Tag Archives: Guantanamo

Usual Rubbish

Celebrating a little early this time.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Man, it has been a long time. But not THAT long. Still, I forgot how the hell that last song ended. And track number seven I don’t remember doing at all! My head is like a cotton swab. Mother of pearl.

Hi, everybody. Now, I don’t want to create the impression that Big Green is one of those old man groups that just reflects back on their own sorry history. That said, I was archiving some old recordings this week. As it happens, that’s what bands sometimes do when they … I don’t know … reach a certain age. I DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS IT.

Whoops – sorry. Anyway, got the chance to listen back to some stuff and it occurred to me that our second album, International House, is nearing a kind of significant anniversary. Quite a coincidence, that.

What’s the coincidence, Joe?

Well, I’m gonna tell you. As you will see in my Political Rant this week, this is also the twentieth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Who can forget those heady days back in the early 2000s, when the ground was still smoking from 9/11 and W. Bush was heating up the pork and beans, getting ready to watch some good bomb-dropping? I know I can’t (though fuck knows I’ve tried).

The coincidence is this: it is also the 14th anniversary of International House, which included a number of songs that bear on the early war on terror. The one I kept thinking of today was Enter the Mind, a song Matt wrote about the CIA black sites. Now, some might say that 14 is not a significant anniversary. I beg to differ! I’ll have you know that 14 is the ivory anniversary … or is it the one when you give your spouse the box set of Electric Light Orchestra’s greatest hits? Always get those mixed up. (They’re both the same color, you see.)

A fitting observance. Or not.

There are a lot of ways we could observe this ivory anniversary of International House. We might, for instance, move into a house and out of this drafty abandoned mill. We might throw stones into the middle of the street and hope that passing baptist ministers happen upon them. Or we could, I don’t know, put the whole damn album on YouTube. Either way, we could do something other than talk about it.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of promoting old product. International House was our album-length retrospective on the W. Bush years. Some of the shit we were complaining about back then is still in effect today. But it’s still a period piece, if you will. We wanted an exclamation point on that sucker, not a period, but there you go.

There’s a place in time

Hey, look – we all have history. We all came from somewhere and are headed somewhere else. Maybe those two somewheres are the same-wheres – who knows? The way I see it, if we concentrate on the present long enough, it will be the past. And if we turn our eyes to the future, that future will soon be the present. It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

And so, I’ll listen to more old recordings this week. You gotta know where you’ve been before you work out where you’re going. Had enough of cliches? There’s more where that came from!

Political Rants

Twenty Years and Counting … And Counting.

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This week marked the 20th anniversary of our illegal and profoundly immoral post-9/11 prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Lord knows I’ve been posting about it long enough.) And though the Afghan war is over, there’s no end in sight for the remaining 39 prisoners captured following our invasion of that unhappy country.

At a time when we should be following through on multiple presidents’ pledge to shut the place down, we’re doing the exact opposite. Biden’s Pentagon is planning another $4 million secret court room in the island compound. Looks like we’re planning on prosecuting some detainees, though under what auspices it’s not clear.

Never the less, let’s look at some of what is clear about Gitmo.

Where the hell is it, again?

Okay, so … the United States has hundreds of military installations around the world, including a significant number in Central and South America. But typically those facilities operate in what we consider to be friendly countries. The reason is simple – our military is an imposing presence, so much so that only a friend could tolerate their presence.

But Guantanamo is located in Cuba, a country that has been under unrelenting attack from the United States since the very early 1960s. You would think we might have packed that place up long ago, but it’s too valuable an instrument of intimidation. Does anyone think Cuba willingly accepts the presence of a U.S. base on their territory, occupying their principal eastern-facing port? It’s a little hard for us to credibly criticize Russia for leaning on Ukraine when we do this kind of shit.

The remaining victims of GWOT

Thirty-nine detainees remain at Guantanamo, of whom 27 have not been charged with a crime. The remaining detainees are basically un-prosecutable by any reasonable standard, as they have been subjected to torture and forced interrogations. The Biden Administration has recently approved five detainees for release, but this means next to nothing. The prison at Guantanamo is a Kafkaesque trap, holding men whose lives mean nothing to their captors.

The fact is, they won’t be released because to do so would have negative political consequences. No president wants to take the heat for releasing “jihadists”, even if none of the detainees cleared for release has ever raised a hand against the U.S. When Obama lost his nerve on this issue back in 2009-10, that was our last chance to shut this dump down. Now the only thing that can kill Guantanamo is us.

What the hell do we do about it?

So glad you asked. We can call our representatives, our senators, our president, and tell them that twenty years is more than enough. Shut that atrocity down now and release the remaining detainees. Recompense them in some measure for the harm we caused them. Represented by a moron? I know the feeling! Call him/her anyway.

luv u,

jp

P.S. just posted an new episode of Strange Sound – the first one in several months. Give it a listen at Anchor.fm or wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The year in advance.

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Okay, I promised domestic policy this week, but I’m going to have to go back on that for a paragraph or two. It’s the product of swallowing so much crap news over the course of the week. Just a few minutes of Latin America coverage by NPR is enough to make me want to pull my own head off. So I just want to dwell on that topic for a few minutes … don’t mind me.

One that got awayObama’s shift on Cuba is instructive in a lot of ways. For one, it is wildly popular, with something like 60% of the country in support. That has been reflected in polls for quite a long time. Second, it does help to lay bare the true nature of the relationship. Just listening to our diplomats lecture Cuba on human rights issues is enough irony to last a decade in and of itself. For chrissake, we can’t even claim to hold to a high standard on human rights even within the confines of Cuba itself!

Raul Castro has said that reestablishing normal relations would require our return of Guantanamo Bay – the only eastern-facing harbor on the island, which would be kind of useful for trade with Europe. The Obama administration has rejected that out of hand. Again … does any news organization in the United States ever examine the issue of our dubious claim on Guantanamo Bay? Nope. Too busy reporting on Russia’s heinous seizure of Crimea.

It goes deeper than that. Why have we targeted Cuba for five decades? Dictatorship? That can’t be it. We cozy up to dictators in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere without a problem. Human rights? Please! Here’s a more plausible explanation. We “owned” Cuba, like a master owns a slave. Cuba broke away, setting a “bad” example for the other slaves. We have never accepted its disobedience, and we have punished it grievously ever since. We’ve invaded it, attacked its people, attempted to assassinate its leaders, strangled it economically as only a superpower can, vilified it in every imaginable way.

So … the nation that innovated the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 pursues the same principle on the national stage. That is the context of this new detente with Cuba.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The other side.

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Last week I wrote about the P.O.W. Bergdahl and how he and his family were being used as a political football. The other half of the story is about the prisoner trade the Taliban negotiated with our government. The same voices that were denigrating the Bergdahl clan described the traded Guantanamo detainees as a  Taliban “dream team” or a set of “MVPs” for the other side in the Afghan war. Setting aside the ridiculousness of the sports analogy, this characterization is as stupid as it is irrelevant.

Let's ask this guy.First of all, they were not high-value detainees. They were leadership within the Taliban regime of the 1990s – 2001, yes, but they were not implicated in the deaths of any Americans. Nor were they captured at great cost, as has been suggested by some. Two or more of them turned themselves in; others were turned in by Pakistani intelligence, probably in exchange for some payment. Will they return to “the fight”? Well, that may be, but keeping Guantanamo open all these years has inspired more (younger) people to join the fight than we could ever release from that legal limbo on Cuban soil. A lot of people want us dead; are we that worried, really?

Then there’s the simple fact that the Afghan war is going to end. Face it, McCain, Graham, Ayotte, etc. … stick a fork in it. Your awesome war is coming to a close, whether you like it or not. Only you are in favor of keeping it going, just as only you were in favor of expanding the Global War on Terror to Syria. The American people are sick of the Afghan war, and they will not miss it.

Now the same political hacks have their hair on fire about Iraq because it is melting down as a result of our having trashed the place with their blessing. This, they suggest, is the argument for staying in Afghanistan for … well, forever. Does anyone, anyone in America agree? Does anyone want their kid to go over there and take a bullet for this sorry project? My guess is no.

Next week, I’ll rant a bit about Iraq. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Permanent rule.

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I’ve heard a lot of commentary in recent days about the state of affairs in Egypt, in Russia – about the primacy of the military and the intelligence services in the political life of those countries. Not as much about our own permanent government. I’m talking about the national security regime that persists independently, it seems, of what administration occupies the White House or runs the Congress. It’s a little hard to pass judgment on others when we ourselves have accommodated to something less than democratic rule.

It’s not that this is totally new. We had the Vietnam war, for instance, through Democratic and Republican presidencies, fought with comparable levels of savagery. The latest cycle, which started on September 11 2001, just nine months into the new century, seems much more pervasive, opened ended, and unquenchable. We invaded Afghanistan and still haven’t left. We’ve expanded our expionage and “homeland” security apparatus to encompass literally thousands of federal and contract installations, employing millions of people. We are spied upon in a way that makes the cold war East German state seem amateurish by comparison.

Is this the problem? Really?Even something as seemingly simple as closing Guantanamo. It would have enormous symbolic value, of course. But even though the president professes to want it closed, it remains open. Why? Why haven’t those cleared for release been released? Why haven’t the ones determined innocent / not a threat been moved to some residential setting that isn’t a prison cell? It’s almost as if that policy level is beyond the reach of democratically elected officials. We seem frozen in place since 9/11, unable to adjust our course, unable to accomplish practically anything aside from blowing things up, assassinating people, and spying on their ass. Hunger striking inmates are force fed, even though the president – a constiitutional lawyer – knows that that is abusive and wrong. Can’t change it.

We have to take power back from this permanent government, even if it means standing in the street and facing it down.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Guantanahole.

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I’m going to write about a topic I haven’t visited for some time in the vain hope that it would be corrected, now that we have left the George W. Bush administration in its deserved dustbin of history. (Save, that is, for within the W. Library, which is a central repository for the disastrous idiocy that was that presidency writ large, but I digress.) The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has re-entered the news cycle once again, owing in large part to an organized protest – a hunger strike – undertaken by more than 100 of its inmates. I have a few things to say about this shit hole, and I’ll keep it brief.

Guantanamo
Camp Joy.

First: Why the hell is this place still open? I know, I know – Congress demagogue’d the issue of closing it down and bringing some of the still-accused to the U.S. for trial and likely eventual imprisonment. (There’s a surprise – they demagogue everything!) The thing is, Obama has options, particularly with regard to those prisoners cleared for release. There are third countries they can most certainly be sent to. Obama is avoiding this option because it will garner criticism, most likely. Not a good reason at all.

Second: The hunger strike is a manufactured crisis, by all appearances. They have generally been presenting it as a difficult situation being handled by the Army as best they can, but the fact is that conditions at the prison turned decidedly worse when the Navy handed over control to the Army early this year. The prisoners were searched, their Korans pored over by investigators, and the prisioners’ communal priviliges were taken away. They are now kept in isolation 22 hours a day or so. Here’s a possible solution to the hunger strike: rotate the Army unit out and bring back the freaking Navy team that was running it before.

Third: If half of these men have never been charged with anything, have been determined to be of no danger to the U.S., why the hell are they being held … and while they’re being held, why are they being kept in prison-like conditions? Many have been there for 11 years. For chrissake, if they’re innocent, build them a freaking house in Guantanamo Bay and let them live like human beings until they are released. What kind of warped sense of justice is at work here?

Finally, if any of these men die while protesting their ill-treatment, it is going to exponentially increase Guantanamo’s value as a jihadist recruitment tool. Add that to your security considerations, Barry.

luv u,

jp

P.S. – Happy May Day. Invented in America, celebrated elsewhere. Ask why.

Political Rants

Win for losing.

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Just a few short shots today. Hopefully one of them will approach some acceptable level of accuracy.

Out of work / luck. The House failed to reach the 2/3 majority it needed this week to approve extending unemployment benefits to the millions out of work for an exceedingly long period of time – about 9.6 percent of us, if you count every part-time burger flipper as “employed” (and don’t even count those unemployed but no longer looking for work). Once again, our great lawmakers are playing ducks and drakes with people’s lives, blaming the victim, punishing those who have paid for their bad decisions. Got the number of your congressman/woman? Get on the phone to them and tell them to vote for this sucker, even if it adds to the freaking deficit. This is a question of survival for millions of American families – what’s more important than that?

Gitmo conviction. Justice Department prosecutors have won the case against a Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani, but are losing the propaganda war with respect to civilian trials for terror defendants. I heard ex-governor Pataki on television this week joining the chorus of ersatz conservatives who think evidence obtained under torture is somehow legitimate. Oh, how they value our traditions!

Non-starter. John McCain’s Arizona colleague appears intent on blocking an arms control treaty that any Republican would have been proud of two decades ago. So our agreement with the Russians is dangling by a thread. What sense does this make? Don’t know. What sense does it make to have NATO members sign on enthusiastically to a new “missile defense” regime – i.e., one that the Russians are not intimidated by? I suppose we should follow the money. Missile defense is as close as this or any administration will come to an industrial policy. Military Keynesianism still rocks down in D.C.

That’s all I’ve got, folks.

luv u,

jp