The Ongoing Torture Debate

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It is unfortunate that the most complete and honest debate regarding the current state of affairs as it surrounds the use of torture by America was on The Daily Show.

Enforcement of the Convention Against Torture

Perhaps the winds of change are blowing through the District of Columbia, for a change. Professor Manfred Nowak has spoken publicly about his belief that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld should be brought before a court because of the conditions of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay. A video of an interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez is posted for context below.



For those readers unfamiliar with the various levels of complicity, such as John Ashcroft's infamous quote, Condoleeza Rice's admission, or Dick Cheney's admission from Taxi to the Dark Side, a few highlights are presented below by liberal pundit Rachel Maddow, for a quick brief.

To summarize the argument even further into condensed legal flavor, Article 4 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment compels member states to prosecute allegations of torture, casting a wide net to catch everyone between the interrogator to those who knew about it and did nothing, in theory. The Text is quoted below.

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

This, to state the obvious, is the largest test of the new administration. How will Obama handle these allegations? I hope this is a question that is being asked again in the White House and in various agencies of the Federal Government, to the logical conclusion that these allegations must be investigated as a matter of legitimacy. How the Rule of Law is enforced will set the tone, as it a lack of credible enforcement of the law as it is written set the tone of the Bush Administration. Simply issuing a subpoena to  former officials will not work, just ask Karl Rove. There can be no pleading and begging for a notionally independent branch of government for morsels of information and the respect due such an august body. Flaunting of Congressional subpeonas must stop, and the words of the anointed, yet not confirmed, Attorney General, Eric Holder, are encouraging, if unsettling to certain people, such as Alberto Gonzalez. Unfortunately for the shamed former AG seems to rest precariously on the words of John Yoo, former counselor in the Bush Administration's Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. 

Weaseling Out of Things

With the new year and the change of administration in Washington there has been a tendency lately for retrospective looks at the outgoing Bush administration which has reminded us of all that has gone wrong in the last eight years and all that the Bush administration and its collaborators have to answer for. This tendency has in turn provoked the apologists for the Bush regime who are now using the unitary executive theory as a shield rather than a spear. The result is conversations like the one on the Diane Rehm show this morning where lawyers acting as apologists for the nefarious acts of Bush policy sound like panicky weasels trying to slip out of anyone having to take responsibility for the wrongs they have done. These pundits try to appear to be centrists, but the way they use arguments regarding pragmatic politics to evade moral accusations that there has been wrongdoing on the part of the Bush administration paints these men as the worst caricature of the sleazy lawyer.

The BART killing

I have been trying to keep the start of the new year on this blog light with video game reviews and silly articles. I have avoided discussing the conflict in the middle east even though that is the most significant international news right now.

But the riots of last night and the, execution style, police killing of Oscar Grant III are too much to ignore. These are very much subjects which we at The Fringe Element are concerned with. I'll start with the widely viewed video.




I don't know much of the story but people attribute Officer Johannes Mehserle's apparent shock to his mistakenly using his firearm when he intended to use his tazer. I am not sure how this is much better. As you can probably guess from previous articles, we here at The Fringe Element don't approve of liberal use of tazers by police, considering them to be a substitute for lethal force only. Whereas countless news stories indicate that police around the country treat this otherwise useful device as a shortcut to incapacitate any person the officer finds inconvenient to deal with.

In this case the use of a tazer would have been substantially less likely to cause death. I suppose that difference in outcome is supposed to mitigate the severity of the actions of the officer in this case in the minds of some people. But again, I don't consider a tazer to be non-lethal force. Neither do its proponents who call such devices "less lethal." In the same category as rubber bullets. The idea is to incapacitate with sufficient force to be sure to incapacitate with a single use. In many cases, the requisite amount of force to do so with such certainty is enough to kill. Again, I am not arguing against the use of tazers, I am arguing that people at large, and particularly the police, need to stop thinking of using a tazer as less serious than using a firearm.

The Walk of Shame: A Shameful Roundup

Saving the best for last.

First, a new study shows that half of all American doctors prescribe a placebo to their patients, and most of them that do, do not inform the patient that the medication will not do anything for their condition. The study goes on to say that doctors usually use pain medication, vitamins, or stress medications rather than the sugar pill one usually associates with placebo.

This throws into question medical ethics and the doctrine of informed consent. It would be possible to meet the standard of informed consent and still get the beneficial effects of a placebo. It also raises questions of further wasting money in the already inefficient American medical system.

This strikes me as similar to the use of tazers since in both cases a professional with a fiduciary duty to the people is using a device as a shortcut around dealing with the psychological difficulty's of the individual they are faced with at the time. It's lazy. It's laziness that has harmful consequences.


Second, the McCain campaign volunteer who claimed to have been attacked and beaten by a black man who carved a "B" into her face to signify Barrac Obama, admitted to lying about the attack. Apparently the woman is mentally unstable and probably did it to herself.


Lastly, we have the Maryland police spying scandal. The state police went to public meetings of politically left protest organizations and entered the names of participants in a database of persons suspected for involvement in terrorism. So essentially what we have is a law enforcement body labeling as terrorists, U.S. citizens who are exercising their constitutionally guaranteed first amendment rights without any evidence that any crime had or would be committed.

The ACLU were the ones credited with this story seeing the light of day because of an information request. This week the state started sending out letters to people who's names are on the list. There are varying accounts of what the letters say or what their purpose is. Questions need to be answered like; why were these people targeted, was it because they were politically liberal, why not investigate groups like the KKK which is already listed as a terrorist group, what prompted this spying, will the victims be able to see what is in their file, what criteria are used to determine someone is a terrorist, how does someone get their name off the list, is it possible to remove someones name?

This again gives an answer the question, "if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to fear?" These people were not doing anything wrong. One officers reports even showed that these people were not planning on doing anything wrong. Yet they were labeled as terrorists. At this point we still do not know why. Again, most people don't concern themselves with the draconian methods of dealing with suspected terrorists since 9/11. Except we have been repeatedly shown that one does not need to do anything wrong to be labeled a terrorist and be subjected to torture. But then again, this woman seems to think that protesters, or anyone that is vocal about their political opinions deserves to be given the third degree.

The Walk of Shame: Palin

This is a pretty detailed article on the whole affair. The bottom line is that the legislative investigation found that Sarah Palin violated the public trust in her office as Governor when she allegedly pressured for the firing of a State Trooper that had been married to her sister. In these cynical times it is hard for me to explain how serious a violation of the public trust is other than to say that even lawyers are required to be more ethical than this.

Once again this raises the question of how well Palin was vetted before she was picked as the VP nominee. Her ability wink and to segue into memorized talking points during the VP debate does not reassure me that she is more intelligent than the Couric interviews have shown her to be. Now there is this report detailing how she wasted no time in becoming corrupt after being elected as Governor of Alaska. Its probably a testament to her Orwellian campaigning that she was originally billed as a reformer.

The most telling part of this story is the reaction of the Republican party and the Republican presidential campaign. When the eye of justice was turned on them they immidiately and vigorously began attacking the integrity and nature of the investigation. What they were doing was analogous to if one was a murder suspect, arguing that the police did not have the authority to look for the murder weapon.

It makes me wonder if any other Alaska Republicans will be found guilty of corruption in the final weeks before the election.

Politicising the Mail Room

We have previously commented on this blog about the propencity of the Bush administration to not only engage in cronyism in hiring but to prefer political supporters over more qualified candidates to the detriment of the function of U.S. governance. The depths to which people were vetted based on their loyalty to the individual that currently holds the office of the President had not been previously revealed. This article describes that it was policy to prefer ideologs at every level of hiring, even down to lowly interns. The ideology-based hiring went so far as to violate the law.

I am not the least bit suprised. Many people would call me cynical for that. Which leaves me wondering at what point, after consistently being vindicated in my cynicism towards government corruption does it cease to be cynicism? When do the people who werent expecting it to get worse get told they are seeing the world through rose colored glasses?

The punchline of the article is that this political monkeying around with the hiring process has not only hurt these specific individuals, but it has hurt the program through which these professioinally inferior, political zombies were hired, and this has hurt the agency of the Justice Department by filling its ranks with substandard ideologs.

The Torture Debate

The national discussion regarding the use of torture and extreme rendition is often cut short by declarations that this is a time of war. Such declarations are not usually followed by any explination as to what significance that should have because most of the time they are made by people that have no interist in actually considering the value or appropriateness of torture. Though now it appears there are legal consequences of the torture that these people had previously been unwilling to think about. Unfortunately these are not the legal consequences of those being responsible facing justice. They are the natural consequences of the unreliable information that is gained from torture. Followed by the that information gained through torture being unusable in court because of the tainted nature in which it was obtained.

Even if you do accept that torture does work and that it is called for by the current situation, the torture debate is more than just an argument over whether extreme measures are acceptable during a time of war. There are at least two other issues.

First, intelligence failures prior to 9/11 indicate that the US intelligence community doea not need more information since they had enough to know the attack was coming, and they are too incompetant to use the information they do have.

Second, there are serious questions about whether the person being detained under suspicion of being a terrorist is actually guilty of anything. People have been spirited away, aparently based on nothing more than a muslim sounding name, tortured, and released after months when it is discovered a mistake was made and that these people were not criminals or if they were, after the CIA had fouled up the investigation.



Many people are not conserned with this because they don't have muslim sounding names and are merely mundane white people living in the heartland. This should consern everyone because it is the start of a slippery slope. If the people responsible for this get away with abducting and torturing innocent people for something as vaguely defined as being a suspected terrorist it is a small step to other criminal suspects and then another small step to the imprisoning and torturing of people for legal but unpopular behavior. And then you have the thought police.

These steps are smaller than most people want to believe because the first step has been so large. That people that are merely suspected of being terrorists are being tortured is highly significant. It causes the ensnarement of innocent people based on unchallenged circumstantial evidence.

The Walk of Shame

There is a set of common arguments that have as their basis the assumption that morality flows from religion. Any athiest will tell you how foolish this is. One need only look to history to learn the lession that people are terrible regardless of what God they kneel to or whether they believe or not. Something that is frequently overlooked is just how dangerous it is to have faith in religion or the law to make people treat each other well. If someone is not killing you or raping you or not robbing you because they are afraid of God or jail then that person is actually evil. Not only evil but an evil coward.

All that crap was to introduce this article about an accused child molesting pastor.

My Contempt for W

If those who are being held in contempt of Congress are above the law because they were ordered not to cooperate by Bush himself, then why not hold W in contempt? There is no article or provision that puts the President above the laws of the land. For offenses up to and including the most heinous crime against a state, treason, the President should expect, as any other citizen, the combined weight of our laws, codes, and regulations when he chooses to violate them. Otherwise, why should any other citizen expect that there will equitable enforcement of the laws? Tin foil hats aside, with just a sparse review of his conduct, there are very simple cases that can be made. For starts, how about the NSA wiretapping program that is widely acknowledged to have been illegal? Then, in the light of Grand Jury discovery, or perhaps even the threat of it, we can finally untangle the web of lies, spin, and contempt which has so characterized the way the Bush administration has treated its adoring public.

A Tropical Vacation

The recent firestorm of controversy surrounding the forthcoming trials of six inmates has forced the mainstream media to consider the military commissions system, as established by the Military Commissions Act. The disparity between the rights enjoyed by defendants in our domestic criminal legal system and those enjoyed by those tried before a military commission are incredible. Arbitrarily, the president of a commission can cloak the proceedings of a trial in national secrecy, beyond the purview of those accused. Moreover, the rules about what evidence is admissible is also more favorable to the prosecution, as statements made under duress, as in made while being tortured, are admissible as evidence. Unfortunately for the unfortunate souls subject to this system and the American people, said evidence will probably be classified. Here is an amusing response from the fashion community to the system.

On the other hand, if the information no longer exists, then there is no need to bother with the bureaucratic wrangling required to classify thousands upon thousands of hours of operations within the detainee detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, encompassing everything from the routine to the interrogations. All of them. As one might imagine, there are some lawyers and a judge that are justifiably upset. Unfortunately, the judge's question seems worded in such a way as to prevent any sort of burden being placed on the Bush Administration. In addition to receiving an extension on a previous deadline, administration officials only have to reveal whether or not the information destroyed was pertinent to the trial of Hani Abdullah, who is before him. If the Administration is bold enough to claim that the life and times of each and every individual in the facility for the entire time they were at the facility would definitely be pertinent to any trial, if for no other reason than to evaluate the statements made during the interrogation process, our constitutional checks and balances, specifically the checks of the judiciary over the executive, will be further eroded, if not made entirely irrelevant. The aforementioned trial was already made more complicated by Mr. Abdullah's attorneys' allegations that their client's personal effects were seized by the government, in violation of attorney privilege. For some additional reading, try the Executive Order outlining the form and procedure of the Military Commissions or the Executive Order outlining the ways in which the United States will cooperate with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

If one follows the most recent rhetoric in the daily White House press feeds regarding Guantanamo Bay and its status, such as June 22, 2007 and Feb. 11, 2008, Ms. Perino says that the Government is working on closing the facility and return the detainees to their home country or other third country. As one might expect, however, there are a few conditions, namely that the detainees have to be held in whatever country they are released to. Why would this matter? Well, if Country X feels that citizen John McY was wrongly imprisoned by Country Y, X might go to the UNSC, b/c pbiab.

For fun, try to come up with other activities that fit the definition of torture according to the U.S. Code and put it in a comment. And, also, a tangentially related article that details the career of the first commander of Guantanamo Bay and his later career in Iraq.

Oh, and the Cuban government wants Guantanamo Bay back to end its role in the War on Terror.

Cleveland Ohio; Terrible American City, Or The Worst American City

Have I mentioned the wild dogs? Dog fighting is common in cities like Cleveland and when the dogs are no longer profitable but the owners don't kill them, the dogs might be released into the city. It is common to see these maladjusted, violent pit bulls roaming the streets at night.

Free The West Memphis Three

This article from Fox News does a good job of explaining some aspects of the case, such as the circumstances of the murder and some of the new evidence. However, in some places it takes leave from the facts in order to paint a story that would be more appealing for a Fox News audience. I question the inclusion of the information that the victems were riding their bikes in their neighborhood before being murdered. Their bodies were found in a drainage ditch behind a truck stop it is unknown how long they laid there. You might as well say they were eating dinner with their family before being murdered if you are going to be including irrelevant information from an indeterminate time before the murder. This may all seem like nitpicking but it seems to me to be the author dressing up the story for his intended audience.

Another example of this is the erroneous statement that the police attributed the murder to the participation of the accused in a satanic cult. The prosecution never alleged that they were satanists, which would have been irrelevant even if it were true. One of the accused, Damien Echols, was a Wiccan at the time and the prosecution made much of this, finding damning quotes from some of the more eccentric mystics from previous centuries and by claiming that Mr.Echols held beliefs about cannibalism. Cannibalism, by the way, was not a part of the crime. The rest of the prosecution's evidence was that the boys were outcast, wore black, and listened to Metallica. As well as the forced confession of one of the accused who was mentally retarded.

"Thats some good police work there Lou."

The new information is that the federal judge is requiring the state courts to hear the new evidence first.

Walk of Shame

As much of a dickhead as Bill Maher is occasionally, he sums up this year's biggest douchbags that should be filled with shame and remorse but are even more worthy of hate because they aren't asshamed.



X

Walk of Shame: Contempt for Christians

Normally I'm not one for dispensing punishment on anyone based on what may or may not be misguided social regulation, but this case makes me tend towards that whole eye for an eye thing. I'm repulsed that the military protects its officers to such an extent as to allow this waste of flesh to get off with only two years in a deep dark hole that is military prison.

Christians are also adopting Bush's mode of cooperating with congress. That is, not. How rich do you think they are? Sen. Charles Grassley would like to find out.

We are Imbued With Certain Natural Rights From Our Creator

http://www.reason.com/news/show/123496.html
Its nice to see a judge that has respect for Ron Paul, even though he uses terms that make me uncomfortable. I get the feeling that if Ron Paul started comparing himself to Barry Goldwater, about half of his support would vanish. Its also nice to see a judge with an honest opinion of the President refer to average Americans as sheeple.

Here, the government is asking firemen to spy on you. What could possibly go wrong? For one, lots more lawsuits.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gek2oSZ_67sh2ukVvXaCGCXzpypwD8T3IFL81

Something that is rarely pointed out, the case that established the state secrets defence was actually an example of government lies. Years later when the requested documents were made public it was revealed that infact, there was no secret mission, and there was no spy equipment. It was just some guys on a normal plane on a normal training run. The government just wanted to avoid liability for a wrongfull death.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071126/ap_on_go_co/state_secrets_4;_ylt=AjLTg3ieO32EurPT9pvqFOoE1vAI

Big suprise!

The U.N. added tazers to its list of torture devices.
http://wcbstv.com/national/taser.torture.united.2.595058.html
The language in the article is pretty stark. I feel like we have been doing shoddy work if we only have re-reported 2 of the 6 recent deaths from tazers. Does this recent move by the U.N. mean local police departments will have to stop using tazers or just reign in their yahoo sadistic officers.

I am not saying the peace officers in any of these incidents are sadists or were acting in a sadistic manner. I am just saying it would behoove local law enforcement bodies to take more time training the officers in their midst that could be percieved as "sadistic."

Walk of Shame

In Hamlet they called this incest. In Christianity its called Adultary.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071119/ap_on_re_us/preacher_paternity;_ylt=AgivIHlMuxhkSP4DfrF3N5as0NUE





Warren Jeffs goes to jail.





http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/ts_nm/usa_polygamy_jeffs_dc_3



Some guy is accused of using a popular photoshop gag to slander his wife. He also had kiddy porn. Get it?



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/ts_nm/usa_polygamy_jeffs_dc_3

Loss of International Good WIll

During the initial phases of the feigned outrage in congress over the use of torture on those in U.S. custody, then Attorny General nominee Alberto Gonzales said in responce to criticism that even if we torture people Americans can never be as bad as the terrorists. It has also been remarked with dismay that the whole way in which the Bush administration has been treating detainees is one of the main reasons we are loosing all of our good will internationally.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002170340_gonzales04.html

For example, Russia has been throwing obstructions infront of international election monitors that they had origionally invited to oversee their current round of national elections. They dont take kindly to any criticism that they might not be behaving like a democracy should and impugn the recent American human rights record and voting irregularities stating that we are not ones to talk down to them about democracy.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iyBfqwTaolA0ETVWNlYycSzVpn8wD8SV0H3O0

Pakistan is less subtle when it points out the speck in our eye to divert criticism from the plank in their own. General/President Pravez Musharrif declared a state of emergency and imprisioned political opponents, and today installed a "caretaker government." Musharrif justifies all this under his countries anti-terrorism laws and points to the U.S. when he justifies locking up dissodents. He says he is doing this to protect his country from radical islamists, but the people he is throwing in jail are the legitimately elected moderates he ousted from power in a military coup. His recent behavior and comments are reminicent of the attitudes of the types of people we have been forced to team up with in Bush's global, generational, war on terror. We have to deal with tribal warlords who see the way we behave and missapprehend it as anti-islam. They say they are also against the Islamists and say they are on our side. Once they have our support they proceed to be corrupt, violent, crime lords.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2GeoguY159A&refer=home

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071107/Malalai_Joya_071107/20071107/

144 posts and this is the second with primary source reporting.

Background: This afternoon I was in a neighborhood in Cleveland that boarders two neighborhoods that are drasticly distinct economicly. The far east side of Cleveland which is poor, with many abandoned homes, foreclosed homes, and boarded up storefronts, where the average home sells for not more than $30, 000. Seperated by two to three blocks of shops in increasing state of repair as you travel east is the western edge of Shaker Heights, a community that is host to homes that top $1 million.

The Observed Facts: On the street that markes the political/jurisdictional boundry between these two communities (Kemper/Moreland), I saw what I would term a "speed trap." Between the hours of 3pm and 4pm I observed six seperate traffic stops on this street. Of those six traffic stops the only three of which I was able to get a look at the driver of the vehicle, the driver was a black male.

Interpretation: I have made no attempt to contact the Cleveland or Shaker police departments to clarify what I saw. Also, I make no accusation of racial profiling. What I observed could easily be a fluke in the time that I happened to be looking and all the other people that were stopped during this operation were of some other ethnic/gender mix. It only looks bad when there is this kind of strong arm tactics that could lead to such an impression.