Great News from the US Supreme Court
Today's Court ruling is
specifically about the prisoners at the illegal detention facility that
the US has been operating at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since shortly after
September 11, 2001.
The highlights:
-o The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects
held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge
their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
-o The Court ruled that the US Government is violating the rights of
prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S.
illegal prison and torture center in Guantanamo.
-o Federal judges could ultimately order some detainees to be released.
-o The Court specifically struck down a provision of the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 (which supposedly "legalized" the Military
Tribunals hatched by Dick Cheney and George Bush), that denies
Guantanamo detainees the right to file petition of Habeas Corpus.
Habeas Corpus is a centuries-old legal principle enshrined within the
US Constitution that allows courts to determine whether a prisoner is
being held illegally.
The "not so good" part of the news from the Opposition is that the US
Government is looking for other options to avoid the law in order to
continue its illegal detainment and torture of the prisoners at
Guantanamo. The Court has already ruled twice previously, that people
held at Guantanamo without charges have a right to go into civilian
Courts to ask that the government justify their continued detention.
Each time, the Administration and US Congress have changed the law to
try to prevent the prisoners and their lawyers from reaching the Courts.
George Bush, Condoleeza Rice and their advisors are now looking to
transport the prisoners to other secret US prisons in countries that
are part of the extensive global Gulag system operated by the US
Government, linked through "special rendition" flights. Prisoners who
are currently trapped within that system have no access to lawyers or
visitors, nor any access to due process under any country's law.
Still, even with "not so good" part of the news, today's victory in the
US Supreme Court is significant and it will help to save lives, prevent
suffering and perhaps even to redress some of the injustices and
atrocities that were committed by the US Government against the
Guantanamo prisoners and their loved ones. This legal victory is the
result of many years of hard work by hundreds of progressive lawyers,
staff, assistants, volunteers and thousands of supporters who are
active in the extended Civil, Constitutional and Human Rights
movements, the Peace and Justice movement and elements of the 9/11
Truth movement.
Please see the news item below. Thanks!
Petros
petros@cyprus-org.net
http://petros-evdokas.cyprus-org.net/Another-sort-of-Introduction.html
~~~~~~~~~
High Court sides with Guantanamo detainees again
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
Jun 12 2008
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held
at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their
detention in U.S. civilian courts.
In its third rebuke of the Bush administration's treatment of
prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the
rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the
U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court's liberal justices were in the
majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and
Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in
extraordinary times."
Kennedy said federal judges could ultimately order some detainees to be
released, but that such orders would depend on security concerns and
other circumstances.
The White House had no immediate comment on the ruling. White House
press secretary Dana Perino, traveling with President Bush in Rome,
said the administration was reviewing the opinion.
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two,
would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been
held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison,
classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or
links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The ruling could resurrect many detainee lawsuits that federal judges
put on hold pending the outcome of the high court case. The decision
sent judges, law clerks and court administrators scrambling to read
Kennedy's 70-page opinion and figure out how to proceed. Chief Judge
Royce C. Lamberth said he would call a special meeting of federal
judges to address how to handle the cases.
The administration opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay
shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to hold enemy
combatants, people suspected of ties to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The Guantanamo prison has been harshly criticized at home and abroad
for the detentions themselves and the aggressive interrogations that
were conducted there.
The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the
Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place
to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is
inadequate.
The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights.
But it also contended that the classification and review process was a
sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the
detainees seek.
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for
striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural
protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy
combatants."
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also dissented.
Scalia said the nation is "at war with radical Islamists" and that the
court's decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost
certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined Kennedy to form the majority.
Souter wrote a separate opinion in which he emphasized the length of the detentions.
"A second fact insufficiently appreciated by the dissents is the length
of the disputed imprisonments, some of the prisoners represented here
today having been locked up for six years," Souter said. "Hence the
hollow ring when the dissenters suggest that the court is somehow
precipitating the judiciary into reviewing claims that the military ...
could handle within some reasonable period of time."
The court has ruled twice previously that people held at Guantanamo
without charges can go into civilian courts to ask that the government
justify their continued detention. Each time, the administration and
Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to try to
close the courthouse doors to the detainees.
The court specifically struck down a provision of the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 that denies Guantanamo detainees the right to
file petition of habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus is a centuries-old legal principle, enshrined in the
Constitution, that allows courts to determine whether a prisoner is
being held illegally.
The head of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which
represents dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo, welcomed the ruling.
"The Supreme Court has finally brought an end to one of our nation's
most egregious injustices," said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren.
"By granting the writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court recognizes a
rule of law established hundreds of years ago and essential to American
jurisprudence since our nation's founding."
In addition to those held without charges, the U.S. has said it plans
to try as many as 80 of the detainees in war crimes tribunals, which
have not been held since World War II.
A military judge has postponed the first scheduled trial pending the
outcome of this case. The trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin
Laden's one-time driver, had been scheduled to start June 2.
Five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks appeared in a Guantanamo
courtroom last week for a hearing before their war crimes trial, which
prosecutors hope will start Sept. 15.
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no
immediate information whether a hearing at Guantanamo for a Canadian
charged with killing a U.S. Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan would
go forward next week as planned. Omar Khadr is one of 19 detainees so
far facing the first U.S. war-crimes trials since the World War II era.
Bush has said he wants to close the facility once countries can be found to take the prisoners who are there.
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama also support shutting down the prison.
From:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080612/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_guantanamo_14&...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Scalia is such a scumbag...
Scalia said the nation is "at war with radical Islamists" and that the court's decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Suuuuure we are, pal. You keep telling yourself that. History will judge your rotten ass like all the other war criminals.
Bag of Scum / In the Halls of Justice
"Scalia is such a scumbag...", you wrote. A legion of
poetic sentiments trapped within the chests of a wholy enslaved
Multitude - both within the US and outside of it - are ready to leap
out, triggered by words such as yours!
My own sentiments on Scalia and on the other Judges who have betrayed
their oath and are now violating everything that is sacred about
Justice, might be expressd in similar poety, but I write and publish
under my own name and address, with a real face and with a tangible
existence in the community.
Perhaps my imagination slipped a little, when I read your words, and I
saw (or thought I saw) a large Choir of innumerable women, children and
men singing together to honour this Judge and the others like Scalia
who "serve the people" and who "serve Themis, the Divine persona of
Justice" so well. So righteously.
It was a hazy but soft-colored image, lots of people standing together,
some hugging each other with care, others in very dignified serious
stances, some smiling and some not, all singing together in multiple
harmonies that very excitable part of the Hallelujah Chorus piece composed by Handel, part of his Messiah oratorio.
Most people know that musical phrase; the lyrics at that point go like this:
"King of kings - forever! and ever!
and lord of lords - forever! and ever!"
All I could see and hear was that glorious Choir of millions of people
singing together to honour the estimbable Judges in the very same
lyrics you wrote- at the tops of their lungs:
"Bag of Scum - forever! and ever!",
"Bag of Scum - forever! and ever!",
"Bag of Scum
- forever! and ever!", urning the verses in their mouths over and over,
forever and ever with all the love and appreciation, all the respect
and honour that these Judges deserve.
Your words also remind me - and I thank you for it - of a momentary
incident that occured once many years ago. It was during one of our
political trials that were being conducted en masse in Massachussets.
Early nineteen eighties. I was standing in the hall preparing to
enter the Courtroom as our lawyer had just entered and we all filed
behind him when one of our supporters whom I hardly knew ran down the
corridor toward me ...tasers did not exist then, and the Police weren't
sure how to handle us, so for a fragment of a second there was tension,
but they let him come to me.
He leaned over and said, "Man, you know? They say that in the Halls of Justic, the only Justice is in the halls."
And then he ran away again.
Actually, we won that trial too, with lots of help from the National Lawyers' Guild.
Petros
_______
When there are no real terrorists, you must purchase some.
Most of these so-called “Islamic terrorists†being held in Guantanamo were either sold to the Americans by the warlords and druglords of the Afghani Northern Alliance, or by Pakistani ISI entrepreneurs working the streets of Karachi. It was a great way to get rid of their enemies, as well as a selective group of “troublemakers.†Just sell ‘em to the Americans as “captured al-Qaeda terrorists.†These groups got to make some serious, hard cash, and the Americans got to parade their “captives†about as “dangerous Islamofascists.†Everybody is happy and gets what they want, except, of course, for the poor folks sold into prisoner status in the American Gulag Archipelago.
The entire “War on Terror,†as conceived by Benny Nut-and-yahoo, is 100% FAKE from top to bottom, start to finish. Our children, friends, and brothers are dying for absolutely fucking nothing at all. Everyone has been bought off (or knocked off), and even the “terrorist†prisoners were bought with cash as props for this very expensive and elaborately staged hoax. The only actual terrorists in this entire equation are the Israelis and the seditious scum who serve them inside the American and Canadian governments. Fuck your bogus “hate speech laws!†How about legislating some anti-treason, anti-genocide laws. Kate’s brother-in-law is totally correct – put ‘em all up against a wall (no last cigarettes, no blindfolds) and shoot ‘em all. Semper Fi, my brother. Tack that Constitution and Bill of Rights to the middle of Dubya’s slimey forehead. If you commit treason and espionage against the nation, you should be prepared to fucking die for your crimes. What we really need is a united, multi-front global war against the fanatical, anti-Semitic Zionist terrorists who have been behind this whole charade since The Lavon Affair and the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty (Sorry people, all my Buddhistic peace and love has run out of patience and tolerance. I can’t fucking take it anymore!). We need to change our terminology as well. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, when the British press referred to “terrorists,†they were talking about the Zionist militants in Palestine, not the Arabs. When we refer to “anti-Semites,†we should be talking about the non-Semitic Zionists, because advocating complete regional GENOCIDE against the Arabs (as they have been doing since 1920) IS anti-Semitism in its most virulent form. Criticizing the psychopathic crimes of these non-Semitic Khazar converts to Judaism is wholly based upon a philosophy of pro-Semitism. These highly deluded folks are not a race; they are not “exiles in a diaspora;†they are not Israelites; and they are not Hebrews. Zionism and their “War on Terror†are complete frauds, and they need to be exposed as lying con-artists at every opportunity. Every time someone asks me now who I think was ultimately behind 9/11, I say without one second of hesitation, “Israel,†and 8 out of 10 times, I am getting the response, “yo, no surprise there.†Cui bono, and it certainly ain’t America, that is by now proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.
And slightly off-topic, but I noticed the other day that Amy Goodman and the treasonous, Left-wing Trotskyites on her little show were explaining how the Taliban were now using opium sales to fund their “terror campaigns.†Uhh, Ms. Goodman, oh queen of bogus research, one of the reasons that American kids were sent to die in Afghanistan (besides setting up a Caspian pipeline for Thomas Kean’s oil company, among others) was that the Taliban had shut down the multi-billion dollar, American CIA-run heroin industry in that country. “Mess with our opium biz, you frickin’ anti-dope, Islamofascists, and we will send uneducated, jobless poor kids to kill you. Got it?â€
Bring me the head of Amy Goodman
As much as I hate the MSN for their part in the war on terror fraud it is the Amy Goodmans/Noam Chomskys et al that really piss me off.These gatekeepers corral the phoney progressives,PBS/NPR type alternative news groupies and self proclaimed hipsters and effectivly control the legitamacy of the so called left.Their cultish psuedo intellectual following make me want to puke.
reporting from London
google '42 days' news
fuckin' insane zionist gordon brown twisted his minions into a q-shaped pretzel to get this BS passed. off to secret prison land (the balkans) tomorrow.
-lh
The Opium Trade
Thanks for bringing up the Opium Trade, and how disinformation and
misinformation are being used by both the fake Left and the Right wing
in order to put emphasis on various points of view that serve their
agendas.
I can't speak for Amy Goodman, but I'd venture to say this. Even
though we disagree with her on the issue of "what is the Truth about
September 11" and about the significance
of that, plus her responsibility on how she's been handling it, on the
issue of Opium we might be closer in agreement with her than one might
expect. Before I continue, I'd like to say that my understanding of the
role of Opium is exactly as stated by Lazlo above:
"one of the reasons that American kids were sent to die in Afghanistan
...was that the Taliban had shut down the multi-billion
dollar, American CIA-run heroin industry in that country." (Thank you Lazlo.)
Amy Goodman was trying to illustrate that connection in her show, but I
think that since she refuses to shift emphasis from the indescriminate
condemnation of "terrorists" her message got messed up. She bears the
responsibity for it, of course, but we can get better clarity by
studying the relevant passage from the show's transcript.
Here it is below.
Petros
__________
From the radio program titled:
“Descent Into Chaosâ€: Ahmed Rashid on How the US Aid to “War on Terror†Ally Pakistan is Aiding the Taliban"
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/10/descent_into_chaos_ahmed_rashid_on
"AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Rashid is our guest. His book is Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.
Usually he’s in Pakistan, but he is here in the United States in
Philadelphia today. We’re talking about what’s happening to the
Taliban, the US relationship with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ahmed
Rashid, let’s talk opium. Let’s talk about the huge opium trade that is
fueling the Taliban and the relationship of the United States to that.
AHMED RASHID: Well, the problem has been that—you know,
the main thesis of my book is that the US failed to carry out effective
reconstruction of Afghanistan after 2001. And having done—having
been—and Iraq, of course, was the main reason for that. US money and
resources were all moved to Iraq. Afghanistan was put on standby, as it
were, literally. Nothing was done for over three to four years. And in
that time, because there was no investment in agriculture, some
two-and-a-half million refugees came back to Afghanistan from
neighboring countries, poverty was endemic, farmers went back to
growing the crop which didn’t need investment—it didn’t need water, it
didn’t need fertilizer—and that was the poppy crop. If there had been
investment in agriculture, even minimal investment in agriculture, I
think we could have avoided this crisis.
Anyway, by 2001, the poppy crop was booming. Today, Afghanistan
is supplying 93 percent of the world’s heroin. And prices have remained
remarkably stable, because Afghanistan—the mafia there has a cartel,
which is able to control prices so that the market is not a flooded
even though every year the crop increases.
Now, on the other side of the game, you’ve got—you have the
American forces, NATO forces, and frankly, in seven years, the US has
not been able to put together a counter-narcotics strategy. The same
goes for the British, which has been the country which has been leading
this effort, and NATO. Consequently, this drug trafficking has
increasingly come in—the profits of this has come into the hands of the
Taliban and al-Qaeda. They are flush with cash right now. Al-Qaeda
and—well, the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are being paid $100 to
$150 a month, which is about twice what the Afghan soldier gets who is
fighting for the government. I’ve known families in the tribal areas of
Pakistan whose sons have committed suicides, launched suicide bombs.
They are getting large sums of money as compensation—the families
are—for their dead son. So you have now all these groups flush with
cash. They’re involved at all levels, protecting the farmers, taking
taxes from the farmers. But more importantly, they’re involved in
trafficking now. And they’re trafficking to—
AMY GOODMAN: Weren’t three British soldiers just killed
this weekend? Weren’t three British soldiers just killed this weekend
by a suicide bomber, bringing their total, I think, of deaths in
Afghanistan to 100?
AHMED RASHID: Right, exactly. I mean, Helmand is the
province where 50 percent of the drugs is produced. There are 6,000
British troops are there. There are 3,000 American Marines there. But
they don’t bring much of a difference, because there is no drugs
policy. I was arguing back in 2002 that what the US forces should be
doing—OK, they don’t want to do eradication, because they don’t want to
upset the farmers, and that is too sensitive an issue, but they should
at least be doing interdiction, that is, stopping the convoys of these
traffickers.
I was at one firebase, a story I recount, with Special Forces in
Helmand, and one morning, you know, the officer says that one morning
he sees twelve trucks laden with heroin passing by his base. He’s not
allowed to do anything. He’s not allowed to stop that convoy. He hasn’t
got orders to do so. Now, the Afghans did not have the capacity, they
didn’t have the troops, the helicopters, the wherewithal, to stop this
kind of interdiction. The US forces did, but they were ordered not to
do it. So, again, we lack a strategy with which to deal with this
issue.
AMY GOODMAN: And where the opium goes?
AHMED RASHID: Sorry, I missed that.
AMY GOODMAN: Where does the opium go from Afghanistan?
AHMED RASHID: Well, most of it, about 60 percent of it,
is going to Europe. There are many routes now that have been opened up.
There’s a route through northern Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia,
and then entering eastern Europe. There’s a route from Pakistan to
Dubai and the Gulf states, from where it’s shipped to Europe. There’s a
route through Iran, and there’s a route through India, Pakistan, India.
So there are many multiple routes now, and it’s becoming more and more
difficult for international agencies to shut down these routes."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Amy Goodman's job=protect Israel
There's simply no question in my mind about this anymore. She went to Harvard, I know her mindset. She is promoted heavily here by the fake left that criticizes Israel just enough to make people think they are real critics but then ignores every real critique, i.e. 9/11. What I gather from this story is that the American troops are chumps, in Afghanistan to unwittingly protect SOMEONE's drug trade, while being told they are noble defenders of freedom from Islamofascists. Goodman offers this up to her lefty fans as proof that "the US is in on the drug trade". Nonsense! The US is being used by people whose agents occupy key positions in the USG in order to use the American soldier and taxpayer to pay for their rackets. I've known customs agents who have told me how corrupt the whole system is--they are led to believe they have an important job to do and then when they actually find drugs being smuggled in a ship let's say, the order will often come down from on high that they are to ignore the contraband and APOLOGIZE to the owner for inconveniencing them. This corrupt network that has infiltrated every level of the USG is not the real USG. This is the problem I have with critiques that cast the USG as an imperial entity--it does not adequately portray what is really going on. The USG does not act with a will of its own--it is either supposed to work on behalf of the American people in which case it is the real USG or it can be corrupted in the service of a global mafia in which case it is NOT THE LEGITIMATE USG. So according to Goodman and her guest none of that heroin or opium is going through Israel or at least through the Israeli protected "Russian" mafiya? The most generous possible explanation for what Goodman does is that she started out with genuinely heartfelt convictions and now having realized what is expected of her is too afraid to go beyond what she understands is OK to talk about. Remember the 9/11 razor--if they lied and/or are still lying about 9/11, it's probably not the only thing they've lied or are lying about.