Maher Arar’s Murderers Are Exposed

by: Al Swearengen - August 12th, 2007   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice, Military 5 Comments

torture chamber“With persons likely to be tortured, there’s not even [been] a claim of a cost-benefit analysis. It’s not like you’re torturing to get the ticking bomb. It’s just that we would rather send this person back and have that person face torture than keep them imprisoned in Canada. There’s not even a trade-off there. It seems to me you can only come to a conclusion like that if you don’t accept the person as fully human.”
– University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin

As journalism catches up with our most recent history, this turn of events which landed Canadian citizen Maher Arar in a torture chamber in Syria will become more and more familiar. ‘Ethics’ and ‘war’ are certainly two words that have no business being anywhere near one another according to the right-wing hawks out there, but I’ve disagreed with that opinion from the start. When the rules that govern our decision making are eliminated, as they were after 9/11, not only do we lose our legitimacy, but the results we hope to achieve move further out of reach.

A dynamic such as this, will again prompt the hawks to argue an unethical position that must disregard the mistakes as being a ‘cost of doing business’, while blaming someone like me for the fact that the mistakes themselves are what creates the blow back, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if I and others hadn’t shined a light on such things. This is the mindset that always seems to start from a point where the government is infallible, and it is the media outlet that publishes details of what the government has been doing without our knowledge that is to blame. The newspaper isn’t simply doing what a newspaper is there to do, but rather it is purposely trying to kill each and every one of us.

The details behind Maher Arar’s detention, the reason why he was picked up, came up in a hearing a few months ago, with Senator Leahy grilling Gonzo on why it happened, and also how we could justify outsourcing his torture to a country like Syria. (The Murder of Maher Arar – 1/07) I wrote about this exchange and set up a Google Alert for anything pertaining to Arar, but the information needed to figure out how it came to be that the US government had convinced the Canadian government to hand over one of its citizens to be treated in this way, was still bogged down by that tired “harmful to national security” argument, so often a masquerading embarrassment and nothing more. That is absolutely the case here.

A judge in Canada recognized this, and so he did what a US judge hasn’t yet had the guts to do, and that is to reject the argument made by our government that the people have no right to any information, especially embarrassing information like this. He made it public. It has prompted a robust debate in Canada about issues our MSM tends to drown out, like “can we give up our rights so easily for the sake of national security”? Due process is the big one for me, as it has become much too easy for the US government to simply pick and choose who needs to be removed from society without having to prove wrongdoing.

It made our government lazy and arbitrarily brutal. We have bought in to the foolish notion that torture is a legitimate, productive way to extract actionable information from a suspect. Here is my favorite pick of the Canadian media of the past couple days.

That is apparently what happened to Ahmad Abou El Maati, another Canadian who, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, was tortured by Syrian jailers into making a “confession” about planning a terror-bomb attack in Canada. He fingered Arar as an associate, and that appears to have been enough to make Canadian government agencies discard Arar’s rights like a used tissue.

Need we say that El Maati, once back in Canada, renounced his confession, saying he would have told his jailers anything, and that he apologized for randomly naming Arar? (Canada.com)

No apology from the US government should be expected. I’m sure that the major players involved in making stories like this a reality are convinced of their righteousness. We know that President Bush considers what happened to Maher Arar “God’s Will”.

Wabbit Feet

by: Al Swearengen - August 7th, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Military Add Comment

(UK asks U.S. to free residents from Guantanamo) Britain asked the United States to release five British residents from Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday in what analysts saw as a sign that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a more independent stance from Washington.

(The Black Sites – A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program – The New Yorker)  Excerpts: In March, Mariane Pearl, the widow of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, received a phone call from Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General. At the time, Gonzales’s role in the controversial dismissal of eight United States Attorneys had just been exposed, and the story was becoming a scandal in Washington. Gonzales informed Pearl that the Justice Department was about to announce some good news: a terrorist in U.S. custody—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks—had confessed to killing her husband. (Pearl was abducted and beheaded five and a half years ago in Pakistan, by unidentified Islamic militants.)

FuddThe Administration planned to release a transcript in which Mohammed boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”Pearl was taken aback. In 2003, she had received a call from Condoleezza Rice, who was then President Bush’s national-security adviser, informing her of the same news. But Rice’s revelation had been secret. Gonzales’s announcement seemed like a publicity stunt. Pearl asked him if he had proof that Mohammed’s confession was truthful; Gonzales claimed to have corroborating evidence but wouldn’t share it. “It’s not enough for officials to call me and say they believe it,” Pearl said. “You need evidence.” (Gonzales did not respond to requests for comment.)

Special Agent Randall Bennett, the head of security for the U.S. consulate in Karachi when Pearl was killed—and whose lead role investigating the murder was featured in the recent film “A Mighty Heart”—said that he has interviewed all the convicted accomplices who are now in custody in Pakistan, and that none of them named Mohammed as playing a role. “K.S.M.’s name never came up,” he said. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer, said, “My old colleagues say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that it was not K.S.M. who killed Pearl.” A government official involved in the case said, “The fear is that K.S.M. is covering up for others, and that these people will be released.” And Judea Pearl, Daniel’s father, said, “Something is fishy. There are a lot of unanswered questions. K.S.M. can say he killed Jesus—he has nothing to lose.” Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the top defense lawyer at the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, which is expected eventually to try Mohammed for war crimes, called his serial confessions “a textbook example of why we shouldn’t allow coercive methods.”

The Bush administration’s code of silence

by: Al Swearengen - August 3rd, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Politics Add Comment

by Sidney Blumenthal

goodfellas(Guardian UK)Omertà (or code of silence) has become the final bond holding the Bush administration together. Honesty is dishonourable; silence is manly; penitence is weakness. Loyalty trumps law. Protecting higher-ups is patriotism. Stonewalling is idealism. Telling the truth is informing. Cooperation with investigators is cowardice; breaking the code is betrayal. Once the code is shattered, however, no one can be trusted and the entire edifice crumbles.

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were miraculously to tell the truth, or if he were to resign or be removed, the secret government of the past six years would be unlocked…

American Blackout – Documentary on Voting Rights

by: Al Swearengen - July 29th, 2007   Filed under: History, Justice, Politics, Video Add Comment

I’m not sure how many, if any, of the readers of this blog actually watch these long videos I post from time to time, but my idea in doing so is that a single viewer is enough to justify posting them. This one here is especially important, as it covers something the corporate media would rather ignore. The disparity in Ohio when it came to the distribution of voting machines, is something that was covered everywhere, but since then it has become a figment of the nation’s imagination. What took place in Ohio is something that must be exposed at the highest level (looking at you Mr. Waxman), and prevented from happening in the future by there being federal laws in place that ultimately strip a state’s ability to run elections as if the United States was a third world authoritarian wasteland.

Cynthia McKinney, a former Congresswoman from Georgia, is also prominent in this film. I’ve taken her case over to Control Congress, a blog that is run by a Republican radio host in Georgia. John Konop is the host in question, and his blog is an absolute open forum where nothing is censored. I urge everyone to check out the video, and also the thread it prompted me to start over on John’s blog. Open primaries…there will be more to come on this topic from me, time permiting…btw, the Yankees are now 9 games behind after Boston’s 6 run 12th inning in Tampa Bay.

Good Eats

by: Al Swearengen - July 27th, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Military Add Comment

halloween 95TPMmuckraker features some top-notch analysis concerning Gonzo and the NSA wiretapping program(s?): “There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales’s careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that “the president described” was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program…”

Harpers reporting on Blackwater: “…In court papers, Blackwater states that the lawsuit from the four families “unconstitutionally intrudes on the exclusive authority of the military of the federal government to conduct military operations abroad.” Blackwater’s attempt to shield itself behind the military is interesting, as the aftermath of the killings highlighted a huge difference between contractors and the military. Had an officer sent four lightly armed soldiers into Fallujah, he would likely have faced public scrutiny in the military justice system. …”

Classic Clip – Samantha Bee interviews Frank Luntz

Censored portions of Arar report to be revealed

by: Al Swearengen - July 25th, 2007   Filed under: Justice Add Comment

This should be interesting:

(Source) A Federal Court judge has agreed to reveal portions of the Maher Arar report that were censored by the government. Mr. Justice Simon Noel ruled Tuesday that he will uncensor some – but not all – of the 1,500 words that had been blacked out. The passages are to emerge within 10 days, unless any of the parties launch an appeal. “In the end, I have agreed in part with the Attorney-General and in part with the [Arar] Commission,” Judge Noel wrote in a 64-page ruling Tuesday, without revealing further details.

My piece on this topic – The Murder of Maher Arar

Life During Wartime

by: Al Swearengen - July 21st, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Military, Politics 3 Comments

Justice at Stake: Ensuring That Prisoners in the U.S. Are Never ‘Disappeared’- by Shahid Buttar, posted at The Peace Tree

Hadrian’s Forum: “The American founding fathers were well versed in Roman history. People such as Washington, Madison and Jefferson, were all very aware of the evils done by Sulla. When they designed the constitution, and ensured a separation of powers, they were specifically thinking about how they would prevent the rise of an American Sulla.”

Senate Delaying Tactics

Paul Krugman: All the President’s Enablers – by Paul Krugman, posted at Welcome to Pottersville

“I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election. In the article, General Petraeus told us that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months.”In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.”

Exec pleads guilty in Iraq contractor bribery scheme – As the New York Times reports in its Saturday edition, at least eight people connected to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root), so far receiving $20 billion for war-related services, have been implicated in an investigation into kickbacks and bribes stemming from a scheme to overcharge for freight services to Iraq. Kevin Andre Smoot, managing director for KBR subcontractor Eagle Global Logistics Incorporated, pleaded guilty to dispensing the bribes along with lying to investigators.

The Murder of Jose Padilla

by: Al Swearengen - June 28th, 2007   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice Add Comment

spanish inquisitionWeek after week, this guy Padilla manages to look more and more like the poster child for what Republican authoritarianism is great at producing. There are many more taxpaying victims of small government, anti-New Deal conservatism out there, from Katrina victims to the folks who have been downsized and/or ruined by insurance that refuses to insure, but in Padilla’s case there is a dynamic that cannot be ignored. This of course being the fact that for every GOP Presidential candidate besides Ron Paul, keeping in place the system that murdered this man or even making it more ferocious and gruesome, happens to be a linchpin of their sales pitch. Attracting Republican primary voters, according to Campaigning Crack-whore Calculations LLC, apparently requires a candidate who is proud of his ‘Club Gitmo’ gear.

In right-wing world the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which rendered habeas corpus a thing of the past, is not a sign that our republic has lost its way, but rather a sign of progress. Never mind the fact that its inception was the result of incompetent law-breaking over a period of many years, resulting in the glut of mostly innocent individuals now in our custody, and the need to minimize exposure to shame or embarrassment over the reality of what that illegal behavior has actually accomplished. Habeas corpus wasn’t exiled for the sake of national security. Habeas corpus was a victim of partisan political expedience, for reasons spelled out in the Supreme Court’s decision on ‘Hamden v. Rumsfeld’, it had to be sacrificed for the sake of the (GOP) team.

That same team required also, years of sacrifice from one Jose Padilla, whose initial capture was hailed as a close brush with a potentially deadly and ‘dirty’ chemical oblivion. Imminent doom being the value-pick of our political marketplace at the time, our government’s hand was forced, and Jose’s threshold for pain had to be established, his capacity to swallow fear evaluated, his ‘animal’ skill set in the product testing labs enhanced. During this period in 2002, Padilla was denied access to his lawyer, and the government admitted that their information on him wasn’t enough to prosecute on. He was tortured for the purpose of extracting information that could then justify his next status as a “material witness”, and when nothing panned out, he became an “enemy combatant”.

John Ashcroft: “We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or ‘dirty bomb,’ in the United States.”

Paul Wolfowitz: “There was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages.”

“(Administration officials)…said that the Justice Department was eager to showcase the Padilla case after weeks in which the FBI had been battered in Congress for missing potential warning signals of the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Sources 1, 2)

A reasonable plan had been established for quite some time regarding the disposal of his body, but of course the judicial activists in charge of our Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into the works. Padilla was a US citizen, and that superseded his “enemy combatant” status, which required the government to either charge him with a crime or let him go. And a panic seemed to erupt all at once, as the assumption that Padilla’s corpse could be tossed into the incinerator and forgotten was not only contradicted, but in fact, his corpse would have to instead be presented for public inspection in a short amount of time.
Read More

If Republicans still controlled Congress…

by: Al Swearengen - June 26th, 2007   Filed under: Al Swearengen, History, Justice, Politics, Video 28 Comments

This hearing on the air quality in New York City in the days and weeks following 9/11 would have never taken place. Christie Todd Whitman wouldn’t have had to sit at a table and answer questions under oath. She wouldn’t have had to view tapes of her statements attesting to the safe level of contaminants in the air on the days following the attacks, and wouldn’t have then been challenged with the conflicting scientific readings acquired by the city’s own environmental agency during that same time period. There would be no justice for the citizens who trusted the government’s word, breathed the air and now suffer from debilitating respiratory illnesses, some of which insurance will not cover.

And how about “The Hero”, Mayor Guliani? Republican blood surely runs through those veins, as his contribution to this lingering tragedy has been to “write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city’s liability at $350 million”. Not a single hearing was held on the aftereffects of 9/11 while Republicans ran the Congress. How can a government lie about the air quality in NYC, allow thousands of workers at the site to operate without respiratory gear, and then refuse to even investigate how such a thing could happen? The photo ops were really all that mattered to the leaders who were in charge during this time, and if they are allowed to just skate on the abdication of their responsibility for ensuring public safety, what hope is there for us?

Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone Magazine) wrote a scathing piece on Rudy Guliani about a month ago, and really manages to sum up the issue here in a single paragraph:

Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy (Al: and the EPA) proclaimed that there were “no significant problems” with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses — respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.

That’s the bottom line here, and not a single leader who played a part in this has had the courage to simply tell the truth or (God forbid) offer an apology to the thousands of real heroes who were too busy removing human remains from the pile to consider whether or not their government was holding up its end. Now those very same people are too busy dying, with medical bills they’re unable to pay and a body that is unable to work for a living.

If the Americans who voted in November hadn’t sent the Republican Party packing, those heroes who can’t afford to feed their kids or purchase the medication they need to have a fighting chance for survival, would have been ignored for another two years! We’d never have had video clips like these: Rep. Bill Pascrell (NJ-08) questions Whitman on the EPA Inspector General’s report:

In a second round of questioning, Rep. Pascrell questions Suzanne Y. Mattei, Former New York City Executive of the Sierra Club and author of a book on this subject, about some of the claims of EPA officials, particularly the claim that it was dangerous “on the pile” but safe “off the pile”:

Read More

The General’s Report

by: Al Swearengen - June 17th, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Military, Politics 2 Comments

Seymour Hersh’s latest essay is a case study on how the military has been turned into a dirty beast under George W. Bush’s watch. Focusing on retired Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba’s experience as the first investigator to focus on the abuse taking place at Abu Ghraib, we are provided a close-up look into the “shoot the messenger” m.o., and how the truth can only get you into hot water. Here are some excerpts:

taguba

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

After General Taguba’s report is complete and has been delivered up the chain:

Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

On his his findings:

The M.P.s, Taguba said, “were being literally exploited by the military interrogators. My view is that those kids”—even the soldiers in the photographs—“were poorly led, not trained, and had not been given any standard operating procedures on how they should guard the detainees.”

(From a Congressional Hearing) Senator Reed then asked Taguba, “Was it clear from your reading of the [Miller] report that one of the major recommendations was to use guards to condition these prisoners?” Taguba replied, “Yes, sir. That was recommended on the report.” At another point, after Taguba confirmed that military intelligence had taken control of the M.P.s following Miller’s visit, Levin questioned Cambone (Rumsfeld’s aide):

LEVIN: Do you disagree with what the general just said?
CAMBONE: Yes, sir.
LEVIN: Pardon?
CAMBONE: I do.

Taguba, looking back on his testimony, said, “That’s the reason I wasn’t in their camp—because I kept on contradicting them. I wasn’t about to lie to the committee. I knew I was already in a losing proposition. If I lie, I lose. And, if I tell the truth, I lose.”

Lee Kaplan Sues Blogger and Wins

by: Al Swearengen - June 17th, 2007   Filed under: Justice 5 Comments

I don’t know much about Kaplan’s work, but have learned that he’s a right-winger who has earned himself an opposition site dedicated to him called ‘Lee Kaplan Watch‘. One Kaplan article I did read, basically blamed the Virginia Tech shootings on the presence of Muslims on college campuses. With that in mind, I can see how there might be a blog out there dedicated to his words. Here are a few of the posts you’ll find on the blog in question:

Kaplan sues the blogger in small claims court and wins a judgment for $7,500 in damages. (h/t Seeing the Forest)

Vintage Bush (assist from Peter Pace)

by: Al Swearengen - June 16th, 2007   Filed under: Justice, Military, Politics, Video Add Comment

Remembering the Peter Pace days…we’ll be celebrating this man’s storied career for months I’m sure, but in order to do this right, we’ve got to really delve into the details of what he was able to provide to our country. This first clip is a perfect example of that. The second one is just Tony Snow lying his ass off. Enjoy!

Supreme Bureaucracy

by: Al Swearengen - June 16th, 2007   Filed under: Justice Add Comment

injustice(Article) This is a bad sign. Regardless of what the inmate was convicted of or whether he’s guilty of the crime, everyone has the constitutional right to appeal their conviction to a higher court. In this case, a lower court judge gave the defendant’s attorney 17 days to file the paperwork for his appeal. Turns out that the federal deadline is only 14 days. The appeals court threw out the inmate’s appeal because it was turned in late.

So the matter before the Supreme Court is whether or not it’s fair to hold the defendant accountable for following instructions that happened to be incorrect. Is the basic right to appeal a conviction less sacred than the couple of days it was denied because of? What do you personally value more – a constitutional right or a bureaucracy’s deadline? How do you think most Americans would answer that question?

Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas felt that the bureaucratic deadline was more important than the inmate’s constitutional right to appeal his conviction.

The Murder of Maher Arar

by: Al Swearengen - January 23rd, 2007   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice, Military 16 Comments

torture chamberWhen years go by as they have, with nerve endings pounding out this sense of shame from encrusted workings inside, utterly unshakable without damning the thoughts that come about around the time of acceptance and future endeavors and mind over matter, that toolbox of good advice more often spoken of than anything else these days, like a corner-man shouting at his fighter to stop thinking about the pain, man up, and stay away from the carbohydrates. Thus stalked by shocking reality video in his sleep, flashes of images and sound played backwards and then forwards, leading to screaming, shouting, running, curling up into a ball, with the vivid stench of excrement and urine the only thing that remains of you, all over you, inside your lungs, coating the insides of your sinuses, reminding you that life is happening all around you, within you, whether you can move or not, and the sounds that make their way into yourabu gharib1 world are the footsteps moving towards the door, ending the dream at that point for the 349th time, pillow soaking wet, eyes open and adjusting to the darkness that surrounds, nostrils still spiked with the tinge of that ultra-personal aroma five panicked gasps later, on through the life and times of a survivor.

Tell some people about what is done in their name by our government, and you get a faithful recognition that it’s all over their head, that reasons exist for everything that happens, and the spooks are keeping all of us safe in ways we are best not knowing about at all. The competence of whoever is providing the actual back-story to all of this isn’t something to be questioned, and to elaborate on the person I am writing about, it is common for the competence of government to be both assumed and considered inconsequential at the same time. Tortured an innocent man? Necessary. Left thousands to die in the hot New Orleans sun?Saddam Piss Wasn’t the government’s responsibility. Convenient for the all-star lineup of stooges able to count votes of this persuasion without a single deed, but so often what is lost in all this is the very soul of our Republic.

Bring up the idea that such suffering is avoidable, and prepare to have “personal responsibility” spoken at you in response, which ultimately boils down in the end to this faith that the ends justify the means, and that when the United States imposes its will on someone, it is always the right thing, always to be supported, and always less of a blood bath than the leftists make it out to be anyways. Abu Gharib was the story of a single National Guard unit with poor leadership…as the story goes, on the historical fringe of reality now not as thick with believers and power, but still loud, absurd and convinced of the fact that to feel shame in response to the story of a man like Maher Arar being abducted by our government and outsourced to Syria on a whim to be tortured, would for some reasonBotero10 be tantamount to admitting defeat. The slippery slope, just like the domino theory and all the other choice scraps of bullshit eaten raw by the handful throughout the Republic, it is largely a lie such as this that tears down our humanity and exposes instead an apathetic lot of lazy-minded drones who are too cowardly and consumed by entertainment to bother considering whether the lessons of right and wrong learned at the earliest age happened to have accompanied them on through to adulthood, or were they largely chucked aside and considered quaint years ago?

Luckily the heart of Senator Patrick Leahy remains in tact, and at a specific point in his Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week, the topic of Maher came up:

Leahy: He’s a Canadian citizen, he was returning home from a vacation. His plane stops at JFK airport and he is detained…He was deported to Syria…Those sending him back must have known he was going to be tortured. The US approved his deportation to Syria, and does not express any remorse about any of this. Why is he on a government watch list if he’s been found completely innocent by this Canadian commission which used information provided by us?

Gonzales: I’m not at liberty…I can’t do it today, I just can’t uh, badeep-badeep-badeep.

Leahy: Why was he sent to Syria instead of Canada?

Gonzales: Well, ah ah badeep-badeep-badeep.

Leahy: Can you tell me whether you took steps to make sure that he wouldn’t be tortured?

Gonzales: It is part of the public record that John Ashcroft has stated that we sought assurances…

Leahy: Oh…Mr. Attorney General, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to treat this lightly, WE KNEW DAMNED WELL IF HE WENT TO CANADA HE WOULDN’T BE TORTURED, HE’D BE HELD AND INVESTIGATED. AND WE KNEW DAMNED WELL THAT IF HE WENT TO SYRIA HE’D BE TORTURED, AND IT’S BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THIS COUNTRY, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know, that has happened a number of times in the last five years by this country. It is a black mark on us. It has brought about the condemnation of some of our closest and best allies. They have made those comments both publicly and privately to the President of the United States And it is easy for us to sit here comfortably in this room knowing that we’re not going to be sent off to another country to be tortured, to treat it as though, ‘well, Attorney General Ashcroft said he got assurances’. Assurances? From a country that we also say now, ‘we can’t talk to them because we can’t take their word for anything’.

Maher Arar with his childrenThe question I have is whether or not it’ll become something for all of us to think about, the folly of our aggression towards progress as a human race, and how a pathological sense of entitlement has caught a hold of our country in the years since 9/11, to the point where an innocent person can be stolen, broken and tossed out with the garbage, and it takes years before they are provided even a hint of justice, a whiff of it to cut down on the night terrors and that horrible smell of one’s waste and fear mixed together, inside the pores, the brain, the nerve endings…

This is Maher Arar with his children. He was murdered by our government. His body remains alive today, but what good is it? What right do we have to deny this man justice? How are we more noble or righteous than the terrorists when this can happen and our government hasn’t even an apology to offer?

ADDED MATERIAL 6/21/2007 – Video of the Gonzalez-Leahy exchange transcribed above:

A Nation of the People, by the People and For the Stock Prices

by: Al Swearengen - May 23rd, 2005   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice 23 Comments

There’s an idea at play in President Bush’s nomination of Janice Rogers Brown that business is sacred and the worker is a negligible part of the whole.  When a business bears responsibility for the mistreatment of their workers or an injury, this judge is the kind of person Bush wants determining culpability. This is all for the sake of profit with the idea that to force a business to uphold their requirement to the employee would not only be unfair, but none of the government’s business. What this amounts to is advocacy for the business over the worker, but why? Why is business in need of protection from the worker?

One of a number of reasons for this is the level of incompetence that exists within the leadership at the top of some American corporations. Executives are on trial right now for their incompetence and subsequent dishonesty that allowed their balance sheets to indicate profit where there was none. When a corporation like Enron engages in such improprieties, where does the burden of that incompetence and dishonesty fall? In the end the workers suffer, the shareholders suffer and mutual funds investing the retirement nest eggs of workers all over the country suffer. Who deserves advocacy in this situation? The people deserve advocacy, and government therefore writes laws to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Would Judge Brown and President Bush have us to believe that the government is wrong for doing this? Read More

Perfect Judge for a Monarchy

by: Al Swearengen - May 17th, 2005   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice 19 Comments

“Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies.  The result is families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”

Are these the words of a Saudi, disgusted at the cheering masses witnessing a public beheading? Are these the words of a Saddam ruled Iraqi whose relatives’ flesh had been burned off by chemical weapons? How about those of an unemployed Cuban or an embittered Muslim Chechnyan? Could be, but no, these are actually the words of Janice Rogers Brown, a Bush judicial appointee to the DC circuit court of appeals. Read More

Rogue Judges and Religious Oppression

by: Al Swearengen - May 11th, 2005   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice, Politics, Religion, Words 39 Comments

Republicans are drumming up support amongst their base with tough talk of ‘rogue activist judges’ and the incredible danger they pose to our way of life. Bill Frist informs us that the judicial filibuster is, “being used against people of faith”, while Tom Delay delivers a speech entitled ‘Confronting the Judicial War on Faith’ to a conservative conference in Washington. And this past Sunday Pat Robertson told George Stephanopoulos and the nation that the out-of-control judiciary is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, trumping even the danger posed by al Qaeda. According to these men, ‘rogue activist judges’ are apparently eroding the bottom line of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with an ultimate goal of ending religion in America.

The entire campaign is an ideological myth that belongs in a science fiction novel, yet here we are in the year 2005 rehashing the same discussion that led people to brave the Atlantic and start this country in the first place. At a time of war when perspective is needed more than ever, the goal of these men is to get people riled up about ideological dead issues, while tangible living issues continue to stack up all around us. Some of these tangible issues alive and thriving right now present significant problems for the majority party, and what we’re seeing here is a suitable diversion that could last through this session of Congress and beyond. They’re hitting the playbook hard in getting the religious-right riled up. Of course this means flipping that ‘martyr-switch’ within to convince these free human beings that they’re in fact not free, but instead victims barely hanging on if it weren’t for these noble leaders rescuing them from the brink of oblivion.

In this country where religions are provided tax-exempt status, and the practice of ones religion is a right that cannot be taken away, somehow the end result is a feeling of oppression. Looking at the life of a Christian in America right now compared with that of any religion’s follower in the history of mankind, it’s absolutely absurd to claim the role of victim. Yet that’s exactly what the leadership of the religious-right and it’s political representatives are selling right now. Meanwhile convincing people that a difference of opinion is tantamount to persecution. Read More

Gay Rights and the System

by: Al Swearengen - July 12th, 2004   Filed under: Al Swearengen, Justice, Politics, Religion Add Comment

A lot has been made of the effect gay parents would have on their children, and most of the negative claims are spoken of from a place of ignorance as there is hardly a substantial amount of research that has been done on the subject.  To hold the belief that two adults would be unfit to raise a child must incorporate facts rather than political or religious bias, as it must as well take into consideration the wretched state of ‘the system’ in America. The first thing wrong with the system is that it’s extremely overpopulated whether it be foster care or prison, and not enough money is allocated in most cases to ensure that what’s best for the individual actually takes place. A budget cut in Massachusetts over a year ago saw a friend of mine, a social worker, whose caseload more than doubled with one signature from the governor on a document. The effect is not only that he’s working longer and more stressful hours, but also that the children who depend on him are now experiencing a higher level of neglect than they had before. These children who have lacked an advocate their entire lives now find another taken from them. As the living conditions in foster homes go unchecked, the situation worsens, and the odds of a child being able to escape from the system during their lifetime decreases. I think that we as a whole in society need to work on ensuring that the system is funded, and to always work towards reducing the number of children raised in it through adoption. Prevention of a child within the system becoming a future criminal is paramount in terms of the progression of our culture, and the legalization of gay marriage would help to greatly reduce the number of unwanted children who would otherwise run the risk of entering the world unprepared with no one to turn to.

This of course doesn’t mean haphazardly shipping kids here and there without the proper work being done, but consistent data showing the negative implications if children were adopted by gay couples over a period of time isn’t prevalent in arguments against marriage. The fear of these children being hazed is legitimate, but there are many things any individual will have to overcome during their life, and while we’d like to shelter our children against negativity, it is the adversity in life that makes us who we are. I learned early on growing up in a tough town that while you’re going to lose some fights along the way, the important thing is to learn how to stand up for yourself. I can safely predict that bullies will always exist in our society. If it’s going to be too much of a hassle for them to harass one child, they’ll move on to the next one. Administrators and teachers would surely play a serious role in policing this type of thing, and in cases where it happens, treat it as they would a black child being called a ‘nigger’. Raise the stakes, because once gay couples are legal, it’s no longer a choice to discriminate or not.

I could be coming off as less than compassionate when it comes to these kids, but a lot of us grew up hard and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I found that it was an experience to build on. Once high school is over the world is your oyster, and all these people you’d hope to never see again, in most cases you don’t. An article I read in which an adult woman who was raised by two lesbians feels as if she’d been ‘cheated’, and to that I’d say, ‘get in line’. I’m not for a second going to give this credence over any kid who grew up without parents at all or whose abused alcohol or drugs or them while they were growing up. When you get to a certain age, having grown from your childhood and become your own person as an adult, a lot of the angst felt towards the tough hand you were dealt falls away out of necessity. Some of us choose to look forward, count up the number of people who love us and thank heaven for each of them. Some of us choose to allow ourselves to make excuses for a lack of success in life or general unhappiness, and most often adults such as this have been able to rationalize that everything can be pinned on someone other than themselves. Accountability for one’s own fate is essential in achieving success and happiness during adulthood. Is the child brought up by a gay couple able to function in society as a law-abiding, tax paying adult? If the answer is ‘yes’ for the most part, it’s surely a better alternative than the child having no one.

I dread nothing more in life than for a brilliant child to be discarded multiple times as they’re brought up, only to be dropped off on the street to start their criminal career at age 18. Once they find themselves in the penitentiary, it feels like home. Read More

Bad Behavior has blocked 2450 access attempts in the last 7 days.