Supreme Court Blocks Bush, Gitmo War Trials

The Supreme Court has decided 5-3 (Roberts recused himself) that the administration cannot try detainees being held in Guantanamo in the military tribunal format they had hoped to use.

The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of about 450 men still being held at Guantanamo and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.

The confinement of enemy combatants captured on the field of battle has never resulted in habeas corpus issues in the past, and the ability to wage this new type of war, in my opinion, has been greatly diminished by this ruling.

Justice Thomas dissents:

For the reasons set forth in Justice Scalia's dissent, it is clear that this Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain petitioner's claims, see ante, at 1-11. The Court having concluded otherwise, it is appropriate to respond to the Court's resolution of the merits of petitioner's claims because its opinion openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs. The Court's evident belief that it is qualified to pass on the "[m]ilitary necessity," ante, at 48, of the Commander in Chief's decision to employ a particular form of force against our enemies is so antithetical to our constitutional structure that it simply cannot go unanswered. I respectfully dissent.

Justice Thomas puts his finger on the central issue when he asks how much power we are willing to give President Bush with which to carry out his constitutional duty to provide security for our nation. People not happy with the administration’s tactics so far will find no relief in precedent; all the rules changed on 9/11, and all three branches of government are making this up as they go along.

Just yesterday, I heard an interview with an assistant to the SecDef, where he explained that 15 freed detainees have subsequently been recaptured after again taking up arms against U.S. forces. I think, based on their dissents, that Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, are the only ones that seem to realize the ramifications of today’s decision.

Go here for the full story.

Go here to read the SALIM AHMED HAMDAN, PETITIONER v. DONALD
H. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al. decision in its entirety.

Italian Blogger Convicted of Defamation

Bloggers, particularly those residing in Italy, should take note of this recent decision:

Reporters Without Borders condemned a 13,500-euro sentence against blogger Roberto Mancini in fines, damages and costs imposed by a court in Val d’Aosta, in northern Italy on 26 May 2006, after local journalists brought a defamation suit.

Mancini, 59, is suspected of creating a US-hosted blog in 2005 - Il Bolscevicostanco, which reports on local news in sarcastic and crude terms. Using the pseudonym, General Sukhov, he apparently wrote several articles directly attacking local figures.

Traditionally, in order for a written communication to be considered libelous, it must be shown to be untrue. This particular case does not seem to meet such a test:

"The columns by-lined General Sukhov are certainly written in an extreme style, but the complainants were not able to show they were untrue,” the press freedom organisation said.

The most perplexing aspect of this case is that journalists themselves initiated the suit; the last people one would expect to be party to the diminution of freedom of the written word.

The case was brought by two journalists on regional newspaper Gazzetta Matin, Luca Mercanti and Christina Porta, the press officer for the Val d’Aosta regional chamber of trade and of a local firm, Pier Maria Minuzzo, and a webmaster, Marco Camilli.

Full story here.

Understand the issue better by going here.

Liberty Part I

The concept of liberty has been the centerpiece of philosophical thought ever since man first realized the advantages of forming social groups. Indeed, mankind’s ability to resist the arbitrarily hostile environment that surrounds him rests solely on his ability to adapt to and exploit what little nature has provided him. Spreading the skills necessary to survive among the many instead of the few has the effect of giving each group participant access to protection, food, medical care, and shelter that he could not have had, had he been left to his own device. Entering into such a pact of mutual assistance is not, however, without its drawbacks: the more we rely on one another to survive, the less freedom we will have to make our own unrestricted choices.

The freedom to make unrestricted choices is the essence of liberty. In order for the members of a given society to survive, they must surrender a certain amount of their own liberty or self-determination. This self-determination is the currency of survival.

Let us take a man who specializes in producing food, and one who has dedicated his time to the study of medical science as an example of the transactions of liberty that may occur in a functioning society. The farmer spends his time growing food, as time goes on his ability to grow food becomes a specialized skill not shared on the same scale with an individual who has used his time becoming expert at the medical sciences. Both men in this example have something the other covets: the farmer can offer the doctor sustenance and conversely, the doctor, through his specialized training, is now in the position to offer the farmer medical care as needed. It must be stressed that either man will have at least a modest ability to accomplish the other man’s task but not to the extent where either will be performing optimally for the society in which they have contracted to take part. A society that does a poor job of matching its needs with the best suited to satisfy these needs, is not giving itself the best chance to survive.

So how does liberty fit into the above example? To be continued soon.

The Truth in Iraq

One Democrat after another, during the Iraq war resolution debate on the house floor today, informed C-Span viewers that America is losing the war in Iraq. Some of them insisting emphatically that things had gotten so bad that U.S. forces should be withdrawn immediately.

“'Stay the course' is not a strategy, it's a slogan,” answered House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi as she called for a new direction in a war she labeled “a grotesque mistake.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who voted against the measure, said the resolution was an ``affirmation of the president's failed policy in Iraq.''

John Murtha, D-Pa.: “It's not a matter of stay the course. It's a matter of change direction.”

The question is, who are we to believe? Democrats angling for a majority control of Congress in November, or al-Zarqawi’s documents clearly stating that the insurgency had become ineffective due to the actions of American forces in Iraq. If the authenticity of these documents holds up to scrutiny, I’ll choose al-Zarqawi's account of the state of the war in Iraq as the more likely one. After all, what possible motivation could he have had to understate the effectiveness of insurgent operations in memos to his own al-Quaeda underlings?

Iran Bans Economist Magazine

Apologists for the current Islamist regime in Iran were handed yet another challenge today:

TEHRAN, June 15 (UPI) -- The government of Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely "the Gulf" in a map in the latest edition.
State television made the announcement Wednesday night, noting it is the second time the government has made such a move to protect the country's Persian roots.
In November 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition was published with the term "Arabian Gulf" in parenthesis beside the more commonly used Persian Gulf.
Criticism on the Persian Journal's Web site was more scathing, calling the London-published Economist "nothing but another worthless tabloid" that alters the news to appease various readers.
There was no immediate response to the ban Thursday on The Economist's Web site.

Source.

Let’s face it; Ahmadinejad and company hate the concept of democracy and anyone who promotes it. Can a government, capable of both hiding a uranium enrichment program for 15 years and banning reputable publications for simply adhering to modern journalistic shorthand, be trusted when it says it has no intention of producing nuclear weapons?

Scientists Question Gore's "Inconvenient Truths"

It seems that a number of climatologists are not particularly impressed with former American VP Al Gore’s theory of global warming:

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science, and its many fine practitioners, a lot of who know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

Full story here.

Is Gore giving the movie-going public an impartial account of global warming, or is he, as is concluded in this particular article, merely using a controversial topic to gain political points? Admittedly, I’m far from being qualified to answer any such question definitively, but I’d also dispute Gore’s expertise in global climatology considering that his academic background was not in the sciences but in government studies. The bottom line is that it makes good sense to be skeptical of any scientific claims made by a politician, or, for that matter, anyone else without extensive scientific training.

A Dire Warning from North Korea

Here's the latest gem out of the DPRK:

Pyongyang, June 12 (KCNA) -- The U.S. imperialist warmongers committed one more grave military provocation by illegally infiltrating a strategic reconnaissance plane into the sky above the DPRK's economic waters on June 12. In this regard the Air Force Command of the Korean People's Army issued the following report on Monday: At around 12:05 on June 12, an overseas-based strategic reconnaissance plane of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces infiltrated into the sky above the waters of the DPRK east of Chongjin and Hwadae and made a shuttle flight there for hours to spy on its strategic targets.
Such ceaseless illegal infiltration and aerial espionage are arousing a bitter indignation from the officers and men of the KPA Air Force.
It is an indigenous disposition of our revolutionary armed forces to mercilessly punish the aggressors.
The KPA Air Force warns again that the U.S. imperialist warmongers will be buried in the East Sea of Korea if they continue running amuck without discretion despite our warnings.

It took me a moment, but I finally figured out why the tone of this kooky admonition seemed so familiar. There can be but one answer: Stanley Kubrick isn't really dead. North Korean intelligence officers faked his death after recruiting him as Kim Jong Il's personal propagandist. (This would explain how Kim Jong Il learned to stop worrying and love the bomb).

The Christian Coalition

The Christian Coalition of America’s website points to a very specific brand of faith as the primary reason for America’s success as a nation:

To that end, we continuously work to identify, educate and mobilize Christians for effective political action! Such action will preserve, protect and defend the Judeo-Christian values that made this the greatest country in history.

I wonder if these people realize how many of America’s founding fathers were not practicing Christians. Here are some quotes from the men themselves:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

- Thomas Paine

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

- James Madison

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines, which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself, are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.

- Thomas Jefferson

Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!

- John Adams

The American value system, as heralded by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, arose directly from the Age of Reason, which was presided over by those seeking to distance themselves from organized religion. To their minds, these great and emancipated thinkers saw formalized religion as nothing more than a superstition-based attack on their freedom to question and objectify the world around them.

The Enlightenment, for the most part, took place before America had adopted its constitution. This means that scripture-based legislation is not conservatism, but instead, fear-inspired regressionism. It used to be that one need only follow Jesus’ teachings in order to be called a Christian; now, unless a Christian is in lockstep with a certain political agenda, their Christianity has apparently lost all validity.

Somalian Hardliners Ban World Cup Broadcast

The nascent Islamist regime in Mogadishu has moved to block Somalis from viewing the World Cup Football tournament. This is just another reminder of how repressive Islamist systems are, and how thankful those not living under them should be.

Hardline Islamic courts shut cinema halls and barred residents from watching the World Cup, prompting scores of civilians to protest the ban in which two people were killed, court officials and residents have said.

The JIC deputy chairman AbdulKadir Ali Omar said the Islamic tribunals would crackdown on halls that defy the order to show western films and video, including the World Cup.

"This is war against all people who show films that promote pornography, drug dealing and all forms of evil," Omar told AFP.
"We shall not even allow the showing of the World Cup because they corrupt the morals of our children whom we endeavor to teach the Islamic way of life," he added.

Full story here.

U.S. Strike Kills Iraq Terror Chief Al-Zarqawi

Apparently, the media can't suppress all the good news coming out of Iraq:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the top
target of the military coalition supporting the country's nascent democracy, was
killed Wednesday in an airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

Full story.

Clinton's Failure in Somalia Now Complete

The lack of resolve shown by former President Bill Clinton in Somalia after the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 has finally paid off...for the Islamofascists:

We will fight and die for Somalia and Islam," said Sheikh Mohamoud Sheik Ibrahim, a senior cleric in the coalition of Sharia courts accused by the US and the alliance of harbouring terrorists.

"We will die for the sake of Allah and we will emerge victorious in our war against the US proxies here," he said. "We will never be ruled by US-paid mercenaries."

He dismissed Bush as a modern-day "Nazi" and "pharaoh", as men, women and children clad in traditional Islamic dress waved placards reading "Down with United States" and "No infidels in Mogadishu".

Story here.

The implications are obvious; leaving Somalia as we did in 1994 has all but guaranteed yet another platform for freedom-hating terrorists to operate with impunity. It would have been much less costly in lives and resources to have stabilized Somalia when we first had the chance.

Here's a short piece putting Clinton's failed Somalia policy in context:

Most of the American troops were out of Somalia by March 25, 1994. A few hundred Marines remained offshore to assist with any noncombatant evacuation mission that might occur regarding the 1,000-plus U.S. civilians and military advisers remaining as part of the U.S. liaison mission. All U.S. personnel were finally withdrawn by March 1995.
The Battle of Mogadishu led to a profound shift in American foreign policy, as American politicians became increasingly reluctant to use military intervention in Third World conflicts, failing to assist in the halt of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and affected America's actions in the Balkans during the later half of the 1990's. President Clinton preferred to use the "air power alone" tactic and hesitated to use U.S. ground troops in fighting Serbian military and para-military ground forces in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, out of fear of losing American soldiers in combat, as well as fear of repeating what happened in Mogadishu in 1993.

Source.

Possibility of Human-to-Human Transmission of Avian Flu Cited by the W.H.O.

Here's a troubling story about a possible mutation in the Avian flu virus:

In the wake of a cluster of Avian flu cases that killed seven members of a rural Indonesian family, it appears likely that there have been many more human-to-human infections than the authorities have previously acknowledged.
The numbers are still relatively small, and they do not mean that the virus has mutated to pass easily between people — a change that could touch off a worldwide epidemic. All the clusters of cases have been among relatives or in nurses who were in long, close contact with patients.

The W.H.O. is generally conservative in its announcements and, as a United Nations agency, is sometimes limited by member states in what it is permitted to say about them.
Still, several scientists have noted that there are many clusters in which human-to-human infection may be a more logical explanation than the idea that relatives who fell sick days apart got the virus from the same dying bird.

Full story here.

As I have understood it to this point, the Avian flu, once it had successfully passed from one human to another, would immediately spread like wildfire, quickly reaching pandemic proportions. It seems here that there are instead levels of communicability; the virus slowly mutates through discrete stages until its transmission mechanism has sufficiently evolved to allow for easy infection. I'm no epidemiologist, but if these latest comments by the W.H.O. bear out, the Avian flu now has a communicability comparable with that of Tuberculosis. T.B., in general, needs 6 months of close contact with an infected person in order to be successfully transmitted to a healthy one.

This is definitely a story worth following. Here's the World Health Organization's Avian flu update site.

Bolivia Does the Marxist Thing

Bolivian president, Evo Morales is wasting no time in redistributing Bolivia's farmland to his nation's poor, indigenous Indians. These land redistribution schemes, though wildly popular with the poor, always make a bad economy worse in the end. Bolivia, long one of South America’s poorest countries, is about to become even poorer. When will people learn that reactionary socialism is exactly the wrong response to widespread poverty?

Apparently, Morales hasn’t given the disastrous land reform experiment in Zimbabwe (a policy responsible for changing Zimbabwe from being a net food exporter to a nation that can no longer feed itself without importing food) its proper consideration. Bolivia’s GDP per capita is currently $2900; look for it to drop to below $2500 within the next 5 years. These developments are particularly ignominious when considering how vigorous Bolivia’s economy was in the 1990s, a decade that saw the nation's GDP growth average 4% per annum.

Here's an excerpt from a relevant AP article:

Leftist President Evo Morales launched a sweeping land reform plan on Saturday by handing over roughly 9,600 square miles of state-owned land to poor Indians.

Full story here.

An Unpleasant Reminder

There are still plenty of deranged people out there intent on killing you and your family if given the slightest opportunity:

Seventeen Canadian residents were in custody Saturday on terrorism- related charges, including plots to use explosives in attacks on Canadian soil, authorities said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they arrested 12 male adults and five youth and foiled plans for terrorist attacks against targets in southern Ontario.

Full story here.

British anti-terrorist police are hunting for a "dirty" chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in Britain after a major raid failed to uncover a device they believe exists, newspapers reported on Saturday.
More than 250 officers, some wearing chemical, biological, and radiological protection suits, shot one man and arrested another during a dawn raid on an east London house on Friday.

Full story here.

It’s reasonable to assume that similar plots are being planned in the U.S., and I would expect, in light of these recent arrests, that questions about the NSA’s wiretapping program by such politicians as Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, will now begin to subside.

Bush Crusades Against Same-Sex Marriages

George Bush makes like a good Christian:

President Bush will promote a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday, the eve of a scheduled Senate vote on the cause that is dear to his conservative backers.
The amendment would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. To become law, the proposal would need two-thirds support in the Senate and House, and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures.

Read story here.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other whether homosexuals can get legally married or not. What I do find troubling, however, is the main argument being employed against gay marriage. Namely, marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman. Marriage as a civil institution remains unmentioned in the U.S. constitution and so, in essence, this claim remains a moral, not a legal one.

I become very uncomfortable whenever someone claims some kind of special moral insight into another’s life, and further, attempts to introduce this moral prerogative into the law of the land. A democracy, in order to be sustainable, must deal strictly with the will of the people and can never defer to any religious scripture or subjective morality.

If we allow the Christian right to push scripture-inspired legislation through, are we any better than Iran, Saudi Arabia or any of the other theocratic dictatorships, which we so instinctively berate as insults to humanity’s natural right to freedom?

This amendment has a zero chance of passing, and what's more, the politicians all know this. The gay marriage ban proposal is nothing more than an attempt to energize the GOP’s base for the coming midterm elections in November. Americans should be outraged at this frivolous pandering, which is taking precious time and money away from much more important issues such as the war in Iraq and the urgent need to develop alternate fuels.

College Commencement = Campaigning on the Cheap

The tradition of using commencement ceremonies as a platform to grind political axes has to stop. Graduating students work hard to earn their degrees, and deserve better than to be used as cheap political props. Cases in point:

NEW YORK -- State Comptroller Alan Hevesi publicly apologized Thursday for a "beyond dumb" remark about a fellow Democrat putting "a bullet between the president's eyes."

Source

Dozens of faculty members and students at the New School turned their backs and raised signs to protest an appearance by Sen. John McCain at their graduation ceremony.

Source

Michael Moore Being Sued for $85 Million

What, you mean "Fahrenheit 9/11" wasn't an academically objective documentary?

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, a supporter of President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, claims Moore misused the footage to portray him "in a false light" and as "disagreeing with the president about the war effort and as disagreeing with the war effort itself."

"It was kind of almost like the enemy was using me for propaganda. What soldier wants to be involved in that?” Damon told CBS's local television news affiliate. "I didn't lose my arms over there to come back and be used as ammunition against my commander-in-chief."

Read story here.