NYT editorial: SUPREME DISGRACE

[DeepModem Mom]

"Mr. Masri is not the only innocent man kidnapped by American agents and subjected to abuse and torture in a foreign country. He’s just the only one whose lawsuit got this far...."

Supreme Disgrace
Published: October 11, 2007

The Supreme Court exerts leadership over the nation’s justice system, not just through its rulings, but also by its choice of cases — the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it led in exactly the wrong direction.

Somehow, the court could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration’s morally, physically and legally abusive anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk.

Those rulings, Mr. Masri’s lawyers correctly argued, represented a major distortion of the state secrets doctrine, a rule created by the federal courts that was originally intended to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit filed against the government. It was never designed to dictate dismissal of an entire case before any evidence is produced.

It may well be that one or more justices sensitive to the breathtaking violation of Mr. Masri’s rights, and the evident breaking of American law, refrained from voting to accept his case as a matter of strategy. They may have feared a majority ruling by the Roberts court approving the dangerously expansive view of executive authority inherent in the Bush team’s habitual invocation of the state secrets privilege. In that case, the justices at least could have commented, or offered a dissent, as has happened when the court abdicated its responsibility to hear at least two other recent cases involving national security issues of this kind....

In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting Mr. Masri to “extraordinary rendition,” the morally and legally unsupportable United States practice of transporting foreign nationals to be interrogated in other countries known to use torture and lacking basic legal protections. It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret, other than the ways in which the administration behaved irresponsibly, and quite possibly illegally, in the Masri case. And Mr. Masri is not the only innocent man kidnapped by American agents and subjected to abuse and torture in a foreign country. He’s just the only one whose lawsuit got this far....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/opinion/11thu1.html?hp

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. aren't there any international courts that can catch torturers like George Bush?

you would think after the atrocities of WW2 that we would have international laws that can be enforced.
Bush is actually torturing even though he is sending them somewhere else to be tortured?
I would have thought this would be considered a war crime as he is always saying he is at war?

[PDJane]

2. There is an international court.

Although Canada is a member, the US is not.

[Bitwit1234]

4. Well I have to add. That if we get the presidency

and the president is talked into joining, wonder if they will go after, bush and cheney. Wouldn't that be wonderful. They just tried that Balkian president for starting a war, the one President Clinton was successfull in ending, so maybe they might go after bush.

[bvar22]

7. Once again, Dennis Kucinich is the ONLY Democratic candidate...

who openly advocates for the US to join the ICC (International Criminal Court).

DK, the ONLY Democrat running for President!


”Unlike other candidates, I am not funded by those corporate interests.
I owe them no loyalty, and they have no influence over me or my policies.” ---Dennis Kucinich

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. does the US have to be a member in order to be tried by it?

[BB1]

14. I don't think so.

However, a couple of years ago the USA passed a resolution that enabled them to invade The Netherlands (where the ICC is seated) if an American were to be tried at the ICC. That is, to have him or her tried in the 'Homeland' (nasty word).

Of course, we in the Netherlands don't believe George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld or any other chickenhawk will ever see the inside of Scheveningen Jailhouse. Not a chance. In fact: we don't even support it, because of the damage it will do. Think of all the enemies they made... they'll be flocking to Holland to blow up a piece of the jailhouse. Run an airplane into it, most likely.

Nope, you can keep 'em. put both of them on a large rock in the Grand Canyon, fixed up with 250 webcams. Then we cannot only share the joy of having them put away, we can even share the joy of watching them suffer mildly. Imagine the joy would they suffer more...

[Hydra]

8. The way I understand how the UN was set up

The superpowers made sure they were the ones always in control...even if it's just one of them digging in their heels.

That, in itself, is a stain against our supposedly "utter victory against evil."

[Prophet 451]

11. Pretty much

The UN was designed in such a way that the five permanent Security Council members can block any resolution. Effectively, if the UN brings a resolution condemning the US's use of torture, the US can just say "No" and the whole resolution collapses.

What's more, several former UN officials (notably Kofi Annan) have made it clear that via economic bribery, veto power, cultural dominance and the physical location of the UN building itself, the UN is now effectively US property. While it would seem that Iraq puts the lie to that, it actually proves it. The US wanted to go to war, most of the rest of the world said no, the US and a couple of allies (including ourselves for which Blair should be publically hanged) did it anyway and the repercussions were exactly nil. If any other nation had done the same, the UN would have imposed sanctions, condemned the action, perhaps sent in peacekeepers. Because it was the US doing it, nothing.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

30. I wonder how the super powers can be taken to task

can you imagine other countries putting sanctions against us for proliferation of nuclear weapons!

[Prophet 451]

9. There is

But the attitude of the US toward any form of international body for years, has been a kind of bemused indulgence when they do what the US wants and outright contempt when they don't. For years now, the US attitude has been "We'll do whatever we like and fuck you if you don't like it". Should teh World Court ever attempt to charge W with anything at all, I'd expect teh US to nuke the building (and I'm only half joking).

[Bitwit1234]

3. The Hague. and they threatened to go after bush and cheney

and the rest of the bush criminals but they never did.

[BB1]

15. Duh. They don't really want them there.

[ThomCat]

6. I hope he can sue the US in some other countries courts.

I know there are laws in some countries that let people sue another country. I'd love to see them used.

[Prophet 451]

12. Like it would make a difference

The ruling would just be ignored anyway. In 1985, the US became the first nation to ever be convicted of international terrorism by the World Court (over Nicaragua). What was the result? The US doubled bombing runs as a public "fuck you" to the World Court. The court hasn't bothered trying a nation on terrorism charges since.

[reprobate]

10. If we can ever get a progressive congress there is one impeachment we must all support.

I'm talking about impeaching the people who are really responsible for the last six years of terror that all Americans have had to suffer through.

The United States Extreme Court.

More specifically, Thomas and Scalia. I'd even impeach O'Connor retroactively. And dig up Rehnquist to impeach HIM before burying him again.

The decision they made in Bush v Gore on December 12, 2000 was undeniably illogical and influenced by personal financial interests of the justices. This is absolute malfeasance and high crime and misdemeanor that demands to be righted by the removal of those responsible.

Besides Bush and Cheney, no one is more responsible for the darkness upon the face of America than those who signed on to this atrocity.

[Prophet 451]

13. Therein lies the problem

When the watchmen themselves go bad, who can stop them?

I'm sorry to say it but I think your country is now unrecoverable. The executive is in the hands of a bunch whose only difference from Hitler is numbers, the legislature is filled with those either too ineffective or too corrupt to do anything, the judiciary was specifically chosen for it's canine fidelity to the views of the extreme-right and the paperwork for outright dictatorship is all nicely legal and ready. Oh, and the rest of the world can't do anything because the US is sat on the most overwhelming military arsenal since the fall of Rome (the US yearly military budget is more than the entire rest of teh world combined, the budget increase alone is more than the rest of the UN security council's entire military budgets combined) and have shown no heisitation in using it for reasons that amount to "What are you looking at?"; the media are as much an arm of government as Pravda was and the electorate, while not stupid exactly, are mainly intellectually lazy and easily distracted.

Like I said, I hate to say it but I really don't think the US can come back from this, not in it's present form anyway. That doesn't mean "stop fighting". Always, always fight, if only to fuck up the other guy but don't expect a pot of gold at the end of the storm.

[Hydra]

16. Expect flames

But that's my view from the inside. A disgusting number of people are even supporting the direction we're going in.

:shrug:

I'm on the frontlines of the battle for what will replace it when the giant finally falls. Hopefully we can make something that isn't as easily pervertable.

[Prophet 451]

17. I'm used to it

The flames universally come in one of four flavours:
1. "You're no better" (entirely true but misses the point)
2. Pointing to past accomplishments like they still make a difference (the Bill of Rights was great considering the time it was written in but it's been deader than Monty Python's parrot for years).
3. Accusations of Freeper-dom or defeatism (I'm still in the fight because I'm hoping to influence the replacement).
4. Various combinations of patriotism, nationalism and accusations of jealousy (odd truth to the world, accusing someone of jealousy when they point out flaws only works in schoolyards and politics).

Over the course of the USA's existance, the nation and it's people have got into some very bad habits. In the long run and to mix a metaphor, it may be better to let the old place collapse and try to build something better out of the rubble. Nothing lasts forever. Not Rome, not the British Empire and not the Pax Americana but out of destruction comes change and, if we're bright about it, growth. To paraphrase Joe Stryzincki, sometimes a nation must die so that it's people can live.

[reprobate]

19. "Out of destruction comes change." The Pheonix movement?

[Prophet 451]

21. Never heard of it but it's a good name

What I am saying is this: Stasis is death. A society is a living thing made up of billions of other living things. A gestalt entity in the same way as the Great Barrier Reef and like any living thing, if it cannot change, it simply rots. Study history, the fall of Rome, the collapse of the British Empire. They collapsed not because of some imagined decadence but because they could not adapt. They were too wedded to their traditions of unbrideled power to change when the world changed and so, they died.

When a paradigm collapses, we rebuild but we learn from our mistakes, make it better, stronger. When/if the Pax Americana collapses, there would be a pediod of mourning, a struggle to come to terms and then the society would be rebuilt but, and this is the important bit, with the knowledge we gained from screwing it up the first time. We adapt, incopororate, change and with change, we grow. In effect, we are tempered in fire and become stronger for it.

Destruction is never the end. Take an old building and dynamite it. Then look again at three months, six months, nine months. In very rapid order, the pile of rubble is assimilated into the world around it. Plants grow on it, rats burrow into it and so out of that destruction comes change and yes, like the phoenix, rebirth.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

23. ahem. The Phoenix project was CIA's name for

its shake and bake assassination program in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. not only CIA operatives, hired guns, and mercs, but trained locals they pushed towards attacking civilian leaders, monks, and anyone that CIA felt was a potential threat. Like everyone but their friends.

[Prophet 451]

29. Tried to edit but too late

I just Googled the Phoenix Movment but couldn't find anything relevant.

Still, the imagery appeals to me. I've believed all my life change and growth can come from destruction and it's obvious, looking around, that our current cultural paradigm is on a self-destruct mission. It just remains to be seen if someone will be able to pick up the pieces afterward.

[reprobate]

18. Hydra, I'm fascinated by what you refer to as: "I'm on the frontlines of the battle"

I'd love to know what you're doing to help determine the future of our nation. If you're not comfortable with an open answer, PM me and we can compare notes.

[Hydra]

20. I'm teaching people economics and other neglected subjects

one of the reasons America is doing so badly is that most of the population doesn't understand how banks and systems work. After watching "Money as Debt" and various things regarding Gov'ts running amok when not under proper oversight, I realized the most damaging thing I could do was to show people the truth about how they were being screwed.

Most people don't want to believe it, but it's worth it for the ones who drop their jaws and say "Really? No way! I knew things were screwed up, but like that?"

[Prophet 451]

22. Bravo sir

I wanted to teach history in my youth. Sadly, by the time I was old enough to seriously consider training, the nation was going through one of it's periodic moral panics.

[Hydra]

24. Thank you

usually only the oddballs and social outcasts get it, but with a base like that, how can we fail to have an awesome gov't replacement? :evilgrin:

[Prophet 451]

25. One builds from the base upwards

It's the nature of ideas: They start out as heresy, become controversy, mutate into orthodoxy and end up as common knowledge. Always keep moving, you never know who's following you...

[Hydra]

26. Wise words

Ideas do indeed frighten before gaining acceptance. "I have met the beast, and he is me"

[Prophet 451]

27. He SHOULD be me

In order to grow, one must avoid stagnating. Test, probe, push, pull, argue, discuss, debate and shout but never accept that a thing is so just because we are told it is so. Some ideas will be wrong but in the process of being wrong, they eliminate one way of making mistakes and open options for doing it right.

And now, I'm well past politics and into philosophy. This is what skipping my meds does to me...

[reprobate]

31. Prophet, I agree that we are rapidly approaching a change point.

One of those points in history when an entire society seems to transform itself from it's youthful, energetic, and aggressive phase to a more mature and caring phase. From competition to cooperation. Or from predatory capitalism to social democracy.

Back in January, 2000 just after the US Extreme Court annointing of George Bush the Lesser, I had a viwion of the future of our nation. I saw a time of political turmoil followed by a really dark period that seemed to include violent upheaval, and then what I could only call a new dawn.

I believe that we are now in the period of political turmoil and this will inevitably lead to the dark times, unless something happens to bypass it. I have in mind something akin to the election of a progressive government reflecting the opinions of the public, 70% of whom now agree with the progressive agenda.

Lacking this kind of bypass I'm afraid we are doomed to live through those dark times.

While this may feel scary I have the feeling it will act as the forest fire does for the forest. It cleans out the junnk, leaving room for new growth. The same may happen to our society. Predatory capitalism may be replaced by a social democracy in which the wealth of the have mores will be replaced by a type of capitalism in which labor owns the means of production and is rewarded for efficiency and profit rather than all the profit being transferred to absentee stockholders. I believe this would be a far more efficient form of capitalism and far more able to govern itself than our current corrupt system.

I look forward to your opinion.

[Prophet 451]

32. The storm cannot be avoided, merely endured

(Today, with added lansaprazol!)

It occurs to me that societies generally follow similar patterns. They start with high ideals, become corrupted, fall apart and are then reborn as something better. Rome (my special interest, which is why I use it often as an example) started life as a republic, became an imperium and eventually collapsed. Today, Italy is a rather pleasent place. Germany followed the same trajectory. Perhaps this is a necessary course for a society to take, a method of finding one's self by finding out what one is not.

I'm afraid that I doubt that even the election of a progressive government would halt matters now. Are you familiar with the concept of societal inertia? The best description came from Terry Pratchett through the mouth of Havelock Vetinari (Pratchett's consumate politican): "People cry that they want truth and justice for all. What they really want is an assurance that life will go on, much as it did before and tomorrow will be very much like today". Humanity's ability to adapt is virtually unlimited but we don't cope well with sudden change and when the avalaunche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote. The USA (and to a lesser extent, Britain) has been happily drifting along in a bubble of wealth-worship and corporatocracy for so long now that the drift has acquired an inertia of it's own. I doubt the ability of any government, progressive or regressive, to halt the landslide from halfway down the cliff.

You have heard me say that a society is very much like a living thing. During a species decline, it will eventually reach a point where the decline cannot be reversed. The genepool has grown stagnant and there is not enough genetic diversity left to establish rebreeding. In the same way, our societal genetics have grown entirely stagnant. We pass from one flavour of corporatism to another, one cult of wealth-worship to a slightly different one and, like the endangered animal attacking anything it deems a threat, our society attacks those who seek to point out society's flaws. Alloys are stronger but our society insists on idealogical purity.

The truth is, there are a dozen better forms of capitalism. Our governments, in love with Atlas Shrugged (decent novel but, like Fight Club, a profoundly depressing one) have put fine silks on a body of naked greed. What Rand proposed, what lasseiz-faire capitalism has always been about, is naked greed. One may dress that up in fine silks, powder it's nose and give it a degree but in the end, naked greed is what it remains. Randism, incidently, is simply the economic version of the social Darwinism which conservative Christians usually claim to detest. None of these ideas are new. In fact, amounting as they do to "I've got mine", they're probably the very oldest ideas. Every so often, they're trotted out, given a new sprinkling of fashionable words and accepted as truth once again but you can put a wig and gown on a pig, teach it to bark and walk on it's hind legs but a pig it remains.

I have been trying to popularise the phrase The Long Night to describe the CheneyBush reign of error. We are already in the darkest of times. My username here comes from a nickname I once had owing to my tendancy to make predictions. I make prophecy all the time. There's nothing divine about it, all it takes is observation, thought and a decent knowledge of history and human nature and you can usually predict, fairly accuratly, how events will play out. The storm rages overhead and it will eventually break on all of us and I think sooner rather than later. I could not say how soon but I think we approach a nexus point, a pivoting in history. That storm will break, there's nothing we can do to avoid that but we can try to lessen the damage it will cause, we can try and save those caught in history's crossfire (to coin a cliche) and we can try and preserve the useful parts to incorporate into the new structure.

Things are not as they were and can never be again but we do not have to be prisoners of our past. Forever is a very long time and choices only become decisions after they've been made. Be careful of the man who would tell you that your choice is no choice at all.

(Y'know, reading that back, I'm not sure if I make any more sense or any less use of metaphor and similie when I'm on my meds as when I'm off them).

[libodem]

28. A case of CYA

in the most inane asinine manner imaginable. What they did WAS NOT justice. They could not be more WRONG and deluded. This is the crumbling of an empire that has become evil. I think what these people claim to be as Judaic-Christian practices are the anti-christ incarnate.

[bhumikag]

33. international courts to the rescue

i think people should send "thank you" note to NYT for this editorial, at least they showed courage by showing the real face of this government..one that tortures and has supreme court in its pocket to back up in case of trouble.

mr. masri should take this case to international courts..justice has to be served

bhumika
politics desk,Voxant Newsroom

[Prophet 451]

34. Like that would help

The US attitude toward any international body has, for years, been sneering contempt.

Want an example? In 1985, the USA became the first country convicted by teh World Court for international terrorism (over it's bombing of Nicaragua). The US doubled bombing raids as a public "fuck you" to the court. The World Court hasn't bothered convicting anyone of international terrorism since.

The law only works when people are frightened of breaking it. The US has the economic, cultural and military muscle to answer each charge with "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?".