Elaine Meinel Supkis
I was working with a friend when I heard on the radio the latest news about Padilla, the canary in our Constitutional mine. I said, 'Isn't is charming we get to live in the Soviet Union?' China is very angry that the do-gooders here are once again attacking China over their criminal justice system. The very black hole kettle calling China's pot black is yet another chapter in our ongoing saga of the US pretending to be moral yet it is the true villain strutting and fretting about the world's stage.
A detainee held at the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has denied he had links with al Qaeda and alleged that he was tortured by U.S. personnel, a document released by the Pentagon on Tuesday showed.The Pakistani man, Majid Khan, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003and held in CIA's secret prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo last year.
"I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails. I am being mentally tortured here," Khan said in a statement on April 15 about his time in Guantanamo, during a hearing by the Combat Status Review Tribunal, a military panel that determines whether detainees at Guantanamo are enemy combatants.
"There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions," he said in the transcript, which was already edited by U.S. military officials.
Yesterday, this was one of two stories the Chinese put together. Both stories were set up to show the rank hypocrisy concerning basic human civil rights. The Chinese are a communist single party police state. The US has two parties both of which are running jointly a police state. The difference is, we get to vote for who will shaft us whereas the Chinese get no say at all. At this point, it is getting pretty hard to see the difference. In our own case, the people we get to choose seem prone to treason, selling our nation down the river. Just look at their inept wars and wild over-spending! Just yesterday, the Senate decided to drop another couple hundred billion down that rat hole despite 65% of the so-called voters wanting the war to end.
China on Tuesday expressed strong dissatisfaction over and firm opposition to a resolution passed by German parliament attacking China's reeducation through labor system."The German parliament ignores China's achievements in the democratic and legal system construction, but distorts and assaults China's reeducation through labor system, which greatly interferes in China's internal affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said in a statement.
The system is based on special or relevant laws and regulations approved and promulgated by the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress and the State Council, said Jiang, adding it plays an important role in maintaining public security, preventing and reducing crimes.
Has Germany passed a resolution demanding the US stop holding Padilla unconstitutionally? No? Not a whisper of criticism comes from the leaders of our alliance. Of course, all of them have trade surpluses with the US so they don't want to rock that boat! And China is running a trade surplus with most of them so they attack China for doing what we do all the time. Want to see extreme police state violence here? Just have unions go on strike and block strike breakers from going to work! The police will come in and literally kill the strikers.
They have in the past! The reason the Teamsters union and the Longshoremen's union won so many battles is, anyone breaking the strike was visited by the Mafia. Today, both unions are being broken via free trade. The government, over the objections of many citizens, has now set it up so all the shipping can go to Mexico and then Mexican truckers will haul it up here. Both unions are very angry about this and thought the Democrats would stop it but they shafted them in the back as usual these days.
The Chinese see all this and they wonder why everyone is picking on them. The US should tell our allies to stop it and to attack us. HAHAHA. Actually, our rulers and leaders and the rich are estatic that they have killed the unions, they have eliminated the unions using strong arm tactics while they use the massive power of the state to crush the workers. I watch one factory after another go to China and the workers hang their heads and like good little sheep, go home to die a slow or in the case of the future, fast death.
The game being played by Europe and the US against China is very stupid. Germany, for example, puts people in prison for singing 'Happy Birthday, Hitler'. Or Austria puts historians in prison for questioning Holocaust statistics! This is just and henious as China. Which is why, using human rights and the suppression of our freedoms as an excuse to diplomatically attack China is so horrible. How dare we do this!
This two-faced criminal activity of finger pointing while covered in blood and gore, infests all international actions taken by the West. But the worst is the US. We use secret Soviet-style torture prisons overseas to destroy the will of people we kidnap all over the planet! These prisons are kept secret from Americans including Congress. Congress could drop all activities and demand Bush give them all the information and then they could recind all the stupid 9/11 laws that turned us into the Soviet Union, they could then clean up our entire judicial police state and restore it to what our Founding Fathers dreamed.
The chances of this happening is 0% because even the Democrats love a police state. Whoever gains the White House gains great power. And the whole point of their pointless lives is to have great power. Power over the entire earth! And like all delusions, the Repubs and Dems are deluded. For the more they destroy America, bankrupting us while extending our military/police state powers, the more likely our empire will collapse and we will become slaves of someone else and we know who that is.
During tonight’s presidential debates, candidates were asked whether they would support the use of waterboarding — a technique, defined as torture by the Justice Department, that simulates drowning and makes the subject “believe his death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage.”
Debating the treatment of foreign detainees at Tuesday night's debate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he thought the US should "double" the number of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.
The Republican candidates lusting for Stalinist powers should be arrested. How can a bunch of criminals like them uphold the Constitution? Bush didn't. And Bush went into the White House with an arrest record! He not only has been repeatedly arrested in the past, he shirked his duty during war, going AWOL to use drugs. And he cheated investors of his oil drilling company going bankrupt, selling stocks while knowing it was going bankrupt. Arrest him. And Cheney. Aside from war crimes and violating the Constitution, what on earth do we need?
The Democrats want to be criminals too so they won't arrest him and his gang. And this, despite the majority of Demcorats wanting impeachment.
If the courts were unwilling to resolve the legality of Padilla’s detention once he was transferred to civilian criminal custody, and if the government never transfers Padilla back to military detention, the only remaining means for Padilla to obtain resolution of that question would be a damages lawsuit. But the Supreme Court has long recognized that damages suits are unavailable against federal officers when the law allegedly violated by the officer was not “clearly established.” Given the split of authority on whether Padilla’s detention was unlawful in the first place, it seems to follow that Padilla would have an extremely uphill battle in any future damages suit, whether he is acquitted of the present charges against him or not.That reality thereby renders much of what is to come in Padilla’s trial anticlimactic. The outcome of the trial will not in any meaningful way shape subsequent resolution of the unresolved questions relating to Padilla’s military detention. It also suggests why Padilla’s case may be such a dangerous precedent whether Padilla is convicted or not. If the government can hold U.S. citizens in military detention up until the moment a court is set to rule against them—as most agree the Supreme Court was in the fall of 2005—and then avoid that review by indicting the detainee, what is to stop it from employing similar tactics in future cases?
China arrests people and holds them for long periods of time. So does the US. China does NOT kidnap people and then hold them in secret prisons in Russia or Vietnam and then tortures them. Or maybe they do! We don't know. But we do know that we do this and this shameful business is a huge blot on our reputation. So when we go about this planet yelling, we must remember, we are covered with blood and grime.
Shame, shame on us all.
"'There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions,' he said..."
He has no reason at all to lie, does he?
"The reason the Teamsters union and the Longshoremen's union won so many battles is, anyone breaking the strike was visited by the Mafia."
I, too, remember when "Teamsters" was synonymous with "organized crime". Those were the good old days!
"The Republican candidates lusting for Stalinist powers should be arrested."
For what? Lusting for Stalinist powers?
Posted by: JSmith | May 17, 2007 at 10:49 AM
Actually, it probably is illegal to promote the violation of human rights.
Here in Massachusetts, we know all about Romney. He spent HUGE amounts on, well, nobody seems quite sure what he spent it on, but the new governor, Patrick, is trying to put things back together.
The so-called 'liberal blogs' are remarkably unwilling to oppose wars, demand justice, etc. The reality is that even some so-called conservatives, like Ron Paul, are vastly more liberal than the so-called 'liberal blogs'. Of course, nobody at these 'liberal blogs' is allowed to say that.
Posted by: blues | May 17, 2007 at 02:06 PM
Ron Paul is not liberal at all. He is a classic conservative and would have happily kept Jim Crow going and no civil rights for women, etc. Don't be fooled by his opposition to imperialism which is, by the way, admirable.
And very old-fashioned. At least he votes against funding these wars.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 18, 2007 at 08:30 AM
Reason binds the man.
Posted by: Beats by Dre | January 13, 2012 at 03:59 AM