing more now on speaking in small rural areas throughout the country where tight midterm races exist and crowds are favorable to his message. Unfortunately for Trump and his lackeys, the number of places in the US where this is possible is shrinking. Tuesday’s public assembly was a rallying point for people living in this region who feel Trump’s presence and rhetoric fuel hatred wherever he goes. It was also a reminder that there will be a defiant presence for his visit to southern Illinois on Saturday.
Jessica Allee is a staff editor for Reader Supported News as well as an editor for Red Wedge Magazine.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS: We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37739"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, The New York Times</span></a>
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Thursday, 25 October 2018 11:40 |
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Sanders writes: "The likely assassination of the Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi underscores how urgent it has become for the United States to redefine our relationship with Saudi Arabia, and to show that the Saudis do not have a blank check to continue violating human rights."
The aftermath of a Saudi-led airstrike in Hodeidah, Yemen. (photo: Abduljabbar Zeyad/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: In Secret Final Interview, Jamal Khashoggi Says Only
Bernie Sanders Was Willing to Stand Up to Saudi Arabia
We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen
By Bernie Sanders, The New York Times
25 October 18
Congress needs to step in to end our complicity in the kingdom’s human rights abuses.
he likely assassination of the Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi underscores how urgent it has become for the United States to redefine our relationship with Saudi Arabia, and to show that the Saudis do not have a blank check to continue violating human rights.
One place we can start is by ending United States support for the war in Yemen. Not only has this war created a humanitarian disaster in one of the world’s poorest countries, but also American involvement in this war has not been authorized by Congress and is therefore unconstitutional.
In March 2015, a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates started a war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Since then, many thousands of civilians have been killed and many more have lost their homes. Millions are now at the risk of the most severe famine in more than 100 years, according to the United Nations. The chaos in Yemen has also provided fertile ground for extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and created new opportunities for intervention by Iran.
The United States is deeply engaged in this war. We are providing bombs the Saudi-led coalition is using, we are refueling their planes before they drop those bombs, and we are assisting with intelligence.
In far too many cases, the bomb’s targets have been civilian ones. In one of the more horrible recent instances, an American-made bomb obliterated a school bus full of young boys, killing dozens and wounding many more. A CNN report found evidence that American weapons have been used in a string of such deadly attacks on civilians since the war began.
Yet last month, responding to congressional concerns, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially certified to Congress — and Secretary of Defense James Mattis affirmed — that the Saudis and Emiratis are making “every effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.”
The data refute these claims. According to the independent monitoring group Yemen Data Project, between March 2015 and March 2018, more than 30 percent of the Saudi-led coalition’s targets have been nonmilitary. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, civilian deaths in one region increased by more than 160 percent over the summer from earlier in the year.
People inside the administration understand these facts. Several days after Mr. Pompeo issued the certification, The Wall Street Journal reported that he had overruled the State Department’s own regional and military experts, siding instead with members of his legislative affairs staff who argued that not certifying could endanger United States arms sales to the Saudis and Emiratis. President Trump himself echoed this logic when asked about the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, claiming that the Saudis are spending “$110 billion” on military equipment.
It gets worse. The Intercept reported that a former lobbyist for the arms manufacturer Raytheon, which stands to make billions of dollars from those sales, leads Mr. Pompeo’s legislative affairs staff.
The administration defends our engagement in Yemen by overstating Iranian support for the Houthi rebels. But the fact is that the relationship between Iran and the Houthis has only strengthened with the intensification of the war. The war is creating the very problem the administration claims to want to solve.
The war is also undermining the broader effort against violent extremists. A 2016 State Department report found that the conflict between Saudi-led forces and the Houthi insurgents had helped Al Qaeda and the Islamic State’s Yemen branch “deepen their inroads across much of the country.” As the head of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, said in a recent interview, “The winners are the extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.”
Above and beyond the catastrophe that this war has created, there is the fact that American engagement there has not been authorized by Congress, and is therefore unconstitutional. Article I of the Constitution clearly states that it is Congress, not the president, that has the power to declare war. Over many years, Congress has allowed that power to ebb. That must change.
In February, along with two of my colleagues, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, I introduced Senate Joint Resolution 54, calling on the president to withdraw from the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We did this for two reasons. The first is that the war is a strategic and moral disaster for the United States. The second is that the time is long overdue for Congress to reassert authority over matters of war.
The Senate voted 55 to 44 to delay consideration of the resolution. Since then, this crisis has only worsened and our complicity become even greater.
Next month, I intend to bring that resolution back to the floor. We will be adding more co-sponsors, and colleagues in the House have offered a similar measure. The brutal murder of Mr. Khashoggi demands that we make clear that United States support for Saudi Arabia is not unconditional.
I very much hope that Congress will act, that we will finally take seriously our congressional duty, end our support for the carnage in Yemen, and send the message that human lives are worth more than profits for arms manufacturers.
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RSN: Muhammad bin Salman: A Coup Is in Order |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36478"><span class="small">John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 25 October 2018 11:04 |
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Kiriakou writes: "On the morning after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi went missing after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a former CIA colleague called me with two questions, the first rhetorical: 'Is this the worst-planned and worst-executed operation you've ever seen?' It certainly was. And 'How long do think it's going to take before this thing brings down [Saudi crown prince] Muhammad bin Salman?' That likely won't happen."
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (photo: Getty)
Muhammad bin Salman: A Coup Is in Order
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
25 October 18
 n the morning after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi went missing after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a former CIA colleague called me with two questions, the first rhetorical: “Is this the worst-planned and worst-executed operation you’ve ever seen?" It certainly was. And “How long do think it’s going to take before this thing brings down [Saudi crown prince] Muhammad bin Salman?” That likely won’t happen.
First, let me get my own personal biases out of the way. I don’t like the Saudi government. I don’t respect it. If I had my druthers, I’d tell the Saudis to drink their oil.
My first overseas tour, when I was with the CIA, was Saudi Arabia, during the first Gulf War. There were two things that have stuck with me for the past 28 years. I just assumed the Saudis would be friendly and grateful, because we had gone there to protect their country, and indeed we did. Instead, they were cold, rude, and mean. Finally, I confronted one of the guards. I said, “What’s your problem, with this attitude?” He said, “You are hired help. You are nothing more. You were paid money to come here and protect the oil fields. Don’t expect thanks. You’ve been paid.” He was right. This is not a mutual relationship based upon trust and affection. This is weapons for oil and nothing else.
The other thing that struck me was when I was the Human Rights Officer in Riyadh. The ambassador asked me to attend a beheading and to document it for the Human Rights report. I went to the mosque at what’s called “Chop Chop Square” in central Riyadh. A large crowd had already gathered. If Saudi attendees see that you are a foreigner, they push you to the front, because they want you to see how justice is done in Saudi Arabia. That’s what happened with me. The crowd pushed me right up to the execution site.
Two policemen brought the condemned man out. He had been convicted of drug smuggling. He had clearly been drugged. He couldn’t walk. He was drooling. The two Saudi policemen at his side forced him to his knees and put his head and neck on a chopping block. A masked executioner came out from the mosque with an enormous curved sword that was intricately carved and, I learned later, was a gift from the crown prince.
Without breaking stride, he walked across the raised area where the condemned man had been placed, put his arm in the air, and chopped. The head fell into a basket, the body fell off to the side, and everybody dispersed after shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” It was sickening.
But let’s get back to Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi apparently was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for the express purpose of being murdered. A resident of Arlington, Virginia, he had become engaged to a Turkish woman and he wanted to register the engagement with the Saudi government as is required by Saudi law. (Khashoggi’s family is of Turkish origin. He thus had no Bedouin tribal structure in Saudi Arabia for Muhammad bin Salman to worry about appeasing once the murder was accomplished.) In Washington, Khashoggi was told that the form had to be filled out in Istanbul. He only went there reluctantly, telling his fiancé that if he didn’t exit the consulate in 20 minutes she should call the police. His body still has not been found.
There are several things about this case that are fascinating to me, and the story is much larger than just Jamal Khashoggi. First, within days of his disappearance, Turkish authorities began talking about video and audio, including recordings of Saudi assassins torturing Khashoggi, cutting off his fingers, and then actually chopping him up while he was still alive. One Turkish government official said Khashoggi’s Apple watch recorded the event. That was laughable. What we really saw was, essentially, an admission by the Turkish government that it has the Saudi consulate in Istanbul wired for audio and video. The Turks must have had a very good reason for exposing what’s known in the spy world as “sources and methods.”
Sure, every country spies on every other country. But why blow a major intelligence collection operation over one dead journalist? It’s because, again, the case is bigger than just Jamal Khashoggi.
Second, Muhammad bin Salman had to call presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to ask why anybody even cared about the murder. Why were otherwise friendly members of Congress making statements and using words like “sanctions” and “crime?” It was a mystery. As I said, Khashoggi had no tribal backing in Saudi Arabia and he wasn’t a US citizen, so why should anybody care about him? I don’t know what Kushner’s answer was, but that Muhammad bin Salman couldn’t figure out on his own that you shouldn’t go around kidnapping, murdering, and dismembering journalists is astounding. That Khashoggi was a US green card holder and a columnist for the Washington Post apparently never occurred to him.
Third is the question of why the Turks would put so much into the investigation. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a nationally-televised speech condemning the killing, he assigned the Turkish National Intelligence Service to carry out the investigation, he invited the FBI in to assist, and he strong-armed the Saudi government into allowing the Turks access to the Saudi consulate and the consul’s house (he had already fled to Saudi Arabia) to look for evidence.
The reason for all of this is likely geostrategic. The Turks hate the Saudis, their rivals for regional domination. The Turks have sided with the Qataris in their ongoing struggle against the Saudis. And the Turks are on the opposite side of the war in Syria, where the Saudis support what some of my former CIA colleagues call the “moderate wing” of al-Qaeda. Erdogan sees the Khashoggi killing as a golden opportunity to knock the Saudis down a peg or two, curry favor with the United States, and begin to rehabilitate his own reputation in the international press, following a roundup of journalists after a coup attempt against him in 2016. It’s a no-lose situation for the Turks.
None of that, however, solves any of the problems caused so far by Muhammad bin Salman. The crown prince is only in his early 30s, his elderly father, the king, is unlikely to be on the scene much longer, and Muhammad bin Salman already has either arrested or exiled pretty much any family member who could pose a threat to his authority. He’s launched a genocidal war in Yemen that the United Nations says could lead to the starvation of as many as 14 million people, he has supported and financed Islamist extremists in Syria, and he has worked to overthrow the royal family of Qatar. Muhammad bin Salman simply has to go.
I’m not going to advocate an assassination attempt against the crown prince. But I do advocate a coup against him. This is one of those moments in history where preemptive action could save perhaps millions of lives. There’s been a perfect storm of events that have brought us to a point where it’s actually possible. If you could go back in time, before the genocides, would you arrest and remove Hitler? Mao? Pol Pot? Pinochet? I would.
CIA Director Gina Haspel traveled to Turkey earlier this week, apparently to discuss the Khashoggi case with the Turks. I was disappointed to read about that trip. If the CIA believed that it was time for Muhammad bin Salman to go, she would have instead gone to Riyadh to make the demand. That could still happen. If it doesn’t, Muhammad bin Salman will survive, millions of Yemenis will starve to death, Syria will remain a basket case, and the rest of us will soon forget the name Jamal Khashoggi. There’s a historic opportunity here. Let’s hope it’s not squandered.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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xplosive devices and/or suspicious packages were sent to a number of major Democratic Party-linked figures this week, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, philanthropist and financier George Soros, former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and former CIA chief John Brennan. 
