thenatureofmind

The American Gulag: President Carter

"What has happened at Guantanamo Bay ... does not represent the will of the American people.... I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people."

-President Jimmy Carter

Carter: Guantanamo Detentions Disgraceful

The American Gulag: Extraordinary Rendition

Over the past year a significant number of my blog entries in this blog have been dealing with the US governement's mistreatment of those it designates as it's enemies. It's reasoning is legalistic and inhuman. When I read these stories I don't see rightous warriors defending the besieged home country, I see thousands of people, innocent or otherwise whose last years, months and days are being spent in situations of severe and unimagineable suffering. I see people who will wind up in unmarked graves lost to the mothers, fathers and children who loved them. Many because they were in the  wrong place at the wrong time.

This article presents another side to this inhuman administration, to this illegal goverment who, using its propaganda mouthpieces and it's media codewords follows in the  footsteps of Adolph Hitler. Maybe we should call this the  4th Reich.

Exclusive: Secret Memo—Send to Be Tortured

The American Gulag: The Roots of Prisoner Abuse

I said I would not use the New York Times as a source but this bears reapeating. I include it here though it technically might be a no-no.

Editorial

The Roots of Prisoner Abuse

This week, the White House blocked a Senate vote on a measure sponsored by a half-dozen Republicans, including Senator John McCain, that would prohibit cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment of prisoners. Besides being outrageous on its face, that action served as a reminder of how the Bush administration ducks for cover behind the men and women in uniform when challenged on military policy, but ignores their advice when it seems inconvenient.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has shown real political courage on this issue, recently released documents showing that the military's top lawyers had warned a year before the Abu Ghraib nightmare came to light that detainee policies imposed by the White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld violated American and international law and undermined the standards of civilized treatment embedded in the American military tradition.

In February 2003, Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, reminded his civilian bosses that American rules on the treatment of prisoners had grown out of Vietnam, where captured Americans, like Mr. McCain, were tortured. "We have taken the legal and moral 'high road' in the conduct of our military operations regardless of how others may operate," he wrote. Abandoning those rules, he said, endangered every American soldier.

General Rives and the other military lawyers argued strongly against declaring that Mr. Bush was above the law when it came to antiterrorism operations. But the president's team ignored them, offering up a pretzel logic that General Rives and the other military experts warned would not fool anyone. Rear Adm. Michael Lohr, the Navy's judge advocate general, said that the situation at the American prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba might be so legalistically unique that the Geneva Conventions and even the Constitution did not necessarily apply. But he asked, "Will the American people find we have missed the forest for the trees by condoning practices that, while technically legal, are inconsistent with our most fundamental values?"

General Rives said that if the White House permitted abusive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, it would not be able to restrict them to that single prison. He argued that soldiers elsewhere would conclude that their commanders were condoning illegal behavior. And that is precisely what happened at Abu Ghraib after the general who organized the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo went to Iraq to toughen up the interrogation of prisoners there.

The White House ignored these military lawyers' advice two years ago. Now it is trying to kill the measure that would define the term "illegal combatants," set rules for interrogations and prohibit cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The president considers this an undue restriction of his powers. It's not only due; it's way overdue.

A Message from Kalu Rimpoche

While cleaning out some boxes I found this small text written by Kalu Rimpoche. While many who read this may not understand some of the references to Tantric Buddhism, I think the fundamental import is very clear. It's all about our understanding of things and how errors in that understanding underpin our predicament...

There is nothing to be gained, nothing to be found which is not there already.

Truth is so simple, Buddhahood is so simple, Bodhicitta is so simple.

Truth is here, even in this very cell. Truth is in you. The silence, sunyata is in you. You are the silence, you are the truth; you are the Buddha. It is here at this moment, so simple and so near. Yet we make it so distant when it is so near, so complicated when it is so simple. Do you know what it is like to be ready to set out, to be at the roadside and beside your motorcar, but to have lost the way?

You are the Buddha.

Then why do you not feel it? Why do you not know it? Because there is a veil in the way, attachment to appearances, the belief that you are not Buddha, that you are a separate individual, (an atma). If you cannot remove this veil wholly and at once, then you must dissolve it little by little.

It is because we have made what is simple so complicated, and what is so near so distant, that complex exercises, mandalas, tantric meditation, the creation of mental images, yoga and so on, are necessary. A complex discipline is necessary in order to deal with all the aspects of the human being, all the aspects of that barrier which we have set up between us and truth.

But, for someone who wished to be persuaded, who wished to know that that is so near and so simple, all those techniques which are the inheritance of Tantric Buddhism and for which it is famous, all that skill would be completely useless.

-H.E. Kalu Rimpoche, 1970

The American Gulag: Hunger Strike

The treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and the resulting hopelessness and depression among the inmates has prompted a hunger strike involving most of the men incarcerated there. The world is watching...

Guantanamo detainees refuse food

Editorial: New York Times is out

I often cite the New York Times as one of the sources for stories that I want to highlight and bring to readers' attention. However due to their policy of archiving articles and charging for access it has become too time consuming to go back and re do links to readable sources. I think their policy is short sighted and requiring each and every reader to pay for access severely limits them as a source for news material. If it were possible for me to pay and grant my readers access this would be workable, but their system precludes this.

While it might be seen that the blog community is living free on the media's resources actually what we are really doing is focusing on certain areas of thought and referring our readers to reference sources and those sources are the ultimate beneficiary. We're increasing their readership. We are free advertisers for their service. The new media demands a different way of thinking, but for the present the New York Times is thinking different.

The American Gulag: What are they afraid of?

"The UN says it has evidence that torture has taken at the prison amid reports that 520 inmates have had mental breakdowns." - BBC News

Like their German Nazi teachers, the Bush administration has discovered that what they are doing will not stand the light of day. For one group of people to declare that another group has no rights or has significantly diminished rights and can be subjected to severe physical and mental torture is the very basis of Hitler's treatment of the Jews in World War II. Some find fault with my comparisons of the Bush administration to the Fascist government of Aldolph Hitler but read the second defining characteristic of Fascism: by Dr. Lawrence Britt:

"2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc."

It must be remembered that Hitler also included anyone who he felt to be "the enemy". During the war any resistance by the civilian population was met with mass extermination. This led to the Geneva Conventions in 1949 extending protection to civilians. The Bush government however is a signatory to all of the Geneva Conventions and are on record in intending to roll back those protections. Part and parcel of this is trying to maintain secrecy so that their deeds cannot be documented and that they cannot be held accountable. But the world is watching....

US 'stalling UN Guantanamo visit'