The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. - George Washington
The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday. -CNN
It’s amazingly coincidental that this ‘new’ government study citing the dangers of superweed is released a week or two after the first signs of serious calls for legalization and regulation of marijuana in the US. And as always, they’re just worried about ‘the children’. Of course, no one is advocating legalization for children, but if you want to scare a voter away from an issue, go after their kids.
I suppose it’s better than the old reasoning, though:
The dominant race and most enlightened countries are alcoholic, whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp and opium, some of which once attained to heights of culture and civilization, have deteriorated both mentally and physically. -Dr. A.E.Fossier 1931
A man has been charged and faces death in the bombing of the USS Cole, which took place in October of 2000. He’s also been charged with various other crimes, including being a member of Al Qeada. In theory, bringing a perpetrator of that act, which killed 17 American servicemen, and a member of a notorious terrorist organization to justice is more than a good thing, it’s well, justice. In practice, however, things tend to get more complicated.
The man is named Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. He’s been in US custody for six years. During much of that time, his imprisonment was top secret, known only to the CIA and certain top level federal officials in the Pentagon and above. More recently, he’s been confirmed as one of the men who were tortured (er, aggressively interrogated?) by way of waterboarding between 2002 and 2003. During one of these sessions, he apparently offered a confession to involvement in the destruction of the USS Cole. That confession will now likely be held against him, not in a court of law, but in a secret military tribunal, whose rules are defined by the Executive branch and whose proceedings and evidence will be kept in secret indefinitely. There are claims of other damning evidence potentially existing, but who gets to see it?
It seems Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal adviser to the U.S. military tribunal system, put it best:
We will look at the evidence, all of the evidence that is associated with the case,” Hartmann said. “While there has been an admission that there was waterboarding, there may well be other evidence in the case. That’s not … necessarily the only part of evidence in the case.
If only you or I or even the defendant (can you imagine them handing over classified information to him?) could be included in ‘we.’ I don’t think this is what they meant by ‘Justice is blind.’
So, the question becomes, how can there be justice when due process of law has been tossed aside? How can justice be served if the evidence of that service is only available to a privileged few? At what point does it become symbolic revenge? Wouldn’t a trial cloaked in secrecy and ending in execution only serve to lend fuel to the fire of fundamentalist ‘Islamists?’
Even a verdict of ‘not guilty’ accomplishes nothing because it won’t prove innocence or guilt; it’s an empty declaration. Besides, it seems likely that such a verdict would only lead to a fine-tuning of the tribunal rules, which appear to be wholly experimental and in-flux. And, in what should be significant, these military tribunals don’t meet UN standards for international trials. In fact, Phillip Alston a UN Envoy from the UN’s Human Rights Council, after completing his review of the upcoming tribunals, had this to say:
It would violate international law to execute someone following this kind of proceeding.
What do these and future tribunal trials truly accomplish? Do they make Americans safer when the void in Al Qeada left by hypothetically guilty ‘detainees’ were filled years ago and the years of uncharged incarceration and admitted torture likely multiplied Al Qeada membership? Are they in the service of justice when the UN (whose resolutions were simultaneously used as justification and dismissed as obstacle for war in Iraq) describes them as violations of international law?
This is how the world ends. Not with a bang or a whimper, but with bills.
The federal government is demanding detailed transaction reports from essentially every business that uses credit cards. What, how, and why this information will be used and whether or not the gathered information will be escalated to the individual purchaser in the near future (it seems like the obvious next step) are not questions the citizen has a right to have answered. What makes this worse, is that the bill in question is sponsored by Chris Dodd, a senator previously known for fighting tooth and nail against this very type of overreach by the federal government. Read more here: Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government
If that weren’t enough, a bill designed to update FISA has stolen even more rights from citizens and handed it over to the attorney general, the Chancellor Palpatine of the federal government. This bill says that anyone (corporations, too, or perhaps especially) who broke the law because the President (read Executive Branch) compelled them to is immune from any litigation stemming from those illegal actions. All the attorney general has to do is say that the action was authorized between September 2001 and January 2007, that the action was related to preventing terrorism, and that the order to carry it out was written down. Now, I’ve used ’say’ instead of ‘prove’ because to say the AG has to prove anything here would be misleading. He simply hands his documents to the judge and the judge, in turn, dismisses whatever case he happens to have in front of him. I hate to use the word ‘judge,’ since the merits of the documents aren’t actually in question. They simply need to exist. I hesitate to use the term ‘exist,’ though, since the bill gives the AG the power to declare the documents secret, meaning the only people that will ever get to see them are the AG and the judge. As a final insult, the judge isn’t even allowed to reference the documents in any way when dismissing the cases. His role is simply to toss out the trash. Judge and janitor start with the same letter, so I suppose it works out in the end.
So, the Iraq war has been going on for over 5 years now. It’s cost more than we expected:
It’s lasted longer than we anticipated:
And the lack of a connection between Al Queda and Hussein has been admitted:
As President Bush states in the last video, though, Iraq is still a part of the ‘War on Terror,’ so it must be helping out there, right? Sorry to disappoint. According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly seven years after 9/11 and the US’s invasion of Afghanistan, the border between that country and Pakistan is still a safe haven for Al Queda and it seems anyone else who needs a good place to hide/wage war from:
The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]. Since 2002, the United States relied principally on the Pakistan military to address U.S. national security goals…GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State, and embassy documents, as well as Defense officials in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA. No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed…Neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power–diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support–called for by the various national security strategies and Congress. As a result, since 2002, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan has had no Washington-supported, comprehensive plan to combat terrorism and close the terrorist safe haven in the FATA.
While the abstract does point out some positives, like the death/capture of hundreds of Al Queda operatives; it also tempers that with the 1,400 Pakistani special forces that lost their lives in the process. There’s also the glaring concern that we’ve given Pakistan nearly $11 billion to fight for us in
the ‘War on Terror’ since 2002, and are no better off in terms of security against Al Queda than we were on September 11, 2001. Is it just me, or does that seem like kind of a big deal?
Back to Iraq, where there’s a war still raging, costing a shade under $4,000 per second and whose 80,000 or more civilian deaths will lead to untold recruitment opportunities for Al Queda and like-minded Islamo-fascists. Yeah, that Iraq. Turns out, there are big plans for the future of downtown Baghdad, and they center around Marriott, literally. The hotel giant has apparently sealed a deal to build a luxury hotel in a city that has no reliable power or sewer system. I’m sure the Iraqi people, who aren’t currently welcome in the Green Zone where it’s going to be built are thrilled to hear the news, although, I’m not sure how the message will get delivered. There are also plans to build an amusement park, starting with a skateboard park this summer.
Now this is all great news for investors, and the influx of capital into Baghdad will certainly raise the standard of living for certain segments of the population, but am I the only one wondering what effect a skyline and economy shaped by Western corporate interests is going to have on the Iraqi people and the Muslim world, in general? In terms of Al Queda’s grievances, excessive Western influence was pretty high on the list. I’m not suggesting we should give into whatever demands they come up with, but in terms of the ‘War on Terror,’ this seems about an effective a tactic as, well, invading Iraq. Who am I to question the President or the Pentagon, though? They’ve done such a great job so far, right?
