Can the flu actually be "contained?"
A confirmed case can cause a school to be closed down for a week. All well and good, but now these children are at home - doing what? Mom or dad there with them - or at work? Ah, it's boring staying at home; let's go to the mall. Hmm. The pool of possible infection spread has just multiplied exponentially.
The entire life of this illness is about seven days, and begins [and possibly remains] with mild symptoms. How long are YOU usually sick before you see a doctor? Do YOU miss work for a cough?
Seems pretty reasonable to assume that infected persons will continue to infect other persons.
So what to do? Everybody walk around in hazmat suits?
The CDC advice is undramatic and eminently practical: WASH YOUR HANDS. STAY HOME IF YOU'RE SICK.
Since you can't know who is infected [it takes many hours for any symptoms to manifest], assume that everyone is infected.
If you are sick, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE to take measures to reduce your broadcasting of whatever it is you have to others. That means possibly wearing a mask if you're coughing/sneezing. It also means WASHING YOUR HANDS. If you use a tissue, flush it or carry a ziplock baggie to contain it. DON'T put it in your office or home wastebasket. Buy a canister of disinfectant wipes [or use 1 tablespoon of household bleach in a gallon of water in a spray bottle] and USE them on your telephone, keyboard, desk, television remote control - whatever you touch. Don't share shower poofs, towels or pillows, etc., and WASH the ones you do use frequently to reduce the population of your nasties. Keep your toothbrush separate from others. Make sure toothbrushes are COVERED in the bathroom [when you flush, particulates spray and roam - yuck!].
Easy, yes? Just do it.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Virus Brings Swine-Hearted Lobby Into Foreground
Virus Brings Swine-Hearted Lobby Into Foreground
by: nezua
Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 15:20:14 PM EDT
By The Sanctuary Founding Editors:
The moment that the news of the "Swine Flu" or "North American Influenza" hit the wires, it was easy to predict what the anti-immigrant faction would have to say about it. People like Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and groups like CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA are so locked into their views that their voices are unnecessary in a dialogue that actually preferences truth-which by nature requires flexibility and bravery. The stances of those who most vocally oppose immigration today are so predictable that one could paint a face on a septic-tainted soccer ball and paste up word balloons and rest well, knowing that The Nativist Lobby point of view on any immigration-related topic will end in "deport them all" and "seal the borders" if not "round them up" and other tired ideas. And nobody reading now needs a reminder of how throughout time, both Latin America as well as all immigrants have been slurred and painted with the brush of disease by those resistant to changing demographics.
This reaction is nothing new. Xenophobic fearmongering has long masqueraded itself behind public health alarmism.
Fear of contagion was used to justify Chinese Exclusion laws in the 19th century, backed up by pseudo-academic papers such as "Chinese Immigration and the Physiological Causes of the Decay of the Nation" (1862) and "How the Chinese Women Are Infusing a Poison in the Anglo-Saxon Blood" (1875). The Angel Island detention facility was set up specifically to quarantine immigrants from Asia, sometimes for months or even years, while European immigrants were processed at Ellis Island in a matter of hours. It is an especially cruel irony of history that it was the Europeans who were bringing to "the New World" the deadly diseases which would claim millions of indigenous lives.
There are of course legitimate public health concerns which deserve attention and precautions; but what's noteworthy is the manner in which these concerns are discussed and imagined, what's played up and played down, what's said and unsaid, and how a racial line is drawn between the clean and the unclean.
Moreover, when the border is lined with barbed wire as it is now, it actually keeps undocumented migrants in- this is another ever-repeating mistake made throughout history, including with Italians after 1924. Before that time, they were much more likely to return home because they knew they could come back if necessary. We have repeated this again with the US Southern borders, which has interrupted the age-old migratory patterns that have brought workers in and out of the US, depending on the seasonal need for more hands. Ironically, this has forced many undocumented to put down roots here. And then the predictable complaints arise from the Nativist Lobby-that we are being "invaded" and "overrun."
How sad for them. These people are unable to simply admit that they are seized with a mental illness that has frozen their mind into a shape echoed throughout time. It is a crooked, and ugly one.
This flu will pass. Meanwhile, people are dying and suffering in México and in the US. Is hatred and fear all these well-paid pundits have to dispense in trying times? Do they see themselves as embodying something...American? We at The Sanctuary have to wonder if people like Michael Savage might best be described as terrorists cells awakening. After all, they are shouting that we should not trust our government, not trust our Health Departments, not frequent businesses that employ brown people, and they incite violence. Would not such disruption of society and our collective emotional fabric, in fact, be terrorists' goals for us?
Let us be united, then. United against fear and hateful misinformation. Together we can keep our heads, our hearts, and our health-while the crazed voices of Yesterday and the zombie-like Nativist choruses of today twist around one other in the rotted mire of irrelevance.
by: nezua
Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 15:20:14 PM EDT
By The Sanctuary Founding Editors:
The moment that the news of the "Swine Flu" or "North American Influenza" hit the wires, it was easy to predict what the anti-immigrant faction would have to say about it. People like Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and groups like CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA are so locked into their views that their voices are unnecessary in a dialogue that actually preferences truth-which by nature requires flexibility and bravery. The stances of those who most vocally oppose immigration today are so predictable that one could paint a face on a septic-tainted soccer ball and paste up word balloons and rest well, knowing that The Nativist Lobby point of view on any immigration-related topic will end in "deport them all" and "seal the borders" if not "round them up" and other tired ideas. And nobody reading now needs a reminder of how throughout time, both Latin America as well as all immigrants have been slurred and painted with the brush of disease by those resistant to changing demographics.
This reaction is nothing new. Xenophobic fearmongering has long masqueraded itself behind public health alarmism.
Fear of contagion was used to justify Chinese Exclusion laws in the 19th century, backed up by pseudo-academic papers such as "Chinese Immigration and the Physiological Causes of the Decay of the Nation" (1862) and "How the Chinese Women Are Infusing a Poison in the Anglo-Saxon Blood" (1875). The Angel Island detention facility was set up specifically to quarantine immigrants from Asia, sometimes for months or even years, while European immigrants were processed at Ellis Island in a matter of hours. It is an especially cruel irony of history that it was the Europeans who were bringing to "the New World" the deadly diseases which would claim millions of indigenous lives.
There are of course legitimate public health concerns which deserve attention and precautions; but what's noteworthy is the manner in which these concerns are discussed and imagined, what's played up and played down, what's said and unsaid, and how a racial line is drawn between the clean and the unclean.
Moreover, when the border is lined with barbed wire as it is now, it actually keeps undocumented migrants in- this is another ever-repeating mistake made throughout history, including with Italians after 1924. Before that time, they were much more likely to return home because they knew they could come back if necessary. We have repeated this again with the US Southern borders, which has interrupted the age-old migratory patterns that have brought workers in and out of the US, depending on the seasonal need for more hands. Ironically, this has forced many undocumented to put down roots here. And then the predictable complaints arise from the Nativist Lobby-that we are being "invaded" and "overrun."
How sad for them. These people are unable to simply admit that they are seized with a mental illness that has frozen their mind into a shape echoed throughout time. It is a crooked, and ugly one.
This flu will pass. Meanwhile, people are dying and suffering in México and in the US. Is hatred and fear all these well-paid pundits have to dispense in trying times? Do they see themselves as embodying something...American? We at The Sanctuary have to wonder if people like Michael Savage might best be described as terrorists cells awakening. After all, they are shouting that we should not trust our government, not trust our Health Departments, not frequent businesses that employ brown people, and they incite violence. Would not such disruption of society and our collective emotional fabric, in fact, be terrorists' goals for us?
Let us be united, then. United against fear and hateful misinformation. Together we can keep our heads, our hearts, and our health-while the crazed voices of Yesterday and the zombie-like Nativist choruses of today twist around one other in the rotted mire of irrelevance.
o what next?
ARIZONA DAILY STAR 04/28/09
Tucson Region
Sheriffs: Are you in school legally?
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX — Some border county sheriffs want Arizona schools to start asking students whether they're in this country legally.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik originated the idea and said millions of dollars in Arizona taxes go to teach English to children who have no legal right to be here. He also said there's a link involving illegal immigration, social problems and gangs.
Only thing is, a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision appears to make it illegal for school officials to ask. In a 5-4 decision, the justices overturned a Texas law that authorized school districts to refuse to enroll anyone who couldn't prove legal residence.
But Dupnik said it may be time for Arizona to have a test case to put the issue back before the high court — to see if the current justices agree.
Dupnik has the backing of Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden and Joe Arpaio, his Maricopa County counterpart. And Gov. Jan Brewer said she sees no reason why youngsters shouldn't be asked to prove they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.
"When I grew up, when I went to school, when I moved from Nevada to California, I had to bring my birth certificate to prove I was a citizen," she said.
But Attorney General Terry Goddard said he doesn't think schools have the expertise to determine legal status. And state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said he believes the federal government should just do a better job of protecting the border.
"But as long as kids are here, they should be in school," he said. "You don't want them on the street corner."
Dupnik, however, has an answer for that: Have schools report their findings to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"They would identify the people that are here illegally by the thousands and send them back, kids and parents," he said.
The issue has financial implications: The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 60,000 to 65,000 of the 1.2 million youngsters in Arizona schools are not in this country legally.
The Department of Education figures basic state aid for students is about $6,000 a year, not counting what the state pays for school construction. That puts the price tag near $390 million — minus, of course, any taxes from illegal residents that go toward education funding.
But that doesn't count the extra $360 per student Arizona now gives to schools to help English-language learners. Assuming two-thirds of these students fit that category, that adds $15 million to the tab.
In 1982, however, the Supreme Court voided a 1975 Texas law that denied state aid to districts for children not "legally admitted" into the United States. That law also allowed districts to deny admission to those students.
Attorneys for Texas argued that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles every person to equal protection of law, doesn't apply to those not in the country legally.
"We reject this argument," Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority. "Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a 'person' in any ordinary sense of the term." And Brennan said education is the only way people can advance themselves.
Tucson-area education leaders were hardly supportive of the sheriffs' idea.
"Our function is not immigration, but to provide a quality education to kids who live in our district or who come in under open enrollment," said Nicholas Clement, superintendent of the Flowing Wells Unified School District.
He said it could invite new problems for schools, envisioning the need to hire additional staffers, order additional training and make difficult decisions on what kinds of documentation would be acceptable.
Eva Dong, a Sunnyside Unified School District board member, agreed. "The federal law given to us by the U.S. Supreme Court states that we are not, as a school entity, to be out there asking the students if they are here legally or illegally," she said.
"Let's face it: The little ones, how are they going to answer that? Even the older students may not know the answer," she said. "The sheriffs want us to go up against the law so they can get their test case. I am surprised they are asking us to go up against the law."
Not all Arizona border sheriffs support the idea.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said schools shouldn't be in the business of asking students their immigration status. And he said he sees that as a first step toward having other state and local public employees also doing the same thing, including his own officers.
"We can't afford it," he said.
The Pew report estimates there are another 100,000 to 110,000 youngsters in Arizona schools who are the children of illegal immigrants but were born in this country. That makes them citizens who would be unaffected by any reversal of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling.
Even if Arizona is successful in persuading the high court to overturn its 1982 decision, that may not end the debate.
Four years earlier, state Attorney General Jack LaSota issued a formal legal opinion saying the only inquiry school officials can make of parents who want to enroll their children is whether they are Arizona residents.
Tucson Region
Sheriffs: Are you in school legally?
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX — Some border county sheriffs want Arizona schools to start asking students whether they're in this country legally.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik originated the idea and said millions of dollars in Arizona taxes go to teach English to children who have no legal right to be here. He also said there's a link involving illegal immigration, social problems and gangs.
Only thing is, a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision appears to make it illegal for school officials to ask. In a 5-4 decision, the justices overturned a Texas law that authorized school districts to refuse to enroll anyone who couldn't prove legal residence.
But Dupnik said it may be time for Arizona to have a test case to put the issue back before the high court — to see if the current justices agree.
Dupnik has the backing of Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden and Joe Arpaio, his Maricopa County counterpart. And Gov. Jan Brewer said she sees no reason why youngsters shouldn't be asked to prove they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.
"When I grew up, when I went to school, when I moved from Nevada to California, I had to bring my birth certificate to prove I was a citizen," she said.
But Attorney General Terry Goddard said he doesn't think schools have the expertise to determine legal status. And state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said he believes the federal government should just do a better job of protecting the border.
"But as long as kids are here, they should be in school," he said. "You don't want them on the street corner."
Dupnik, however, has an answer for that: Have schools report their findings to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"They would identify the people that are here illegally by the thousands and send them back, kids and parents," he said.
The issue has financial implications: The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 60,000 to 65,000 of the 1.2 million youngsters in Arizona schools are not in this country legally.
The Department of Education figures basic state aid for students is about $6,000 a year, not counting what the state pays for school construction. That puts the price tag near $390 million — minus, of course, any taxes from illegal residents that go toward education funding.
But that doesn't count the extra $360 per student Arizona now gives to schools to help English-language learners. Assuming two-thirds of these students fit that category, that adds $15 million to the tab.
In 1982, however, the Supreme Court voided a 1975 Texas law that denied state aid to districts for children not "legally admitted" into the United States. That law also allowed districts to deny admission to those students.
Attorneys for Texas argued that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles every person to equal protection of law, doesn't apply to those not in the country legally.
"We reject this argument," Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority. "Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a 'person' in any ordinary sense of the term." And Brennan said education is the only way people can advance themselves.
Tucson-area education leaders were hardly supportive of the sheriffs' idea.
"Our function is not immigration, but to provide a quality education to kids who live in our district or who come in under open enrollment," said Nicholas Clement, superintendent of the Flowing Wells Unified School District.
He said it could invite new problems for schools, envisioning the need to hire additional staffers, order additional training and make difficult decisions on what kinds of documentation would be acceptable.
Eva Dong, a Sunnyside Unified School District board member, agreed. "The federal law given to us by the U.S. Supreme Court states that we are not, as a school entity, to be out there asking the students if they are here legally or illegally," she said.
"Let's face it: The little ones, how are they going to answer that? Even the older students may not know the answer," she said. "The sheriffs want us to go up against the law so they can get their test case. I am surprised they are asking us to go up against the law."
Not all Arizona border sheriffs support the idea.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said schools shouldn't be in the business of asking students their immigration status. And he said he sees that as a first step toward having other state and local public employees also doing the same thing, including his own officers.
"We can't afford it," he said.
The Pew report estimates there are another 100,000 to 110,000 youngsters in Arizona schools who are the children of illegal immigrants but were born in this country. That makes them citizens who would be unaffected by any reversal of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling.
Even if Arizona is successful in persuading the high court to overturn its 1982 decision, that may not end the debate.
Four years earlier, state Attorney General Jack LaSota issued a formal legal opinion saying the only inquiry school officials can make of parents who want to enroll their children is whether they are Arizona residents.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Naomi Wolf in The Huffington Post
Don't Prosecute -- and Scapegoat -- Torture Operatives; Go for the Top
Naomi WolfPosted April 22, 2009 | 06:26 PM (EST)
As citizens' outrage over the torture memos heats up, and Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a special prosecutor, we may be about to commit an egregious error.
Today Republicans accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would like to say that this is exactly right.
I will go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have "blood on their hands" -- but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their, and our, guilt.
Today's suddenly urgent calls by our Congressional Democratic leaders, and even by many of the American people, to prosecute CIA operatives, military men and women and contractors who were certainly involved with, colluded in or turned a blind eye to torture are not only the height of hypocrisy, they are a form of unconscionable scapegoating. The scapegoating is political on the part of Congressional leaders, and psychological on the part of many Americans who are now "shocked, shocked" at what was done in their name.
Hello, America? Hello? Were you asleep for the past seven years? The fact that the Bush administration used torture for the past seven years has been the furthest thing from a secret. When the political winds were with the last administration, which framed qualms about torture as being soft on "the war on terror," just about every Congressional Democrat fell right into line to accept it, if not cheer it on. Even Hillary Clinton supported torture, right up through her Presidential run. Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture in closed-door meetings. When activist groups and citizens called for a special prosecutor, all we heard from Congressional Democrats was that they did not wish to spend the political capital.
President Bush championed torture. Vice President Cheney gave such explicit interviews about his role in directing the policy of torture that in legal terms, were there a prosecution, they amount to a confession. Did the Congress that is now so piously calling for the investigation of rank-and-file agents and military express their horror and outrage then? With a very few exceptions, they did not. These leaders "had no idea"? Please.
Since 2003 it has been fully documented by rights organizations, and accessible to anyone listening, that direct US policy for prisoners in our custody included electrodes to genitals, suffocation, hanging prisoners from bars by the wrists, beatings, concealed murders, sexual assault threats, sexual humiliation and forced nudity, which is considered a sex crime in warfare international and domestic law. Many voices from Jane Mayer's to Michael Ratner's to Jameel Jaffer's to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch made similar documented charges. Did our leaders call for investigations? They barely even called for a moment's consideration of it. Tolerating torture ("tough tactics" or "enhanced interrogations") polled well; supporting it made them look tough in close elections. It was, overwhelmingly, okay with them.
And may we ourselves please look in the mirror, for the sake of our own moral health? How many Americans spoke up when it was chic to thrill to the sadistic soundbite of "take the gloves off"? How many watched 24 without a murmur when the mass consensus was that it was okay -- no, patriotic -- to waterboard a bit? How many of us -- as in civilized societies everywhere when a wind of barbarism is set free -- actually thrilled to the sadistic (and sometimes sexually sadistic) soundbites that came out of the Bush communications office of the "special sauce," the "belly slap," and the phrase "we have our methods"?
So now the political and cultural winds have shifted. Congress in their moral courage NOW are starting to call for investigations. Whom should they investigate? Well, in an ideal world, themselves: by knowing about and colluding with a declared and documented series of crimes, they are legally -- Pelosi especially -- accessories to those crimes. So there is an element of cover-your-blank in Congress finding its high dudgeon at last and pointing the accusing finger at subordinates in the CIA who obeyed orders that Congressional leaders themselves helped to sustain as a mockery of domestic and international law, and as daily, appalling practice.
Should we prosecute the agents who committed the torture? We should not. As a longtime advocate for prosecutions, that may sound surprising coming from me. But let us look at the Nuremberg Trials: the rank and file soldiers and operatives who committed torture and genocide were not tried -- the lawyers and political leaders who crafted and defended the policy of torture and genocide were tried (and many convicted). While I am not apologizing for the dozens or perhaps hundreds of CIA agents, military and contractors who, any investigation will show, were complicit, actively or passively, in the top-down policy of torture, I do know that these were people lower down the chain of command who have served their nation for many years -- and who were following directives declared not only legal by the President of the United States of America and the OLC, but were told they were "saving lives." To throw them into the fire for political cover is shameful.
Also, it would leave Obama with the problem from hell. So many people in the agency were involved in these practices that to prosecute them -- well, he would disembowel his own intelligence services.
So we should call for former chief judge of the army General James Cullen's solution. He has been at the forefront of calling for accountability -- but the right kind of accountability: Cullen urges us to indemnify those lower down the chain of command to get their testimonies. So they implicate the ringleaders, and then the only people who should be prosecuted are, as at Nuremberg, those who directed otherwise honorable men and women to commit crimes: the lawyers, and those who are on record having given the orders: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. The psychiatrist who reverse-engineered the SERE tactics should be prosecuted as well.
As for the dozens or hundreds of men and women who committed criminal assaults because their nation told them to -- at risk, if they refused to, of ending their careers? Protect them from prosecution. Many of them suffer trauma, nightmares -- and shame. That is more than burden enough.
Lay the guilt where it belongs: on Congress -- most particularly, legally, on the leadership that directed this policy -- and, emotionally and morally, on our complicit American selves.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
from NPR 04/17/09
CIA Officials Won't Face Charges For Waterboarding
Listen Now [4 min 17 sec] add to playlist
Read The Memos
- Aug. 1, 2002: from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA
- May 10, 2005: from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
- May 10, 2005: from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
- May 30, 2005: from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
Morning Edition, April 17, 2009 · The Obama administration has released four Bush-era legal memos describing "enhanced interrogation techniques" CIA interrogators were allowed to use on some terrorism detainees. As the Justice Department released the documents, Attorney General Eric Holder told CIA officials that they would not be prosecuted for having followed the legal guidance in the memos.
The memos, from 2002 and 2005, document what President Obama called "a dark and painful chapter in our history."
The documents go into more detail than had been previously revealed about tactics the Justice Department approved for CIA use against so-called high value detainees. The list includes slapping, nudity, stress positions and slamming detainees into a wall. CIA officials were told they could put one detainee who was afraid of bugs in a small box with an insect.
The controlled drowning technique known as waterboarding was described as "the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques." One memo says waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death.
But in that same memo, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that because waterboarding does not cause severe pain or suffering, "the use of these procedures would not constitute torture."
Fred Hitz, who served as CIA inspector general in the 1990s, read the memos and said, "I just don't see how in the world that kind of advice can be given as a legal opinion as if you were advising on whether a deed of trust was properly executed." He added, "These are human beings we're talking about, and it's not something that the United States — much less the Central Intelligence Agency — should be involved in."
The Justice Department has withdrawn all of these memos. Holder sent a message to CIA officials Thursday saying they would not be prosecuted for following the memos' legal guidance.
"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," he said.
CIA Director Leon Panetta also sent a message to agency employees, saying that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "CIA responded, as duty requires."
In the past few weeks, top current and former CIA officials had pushed to keep the memos secret. After the Obama administration declassified the documents Thursday, former CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Associated Press that the United States is less safe now. He said agents will be more timid and foreign allies will be less likely to cooperate with American intelligence officials because "they can't keep anything secret."
Some human rights groups criticized the decision not to prosecute people for these actions. Amnesty International called it a "get out of jail free card" for people who committed torture. But Obama said in a statement, "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."
The release of the memos ended a five-year court battle with the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's legal reasoning that is ends-driven," said Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU's National Security Project. "It's legal reasoning that's meant to reach the result that the Bush administration wanted to reach."
Jaffer said he was surprised at the detail in the documents. They explain which abusive interrogation techniques can be combined, how many calories a detainee must be given when he's being deprived of food, and how many minutes detainees need to recover from being doused with cold water. The amount of time depends on the water's temperature.
One former CIA official speaking on background said that level of detail shows how carefully tailored the program was.
"I agree with that," said former CIA official Hitz, "but so were all of the experiments that were done by the Nazi doctors during the time of the Holocaust. They kept excellent records of the body temperature of the prisoner and all that stuff; it didn't make it any less torture."
Jaffer says there are more fights coming. Other documents remain classified because they refer to these memos. With these new declassifications, the ACLU plans to push for other dominoes to fall.
And, although the Obama administration has said it will not prosecute CIA officials who relied on the legal guidance in the memos, there is an ongoing investigation into the Justice Department lawyers who wrote the memos and whether they violated professional legal standards.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
okay, well, we can't have the president knowing classified information, right?
AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.
Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.
Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.
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