Talking Rights

I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

– Lewis Carroll

As the New York Times reports today, a federal appeals court yesterday found that accusations against a Uighur detainee held for more than six years at Guantanamo were based on bare and unverifiable claims.

“With some derision,” the three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents. In its ruling, the court quoted Lewis Carroll, saying, “This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true.”

The detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, was a fruit seller. He and 16 other Uighur detainees cannot be returned to China since there is a reasonable fear that they would be detained and tortured.

As close observers report, this case is not unusual. Only 8 percent of the 517 detainees at Guantanamo were described by the US government as Al Qaeda fighters according to a Seton Hall study. The same study, using only official documents, found that over hald had committed no hostile acts against the United States. Eighty-six percent were not captured by Americans, but were rather taken by Pakistan or the now-defunct Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, then handed over to US forces in exchange for bounties.

Very snarky indeed…

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags:   "Huzaifa Parhat" · "Lewis Carroll" · China · Guantanamo · snark · Uighur · war on terrorNo Comments.

Yesterday, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) gave a magnificent speech on the Senate floor in opposition to the FISA bill before that body. Among its other reprehensible provisions, the bill would give retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that fed information to the National Security Administration, without judicial warrant and without notifying the individuals.

But Dodd went much further than the bill, indicting all of the Bush administration’s human rights crimes: torture, extraordinary rendition, designating people “unlawful combatants” without recourse to any court, etc.

Here’s just a small excerpt:

… Controlled death. Outsourced torture. Secret prisons. Month-long sleep deprivations. The president’s personal power to hold whomever he likes for as long as he’d like.  It is as if we woke up in the middle of some Kafka-esque nightmare.

Have I gone wildly off-topic, Mr. President? Have I brought up a dozen unrelated issues?

I wish I had, Mr. President.  I wish that none of these stories were true.

But, we are deceiving ourselves when we talk about the U.S. attorneys issue, the habeas issue, the torture issue, the rendition issue, or the secrecy issue as if each were an isolated case! As if each one were an accident! When we speak of them as isolated, we are keeping our politics cripplingly small; and as long as we keep this small, the rule of men is winning.

There is only one issue here. Only one: the law issue.

Does the president serve the law, or does the law serve the president? Each insult to our Constitution comes from the same source; each springs from the same mindset; and if we attack this contempt for the law at any point, we will wound it at all points.

That is why I’m here today: Retroactive immunity is on the table today; but also at issue is the entire ideology that justifies it, the same ideology that defends torture and executive lawlessness. Immunity is a disgrace in itself, but it is far worse in what it represents. It tells us that some believe in the courts only so long as their verdict goes their way.  That some only believe in the rule of law, so long as exceptions are made at their desire.   It puts secrecy above sunshine and fiat above law.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags:   Bush Administration · Chris Dodd · extraordinary rendition · FISA · Guantanamo · torture · war on terror · waterboardingNo Comments.

Yet another example of all the things going unfunded while we are stuck fighting a misguided war in Iraq…

Cambodia genocide tribunal running out of money - Los Angeles Times

Plagued by long delays and corruption allegations, the special court prosecuting Cambodia’s former Khmer Rouge leaders on genocide charges is running short of money months before its first trial is set to start.

The court, which was set up by the United Nations and Cambodia’s government two years ago, needs $43.8 million to continue operating through 2009, administrators said Tuesday in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital…

Technorati Tags: Cambodia, genocide, justice

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.

In another first, legislators in New York just voted to require anyone showing a plastination exhibit to show where exactly the bodies came from. Senator Jim Alesi (R-Perinton) sponsored the bill, which mirrors similar efforts in California, Pennsylvania, Washington and Hawaii.

North Carolina may see similar legislation introduced next year.

Alesi told WROC-TV, “It’s human dignity and I think it’s also consumer protection because if people knew the origins, if they’re suspect, then they probably would be less likely to go to some kind of display like that.”

To listen in on what Premier’s stock holders are saying, click here. Essentially, a lot of grumping about the new legislation to regulate “Bodies” and infantile jokes about a proposed Premier “Playboy” exhibit…

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags:   China · Human Rights · plastinationNo Comments.

Today, North Carolina took one step closer to becoming the first state in the union to make torture and conspiracy to commit torture a crime. By a 4 to 3 vote, the Judiciary I Committee of the North Carolina House approved a bill meant to put a stop to the “extraordinary rendition” flights that begin in the Old North State.

Specifically, the bill would:

1. Create a crime called “torture” in the North Carolina statutes, and include the concept of conspiracy to commit torture;
2. Allow the Attorney General’s office to investigate conspiracy to commit torture as long as any part of the conspiracy was formed in North Carolina.

Supported by a tireless grassroots effort by NC Stop Torture Now and the American Civil Liberties Union, HB 2417 will now go to the House Appropriations Committee for a vote.

Funded by the Central Intelligence Agency and using local pilots, extraordinary rendition flights “disappear” individuals suspected of involvement in acts of terror. The detainees are brought to secret jails in countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, where torture is the norm.

Several cases have come to light that involve men innocent of any crime. Perhaps the best known involves German citizen Khaled El-Masri. Here’s the ACLU summary:

On January 23, 2004, El-Masri was taken from a hotel room in Skopje, Macedonia where he had been held for twenty-three days after being kidnapped by unidentified assailants. Mr. El-Masri was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to a building where he could hear the sound of airplanes. There, he was beaten and stripped. Unidentified men wearing ski masks dressed him in a jumpsuit and a diaper, and he was forced to lie face down inside a plane spread-eagled and strapped to the sides of the fuselage. Mr. El-Masri was sedated and awoke in a country he later learned to be Afghanistan.  For the next four months, Mr. El-Masri was held incommunicado in a secret prison north of Kabul known as the “salt pit” where he was repeatedly subjected to coercive interrogation. On the night of May 28, 2004, Mr. El-Masri was deposited on a hill in Macedonia. Mr. El-Masri was a victim of the “extraordinary rendition” program, but he was never charged with any crime. As best as people have been able to figure out, he was subjected to this ordeal because he shares the name of a person alleged by US authorities to have ties to Al-Qaeda.  Aviation documents show that a Boeing business jet operated by Aero Contractors took off from the Skopje Airport on January 23, 2004, the day Mr. El-Masri says they left Skopje. It landed in Baghdad and then flew on to Kabul, Afghanistan, not far from where Mr. El-Masri was held.

Many of the flights start at the Johnston County Municipal Airport, about an hour south of the state capitol in Raleigh.

I’m proud to say that my representative, Paul Luebke, championed this bill. The plan is to get the House Appropriations Committee to approve the bill, then bring it to the House floor for a vote before the end of July.

If you support the bill, call the committee’s chair, Mickey Michaux, to ask him to schedule HB 2417 for a hearing in during the week of June 30. His number is (919) 715-2528.

North Carolina residents should also call their Representative and ask him or her to support HB 2417. To find out who represents you, click here.

Interestingly, the Fayetteville Observer, which covers three of the country’s main military bases — Ft. Bragg (Army), Camp Lejeune (Marines) and Seymour Pope (Air Force) — came out in strong support of the bill today. This continues a strong and principled editorial position against torture.

The editorial is worth quoting in full:

Who we are: Anti-torture bill tells other whether North Carolina ‘gets it.’

If the vote goes off as scheduled, check, at the end of the day, and see which of your elected representatives voted against making North Carolina a torture-free zone. See who voted not to make it a felony to kidnap people and whisk them away, possibly to be tortured elsewhere.

If you’re guessing that this bill had its origins in a dispute over anti-terrorism tactics, you’re right. Remember the fuss over those mysterious flights out of Smithfield? But here are the salient facts: The bill applies to everyone, not just to government officials and their hirelings. If it passes, you can’t commit torture in North Carolina; we can’t torture; they can’t torture. You can’t “disappear” anyone in North Carolina, nor can we, or they. And what is wrong with that?

The bill can do no harm. Even if it’s true that we can’t adequately defend ourselves without becoming just as low and brutal as our enemies, Congress can pass itself a bill explicitly permitting what this bill explicitly forbids, and federal law will, as usual, trump state law.

This bill doesn’t pretend to solve all problems or settle all debates. Its primary effect will be simply to let the rest of America and the world know who we are — and what we are not.

North Carolina cannot singlehandedly put a stop to “renditioning” and “enhanced interrogation” and all those other atrocities for which so many cynical euphemisms have been coined. But it can say “Not here” and “Not in our name,” then leave it to others, if they are so inclined, to explain why one state’s ban on a couple of police-state, goon squad tactics cannot be allowed to stand.

Actually, it’s not the bill that will make that statement. It’s the vote that matters, because we are making a statement about ourselves no matter which way it goes, just as preventing a House judiciary panel vote on it would make a statement.

At the end of this day, more people will know more about us — our values, our honor, our humanity — than they knew when they went to bed last night. And we’ll know more about ourselves.

This is no epic battle. Tomorrow will be much like today. The question, after trying to reconcile what’s been going on for the past half-decade with our history’s most famous declarations about the rights of men and our binding covenants with other nations, is how we’ll feel when next we look into a mirror.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.

J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard is required listening… the speech is in three parts:

[youtube]9kh_tSiqL1U [/youtube]

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.

Well, not quite — but the network of people who have opposed the for-profit use of unclaimed and “un-donated” bodies in plastination exhibits scored several impressive victories recently.

After an extensive investigation of the origin of the bodies, the New York State Attorney General announced on May 29 that Premier had agreed to a settlement that acknowledged that the company could not disprove allegations that its bodies had been obtained through informed consent.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said, “The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China. Despite repeated denials, we now know that Premier itself cannot demonstrate the circumstances that led to the death of the individuals. Nor is Premier able to establish that these people consented to their remains being used in this manner. Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern. This settlement is a start.”

Under the settlement, Premier has to obtain written documentation demonstrating the source of each body and body part, the cause of death, and the decedent’s consent to the use of his or her body before displaying a body as part of any New York exhibit. Additionally, Premier has to offer refunds to all customers who can establish that they attended the New York exhibition and who represent that they would not have done so if they had known of the questionable origins of the bodies and parts on display.

Premier also had to hire an independent monitor — at its own expense and for a term of 2 years — to ensure that the terms of the settlement are followed and oversee the refund process.

A month earlier, Congressman Todd Akin (R-Mo) introduced a bill that would prohibit the importation into the US of plastinated remains.

The bill follows similar legislation proposed in Pennsylvania and California to regulate this shady business and ensure that companies obtain consent before putting remains on display.

Plastination exhibits continue to draw in visitors on the dubious (at best) claims that they have obtained consent. But consumers seem to be wising up. For instance, the final visitor count in Pittsburgh was 267,000 according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Initially, the Carnegie Science Center hoped to draw 300,000 visitors during the seven-month run.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: 1 Comment

The 1998 Good Friday agreement, which provided the blueprint for a peaceful resolution to a decades-old conflict, has meant an end to the daily killings that used to define life in Northern Ireland. But the fighting persists in different ways, most visibly through the outdoor murals maintained in many neighborhoods.

In Catholic neighborhoods, murals celebrate the Republican cause or the legacy of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Perhaps the most well-known one marks the office of Sinn Fein, the political party that came out of the IRA.

In Protestant neighborhoods, the iconography is much more aggressive and militaristic. For example, this mural was just off the Shankill Road and celebrates the paramilitaries who became notorious for killing people, primarily Catholics but also Protestants, at random (and this is not to say that the IRA did not engage in bombing that took innocent lives of both faiths — they certainly did).

In contrast, some of the Republican murals are more romantic, evoking a kind of essential Ireland that stands for unity and the end of the British presence. I saw this mural in the Short Strand neighborhood of Belfast, near the Central train station. The portraits belong to known Republican and IRA heroes, including some of the men who died in the 1981 hunger strike.

Not all of the “dialectical art” is strictly political. Belfastians also do battle through the two soccer teams that have come to stand, respectively, for Protestant and Catholic: the Glasgow Rangers (Protestant) and the Glasgow Celtics. These last two murals are as eloquent, in their way, as the overtly political ones.

“The Ulster” is defiantly Protestant

And this mural, off the Falls Road, is all about Catholic pride:

Far from becoming less important, it seems like the tribal identity of the past is as or more important than ever. But somehow, the worst of the violence has been removed, almost like removing the stinger from a wasp. The wasp remains a wasp, with all of its aggression; yet it is unable to do real damage.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.

I’m in Northern Ireland this week, lookign at issues of truth, reconciliation and how (or if) to memorialize the past. As with any conflict, this one has its volcabulary (nationalist, UVF, the Troubles, etc.) and its touchstone events, like Bloody Sunday or the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which has led to a kind of tense peace and powersharing between the majority Protestant and minority Catholic communities.

Reading is no substitute for travel to a place. For instance, although Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom (the unit of currency is the pound and the flag is the Union Jack), there is absolutely no boundary between it and the Republic of Ireland. which surrounds it on three sides (the fourth is the Irish Sea). So Orin and I drove north from Dublin and only realized that we had switched countries when I saw a billboard advertising “the lowest prices in Northern Ireland.”

In terms of the differences between Protestants and Catholics, they are invisible to the unpracticed eye. As I told one Irish friend today, I could walk the length of Belfast and never be able to tell if the neighborhood was one or the other (with the exception of streets decorated with gigantic pro-Protestant or pro-Catholic murals). In that way, Northern Ireland reminds me of Rwanda. The untutored cannot tell any diffrence between Hutu and Tutsi, derspite the junk science that holds that Tutsis are tall and thin and Hutus are short and wide.

But the differences here are glaring to the trained eye. For instance, only a Catholic would wear the bright green soccer shirt belonging to the Scottish professional team known as the Celtics. A Protestant would wear the shirt of the (equally Scottish) Rangers. Indeed, anything green, the kind of green Americans associate with the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, is read here as Catholic, meaning pro-Irish Republican Army. Anything red, white and blue is Protestant, meaning pro-Unionism. To wear a Celtics shirt in a Protestant area is an invitation to a rock hitting you (or an outright attack, in earlier days); and the same is true of a Rangers shirt in a Catholic area.

Even the alphabet is a danger area. A-B-C-D are pronounced the same until you reach “H.” Protestants say it as Americans do, but Catholics put a spin on it: “haitch.”

So standing at a bus stop, Belfastians who want to remain neutral leave their sports passions at home and take a care with any word that begins with H.

In important ways, the differences here, centered on religion and a particular history with England, are more real than the articially imposed ones, dating from Belgian colonial rule, in Rwanda. But neither one have to do with race, as in the United States. And to American eyes, they are as invisible as breath. But to locals, they are the every day language that is as ovious as a street sign.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.

A student led me to this very good video by Fall Out Boy on the plight of children harmed by war in northern Uganda. Filmed in Uganda, the video supports Invisible Children, a non-profit started by American film students and including a Ugandan staff.

Although there is currently a truce between the government and Lord’s Resistance Army, led by religious fanatic Joseph Kony, the damage the 20-year conflict has done to civilians is deep. About 20,000 children have been caught up the war, many as forcibly recruited child soldiers.
Great web site and great, on the ground work!

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: No Comments.