Sunday, October 31, 2010

LIES LIES LIES and more to come........

As I examine the lies in my own clients habeas case....I am reminded of
the history of lies that resulted in my clients almost 10 years of unlawful
detention....
Yes. The wrong fucking people are locked up.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Paying for his father's sins....

Another in a string of black days in this here country of mine. Today we (sorta) sentenced a young man for supposed war crimes committed while he was a child. Shame on us and shame on Canada for not coming to the rescue of its young son long ago. (every other Western nation took their citizens out of Guantanamo years ago....even the Australian Bush clone Howard....but Harper refused, even after the Canadian Supreme Court held that the country had a constitutional obligation.)
Of course there is still a chance that the jury in his case will give him a lesser sentence....the sentencing hearing continues before the military jury.
Andy Worthington has more here.
Emptywheel has more here.
The Toronto star has more here.
And let's not forget our friends at P,O and GG,E

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

From David Hicks' autobiography

David Hicks, aka "the Australian Taliban" has written an account of his treatment in US hands. The book is due out in another month or so ....but click on the title for a glimpse.

Friday, October 15, 2010

EXPERIMENTING ON THE DETAINEES

CLICK ON THE TITLE TO READ THIS EXPOSE BY JASON LEOPOLD AND JEFFREY KAYE.

The article discusses a little known directive by then deputy defense secretary Wolfowitz allowing for experimentation on some of the prisoners at Guantanamo. One of the many disturbing points about this article is how the Government turned the humane treatment of prisoners as a "privilege" to be afforded only those who were considered "lawful combatants." Of course one of the many ironies is that the Government never could get its terminology consistent so the men at Guantanamo were never found to be "unlawful combatants" but were instead found to be "enemy combatants." I know....picky picky.

Little by little the war crimes are coming to the surface. Wolfowitz has moved up on my list.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Catching up....updated....

Well I still haven't gotten to the trial that is supposed to prove to us why we should turn our backs on our court system and adopt military law but here are a few updates to the important story from Dafna Linzer:





I have been buried preparing for my remaining clients habeas hearing which I had hoped would be next week but on monday I found out it will not be until December.....so let me try to catch up.

This will take a few days but I will start with Dafna Linzer's two pieces in Pro Publica:

Link directly to story: http://www.propublica.org/article/in-gitmo-opinion-two-versions-of-reality

Link directly to the sidebar: http://www.propublica.org/article/dojs-troubled-case-against-uthman

The fact that things are being kept from the public...not because they involve National Security but because they are embarrassing to our country has been a problem since this litigation began....what is even more disturbing in these two articles is that a judge actually rewrote his opinion to placate the government and in the process took out some very important facts that puts this case in perspective. The government has been abusing the classification system for a long time but it got ten times worse in the late fall of 2008. From that point on there is very little on the public docket about our cases.

Tomorrow I will get up to speed on the Gitmo trial going on in New York...........