Jan 11th, 2009
Posted by Astine Suleimanyan, Washington Legislative Office at 5:09pm	National Security

A Shameful Anniversary

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Today marks the seventh anniversary since the first 20 detainees arrived at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Since that day in 2002, Guantánamo has become a disgrace to this country. It's a symbol of our government's willingness to flout international and domestic laws by torturing prisoners and holding them for indefinite periods of time, stripping most of them of the most fundamental right to challenge their detention.

Seven years since those prisoners arrived, only one trial, that of Salim Hamdan, has been completed. As the Bush administration winds down, the military commissions plan to try Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan. If Khadr's trial does indeed commence on January 26, 2009, as planned, the U.S. will be the first western nation in recent history to prosecute someone for war crimes he allegedly committed as a child.

On August 1, 2007, then-Presidential nominee Barack Obama said, "As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions." Like many Americans, I was motivated and ready to bring awareness to help end the torture of detainees that has stained America's reputation abroad. Here at the Washington Legislative Office, the field team collaborated to display a large banner which reads "CLOSE GITMO" in front of the ACLU building in downtown Washington, D.C.

Friday afternoon, my colleagues and I stood in the freezing 38-degree cold weather for two hours waiting for the banner to drop outside our office. I stood watching and discussing with Washingtonians walking by, curious to see what the commotion was all about. When the banner was finally in place, we clapped and watched others, walking out for lunch looking up curiously at the message on the banner.

As millions of Americans gather in Washington, D.C., for President-elect Obama's historic inauguration, we hope the "Close Gitmo" banner will remind them, all Washingtonians, and the Obama administration of his promise to close Guantánamo. We need to end this brutality and restore America's moral leadership in the world.

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Tags: Close Guantanamo

1. Vic Livingston Says:
   Jan 11th, 2009 at 8:03pm

   WHEN WILL THE ACLU CONFRONT THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE OF DOMESTIC TORTURE — VIA RADIATION WEAPONS AND DEVICES — IN CITIES AND TOWNS ALL ACROSS AMERICA?

   DOMESTIC TORTURE VIA RADIATION WEAPONRY: AMERICA’S HORRIFIC SHAME

   • Extrajudicial targeting/punishment violates the U.S. constitution, and has enabled crimes against humanity. Government intelligence, security, law enforcement and revenue officials are said to be complicit.

   GET POLITICAL w/ VIC LIVINGSTON, NowPublic.com/scrivener

   Former business reporter, Fox TV Phila., NY Daily News, Phila. Bulletin, St. Petersburg Times

   The reality of domestic torture delivered by ideologically-driven, cold-hearted agents of government and their vigilante citizen operatives is finally gaining public exposure by way of first-hand accounts — including that of this correspondent, a mainstream journalist who who has been “community stalked” and tortured by means of silent, potentially deadly radiation weaponry for nearly five years.

   In a matter of weeks, this correspondent believes, operatives who have been involved in the purposeful “dosing” of American citizens with various forms of pulsed radiation emitted from so-called “directed energy weapons” and devices will begin to come forward, confirming reports of what’s been euphemistically labeled as “electronic harassment” by victims of so-called “community stalking” or “gang stalking.”

   The “gang stalking” moniker trivializes what is an extensive, multi-level government campaign of extrajudicial targeting and punishment that victims say extends into Canada, the United Kingdom and other industrialized nations.

   The “targets” are not limited to “terrorists” or drug traffickers. They include individuals who have been labeled by persons in positions of authority as “dissidents,” “radicals,” “whistle-blowers” or undesirables, perhaps due to their lifestyles, their ethnic heritage, or their religious or political beliefs. Many find themselves slandered and unjustly accused of wrongdoing. Typically, they are not charged with any violation of the law — yet they are condemned nonetheless to a lifetime sentence of being “community stalked” by citizen vigilantes, over-reaching uniformed officers, or undercover agents.

   Some victims who are charged with crimes typically maintain that they were framed — set up with fabricated or planted “evidence” or entrapped. Journalists are among targeted classes; but many don’t realize they are subject to pervasive surveillance, physical harassment and career sabotage until they are already ruined, professionally and personally.

   These targeted persons — and their families — are subject to relentless harassment, including surreptitious entry into their homes and vandalism of their property, with surveillance data about their whereabouts and personal daily routines funneled to “community stalkers” who are recruited under the cover of government-funded community policing, town watch, and business-related anti-terrorism programs, even fire and rescue squads. The operations of these civilian vigilantes are supervised by agents of government, ranging from local police personnel to federal intelligence and security agents under whose direction these programs have been institutionalized.

   Under the guise of performing “surveillance,” the “targets” are subject to electromagnetic radiation of various forms — ranging from microwave energy, sound waves, even X-rays and gamma rays. The government publicly claims that these “directed energy weapons,” or “D.E.W.”, are still in the experimental stage, or that working equipment is large and bulky, such as the Army’s recent demonstration of a microwave weapon tagged with an innocuous-sounding sobriquet, the “Active Denial System.” The government describes these radiation weapons as “non-lethal” — when in fact, depending on the dosage of radiated energy delivered, they can stun, maim, burn, cause strokes or aneurysms, induce illness such as cancer, or kill.

   These D.E.W. have are being widely deployed, as noted in an article in the April 2008 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. The article discusses the potential adverse health effects of D.E.W. fire. The article also states that law enforcement personnel themselves may fall victim to these adverse effects, should criminals or terrorists obtain D.E.W.

   http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2008/april08leb.pdf< /p>

   What the article does not state is that victims of “community stalking” have complained for several years that they are being tortured by painful D.E.W. radiation attacks, and that their health has been degraded by the cumulative effects of exposure to silent and potentially lethal beams of radiated energy.

   These weapons share a characteristic that explains why few people outside of law enforcement are aware of their widespread deployment and usage: The radiation energy the weapons emit is silent and invisible, making possible “the perfect crime” — the covert application of potentially lethal force.

   Victims of D.E.W. attack have tried to appeal to law enforcement for justice, but to no avail. Indeed, that’s part of the “M.O.” — when victims complain, they are routinely written off as delusional or mentally ill. Victims say that health care workers also cooperate in this persecution. Targeted persons may even be subject to attempts to commit them to psychiatric facilities, a means of accomplishing the underlying goal of extrajudicial targeting and punishment — the removal of “targeted individuals” (and by extension, their families) from mainstream society.

   Victims of extrajudicial targeting also charge that their family finances are sabotaged and ultimately expropriated by secret government programs ostensibly implemented to disrupt the financial dealings of terrorists and drug traffickers. In effect, they say, they are victimized by a parallel system of transaction processing sold to lawmakers as necessary components of the “war on terror” — not as an ideologically-motivated tool of social control and political repression.

   There is no rational or moral defense for this horrific domestic torture — what could be termed a campaign of “slow genocide” — which is happening right now in cities and towns across America. The “targets” typically pose no danger to society. They are victims of a political system that has institutionalized — and has attempted to legalize — extrajudicial punishment. The “war on terror” is the pretext that has been employed to effect a wholesale bypass of the judicial system, and of constitutionally protected rights.

   This is the transformation of American democracy into a fascist police state — an American Gestapo, a frontal assault on our constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and liberties.

   When the pervasiveness of this officially sanctioned and funded domestic terrorism and torture is confirmed by “official sources” — in recent times, the only sources that much of the mainstream media consider sufficiently credible — any excuses for the excesses that heretofore have come to light will be exposed as evil sophistry.

   That day is coming, and very soon. In the meantime, please read related articles at http://members.NowPublic.com/scrivener and help secure the legal assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union (www,ACLU.org) or any other organization capable of bringing justice to the untold thousands of victims of extrajudicial targeting, punishment, and TORTURE in America 2008.

   FOR MORE ON DOMESTIC TERRORISM IN AMERICA:

   http://www.nowpublic.com/world/american-gestapo-state- supported-terrorism-targets-u-s-citizens

   http://www.nowpublic.c om/world/targeting-u-s-citizens-govt-agencies-root-cause-wall-street-f inancial-crisis

2. Alex Katz Says:
   Jan 11th, 2009 at 9:08pm

   A new forum on Guantánamo Bay at the Boston Review website may be of significant interest to you. With fresh news from the Obama administration about its closing, this forum should be of particular interest to you.

   We have assembled some of the top legal scholars on the issue to debate and discuss the closing of Guantánamo Bay. Below is a description of the forum that you could use on your blog if you’d like. All of the articles can be found at bostonreview.net/cole

   The Boston Review website now features a forum on the prospects and problems of closing Guantánamo Bay. In the lead article, David Cole, Nation legal affairs correspondent and Georgetown law professor, argues for a surprisingly middle of the road position, acknowledging both the need to stop ongoing abuses and maintain flexibility in the fight against al Qaeda and other threats. Cole’s approach permits preventive detention, but restricts it to a limited class of enemy fighters—not extending it to “suspected terrorists.” This policy is, he says, “sensitive to both security and liberty.”

   The forum also features three responses to Cole’s proposal. Joanne Mariner, director of Human Rights Watch’s Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, rejects preventive detention and suggests some alternatives. Eric Posner, professor of law at the University of Chicago, criticizes the limited scope of Cole’s approach to detention and attempts to justify the restriction on civil liberties by the Bush administration. Finally, Robert Chesney, professor of law at Wake Forest University, agrees philosophically with that Cole proposes but criticizes Cole’s legal method for tackling the issue.

   Read it all on bostonreview.net .

   The Boston Review dedicates itself to providing informative, relevant content. We hope that your blog is interested in this forum on Guantánamo Bay. Please let us know if you have any questions.

   Thanks,

   Alex Katz
   Boston Review Editorial Assistant

3. sam Says:
   Jan 12th, 2009 at 6:11am

   great article..this needs to stop and if there is a group that can do it i know its the ACLU group...

4. Ryan Says:
   Jan 12th, 2009 at 9:08am

   It would be great if a sign made Obama do what is right, but it's not going to happen. Even if Guantanamo is one day closed, the same prisoners (and- of course - new ones) will be transferred to the same place with a different location and name.
   http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com

5. Marc Stager Says:
   Jan 13th, 2009 at 12:15pm

   Dear Mr. President.

   Don't close Guantanamo. Not yet.

   Granted, there have been horrible abuses against the prisoners there, but those, hopefully, have stopped. And it's been a grossly inefficient institution, costing $60,000,000 per year to operate, and with 2200 employed to run the facility housing 248 inmates, that makes it approximately nine service personnel at a cost of over $240,000 per year per prisoner,

   Don't close it - reform it.

   Either a prisoner is charged with a crime and gets his day in court, represented by competent and well prepared legal counsel, or he is set free. Immediately. Already 500 prisoners who had been held without being charged with any crime have been released, some after as many as six years of confinement and often torture. For those others who have never been charged with any crime and won't be, some will find going home to be impossible, facing death or torture there. With the help of the UN, it should be possible to find them safe haven. Others will have family and friends waiting for them. There's no reason the release process should not take more than a few weeks.

   For those who have committed verifiable acts of terror, approximately 50 to 80 individuals, try them and if convicted, they serve their sentences in a reformed, downsized, efficiently run, Guantanamo prison. Not the ugly torture chamber of the Bush years. Then shut it down when the last convict has served his sentence.

6. Dave Davisson Says:
   Jan 13th, 2009 at 5:21pm

   I am ashamed of these illegal detentions, they are a disgrace to my country. I will be watching closely to see how this situation is resolved and take hope in the promises of the next administration to do so.

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