American Prison Camps On The Way

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Chimpy McSmirker's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Chimpy and Dr Evil to declare aliens and US citizens alike as unlawful enemy combatants. McSmirker, Evil & Co have portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect Americans from terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with no substantive debate.

Now, anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act) are all subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia. During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting".

One month after the terrorist attacks of 2001, US Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and American citizens he determines have given support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Dr Evil's Halliburton, is currently constructing a huge facility to hold tens of thousands of undesirables. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, has even gone so far as to warn Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do".

We can expect Chimpy to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip America of more liberties and to threaten the rest of the world. America's constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy as is that of both its enemies and allies.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Torture In Any Language

George Chimpy McSmirker Bush and his army of coercion advocates are on the defensive following the latest revelations about CIA interrogations. The argument over the USA's methods, especially water-boarding, has raged since 2001 with Chimpy's administration fighting tooth and nail to preserve what it regards as an effective way of forcing information from al-Qaeda suspects. Critics say the techniques are torture under both US and international law and should be banned.

The debate has been heightened by ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou who admitted on ABC News that he took part in interrogating Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou conceded that water-boarding does amount to torture. It is now also known that in 2005 the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and at least one other al-Qaeda suspect to cover up their use of torture.

The Bush circus accepts that torture is banned by US and international law and says it does not practise it. However, the United States has not outlawed what it conveniently calls enhanced interrogation techniques because the administration does not include enhanced interrogation in its definition of torture. The "enhanced" techniques not only include water-boarding, but sleep deprivation, subjection to extreme cold, long periods of standing, threat to life and "restrained" physical abuse.

Water-boarding involves a blind-folded prisoner being stretched on his back, having a cloth stuffed into his mouth and water poured onto his face. The subject suffers a drowning reflex and gags almost immediately. CIA Director Michael Hayden, who took office in May 2006, is reported to have discontinued water-boarding but has refused to confirm this publicly. However, in a recent interview he stated: "It would be wrong to assume that the programme of the past is necessarily the programme moving forward."

Following the disgraces at Abu Ghraib, President Bush signed an executive order in July 2007 which sought to define the American commitment to the Geneva Conventions' prohibition on cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment and torture. The presidential order defined torture by reference to the US legal code. The code says it is an action "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering". The order ruled out the use of torture as defined by the legal code and also listed other interrogation methods and practices that were not allowed. The banned methods did not, however, include the enhanced interrogation techniques. The order states that the CIA are allowed to conduct a "special program of detention and interrogation". An accompanying memorandum from McSmirker is said to have listed the allowable methods, but this has never been made public.

The argument is not over. Mr Kiriakou concluded: "Water-boarding is probably something that we should not be in the business of doing. We're Americans, and we're better than that." But he also claimed that Abu Zubaydah had given up during water-boarding and had provided information he had previously refused to give. Abu Zubaydah later claimed he had made things up just so the Americans would stop torturing him.

The issue dominated the congressional hearings this year into the appointment of Michael Mukasey as the new US Attorney general. He called water-boarding "repugnant" and promised a review of its use. In 2006, Vice-President and war-mongering psychopath, Dick Dr Evil Cheney, defended water-boarding calling it "a no-brainer for me" when asked about its use in a recent radio interview.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Who Needs Extradition?

Why bother with an Extradition Treaty when you can just kidnap any citizen of any country from anywhere you like?

The United States of America has told Britain that, under American law, it can kidnap British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. The laws of the 'target' nation are considered irrelevant. A senior lawyer for the American government told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. But for the first time the American government has made it clear that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington. American authorities view extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, is still considered a legitimate process by the Americans.

The US government’s view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club. During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC representing the US government about its treatment of Gavin Tollman, Stanley’s nephew. Gavin was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005. Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America.

“The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared” he said, adding that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal. “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and take him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse, it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about his position”. Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government from his office in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution. Despite the extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time, just as there is currently between the USA and Britain, the Supreme Court ruled that the Mexican had no legal remedy regarding his abduction because the alleged offense took place in another country.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!