tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64013227052178131472024-02-07T11:45:44.693-08:00Project to Enforce the Geneva ConventionsHolding governments and people accountable for war crimes under the Geneva Convention and United States Law.Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-79101987116455130242013-04-30T21:00:00.001-07:002013-04-30T21:00:10.629-07:00Students in Compton, CA offer new resources<a href="http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/Criminal-Justice-Links-s/399.htm">http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/Criminal-Justice-Links-s/399.htm</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Here's the message from the counselor:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">My name is Joan - I'm a counselor at Compton Community Center. The kids have been doing research for a project on obeying laws and during their searching for resources, they found your page </span><a href="http://pegc.us/links.html" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" target="_blank">http://pegc.us/links.html</a><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">They also found a great website, </span><a href="http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/Criminal-Justice-Links-s/399.htm" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" target="_blank">http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/<wbr></wbr>Criminal-Justice-Links-s/399.<wbr></wbr>htm</a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"> that's has a long list of resources on criminal justice ; would you mind adding it to your page? We think it would be a great help for others and I would love to show the kids that their hard work paid off.</span><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">I hope that you find their newly discovered resource useful. Shoot me an email if you get a chance to update and thanks again for having such a nice site.</span><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Enjoy your week !</span><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">-Joan</span><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;" /><a href="http://enrichingkids.com/">enrichingkids.com</a>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-37873362991762872522013-04-15T20:00:00.000-07:002013-04-15T20:00:18.405-07:00Guantanamo Geneva <a href="http://gtmoblog.blogspot.com/">http://gtmoblog.blogspot.com/</a>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-16237929640113682892012-03-26T01:00:00.000-07:002012-03-26T01:00:53.877-07:00Haridimos Thravalos on Hamdan, Conspiracy, and History<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">From <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/about/">Benjamin Wittes</a>, <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/03/haridimos-thravalos-on-hamdan-conspiracy-and-history/">Lawfare</a>: </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">It isn’t every day that someone sends me a memo outlining how a four-justice plurality of the Supreme Court got a key historical point wrong in a major case–much less does so convincingly. But that is what the following article by one Haridimos V. Thravalos claims about the discussion in the plurality opinion in </span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Hamdan</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> concerning whether conspiracy has been historically considered a war crime triable by commission. This point is important; indeed, as Thravalos explains, it is currently being contested in the courts. How those cases turn out will determine whether the crime will be available to prosecutors in military commission cases going forward.</span> </div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-35361424572916094602012-02-12T02:11:00.000-08:002012-02-12T02:11:20.831-08:00The Green(wash)ing of Guantanamo Bay<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsworldnation/949842-227/the-greening-of-guantanamo-bay.html">http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsworldnation/949842-227/the-greening-of-guantanamo-bay.html</a> <br />
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Please read the original to honor the author. -ed.<br />
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border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; float: none !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; max-height: 600px; max-width: 333px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important; width: auto !important;" /><div style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px !important; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px; text-align: left;">A view of the wind turbines at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is seen October 12, 2011. (Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta/U.S. Navy/MCT)</div><div class="photo-details" style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 11px !important; height: 20px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px; text-align: left;"><a class="enlargeImg" href="http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsworldnation/949842-227/the-greening-of-guantanamo-bay.html#" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: url(http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/csp/cms/sites/Telegraph/assets/images/icons/enlarge.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #071554; display: block; float: left; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 2px; width: 100px;">Enlarge</a></div></div></div></div><br style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><div class="freeHTML-wrap" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 10px;"></div><div class="sidebarAd" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; display: inline; float: right; height: 250px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;"><div id="google_ads_div_Tele300x250-2_ad_container" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><ins style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline-table; height: 250px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; width: 300px;"><ins style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: block; height: 250px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; width: 300px;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_Tele300x250-2" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_Tele300x250-2" scrolling="no" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px;" width="300"></iframe></ins></ins></div></div><br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /><table align="RIGHT" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 300px;"><tbody style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
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</tbody></table></div><div class="bodytxt" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top !important;"><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – Solar-powered lights serve as sentries where U.S. Marines once faced-off along the Cuban frontier. A team of Navy cops now rides bikes rather than gas-guzzling patrol cars in the searing Caribbean sunshine.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">In this remote corner of Cuba that is better known as a lab for Pentagon justice and interrogation, the U.S. Navy has been quietly engaging in more low-profile offshore experimentation – seeking environmentally friendly alternatives to reduce its whopping $100,000 a day fossil fuel dependence.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">It’s a Navy-wide goal to halve dependence on fossil fuels by 2020. But the greening of Gitmo, as this base is known, comes with a particular challenge.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">The base that today houses 6,000 people makes all its own electricity and desalinates its own water. It has done so ever since the 1960s when Rear Adm. John Bulkeley, then base commander, faced down Fidel Castro and cut off the naval station from Cuba’s water and power supply.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Everything from diesel fuel to spare parts arrives by ship or aircraft, more than tripling the price of power, according to base estimates.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">“From my perspective certainly the greening of Gitmo is important,” says U.S. Navy Capt. Kirk Hibbert, the base commander. National security is paramount, he said, but the Navy mandate to curb consumption “has an effect on almost everything we do here.”</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Hibbert’s the man who put a pair of Navy cops on bikes to patrol the base rather than sit inside air-conditioned sport utility vehicles, an $800 a year savings that sends a symbolic message. And it’s been on his watch that a contractor is building a huge solar array behind the high school.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Guantanamo can strike visitors as a small slice of Americana, with its trailer parks and tract housing, a hilltop church, McDonald’s, cinemas and schools. But it’s a base behind a Cuban minefield with the Navy controlling who may come and who may go and who gets water and electricity.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Commanders like to compare it to a ship at sea – except this one is towing the most expensive prison on earth. By base estimates, it costs $32,000 a day, or $11.7 million a year, to keep the lights on and water flowing to the 171 captives at the Pentagon’s prison camps and 1,850 U.S. forces and contractors who work there.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">The Defense Department set up the detention center a decade ago, temporarily, at a time when the Navy was already tinkering with energy efficiencies.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">In 2005, a Massachusetts firm installed four 270-foot-tall windmills on Guantanamo’s highest hill with visions of capturing up to 25 percent of the base’s power consumption from the Caribbean trade winds. But that analysis did not consider the never-ending nature of detention operations here, a venture that tripled the base population and sent construction costs soaring from the coastal prison camps to the crude war court compound built atop an abandoned airfield.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">“We get a lot of attention here because we are such an expensive base in the Navy,” said Arthur Torley, a senior civilian worker at Guantanamo’s version of a small town Department of Public Works. “Gitmo, to me, is even more of a priority because of the expense. They would much rather spend money fixing planes and ships than dumping fuel into Gitmo.”</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">So he’s got his workers using a fleet of 24 solar-powered minis, squat little electrical vans with panels on their roofs.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">They arrived this summer, and can go about 35 miles before needing a charge, just about right for a week’s worth of work on the 45-square-mile outpost.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Hibbard cautions against seeing the base as a site for random experimentation, of “just taking stuff and throwing it up against the wall and seeing what sticks.” Because it’s remote, and because importing goods and services is so expensive, the Navy engages in “a lot of analysis” ahead of time to figure out what might work.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">But Guantanamo’s location – in the tropics straddling a bay – does make it fertile ground for innovations such as these:</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Two Florida firms, Solar Source of Tampa and TerraSmart of Fort Myers, are the contractor and supplier of a 1,200-panel solar array behind the base high school, just below the scrubby nine-hole golf course. It’s meant to produce 430,000 kilowatt hours a year and power the base’s popular no-charge gym, which doubles as a hurricane shelter.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">There also have been email exchanges about whether the base could grow algae, as biofuel, inside a floating field of waste-water discharged into Guantanamo Bay. “NASA scientists are exploring this technology,” says the base spokesman Terence Peck. “No decisions have been made for experimental locations as of yet.”</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">In 2007, a public works officer bought a bioreactor off the Internet and tried his hand at extracting fuel from used cooking oil. It was abandoned after eight months, according to environmental director Mike McCord, as too labor-intensive and potentially dangerous because of the chemicals needed for the conversion process.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">The Navy put in artificial turf at Cooper Field, the outdoor sports complex, to save on the fuel for desalinating water for the baseball diamond and soccer pitch.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Guantanamo is also the first Navy base in the southeast region – stretching from Fort Worth, Texas, to Charleston, S.C., to Cuba – to introduce mock utility bills.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Since the military picks up the troops’ tab, the faux bills are meant to shock sailors and their families into conserving by estimating base household power costs. They come in at nearly 3.5 times the price of an average U.S. household.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">The bills have had the desired “wow!” effect. Guantanamo human resources worker Ambroshia Jefferson-Smith felt her stomach turn in October when she got her $1,021.79 mock bill for a month of power at the single-story ranch-style house she shares with her 15-year-old son, five television sets and a cat.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">“It’s like coming home when you have been on holiday and getting that big credit card bill,” she said. “You don’t see anything tangible there, and you realize you have consumed a lot of electricity and water.”</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">By her estimate, the bill would be seven times the sum she’d pay back home in Mississippi. So now she makes sure all the TVs are turned off, including the one on the backyard patio, and lowers the AC before she heads to work.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Conservation awareness is a work in progress. And the mock bills, like the Navy cops on bikes, are largely symbolic. The prison camps commander, the most senior officer on the base, has one of the biggest houses – and one of the biggest household bills, $2,093.67 in December, one of the coolest months in Cuba.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">Another military unit here has joined the movement.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">The Marine major in charge of the unit that monitors the 17.4 miles of fence line surrounding the base agreed to let the Public Works department replace a third of the floodlights with solar-powered LED lights. They’re still on the electrical grid in case of too many gloomy or rainy days in a row. But they haven’t needed to use the grid yet.</div><div class="Telegraph-BodyText" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 8px;">“I don’t know what they’re doing along the Mexican border,” Torley said. “But the Marines were on board with all the energy stuff. They couldn’t tell a difference.</div></div></div><br />
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</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-22861527362655076772012-01-14T23:37:00.000-08:002012-01-14T23:39:36.199-08:00Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved: The Jurist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://jurist.org/forum/2012/01/denbeaux-stratton-winchester.php">Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved</a></b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span> <br />
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<div style="line-height: 17px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;">JURIST Guest Columnists <a href="http://law.shu.edu/Faculty/display-profile.cfm?customel_datapageid_4018=16006" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mark Denbeaux</a>, Nick Stratton and Lauren Winchester of Seton Hall University School of Law say the right to a meaningful habeas corpus proceeding by Guantanamo detainees has been complicated by a recent decision making it more difficult for detainees to challenge the evidence against them...</span><br />
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</tbody></table><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><strong>W</strong>ith the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in <a href="http://jurist.org/paperchase/2011/11/dc-circuit-overturns-release-of-guantanamo-detainee.php" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Latif v. Obama</a>on October 14, 2011, the right to a meaningful habeas corpus proceeding established in<a href="http://jurist.org/paperchase/2008/06/supreme-court-rules-guantanamo.php" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Boumediene v. Bush</a> is now a nullity. By solving the puzzle caused by the voluminous redactions in the 112 page opinion, understanding prior habeas case law, and pondering evidentiary standards, it became apparent how flimsy the record was upon which this crucially important decision rests. A habeas petition can now be denied when the government relies on a single document — an interrogation report — compiled in what the dissent describes as "the fog of war." In addition, after <em>Latif</em>, district court judges are required to view reports by interrogators containing translated material as accurate, shifting the burden to the detainee to prove inaccuracy. Subject to this high burden and with limited resources, the detainee will be left challenging the credibility of the subject of the interrogation — himself. Further, through muddled vocabulary and misapplied hypotheticals, the majority hides the fact that the presumption's application to Latif's interrogation report will prevent him from challenging the only evidence against him. The effect of the presumption on all detainees who are recorded as having given incriminating statements in their interrogations is the creation of a Catch-22.</span><br />
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<strong>How to Overturn a District Court Judge Who Did Not Clearly Err</strong></span><br />
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</b> Since the outset of habeas proceedings, district court judges have assessed the reliability of intelligence documents against claims of mistranslation and lack of corroboration. The DC Circuit has upheld a number of these findings (<a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1919795851550044254" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Barhoumi v. Obama</a>, <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2504429890215737955" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Al Alwi v. Obama</a>, <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3634415318804553765" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Khan v. Obama</a>), and even overturned one reliability finding (<a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9483045650136058304" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Bensayah v. Obama</a>). Dissenting Judge David Tatel, however, noted that <em>Latif</em> contains a feature not present in the others: the government lost because the district court found the dispositive government report to be unreliable.</span><br />
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Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif is a Yemeni citizen who was seized by Pakistani authorities and held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since January 2002. In his July 21, 2010 <a href="http://jurist.org/paperchase/2010/07/federal-judge-grants-yemeni-guantanamo-detainees-habeas-petition.php" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">decision</a>, Judge Kennedy granted Latif's habeas petition, concluding that the government failed to demonstrate Latif's detention is lawful because it primarily relied on a document that was not sufficiently reliable, the document had no corroboration, and Latif's alternative story to explain his travel was at least corroborated by medical records. Instead of reviewing Judge Kennedy's thorough findings of fact for clear error, the DC Circuit reviewed <em>de novo</em> his decision not to give the government document a presumption of accuracy. In so doing, the DC Circuit avoided ruling on the merits of Judge Kennedy's determination that the report was unreliable. The majority disguises the fact that it could not overturn Judge Kennedy on the merits by creating a new, and confusing, rule of law.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
<strong>The Meaning of the Presumption and its Practical Application in the Guantanamo Context</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b> The DC Circuit's mandated use of the presumption of regularity in intelligence reports is a covert attempt to circumvent the intent of <em>Boumediene</em>. According to the majority, the presumption presumes the interrogator accurately recorded and compiled the report, though it does not presume the information from the third party source is true. In <em>Boumediene</em>, the Supreme Court stated several reasons why Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) fell short of the procedural protections of habeas proceedings. One reason was that the CSRTs accorded a presumption of validity to government evidence. Although the presumption applied by the DC Circuit is that of regularity (and sometimes accuracy), since there is no practical way for a detainee to rebut the presumption in the context of a report of his own interrogation (see paragraphs below), what was just a presumption of accuracy is, for all intents and purposes, a presumption of validity. Thus, <em>Latif</em> renders Article III habeas proceedings as limited as the flawed CSRT process.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
To illuminate how the presumption works, the majority utilizes a hypothetical that does not properly apply to Latif's case. The hypothetical depicts a government intelligence officer taking the statement of a third party informant. The majority would have us presume that the officer accurately wrote down what the third party informant said, though not presuming the informant's statement was itself true. This seems to make sense until you apply it to the facts of <em>Latif</em>. A fair and thorough reading of the opinion suggests that the document and information being redacted is a report from an interrogation of Latif that contains opponent-party admissions. The interrogation likely involved an interrogator, a translator, and Latif. Thus, the third party informant in the majority's hypothetical is Latif himself.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
The likelihood that this intelligence document is an interrogation report with admissions is confirmed by the fact that the <em>Latif</em> opinion redacts part of the un-redacted <em>Al-Bihani</em> opinion. The <em>Al-Bihani</em> opinion discusses how statements in interrogations are treated as opponent-party admissions and that translation does not affect their status as an admission, despite technically rendering the statements as hearsay. The incriminating statements at issue likely have something to do with Latif's travels and reasons for being at certain locations at certain times based on the district court's finding that his alternative story was plausible.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
Applying the presumption of accuracy to the interrogation report, the document upon which the government's entire case turns, the district court will have to deny Latif's petition. If the presumption is applied, the report is an accurate account of what the detainee said through a translator. Therefore, under <em>Al-Bihani</em>, we have an admission from a party-opponent in an accurate government document that does not lose its status as an admission even though a translator was used. This means the trier of fact is weighing an accurate account of an admission against the detainee's word and any other evidence he presents. The accuracy of the report (and therefore the accuracy of the recording of this admission) will not be questioned by the trier of fact unless and until the detainee presents <em>at least</em> a preponderance of the evidence rebutting the accuracy. Practically speaking, the detainee will not have any evidence beyond his own word to rebut this presumption of accuracy. Therefore, the trier of fact will likely be weighing an admission (usually weighed very heavily) against whatever evidence the detainee may be able to produce.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
Contrast the result if the presumption is not applied. The accuracy of the report is automatically in question, and the government must prove it is accurate. The detainee can give his account, and the trier of fact will balance what is before him to determine whether or not the report is an accurate account of the interrogation. By affording the detainee the opportunity to challenge the accuracy (and making the government prove the accuracy) at this lower standard, the trier of fact will necessarily view and scrutinize more evidence and make a determination based on the whole picture. If the report's accuracy is challenged, the admission is challenged, and the trier of fact does not have to afford the admission so much weight. Potential errors in interrogation reports would likely be brought up in all detainees' habeas cases, so the presumption would likely never apply to these types of government documents; however, this only requires the government to corroborate its reports and supply enough evidence so it does not have to rely solely on one report.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
Even in an everyday situation where information and evidence is much more readily available, a court may choose not to apply such a presumption. Consider a car accident where an officer comes on scene and one party only speaks Spanish, while the officer does not. Fortunately, another person on the scene speaks fluent Spanish and agrees to facilitate a conversation between the officer and the party. The officer's report of the conversation includes an admission from the party that he did not slow down when the light turned yellow even though he probably could have stopped. Leaving hearsay issues aside (hearsay is automatically allowed into evidence in all Guantanamo habeas cases) would the court automatically presume the accuracy of the report in this situation, or would the court consider using its discretion to not apply the presumption, and balance all of the factors and evidence available?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
<strong>The Catch-22</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b> Applying the presumption of accuracy, Latif is faced with a Catch-22. If the report is presumed accurate, then his only option is to attack the reliability of the non-government source, himself. Under the presumption of accuracy, Latif must show by at least by a preponderance of the evidence, that the interrogator did not accurately record or collect the information in the interrogation report. In order to do so, his attorneys would need to present evidence that, for practical purposes, is unavailable to them because there is little likelihood that the government will allow the attorneys to interview the interrogator and translator, and the existence (or continued existence) of a tape of the interrogation is highly doubtful. Instead, the sole evidence presented will be the detainee's own testimony that he did not say what is in the report, and in doing so he puts his own credibility on the line. Unable to rebut the presumption, Latif will need to argue that the underlying truth of the report is in question. However, the underlying truth goes to Latif's own admissions and statements. In order to attack his admission, Latif must argue either that he himself was not credible at the time (thus undermining his current credibility) or that other circumstances, such as torture or coercion, led to his admission (which the federal courts have been loath to acknowledge or consider in habeas proceedings).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
If a document is presumed to be accurately recorded, all statements within the document are presumed to have been said. Assuming Latif cannot rebut the accuracy, the only argument he has is to say that what he is reported to have said is false in substance. He can no longer argue that he did not say those words; instead he must prove the words he said were lies. The presumption requires that Latif call himself a liar for saying something he did not say, because he cannot adjudicate the fact that he never uttered the words. And this conundrum does not just apply to Latif; all detainees have interrogation reports, and many detainees will face this problem. The majority glosses over the issue by discussing "non-government sources" rather than the reality that detainees, in order to prove their testimony is credible enough to rebut the presumption, must prove they were incredible in the first instance.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
The consequence of the DC Circuit's decision in <em>Latif</em> is an opinion that singlehandedly destroyed the Great Writ for Guantanamo detainees. The <em>Latif</em> decision, and effective repeal of <em>Boumediene</em>, rests on a single interrogation report, translated and uncorroborated, now required to be viewed through a blurry lens of forced legitimacy. In the end, however, there is no legitimacy in a system that creates insurmountable hurdles to the ultimate goal — discerning the truth and ruling upon it.<br />
<em>Professor Denbeaux is the Director of the Seton Hall Law School <a href="http://law.shu.edu/ProgramsCenters/PublicIntGovServ/policyresearch/center-policy-research.cfm" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Center for Policy and Research</a>, which is best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. The Guantánamo report series is primarily produced by Seton Hall Law students of all levels. Nick Stratton and Lauren Winchester are research fellows for the Center.</em></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i><br />
</i> <strong>Suggested citation:</strong> Mark Denbeaux, Nick Stratton & Lauren Winchester <em>Latif v. Obama: Redaction Riddle Resolved</em>, JURIST - Forum, Jan. 14, 2012, http://jurist.org/forum/2012/01/denbeaux-stratton-winchester.php.<br />
<br />
</span><br />
<hr height="1" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; text-align: -webkit-auto;">This article was prepared for publication by <a href="http://jurist.org/jurist_search.php?q=Ben+Klaber" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Ben Klaber</a>, a senior editor for JURIST's academic commentary service. Please direct any questions or comments to him at <a href="mailto:academiccommentary@jurist.org" style="color: #6277bc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">academiccommentary@jurist.org</a></span><br />
<hr height="1" /><div style="font-size: 10pt;"></div></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></span></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-90034524487452762482012-01-07T23:31:00.000-08:002012-01-14T23:51:01.594-08:00A Tired Obsession With Military Detention Plagues American Politics – OpEd<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/07012012-a-tired-obsession-with-military-detention-plagues-american-politics-oped/">http://www.eurasiareview.com/07012012-a-tired-obsession-with-military-detention-plagues-american-politics-oped/</a> <br />
<br />
By Andy Worthington<br />
<br />
Please read the article at the link above.</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-22464194180437540742011-12-29T06:03:00.000-08:002011-12-29T06:03:09.788-08:00Detainee Legal Mail to Be Reviewed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<h3 class="byline" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0.583em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204632204577126791984789450.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204632204577126791984789450.html?mod=googlenews_wsj</a> </h3><div><br />
</div><div>Yet another slam against the most basic of rights, attorney-client privilege. What the government does to detainees, it will do to citizens as well. Recall the passage of NDAA recently, which allows detention of American citizens without trial. -ed.</div><h3 class="byline" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0.583em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><br />
</h3><h3 class="byline" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0.583em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">By <a href="http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=JESS+BRAVIN&bylinesearch=true" style="color: #093d72; letter-spacing: 1px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">JESS BRAVIN</a></h3><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The prison commander at Guantanamo Bay issued new rules allowing prison staff to examine mail between military-commission defendants and their lawyers, renewing a dispute with defense attorneys who say communications with their clients should remain confidential.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In a 21-page memorandum signed Tuesday, Rear Adm. David Woods said that teams—which include Defense Department attorneys and intelligence and law-enforcement personnel—assigned to review attorney-client correspondence for "physical contraband" such as paper clips could also seize and keep written materials if they "appear to violate" restrictions.</div><div class="insetCol3wide" style="background-color: white; clear: left; float: left; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 19px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 280px;"><div class="insetContent" style="border-top-color: rgb(112, 120, 124); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 4px; font-size: 1em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;"><h3 class="first" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #333333; font-size: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Related Reading</h3><ul style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><li style="background-image: url(http://s1.wsj.net/img/orange_bullet.gif); background-position: 0px 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #333333; font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;"><a class="icon pdf" href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/gitmo122811.pdf" style="color: #093d72; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Read the Order</a></strong></li>
</ul><ul style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><li style="background-image: url(http://s1.wsj.net/img/orange_bullet.gif); background-position: 0px 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #333333; font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a class="" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204528204577012910530239928.html" style="color: #093d72; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">Previously:</strong> Lawyers of Alleged 9/11 Conspirators Object to Mail Monitoring</a>(11/2/11)</li>
</ul></div></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Adm. Woods began tangling with defense attorneys soon after taking command earlier this year at the prison on the U.S. naval base in Cuba where suspected terrorists are held. He directed staff to seize the mail bins of detainees expected to face military-commission trials, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In a separate case involving the review of detainee mail, a military judge at Guantanamo ordered prison officials in a ruling last month to stop reading mail between Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the alleged planner of a 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and his attorneys. The military judge, Col. James Pohl, said that prison staff may review Mr. Nashiri's mail "only to ensure each page in the envelope is properly marked" as legal mail.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Defense attorneys criticized Adm. Woods's new rules, saying they could allow authorities to review drafts of legal motions or evidence they may wish to share with their clients.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">"Our clients are being charged with capital offenses," said Cmdr. Stephen Reyes, a military attorney who is representing Mr. Nashiri. "They have to be certain that the attorney-client privilege is kept."</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Cmdr. Reyes said he believed the new order applied to the Nashiri case. However, a Guantanamo spokeswoman said it didn't, because Mr. Nashiri is covered by Col. Pohl's ruling regarding his mail. Col. Pohl's ruling doesn't apply to other detainees, she said. The five detainees accused of planning the Sept. 11 attacks have no judge yet because charges against them haven't been finalized.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Adm. Woods's memorandum says the new rules are necessary for "safety and security" on the base. They define broad categories of information that detainees may not receive. However, the document also appears to include various exceptions.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The dispute is "symptomatic of the problems" created by military-commission trials, which Congress authorized to prosecute suspected terrorists without affording them rights required by federal courts, Cmdr. Reyes said. "Basic questions like this are already answered in federal court," he said. "Here, we're still arguing about it."</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">Write to </strong>Jess Bravin at <a class="" href="mailto:jess.bravin@wsj.com" style="color: #093d72; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;">jess.bravin@wsj.com</a></div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-57357735525873138122011-12-25T22:56:00.000-08:002011-12-25T23:02:57.322-08:00Will We Turn the UN Charter Into a Scrap of Paper?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">By Howard Meyer<br />
<br />
March 2003<br />
<br />
<a href="http://historynewsservice.org/2003/03/will-we-turn-the-u-n-charter-into-a-scrap-of-paper/">http://historynewsservice.org/2003/03/will-we-turn-the-u-n-charter-into-a-scrap-of-paper/</a> <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f5; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">“Just for a scrap of paper Great Britain [is] going to war,” Germany’s chancellor, Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg complained as the First World War began. The “scrap of paper” was the treaty that Germany disregarded when it invaded Belgium.</span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f9f9f5; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Because of such dismissal of international agreements, the esteem that Germany had enjoyed until then among neutral nations quickly changed to hostility and fear. Britain and France exploited the “scrap of paper” remark in the United States, where there then was respect for international treaties, which the 1787 Constitution had elevated to the “supreme Law of the Land.”</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f9f9f5; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Today we must ask, is the United States about to treat the Charter of the United Nations as a scrap of paper? We would be doing so if, without the authority of the U.N. Security Council, the administration were to launch American armed forces against Iraq.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f9f9f5; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://historynewsservice.org/2003/03/will-we-turn-the-u-n-charter-into-a-scrap-of-paper/">Please read the rest of the article here.</a><br />
<br />
See Doonesbury on Leaving Iraq<a href="http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2011/12/25" target="_blank"> here</a>. -ed </div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-63120410171855339982011-12-25T20:48:00.000-08:002011-12-25T20:50:50.471-08:00Signing Statement on the Budget Bill<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Please read the post at the link below, Wells C. Bennett's excellent Lawfare Blog. Congress is once again passing bills prohibiting the government from using Federal funds to transfer Guantanamo detainees to the US or other countries. Obama objects.<br />
<br />
Congress's insistence on passing these bills is canny. It takes 2/3s of the Senate to override a law, and you know that that will not happen anytime soon. -ed<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/4567/">http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/4567/</a> <br />
<br />
Text from the President's Signing Statement:<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; padding-left: 30px;">I have previously announced that it is the policy of my Administration, and in the interests of promoting transparency in Government, to indicate when a bill presented for Presidential signature includes provisions that are subject to well-founded constitutional objections. The Department of Justice has advised that a small number of provisions of H.R. 2055 raise constitutional concerns.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 30px;">In this bill, the Congress has once again included provisions that would bar the use of appropriated funds for transfers of Guantanamo detainees into the United States (section 8119 of Division A), as well as transfers to the custody or effective control of foreign countries unless specified conditions are met (section 8120 of Division A). These provisions are similar to others found in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. My Administration has repeatedly communicated my objections to these provisions, including my view that they could, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. In approving this bill, I reiterate the objections my Administration has raised regarding these provisions, my intent to interpret and apply them in a manner that avoids constitutional conflicts, and the promise that my Administration will continue to work towards their repeal.</div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-67323369389552325372011-12-25T20:44:00.000-08:002011-12-25T20:44:35.846-08:00Christmas Thoughts for Omar Khadr, Still Held at Guantánamo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
Please read the article on our worthy Andy Worthington's website.<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br />
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/12/25/christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo/">http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/12/25/christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo/</a><br />
<br />
It is also featured on the Eurasia Review site.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/25122011-christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo-oped/">http://www.eurasiareview.com/25122011-christmas-thoughts-for-omar-khadr-still-held-at-guantanamo-oped/</a> <br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-969485158581679272011-12-25T00:05:00.000-08:002011-12-25T00:05:12.481-08:00A Chilling Dismissal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: #dfe4e7; color: #1a2732; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Judge dismisses ex-captive's damage suit</span><br />
<br />
Likely an innocent man, Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Janko was held for 7 years in Guantánamo. The judge's holding in this case should give anyone pause regardless of political orientation. First, the judge calls Janko's captivity mere collateral damage from a "war." A partisan group in Afghanistan had supported groups such as Al Qaeda. Afghanistan certainly hadn't declared war on the United States. The Declaration of War on Afghanistan, illegitimate as it was, has denied this man eight years of his life, and likely health problems that will shorten his life expectancy. His family's wellbeing has certainly suffered in his absence. That's a lot of damage. Federal Judge Richard Leon says, well, too bad so sad.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Janko's is a sorrowful tale. First he was captured and tortured by Al Qaeda, whose operatives accused him of being an American spy, then he was held at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. <br style="background-color: #dfe4e7; color: #1a2732; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;" /><span style="background-color: #dfe4e7; color: #1a2732; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/24/2560370/judge-dismisses-ex-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy</span> </blockquote><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"War, by its very nature, victimizes many of those caught in its wake. Innocent civilians are invariably killed, and sometimes even mistakenly imprisoned. Our legal system was never designed to provide a remedy in our Courts for these inevitable tragedies, especially in a conflict like this where terrorists cunningly morph into their surroundings."- Federal Judge Richard Leon.</blockquote></div><a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/24/2560370/judge-dismisses-ex-guantanamo.html">http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/24/2560370/judge-dismisses-ex-guantanamo.html</a> </div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-49432758746288170452011-12-06T21:36:00.000-08:002011-12-06T21:36:28.018-08:00National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012: US Senate Removes Key Civil Liberties Protections from US Citizens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN01867:">S.1867</a> passed on December 1, 2011, will live in infamy.<br />
<br />
I popped off about it right away. <a href="http://olivialarosa.com/2011/11/us-senate-votes-to-repeal-key-1878-civil-liberties-act/">US Senate Votes to Repeal Key Civil Liberties Act.</a><br />
<br />
As did many other people who saw the same terrible things I did in this bill.<br />
<br />
As of December 6, 2011, President Obama renewed his threat to veto the bill. Not because it was too broad, no. Rather, the veto threat comes because it did not give the Chief Executive enough discretion.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This came from a correspondent.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The movie "The Siege" is based on what can happen when the Posse Comitatus Act is overruled by the president.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133952/" style="background-color: white; color: #147dba; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto;" target="_blank">http://www.imdb.com/title/<wbr></wbr>tt0133952/</a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">it was made in 1998 and does a pretty good job of forecasting today's events.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Alternet: </span><a href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/742169/senate_approves_indefinite_military_detention_of_us_citizens_in_america/">http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/742169/senate_approves_indefinite_military_detention_of_us_citizens_in_america/</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 25px;">The bill emerged from the Senate Armed services Committee without a hearing on the military detention provisions.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">How convenient for the hawks!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-79206405813110957662011-12-06T00:49:00.003-08:002011-12-06T00:49:57.522-08:00Boumediene Resources 2011<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Omar v. McHugh<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020110621232.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR">http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020110621232.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR</a></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-4844025403457594582011-12-04T00:17:00.000-08:002011-12-04T00:17:42.884-08:00High Court Declines Three Gitmo Detainee Appeals<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/04/35502.htm">http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/04/35502.htm</a><br />
<br />
April 2011<br />
<br />
[snip] posted by Olivia LaRosa<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">(CN) - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected petitions from three Guantanamo Bay detainees who say that they have been afforded only toothless attempts for habeas review of their cases. It deferred its answer on a fourth case.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> The three rejected appeals stem from the detentions of Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani and Adham Mohammed Ali Awad, who each lost their appeals in the D.C. Circuit. In addition to ensuring that the detainees in question stay at Guantanamo, the mostly conservative D.C. Circuit judges have not ordered the release of any other detainee.</span></blockquote></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-29452887548240863802011-12-04T00:06:00.000-08:002011-12-04T00:09:15.255-08:00Scorched Earth begins at Gitmo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Yeah yeah, they get steaks at Guantanamo.<br />
<br />
An article in opposition to the Geneva Conventions; read their talking points for later reference!<br />
<br />
<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 1.6em; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">Scorched Earth begins at Gitmo</h2><div><br />
</div><br />
Posted by Olivia LaRosa<br />
<a href="http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/42716">http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/42716</a><br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-41867994242916755612011-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:002011-12-04T00:01:49.020-08:00Uthman Resources 2011<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Uthman-Cert-petition-as-filed-09.23.11.pdf">http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Uthman-Cert-petition-as-filed-09.23.11.pdf</a><br />
<br />
LAWFARE<br />
<br />
By <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/experts/wittesb.aspx">Benjamin Wittes</a><br />
<br />
[snip]<br />
<blockquote>Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, a Guantanamo habeas petitioner, has filed a <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Uthman-Cert-petition-as-filed-09.23.11.pdf" style="color: #000033; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;">cert petition</a>, asking the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s March <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Uthman-opinion.pdf" style="color: #000033; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;">decision in his case</a>. The cert petition presents two questions for review: </blockquote><blockquote>1. Whether the Authorization of Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001) (‘‘AUMF”), authorizes the President to detain, indefinitely and possibly for the rest of his life, an individual who was not shown to have fought for al Qaeda, trained to fight for al Qaeda, or received or executed orders from al Qaeda, and was not claimed to have provided material support to al Qaeda. </blockquote><blockquote>2. Whether the AUMF, as applied by the court of appeals for the D.C. Circuit, violates the command of Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 768 (2008), that “[t]he habeas court . . . [will] . . . conduct a meaningful review of . . . the Executive’s power to detain” an individual, and violates the Suspension Clause, U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl. 2. </blockquote><blockquote>The petition presents a direct, frontal attack on the manner in which the D.C. Circuit assesses whether a detainee is “part of” an enemy group. Its principal reason for granting the writ begins as follows:</blockquote></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-61152360311061151842011-12-03T23:55:00.000-08:002011-12-06T00:49:00.484-08:00Latif Resources 2011<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/thoughts-on-latif-4-a-fuller-analysis/" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/thoughts-on-latif-4-a-fuller-analysis/</a><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">LAWFARE</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><a href="http://www.brookings.edu/experts/wittesb.aspx">Benjamin Wittes</a><br />
<br />
Posted by Olivia LaRosa</div><blockquote>Any serious effort to analyze this case must be cautious. While I have strong feelings about the decision, they are tentative ones. The number and scope of redactions in critical places is simpy too high to make confident assertions about the merits of the opinion. I am relatively certain that I agree with Judge Tatel. But as <a href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/thoughts-on-latif-1/" style="color: #000033; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial;">I said in an earlier post</a>, this judgment may be influenced to some degree by the fact that Judge Tatel–either intentionally or by luck–did a far better job than did Judge Brown in writing his opinion in such a manner that the government’s redactions would not dismember it. The result is that his argument reads more cohesively–though there are, to be sure, still many pages that are impossible to parse. </blockquote><blockquote>Here is my best effort to unpack the dispute: </blockquote><blockquote>Judge Brown, writing for herself and Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, declares that Judge Kennedy’s opinion has “three errors [that] require us to vacate that decision. </blockquote><blockquote>First, the court failed to accord an official government record a presumption of regularity. </blockquote><blockquote>Second, the district court failed to determine Latif’s credibility even though the court relied on his declaration to discredit the Government’s key evidence. See Al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2010). </blockquote><blockquote>Third, the court’s unduly atomized approach to the evidence is one we have rejected. . . . We remand so the district court can evaluate Latif’s credibility as needed in light of the totality of the evidence, including newly available evidence.” (Judge Henderson also writes separately to say that she would not bother with a remand but would reverse Judge Kennedy outright.)</blockquote></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-36191225432838779642011-12-03T23:49:00.000-08:002011-12-03T23:49:22.892-08:00War Court Website Leaves Out Key Details<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid=%7B6846d0e5-197e-4521-842f-a383cdab316a%7D">http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid=%7B6846d0e5-197e-4521-842f-a383cdab316a%7D</a><br />
<br />
Kindly go to their site to read this important story. For starters, they forgot to include <i>Boumediene</i>. ~Olivia LaRosa<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-90532139210292092632011-12-03T23:34:00.000-08:002011-12-03T23:44:49.870-08:00The legal implications of the al-Awlaki assassination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<h5 style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">By Tom Carter - World Socialist News Network<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" />10 October 2011</h5><div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/awla-o10.shtml">http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/awla-o10.shtml</a></div><div>Posted by Olivia LaRosa</div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">In September 30, 2011, the Obama administration, through its military and intelligence apparatus, assassinated US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.<br />
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the legal implications of the assertion by the Obama administration of the power to assassinate US citizens anywhere in the world.<br />
From the standpoint of US and international law as it has developed historically, the killing of al-Awlaki is entirely illegal. Extrajudicial executions violate nearly every fundamental democratic legal protection. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">At the request of the Obama administration, a lawsuit filed on al-Awlaki’s behalf was thrown out of US courts in September of last year on the basis of authoritarian precepts far exceeding any precedent in the country’s history. The decision in that case, left undisturbed, clears the way for the extrajudicial liquidation of opponents of the US government and, ultimately, for presidential dictatorship. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Background</b> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Anwar bin Nasser bin Abdulla al-Awlaki was born on April 21, 1971 in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the US. He maintained dual citizenship in the US and Yemen. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Conflicting accounts are given of al-Awlaki’s personal and political history. On the one hand, the US government alleges that he was a “senior recruiter for Al Qaeda” who was “directly involved” in various violent acts over the past two decades, including the Fort Hood shootings, the attempted Christmas Day “underwear bombing,” and others. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">On the other hand, Al-Awlaki presented himself as an unaffiliated religious scholar who, while advocating “jihad against the West,” claimed never to have participated in or advocated terrorism. Ultimately, no allegation against al-Awlaki was ever tested or proven in court.</blockquote></div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-24736468860994773212011-12-03T23:31:00.000-08:002011-12-03T23:31:45.766-08:00Wrestling with rights; Everyone deserves right to fair trial<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.alligator.org/opinion/editorials/article_0cd8bf80-1b19-11e1-904b-001cc4c03286.html">http://www.alligator.org/opinion/editorials/article_0cd8bf80-1b19-11e1-904b-001cc4c03286.html</a><br />
<br />
Posted by Olivia LaRosa<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">On Tuesday, Republican Sens. John McCain, Ariz., and Rand Paul, Ky., went head to head about an amendment to a proposed defense authorization bill.<br />
The amendment in question would potentially deny a civilian trial to American citizens who have been suspected of terrorism.<br />
According to The Hill, McCain argued that any "individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat."<br />
But how does denying a citizen of the U.S. the constitutional right to a civilian trial help to ensure that a threat does not continue?<br />
In fact, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that anyone, citizen or not, has the right to a civilian trial. This was correctly interpreted by the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush in 2008, ruling that the writ of habeas corpus applies to Guantanamo Bay detainees.<br />
From a philosophical standpoint, it would be unjust to deny rights to non-U.S. citizens. The Bill of Rights is based on the idea of natural rights, which apply to every human based upon their nature.<br />
To deny noncitizens the rights in the Bill of Rights would be to deny the existence of natural rights altogether. Instead, rights would not come from man's nature but from the government where that person lived. This would make rights arbitrary and subject to the whim of the politicians in power.</blockquote><div id="in-story" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="tncms-region-ads blox-filled" id="tncms-region-ads-in-story" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-68886347907628870352011-12-03T23:23:00.000-08:002011-12-03T23:23:26.934-08:00Susan Collins spreads central myth about the Constitution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/collins_5/singleton/">http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/collins_5/singleton/</a><br />
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Posted by D. Lagutaris aka Olivia LaRosa<br />
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RE: Boumediene v. Bush<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><u style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">First</strong></u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2008, issued a highly publicized opinion, in </span><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/06-1195.ZO.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Boumediene v. Bush</em></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">, which, by itself, makes clear how false is the claim that the Constitution applies only to Americans. The </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">Boumediene</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> Court held that it was unconstitutional for the Military Commissions Act to deny habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees,</span><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">none of whom was an American citizen</strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> (indeed, the detainees were all foreign nationals outside of the U.S.). If the Constitution applied only to U.S. citizens, that decision would obviously be impossible. What’s more, although the decision was 5-4, </span><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">none of the 9 Justices — and, indeed, not even the Bush administration — argued that the Constitution applies only to American citizens.</strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> That is such an inane, false, discredited proposition that no responsible person would ever make that claim.</span></blockquote></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-28919573764823787462011-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:002011-12-02T23:59:06.899-08:00US Senate Votes to Repeal Key 1878 Civil Liberties Act<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Please see the original at <a href="http://olivialarosa.com/2011/11/us-senate-votes-to-repeal-key-1878-civil-liberties-act/">http://olivialarosa.com/2011/11/us-senate-votes-to-repeal-key-1878-civil-liberties-act/</a><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHshvbhM4Y6DJMASpR8w-IRNeueZPFIyTuXjk8Y9iu-XAbre7v7lVaBLPrqFEU9CoFSMZiZ-iZbN1ghUiPHF4z_s894vDlVz_xq3xZvxQenVItsO0sVSGI8M-Pr7nWbNIQbwwGS2AZ4fI/s1600/civil-war-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHshvbhM4Y6DJMASpR8w-IRNeueZPFIyTuXjk8Y9iu-XAbre7v7lVaBLPrqFEU9CoFSMZiZ-iZbN1ghUiPHF4z_s894vDlVz_xq3xZvxQenVItsO0sVSGI8M-Pr7nWbNIQbwwGS2AZ4fI/s200/civil-war-002.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Union Army rests while hunting Rebel guerrillas</td></tr>
</tbody></table>By Olivia X. LaRosa, olivialarosa.com<br />
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<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">November 29, 2011 Oakland CA</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">My head is spinning. Sixty US Senators just voted for a bill that allows citizens to be detained without due process of law. (1) The military is assigned the authority to manage these US citizens as it pleases, out of the public eye. Likely many of them will end up in <a data-mce-href="http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153212" href="http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153212">private prisons</a> without recourse to any legal remedy.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">It kinda feels like a military-industrial-congressional complex coup.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Until now, I always thought that the Supreme Court would overturn such a law based on the precedent of Posse Comitatus Act. Now, I worry.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Posse Comitatus Act (2) was enabled in June of 1878. It forbids local law enforcement to call on the Army or Air Force to enforce the laws of the land.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Act was passed after the Tilden/Hayes election compromise, which heralded the end of Reconstruction. Federal Troops had remained stationed in the former Confederacy until 1877. They were withdrawn after Rutherford B. Hayes became President, as part of the Faustian bargain cut to give Hayes the nod.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Posse Comitatus Act protects states and inhabitants from the possibility of a military coup as well as limiting the imprisonment of political opponents.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Looks like we lost that one, folks.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">###</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">(1)<a data-mce-href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/senate-rejects-effort-to-strip-provisions-on-terror-suspects-from-defense-bill/2011/11/29/gIQAIC7V9N_print.html" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/senate-rejects-effort-to-strip-provisions-on-terror-suspects-from-defense-bill/2011/11/29/gIQAIC7V9N_print.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/senate-rejects-effort-to-strip-provisions-on-terror-suspects-from-defense-bill/2011/11/29/gIQAIC7V9N_print.html</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">(2) <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act</a></div></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-64215008714302590112011-12-02T23:50:00.000-08:002011-12-02T23:50:55.774-08:00Ten Years of Guantanamo Demands Our Action and Our Outrage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://warisacrime.org/content/ten-years-guantanamo-demands-our-action-and-our-outrage">http://warisacrime.org/content/ten-years-guantanamo-demands-our-action-and-our-outrage</a><br />
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Please read the entire article by Frida Berrigan at <a href="http://warisacrime.org/">WarisaCrime.org</a>, formerly <a href="http://afterdowningstreet.org/">AfterDowningStreet.org</a> at the link above.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;">I start with all this because I have been thinking about Guantanamo. The notorious and often forgotten gulag is in the news again this week because the Senate voted on Tuesday to retain a provision within the </span><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/11/29/battlefield_america_us_citizens_face_indefinite" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #005a8c; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">National Defense Authorization Act</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;"> that would allow the military detain terror suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial. In addition, the measure—which passed in a </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/senate-votes-to-let-military-detain-americans-indefinitely_n_1119473.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #005a8c; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">bipartisan show</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;"> of fear-mongering and brutality—would close the door to civilian trials for terror suspects and place restrictions on resettling the </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/guantanamo-detainees-cleared-for-release-but-left-in-limbo/2011/11/03/gIQAJivM3M_story.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #005a8c; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">dozens of men at Guantanamo</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;"> who have been cleared for release.</span></blockquote><br />
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</div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-724137692923282812011-12-02T21:40:00.000-08:002011-12-02T21:40:04.797-08:00Deranged US Senate Votes For Military Detention Of All Terror Suspects And Permanent Guantánamo – OpEdWritten by: <a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/andy-worthington/">Andy Worthington</a><br />
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December 2, 2011<br />
<a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.eurasiareview.com/02122011-deranged-us-senate-votes-for-military-detention-of-all-terror-suspects-and-permanent-guantanamo-oped/">Yesterday the shameful dinosaurs of the Senate</a> — hopelessly out of touch with reality, for the most part, and haunted by specters of their own making — approved, by 93 votes to 7, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (PDF), which contains a number of astonishingly alarming provisions — Sections 1031 and 1032, designed to make mandatory the indefinite military detention of terror suspects until the end of hostilities in a “war on terror” that seems to have no end (if they are identified as a member of al-Qaeda or an alleged affiliate, or have planned or carried out an attack on the United States), ending a long and entirely appropriate tradition of trying terror suspects in federal court for their alleged crimes, and Sections 1033 and 1034, which seek to prevent the closure of Guantánamo by imposing onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners, and banning the use of funds to purchase an alternative prison anywhere else. I have previously remarked on these depressing developments in articles in July and October, as they have had a horribly long period of gestation, in which no one with a grip on reality — and admiration for the law — has been able to wipe them out.<br />
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The four sections are connected, as cheerleaders for the mandatory military detention of terror suspects want them to be sent to Guantánamo, and have done, if I recall correctly, at least since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas plane bomber in 2009, was arrested, read his Miranda rights, and interrogated by the FBI. Recently, Abdulmutallab, who told his interrogators all they wanted to know without being held in military custody — and, for that matter, without being tortured, which is what the hardcore cheerleaders for military detention also want — was tried and convicted in a federal court.<br />
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Hundreds of other terror suspects have been successfully prosecuted in federal court, throughout the Bush years, and under Obama, but supporters of military custody like to forget this, as it conflicts with their notions, held since the aftermath of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s horrendous flight from the law, that terrorists are warriors. Underpinning it all is the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the founding document of the “war on terror,” passed the week after the 9/11 attacks. This authorizes the President to pursue anyone, anywhere who he thinks was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and it is a dreadfully open-ended excuse for endless war whose repeal I have long encouraged, but which some lawmakers have been itching to renew, even after the death of Osama bin Laden, and the obvious incentives for the winding-down of the ruinous, decade-long “war on terror.”<br />
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The fundamental opposition to the provision for the mandatory military custody of terror suspects<br />
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Depressingly, when it came to passing the Act, the world was treated to the unedifying spectacle of lawmakers arguing about whether the existing law — the AUMF, plus the Supreme Court’s 2004 ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that it authorizes detention until the end of hostilities — actually applies to Americans, and whether, on that basis, this new legislation does too. Their compromise was that it would authorize whatever already exists, which only made them look rather stupid, frankly. For evidence, check out this comment from Sen. Carl Levin, as mentioned in the New York Times. “We make clear that whatever the law is, it is unaffected by this language in our bill,” he said.<br />
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However, one of the even more extraordinary things about the Senate’s custody provisions is not only that they are a mangled, scrambled mess, but also that no one who will be required to obey them wants anything to do with them. The executive branch, the military, the FBI and the CIA — no one asked for this new policy. As Spencer Ackerman noted for Wired:<br />
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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opposes the maneuver. So does CIA Director David Petraeus, who usually commands deference from senators in both parties. Pretty much every security official has lined up against the Senate detention provisions, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who worry that they’ll get in the way of FBI investigations of domestic terrorists.<br />
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Also opposing the bill’s unwanted provisions are Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, Obama Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, 16 former interrogators and counterterrorism professionals, and 26 retired military leaders who, on Tuesday, urged Senators to support an amendment by Sen. Mark Udall, backed by Sen. Jim Webb, to strip all the troublesome provisions from the legislation (and also see Sen, Udall’s eminently sensible Washington Post op-ed). Despite this, the Udall amendment was defeated by 61 votes to 37 (with 16 Democrats voting against the amendment — see the breakdown of votes here).<br />
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In addition, President Obama has threatened to veto the bill, although whether he will remains to be seen. The mandatory military custody provisions, after all, have a get-out clause, as Andrew Cohen noted for the Atlantic a month ago, when he wrote:<br />
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Section 1032, to be applied in concert with Section 1031, contains a mandatory detention requirement for anyone “determined” (by the military) to be a member of al-Qaeda or its affiliates. It allows the executive branch, however, to “waive” this requirement by having the “Secretary of Defense … in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence” submit to Congress a written certificate that the waiver is in the “national security interests of the United States.” The executive branch, in other words, would practically have to do a song-and-dance on Capitol Hill to prosecute a terror suspect in civilian court.<br />
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Obama, of course, is no great defender of due process, as he had Osama bin Laden killed in a Wild West style and also approved the execution without any kind of charge or trial of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in Yemen, where he was producing irritating jihadist material in English on the Internet. However, it seems likely that his defense secretary, Leon Panetta, will indeed be forced to jump through hoops if the custody provisions are not removed.<br />
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I honesty find it hard to believe that these proposals even made it as far as they did, especially as Sen. Carl Levin was involved in drafting the legislation with the usual deranged suspects — Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Liebermann — plus torture advocate Sen. Kelly Ayote, who attempted to specifically reintroduce torture as official US policy in her own deranged bill, which was recently defeated. Astonishingly, the Senate Armed Services Committee, where this toxic brew was created, conjured it up in secret, which did not go down well with some of the lawmakers’ colleagues. Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially found his spine and spoke up against it, he soon remembered that it is his job to cave in on matters of importance, which he duly did, although others were not so easily swayed.<br />
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Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as Andrew Rosenthal explained in the New York Times, noted with horror that the provisions were “hashed out behind closed doors without consultation with his committee [he is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee], or the Intelligence Committee, or the Defense Department, the FBI or the intelligence community.” In addition, as Andrew Cohen explained:<br />
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Leahy, and California’s Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote Sen. Reid a letter requesting that the controversial provisions be removed from the NDAA. “We concur with the Administration’s view that mandatory military custody is ‘undue and dangerous,’” they wrote, “and that these provisions would ‘severely and recklessly undermine’ our Nation’s counterterrorism efforts.”<br />
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The provisions relating to Guantánamo and why they are also important<br />
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However, while a host of critics are lined up against the mandatory military custody aspects of the bill, far less attention, unfortunately, has been paid to the provisions preventing the closure of Guantánamo. As Andrew Cohen lamented a month ago, “I think Section 1034 [banning the use of any funds to buy an alternative prison] may be the worst of the lot — a triumph of fear and prejudice over pragmatic solutions. But it doesn’t appear to have raised the hackles of even those senators who are opposed to some of the other provisions. Go figure.”<br />
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Go figure, indeed. It may, perhaps, be slightly cynical of me to note that the story of Guantánamo involves foreigners and that Americans only wake up in any kind of numbers when legal monstrosities might apply to American citizens, but there does appear to be some truth in it. If it could be demonstrated that no American could possibly end up in mandatory military custody as a result of the Senate’s mad provisions, I would be prepared to wager that hardly any Americans would bat an eyelid.<br />
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As it is, I can only hope that the two sections relating to Guantánamo, and two other sections specifically criticized by the President’s advisors (in which Congress demanded detainee reviews from the executive branch) are subjected to a veto. To make it clear, Section 1033 (which ramps up unjustifiable restrictions already implemented by lawmakers) is entitled, “Requirements for certifications relating to the transfer of detainees at United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to foreign countries and other foreign entities,” and it stipulates that no transfer out of Guantánamo will be allowed “if there is a confirmed case of any individual who was detained at [Guantánamo] who was transferred to such foreign country or entity and subsequently engaged in any terrorist activity.”<br />
<br />
As noted above, Section 1034 (which repeats previous bans imposed by lawmakers) is entitled, “Prohibition on use of funds to construct or modify facilities in the United States to house detainees transferred from United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” prevents the closure of Guantánamo by stopping the President from buying or modifying an alternative facility elsewhere, and then there are the two other provisions, both new, and both largely unnoticed.<br />
<br />
Section 1035, entitled, “Procedures for periodic detention review of individuals detained at United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” requires the Secretary of Defense “to submit a report to Congress for implementing the periodic review process” established in the executive order of March this year, which, outrageously, authorized the indefinite detention without charge or trial — but with periodic reviews — of 46 of the remaining 171 prisoners, on the unacceptable basis that they were too dangerous to be released, but that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial.<br />
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Section 1036, entitled, “Procedures for Status Determinations,” states that, “Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report setting forth the procedures for determining the status of persons detained pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) for purposes of section 1031″ — meaning that it is supposed to establish, to the satisfaction of Congress, who will be subjected to mandatory military custody.<br />
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The response of the President’s Office, in its letter threatening a veto, spells out the administration’s opposition to these sections, and is of interest. The President’s advisors noted:<br />
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The certification and waiver, required by section 1033 before a detainee may be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to a foreign country, continue to hinder the Executive branch’s ability to exercise its military, national security, and foreign relations activities. While these provisions may be intended to be somewhat less restrictive than the analogous provisions in current law, they continue to pose unnecessary obstacles, effectively blocking transfers that would advance our national security interests, and would, in certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The Executive branch must have the flexibility to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers.<br />
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Section 1034′s ban on the use of funds to construct or modify a detention facility in the United States is an unwise intrusion on the military’s ability to transfer its detainees as operational needs dictate.<br />
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Section 1035 conflicts with the consensus-based interagency approach to detainee reviews required under Executive Order No. 13567, which establishes procedures to ensure that periodic review decisions are informed by the most comprehensive information and the considered views of all relevant agencies.<br />
<br />
Section 1036, in addition to imposing onerous requirements, conflicts with procedures for detainee reviews in the field that have been developed based on many years of experience by military officers and the Department of Defense.<br />
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The President’s advisors concluded:<br />
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In short, the matters addressed in these provisions are already well regulated by existing procedures and have traditionally been left to the discretion of the Executive branch.<br />
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Broadly speaking, the detention provisions in this bill micromanage the work of our experienced counterterrorism professionals, including our military commanders, intelligence professionals, seasoned counterterrorism prosecutors, or other operatives in the field. These professionals have successfully led a Government-wide effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents over two consecutive Administrations. The Administration believes strongly that it would be a mistake for Congress to overrule or limit the tactical flexibility of our Nation’s counterterrorism professionals.<br />
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This is not quite the end of the road for the NDAA, as it must now be consolidated with the version previously passed by the House of Representatives, which I wrote about here and here. However, it is almost certain that the President will soon be required to make clear what he thinks.<br />
<br />
If Obama is wavering, as is his habit, I would suggest that he takes note of the fact that the election season is nearly upon us, and that, as we approach that frenzy of hype and hyperbole, he needs do something to make his progressive supporters remember why they might want to vote for him, rather than just hoping — or presuming — that they will not vote against him. In short, the President needs to veto this bill, and stand up for US justice, and the still-pressing need to close Guantánamo, rather than doing as he has so often on national security issues, and caving in to pressure.<br />
<br />
<i>About the author:<br />
Andy Worthington<br />
<br />
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to his RSS feed (he can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see his definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate his work, feel free to make a donation.</i>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401322705217813147.post-20537463301601094782011-11-24T00:41:00.000-08:002011-11-24T00:41:32.701-08:00Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes<a href="http://www.legitgov.org/Bush-Blair-Found-Guilty-War-Crimes">Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes</a><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, '“DejaVu Sans”', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">23 Nov 2011 A War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President [sic] George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq war, Press TV reports. The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday. The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.</span></div>Olivia LaRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16478588278043360157noreply@blogger.com0