Category: Evil

About Those Gitmo Detainees “Returning to the Fight”

No Comments

In the most recent Supreme Court decision on Gitmo, Scalia noted that 30 former detainees had, “Returned to the Fight”.

Well, thanks to Sabin Willett, whose firm has represented some of those detainees, writing in the Boston Globe, we now have a definition of what this means:

It is a serious allegation, so the lawyers looked into it. It turns out that clients of our firm, who were sent to Albania in 2006, were two of the 30. What fight had they returned to? Abu Bakker Qassim had published an op-ed in The New York Times. Adel Abdul Hakim had given an interview. These press statements were deemed hostile by the Department of Defense.

Surely the Pentagon was joking? They weren’t.

So I can’t speak for the other 28, if indeed there are another 28, but for the two men I do know about, giving hostile interviews constituted “returning to the fight.”

The basic institutions of state security in the United States have become very profoundly pathological indeed.

Well, the Courts Finally Recognize That There are Limits

No Comments

Hazaifa Parhat, a Uighur (pronounced weeger) was declared an “illegal enemy combatant” because the Uighur separatists are occasionally friendly with people who are friendly with al Queida, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that this was insufficient in a unanimous vote.

Note that this was not under the Supreme Court’s habeas corpus ruling. It was under the “Detainee Treatment Act” that the Republithug congress passed in 2006 stripping everyone of habeas corpus rights.

There was no evidence. Not even after Bush and His Evil Minions™ declared them terrorists at the bidding of the Chinese government, and then tortured these guys on behalf of the Chinese Communists.

No evidence. And the only reason to call them “illegal enemy combatants” was because Bush wanted to make nice with the Chinese commies.

The specifics of the non-existent evidence are still not public, as the judgement has to be scrubbed of classified data, but that’s why a bunch of Republithug appointed judges.

When You Think That They Can Go No Lower

No Comments

They continue to surprise…in a bad way.

Everyone’s poster child for mercenaries, Blackwater USA, is now asserting that they bear no culpability for a plane crash in which their under trained and reckless employees killed US soldiers when they crashed into a mountain top in Afghanistan because the law of the land there is Sharia, and “Sharia law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.

Thats right, they are trying to apply religious law to a civil suit.

I have an idea. Let’s send Eric Prince to Afghanistan to stand trial there.

We Hid Prisoners from the Red Cross

No Comments

Hey, if it’s not illegal torture, why was so much effort spent covering it up?

The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

“We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,” Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who’s since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to “break” detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. “True, but officially it is not happening,” she is quoted as having said.

…

These people need to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Really, Really, Really, Really Bad Ideas, The Juxtaposition of Border Security and Copyright Edition

No Comments

The newest leaked draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is proposing that border security will have the ability to inspect digital devices, determine whether they contain “infringing material”, and then confiscate them.

So if you have MP3’s on your iPod leally ripped from you CD, they get to confiscate it without any due processas, “The draft allows for the confiscation or destruction of any device the agents deem suspect.”

The draft is available at WikiLeaks.

The Latest in the US Gulags, Prison Ships

No Comments

Delightful. They are now apparently using prison ships outside of territorial waters in order to avoid the scrutiny of human rights activists:

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

….

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

The Hague, bitches, the Hague.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ need to spend the rest of their lives in foreign prisons under the international criminal court. It’s the only way that this can be resolved now, because we lack the political will to prosecute this ourselves.

Kapo*

No Comments

So, Joe Lieberman has decided to headline Pastor John Hagee’s next “Christians United For Israel” summit on July 22.

He is gladly sharing the stage with a man (Hagee) who in addition to calling Catholicism as being “the Great Whore” said that Hitler, and the Holocaust, were heaven sent, and Joe Lieberman has called him a man of God and compares him to Moses (see video below).

Joe Lieberman is so wrapped up in his twisted vision of his own sanctimony and his own revenge fantasies against those who he thinks have wronged (most recently the Democrats for not nominating him for President or renominating him for Senate.)

There appears to be nothing beyond Joseph Lieberman’s (yimach shmo) small and petty goal of self-aggrandizement.

Adblock

*Kapo, not to be confused with Capo†. They were Jewish trustees in the prison camp, and did the Nazi’s dirty work there, frequently with a level of brutality and sadism that stunned even their Nazi warders.
†Capo is short for Caporegime, which, to quote the Wiki means , “The head of a branch of an organized crime syndicate who commands a crew of soldiers and reports directly to a boss or an underboss.”

School Districts Employ Snitches to Throw the Newly Foreclosed Out of School

No Comments

Yep, school districts are employing private investigators to find foreclosed children so that they can thrown them out of school.

I would note that it’s frequently illegal, “The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, an updated version of a 1987 law, says school districts can’t deny enrollment to children who are homeless because of foreclosure or other economic hardship.”

As the good Rev. Wright says, “God bless America.”

H/T Calculated Risk

The Government’s Secret Detention List

No Comments

I’m wondering if I am on that list.

My guess would be that if martial law were to be declared, it would be in mid to late November, following a Democratic victory,* because it would be to cover up their own wrongdoing.

Christopher Ketcham of Radar Magazine makes the case that the US government has a list of 8 million people that they will detain without process if martial law is declared. That’s just under 3% of the population.

He makes a convincing case that the entire scene with Ashcroft in the hospital being browbeaten to sign a document was in fact a surveillance program connected to a, “so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs”, centered in FEMA‡, where it evades the oversight done on what is normally considered the state security apparatus (FBI, CIA, other TLAs, etc.).

I’m not sure which is more depressing to me, the fact that this might be the plan of Bush and His Evil Minions™, or the fact that I have so little faith in those career bureaucrats in the US state security apparatus to obey their vows to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

*And let’s be clear….At this point, that means Barack Obama. Even if all of FL and MI are seated. Unless he is caught with a live boy or a dead girl, he’s the nominee.†
†Not my preferred outcome, but I wanted Howard Dean in 2004 and Bill Bradley in 2000, so I’m used to it.
‡That’s right, the folks who f%$#ed up Katrina are responsible for the continued existence of a law based Democracy in the US.

No, Make That Hell No!

No Comments

Publius makes an an argument that the realities of votes and politics require that the Democrats keep Joe Lieberman in his chairmanship on the Homeland Security Committee.

While his arguments are logical, they are also wrong. They are predicated on the idea that he generally votes with the Dems, and this is really not true. He votes with the Dems when it does not matter, so he voted against Alito, and voted for Cloture.

If he is the 60th vote for cloture, he will not vote for cloture, because as he has already made clear, he is intent on extracting vengeance against a Democratic party that he feels has betrayed him.

As to whether you allow him to caucus with the Dems, that’s their business, but he should not be chairman of anything significant, particularly homeland security, which has been politicized, and needs to be de-Bushified.

Any authority that he is granted will merely serve his petty vendetta.

Republicans Want to Steal from the Poor

No Comments

It looks like that will be one of the conditions set down by the Senate Republithugs to allow the bill housing bailout to the floor.

Senator Dodd’s bill also creates a housing trust fund with resources from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build or preserve rental housing for extremely low and very low income people. Senator Shelby wants those funds to be used to pay for the new FHA program instead.

I’m not sure what upsets me more, the ‘Phants balancing the budget on the back of people who are closest to being homeless, or the fact that I’m not surprised by their venality and evil.

Repulsive, But This Time I’m Not Surprised

No Comments

Yep, speaking in Israel, George W. Bush made Nazi references with regard to Barack Obama’s suggestion that we might want to talk to potential adversaries:

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

This is repulsive. You have this sort of accusation made in a public forum by the President of the United States. What’s more, this misuse of WWII and the Holocaust was made before the Knesset in Israel.

This is unbelievably, and unspeakably low, and speaks to the mind of a man who has no moral compass whatsoever.

What surprises me the most is that I’m not stunned by this. This is exactly what I have been expecting from him, and so I’m not surprised.

That being said, had he been drowned at birth, the world would be a far better place.

And in the Depart of Finally Getting a F$#@ing Clue

No Comments

After something like 20 years of fraud and deception, someone in the US military has noticed that Achmad Chalabi is a con man who has played the Neocons establishment like a freaking violin.

Sources in Baghdad tell NBC News that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington’s once powerful neoconservatives.

What is it that Tom and Ray Magliozzi say? “Unencumbered by the thought process.”

Dude, read up on Bush and His Evil Minions™. You got nothing on them.*

*Truth be told, neither are intellectual slouches, having degrees in from MIT.

The Mongoose Gang* in the US

No Comments

It appears that people under investigation in what appear to be politically motivated cases, and those who whistle blow on the same, are being systematically targeted with arson, break ins, and attempts to force their car from the road.

Cases in point:

  • Governor Don Siegelman home was burglarized twice with nothing taken, “the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman’s home office.”
  • Siegelman’s attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.
  • Dana Jill Simpson, who went on 60 Minutes to allege that Siegelman was the target of a political prosecution had her home burned down, and her car forced off the road.
  • In Muississipi, in a similar case, attorney Paul Minor, had his office broken into, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Oliver E. Diaz Jr., had his home burglarized, again with nothing taken except documents and a computer , and another defendant, John Whitfield, had his office was the target of arson.

I want my country back.

*Mongoose Gang reference is here. I went on vacation to Grenada a number of times as a kid, and the name given to Eric Gairy’s group of thugs and bully-boys used to enforce political intimidation always stuck in my head.

Yes, There Are Similarities. Corruption is as Corruption Does

No Comments

Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) is noting that the firing of Mary Gade as regional administrator of region 5 for her attempts to keep dioxin out of the environment resembles the US attorney scandal.

Of course. When one believes that government is an unmitigated evil, as movement conservatives do, the only role for government agencies is to do favors for friends and allies.

Dow is a friend, poor children who you put at risk for cancer are not.