By William Fisher
Legal experts and civil libertarians are attacking the administration of President Barack Obama for resusiscitating what they regard as “deeply flawed” military commissions to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay – and their choice of a “child soldier” as the first defendant.
They are particularly incensed that Omar Khadr, Guantanamo’s “child soldier” – a Canadian captured in Afghanistan seven years ago when he was only 15 and imprisoned ever since – is slated for the first trial to be held since Obama took office in January 2009.
The “new and improved” military commissions were part of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama signed last month. It included some changes in the rules governing commission proceedings and is intended to replace – and improve upon -- the Bush-era Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional last year.
Human rights groups and many legal experts are charging that, while the new regulations improve the Commissions to come extent, they remain not only unnecessary but dangerous because they establish a parallel system of second-class justice.
Furthermore, they point out, the actual implementation of Military Commission proceedings could be delayed for years by legal challenges – as were their predecessors.
Much of the early pushback against the Military Commissions is centering on the Khadr case. Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was arrested in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old, accused of throwing a grenade that killed an Army medic, and sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, where he has been imprisoned for more than seven years without charge or trial.
Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed an Army medic in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has refused to acknowledge his status as a child or to apply universally recognized standards of juvenile justice in his case.
In a related development, The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has voiced its concern about the Khadr prosecution, saying it sets a dangerous precedent for child victims of recruitment in armed conflicts.
UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement that the recruitment and use of children in hostilities is a war crime, and those who are responsible – the adult recruiters – should be prosecuted.
Lake said, “The recruitment and use of children in hostilities is a war crime, and those who are responsible – the adult recruiters – should be prosecuted. The children involved are victims, acting under coercion. As UNICEF has stated in previous statements on this issue, former child soldiers need assistance for rehabilitation and reintegration into their communities, not condemnation or prosecution.
“The children involved are victims, acting under coercion,” he said, adding that former child soldiers need assistance for rehabilitation and reintegration into their communities, not condemnation or prosecution.
“The prosecution of Omar Khadr may set a dangerous international precedent for other children who are victims of recruitment in armed conflicts,” Lake added.
Lake is former National Security Advisor to former President Bill Clinton.
The Khadr trial is reportedly set to begin in August.
According to Human Rights First, no international tribunal since Nuremberg has prosecuted a child for alleged war crimes. The United Nations committee that monitors the rights of children found that the United States has held alleged child soldiers at Guantánamo without giving due account of their status as children and concluded that the “conduct of criminal proceedings against children within the military justice system should be avoided.”
The only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo, Khadr is unique in that Canada has refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organizations.
A 2009 review determined that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service failed Khadr, by refusing to acknowledge his juvenile status or his repeated claims of being abused. It was also determined that Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon had lied when he claimed that Khadr had built bombs to kill Canadian soldiers.
The Attorney General believes that the reforms Congress recently incorporated into the Military Commissions Act will ensure that military commission trials will be fair and that convictions obtained will be secure. He has announced that some terror suspects will be tried in Federal civilian courts while others will appear before Military Commissions.
But many disagree -- fiercely.
One of them is Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and a lecturer at Stanford University Law School. He told IPS, “Continuing to rely on military commissions to try those otherwise unable to be convicted on strained and novel ‘war crimes’ charges (that don’t meet the usual definitions of war crimes), by contrast, proceeds from the politically popular but legally inappropriate and counterproductive ‘endless global war on terror’ mindset that has clearly been so destructive to actual national security. The fraudulent nature of the latter process is evident in the unwillingness of the new administration, like the Bush administration, to say that it will release those acquitted or whose danger remains suspected but unproven.”
He added, “It’s a very bad sign that the Obama administration chose to begin the trials with the case of alleged child soldier – who was threatened with rape by US interrogators -- Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who is not even accused of any war crime that would violate the traditional law of war.”
He said, “The absence of age limitations for juveniles with undeveloped brains only begins the long list of continued problems with these commissions – above all the fact that their existence, operation and procedural rules blatantly contradict the laws, treaties, and policies under which the US has committed to protect human rights.”
“Maybe that’s why the Obama administration, no less than the Bush administration, still cloaks the trials and evidence in excessive secrecy and has acted against veteran reporters covering them (as happened with several reporters covering Khadr’s opening hearing,” Pitts opined.
Another critic is Prof. David Frakt of Western State University law school, the Air Force Reserve officer who successfully served as military defense counsel for a Guantanamo detainee – GITMO’s other child soldier, Mohammed Jawad, who was recently released to return to Afghanistan.
Lt. Col. Frakt has strong views on Military Commissions. He believes that “Allowing some cases to go forward in the military commissions means that some detainees are getting second-class justice.”
Frakt is also critical of the “new” Military Commissions because, like their predecessors, they fail to protect juveniles.
“It is appalling that the Obama Administration is allowing charges to go forward in the military commissions against Omar Khadr. Clearly, Omar Khadr, as a juvenile of 15 at the time of his alleged offenses, could not be tried as an adult in federal court, so they are allowing him to be tried as an adult in the military commissions, potentially making him the first child soldier to be tried and convicted as a war criminal in world history.”
Monday, May 31, 2010
Texas Texts to the Right (Far)
By William Fisher
The nation’s most powerful civil liberties organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, has launched a letter-writing campaign designed to persuade book publishers not to use the “ideologically-slanted standards for social studies textbooks” approved by the Texas State Board of Education as a model for use in other states.
In a letter to its members, the ACLU said, “It's up to us to convince textbook publishers that Texas's curriculum shouldn't be adopted for use in other states. We'll need to act fast to keep this extremism in check.”
Because of the large number of textbooks used by Texas’s 4.9 million children, the Lone Star State has an outsized influence on textbook publishers. The State Board of Education, elected by Texas voters, last week approved what most consider an ultra-conservative curriculum for social studies textbooks, overruling recommendations by teachers and scholars.
At the same time, the head of the Texas chapter of the ACLU is questioning whether members of the Texas State Board of Education “acted outside the rules” in approving the curriculum.
Terri Burke, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, told IPS that she intends to “call for a thorough investigation” of reports that members of the Board continued to make changes in resolutions after they were voted on.
She said she has heard such reports from a variety of independent sources.
Ms. Burke added, “If we can’t produce proof that this happened, we still intend to work with members of the legislature and other activist organizations to change the rules of the game so that the people we elect to do this job have the professional qualifications needed to do it properly.”
For the next ten years, Texas school children will be taught that the authors of the U.S. Constitution believed America was “a Christian nation” where no separation of church and state was contemplated.
They will also learn to question whether the United Nations presents a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
Other changes include:
President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis's inaugural address will be studied alongside Abraham Lincoln's.
The U.S. government will be referred to as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic."
Students will be required to study the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
Thomas Jefferson will be deleted as an example of an influential political philosopher in a world history class. He will be replaced by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone.
Jefferson, who first used the phrase “separation between church and state”
is not admired by conservatives.
Noting that the words “separation of church and state” were not included in the Constitution, the Board will now require students to compare and contrast the judicial language with the First Amendment's wording.
Students also will be required to study the decline in the U.S. dollar's value, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
Students will now learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
The teaching of the civil rights movement will ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Students will study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation.
They will now learn that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
The history of McCarthyism will now include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.
The word “capitalism” has been replaced with the “free-enterprise system.”
“The importance of personal responsibility for life choices” will now be included in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
The Board’s actions have drawn widespread criticism from education scholars.
When one critic noted the state has few standards for service on the State Board of Education, including no educational requirements for the Commissioner of Education, Board Member David Bradley of Beaumont asked: “So, should the head of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission be a drunk?” My response would have been, “No, but the top educator in our state should be educated.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said school officials "should keep politics out" of curriculum debates.
"We do a disservice to children when we shield them from the truth, just because some people think it is painful or doesn't fit with their particular views," Duncan said in a statement. "Parents should be very wary of politicians designing curriculum," he said.
The ACLU of Texas urged the state Legislature to place more control over the board.
"At the end of three long days, the State Board of Education has amended, re-amended and approved curriculum standards that are more ideological than ever, despite pleas to not politicize what is taught to Texas school children," said the ACLU’s Terri Burke.
Rep. Mike Villareal, a San Antonio Democrat, said the Board “ignored historians and teachers, allowing ideological activists to push the culture war further into our classrooms," said. "They fail to understand that we don't want liberal textbooks or conservative textbooks. We want excellent textbooks, written by historians instead of activists."
Bush-era Education Secretary and former Houston school superintendent Rod Paige told the board, “What students are taught should not be the handmaiden of political ideology.”
And Benjamin Todd Jealous, the national president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said that children need to learn the “whole truth, not half truths.” He said the standards threaten students’ ability to compete on advanced placement tests and SATs.
The nation’s most powerful civil liberties organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, has launched a letter-writing campaign designed to persuade book publishers not to use the “ideologically-slanted standards for social studies textbooks” approved by the Texas State Board of Education as a model for use in other states.
In a letter to its members, the ACLU said, “It's up to us to convince textbook publishers that Texas's curriculum shouldn't be adopted for use in other states. We'll need to act fast to keep this extremism in check.”
Because of the large number of textbooks used by Texas’s 4.9 million children, the Lone Star State has an outsized influence on textbook publishers. The State Board of Education, elected by Texas voters, last week approved what most consider an ultra-conservative curriculum for social studies textbooks, overruling recommendations by teachers and scholars.
At the same time, the head of the Texas chapter of the ACLU is questioning whether members of the Texas State Board of Education “acted outside the rules” in approving the curriculum.
Terri Burke, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, told IPS that she intends to “call for a thorough investigation” of reports that members of the Board continued to make changes in resolutions after they were voted on.
She said she has heard such reports from a variety of independent sources.
Ms. Burke added, “If we can’t produce proof that this happened, we still intend to work with members of the legislature and other activist organizations to change the rules of the game so that the people we elect to do this job have the professional qualifications needed to do it properly.”
For the next ten years, Texas school children will be taught that the authors of the U.S. Constitution believed America was “a Christian nation” where no separation of church and state was contemplated.
They will also learn to question whether the United Nations presents a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
Other changes include:
President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis's inaugural address will be studied alongside Abraham Lincoln's.
The U.S. government will be referred to as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic."
Students will be required to study the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
Thomas Jefferson will be deleted as an example of an influential political philosopher in a world history class. He will be replaced by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone.
Jefferson, who first used the phrase “separation between church and state”
is not admired by conservatives.
Noting that the words “separation of church and state” were not included in the Constitution, the Board will now require students to compare and contrast the judicial language with the First Amendment's wording.
Students also will be required to study the decline in the U.S. dollar's value, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
Students will now learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
The teaching of the civil rights movement will ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Students will study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation.
They will now learn that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
The history of McCarthyism will now include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.
The word “capitalism” has been replaced with the “free-enterprise system.”
“The importance of personal responsibility for life choices” will now be included in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
The Board’s actions have drawn widespread criticism from education scholars.
When one critic noted the state has few standards for service on the State Board of Education, including no educational requirements for the Commissioner of Education, Board Member David Bradley of Beaumont asked: “So, should the head of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission be a drunk?” My response would have been, “No, but the top educator in our state should be educated.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said school officials "should keep politics out" of curriculum debates.
"We do a disservice to children when we shield them from the truth, just because some people think it is painful or doesn't fit with their particular views," Duncan said in a statement. "Parents should be very wary of politicians designing curriculum," he said.
The ACLU of Texas urged the state Legislature to place more control over the board.
"At the end of three long days, the State Board of Education has amended, re-amended and approved curriculum standards that are more ideological than ever, despite pleas to not politicize what is taught to Texas school children," said the ACLU’s Terri Burke.
Rep. Mike Villareal, a San Antonio Democrat, said the Board “ignored historians and teachers, allowing ideological activists to push the culture war further into our classrooms," said. "They fail to understand that we don't want liberal textbooks or conservative textbooks. We want excellent textbooks, written by historians instead of activists."
Bush-era Education Secretary and former Houston school superintendent Rod Paige told the board, “What students are taught should not be the handmaiden of political ideology.”
And Benjamin Todd Jealous, the national president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said that children need to learn the “whole truth, not half truths.” He said the standards threaten students’ ability to compete on advanced placement tests and SATs.
How Long? Indefinite?
By William Fisher
A new U.S. Government report is recommending that 48 men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay should be held indefinitely without trial because “for many of the detainees, there are no witnesses who are available to testify in any proceeding against them.”
But authorities who follow the tortuous fortunes of Guantanamo say there is another reason: The evidence against them has been produced by confessions obtained through torture and would not be admissible in either a civilian or military court.
The report comes from the Guantánamo Review Task Force, appointed by President barrack Obama during his first week in office to review and assess each detainee’s case to determine his fate.
The report found that the large majority of detainees were low-level fighters who were not involved in plots against the United States. The report by the recommends that 126 of the detainees still held at Guantánamo be transferred to their home countries or a third country, that 36 be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions, and that 48 of the detainees be held indefinitely without charge or trial.”
Constitutional law experts and civil liberties advocates have consistently maintained that the U.S. system of justice leaves no place for people who are deemed “impossible to try but too dangerous to release.”
Many of them expressed this view in response to the recent introduction of legislation that mandates trials only by military commissions and recognizes and plans for a category of prisoners to be held indefinitely without charge or trial. The legislation was introduced by Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.
Commenting on the legislation, Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), told IPS, “This bill’s warped understanding of international law and its mistaken predicate still blur actual wars (such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq today) with the politically appealing yet misleading and overbroad chimera of an endless and geographically unlimited ‘global war on terror’.”
He added, “Particularly when seen along with the Obama administration’s rumored reversal of its prior decision to try 9/11 suspects in civilian courts as opposed to military commissions, it’s another leg in the terrible race to the bottom in which politicians compete to seem ‘tougher’ on terrorism while really diminishing national security.”
Prof. Peter Shane of the Ohio State University law school told IPS, “There seems to be a fundamental philosophical difference between those who believe that the rule of law threatens our fight against terrorism and those who regard it as one of our most potent weapons. There is no evidence to believe that the executive branch is making decisions with regard to the interrogation or detention of suspected terrorists that is compromising either our capacity to obtain intelligence information or to protect the United States from terrorist attack.”
The Bush Administration, he added, “convicted over 300 terrorist suspects apprehended in the United States using our criminal justice system to prosecute terror-related crimes. We should continue to leave these decisions to the discretion of federal prosecutors and investigators.”
Another legal scholar, Prof. Frances Boyle of the University of Illinois law school, told IPS that the current controversy had its roots in the administration of President George W. Bush, who created a universe of “legal nihilism where human beings (including U.S. citizens) can be disappeared, detained incommunicado, denied access to attorneys and regular courts, tried by kangaroo courts, executed, tortured, assassinated and subjected to numerous other manifestations of State Terrorism.”
He said, “This category of ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ negates almost the entirety of the post-World War II regime for the International Protection of Human Rights established by the U.N. Charter in 1945 and most of the major international human rights treaties.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also rejected the notion that there is a significant class of prisoners who simultaneously cannot be prosecuted or safely released. She said detaining terrorism suspects without charge or trial is “illegal and un-American.”
Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said it was “Incredibly disturbing to hear that the Obama administration will continue to hold a significant number of detainees without charge or trial, many of whom were presumably not captured near any battlefield. It would be a colossal error for the Obama administration to continue its predecessor’s policy of indefinitely holding terrorism suspects, whether at Guantanamo or on U.S. soil. Detaining individuals indefinitely without charge or trial is un-American and violates our commitment to the Constitution and due process.”
A new U.S. Government report is recommending that 48 men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay should be held indefinitely without trial because “for many of the detainees, there are no witnesses who are available to testify in any proceeding against them.”
But authorities who follow the tortuous fortunes of Guantanamo say there is another reason: The evidence against them has been produced by confessions obtained through torture and would not be admissible in either a civilian or military court.
The report comes from the Guantánamo Review Task Force, appointed by President barrack Obama during his first week in office to review and assess each detainee’s case to determine his fate.
The report found that the large majority of detainees were low-level fighters who were not involved in plots against the United States. The report by the recommends that 126 of the detainees still held at Guantánamo be transferred to their home countries or a third country, that 36 be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions, and that 48 of the detainees be held indefinitely without charge or trial.”
Constitutional law experts and civil liberties advocates have consistently maintained that the U.S. system of justice leaves no place for people who are deemed “impossible to try but too dangerous to release.”
Many of them expressed this view in response to the recent introduction of legislation that mandates trials only by military commissions and recognizes and plans for a category of prisoners to be held indefinitely without charge or trial. The legislation was introduced by Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.
Commenting on the legislation, Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), told IPS, “This bill’s warped understanding of international law and its mistaken predicate still blur actual wars (such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq today) with the politically appealing yet misleading and overbroad chimera of an endless and geographically unlimited ‘global war on terror’.”
He added, “Particularly when seen along with the Obama administration’s rumored reversal of its prior decision to try 9/11 suspects in civilian courts as opposed to military commissions, it’s another leg in the terrible race to the bottom in which politicians compete to seem ‘tougher’ on terrorism while really diminishing national security.”
Prof. Peter Shane of the Ohio State University law school told IPS, “There seems to be a fundamental philosophical difference between those who believe that the rule of law threatens our fight against terrorism and those who regard it as one of our most potent weapons. There is no evidence to believe that the executive branch is making decisions with regard to the interrogation or detention of suspected terrorists that is compromising either our capacity to obtain intelligence information or to protect the United States from terrorist attack.”
The Bush Administration, he added, “convicted over 300 terrorist suspects apprehended in the United States using our criminal justice system to prosecute terror-related crimes. We should continue to leave these decisions to the discretion of federal prosecutors and investigators.”
Another legal scholar, Prof. Frances Boyle of the University of Illinois law school, told IPS that the current controversy had its roots in the administration of President George W. Bush, who created a universe of “legal nihilism where human beings (including U.S. citizens) can be disappeared, detained incommunicado, denied access to attorneys and regular courts, tried by kangaroo courts, executed, tortured, assassinated and subjected to numerous other manifestations of State Terrorism.”
He said, “This category of ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ negates almost the entirety of the post-World War II regime for the International Protection of Human Rights established by the U.N. Charter in 1945 and most of the major international human rights treaties.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also rejected the notion that there is a significant class of prisoners who simultaneously cannot be prosecuted or safely released. She said detaining terrorism suspects without charge or trial is “illegal and un-American.”
Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said it was “Incredibly disturbing to hear that the Obama administration will continue to hold a significant number of detainees without charge or trial, many of whom were presumably not captured near any battlefield. It would be a colossal error for the Obama administration to continue its predecessor’s policy of indefinitely holding terrorism suspects, whether at Guantanamo or on U.S. soil. Detaining individuals indefinitely without charge or trial is un-American and violates our commitment to the Constitution and due process.”
Those Pesky GITMO Lawyers
By William Fisher
The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other legal organizations, are demanding that the Senate Armed Services Committee to reject a provision in a House of Representatives bill that would mandate an investigation into lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2011 requires the inspector general to investigate "the conduct and practices" of Guantanamo lawyers and report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees within 90 days.
The provision was quietly tucked into the Defense bill last week by Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican. At the time, he criticized the John Adams Project, a joint enterprise of the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The project provides research and legal assistance to military lawyers defending detainees in military commissions.
The bill is pending on the House floor where debate and passage are expected this week.
The lawyers have defended the legality and propriety of their efforts. They
contend that the detainees were illegally tortured in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency, and they want to raise that issue at trial. To do so, they say they need to identify potential witnesses to the interrogation sessions.
Rep. Miller says this effort is “disloyal” and illegal. He says the
“intelligence community deserves a complete and honest investigation” into
whether laws or policies were violated.
Democrats on the committee agreed to Miller’s proposal after several
modifications. One change added the requirement of “reasonable suspicion” of wrongdoing before a lawyer would be investigated by the inspector general.
"I think this is of a piece with lots of other things we've seen in the last few
months -- attacks on what kind of representation and protection detainees are
entitled to," said terrorism law scholar Stephen Vladeck of American University Washington College of Law. "Whether or not this provision makes it through the House and Senate, it's just another episode in an increasingly common story."
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees strongly condemned the Miller proposal. One of them, Barry Coburn, said, "When I was in law school, I was taught in our professional-responsibility class that the highest calling of a lawyer is to represent an unpopular client."
"I don't think the government should attempt to punish or intimidate us for doing so," he added.
And Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told us,
“This vague, overbroad, ill-considered, and likely unconstitutional bill attempts to use the country’s military to chill the brave and already besieged military and civilian defense lawyers from doing their job illustrates the extent to which that the basest political instincts still infect counterterrorism policy in ways that threaten not only the much-needed ongoing search for accountability for torture and other rights violations, but the rule of law itself.”
He said it is “impossible for lawyers to represent Gitmo detainees without violating the vague terms of this bill (which include any interference with the operations of the Department of Defense).
Pitts sees the attack on the GITMO lawyers as “a form of neo-McCarthyism that recalls an “A to Z” of some of the worst historical and current excesses -- in places ranging from Argentina and Chile under their “dirty wars” to Nazi Germany and today’s China, Syria and Zimbabwe.”
“This latest attack on lawyers is a solution in search of a problem: as factually unjustified and repulsive as the Bush administration’s politically motivated and counterproductive attacks on DOJ and Gitmo lawyers and the continued attacks by rightist demagogues like Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney on these lawyers and on the very use of courts to try terrorist suspects. The fact that the lawyers represent suspects clearly doesn’t make them sympathetic to the underlying crimes of which their clients are accused; but without lawyers, how will the system ever deliver justice or ascertain the truth? The patriotic lawyers representing these unpopular clients deserve the highest praise – not stigmatization that attempts to stop them from doing their jobs.
Scott Horton, Constitutional law expert and contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, held similar views. “This provision was sponsored by Florida Republican Jeff Miller and it's another chapter in the efforts of political figures close to Dick Cheney to smear the habeas lawyers,” he said.
“Why? ”Horton asked, and then answered: “Things haven't been going well for GOP's Gitmo narrative. The total historical prison population of Gitmo is 779; only 181 prisoners remain, and it seems unlikely that more than 60-70 of them will ever face any charges--most of them the prisoners who were held at black sites and moved to Gitmo only in September 2006.”
Horton added, “Between 80 and 90 percent of the prisoners held there were, it turns out, not only not the "worst of the worst," they were in fact not terrorists at all but a bunch of nobodies picked up by Pakistani security and Afghan warlords in exchange for bounty payments from the Americans--while the real people for whom Guantanamo was designed, 600-800 Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, were allowed to go free when Dick Cheney gave the green light to Operation Evil Airlift so the Pakistanis could remove them from Kunduz in November 2001.”
Horton says that, “Rather than acknowledge the horrendous mistakes that were made, Miller and his colleagues want to blame the lawyers, which explains this McCarthyite measure. But it's real purpose is to shift attention away from the fact that the Gitmo prisoners will by and large be sent home after determinations by military intelligence and the courts (and usually by conservative Republican judges) that they were the wrong people who never should have been held at Gitmo in the first place.”
The House provision directs an investigation of military or civilian lawyers
when there is a "reasonable suspicion" that they have engaged in any conduct or practice that interferes with the operations at Guantanamo; violates any Department of Defense policy or law within the inspector general's jurisdiction, or generates any "material risk to a member of the U.S. Armed Forces."
In a letter Wednesday to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and senior Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Carolyn Lamm, president of the American Bar Association said the inspector general provision will have a "chilling effect" on the ability of lawyers to give zealous advocacy and effective assistance of counsel to their Guantanamo clients.
"It will compromise the professional independence of counsel and divert already starved defense resources from defending clients to defending the conduct, practices, actions and strategies of their lawyers," she wrote. Lamm added that the Department of Justice, not the Department of Defense, is the appropriate agency to investigate any legal wrongdoing by these lawyers.
The National Institute of Military Justice and the American Civil Liberties
Union joined the ABA on Thursday in criticizing the Defense bill provision.
Rep. Miller's press spokesman reportedly said the provision is "focused on investigating attorneys who may have outed covert operatives in the field.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement, "The
members of the John Adams Project at all times adhered to the law and fulfilled their ethical obligations while representing their clients. In addition, the members of the John Adams Project complied with every requirement of the Joint Task Force and every protective order of the military Commissions."
American University’s Vladeck said he had hoped the strong criticism of conservative attacks on the so-called al Qaeda 7 -- Obama Administration lawyers who had prior service as detainee lawyers -- and of Bush Administration official Cully Stimson's critique of law firms engaged in Guantanamo litigation would have ended these attempts to hinder lawyers in their defense of detainees.
"To whatever extent this is a concerted attack, it's manifesting frustration
with the courts more than with lawyers," he suggested. "But courts, particularly the Supreme Court, are far less politically palpable targets. It's always easier to go after the lawyers."
The controversy over Guantanamo defense lawyers was set off last March when a group of conservatives headed by Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, launched an effort to label seven Justice Department lawyers who previously defended Guantanamo detainees as terrorist sympathizers.
But many other conservatives were quick to attack Cheney’s proposal. They included Ted Olson, who served as George W. Bush’s Solicitor General. who called efforts to demonize detainee defense lawyers as antithetical to American values.
"The ethos of the bar is built on the idea that lawyers will represent both the popular and the unpopular, so that everyone has access to justice. Despite the horrible Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, this is still proudly held as a basic tenet of our profession," Olson wrote.
The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other legal organizations, are demanding that the Senate Armed Services Committee to reject a provision in a House of Representatives bill that would mandate an investigation into lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2011 requires the inspector general to investigate "the conduct and practices" of Guantanamo lawyers and report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees within 90 days.
The provision was quietly tucked into the Defense bill last week by Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican. At the time, he criticized the John Adams Project, a joint enterprise of the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The project provides research and legal assistance to military lawyers defending detainees in military commissions.
The bill is pending on the House floor where debate and passage are expected this week.
The lawyers have defended the legality and propriety of their efforts. They
contend that the detainees were illegally tortured in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency, and they want to raise that issue at trial. To do so, they say they need to identify potential witnesses to the interrogation sessions.
Rep. Miller says this effort is “disloyal” and illegal. He says the
“intelligence community deserves a complete and honest investigation” into
whether laws or policies were violated.
Democrats on the committee agreed to Miller’s proposal after several
modifications. One change added the requirement of “reasonable suspicion” of wrongdoing before a lawyer would be investigated by the inspector general.
"I think this is of a piece with lots of other things we've seen in the last few
months -- attacks on what kind of representation and protection detainees are
entitled to," said terrorism law scholar Stephen Vladeck of American University Washington College of Law. "Whether or not this provision makes it through the House and Senate, it's just another episode in an increasingly common story."
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees strongly condemned the Miller proposal. One of them, Barry Coburn, said, "When I was in law school, I was taught in our professional-responsibility class that the highest calling of a lawyer is to represent an unpopular client."
"I don't think the government should attempt to punish or intimidate us for doing so," he added.
And Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told us,
“This vague, overbroad, ill-considered, and likely unconstitutional bill attempts to use the country’s military to chill the brave and already besieged military and civilian defense lawyers from doing their job illustrates the extent to which that the basest political instincts still infect counterterrorism policy in ways that threaten not only the much-needed ongoing search for accountability for torture and other rights violations, but the rule of law itself.”
He said it is “impossible for lawyers to represent Gitmo detainees without violating the vague terms of this bill (which include any interference with the operations of the Department of Defense).
Pitts sees the attack on the GITMO lawyers as “a form of neo-McCarthyism that recalls an “A to Z” of some of the worst historical and current excesses -- in places ranging from Argentina and Chile under their “dirty wars” to Nazi Germany and today’s China, Syria and Zimbabwe.”
“This latest attack on lawyers is a solution in search of a problem: as factually unjustified and repulsive as the Bush administration’s politically motivated and counterproductive attacks on DOJ and Gitmo lawyers and the continued attacks by rightist demagogues like Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney on these lawyers and on the very use of courts to try terrorist suspects. The fact that the lawyers represent suspects clearly doesn’t make them sympathetic to the underlying crimes of which their clients are accused; but without lawyers, how will the system ever deliver justice or ascertain the truth? The patriotic lawyers representing these unpopular clients deserve the highest praise – not stigmatization that attempts to stop them from doing their jobs.
Scott Horton, Constitutional law expert and contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, held similar views. “This provision was sponsored by Florida Republican Jeff Miller and it's another chapter in the efforts of political figures close to Dick Cheney to smear the habeas lawyers,” he said.
“Why? ”Horton asked, and then answered: “Things haven't been going well for GOP's Gitmo narrative. The total historical prison population of Gitmo is 779; only 181 prisoners remain, and it seems unlikely that more than 60-70 of them will ever face any charges--most of them the prisoners who were held at black sites and moved to Gitmo only in September 2006.”
Horton added, “Between 80 and 90 percent of the prisoners held there were, it turns out, not only not the "worst of the worst," they were in fact not terrorists at all but a bunch of nobodies picked up by Pakistani security and Afghan warlords in exchange for bounty payments from the Americans--while the real people for whom Guantanamo was designed, 600-800 Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, were allowed to go free when Dick Cheney gave the green light to Operation Evil Airlift so the Pakistanis could remove them from Kunduz in November 2001.”
Horton says that, “Rather than acknowledge the horrendous mistakes that were made, Miller and his colleagues want to blame the lawyers, which explains this McCarthyite measure. But it's real purpose is to shift attention away from the fact that the Gitmo prisoners will by and large be sent home after determinations by military intelligence and the courts (and usually by conservative Republican judges) that they were the wrong people who never should have been held at Gitmo in the first place.”
The House provision directs an investigation of military or civilian lawyers
when there is a "reasonable suspicion" that they have engaged in any conduct or practice that interferes with the operations at Guantanamo; violates any Department of Defense policy or law within the inspector general's jurisdiction, or generates any "material risk to a member of the U.S. Armed Forces."
In a letter Wednesday to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and senior Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Carolyn Lamm, president of the American Bar Association said the inspector general provision will have a "chilling effect" on the ability of lawyers to give zealous advocacy and effective assistance of counsel to their Guantanamo clients.
"It will compromise the professional independence of counsel and divert already starved defense resources from defending clients to defending the conduct, practices, actions and strategies of their lawyers," she wrote. Lamm added that the Department of Justice, not the Department of Defense, is the appropriate agency to investigate any legal wrongdoing by these lawyers.
The National Institute of Military Justice and the American Civil Liberties
Union joined the ABA on Thursday in criticizing the Defense bill provision.
Rep. Miller's press spokesman reportedly said the provision is "focused on investigating attorneys who may have outed covert operatives in the field.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement, "The
members of the John Adams Project at all times adhered to the law and fulfilled their ethical obligations while representing their clients. In addition, the members of the John Adams Project complied with every requirement of the Joint Task Force and every protective order of the military Commissions."
American University’s Vladeck said he had hoped the strong criticism of conservative attacks on the so-called al Qaeda 7 -- Obama Administration lawyers who had prior service as detainee lawyers -- and of Bush Administration official Cully Stimson's critique of law firms engaged in Guantanamo litigation would have ended these attempts to hinder lawyers in their defense of detainees.
"To whatever extent this is a concerted attack, it's manifesting frustration
with the courts more than with lawyers," he suggested. "But courts, particularly the Supreme Court, are far less politically palpable targets. It's always easier to go after the lawyers."
The controversy over Guantanamo defense lawyers was set off last March when a group of conservatives headed by Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, launched an effort to label seven Justice Department lawyers who previously defended Guantanamo detainees as terrorist sympathizers.
But many other conservatives were quick to attack Cheney’s proposal. They included Ted Olson, who served as George W. Bush’s Solicitor General. who called efforts to demonize detainee defense lawyers as antithetical to American values.
"The ethos of the bar is built on the idea that lawyers will represent both the popular and the unpopular, so that everyone has access to justice. Despite the horrible Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, this is still proudly held as a basic tenet of our profession," Olson wrote.
Obama’s GITMO?
By William Fisher
Human rights advocates are expressing shock at a federal court ruling that detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan do not have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. federal court -- and dismay that their path to a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court may be blocked.
A lawyer for the detainees, Tina Foster, warned that if the precedent stood, U.S. President Barack Obama and future presidents would be able to “kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives” without ever having to prove their case in court.
The case was brought on behalf of a Tunisian man who says he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, a Yemeni man who says he was captured in Thailand in 2002, and another Yemeni man who says he was captured in 2003 at another location outside Afghanistan that has not been disclosed. (The government has disputed the second Yemeni’s claim.)
The men’s case was originally heard by Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, in Federal District Court. The Bush and Obama administrations had both urged Judge Bates not to extend habeas corpus rights beyond Guantánamo, arguing that courts should not interfere with military operations inside active combat zones.
But in April 2009, Judge Bates ruled that there was no difference between the three men who had filed suit and Guantánamo prisoners. His decision was limited to non-Afghans captured outside Afghanistan — a category that fits only about a dozen of the roughly 800 detainees at Bagram, officials have said. The appeals court overturned that ruling.
The chances of a successful appeal to the Supreme Court look slim to none. Presumably, this case would come before the Supreme Court – if the Court decides to hear the case at all – after Justice John Paul Stevens retires and Justice-designate Elena Kagan takes his seat.
But since it was Kagan, as U.S. Solicitor General, who argued the government’s case against the Bagram detainees, she would almost certainly recuse herself from the appeal. This would result in a 4-4 decision which, according to the Supreme Court’s rules, would be a victory for the government.
Human rights advocates and Constitutionals scholars contacted by IPS were unanimous in condemning the Appeals Court ruling.
Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, called the ruling “warped and illegitimate” and said it “highlights the dire risks of excessive judicial deference to executive power.”
In overruling Judge Bates’ original decision, “the D.C. Circuit has made possible, and even likely, a return to the Bush administration approach of using end-runs around the Constitution to allow kidnapping of suspects, potentially indefinite detention, and the inevitable related abuses,” he said.
David Frakt, a former Guantanamo Bay defense counsel and now a professor at Western State University College of Law, told IPS, “The idea that the United States can seize someone anywhere in the world, then transport them to Afghanistan to be held indefinitely without access to counsel, courts or any avenue to meaningfully challenge the basis for their confinement simply by asserting, without any oversight or requirement of substantiation, that the individual seized is an enemy is deeply troubling.”
He added, ”The law of war does not support such unchecked authority. The potential for abuse is far too great to entrust this power solely to the Executive Branch.”
Nancy Talanian, Executive Director of No More Guantanamos, told IPS, “The judges’ confidence that the government would never transfer detainees to a prison site, such as a war zone, to evade habeas corpus review is bewildering, in light of the fact that the Bush administration created Guantánamo Bay prison precisely to evade judicial scrutiny.”
And Prof. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois law school, called the decision “a serious set-back for international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.”
He told IPS, “Bagram has become Obama's Guantanamo where he is detaining and abusing human beings beyond the reach of United States Courts and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
He continued, “Since Afghanistan is a party to the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, the highest level officials of the Obama administration could very well see themselves indicted by the ICC Prosecutor for what they are doing at Bagram and the numerous other detention centers in Afghanistan. The fact that the U.S. Courts will not act to protect the prisoners at Bagram satisfies the Rome Statute's requirement of "complementarity" and thus paves the way for the International Criminal Court to act. The ICC Prosecutor has already stated that he keeping the situation in Afghanistan under review.”
Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of The National Lawyers Guild and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said the appellate court decision runs afoul of Supreme Court precedents.
She added, “Unfortunately, if the appellate court ruling in the Bagram case reaches the Supreme Court, it will likely be affirmed since Justice Stevens will be gone and Elena Kagan will recuse herself, resulting in a 4-4 tie."
And Daphne Eviatar, Human Rights First Senior Associate, said, "Under the current procedures, detainees have no right to representation by a lawyer, their hearings are not public and much of the evidence used against them remains secret. Even the rules governing the review board procedures have not been released publicly."
She continued, "It is impossible to have confidence that the United States is lawfully detaining actual enemy belligerents when their status is determined without disclosure and they can't even see all of the evidence used against them. In order to build confidence among Afghans and the rest of the world that it is lawfully detaining actual enemy belligerents, the United States should act transparently instead of withholding evidence from detainees and making determinations about their status based on secret evidence."
Human rights advocates are expressing shock at a federal court ruling that detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan do not have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. federal court -- and dismay that their path to a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court may be blocked.
A lawyer for the detainees, Tina Foster, warned that if the precedent stood, U.S. President Barack Obama and future presidents would be able to “kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives” without ever having to prove their case in court.
The case was brought on behalf of a Tunisian man who says he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, a Yemeni man who says he was captured in Thailand in 2002, and another Yemeni man who says he was captured in 2003 at another location outside Afghanistan that has not been disclosed. (The government has disputed the second Yemeni’s claim.)
The men’s case was originally heard by Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, in Federal District Court. The Bush and Obama administrations had both urged Judge Bates not to extend habeas corpus rights beyond Guantánamo, arguing that courts should not interfere with military operations inside active combat zones.
But in April 2009, Judge Bates ruled that there was no difference between the three men who had filed suit and Guantánamo prisoners. His decision was limited to non-Afghans captured outside Afghanistan — a category that fits only about a dozen of the roughly 800 detainees at Bagram, officials have said. The appeals court overturned that ruling.
The chances of a successful appeal to the Supreme Court look slim to none. Presumably, this case would come before the Supreme Court – if the Court decides to hear the case at all – after Justice John Paul Stevens retires and Justice-designate Elena Kagan takes his seat.
But since it was Kagan, as U.S. Solicitor General, who argued the government’s case against the Bagram detainees, she would almost certainly recuse herself from the appeal. This would result in a 4-4 decision which, according to the Supreme Court’s rules, would be a victory for the government.
Human rights advocates and Constitutionals scholars contacted by IPS were unanimous in condemning the Appeals Court ruling.
Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, called the ruling “warped and illegitimate” and said it “highlights the dire risks of excessive judicial deference to executive power.”
In overruling Judge Bates’ original decision, “the D.C. Circuit has made possible, and even likely, a return to the Bush administration approach of using end-runs around the Constitution to allow kidnapping of suspects, potentially indefinite detention, and the inevitable related abuses,” he said.
David Frakt, a former Guantanamo Bay defense counsel and now a professor at Western State University College of Law, told IPS, “The idea that the United States can seize someone anywhere in the world, then transport them to Afghanistan to be held indefinitely without access to counsel, courts or any avenue to meaningfully challenge the basis for their confinement simply by asserting, without any oversight or requirement of substantiation, that the individual seized is an enemy is deeply troubling.”
He added, ”The law of war does not support such unchecked authority. The potential for abuse is far too great to entrust this power solely to the Executive Branch.”
Nancy Talanian, Executive Director of No More Guantanamos, told IPS, “The judges’ confidence that the government would never transfer detainees to a prison site, such as a war zone, to evade habeas corpus review is bewildering, in light of the fact that the Bush administration created Guantánamo Bay prison precisely to evade judicial scrutiny.”
And Prof. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois law school, called the decision “a serious set-back for international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.”
He told IPS, “Bagram has become Obama's Guantanamo where he is detaining and abusing human beings beyond the reach of United States Courts and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
He continued, “Since Afghanistan is a party to the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, the highest level officials of the Obama administration could very well see themselves indicted by the ICC Prosecutor for what they are doing at Bagram and the numerous other detention centers in Afghanistan. The fact that the U.S. Courts will not act to protect the prisoners at Bagram satisfies the Rome Statute's requirement of "complementarity" and thus paves the way for the International Criminal Court to act. The ICC Prosecutor has already stated that he keeping the situation in Afghanistan under review.”
Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of The National Lawyers Guild and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said the appellate court decision runs afoul of Supreme Court precedents.
She added, “Unfortunately, if the appellate court ruling in the Bagram case reaches the Supreme Court, it will likely be affirmed since Justice Stevens will be gone and Elena Kagan will recuse herself, resulting in a 4-4 tie."
And Daphne Eviatar, Human Rights First Senior Associate, said, "Under the current procedures, detainees have no right to representation by a lawyer, their hearings are not public and much of the evidence used against them remains secret. Even the rules governing the review board procedures have not been released publicly."
She continued, "It is impossible to have confidence that the United States is lawfully detaining actual enemy belligerents when their status is determined without disclosure and they can't even see all of the evidence used against them. In order to build confidence among Afghans and the rest of the world that it is lawfully detaining actual enemy belligerents, the United States should act transparently instead of withholding evidence from detainees and making determinations about their status based on secret evidence."
THE CIA, DRONES AND THE CHILD SOLDIER
By William Fisher
On the heels of reports that the Administration of President Barack Obama altered a new manual on military commission rules to accommodate
an illegal drone program, a senior United Nations official is expected to call on the U.S. this week to stop Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda.
The UN challenge will come from Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. , On June 3, he is scheduled to deliver a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the “life and death power” of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies.
It is unlikely that the U.S. will accept the UN’s call because drone attacks have become an increasingly important tactic in counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan.
Alston’s views will not be legally binding, and his report will not assert that
the operation of combat drones by nonmilitary personnel is a war crime, he told The New York Times.
But he clarified why he was targeting only actions by the CIA, not by the U.S. military.
“With the Defense Department you’ve got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan,” he said. “The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about.”
Reports over the weekend suggest that the U.S. Government has been struggling to justify the CIA’s counter-terrorism involvement without violating the laws of war.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) charged last week that the Obama administration changed a new manual on military commissions rules to accommodate its illegal drone program.
Under the old rules, "murder in violation of the laws of war" was defined as killings by people who did not meet "the requirements for lawful combatancy," which would have suggested that CIA drone operators - who are not members of the military and do not wear a military uniform - could be charged with war crimes for killing individuals using drones.
The ACLU is charging that “the U.S. program of targeting and killing people, sometimes far from any battlefield, with little oversight or Transparency, is illegal regardless of the military commissions rules.”
A Constitutional scholar, Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, agrees. He told IPS, “The manual’s change to the definition of ‘murder in violation of the laws of war’ made in order to exempt drone killings by the CIA further reveals the double standards at play – a problem which has characterized these commissions since the outset, when normal rules of evidence, law, and humane treatment were declared inapplicable.”
He said, “I don’t want to use the old cliché about ‘lipstick on a pig’. But no matter how much you dress up these commissions, they’re still used in circumstances where they shouldn’t be used – i.e. for terrorist suspects and those not amenable to prosecution under the classic law of war -- and they remain flawed tribunals under control of the executive, like the military courts used by dictators (which the US has always rightly criticized). That’s why we’ve seen repeated resignations by military prosecutors fed up with the system. The best way to achieve justice and prevent both war and terrorism is authentic, proactive commitment to implementing the human rights to which our nation subscribes.”
These developments come in the wake of a scathing report by the American military on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by Predator drone operators helped lead to an airstrike in February on a group of innocent men, women and children.
The report said that four American officers, including a brigade and battalion commander, had been reprimanded, and that two junior officers had also been disciplined. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who apologized to President Hamid Karzai after the attack, announced a series of training measures intended to reduce the chances of similar events.
The attack, in which three vehicles were destroyed, illustrated the
extraordinary sensitivity to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants by NATO forces. Since taking command here last June, General McChrystal has made protection of civilians a high priority, and has sharply restricted airstrikes.
The overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by
insurgents, but the growing intensity of the fighting this year has sent
civilian casualties to their highest levels since 2001.
The laws of war stipulate that soldiers in traditional armies cannot be prosecuted and punished for killing enemy forces in battle. The U.S. maintains that Qaeda fighters do not meet the requirements of the Geneva Conventions — for example, wearing uniforms. They are therefore not “privileged combatants” entitled to such battlefield immunity.
But C.I.A. drone operators are also not in uniform.
The Pentagon was forced to address this issue in connection with the Plan to restart military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay. The commissions began with pretrial hearings in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee accused of killing an Army sergeant during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Khadr was 15.
The Pentagon issued its new manual laying of commission rules the night before the first pretrial hearing. The delay was reportedly due to the time spent by government lawyers who had been rewriting a section about murder that has implications for the C.I.A. drone program.
A 2007 version of the manual defined the charge of “murder in violation of the laws of war” as a killing by someone who did not meet “the requirements for lawful combatancy” — like being part of a regular army or otherwise wearing a uniform. Similar language was incorporated into a draft of the new manual.
But, according to reporting by The New York Times, “as the Khadr hearing approached, Harold Koh, the State Department legal adviser, pointed out that such a definition could be construed as a concession by the United States that C.I.A. drone operators were war criminals. Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, and his staff ultimately agreed with that concern. They redrafted the manual so that murder by an unprivileged combatant would instead be treated like espionage — an offense under domestic law not considered a war crime.”
The manual now states, “An accused may be convicted,” the final manual states, if he “engaged in conduct traditionally triable by military commission (e.g., spying; murder committed while the accused did not meet the requirements of privileged belligerency) even if such conduct does not violate the international law of war.”
C.I.A. drone operators, who reportedly fly the aircraft from agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, might theoretically be subject to prosecution in a Pakistani courtroom under this new formulation. But it allows the United States to assure allies that it is in compliance with the laws of war.
On the heels of reports that the Administration of President Barack Obama altered a new manual on military commission rules to accommodate
an illegal drone program, a senior United Nations official is expected to call on the U.S. this week to stop Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda.
The UN challenge will come from Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. , On June 3, he is scheduled to deliver a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the “life and death power” of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies.
It is unlikely that the U.S. will accept the UN’s call because drone attacks have become an increasingly important tactic in counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan.
Alston’s views will not be legally binding, and his report will not assert that
the operation of combat drones by nonmilitary personnel is a war crime, he told The New York Times.
But he clarified why he was targeting only actions by the CIA, not by the U.S. military.
“With the Defense Department you’ve got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan,” he said. “The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about.”
Reports over the weekend suggest that the U.S. Government has been struggling to justify the CIA’s counter-terrorism involvement without violating the laws of war.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) charged last week that the Obama administration changed a new manual on military commissions rules to accommodate its illegal drone program.
Under the old rules, "murder in violation of the laws of war" was defined as killings by people who did not meet "the requirements for lawful combatancy," which would have suggested that CIA drone operators - who are not members of the military and do not wear a military uniform - could be charged with war crimes for killing individuals using drones.
The ACLU is charging that “the U.S. program of targeting and killing people, sometimes far from any battlefield, with little oversight or Transparency, is illegal regardless of the military commissions rules.”
A Constitutional scholar, Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, agrees. He told IPS, “The manual’s change to the definition of ‘murder in violation of the laws of war’ made in order to exempt drone killings by the CIA further reveals the double standards at play – a problem which has characterized these commissions since the outset, when normal rules of evidence, law, and humane treatment were declared inapplicable.”
He said, “I don’t want to use the old cliché about ‘lipstick on a pig’. But no matter how much you dress up these commissions, they’re still used in circumstances where they shouldn’t be used – i.e. for terrorist suspects and those not amenable to prosecution under the classic law of war -- and they remain flawed tribunals under control of the executive, like the military courts used by dictators (which the US has always rightly criticized). That’s why we’ve seen repeated resignations by military prosecutors fed up with the system. The best way to achieve justice and prevent both war and terrorism is authentic, proactive commitment to implementing the human rights to which our nation subscribes.”
These developments come in the wake of a scathing report by the American military on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by Predator drone operators helped lead to an airstrike in February on a group of innocent men, women and children.
The report said that four American officers, including a brigade and battalion commander, had been reprimanded, and that two junior officers had also been disciplined. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who apologized to President Hamid Karzai after the attack, announced a series of training measures intended to reduce the chances of similar events.
The attack, in which three vehicles were destroyed, illustrated the
extraordinary sensitivity to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants by NATO forces. Since taking command here last June, General McChrystal has made protection of civilians a high priority, and has sharply restricted airstrikes.
The overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by
insurgents, but the growing intensity of the fighting this year has sent
civilian casualties to their highest levels since 2001.
The laws of war stipulate that soldiers in traditional armies cannot be prosecuted and punished for killing enemy forces in battle. The U.S. maintains that Qaeda fighters do not meet the requirements of the Geneva Conventions — for example, wearing uniforms. They are therefore not “privileged combatants” entitled to such battlefield immunity.
But C.I.A. drone operators are also not in uniform.
The Pentagon was forced to address this issue in connection with the Plan to restart military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay. The commissions began with pretrial hearings in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee accused of killing an Army sergeant during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Khadr was 15.
The Pentagon issued its new manual laying of commission rules the night before the first pretrial hearing. The delay was reportedly due to the time spent by government lawyers who had been rewriting a section about murder that has implications for the C.I.A. drone program.
A 2007 version of the manual defined the charge of “murder in violation of the laws of war” as a killing by someone who did not meet “the requirements for lawful combatancy” — like being part of a regular army or otherwise wearing a uniform. Similar language was incorporated into a draft of the new manual.
But, according to reporting by The New York Times, “as the Khadr hearing approached, Harold Koh, the State Department legal adviser, pointed out that such a definition could be construed as a concession by the United States that C.I.A. drone operators were war criminals. Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, and his staff ultimately agreed with that concern. They redrafted the manual so that murder by an unprivileged combatant would instead be treated like espionage — an offense under domestic law not considered a war crime.”
The manual now states, “An accused may be convicted,” the final manual states, if he “engaged in conduct traditionally triable by military commission (e.g., spying; murder committed while the accused did not meet the requirements of privileged belligerency) even if such conduct does not violate the international law of war.”
C.I.A. drone operators, who reportedly fly the aircraft from agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, might theoretically be subject to prosecution in a Pakistani courtroom under this new formulation. But it allows the United States to assure allies that it is in compliance with the laws of war.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
KBR GETS TWOFER: CONTRACT, LAWSUIT
By William Fisher
Only hours after the Justice Department said it plans to pursue a lawsuit accusing KBR Inc. of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work, the Army announced it would award a $568 million no-bid contract to the former Halliburton Corporation subsidiary.
The company, which won the award over objections from members of Congress who have pushed the Pentagon to seek bids for further logistics contracts, will provide military support services in Iraq through 2011.
Several hours earlier, the Justice Department (DOJ) said the government will join a suit filed by whistleblowers alleging that two freight-forwarding firms gave KBR transportation department employees kickbacks in the form of meals, drinks, sports tickets and golf outings.
“Defense contractors cannot take advantage of the ongoing war effort by accepting unlawful kickbacks,” Assistant Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.
KBR, the Army’s largest contractor in Iraq, will continue to provide services in Iraq such as housing, meals, laundry, showers, water purification and bathroom cleaning under the new order, which was placed under a military contract KBR won in late 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
Since April 2008, the Army has put all logistics orders out for bids, pitting KBR against other companies, including the Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp.
Thus the no-bid work order is considered to be unusual. The Army said it chose the no-bid route for this contract because U.S. commanders in Iraq felt that bringing in a new company would be too disruptive as the U.S withdraws.
The view of General Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, was crucial to the decision, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told reporters.
“Odierno has reportedly said, ‘I’ve got three million pieces of equipment I’ve got to get out of Iraq, I’ve got 100 or so bases to close, I’ve got to move 80,000-plus people out of here and you want me to change horses in the middle of the stream?”
The U.S. force in Iraq is scheduled to shrink from 94,000 troops now to 50,000 by August, with a complete withdrawal by December 2011.
The Army, in its statement yesterday, said putting out to bid an order for 18 months’ work and making the transition to a new contractor would cost at least $77 million.
But members of Congress expressed dismay at the award. Congressman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to question the Army's decision. North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, who chaired several Senate hearings on electrocutions of soldiers in Iraq resulting from shoddy contracting work by KBR, said the Army's past LOGCAP, or logistics, contracts had produced "the greatest waste, fraud and abuse perhaps in the history of our country."
KBR’s no-bid work order also drew criticism from two U.S. senators even before it was announced. Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who heads a subcommittee that oversees military contracting, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging the Army against “continued reliance” on KBR in light of the Justice Department’s April lawsuit.
“The Army has a big burden to demonstrate that a decision to not compete is in the best interest of the military and American taxpayers,” McCaskill said.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit against KBR is the second government action this year. The U.S. sued the company on April 1, alleging that it used private armed security guards in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 in violation of its Army contract and then improperly billed for their services.
Before yesterday’s DOJ announcement, the Army had said in an e-mailed statement that it was aware of the April lawsuit and would use “additional oversight measures to ensure only reasonable, allowable costs are paid” under the new work order.
The new lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, was based on information from two whistleblowers who work in the air cargo industry, the DOJ said. The whistleblowers are entitled to a part of any money the Justice Department obtains in the case.
The new no-bid award also comes just a week after the Army announced that KBR would not receive $25 million in bonuses under the LOGCAP III Iraq support contract because KBR "failed to meet a level deserving of an award fee payment for work it did during the first four months of 2008.”
KBR's "failed" work occurred during the time a Green Beret soldier was electrocuted in a barracks shower in Iraq that KBR was responsible for maintaining.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit is not the first legal action taken against KBR. On April 1, the DOJ sued KBR alleging it violated its contract by using private security guards and improperly charging the Army for their services.
More recently, Charles M. Smith, a civilian official formerly in charge of managing KBR's multibillion-dollar contract in Iraq, blew the whistle on the Army approving $1 billion in dubious charges to the company. Smith was forced from his job when he refused to sign off on the charges, for which auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records. His successors then approved the charges. Smith said:
"They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify. Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”
For KBR, the new contract award is about more than money. It represents an opportunity for the company to repair its iconic image as typifying the worst of wartime profiteering and greed. The company has charged billions of dollars in unsupported charges, carried out shoddy electrical work, built hazardous burn pits, and failed to protect its employees from being raped.
KBR sent an email to its employees that says, "With so much negative news about KBR and the fact that we have not won a LOGCAP IV task order, it is with great pride that I am able to announce that KBR is now in the LOGCAP IV business."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000. Halliburton spun off its KBR subsidiary in 2006.
Only hours after the Justice Department said it plans to pursue a lawsuit accusing KBR Inc. of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work, the Army announced it would award a $568 million no-bid contract to the former Halliburton Corporation subsidiary.
The company, which won the award over objections from members of Congress who have pushed the Pentagon to seek bids for further logistics contracts, will provide military support services in Iraq through 2011.
Several hours earlier, the Justice Department (DOJ) said the government will join a suit filed by whistleblowers alleging that two freight-forwarding firms gave KBR transportation department employees kickbacks in the form of meals, drinks, sports tickets and golf outings.
“Defense contractors cannot take advantage of the ongoing war effort by accepting unlawful kickbacks,” Assistant Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.
KBR, the Army’s largest contractor in Iraq, will continue to provide services in Iraq such as housing, meals, laundry, showers, water purification and bathroom cleaning under the new order, which was placed under a military contract KBR won in late 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
Since April 2008, the Army has put all logistics orders out for bids, pitting KBR against other companies, including the Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp.
Thus the no-bid work order is considered to be unusual. The Army said it chose the no-bid route for this contract because U.S. commanders in Iraq felt that bringing in a new company would be too disruptive as the U.S withdraws.
The view of General Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, was crucial to the decision, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told reporters.
“Odierno has reportedly said, ‘I’ve got three million pieces of equipment I’ve got to get out of Iraq, I’ve got 100 or so bases to close, I’ve got to move 80,000-plus people out of here and you want me to change horses in the middle of the stream?”
The U.S. force in Iraq is scheduled to shrink from 94,000 troops now to 50,000 by August, with a complete withdrawal by December 2011.
The Army, in its statement yesterday, said putting out to bid an order for 18 months’ work and making the transition to a new contractor would cost at least $77 million.
But members of Congress expressed dismay at the award. Congressman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to question the Army's decision. North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, who chaired several Senate hearings on electrocutions of soldiers in Iraq resulting from shoddy contracting work by KBR, said the Army's past LOGCAP, or logistics, contracts had produced "the greatest waste, fraud and abuse perhaps in the history of our country."
KBR’s no-bid work order also drew criticism from two U.S. senators even before it was announced. Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who heads a subcommittee that oversees military contracting, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging the Army against “continued reliance” on KBR in light of the Justice Department’s April lawsuit.
“The Army has a big burden to demonstrate that a decision to not compete is in the best interest of the military and American taxpayers,” McCaskill said.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit against KBR is the second government action this year. The U.S. sued the company on April 1, alleging that it used private armed security guards in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 in violation of its Army contract and then improperly billed for their services.
Before yesterday’s DOJ announcement, the Army had said in an e-mailed statement that it was aware of the April lawsuit and would use “additional oversight measures to ensure only reasonable, allowable costs are paid” under the new work order.
The new lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, was based on information from two whistleblowers who work in the air cargo industry, the DOJ said. The whistleblowers are entitled to a part of any money the Justice Department obtains in the case.
The new no-bid award also comes just a week after the Army announced that KBR would not receive $25 million in bonuses under the LOGCAP III Iraq support contract because KBR "failed to meet a level deserving of an award fee payment for work it did during the first four months of 2008.”
KBR's "failed" work occurred during the time a Green Beret soldier was electrocuted in a barracks shower in Iraq that KBR was responsible for maintaining.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit is not the first legal action taken against KBR. On April 1, the DOJ sued KBR alleging it violated its contract by using private security guards and improperly charging the Army for their services.
More recently, Charles M. Smith, a civilian official formerly in charge of managing KBR's multibillion-dollar contract in Iraq, blew the whistle on the Army approving $1 billion in dubious charges to the company. Smith was forced from his job when he refused to sign off on the charges, for which auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records. His successors then approved the charges. Smith said:
"They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify. Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”
For KBR, the new contract award is about more than money. It represents an opportunity for the company to repair its iconic image as typifying the worst of wartime profiteering and greed. The company has charged billions of dollars in unsupported charges, carried out shoddy electrical work, built hazardous burn pits, and failed to protect its employees from being raped.
KBR sent an email to its employees that says, "With so much negative news about KBR and the fact that we have not won a LOGCAP IV task order, it is with great pride that I am able to announce that KBR is now in the LOGCAP IV business."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000. Halliburton spun off its KBR subsidiary in 2006.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Un-NIMBY
By William Fisher
As Congress stiffens its resistance to moving any Guantánamo prisoners anywhere near the Continental U.S., some American communities are putting out the welcome mat.
Through an organization called “No More Guantánamos,” two New England towns have voted to welcome detainees who have been cleared for release, and similar actions are being planned in other locations.
In late April, voters at a Town Meeting in Leverett, Massachusetts, overwhelmingly approved a resolution welcoming “one or two” cleared Guantánamo Bay detainees to the community once Congress lifts its current ban.
Leverett thus became the second U.S. municipality to make it known that it would welcome GITMO detainees. Its resolution is identical to one approved in November 2009by Town Meeting members in nearby Amherst, Massachusetts.
Leverett is a town in Western Massachusetts with a population is 1,663 as of the 2000census. It is part of the Springfield metro area. Amherst is a much larger town, with a population of more than 35,000. It is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It was also the home of famed American poet Emily Dickinson, who was known as “The Belle of Amherst.”
Nancy Talanian, executive director of “No More Guantánamos,” told IPS that there was very little local opposition in either of the towns. “The main opposition that Amherst town officials experienced came from outside the community, from right-wing talk radio and the blogosphere.”
Congress has left no doubt that it regards the movement of any Guantánamo prisoner to the Continental U.S. as one of the most highly charged third rails in American politics. It has imposed strict rules on the Obama Administration governing bringing GITMO prisoners to the U.S. even for trial.
And it has effectively stalled the Administration’s plans to purchase a prison in Illinois to house prisoners now in custody at Guantánamo. Congress reiterated that position last week when the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved a defense bill for 2011 that bans spending money to build or modify any facility inside the United States to house Guantánamo detainees.
Guantánamo detainees have been largely successful in appealing their detentions to Federal district court, which has ordered 75 per cent of appellants to be released. But the U.S. military continues to hold them because an Appeals Court has ruled that releasing them into the U.S. involves immigration law, over which federal judges have no jurisdiction.
At the same time, the U.S. continues to negotiate with other countries to accept prisoners it has cleared for release.
With GITMO’s promised closing effectively stalled by Congress, why is “No More Guantánamos” actively promoting municipal resolutions offering homes?
The group’s executive director, Nancy Talanian, told IPS, “It’s important for the world to know that there are many community groups who take seriously their responsibility to promote justice for their fellow human beings. For years, we were told that all the prisoners held at Guantánamo were the worst of the worst. Now we know that was not true.”
She added, “The Bush and Obama administrations and Federal court have already freed nearly 600 men who passed through that facility. Many of the 100 remaining men whom the government has cleared for transfer have been held for more than eight years without being charged with any crime. We are prepared to accept our government’s verdict that these men pose no threat to the United States.”
“Without cooperation from U.S. communities and Congress, the long-awaited plan to close Guantánamo may not succeed,” she said.
She noted that Congress's ‘not-in-our-backyard' ban stands in the way of encouraging international cooperation in closing the prison. "Guantánamo detainees who cannot safely return home are really no different than other refugees whom western Massachusetts communities have welcomed in the past," she said.
Talanian told IPS that “No More Guantánamos” has additional chapters in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; New York City; Denver, Colorado; and Tallahassee, Florida, and other chapters currently forming.
Ms. Talanian founded the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), a grassroots not-profit advocating for the rule of law, and was its executive director through 2008.
No More Guantánamos describes itself as “a coalition of concerned U.S. residents, communities, organizations, and attorneys who are working together to ensure justice for the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and other offshore prison sites maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon around the world.”
Its mission is “to ensure basic human rights for all prisoners, including the right to be either charged for crimes and tried or released, in accordance with international law, and not held indefinitely, and to find homes for prisoners who cannot return home. “
The organization was formed soon after President Barrack Obama signed an executive order to close Guantánamo Bay prison by January 22, 2010.
As Congress stiffens its resistance to moving any Guantánamo prisoners anywhere near the Continental U.S., some American communities are putting out the welcome mat.
Through an organization called “No More Guantánamos,” two New England towns have voted to welcome detainees who have been cleared for release, and similar actions are being planned in other locations.
In late April, voters at a Town Meeting in Leverett, Massachusetts, overwhelmingly approved a resolution welcoming “one or two” cleared Guantánamo Bay detainees to the community once Congress lifts its current ban.
Leverett thus became the second U.S. municipality to make it known that it would welcome GITMO detainees. Its resolution is identical to one approved in November 2009by Town Meeting members in nearby Amherst, Massachusetts.
Leverett is a town in Western Massachusetts with a population is 1,663 as of the 2000census. It is part of the Springfield metro area. Amherst is a much larger town, with a population of more than 35,000. It is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It was also the home of famed American poet Emily Dickinson, who was known as “The Belle of Amherst.”
Nancy Talanian, executive director of “No More Guantánamos,” told IPS that there was very little local opposition in either of the towns. “The main opposition that Amherst town officials experienced came from outside the community, from right-wing talk radio and the blogosphere.”
Congress has left no doubt that it regards the movement of any Guantánamo prisoner to the Continental U.S. as one of the most highly charged third rails in American politics. It has imposed strict rules on the Obama Administration governing bringing GITMO prisoners to the U.S. even for trial.
And it has effectively stalled the Administration’s plans to purchase a prison in Illinois to house prisoners now in custody at Guantánamo. Congress reiterated that position last week when the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved a defense bill for 2011 that bans spending money to build or modify any facility inside the United States to house Guantánamo detainees.
Guantánamo detainees have been largely successful in appealing their detentions to Federal district court, which has ordered 75 per cent of appellants to be released. But the U.S. military continues to hold them because an Appeals Court has ruled that releasing them into the U.S. involves immigration law, over which federal judges have no jurisdiction.
At the same time, the U.S. continues to negotiate with other countries to accept prisoners it has cleared for release.
With GITMO’s promised closing effectively stalled by Congress, why is “No More Guantánamos” actively promoting municipal resolutions offering homes?
The group’s executive director, Nancy Talanian, told IPS, “It’s important for the world to know that there are many community groups who take seriously their responsibility to promote justice for their fellow human beings. For years, we were told that all the prisoners held at Guantánamo were the worst of the worst. Now we know that was not true.”
She added, “The Bush and Obama administrations and Federal court have already freed nearly 600 men who passed through that facility. Many of the 100 remaining men whom the government has cleared for transfer have been held for more than eight years without being charged with any crime. We are prepared to accept our government’s verdict that these men pose no threat to the United States.”
“Without cooperation from U.S. communities and Congress, the long-awaited plan to close Guantánamo may not succeed,” she said.
She noted that Congress's ‘not-in-our-backyard' ban stands in the way of encouraging international cooperation in closing the prison. "Guantánamo detainees who cannot safely return home are really no different than other refugees whom western Massachusetts communities have welcomed in the past," she said.
Talanian told IPS that “No More Guantánamos” has additional chapters in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; New York City; Denver, Colorado; and Tallahassee, Florida, and other chapters currently forming.
Ms. Talanian founded the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), a grassroots not-profit advocating for the rule of law, and was its executive director through 2008.
No More Guantánamos describes itself as “a coalition of concerned U.S. residents, communities, organizations, and attorneys who are working together to ensure justice for the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and other offshore prison sites maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon around the world.”
Its mission is “to ensure basic human rights for all prisoners, including the right to be either charged for crimes and tried or released, in accordance with international law, and not held indefinitely, and to find homes for prisoners who cannot return home. “
The organization was formed soon after President Barrack Obama signed an executive order to close Guantánamo Bay prison by January 22, 2010.
KBR GETS TWOFER: CONTRACT, LAWSUIT
By William Fisher
Only hours after the Justice Department said it plans to pursue a lawsuit accusing KBR Inc. of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work, the Army announced it would award a $568 million no-bid contract to the former Halliburton Corporation subsidiary.
The company, which won the award over objections from members of Congress who have pushed the Pentagon to seek bids for further logistics contracts, will provide military support services in Iraq through 2011.
Several hours earlier, the Justice Department (DOJ) said the government will join a suit filed by whistleblowers alleging that two freight-forwarding firms gave KBR transportation department employees kickbacks in the form of meals, drinks, sports tickets and golf outings.
“Defense contractors cannot take advantage of the ongoing war effort by accepting unlawful kickbacks,” Assistant Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.
KBR, the Army’s largest contractor in Iraq, will continue to provide services in Iraq such as housing, meals, laundry, showers, water purification and bathroom cleaning under the new order, which was placed under a military contract KBR won in late 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
Since April 2008, the Army has put all logistics orders out for bids, pitting KBR against other companies, including the Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp.
Thus the no-bid work order is considered to be unusual. The Army said it chose the no-bid route for this contract because U.S. commanders in Iraq felt that bringing in a new company would be too disruptive as the U.S withdraws.
The view of General Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, was crucial to the decision, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told reporters.
“Odierno has reportedly said, ‘I’ve got three million pieces of equipment I’ve got to get out of Iraq, I’ve got 100 or so bases to close, I’ve got to move 80,000-plus people out of here and you want me to change horses in the middle of the stream?”
The U.S. force in Iraq is scheduled to shrink from 94,000 troops now to 50,000 by August, with a complete withdrawal by December 2011.
The Army, in its statement yesterday, said putting out to bid an order for 18 months’ work and making the transition to a new contractor would cost at least $77 million.
But members of Congress expressed dismay at the award. Congressman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to question the Army's decision. North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, who chaired several Senate hearings on electrocutions of soldiers in Iraq resulting from shoddy contracting work by KBR, said the Army's past LOGCAP, or logistics, contracts had produced "the greatest waste, fraud and abuse perhaps in the history of our country."
KBR’s no-bid work order also drew criticism from two U.S. senators even before it was announced. Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who heads a subcommittee that oversees military contracting, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging the Army against “continued reliance” on KBR in light of the Justice Department’s April lawsuit.
“The Army has a big burden to demonstrate that a decision to not compete is in the best interest of the military and American taxpayers,” McCaskill said.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit against KBR is the second government action this year. The U.S. sued the company on April 1, alleging that it used private armed security guards in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 in violation of its Army contract and then improperly billed for their services.
Before yesterday’s DOJ announcement, the Army had said in an e-mailed statement that it was aware of the April lawsuit and would use “additional oversight measures to ensure only reasonable, allowable costs are paid” under the new work order.
The new lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, was based on information from two whistleblowers who work in the air cargo industry, the DOJ said. The whistleblowers are entitled to a part of any money the Justice Department obtains in the case.
The new no-bid award also comes just a week after the Army announced that KBR would not receive $25 million in bonuses under the LOGCAP III Iraq support contract because KBR "failed to meet a level deserving of an award fee payment for work it did during the first four months of 2008.”
KBR's "failed" work occurred during the time a Green Beret soldier was electrocuted in a barracks shower in Iraq that KBR was responsible for maintaining.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit is not the first legal action taken against KBR. On April 1, the DOJ sued KBR alleging it violated its contract by using private security guards and improperly charging the Army for their services.
More recently, Charles M. Smith, a civilian official formerly in charge of managing KBR's multibillion-dollar contract in Iraq, blew the whistle on the Army approving $1 billion in dubious charges to the company. Smith was forced from his job when he refused to sign off on the charges, for which auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records. His successors then approved the charges. Smith said:
"They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify. Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”
For KBR, the new contract award is about more than money. It represents an opportunity for the company to repair its iconic image as typifying the worst of wartime profiteering and greed. The company has charged billions of dollars in unsupported charges, carried out shoddy electrical work, built hazardous burn pits, and failed to protect its employees from being raped.
KBR sent an email to its employees that says, "With so much negative news about KBR and the fact that we have not won a LOGCAP IV task order, it is with great pride that I am able to announce that KBR is now in the LOGCAP IV business."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000. Halliburton spun off its KBR subsidiary in 2006.
Only hours after the Justice Department said it plans to pursue a lawsuit accusing KBR Inc. of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work, the Army announced it would award a $568 million no-bid contract to the former Halliburton Corporation subsidiary.
The company, which won the award over objections from members of Congress who have pushed the Pentagon to seek bids for further logistics contracts, will provide military support services in Iraq through 2011.
Several hours earlier, the Justice Department (DOJ) said the government will join a suit filed by whistleblowers alleging that two freight-forwarding firms gave KBR transportation department employees kickbacks in the form of meals, drinks, sports tickets and golf outings.
“Defense contractors cannot take advantage of the ongoing war effort by accepting unlawful kickbacks,” Assistant Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.
KBR, the Army’s largest contractor in Iraq, will continue to provide services in Iraq such as housing, meals, laundry, showers, water purification and bathroom cleaning under the new order, which was placed under a military contract KBR won in late 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
Since April 2008, the Army has put all logistics orders out for bids, pitting KBR against other companies, including the Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp.
Thus the no-bid work order is considered to be unusual. The Army said it chose the no-bid route for this contract because U.S. commanders in Iraq felt that bringing in a new company would be too disruptive as the U.S withdraws.
The view of General Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, was crucial to the decision, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told reporters.
“Odierno has reportedly said, ‘I’ve got three million pieces of equipment I’ve got to get out of Iraq, I’ve got 100 or so bases to close, I’ve got to move 80,000-plus people out of here and you want me to change horses in the middle of the stream?”
The U.S. force in Iraq is scheduled to shrink from 94,000 troops now to 50,000 by August, with a complete withdrawal by December 2011.
The Army, in its statement yesterday, said putting out to bid an order for 18 months’ work and making the transition to a new contractor would cost at least $77 million.
But members of Congress expressed dismay at the award. Congressman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to question the Army's decision. North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, who chaired several Senate hearings on electrocutions of soldiers in Iraq resulting from shoddy contracting work by KBR, said the Army's past LOGCAP, or logistics, contracts had produced "the greatest waste, fraud and abuse perhaps in the history of our country."
KBR’s no-bid work order also drew criticism from two U.S. senators even before it was announced. Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who heads a subcommittee that oversees military contracting, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging the Army against “continued reliance” on KBR in light of the Justice Department’s April lawsuit.
“The Army has a big burden to demonstrate that a decision to not compete is in the best interest of the military and American taxpayers,” McCaskill said.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit against KBR is the second government action this year. The U.S. sued the company on April 1, alleging that it used private armed security guards in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 in violation of its Army contract and then improperly billed for their services.
Before yesterday’s DOJ announcement, the Army had said in an e-mailed statement that it was aware of the April lawsuit and would use “additional oversight measures to ensure only reasonable, allowable costs are paid” under the new work order.
The new lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, was based on information from two whistleblowers who work in the air cargo industry, the DOJ said. The whistleblowers are entitled to a part of any money the Justice Department obtains in the case.
The new no-bid award also comes just a week after the Army announced that KBR would not receive $25 million in bonuses under the LOGCAP III Iraq support contract because KBR "failed to meet a level deserving of an award fee payment for work it did during the first four months of 2008.”
KBR's "failed" work occurred during the time a Green Beret soldier was electrocuted in a barracks shower in Iraq that KBR was responsible for maintaining.
The whistleblowers’ lawsuit is not the first legal action taken against KBR. On April 1, the DOJ sued KBR alleging it violated its contract by using private security guards and improperly charging the Army for their services.
More recently, Charles M. Smith, a civilian official formerly in charge of managing KBR's multibillion-dollar contract in Iraq, blew the whistle on the Army approving $1 billion in dubious charges to the company. Smith was forced from his job when he refused to sign off on the charges, for which auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records. His successors then approved the charges. Smith said:
"They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify. Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”
For KBR, the new contract award is about more than money. It represents an opportunity for the company to repair its iconic image as typifying the worst of wartime profiteering and greed. The company has charged billions of dollars in unsupported charges, carried out shoddy electrical work, built hazardous burn pits, and failed to protect its employees from being raped.
KBR sent an email to its employees that says, "With so much negative news about KBR and the fact that we have not won a LOGCAP IV task order, it is with great pride that I am able to announce that KBR is now in the LOGCAP IV business."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000. Halliburton spun off its KBR subsidiary in 2006.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Europe’s Great Cover Up!
By William Fisher
France is now poised to enact legislation making it illegal to wear the burqa (full body covering) and the niqab (face veil). And a growing number of European countries have already passed or are well on the way to passing similar legislation.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is promoting such a ban in his country, says bluntly: "The burqa has no place in France."
Yet, while the anti-burqa frenzy sweeps Europe, the targets of these measures seem virtually invisible. It is estimated that a couple of hundred women in Belgium wear a full veil. In France, one study estimated that there are 1,900 burqa wearers in a Muslim population of five million.
European public policy makers are using the idea of an enforced dress code as a piece of social engineering, trying to hasten the assimilation of Muslims into the general population. Those opposed to this policy contend that assimilation doesn’t happen this way. The result of the ban, they say, will not make them more European; it will only make Europe less free.
With that background, I was interested to learn what my (largely American) readers thought about this issue. So, to a largish but handpicked list (attempting some kind of balance), I emailed the following question:
“France is about to pass a law banning the wearing of the burqa (full body covering) and the niqab (face veil). Proponents of this measure claim the legislation strikes a blow for women's freedom by allowing them to cast off garb they have been forced to wear against their will. Others say women who want to wear these items will now have no choice.
“The religious issue complicates the situation further. Some Muslims feel that these items of clothing are part of a religious obligation; others deny that the Koran makes dress mandatory.
“I'd like to know how you feel. Does the proposed new law help or hinder the rights of Muslim women?”
I got a goodly number of responses. They broke down into four main categories: those opposing the ban outright; those favoring the ban; those who thought the issue was none of the government’s business; and the outliers – people who suggested off-the-beaten-track solutions.
Readers who felt that such a ban would impede the rights of Muslim women who want to wear such clothing was by far the largest group of respondents. But they often reached their conclusions after a lot of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand rabbinical angst.
Typical responses from this group:
“It seems to me that the costumes are an integral part of freedom of religion (speech) as the wearing of orthodox Jewish garb, nuns habits, or even justices use of robes. It is all part of freedom of expression. Even the question infers that such repression is justified by the benefits that may derive from such prohibitions. The issue of women’s freedom to shed such costumes is a separate one and yet another justification for holding sacrosanct the civil and human rights to freedom of and from religion and politics.”And another reader: “I'm assuming that all Muslim women are not alike, but if I had to make a choice, I'd say that the mandate impedes the rights of Muslim women who want to wear such clothing.”
And another: “I am terribly conflicted on this issue. On the one hand, I hate these items of dress because they seem to keep women in a subservient position. It also sets them apart from other women whose dress is conventional. Often people see clothing of this sort and distrust the person. On the other hand, religious garb is typical of many religions. Catholic women wearing head coverings in church, Jewish men wearing hats in temple, and you know the rest. Do those practices need to be outlawed? It seems to me as though it should be all or nothing.”
And another: “Okay, my conclusion is that if a woman should choose to wear it, it's okay. If she's forced to wear it, it isn't. How do you legislate that?”
And yet another: “My opinion as a liberated woman is that: Sounds like state-sanctioned racism to me. Will they next start banning turbans or yarmulkes? Will orthodox Jewish women not be able to cover their heads with scarves or wigs? Will they be forced to conform to contemporary French fashions? I understand that the intent is good. But I also understand that it will effectively eliminate these women's ability to choose. In my opinion, a civilized society should respect cultural differences. This law is a newfound fascism turned on its head and blinded by a contemporary "niqab."
Another group favored the ban, another position that garnered a sizable minority.
As one reader in this group put it, “It's quite possible (though hard for me to believe), that there are women who actually want to be invisible, but they are better off learning to live - and dress - as part of society. Moreover, some people claim it's a security issue, if you are going to throw a bomb what better way than to be all covered up? So I think it goes beyond a civil rights issue. Only very radical fundamentalist Muslims claim it is a religious obligation mandated by the Koran, by the way.”
Other responses:
“National security is at stake with burqas and niqabs. They conceal identity and conceivably suicide weapons. If a woman wants to dress in them, then she can go to countries where they are accepted.”
And from another reader: “If they want to live in a country for which this is not the custom, then they have to conform to the local culture. Muslim women and their spouses are free to return to the country they came from. I don't see this as France's problem. Their problem is if concealing of identity and weapons causes challenges to unknown innocent people.”
And another: “I would be against the law, except for cases of national security. There is no way government should dictate how to dress or undress. However when it is an issue of identification the dress should come off.”
And another: It's a difficult issue, but on balance I agree with the proposed ban. It's quite possible (though hard for me to believe), that there are women who actually want to be invisible, but they are better off learning to live - and dress - as part of society. Moreover, some people claim it's a security issue, if you are going to throw a bomb what better way than to be all covered up? So I think it goes beyond a civil rights issue. Only very radical fundamentalist Muslims claim it is a religious obligation mandated by the Koran, by the way.”
And finally: “If there is no definitive religious mandate, it would seem reasonable for a government to invoke a dress code in the same way that governments prohibit public nudity or covering the face with ski masks or nylon stockings upon while sauntering down the street toward a bank while carrying an AK-47 assault rifle as an elegant accessory.”Then there was a third group, also a sizable minority, which felt this was none of the government’s business.
One reader put it this way: “France's proposed law could help the rights of those women who oppose the items of dress, but take away the rights of those who want to respect and honor their tradition. I don’t know France’s motivation behind this. If hidden weapons have become an issue then it might be a strategy to seriously consider. However, if it’s to free women of the garb, I don’t think that’s the state’s place. Whether or not the Koran makes the dress mandatory is irrelevant since it’s not the state’s role to interpret the Koran, and since most religious sects have a range of interpretations of their sacred writings. This is a religious and cultural matter which those who oppose it should pursue as such; that’s what “movements” are for. The State should keep its hands off.”
And from another reader: “This question is at the heart of our future. Where, when and how does one culture impose its values on another? At what line? We may think that the wearing of the burqa and the niqab delegates women to the dark shadows of life, obliterating their existence in domesticity. But is it our--or the French government's-- business? Whose business is it? “
And yet another: “Anything so rigid in ANY direction is bound to trample on someone's rights. I don't see why this law needs to be in effect at all....seems like choice is the way to go here. But there is a lot of background, I'm sure, that I am totally unaware of in this case.”
And another: “I think it isn't our business what these people want to wear. But when I taught in Spanish Harlem the boys who didn't want to take their hats or jackets off -- there was the suggestion that it had to do with being Muslim -- bothered me. I felt they didn't want to be where they were...learning now to be in a foreign culture."
And a final comment, treasured for its brevity: “Is it the place of a national government to impose a dress code?”
Then there were the inevitable outliers.
One of them opposed wearing religious garb of any faith. He said, “ From a purely non-sectarian point of view, I would say that the wearing of the burqa and niqab hurts women, especially if they are forced to wear them against their will. However, it is my understanding that many Muslim women (especially those in western countries) that choose to wear those garments and therefore they feel it is a choice that they are consciously making. In terms of women's rights, however, I am sure that there are many other restrictive measures that crush women's rights; restrictions that are probably far more egregious and harmful. If it were up to me -- and I were king -- there would be no public displays of religious vestments whatsoever, but hey, that's just me.”
Another reader chimed in with a Solomonic question. He said, “Of course, if wearing burqas and niqabs is, indeed, mandated by religion, the decision would have to turn on weighing the balance of religious freedom and the public good. And who is really qualified to render such a judgment?
And yet another reader suggested that burqas and niqabs be “grandfathered” into the laws that are passed. He said, “I am always for a free decision based on all relevant and current information. Those entering France when these garments were allowed should be free to continue--all new entrants should be subject to then existing laws. However, any government can impose sumptuary laws (tobacco prohibition) on everyone (without discrimination) which they consider benefit society; those disagreeing can appeal to the courts.”
What are we to take away from these comments? First, we need a disclaimer: This was certainly not a scientific survey. Second, the sample was much too small to qualify as a credible base. Third, many of my readers, it is probably safe to say, are known to have a built-in bias toward the Left. And it’s a fair bet that most of my readers are highly educated, with advanced university degrees.
Finally, it seems to me that most of my readers’ comments are conditioned to a greater or lesser extent by the events of 9/11 and the whole issue national security. Some respondents made that caveat explicit: Are burqas going to be used to secret suicide vests?
(Personally, I would be more freaked by the potential loss of peripheral vision by a car driver with a niqab.)
But I think most national security experts would tell you that trying to chase down every burqa in town won’t necessarily turn up more suicide vests, only more irritated Muslim women complaining about being racially profiled.
That said, it seems to me that the French Government, and all the other European Governments who are considering the dress code issue, are simply trying to eliminate that big slice of its population that’s “not like us.” They are attempting to achieve instant homogeneity by wardrobe. But the history of immigration tells us this is not the way people get assimilated.
The history of immigrant assimilation into our own country may not be the best example, simply because it is our own country, where many things have worked differently from their European counterparts.
Legal immigration into the U.S. was accompanied by a great deal of we’ll-let-you-be second-class-citizens attitudes, we’ll-give-you-the-jobs-no-one-else-wants-to-do work. And, yes, there was conflict not only between immigrants and non-immigrants, but also among immigrants from different parts of the world.
These new Americans cleaned our houses, took care of our children, and picked the fruit and vegetables we put on our tables. And they got paid less for doing more.
In other words, immigrants were the victims of institutionalized greed. Most began in poverty and improved their condition gradually by buying and selling among themselves – in their ghettos. Eventually, a few began to accumulate wealth. They became the ghetto leaders. Then they broke out of the ghettos and became entrepreneurs.
And, for many, although they still clung to some old customs, always remembered the music, and spoke some of the old country’s languages, their principal aspiration was always to be 110 per cent Americans. Baseball. Apple pie. The Whole Nine Yards. This evolution took generations.
So it is and will be for future generations of immigrants. You can see the full metamorphosis if you visit the Muslim neighborhoods of places like Dearborn, Michigan.
People who live there – part of the several million Muslims who are proud to
call themselves Americans – remember where they came from. The elders may even remember the discrimination and the second-class citizenship they experienced – some of which lingers to this day, thanks to the Islamophobia that followed 9/11.
But, by and large, these people have become the kinds of fully assimilated Americans who would warm the cockles even of fear-mongering nativists like Tom Tancredo and Steve King.
Could this happen in Europe? Well, I guess anything’s possible. But on the Continent, it faces a major obstacle: Europe does not honor diversity; it honors a homogeneity that can’t be achieved in the 21st Century.
At the core of Americans, I still find that most people buy into the narrative we invented of improving ourselves and our country by celebrating the differences among and between our people.
What the so-called anti-immigrant forces want is an instant replay of Ellis Island. They want immigrants to come to our country legally. That’s not so far-fetched. It’s the duty of every sovereign country. But one of the problems with that construct is that, for the most part, the people who passed through Ellis Island looked pretty much like the rest of us. There may have been Mediterranean men who looked Latino – but back then, we didn’t fear Latinos. And there were certainly no women in burqas or hiqabs!
In any event, people who really know about immigration tell us that banning burqas and hiqabs will be about as effective in controlling border traffic as the fences we’ve built.
Getting this job done will take nothing less than CIF – Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CIF that puts illegals on a path to citizenship, that lets hard-working people do the jobs only hard-working people would want to do, that regulates the numbers and types of immigrants we wish to welcome, that treats immigrant detainees humanely, and that takes a big whack at employers who use wink-and-a-nod personnel practices to hire people who are in this country illegally because it saves them money.
That sounds like something we could actually do!
But at the same time, there are ominous portents of things to come taking place among our neighbors to the North. Quebec has recently tabled a new law, Bill 94, which will ban the niqab — or any face cover — when extending and receiving public services in such institutions as courts, hospitals, schools, and licensing bureaus.
Could this be the beginning of the slippery slope for the Western Hemisphere?
Having sounded that alarm bell, I have to say that whether or not there’s a burqa ban in Europe, or in Canada, or even in America, we’re dealing with a sideshow, a symptom. The woman who really wants to wear these garments isn’t going to change because she’s told they’re banned. She’s just going to get angrier and less assimilated.
So, until they find the smarts and the courage to come up with a lot more holistic and robust approach to immigration, governments should just get out of the way.
France is now poised to enact legislation making it illegal to wear the burqa (full body covering) and the niqab (face veil). And a growing number of European countries have already passed or are well on the way to passing similar legislation.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is promoting such a ban in his country, says bluntly: "The burqa has no place in France."
Yet, while the anti-burqa frenzy sweeps Europe, the targets of these measures seem virtually invisible. It is estimated that a couple of hundred women in Belgium wear a full veil. In France, one study estimated that there are 1,900 burqa wearers in a Muslim population of five million.
European public policy makers are using the idea of an enforced dress code as a piece of social engineering, trying to hasten the assimilation of Muslims into the general population. Those opposed to this policy contend that assimilation doesn’t happen this way. The result of the ban, they say, will not make them more European; it will only make Europe less free.
With that background, I was interested to learn what my (largely American) readers thought about this issue. So, to a largish but handpicked list (attempting some kind of balance), I emailed the following question:
“France is about to pass a law banning the wearing of the burqa (full body covering) and the niqab (face veil). Proponents of this measure claim the legislation strikes a blow for women's freedom by allowing them to cast off garb they have been forced to wear against their will. Others say women who want to wear these items will now have no choice.
“The religious issue complicates the situation further. Some Muslims feel that these items of clothing are part of a religious obligation; others deny that the Koran makes dress mandatory.
“I'd like to know how you feel. Does the proposed new law help or hinder the rights of Muslim women?”
I got a goodly number of responses. They broke down into four main categories: those opposing the ban outright; those favoring the ban; those who thought the issue was none of the government’s business; and the outliers – people who suggested off-the-beaten-track solutions.
Readers who felt that such a ban would impede the rights of Muslim women who want to wear such clothing was by far the largest group of respondents. But they often reached their conclusions after a lot of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand rabbinical angst.
Typical responses from this group:
“It seems to me that the costumes are an integral part of freedom of religion (speech) as the wearing of orthodox Jewish garb, nuns habits, or even justices use of robes. It is all part of freedom of expression. Even the question infers that such repression is justified by the benefits that may derive from such prohibitions. The issue of women’s freedom to shed such costumes is a separate one and yet another justification for holding sacrosanct the civil and human rights to freedom of and from religion and politics.”And another reader: “I'm assuming that all Muslim women are not alike, but if I had to make a choice, I'd say that the mandate impedes the rights of Muslim women who want to wear such clothing.”
And another: “I am terribly conflicted on this issue. On the one hand, I hate these items of dress because they seem to keep women in a subservient position. It also sets them apart from other women whose dress is conventional. Often people see clothing of this sort and distrust the person. On the other hand, religious garb is typical of many religions. Catholic women wearing head coverings in church, Jewish men wearing hats in temple, and you know the rest. Do those practices need to be outlawed? It seems to me as though it should be all or nothing.”
And another: “Okay, my conclusion is that if a woman should choose to wear it, it's okay. If she's forced to wear it, it isn't. How do you legislate that?”
And yet another: “My opinion as a liberated woman is that: Sounds like state-sanctioned racism to me. Will they next start banning turbans or yarmulkes? Will orthodox Jewish women not be able to cover their heads with scarves or wigs? Will they be forced to conform to contemporary French fashions? I understand that the intent is good. But I also understand that it will effectively eliminate these women's ability to choose. In my opinion, a civilized society should respect cultural differences. This law is a newfound fascism turned on its head and blinded by a contemporary "niqab."
Another group favored the ban, another position that garnered a sizable minority.
As one reader in this group put it, “It's quite possible (though hard for me to believe), that there are women who actually want to be invisible, but they are better off learning to live - and dress - as part of society. Moreover, some people claim it's a security issue, if you are going to throw a bomb what better way than to be all covered up? So I think it goes beyond a civil rights issue. Only very radical fundamentalist Muslims claim it is a religious obligation mandated by the Koran, by the way.”
Other responses:
“National security is at stake with burqas and niqabs. They conceal identity and conceivably suicide weapons. If a woman wants to dress in them, then she can go to countries where they are accepted.”
And from another reader: “If they want to live in a country for which this is not the custom, then they have to conform to the local culture. Muslim women and their spouses are free to return to the country they came from. I don't see this as France's problem. Their problem is if concealing of identity and weapons causes challenges to unknown innocent people.”
And another: “I would be against the law, except for cases of national security. There is no way government should dictate how to dress or undress. However when it is an issue of identification the dress should come off.”
And another: It's a difficult issue, but on balance I agree with the proposed ban. It's quite possible (though hard for me to believe), that there are women who actually want to be invisible, but they are better off learning to live - and dress - as part of society. Moreover, some people claim it's a security issue, if you are going to throw a bomb what better way than to be all covered up? So I think it goes beyond a civil rights issue. Only very radical fundamentalist Muslims claim it is a religious obligation mandated by the Koran, by the way.”
And finally: “If there is no definitive religious mandate, it would seem reasonable for a government to invoke a dress code in the same way that governments prohibit public nudity or covering the face with ski masks or nylon stockings upon while sauntering down the street toward a bank while carrying an AK-47 assault rifle as an elegant accessory.”Then there was a third group, also a sizable minority, which felt this was none of the government’s business.
One reader put it this way: “France's proposed law could help the rights of those women who oppose the items of dress, but take away the rights of those who want to respect and honor their tradition. I don’t know France’s motivation behind this. If hidden weapons have become an issue then it might be a strategy to seriously consider. However, if it’s to free women of the garb, I don’t think that’s the state’s place. Whether or not the Koran makes the dress mandatory is irrelevant since it’s not the state’s role to interpret the Koran, and since most religious sects have a range of interpretations of their sacred writings. This is a religious and cultural matter which those who oppose it should pursue as such; that’s what “movements” are for. The State should keep its hands off.”
And from another reader: “This question is at the heart of our future. Where, when and how does one culture impose its values on another? At what line? We may think that the wearing of the burqa and the niqab delegates women to the dark shadows of life, obliterating their existence in domesticity. But is it our--or the French government's-- business? Whose business is it? “
And yet another: “Anything so rigid in ANY direction is bound to trample on someone's rights. I don't see why this law needs to be in effect at all....seems like choice is the way to go here. But there is a lot of background, I'm sure, that I am totally unaware of in this case.”
And another: “I think it isn't our business what these people want to wear. But when I taught in Spanish Harlem the boys who didn't want to take their hats or jackets off -- there was the suggestion that it had to do with being Muslim -- bothered me. I felt they didn't want to be where they were...learning now to be in a foreign culture."
And a final comment, treasured for its brevity: “Is it the place of a national government to impose a dress code?”
Then there were the inevitable outliers.
One of them opposed wearing religious garb of any faith. He said, “ From a purely non-sectarian point of view, I would say that the wearing of the burqa and niqab hurts women, especially if they are forced to wear them against their will. However, it is my understanding that many Muslim women (especially those in western countries) that choose to wear those garments and therefore they feel it is a choice that they are consciously making. In terms of women's rights, however, I am sure that there are many other restrictive measures that crush women's rights; restrictions that are probably far more egregious and harmful. If it were up to me -- and I were king -- there would be no public displays of religious vestments whatsoever, but hey, that's just me.”
Another reader chimed in with a Solomonic question. He said, “Of course, if wearing burqas and niqabs is, indeed, mandated by religion, the decision would have to turn on weighing the balance of religious freedom and the public good. And who is really qualified to render such a judgment?
And yet another reader suggested that burqas and niqabs be “grandfathered” into the laws that are passed. He said, “I am always for a free decision based on all relevant and current information. Those entering France when these garments were allowed should be free to continue--all new entrants should be subject to then existing laws. However, any government can impose sumptuary laws (tobacco prohibition) on everyone (without discrimination) which they consider benefit society; those disagreeing can appeal to the courts.”
What are we to take away from these comments? First, we need a disclaimer: This was certainly not a scientific survey. Second, the sample was much too small to qualify as a credible base. Third, many of my readers, it is probably safe to say, are known to have a built-in bias toward the Left. And it’s a fair bet that most of my readers are highly educated, with advanced university degrees.
Finally, it seems to me that most of my readers’ comments are conditioned to a greater or lesser extent by the events of 9/11 and the whole issue national security. Some respondents made that caveat explicit: Are burqas going to be used to secret suicide vests?
(Personally, I would be more freaked by the potential loss of peripheral vision by a car driver with a niqab.)
But I think most national security experts would tell you that trying to chase down every burqa in town won’t necessarily turn up more suicide vests, only more irritated Muslim women complaining about being racially profiled.
That said, it seems to me that the French Government, and all the other European Governments who are considering the dress code issue, are simply trying to eliminate that big slice of its population that’s “not like us.” They are attempting to achieve instant homogeneity by wardrobe. But the history of immigration tells us this is not the way people get assimilated.
The history of immigrant assimilation into our own country may not be the best example, simply because it is our own country, where many things have worked differently from their European counterparts.
Legal immigration into the U.S. was accompanied by a great deal of we’ll-let-you-be second-class-citizens attitudes, we’ll-give-you-the-jobs-no-one-else-wants-to-do work. And, yes, there was conflict not only between immigrants and non-immigrants, but also among immigrants from different parts of the world.
These new Americans cleaned our houses, took care of our children, and picked the fruit and vegetables we put on our tables. And they got paid less for doing more.
In other words, immigrants were the victims of institutionalized greed. Most began in poverty and improved their condition gradually by buying and selling among themselves – in their ghettos. Eventually, a few began to accumulate wealth. They became the ghetto leaders. Then they broke out of the ghettos and became entrepreneurs.
And, for many, although they still clung to some old customs, always remembered the music, and spoke some of the old country’s languages, their principal aspiration was always to be 110 per cent Americans. Baseball. Apple pie. The Whole Nine Yards. This evolution took generations.
So it is and will be for future generations of immigrants. You can see the full metamorphosis if you visit the Muslim neighborhoods of places like Dearborn, Michigan.
People who live there – part of the several million Muslims who are proud to
call themselves Americans – remember where they came from. The elders may even remember the discrimination and the second-class citizenship they experienced – some of which lingers to this day, thanks to the Islamophobia that followed 9/11.
But, by and large, these people have become the kinds of fully assimilated Americans who would warm the cockles even of fear-mongering nativists like Tom Tancredo and Steve King.
Could this happen in Europe? Well, I guess anything’s possible. But on the Continent, it faces a major obstacle: Europe does not honor diversity; it honors a homogeneity that can’t be achieved in the 21st Century.
At the core of Americans, I still find that most people buy into the narrative we invented of improving ourselves and our country by celebrating the differences among and between our people.
What the so-called anti-immigrant forces want is an instant replay of Ellis Island. They want immigrants to come to our country legally. That’s not so far-fetched. It’s the duty of every sovereign country. But one of the problems with that construct is that, for the most part, the people who passed through Ellis Island looked pretty much like the rest of us. There may have been Mediterranean men who looked Latino – but back then, we didn’t fear Latinos. And there were certainly no women in burqas or hiqabs!
In any event, people who really know about immigration tell us that banning burqas and hiqabs will be about as effective in controlling border traffic as the fences we’ve built.
Getting this job done will take nothing less than CIF – Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CIF that puts illegals on a path to citizenship, that lets hard-working people do the jobs only hard-working people would want to do, that regulates the numbers and types of immigrants we wish to welcome, that treats immigrant detainees humanely, and that takes a big whack at employers who use wink-and-a-nod personnel practices to hire people who are in this country illegally because it saves them money.
That sounds like something we could actually do!
But at the same time, there are ominous portents of things to come taking place among our neighbors to the North. Quebec has recently tabled a new law, Bill 94, which will ban the niqab — or any face cover — when extending and receiving public services in such institutions as courts, hospitals, schools, and licensing bureaus.
Could this be the beginning of the slippery slope for the Western Hemisphere?
Having sounded that alarm bell, I have to say that whether or not there’s a burqa ban in Europe, or in Canada, or even in America, we’re dealing with a sideshow, a symptom. The woman who really wants to wear these garments isn’t going to change because she’s told they’re banned. She’s just going to get angrier and less assimilated.
So, until they find the smarts and the courage to come up with a lot more holistic and robust approach to immigration, governments should just get out of the way.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
An Open Letter To Arizona Senator Sylvia Allen
By William Fisher
Dear Senator Allen:
Thanks for publishing your oped in the Austin Capital Times to explain SB 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law. Frankly, I think some of the rhetoric applied to this new measure has managed to generate a lot of heat but not much light. Some of the knee-jerk Arizona-bashers among us just haven’t caught up with your side of the story yet.
On the other hand, I think it’s important that we all agree on the basic facts at play here. What would we ever do if Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had never said, “We’re all entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts.”
You write that “Rancher Rob Krantz was murdered by the drug cartel on his ranch a month ago. You say the people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico Border have for years been terrorized and have pleaded for help to stop the daily invasion of humans who cross their property. One Rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people a DAY come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles.”
“Another rancher testified that daily drugs are brought across his ranch in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards… One man told of two illegal's (sic) who came upon his property one shot in the back and the other in the arm by the drug runners who had forced them to carry the drugs and then shot them.”
I have no doubt that, from your perspective, all your statements are true and un-challengable. And one can’t help but feel great compassion for the folks who suffered these losses.
But let me tell you where I think there are other facts that also need to be understood.
These facts are that crime rates and violence in Arizona are down, not up. Federal statistics show that in fact violent crime in your state was lower in 2008 than it has been since the early 1970s. In fact, violent crime and property crime have fallen consistently in all the border states over the last several years. The Mayor of Hidalgo, Texas, said that in his 20 years as mayor there has not been a single homicide, and there was only one kidnapping, committed by a registered sex offender from California.
But there’s an even more significant context here. We all need to be careful to distinguish between cartelistas in the drug trade and ordinary Mexicans who are coming to our country to work and earn money to send home. The druggistas are vicious thugs who are breaking our people and our laws. They need to be caught. But that’s not going to be easy so long as it’s our own appetite for the toxins they peddle that keeps them in business and doing very nicely, thanks very much.
(Maybe when we have ore time, we can have a discussion about the impact that drug legalization might have on the border problem, but that’s for another day.)
You say that “The border patrol is not on the border. They have set up 60 miles away with checkpoints that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing them, if they get their hands on them then they can take them back across the border.”
Well, Senator, you are absolutely right that the Border Patrol is not on the border. The fact is that their checkpoints are invasive law enforcement roadblocks that do not improve security but do infringe on the civil rights of border residents.
You write that Federal prisons have over 35% illegal's (sic) and 20% of Arizona prisons are filled with illegals. In the last few years 80% of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal.
Here, I have to tell you the percent of illegals you say is in jails or committing crimes is simply wrong. It’s possible that prisons have 35% non-citizens, but that’s not the same as illegal immigrants. And I’m sorry to have to tell you that your claim about injury to law enforcement being 80% caused by illegal immigrants is completely spurious. It’s your own fact!
You say, “the Federal Government has refused for years to do anything to help the border states. We have been over run and once they are here we have the burden of funding state services that they use. Education costs have been over a billion dollars. The healthcare cost billions of dollars. Our State is broke, $3.5 billion deficit and we have many serious decisions to make. One is that we do not have the money to care for any who are not here legally. It has to stop.”
I think most immigration experts and reliable economists would agree that Arizona’s fiscal problems are not the result of unlawful entries. In fact, most unlawful entries are of migrants seeking work, contributing a net gain to Arizona’s economy. Contrary to widespread misunderstanding, most undocumented workers pay taxes, including sales taxes and income taxes, which are often withdrawn before the worker is paid. Furthermore, I am not an economist, but it seems more reasonable to suggest that Arizona’s fiscal problems are much more a result of a national and global economic meltdown.
You say, “The border can be secured. We have the technology we have the ability to stop this invasion. We must know who is coming and they must come in an organized manner legally so that we can assimilate them into our population and protect the sovereignty of our country. We are a nation of laws. We have a responsibility to protect our citizens and to protect the integrity of our country and the government which we live under.”
You go further. You say you “would give amnesty today to many, but here is the problem, we dare not do this until the Border is secure. It will do no good to forgive them because thousands will come behind them and we will be over run to the point that there will no longer be the United States of America but a North American Union of open borders. I ask you what form of government will we live under? How long will it be before we will be just like Mexico,, Canada or any of the other Central American or South American countries? We have already lost our language, everything must be printed in Spanish also. We have already lost our history it is no longer taught in our schools. And we have lost our borders.”
I think what I’d most like to get across to you is that reforming the immigration system and creating legal avenues for migration is the way to improve border security and traffic flows at the border. I can’t believe that you think that “securing the border first” means that there will be absolutely zero crime or unlawful entries. Heck, this is an expectation for law enforcement that cannot be serious, given that all communities have criminal incidents. To be perfectly frank, Senator, I find this a shortsighted and reactionary response to an over-hyped perception of border violence that is not borne out by evidence.
Now, here’s the part of your letter that I find most disturbing. I am old enough to remember the House un-American Activities Committee hearing in the House of Representatives. And the incessant rantings of Senator Joe McCarthy about how the Commies were taking over our government. Why, he even though President Eisenhower was a pinko agent!
Well, here you go with that same kind of “guilt by association” vitriol – with lots of “facts” that came straight out of cloud cuckooland and are now very much your own facts, like:
“The leftist media has distorted what SB 1070 will do. It is not going to set up a Nazi Germany . Are you kidding. The ACLU and the leftist courts will do everything to protect those who are here illegally, but it was an effort to try and stop illegal's from setting up businesses, and employment, and receiving state services and give the ability to local law enforcement when there is probable cause like a traffic stop to determine if they are here legally….No one is going to be stopped walking down the street etc.…The Socialist who are in power in DC are angry because we dare try and do something and that something the Socialist wants us to do is just let them come. They want the ‘Transformation’ to continue”.
Well, Senator, all I can say about your hysteria is that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palen must be very proud of you. But I wonder if are those the people whose information you respect and find credible? Do you really want to be publicly associated with these two people whose breadth of misinformation and disinformation is surpassed only by their greed for the big bucks they get brainlessly running their motor-mouths.
You wonder, “Maybe it is too late to save America.” And I wonder what America it is whose loss you’re lamenting? This really does sound like some nostalgic look-back at a faux narrative many of us persuaded ourselves was really “the way we were.” You are eager to “take back” a country that never existed, except in John Wayne films.
I agree with you that “Freedom is not free,” but I suggest we can start paying the price for being able to live as free people not by launching ad homonym attacks on the character and honesty of the President, but by starting real work solving real problems.
You and I might agree on a couple of other things. I think we’d probably agree with DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has said that to do its job effectively, the Department of Homeland Security needs reform. “The laws themselves must be reformed,” she believes."
And I think we’d probably agree with Border leaders who emphasize that there is a "right way" to do border enforcement. Comprehensive immigration reform would further secure our borders and help keep the country safe. A regulated flow of immigrants would take the pressure off the border and scarce enforcement resources would be more rationally focused on real threats to national security, public safety and the flow of people and commerce. Our collective failure to fix the broken immigration system has undermined real and effective border security. In recent years, the federal government has dedicated unprecedented resources to the Mexican border in terms of manpower, technology and infrastructure-and progress has been made to secure our border. However, without fixing the immigration system, more resources on the border bring diminishing returns.
I think we might agree with your Congressman Raul Grijalva, who says, “"Border security cannot be separated from the need for comprehensive immigration reform. A sane immigration and citizenship system needs to accompany smartly targeted law enforcement measures -- merely spending billions of dollars on fences is no kind of 'safety' policy,"
I don’t think SB 1070 is good law. I think it will probably be found unconstitutional. I also think that it’s going to cost Arizona a bunch of money in lost convention and tourism revenue. Yet it’s possible that some really good tings are going to emerge from the controversy over the law.
It’s possible that the hue and cry over SC 1070 – and the copycat laws now being considered by many other states – will finally light a big fire under President Obama and Secretary Napolitano to actually come up with a comprehensive immigration plan, get it passed this year, and start making the changes that’ll make your life a lot more pleasant.
So let’s agree that Job One right now is to exert maximum political pressure on President Obama and Secretary Napolitano and those timid souls who we send to Congress.
They can begin to clean up this mess. Arizona can’t.
Dear Senator Allen:
Thanks for publishing your oped in the Austin Capital Times to explain SB 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law. Frankly, I think some of the rhetoric applied to this new measure has managed to generate a lot of heat but not much light. Some of the knee-jerk Arizona-bashers among us just haven’t caught up with your side of the story yet.
On the other hand, I think it’s important that we all agree on the basic facts at play here. What would we ever do if Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had never said, “We’re all entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts.”
You write that “Rancher Rob Krantz was murdered by the drug cartel on his ranch a month ago. You say the people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico Border have for years been terrorized and have pleaded for help to stop the daily invasion of humans who cross their property. One Rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people a DAY come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles.”
“Another rancher testified that daily drugs are brought across his ranch in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards… One man told of two illegal's (sic) who came upon his property one shot in the back and the other in the arm by the drug runners who had forced them to carry the drugs and then shot them.”
I have no doubt that, from your perspective, all your statements are true and un-challengable. And one can’t help but feel great compassion for the folks who suffered these losses.
But let me tell you where I think there are other facts that also need to be understood.
These facts are that crime rates and violence in Arizona are down, not up. Federal statistics show that in fact violent crime in your state was lower in 2008 than it has been since the early 1970s. In fact, violent crime and property crime have fallen consistently in all the border states over the last several years. The Mayor of Hidalgo, Texas, said that in his 20 years as mayor there has not been a single homicide, and there was only one kidnapping, committed by a registered sex offender from California.
But there’s an even more significant context here. We all need to be careful to distinguish between cartelistas in the drug trade and ordinary Mexicans who are coming to our country to work and earn money to send home. The druggistas are vicious thugs who are breaking our people and our laws. They need to be caught. But that’s not going to be easy so long as it’s our own appetite for the toxins they peddle that keeps them in business and doing very nicely, thanks very much.
(Maybe when we have ore time, we can have a discussion about the impact that drug legalization might have on the border problem, but that’s for another day.)
You say that “The border patrol is not on the border. They have set up 60 miles away with checkpoints that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing them, if they get their hands on them then they can take them back across the border.”
Well, Senator, you are absolutely right that the Border Patrol is not on the border. The fact is that their checkpoints are invasive law enforcement roadblocks that do not improve security but do infringe on the civil rights of border residents.
You write that Federal prisons have over 35% illegal's (sic) and 20% of Arizona prisons are filled with illegals. In the last few years 80% of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal.
Here, I have to tell you the percent of illegals you say is in jails or committing crimes is simply wrong. It’s possible that prisons have 35% non-citizens, but that’s not the same as illegal immigrants. And I’m sorry to have to tell you that your claim about injury to law enforcement being 80% caused by illegal immigrants is completely spurious. It’s your own fact!
You say, “the Federal Government has refused for years to do anything to help the border states. We have been over run and once they are here we have the burden of funding state services that they use. Education costs have been over a billion dollars. The healthcare cost billions of dollars. Our State is broke, $3.5 billion deficit and we have many serious decisions to make. One is that we do not have the money to care for any who are not here legally. It has to stop.”
I think most immigration experts and reliable economists would agree that Arizona’s fiscal problems are not the result of unlawful entries. In fact, most unlawful entries are of migrants seeking work, contributing a net gain to Arizona’s economy. Contrary to widespread misunderstanding, most undocumented workers pay taxes, including sales taxes and income taxes, which are often withdrawn before the worker is paid. Furthermore, I am not an economist, but it seems more reasonable to suggest that Arizona’s fiscal problems are much more a result of a national and global economic meltdown.
You say, “The border can be secured. We have the technology we have the ability to stop this invasion. We must know who is coming and they must come in an organized manner legally so that we can assimilate them into our population and protect the sovereignty of our country. We are a nation of laws. We have a responsibility to protect our citizens and to protect the integrity of our country and the government which we live under.”
You go further. You say you “would give amnesty today to many, but here is the problem, we dare not do this until the Border is secure. It will do no good to forgive them because thousands will come behind them and we will be over run to the point that there will no longer be the United States of America but a North American Union of open borders. I ask you what form of government will we live under? How long will it be before we will be just like Mexico,, Canada or any of the other Central American or South American countries? We have already lost our language, everything must be printed in Spanish also. We have already lost our history it is no longer taught in our schools. And we have lost our borders.”
I think what I’d most like to get across to you is that reforming the immigration system and creating legal avenues for migration is the way to improve border security and traffic flows at the border. I can’t believe that you think that “securing the border first” means that there will be absolutely zero crime or unlawful entries. Heck, this is an expectation for law enforcement that cannot be serious, given that all communities have criminal incidents. To be perfectly frank, Senator, I find this a shortsighted and reactionary response to an over-hyped perception of border violence that is not borne out by evidence.
Now, here’s the part of your letter that I find most disturbing. I am old enough to remember the House un-American Activities Committee hearing in the House of Representatives. And the incessant rantings of Senator Joe McCarthy about how the Commies were taking over our government. Why, he even though President Eisenhower was a pinko agent!
Well, here you go with that same kind of “guilt by association” vitriol – with lots of “facts” that came straight out of cloud cuckooland and are now very much your own facts, like:
“The leftist media has distorted what SB 1070 will do. It is not going to set up a Nazi Germany . Are you kidding. The ACLU and the leftist courts will do everything to protect those who are here illegally, but it was an effort to try and stop illegal's from setting up businesses, and employment, and receiving state services and give the ability to local law enforcement when there is probable cause like a traffic stop to determine if they are here legally….No one is going to be stopped walking down the street etc.…The Socialist who are in power in DC are angry because we dare try and do something and that something the Socialist wants us to do is just let them come. They want the ‘Transformation’ to continue”.
Well, Senator, all I can say about your hysteria is that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palen must be very proud of you. But I wonder if are those the people whose information you respect and find credible? Do you really want to be publicly associated with these two people whose breadth of misinformation and disinformation is surpassed only by their greed for the big bucks they get brainlessly running their motor-mouths.
You wonder, “Maybe it is too late to save America.” And I wonder what America it is whose loss you’re lamenting? This really does sound like some nostalgic look-back at a faux narrative many of us persuaded ourselves was really “the way we were.” You are eager to “take back” a country that never existed, except in John Wayne films.
I agree with you that “Freedom is not free,” but I suggest we can start paying the price for being able to live as free people not by launching ad homonym attacks on the character and honesty of the President, but by starting real work solving real problems.
You and I might agree on a couple of other things. I think we’d probably agree with DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has said that to do its job effectively, the Department of Homeland Security needs reform. “The laws themselves must be reformed,” she believes."
And I think we’d probably agree with Border leaders who emphasize that there is a "right way" to do border enforcement. Comprehensive immigration reform would further secure our borders and help keep the country safe. A regulated flow of immigrants would take the pressure off the border and scarce enforcement resources would be more rationally focused on real threats to national security, public safety and the flow of people and commerce. Our collective failure to fix the broken immigration system has undermined real and effective border security. In recent years, the federal government has dedicated unprecedented resources to the Mexican border in terms of manpower, technology and infrastructure-and progress has been made to secure our border. However, without fixing the immigration system, more resources on the border bring diminishing returns.
I think we might agree with your Congressman Raul Grijalva, who says, “"Border security cannot be separated from the need for comprehensive immigration reform. A sane immigration and citizenship system needs to accompany smartly targeted law enforcement measures -- merely spending billions of dollars on fences is no kind of 'safety' policy,"
I don’t think SB 1070 is good law. I think it will probably be found unconstitutional. I also think that it’s going to cost Arizona a bunch of money in lost convention and tourism revenue. Yet it’s possible that some really good tings are going to emerge from the controversy over the law.
It’s possible that the hue and cry over SC 1070 – and the copycat laws now being considered by many other states – will finally light a big fire under President Obama and Secretary Napolitano to actually come up with a comprehensive immigration plan, get it passed this year, and start making the changes that’ll make your life a lot more pleasant.
So let’s agree that Job One right now is to exert maximum political pressure on President Obama and Secretary Napolitano and those timid souls who we send to Congress.
They can begin to clean up this mess. Arizona can’t.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Webb Commission: More Hope Than Reality?
By William Fisher
Despite the lackluster performance of so-called “Blue Ribbon Commissions” over the years, sponsors of the latest proposal – the National Criminal Justice Commission -- are optimistic that it will become a reality and that its recommendations will be taken seriously by the President, Congress and the American people.
The reason, says its sponsor, Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, is that “America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous.”
He added, “We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.”
Given the checkered history of Blue Ribbon commissions in the nation’s capital, a spokesman for Sen. Webb told IPS that “with nearly 40 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, there is a strong likelihood of success.”
In the past, Congressionally-appointed commissions are typically set up, staffed, complete their investigative and analytical work, make recommendations that are received by a senior official, a press release is issued, and then the commission’s report is consigned to a shelf where it gathers dust.
Throughout U.S. history, there have been relatively few bodies that have gained the notoriety, media coverage, and attention from Congress and the President as the 9/11 Commission, established in the wake of the terrorist attacks if September 11, 2001. Over time, most of its recommendations were implemented. One reason was the severity of the issue – almost 3,000 deaths. Another was ongoing, well-organized, effective support from the families of the 9/11 victims.
A prison commission has none of those attributes – and prisoners can’t vote. So the political inventive appears minimal.
But the issue is not. Statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service begin to tell the story:
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, imprisoning a higher percentage of its population than any other country. The American incarceration rate is five times the world's average. A total of 2,380,000 people are now in prison. The U.S. has five percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prison population.
Minorities make up a disproportionately large share of prison populations. Black males have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives; Hispanic males have a 17 percent chance; white males have a 6 percent chance. Extensive racial and ethnic disparities exist today in the American criminal justice system.
African American men and boys are grossly over-represented at every stage of the judicial process. Although African Americans make up just over 12% of the national population, 42% of Americans currently on death row are African American.
African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in our nation, a rate four times higher than that of White women.
Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments.
Cocaine laws disproportionately affect African Americans, who account for 25% of total crack cocaine users, yet who comprised 81% of those convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses in 2007.
Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1200 percent since 1980. Nearly a half million persons are in Federal or State prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. A significant percentage of these offenders have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.
There are approximately 1,000,000 gang members in the United States, and gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in some locations.
Spending on corrections rose 127 percent at the State level while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent.
Prisons and jails have also become holding facilities for the mentally ill. There are an estimated 350,000 men and women prisoners with serious mental disorders -- four times the number in mental health hospitals.
Prisons have also become public health risks, with the number of State prisoners with HIV is 2.5 times greater than the general population.
Prison administration is uneven, lacking clear standards of training and performance, and varying widely between institutions, localities, and between Federal, State and local jurisdictions.
It is against this background that Sen. Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Act, authorizing the Commission. There has been no in-depth or comprehensive study of the entire criminal justice system since The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration and Justice, impaneled in 1965.
A companion to the Webb bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan sponsorship. The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the proposal with strong bipartisan support. The legislation is now awaiting action by the full Senate and is pending in the House.
The Commission would carry out a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, make findings related to current Federal and State criminal justice policies and practices, and make reform recommendations to improve public safety, cost-effectiveness, overall prison administration, and fairness in the implementation of the criminal justice system.
It “would also be charged with looking at how we have arrived at this convoluted mess, how many of our problems are interrelated and often feed off of one another, and how we can correct a system that is badly in need of a new course,” Sen. Webb said.
Other powerful actors agree. Among them is Hilary 0. Shelton, Director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In a telephone interview, Shelton told IPS, “At every stage of the criminal justice process serious problems undermine basic tenets of fairness and equity, as well as the public’s expectations for safety.”
He added, “Perhaps the most glaring problem inherent in today’s system is the number of racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately treated more harshly and more often by our Nation’s criminal justice system. From initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those reentering the community after incarceration – racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the number of people stopped, arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated.”
The Commission would include members appointed by the president and by federal and state politicians, as well as private sector specialists in law enforcement, criminal justice, national security, prison administration, prisoner reentry, public health, including drug addiction and mental health, victims' rights, and social services.
The bill has also been endorsed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest organization of police executives.
Despite the lackluster performance of so-called “Blue Ribbon Commissions” over the years, sponsors of the latest proposal – the National Criminal Justice Commission -- are optimistic that it will become a reality and that its recommendations will be taken seriously by the President, Congress and the American people.
The reason, says its sponsor, Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, is that “America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous.”
He added, “We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.”
Given the checkered history of Blue Ribbon commissions in the nation’s capital, a spokesman for Sen. Webb told IPS that “with nearly 40 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, there is a strong likelihood of success.”
In the past, Congressionally-appointed commissions are typically set up, staffed, complete their investigative and analytical work, make recommendations that are received by a senior official, a press release is issued, and then the commission’s report is consigned to a shelf where it gathers dust.
Throughout U.S. history, there have been relatively few bodies that have gained the notoriety, media coverage, and attention from Congress and the President as the 9/11 Commission, established in the wake of the terrorist attacks if September 11, 2001. Over time, most of its recommendations were implemented. One reason was the severity of the issue – almost 3,000 deaths. Another was ongoing, well-organized, effective support from the families of the 9/11 victims.
A prison commission has none of those attributes – and prisoners can’t vote. So the political inventive appears minimal.
But the issue is not. Statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service begin to tell the story:
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, imprisoning a higher percentage of its population than any other country. The American incarceration rate is five times the world's average. A total of 2,380,000 people are now in prison. The U.S. has five percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prison population.
Minorities make up a disproportionately large share of prison populations. Black males have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives; Hispanic males have a 17 percent chance; white males have a 6 percent chance. Extensive racial and ethnic disparities exist today in the American criminal justice system.
African American men and boys are grossly over-represented at every stage of the judicial process. Although African Americans make up just over 12% of the national population, 42% of Americans currently on death row are African American.
African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in our nation, a rate four times higher than that of White women.
Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments.
Cocaine laws disproportionately affect African Americans, who account for 25% of total crack cocaine users, yet who comprised 81% of those convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses in 2007.
Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1200 percent since 1980. Nearly a half million persons are in Federal or State prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. A significant percentage of these offenders have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.
There are approximately 1,000,000 gang members in the United States, and gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in some locations.
Spending on corrections rose 127 percent at the State level while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent.
Prisons and jails have also become holding facilities for the mentally ill. There are an estimated 350,000 men and women prisoners with serious mental disorders -- four times the number in mental health hospitals.
Prisons have also become public health risks, with the number of State prisoners with HIV is 2.5 times greater than the general population.
Prison administration is uneven, lacking clear standards of training and performance, and varying widely between institutions, localities, and between Federal, State and local jurisdictions.
It is against this background that Sen. Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Act, authorizing the Commission. There has been no in-depth or comprehensive study of the entire criminal justice system since The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration and Justice, impaneled in 1965.
A companion to the Webb bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan sponsorship. The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the proposal with strong bipartisan support. The legislation is now awaiting action by the full Senate and is pending in the House.
The Commission would carry out a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, make findings related to current Federal and State criminal justice policies and practices, and make reform recommendations to improve public safety, cost-effectiveness, overall prison administration, and fairness in the implementation of the criminal justice system.
It “would also be charged with looking at how we have arrived at this convoluted mess, how many of our problems are interrelated and often feed off of one another, and how we can correct a system that is badly in need of a new course,” Sen. Webb said.
Other powerful actors agree. Among them is Hilary 0. Shelton, Director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In a telephone interview, Shelton told IPS, “At every stage of the criminal justice process serious problems undermine basic tenets of fairness and equity, as well as the public’s expectations for safety.”
He added, “Perhaps the most glaring problem inherent in today’s system is the number of racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately treated more harshly and more often by our Nation’s criminal justice system. From initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those reentering the community after incarceration – racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the number of people stopped, arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated.”
The Commission would include members appointed by the president and by federal and state politicians, as well as private sector specialists in law enforcement, criminal justice, national security, prison administration, prisoner reentry, public health, including drug addiction and mental health, victims' rights, and social services.
The bill has also been endorsed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest organization of police executives.
More than Nukes
By William Fisher
Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the bloody disturbances following its elections last year have so dominated media reporting on the country that many equally critical issues have been virtually forgotten.
That’s the view of Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), a New York-based not-for-profit group attempting to raise public awareness of human rights abuses in Iran.
In an telephone interview with IPS, Ghaemi cited two issues to illustrate his point: last Sunday’s secret executions of five Iranian political prisoners, and the recent elevation of Iran to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
And he reminded an IPS correspondent that “with the first anniversary of the uprising that followed Iran’s deeply flawed election, last June 12th, we can only expect more repression and more brutality as the authorities continue their relentless campaign to silence any voices of protest.”
Iran’s election to the UN Commission came as many women’s rights activists and their international supporters issued a protest statement addressed to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The statement called Iran’s election “shocking.” It asked Council members to oppose Iran’s request and to make Iran’s election conditional on its adherence to international equal rights covenants.
The Iranian official news agency called the women’s rights activists, “hostile groups and western media,” who through “poisonous propagation,” tried to prevent Iran’s membership in the Commission on the Status of Women,” but that “their efforts were ignored by members of ECOSOC.”
The agency said Iran’s membership in the Commission is important because “Iran’s views about the position of women can help reflect Islamic views about family and women.”
The letter by women’s rights activists said, “In recent years, the Iranian government has not only refused to join the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), but has actively opposed it.”
The Iranian government, the letter said, “has earned international condemnation as a gross violator of women’s rights. Discrimination against women is codified in its laws, as well as in executive and cultural institutions, and Iran has consistently sought to preserve gender inequality in all places, from the family unit to the highest governmental bodies.”
The second development referenced by Dr. Ghaemi was Iran’s May 9 sudden and secret hanging of five political prisoners. Neither their families nor their lawyers were notified.
ICHRI said the executions “appear to signal a government policy of relying on politically-motivated executions to strengthen its position vis-à-vis its opposition through terror and intimidation.”
The four men and one woman executed include Farzad Kamangar, a 34-year-old teacher and social worker, who was charged with Moharebeh (taking up arms against God), convicted and sentenced to death in February 2008, after a seven-minute long trial in which “zero evidence” was presented, ICHRI said in a statement.
“Kamangar was arbitrarily arrested and set up to be killed in a staged trial,
with no opportunity to present a defense,” stated Aaron Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Campaign.
He added, “These secret executions are, in reality, nothing more than state-sanctioned murders, and provide more evidence of the Islamic Republic’s brazen contempt for international human rights standards.”
Kamangar was held incommunicado for seven months after his arrest in July 2006. ICHRI says there is “strong evidence” that he was tortured. His lawyer has stated that no evidence could be found in his interrogation records, file, or in presentations by prosecutors or the judge’s decision to support the charge of Mohareb. Neither Kamangar nor his lawyers were permitted to speak at his trial.
Shirin Alam Holi, a 28-year-old Kurdish woman was also executed. In several letters recently written from Evin prison she denied charges of terrorism against her and said she had been tortured to make false confessions in front of television cameras, which she had refused.
At least sixteen other Kurdish political prisoners and eleven post-election protestors are in danger of similar unannounced and sudden executions, ICHRI said.
Roxana Saberi, the journalist who was detained in Iran for 100 days in 2009 in Iran, is among many others attempting to raise awareness of dire situation inside Iran.
She wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, “If the international community fails to condemn such atrocities, Iran's regime will continue to trample on the basic rights of individuals, many of whom have been detained simply for peacefully standing up for universal human rights. It is common for Tehran's prisoners -- including journalists, bloggers, women's rights campaigners, student activists and adherents of the minority Baha'i faith -- to be held in prolonged solitary confinement without access to an attorney as they try to defend themselves against fabricated charges such as espionage and "propaganda against Islam" or the regime.”
Saberi believes international pressure and media attention helped her win her freedom. Her book, "Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran," chronicles her experiences and the stories of her fellow political prisoners in Evin prison.
Hadi Ghaemi, ICHRI’s founder, came to the United States from Iran in 1983 as a student and received his doctorate in Physics from Boston University in 1994. Dr. Ghaemi was a professor of Physics at the City University of New York until 2000.
In 2004, he joined Human Rights Watch as the Iran and United Arab Emirates researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division. He founded ICHRI in 2007 to advocate on behalf of human rights and social movements in Iran and provide a platform for their views.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the bloody disturbances following its elections last year have so dominated media reporting on the country that many equally critical issues have been virtually forgotten.
That’s the view of Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), a New York-based not-for-profit group attempting to raise public awareness of human rights abuses in Iran.
In an telephone interview with IPS, Ghaemi cited two issues to illustrate his point: last Sunday’s secret executions of five Iranian political prisoners, and the recent elevation of Iran to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
And he reminded an IPS correspondent that “with the first anniversary of the uprising that followed Iran’s deeply flawed election, last June 12th, we can only expect more repression and more brutality as the authorities continue their relentless campaign to silence any voices of protest.”
Iran’s election to the UN Commission came as many women’s rights activists and their international supporters issued a protest statement addressed to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The statement called Iran’s election “shocking.” It asked Council members to oppose Iran’s request and to make Iran’s election conditional on its adherence to international equal rights covenants.
The Iranian official news agency called the women’s rights activists, “hostile groups and western media,” who through “poisonous propagation,” tried to prevent Iran’s membership in the Commission on the Status of Women,” but that “their efforts were ignored by members of ECOSOC.”
The agency said Iran’s membership in the Commission is important because “Iran’s views about the position of women can help reflect Islamic views about family and women.”
The letter by women’s rights activists said, “In recent years, the Iranian government has not only refused to join the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), but has actively opposed it.”
The Iranian government, the letter said, “has earned international condemnation as a gross violator of women’s rights. Discrimination against women is codified in its laws, as well as in executive and cultural institutions, and Iran has consistently sought to preserve gender inequality in all places, from the family unit to the highest governmental bodies.”
The second development referenced by Dr. Ghaemi was Iran’s May 9 sudden and secret hanging of five political prisoners. Neither their families nor their lawyers were notified.
ICHRI said the executions “appear to signal a government policy of relying on politically-motivated executions to strengthen its position vis-à-vis its opposition through terror and intimidation.”
The four men and one woman executed include Farzad Kamangar, a 34-year-old teacher and social worker, who was charged with Moharebeh (taking up arms against God), convicted and sentenced to death in February 2008, after a seven-minute long trial in which “zero evidence” was presented, ICHRI said in a statement.
“Kamangar was arbitrarily arrested and set up to be killed in a staged trial,
with no opportunity to present a defense,” stated Aaron Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Campaign.
He added, “These secret executions are, in reality, nothing more than state-sanctioned murders, and provide more evidence of the Islamic Republic’s brazen contempt for international human rights standards.”
Kamangar was held incommunicado for seven months after his arrest in July 2006. ICHRI says there is “strong evidence” that he was tortured. His lawyer has stated that no evidence could be found in his interrogation records, file, or in presentations by prosecutors or the judge’s decision to support the charge of Mohareb. Neither Kamangar nor his lawyers were permitted to speak at his trial.
Shirin Alam Holi, a 28-year-old Kurdish woman was also executed. In several letters recently written from Evin prison she denied charges of terrorism against her and said she had been tortured to make false confessions in front of television cameras, which she had refused.
At least sixteen other Kurdish political prisoners and eleven post-election protestors are in danger of similar unannounced and sudden executions, ICHRI said.
Roxana Saberi, the journalist who was detained in Iran for 100 days in 2009 in Iran, is among many others attempting to raise awareness of dire situation inside Iran.
She wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, “If the international community fails to condemn such atrocities, Iran's regime will continue to trample on the basic rights of individuals, many of whom have been detained simply for peacefully standing up for universal human rights. It is common for Tehran's prisoners -- including journalists, bloggers, women's rights campaigners, student activists and adherents of the minority Baha'i faith -- to be held in prolonged solitary confinement without access to an attorney as they try to defend themselves against fabricated charges such as espionage and "propaganda against Islam" or the regime.”
Saberi believes international pressure and media attention helped her win her freedom. Her book, "Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran," chronicles her experiences and the stories of her fellow political prisoners in Evin prison.
Hadi Ghaemi, ICHRI’s founder, came to the United States from Iran in 1983 as a student and received his doctorate in Physics from Boston University in 1994. Dr. Ghaemi was a professor of Physics at the City University of New York until 2000.
In 2004, he joined Human Rights Watch as the Iran and United Arab Emirates researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division. He founded ICHRI in 2007 to advocate on behalf of human rights and social movements in Iran and provide a platform for their views.
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