An act of betrayal...

Guantanamo is a particularly significant issue because it demonstrates Obama’s fundamental lack of core convictions, contrary to what he had led us to believe during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

We were told to expect change, that the Bush/Cheney world view and approach belonged to the past…The rule of law, and civilized behavior worthy of a great democracy  would now be a political imperative for Obama’s America…

We were evidently misled…

The absolute ethical necessity to close Guantanamo may have reflected a belief he held at the time Bush/Cheney still wielded  (many would have said, abused) power in Washington.

Once he arrived in the nation’s capital, however, the issue was less significant because he was now in charge, presumably. The concept of justice for all was once again in safe hands, that is to say, his own...Those who took human and constitutional rights seriously no longer had anything to worry about…This conviction was so universally engrained that Obama actually won the Nobel Peace Prize his first year in office.

Closing Guantanamo, the modern-day Bastille, and an infamous symbol of abuse and of arbitrary detention, demanded the new President’s undivided attention and wholehearted support…Since the Obama Administration claimed that the facility was a recruiting tool for terrorists, many assumed the new President would not relent until he had reached the intended objective. Obama had vowed to close it at the conclusion of his first year in office.

The new, excessively popular president could have exerted the necessary pressure on a Democratic Congress to ensure this blight on America’s reputation would be forever obliterated….

And yet, he failed to do so…

The rule of law was no longer a priority, but conditioned by politics…

The rule of law was no longer a popular, political issue, thus expendable…

The notion of trying terrorist suspects in civilian courts, of transferring those held in Guantanamo to the US mainland, ceased to make political sense. It seemed more politically savvy to cater to the people’s fear, than  cultivate or educate their sense of justice and fairness…

We had hoped that a former professor of constitutional law would have done his utmost to promote the cause of justice, and not chosen the facile path of political expediency.  

He had too much else to do than to fight for such fundamental principles, we were told.

Pardon my naiveté, but what is more important than that?

Similarly, the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed was to have been a defining event, according to Attorney General Holder.

Our nation has had no higher priority then bringing those who planned and plotted the attacks to justice, Holder also recklessly declared.

Justice?

Caving in to pressure from local NY politicians ( including, alas, the Mayor of New York)  more interested in public opinion polls than principles, Holder relented.

KSM will be tried in Guantanamo, where justice is an alien concept, defiled by water-boarding, forced sleeplessness, other various “enhanced interrogation techniques” and arbitrary and indefinite detention...

Some have been held for nine years without charge, and will neither be tried nor released, thanks again to Obama who did not se fit to abolish the precedent set by his reckless predecessor …

Who would have thought that MM. Bush and Obama’s America would have resurrected les lettres  de cachet abolished by revolutionary France in 1789? Can anyone, alas, now take the US seriously when it sees fit to lambast another nation’s human rights record?

This, also, shall be part of Obama’s legacy…

How many of us shall be able to forget and forgive this grievous act of betrayal?

(the photograph of Guantanamo can be found here)

Assad sends tanks to crush uprising in Dara'a

In this military assault on Dara'a this morning, the Syrian army killed 25 protesters and left their bodies in the streets, according to a report by Euronews...
The army then combed the streets in an attempt to round up all potential demonstrators.
They are entering houses, they are searching houses. They are carrying knives and guns, one witness told The Guardian...
Assad has clearly opted for the Libyan option in response to his people's demand for freedom....
He is clearly his father's son, and reports that he was in fact a reformer capable of gradually transforming his country into a democracy were clearly misguided...
Assad and his clique must go and then be held accountable for their numerous crimes...
Some 400  Syrians have been killed since the beginning of the uprising last month...

Manning transferred to Fort Leavenworth

Bradley Manning, charged with providing the WikiLeaks whistleblowing site with thousands of classified US government documents, was transferred last Wednesday to Fort Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional Facility. He had previously been held in harsh conditions at Quantico Marine Brig, in Virginia, since May of last year.
Earlier this month, 250 distinguished legal scholars condemned the military's treatment of Manning, characterizing it as not only shameful but unconstitutional.
Mannign was being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, and deprived of his underwear every night, purportedly for his own safety.
Juan Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has been trying to evaluate Manning's conditions, but prevented from doing so by US authorities, who refuse to allow him an unmonitored visit with him.
I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture...until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely, he told The Guardian earlier this month...
Mendez would be authorized to meet with Manning, but only with a guard also present.
At such meetings, anything the prisoner says can then be used against him during his court martial...
Manning will be placed in a single cell in Fort Leavenworth, and he would not receive abusive treatment, officials said, according to Reuters.
It seems therefore, that the Obama administration no longer considers it useful to abuse Bradley Manning, as the young man's case receives ever gretaer attention...
It is also evident however, that it is convinced that Manning is guilty as charged, even though his trial is still many months away, and that, as such, he is considered innocent.
On Thursday, President Obama made this extraordinary statement: we're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.
Can we now reasonably expect Manning to receive a fair trial, since the verdict is already known?
Is the US still a nation of laws, when serious offenders such as those responsible for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, "enhanced interrogation techniques", indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, secret prisons, ghost detainess and so forth are not prosecuted, let alone investigated, while a Private First Class accused of revealing information that the State Department itself concluded did little lasting damage to the US is already considered guilty before his trial has even begun?
(the photograph of an activist protesting against Manning's detention is by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Things you should know, take two

The Assads do not take lightly any concerted attempt to question their authority.
In 1982, President Hafez al-Assad sent 12,000 soldiers to besiege the city of Hama in open revolt against his regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood had taken control of the city, and declared it liberated.
Assad, a member of the Alawite, a Shiite minority in Syria, shelled the city for weeks.
His troops then entered the town, eliminating all Muslim Brotherhood militants that they could find.
Some 1,000 were slaughtered.
Overall, Assad killed approximately 40,000 Syrians, displaced another 100,000 others, in order to reassert his authority.
Some 15,000 still remain unaccounted for…
The foreign policy analyst Robin Wright called the Hama Massacre the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. That is no small achievement in a region that has had to endure the regimes of thugs the likes of Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi…
In many ways you can look at the Arab world over the last few decades and really if you want a turning point, I think the turning point was the terror unleashed on the Syrian people in the city of Hama in 1982.
For about 25 years the Arab people have been terrified of their rulers and the security states have really marginalized them and demolished their sense of dignity, Fouad Ajami, of John Hopkins University, told PBS.
It is that sense of dignity that the Syrians, following the lead of the Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis and Libyans, are seeking to retrieve.
Yet, they are still facing the same ruthless regime, now led by Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father after his death in 2000.
The revolt against the Assad tyranny began some five weeks ago in Deera, a city near the Jordanian border.
Last Friday, thousands of Syrians took to the streets anew, after prayers, to demand the fall of Assad.
The people want the overthrow of the regime, they chanted near Abbasside Square in Damascus.
Security forces shot and killed 109 demonstrators, clearly not hesitating to fire into the crowd.
Demonstrators raised their hands to show that they were unarmed. The fire intensified, wrote Reuters’ Khaled Yacoub Oweiss.
Many were shot in the head and chest, wrote Katherine Marsh of The Observer.
Yesterday, funeral processions for the preceding day’s fallen turned into angry demonstrations against the regime in Damascus, Douma, Barza, Maadamiah and Qabon, according to the NYT.
Bashar al-Assad, you traitor! You coward. Take your soldiers to the Golan, many chanted on Saturday (The Golan Heights were seized by the Israelis during the 1967 war, and remain under Israeli occupation).
In Barza, a witness who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said that at least 1,000 mourners came under fire as they prepared to bury four men and two children, one 7 years old and the other 14. The witness said security forces aimed directly at the mourners, many of whom sought shelter in the nearby Al-Salam mosque, wrote Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
A further 11 were killed on Saturday, throughout Syria.
To date, 280 demonstrators have been killed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising.
Coverage of the events by traditional media has been difficult, as foreign journalists are not authorized to operate freely in Syria.
Yesterday, Carl Perry of Aljazeera was expelled from the country.
Hence, most reports of the events originate from the Syrian activists themselves.
Satellite phones, laptops and modems have been donated by the Syrian Diaspora to ensure that Assad’s brutal repression does not remain unreported.
The opposition movement also has a Facebook page, Syrian Revolution, to rally its supporters.
Assad has made several attempts to assuage the anger of the demonstrators.
He abolished the state of emergency in place since 1963, did away with the security courts, fired several provincial governors and released some political prisoners…
Yet, the fact that his security forces are unabashedly firing on unarmed demonstrators and that activists are still being arrested in midnight raids clearly evince the fact that Assad is more interested in saving his regime than reforming it…
In any case, since Assad has shed the blood of his own compatriots, and considering the brutal legacy of his Baath Party regime, nothing short of its elimination is likely to quell the unrest…
We want the toppling of the regime, a resident of Ezraa told The Observer.
The blood of our martyrs makes this our responsibility now.
Can Assad survive?
How many Syrians is he willing to kill in order to do so?
Will the Syrians persist and topple his regime?
Not all Syrians welcome the uprising.
Several religious minorities, including the Christians, fear that a post-Assad regime could be even worse…
Nevertheless, Assad is clearly unfit, both morally and politically, to rule Syria.
His fate, as well as the nation’s, is in the hands of the Syrian people…
(The photograph above of a demonstration in the Syrian city of Banias on Friday is by AFP)

Things you should know, take one...

Is Misrata the new Sarajevo?
If so, then we should already be ashamed of ourselves.
How many times can the civilized world make the same mistake?
That it is a chillingly dangerous place, furthermore,  was made abundantly clear yesterday for those not paying attention...
Two prominent and intrepid war photographers, Tim Hetheington and Chris Hondros were killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack instigated by pro-Gaddafi forces, according to the BBC.
Xan Rice, of The Guardian, manages to convey the current horrendous conditions in Misrata...
To date, some 1,000 have been killed, 90% of which are civilians, the journalist reports...
President Obama yesterday authorized US forces to use drones  in order to enhance NATO's camapaign to protect Libyan civilians...
Some, including Glenn Greenwald, construed this move as an escalation of the war in Libya.
As the war in Libya escalates on a seemingly weekly basis,  I think it's time for another urgent speech about how imperative it is we all tighten our belts. It's also probably time for another Nobel Peace Prize (and yes, I know: these drone attacks are designed to bring about peace-because War, as we know, is Peace),  he wrote in his blog...

Al Jazeera reported the following today:Predator drones have routinely been flying surveillance missions in Libya, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

He said the US will provide up to two 24-hour combat air patrols each day by the unmanned Predators.

Is the introduction of two drones an escalation?

In essence, what is the welfare of the people of Misrata and Libya worth?

Is it our problem, and if so, how far should we go?

As Chirac said in 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, war is always the worse solution...

Yet, after Bosnia, Srebrenica and Rwanda, can we simply remain on the sidelines and watch a ruthless thug resort to heavy weaponry and cluster bombs in order to submit a people that is courageously fighting for its freedom and dignity? 
(the photograph above of a Libyan revolutionary on the front line in Misrata is by Chris Hondros)

Where are Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi...?

The Iranian authorities could not resist the temptation to take credit for the uprisings currently taking place across the Arab world.
Last month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the Iranian nation is witnessing the echo of its voice in other parts of the Muslim world.
That the revolutions have been secular in nature was not deemed relevant by the regime’s luminaries. They looked forward to a new Middle East, characterized by waning US and Israeli influence.
The Iranian opposition Green Movement, led by Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, seized the opportunity afforded by the uprisings and the regime’s purported support of them to call for a mass demonstration to express solidarity with the people’s movement in the region against their oppressive regimes, they wrote.
The Iranian government, arguing that this would be a political act, refused to authorize the demonstration even though it was called to support developments in the Arab world that it itself had encouraged…
The contradictions and hypocrisy of the regime were clearly exposed, which may also have been one of the objectives of Karroubi and Mousavi.
Despite the ban, Iranians took to the streets nevertheless, on February 14, notably in Tehran, where they converged on Enghelab and Azadi Square…
Two demonstrators were killed in clashes with the security forces.
Both Karroubi and Mousavi were prevented from attending and placed under house arrest.
The following day, 50 or so member of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, shouted Death to Mousavi, death to Karroubi inside the chamber.
Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi are corrupts on earth and should be tried, others told the official IRNA news agency. The death penalty usually follows a conviction on such charges in the Islamic Republic…
Since their house arrest on February 14, nothing has been heard from them…
The two are currently in their home. There have only been some limitations on their contacts with suspicious elements, a justice ministry official told the Fars news agency last Monday.
Iran’s Prosecutor General, Gholam Hossein Moshseni Ejei, was more explicit.
Judicial action has been taken (against them), ultimatums have been issued. In the first step, their communications, including their comings and goings, and their telephone conversations have been restricted, and if need be, other steps will be taken, he warned last Monday as well.
Interestingly, four days later, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, in an interview with Euronews, claimed that those gentlemen you refer to are in their homes, they are living ordinary lives…To the best of my knowledge, they are at their homes. They are always moving from one place to another. They are free to visit their families. They may have made their own decision to move.
He thus implicitly stated that they were no longer in their homes nor under house arrest.
Yet, if that is so, why has no one seen them?
We, like any other children that suddenly have been cut off from communicating with their parents, are highly concerned. We live in an absolute news blackout about our loved ones. It is clear to us that our loved ones are held by those who hate them only because of their ideals. We are concerned because we read that our parents have not been imprisoned, and are not under house arrest, but are only escorted by security agents, and that we, their children, can see them. But it has not been that way. We the children have not seen our parents, have not heard their voices, and what concerns us most is the contradiction between what the regime says and what is actually taking place, Mousavi’s three daughters declared in a statement quoted by tehranbureau last Thursday.
Opposition activists claim that the two men, along with their wives, Zahra Rahnavard and Fatemeh Karroubi, have been arrested and imprisoned.
It has been more than two weeks that Iranian authorities have put Mousavi and Karroubi in a situation such that no one has any reliable information about their conditions and health. There have been many speculations. For us, after we investigated, the report about the transfer of Mousavi and Karroubi and their wives to Heshmateiyeh (a Tehran jail) is considered credible, Amir Arjomand, a senior Mousavi advisor, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
According to some sources, Vahid Haghanian, the Supreme Leader’s own deputy chief of staff, arrested Mr. and Mrs. Karroubi.
The fact that they are being held incommunicado is not a good sign.
Arbitrary and incommunicado detention in unknown locations is often associated with torture and ill treatment, even extrajudicial execution in Iran. Time and again opposition figures in Iran are detained without contact with their families or lawyers, only to undergo abuse and appear on TV weeks later confessing to baseless charges, Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesperson for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, declared.
The precedents are numerous and alarming…
Given the current context of uprisings throughout the Arab world, has the regime finally opted to do away with the opposition’s most prominent leaders in hopes of crushing it, even if it means flouting its own laws, let alone international law?
As such, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH in French) and the Iranian League for the Defense of Human Rights officially seized the United Nations Working Group for Involuntary Disappearances.
The houses of four opposition leaders have been surrounded by the security forces and all their contacts were under scrutiny for months. Now they have disappeared. Their case constitutes a clear application of enforced or involuntary disappearance. The Iranian authorities are responsible for their safety, Dr. Karim Lahiditi, vice president of the FIDH, announced.
Where are Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi?
We must insist that the thugs who rule in Tehran answer that question, and answer it now…
The events in Libya and elsewhere should not lead us to neglect their fate, or encourage the Iranian despots to believe that no one is currently concerned with their wellbeing…
(the photograph of Karroubi and Mousavi was found here)

Is this the treatment one should expect in Obama's America...?

PFC Bradley Manning, suspected of having transferred troves of classified material to WikiLeaks, can no longer be trusted to sleep with any clothes on at all, according to officials at the Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia, where he has been held for ten months...
As a result, he has been compelled to surrender his underwear lest he injure himself…
How he could possibly manage that feat, the authorities did not care to explain.
This new regulation is for his own good, a simple precautionary measure, according to the military authorities detaining him…
Consequently, he will have to undergo morning inspections stark naked as well, to prevent being injured, presumably, by a potentially lethal piece of  under clothing…
Why has this new procedure been put in place?
The military authorities will not elaborate, because to discuss the details would be violating the detainee’s privacy, they claimed.
For the Obama administration, stripping a detainee on a regular basis and subjecting him to daily inspections without any clothes on, does not qualify as a violation of Manning’s privacy, however…
Coincidentally, this precautionary measure, taken, naturally, for the detainee’s own good, came one day after the Army charged Manning with 22 additional counts, including aiding the enemy. That is a capitol offense.
The prosecution announced that it would not seek the death penalty, however.
Should that be the case, Manning could still face life in prison…
The Obama administration's strategy is clear: it is increasing the pressure on Manning, who has been held under harsh conditions since June of last year.
This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification. It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated, David Coombs, Manning’s lawyer declared.
Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell characterized Manning’s behavior at Quantico as exemplary.
Yet, this clearly does not matter since it is administration policy, evidently, to humiliate and intimidate Manning, now matter how he behaves.
He remains in his cell 23 hours a day.
Because of his Prevention of Injury status, the guards check up on him every five minutes.
At night, they can wake him up at any time if they cannot ascertain that all is well…
Yet, Manning is steadfastly refusing to cooperate with the prosecution and reach some kind of plea agreement conditioned on incriminating Julian Assange, editor in chief of WikiLeaks, as a co-conspirator, the real target of this case.
The increasingly abusive and disgraceful treatment inflicted on Manning suggests the authorities have no elements against Assange, and thus must obtain incriminating evidence from Manning
The young soldier is now accused of aiding the enemy, thus…
Yet, who, in fact, is the enemy? WikiLeaks, for releasing the classified material, or the Taliban, al-Qaeda or similar parties?
If the former, then since when has a media organization been considered an enemy for simply publishing information?
If the prosecution is referring to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, then traditional media organizations such as The New York Times should be prosecuted as well, for they were intimately involved in the vetting and publication of the classified material, which, the authorities claim, aided the enemy…
They also published the material before WikiLeaks actually did....
This charge of aiding the enemy may prove difficult to establish in court, thus the administration’s current efforts to extort a plea agreement from Manning.
So, this is the treatment that one should expect in Obama’s America?
Bush and Cheney could have done no better, and are surely pleased with this administration’s approach to civil and constitutional rights….
How frightening that, today, in America, there should no longer be a major political party to condemn such practices…Who now represents those who still believe in justice and individual rights?
Not only US, and international laws demand that human beings be treated in a dignified manner, particularly when they are in detention, and thus at the government’s mercy, but simple, common decency does as well.
Is that now also extinct in Washington?
One would have hoped that someone in the capital learned something from the despicable Abu Ghraib events.
Imagine the outcry in Washington and on the sets of 24-hour cable news networks if a US citizen held abroad was subjected to such degrading treatment?
Alas, it seems that abuse and humiliation are now standard procedure in US-controlled facilities, when detainees are deemed to hold potentially significant information, regardless of who is in the White House….
(here shall you find the photograph posted on top)