by frog
Keith was in Auckland on Friday and protested with Green supporters at the continuing presence of the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. As recently released photos highlight even more of the atrocities that have been going on there, it becomes even more clear that the detainees should be tried or freed, and the facility closed as soon as possible. To highlight the issue, a protester dressed in Guantanamo style orange overalls and stood masked and gagged.
Thanks to topic photography for these images.
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Mon, February 20th, 2006
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
just who is that man in orange..?..what about a guess who! competition..?
phil(whoar.co.nz
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Keith’s sign shows a certain cognitive dissonance: is this the same UN that:
- facilitated the laundering of hundreds of millions of Oil-for-Fraud dollars (read anything by Claudia Rosett on this topic) in Saddam’s Iraq
- allowed peacekeepers on station in several African countries to sexually assault children
- operates on the general principle of ‘let’s hold committee meetings and talk until they all die’ whenever confronted with actual nastiness like Bosnia and Darfur?
If we must appeal to transnational entities, for frog’s sake, let’s hook up with one with some actual moral standing.
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It can be said that illegitimate behaviour, can indicate an illegitmate cause of an illegitimate entity. Such as that of a criminal gang (which sometimes run nations).
Of course many a legitimate group has said a legitimate cause justifies questionable behaviour. Of course some will question the state of war – against resistance, against terrorism, if that engagement involves behaviour different only in degree to that called lawless/inhuman/amoral.
Here the issue is the principles by which sovereign states operate towards their own citizens – and the relationship to foreign nationals and those said to be of their cause.
What is really involved here, is establishing contestable procedures for “detained foreign national hostiles”. Not closing down camps
International standards need to be established. Effectively people are becoming prisoners of unofficial wars (a conflict without two “national” parties engaged). As they cannot end – detention is ongoing. The party not a nation is deemed to be illegal – yet it’s “hostiles” are not tried.
In the UK detention without trial is for investigation of an associated security threat, here at GB, it’s round-up of people seen as associated with the cause AND personnel of the “illegal enemy”.
The actual trial/POW test is supporting “actions” of the illegal enemy.
Thus the issue of contestable procedures for the detainees – in some process of accountability.
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SPC says:
“What is really involved here, is establishing contestable procedures for “detained foreign national hostiles?. Not closing down camps.”
Really? I see the USA, under its current American Administration (unilaterally) doing what it is doing in many parts of the world basically because it can.
To me, “what is really involved here” is what is the rest of the world, separately or together, going to do about this behaviour, and when?
eredwen
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Continuing the theme (above email) of “what is the rest of the world doing about American behaviour?”:
As an example of what one Californian American pensioner is doing,
(for anyone who hasn’t found this source of info):
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/who.htm
I find Tom Feeley’s ICH daily bulletin (delivered by email, or online) a quick and fairly comprehensive source, and a good introduction to new sources.
it comes out six days a week: A page of headlines, three line summary of each, and if you want more read the article. (Readers are asked to send in appropriate material for inclusion…)
eredwen
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Weren’t you even vaguely tempted, once your protest was over, to sneak off & leave the bound & gagged protester standing there?
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ICH is an excellent source of news plus http://www.truthout.org
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yeah..and locally..so is whoar.co.nz….sorta under your noses..eh?
with a years worth of archives…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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eredwen,
What is really involved here, is establishing contestable procedures for “detained foreign national hostiles?. Not closing down camps.
“Really? I see the USA, under its current American Administration (unilaterally) doing what it is doing in many parts of the world basically because it can. To me, “what is really involved here? is what is the rest of the world, separately or together, going to do about this behaviour, and when?”
I am not sure what point you were trying to make. We all know what the USA are doing. And my advice about what needs to be done, was and is, to establish contestable procedures.
The detainees are foreign nationals, but not prisoners of war. It’s a new category and there should be international standards expectations. Such need to be contestable (challenge to decision making) and involve outside inspection.
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Half of America is agin ‘em, all of the rest of the world is agin ‘em, and they prosper, because “everything that ain’t nailed down is their’s and anything they can pry loose ain’t nailed down”. The USA is blinded by the delivery of broken corporate infotainment.
There isn’t anything useful that can be done about the USA right now, it is self-destructing and has got a fair bit further to go before it will even begin to get better. Some of us expect it to get all the way to totalitarianism. Me, I’m not so sure, but I moved to NZ and brought my family.
It isn’t looking good IMHO.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ: Trying like hell to do what you did but life keeps throwing up roadblocks. Give me an email: apanthropinization@gmail.com
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SPC:
bjchip speaks from experience!
My point was:
The American Administration has not acted legally because they don’t have to, and they know that.
By all means, keep on trying …
Assuming the “World” follows your advice and establishes new “contestable procedures” (which would be a “watering down” of whatever rights individuals have now) don’t expect the current American Administation to observe these new rules.
“Might is right” and they know that they can ignore them.
eredwen
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bj, Brian Boyko, et al
… and it seems that Americans who don’t like what their country is doing,
all seem to be deperate to emigrate and come to Aotearoa!
I hope you “new” and “would be” Kiwis are doing your bit and remaining as voiciferous on American websites as you are here!
Kia ora!
eredwen
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Hell no. NSA reads that stuff.
More importantly, there’s no hope for America so it doesn’t make it worth it to really try to improve it.
My file’s long enough already.
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Eredwen, they are probably monitoring every word I type
But talking doesn’t do it. The USA is in the thrall of people who don’t listen, and talking doesn’t do anything at all, if indeed you can say anything at all. Did you catch my post about the Nurse who wrote a letter to the editor criticizing Bushco and wound up on sedition charges?
These are seriously repressive times for dissent in the USA. Worse than it ever was during ‘Nam.
respectfully
BJ
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I just read your post SPC… have you been hanging out with Nandor lately?
The current mob in the Whitehouse believes that they are above the law. Nixon was a piker compared to this group, and they’ve shut down dissent in ways that would’ve been unimaginable even 10 years ago. Almost total control of what people see on the news, hear on the radio, and read in USA Today. We have a name for the people who live on this news alone… we call them “tube sheep”.
The ignorance is like a blanket smothering the few dissenting voices in the country. It would be physically DANGEROUS for my atheistic liberal views to be “outed” in vast stretches of the heartland. The people who would administer the beating wouldn’t even know why they were doing it.
It’s not neo-conservatism, it is neo-fascism that is overtaking the USA and if they have so little respect for the Constitution and the governing processes of the USA they are CERTAIN to have an even deeper disrespect for the rest of the world. Most of them would like to abolish the UN…. you think they’ll listen to it? Nope, they only listen to money, and they’ve already got all of that and the printing press besides.
The thing that COULD stop them? China and Japan cut off the credit line. The rest of the world stops buying US debt. That’s how it could be stopped, but the economy of the entire planet would go into recession/depression that would make the 1930 event look like an afternoon stroll along the waterfront. It’d bring down the current US government in a hurry though. It’s what the US PEOPLE need to believe that there is a world outside their borders and that the rest of the world matters too.
Better than a war, but not something you’ll persuade the Chinese and Japanese to do in a hurry.
respectfully
BJ
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History will have interesting things to say about these times.
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A good recession would cut CO2 emissions by a third within a year.
Hmmm….
respectfully
BJ
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Here’s a link to that nurse story
[Editor and Publisher]
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995631
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BJ isn’t exaggerating when it comes to that “physically dangerous” bit. I’ve got a bumper sticker on my car with the relatively innocuous “The media is only as liberal as the conservative businesses that own them” printed on it. If I drive more than 30 minutes outside of Austin’s city limits, I make sure to put some duct tape over it.
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BJ -
that very high-geared scientific brain of yours needs a walk in the park occasionally! Chill, man!
However, I do agree with you that the most part of NZ’ers will have no idea how constrained the public is in the US by the current administration.
FWIW, I’m never goin to qualify for a visa to the USA, I’ve yelled at the Ambassador here a couple times too many…. (at public occasions, for the record…)
The US Embassey keeps trying to put pressure on our Police and security policy wonks to get the same level of repression of civil liberties happening here, that goes on without question in the US. They didn’t count on the legacy of British legal process in this ex-colony, which creates an alternate environment for change/repression to that which the US Constitution allows.
Although having said that, John Howard allowed anti-terrorist legislation based on US law. But Aussies are way more redneck than Kiwis, straight off the bat – look at the Cronulla riots.
Brash has been doing his best to incite race riots in NZ, but there are far to many educated liberals-thinking people, who analyse the shit out of media, and know when they’re being spun, because they check the original text that’s being referred to…. and spot the deliberate insult to their intelligence.
Both politicians and media make that mistake, but react differently to getting caught – Brash’s gradual retraction from “I know nothing” to “Yes, I met with them, and they said they were going to do this, but I didn’t commission them to do it” over the Exclusive Bretheren pamphlets during the 2005 election campaign is a classic example of painstakingly shoving one’s foot further down one’s own throat.
Anything that brings media and politicians to an acknowledgement that their best efforts at hiding the truth have failed is good, by my yardstick.
Good on Keith for taking a public stand outside the Consulate, and telling the representatives of the Bush Administration that we won’t be bullied into ignoring their international law abuses.
If they want to destroy their own country, well be that as it may. But they’ve lost their mandate to be in another nation’s territory, be it Iraq, Palestine or here, when they refuse to accept governance from the International body they set up after WW2 in the first place.
The UN’s official languages are French and English at the behest of the USA, who compromised to allow a European language to be used in official communications; historically, French was the ligua franca of diplomats throughout Europe, and English was hardly spoken (especially by the British monarchy, who mostly spoke German, but I digress….), so for them to reneg on the UN deal just because the rest of the world won’t sanction their bullying is pretty rank. It’s time they stopped their illegal wars.
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Well said Katie… and well done. It is the Thoreau question in a way… “what are you doing in here” when he was sent to jail for opposition to another law by another administration in another time…. and his response was “what are you doing out there”. The moral stance has to be taken, the opposition DOES have to be vocal and principled and firm, but in the end if you were a Jew in Germany before Kristalnacht, your best option wasn’t speaking out, but moving out.
respectfully
BJ
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It comes down to hope.
If you are an American, and you have even the slightest shred of hope that it can be turned from it’s current path, then you owe it to fight however you can.
If you are an American, and you have no hope, there’s no sense in staying.
I have no hope.
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And if the prisoners are terrorists. How will you reconcile them killing more people after being released? None of us have any idea about who they have or what circumstances they were caught.Even if we look at Ahmed Zaoui,only he will know the truth of his background. I agree the form of detention is cruel but it certainly looks like a lot of the kidnapees in Iraq arent at a holdiday camp either.
In that light what do forum members think should happen to those detainees if they are a security risk? Let them immigrate here?
And on the Cronulla “riots” In my view it was originally a turf war which the media put a race slant on after the right wing groups highjacked the whole thing
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Marsboy:
If the prisoners are terrorists, they should be charged.
You actually make the best argument for closing down Gitmo when you say “None of us have any idea about who they have or what circumstances they were caught” (although there’s alot of evidence that suggests that alot of them were innocent victims just kidnapped and turned in for rewards and favors by local warlords.)
Something like this should be a matter of the public record. We don’t know who is down there. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? We have a process to determine that in the United States – it’s called a trial. Even the guilty in the United States have a right to one.
What is occuring is that these are people being held indefinetly without charge, and that there is significant evidence they are being tortured.
As for your assertion that “it certainly looks like alot of the kidnappees in Iraq aren’t at a holiday camp either.” – that’s true. I think the entire point, though, is that Western Civilization is supposed to be better than some thugs with machetes. If you cannot justify the behavior in Iraqi kidnappers, then how can you justify the behavior in Americans who have lived in a free society and should very damn well know better?
In the end, the problem is that we don’t know if these people are a security risk. We don’t know who makes that determination, what criteron that determination is made, if the material presented is accurate – all of this is occuring in the dark, away from the eyes of the public.
If these people are criminals, charge them. Give them trials. If they are guilty, lock them away in jail.
If they are innocent, they deserve to be released and it is a value of free societies that we are more than willing to let some guilty go free to prevent any innocent from being wrongly imprisoned.
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Agree with you Brian. To any person with some sense of civilisation Gitmo is an abomination. (cue Dosteovsky quote)
The problem is the good ol US just doesnt want to risk letting them go. How could any political figure survive some of the released prisoners then killing more americans or Nzers. They are stuck.
Personally I dont think it likely but what would happen to Keith Lockes career (as it is) if he was proved wrong on Zaoui?
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Marsboy: Politically it’s unpleasant. But no person should have to undergo torture even if it means that a politician has to undergo a dip in the approval ratings.
However, this is not the concern of the holders of the keys of Gitmo. This was a camp -created- for the purpose of locking people away without trial indefinitely.
Again – if a person is a terrorist, they can be found guilty in a legitimate court of law and locked up for the rest of their lives, so the “no one wants to release a prisoner and then have that prisoner kill someone? doesn’t apply. The same excuse can be used to justify keeping all prisoners – no matter how minor the crime – locked up for life sentences.
In the end, prisoners released and returned to Britain have had scant or no evidence showing anything even connecting them to terrorism, which makes it seem that Gitmo is not even being used for the purpose of holding actual terrorists.
The argument about free trials would remain so if we knew more about exactly who is being held there. This is a breeding ground for conspiracy theory. A few people here think the U.S. already –has- Osama in one of the camps just to use him as a bogeyman. In truth, we don’t know. They could be terrorists. They could be innocent people. They could be people who spoke out against the Bush administration. This is all done in secrecy and if these guys actually were terrorists, there’d be no need for the secrecy, nor would there be a problem with actually charging them with crimes.
In short, Gitmo is a political prison for those stripped of all rights to a trial. Whether or not it’s a political prison that actually holds real terrorists or just those in the wrong place at the wrong time or Bush’s political enemies is a significant question, but we can’t even begin to form an answer and history teaches us in this situation to always assume the worst.
We shouldn’t have to trust the government’s assertions that these are “bad men? and that even if we did, these “bad men? still deserve a right to trial.
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