Torture update

Balkinization's Marty Lederman, who worked in the Office of Legal Council office from 1994-2002, provides a series of posts on all of the torture laws and prohibitions and to whom these do or do not apply, in the Bush administration's previous and recent opinions. I found this from the link at Tapped via Liberal Oasis.

Senate "approved torture" -- NOT!

So I kept hearing on the talk shows last night that Reagan and the Senate endorsed torture in the 1980s -- well, NOT!
Its just another damned Republican Talking Point, ginned up to confuse the masses and confound the talk show hosts, who were caught flatfooted by these bald statements.
Here is the August 2002 memo which defined "torture" and "not-torture". Torture, according to the memo, means "that the victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be assoiated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result. . . [mental suffering] must cause long-term mental harm."
So things like sticking burning cigarettes in someone's ear, or chaining someont to a stool for hours, or incarcerating someone in a hot room, or pretending to execute someone, or threatening to send them to jail in Egypt, and so forth, fall into the category of "not-torture".
The memo also notes that, in 1984, Congress criminalized torture to fulfill US obligations under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. At that time, torture was defined only as severe pain or suffering intentionally inflicted.
So here we are: by parsing the definition of "torture" so narrowly, and by noting that "torture" was what Congress criminalized in 1984, the Talking Point can be stated that Congress, in effect, approved all the other actions which the memo defines as "not-torture". Neat reasoning, huh? How clever! Oh, those lawyers sure can write good!
The Talking Point demonstrates exactly the same kind of contorted, convoluted, ammoral, slippery thinking that is demonstrated in the memo itself.
And there also seems to be another Talking Point that the Senate in the 80s approved Reagan's decision to torture terrorists. Well, again, this doesn't appear to be the case. There were two additional Geneva Convention Protocols adopted by an intergovernmental conference in 1977, designed to deal with terrorism and its targeting of civilians. Reagan decided in 1987 that he would not ask Senate to ratify Protocol I (Victims of International Armed Conflicts) -- Reagan said Protocol I gave too much protection to terrorist groups -- and Senate apparently decided not to ratify Protocol II (Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts) until Protocol I was revised, which it hasn't been.

The medium is the message

The Smirking Chimp writes about the Guantanamo message to America:
"The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay is the brightest star in the Bush firmament. It towers over the political landscape like a monument to human cruelty . . . What is it that we fail to grasp about Guantanamo? Are we so blinded by the assuring narrative of democracy and personal freedom that we don't recognize the symbols of tyranny when we see them? The reality of Guantanamo is quite stark; a dull-gray world of cinder-block and wire situated beyond the reach of any law or regulation. Is their some doubt about what this really means? . . . Guantanamo is a deliberate effort to overturn every legal protection that safeguards the individual from the arbitrary actions of the state. Simply put, it is the end of the law . . . The Gulag at Guantanamo casts a pall over American political life. It illustrates a seismic shift in our fundamental values as Americans and a wholesale betrayal of our commitment to human rights. Concentration camps are anathema to democracy and Guantanamo is asphyxiating the promise of American justice. Institutions that once were counted on to protect the individual have been casually discarded by the perpetrators of the most despicable crimes against humanity. The Bush administration has assumed the role of Grand Inquisitor; dispensing 'cruel and inhuman' punishment without remorse or hesitation. They've elevated injustice to a level of state policy. "
I never understood Marshall McLuhan's statement "the medium is the message" until I considered Guantanamo -- it was built as just another prison, sure, but one consciously designed to subvert constitutional due process and prisoner of war conventions. In just three years, it has distorted American thinking to the point that the US now has a nominee Attorney General who supports presidential rule by divine right and who endorses torture - and the lock-step Senate Republicans, and probably a few Democrats also, will likely vote for him.
Maybe with the Patriot Act vote they had some excuse in 911 panic. And maybe with the Iraq War vote they had been sandbagged by mushroom cloud scenarios.
But with Gonzales, they will know exactly what they're voting for -- government of the gulag, by the gulag and for the gulag.

Its about time

The Globe and Mail: Canada to send DART to Asia on Thursday
Thanks, Paul - you finally did the right thing .
UPDATE: Also a good idea is that the government will accept for the 2004 tax year charitable donation receipts for Asian relief issued up to Jan 11. Great move that will encourage donations.

Its about defending the constitution, folks

Well, a Google search for today's "Guantanamo" headlines reveals that the news about the US Guantanamo plan is being covered in the US and around the world -- with considerable differences in tone.
The foreign coverage speaks to the heart of the story - that the US government plans to jail people for life without evidence or trial. The Sydney Morning Herald headline is "Senators dennounce plan to jail suspects for life without trial" and various other Australian newspapers echo this approach. UK Guardian ("US plans permanent Guantanamo jails") and Telegraph ("Guantanamo suspects face a life in captivity"), the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain ("US may hold suspects for life"), the Pakistan Daily Times ("Washington mulls life-term detention for terror suspects") and other headlines in the Indian Express, Xinhau China, Al-Jazeera, the Mathaba Net in Africa, the Mail & Guardian in South Africa.
In the few American newspapers that have run the stories, the headlines are usually either innocuous - like the Lexington Herald Leader ("US planning detainees' future") the Knoxvill News Sentinal ("US reviews imprisonment plans") - or themselves condemn people without trial, like the New York Post's "Feds Eye Life for Terrorists".
There are two slightly longer takes: the Chicago Tribune today publishes a story headlined "Legal tide turning on detainee issue" saying that US lawyers are now getting on board the detainee issue, though its main focus is still on the Gonzales AG confirmation hearings rather than on the detainees themselves. And Salon today publishes "Indefinite and secretive" which explains helpfully that "The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of hard evidence." I guess even Salon thinks there is such a thing as "soft" evidence, which is sufficient to justify life imprisonment on its own, unexamined merits.
So I looked around the progressive blogosphere for outrage and found only a few postings: this diary at Kos and this at All Spin Zone, and the Washington Post stories posted on Buzzflash. That's it. Digby is covering the torture issue very well, but I haven't seen any imprisonment posts there. I have likely missed checking some others, but I couldn't find anything posted on this either at Liberal Oasis, Seeing the Forest, My DD, Blogging of the President or Eschaton. (I know some other blogs, like Frogsdong, Oliver Willis, Pandagon are on hiatus or away for the holidays so I didn't expect to see anything there.)
Now, I know democrats don't want to be seen as "soft on terrorism" and the progressive blogospere generally follows the party approach, but come on, folks -- this isn't terrorism, its your own damn constitution that needs defending -- the United States should not imprison people for life without evidence or trial. You're better than this - or at least, you used to be.
UPDATE: My Blahg is on it, and so is Stageleft.

Gutless toadies

Lugar Condemns Plan To Jail Detainees for Life
What this story should have said:
"A leading Republican senator yesterday strongly condemned as "a terrible idea" a reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them . . . Influential senators denounced the idea as completely unconstitutional and condemned the White House and the Pentagon for suggesting a scheme which would "deliberaterly circumvent the Supreme Court rulings for due process for every detainee,"Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday. Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also cited earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions, as well as the Geneva Conventions which are intended to prevent indefinite imprisonment without trial. "There absolutely must be due process. No person, whether American or foreign, should ever be detained without evidence," Levin said, also on Fox."
Oh, I wish they had shouted to the rooftops, using language which condemned this evil plan in the strongest possible terms. Instead, these gutless Senate toadies called it just "a bad idea" and asked only for "some modicum, some semblance" of due process.
Has no one in Washington noticed, by the way, that the Pentagon seems to be blithely IGNORING the Supreme Court requirement that a procedure be established to provide due process hearings for every detainee? What kind of government allows its military to disregard court decisions it disagrees with? What kind of president swears to uphold the US Constitution and then ignores it?

I love brave dog stories

Here's one, about a dog saving a child during the tsumani - MSNBC - A not-so-shaggy dog story, complete with happy ending
And I read another one, which I can't find now, about a child who clung to a swimming dog and was saved because the dog knew the direction to swim to safety.

Just another day in paradise

I can hardly believe that this "story" is being reported in such an off-hand matter -- Long-Term Plan Sought For Terror Suspects. As if the life imprisonment of people who cannot be convicted of a crime BECAUSE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE FOR CONVICTION is just another routine matter, just a problem of finding some secret place for them where no decent judge or criminal defense attorney will be able to find them. And most chilling, at the end, is the casual talk of so-called "rendition" - sending them to dictatorships where they will be tortured.
Of course, now the US itself apparently falls into that category.
Note, too, the almost-complete lack of names in this article, indicating that the sources for this story are too embarassed to step forward -- so I guess there is still some sense of shame in the US government. Not much, but a little.

More VRWC stuff

Here's some more Vast Right Wing Conspiracy stuff, following up on my earlier posts here and here.
Dave Johnson, from Seeing the Forest, wrote this article in 2003, which notes how a few rich people have funded multiple right-wing organizations and so created the impression of a groundswell of conservative thinking: Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors?

Great idea

I think this is a great idea -- Canada suspends debt for tsunami-hit countries. It is something Western governments can do immediately and directly, without even leaving their desks. Other countries should follow Canada's lead.

How stupid do they think people are?

Pretty stupid, I guess -- the Weekly Standard editorial, Negotiating with Himself thinks that Americans will accept Republican dismantling of Social Security as long as Republicans obscure the truth and don't tell anyone what they are actually doing, but rather "sell it" with feel-good phrases and focus-group-tested language. Will it work? Stay tuned.

Looking for a few good men

Bad day for Bonhomme Carnaval
"Journalists have been unable to . . . find out exactly what led to them forming a union."
My daughter worked as an advertising mascot on several occasions -- wandering around our exhibition in a Mario costume, if memory serves. She said it was hotter than hell in that suit, and she couldn't see where she was going, and 10-year-old boys would throw drinks at her and try to trip her.
No wonder the Bonhommes wanted a union. Mascots of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your latex heads.

Wondering if someone dropped the ball

Agency answers critics over no tsunami warning:
"Fifteen minutes after Sunday's quake near Sumatra, NOAA fired off a bulletin from Hawaii to 26 Pacific nations that now make up the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System, alerting them of the quake but saying they faced no threat of a tsunami. Fifty minutes later, the U.S. agency upgraded the severity of the quake and again said there was no tsunami threat in the Pacific, but identified the possibility of a tsunami near the quake's epicenter in the Indian Ocean. After nearly another half hour, NOAA contacted emergency officials in Australia as a backstop, knowing they would quickly contact their counterparts in Indonesia . . . 'The fact that the potential danger rose to the level of prompting a swift warning to two nations, while others could be faced with a potentially devastating impact, raises serious questions,' the Senate oceans subcommittee chair, Sen. Olympia Snowe, of Maine, said in a letter to Lautenbacher. Lautenbacher said there was only so much NOAA can do. "
Far be it for me to criticize, but I have wondered about this -- it took me less than five minutes to find the phone numbers for the US ambassadors to India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, etc. in the CIA Factbook. Even on Christmas Day, I think someone likely would have answered the phone . . .

Paging General Miller - you have an urgent message on the white courtesy phone!

Having turfed the Geneva Convention and OKd torture of prisoners a year ago, the US government has now officially changed its mind --Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition.
Of course, this pulls the rug out from under all the military police and CIA types who can now be prosecuted for war crimes for torturing people at Gitmo and Abu Gharib and other undisclosed locations for the last two years.
But they're just a peck of low-level bad apples anyway.
The important thing, as far as the Bush administration is concerned, is that now Gonzales can announce during the upcoming hearings on his Attorney General nomination that all questions about the August, 2003 memo are "inoperative" because these were merely "preliminary conclusions" and no one actually intended that they be acted on, oh goodness gracious no.
The most bizarre sentence in this bizarre article: "It could be that this is not just a cynical ploy but a real sign of change" as spoken by Clinton administration Justice official Michael Greenberger.
Oh goodness gracious, of course its sincere -- they've all got religion now, I guess.

Some Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Stuff

So I was poking through my favorite blogs yesterday and read All Spin's post about the recent spate of Christian Right attacks on education and universities. The All Spin Zone: Warning - Too Much Education Causes (gasp!) Liberalism! At the end, All Spin raises the issue: "What is lacking is a coordinated effort to investigate what and who is behind this 'movement' to undermine public education. "
So I did some Googling.
The Counterpunch article quoted by All Spin mentions the Students for Academic Freedom organization as ringleading protests criticizing professors for being too liberal. So I checked their website and found that David Horowitz is apparently its self-appointed founder and president. Googling David Horowitz leads to this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Patrolling Professors' Politics, which described David Horowitz as president of the Centre for the Study of Popular Culture, which publishes FrontPage Magazine , edited also by Horowitz. This is a magazine which just named Swiftboater John ONeill as its Man of the Year and is full of articles attacking George Soros and Theresa Heinz Kerry's philanthropy and the democratic party's "radical agendas" and is also very concerned about immigration and Middle East politics -- ah ha! Now we're getting to it, coming full circle, as a matter of fact. One of the "watchdog" organizations on the FrontPage website is Campus Watch, which says it "monitors Middle East Studies on campus". The monitoring seems to consist of criticizing universities which let their Islamic students muzzle pro-Israel speakers (remember the mess at York and at Concordia?) and also seems to imply that left-wing faculty at universities are actually some kind of pro-Islamic fifth column in America. Many of the articles listed for reference on the Campus Watch site were published in -- you guessed it -- FrontPage magazine.
I also meant to Google some of the Intelligent Design and Creationist stuff but I just couldn't stand it. Maybe later . . .