justice

Klaus Pfeiffer

Klaus Pfeiffer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:06:42 -0700

Born in Piene, Germany in 1952.
Emigrated to Saint Louis Park, Minnesota in 1956.
Joined US Army in 1970.
Served in 1st Calvary Division in Phuc Vein, Vietnam.
TDY with 1st Marine Air Wing in Marble Mountain near Da Nang, Vietnam.
Served in 1st Aviation Division, US Army, at Dong Ba Thin, near Cam Ron Bay, Vietnam.
Honorably discharged in 1972 to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Spent several years searching for happiness in every conceivable place. Wound up at the bottom of a self excavated trench with holes in my arms and a big one in my head.
Moved to California in 1978 to try and establish a relationship with my father who I had been at odds with most of my life.
Managed to find a job as a swordfish spotter on a commercial fishing vessel, the Volare. The beginning of what would become my "life of Riley."
After a rough start and an unwillingness to give up became good friends with dad and enjoyed a father son relationship the way it is supposed to be by the time he died in 1982.
Attended Mira Costa College in Oceanside on the GI bill. Received an AA degree in set design.
Began working construction as a laborer after college.
Learned how to snow ski at Big Bear Lake, which has proven to be a new lease on life ever since.
Attended welding school on the GI bill.
Attended Control Data School of Micro-Electronics courtesy of EDD of California. Graduated top of class.
Continued working in construction now as steel painter. Working at high elevations, in confined spaces, and frequent sand blasting.
Tried my hand at self employment after re-uniting with a college chum. Formed a set design and construction company called Get A Grip and prospered in the very limited market of San Diego. Involved in several hidden camera commercials for Tylonol. Involved in several shots for Times-Warner. Involved in several local Toyota commercials as well as many live event stages and studio sets. However my college chum had a cohort who became a major thorn in the flow of energy and thus business. After a confrontation I elected to resolve my interests in the venture and sadly said good bye.
Returned to construction as an apprentice operating engineer. Have been employed by most if not all the large construction engineering companies in San Diego. I have been employed operating trenchers, forklifts, loaders, rollers, bulldozers, scrapers, cranes, elevators, man lifts, and tractor trailer rigs. I have decked on several dredges as well as a tug boat.
Then the Great State of California changed the emission standards regarding off-road construction equipment in 2006 and the excavating and grading industry died overnight.
A picture of well planned political despotism has become ever increasingly clear. It has been years in the making, and its gradual and incremental deployment has all but hidden the insidious roots and purposes of the global elite and their extraordinary greed and avarice.

Perry Godwin

Perry Godwin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:52:37 -0700

The People for Positive Social Change (LCC-P4PSC) is a Lansing Community College student group under the auspices of the LCC Student Life & Leadership Office. The primary focus of LCC-P4PSC is to take action on political, social, and environmental issues involving peace, justice, equality, fairness, human rights, and sustainability that affect ourselves, the college, and the communities in which we live. In accordance with our mission, we do what we can to educate and inform people about what we see as the relevant problems of our times.

The mission of the LCC People for Positive Social Change group is: “Observing human rights for all, we will use our resources to improve our community in concrete, practical ways by contributing our time, philosophical arguments, love, and physical labor. As our ultimate goal, we seek peace – in all its various forms – from wisdom and serenity, to the absence of warfare, to a harmonious dynamic between humans and the natural world.”

P4PSC is affiliated with the Peace Education Center (PEC), the Greater Lansing Network Against War and Injustice (GLNAWI) group, and the LCC Sustainability Committee. We maintain an active presence on the LCC campus, where we provide counter-recruitment information to students, organize in opposition to the war in Iraq, support peace in Palestine and the Middle East, and work to make Lansing Community College a green and sustainable campus.

America Needs a 12-Step Program

Kari Fulton — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:18:02 -0700

It is a Monday morning in Washington, D.C. and the children of River Terrace Elementary are walking past carry-outs, liquor stores, traffic, and plumes of smoke from the Benning Road Peaking Power Plant dancing in the sky. The dance ends with a sprinkle of pellets of chemical warfare falling onto the community below. Scientists at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry call it "particulate matter" and it has been linked to the area's high rates of asthma, bronchitis and cancer .

A few states away, at Marsh Fork Elementary in West Virginia, little children are also filing into class, smack dab in the middle of coal country. Sludge fills their drinking water, so they are told not to drink it. Sometimes they cannot even go out to play, because the cracks in the playground are oozing out toxic coal sludge. Why?

Why are these children and so many more people around the world suffering from cancer, disease, chemical warfare, increased violence and economic instability? All for the sake of fossil fuels. Brittanica Encyclopedia defines fossil fuels as, "any of a class of materials of biologic origin occurring within the Earth's crust that can be used as a source of energy. Fossil fuels include coal, petroleum, and natural gas. They all contain carbon, and were formed as a result of geologic processes acting on the remains of (mostly) plants and animals that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago." This ancient source supplies 90 percent of all the energy used by industrially developed nations. It turns on our lights, heats our stoves, fuels our cars.

The Politics of Energy: How Much Capping And Trading?

In the days leading up to the America's Future NOW! conference starting June 1, we're hosting an online dialogue featuring conference speakers on the key issues they will be addressing during the conference. Join the conversation by clicking the "Discuss" link below or contribute your own post.

For almost a century, scientists have been developing technology to make us less reliant on fossil fuels. In 1910, American Engineer Frank Schuman built one of the first practical industrial scale solar plant, at Meadi, Egypt. Schuman proclaimed enthusiastically, "Sun power is now a fact and no longer in the 'beautiful possibility' stage... It will have a history like aerial navigation. Up to twelve years ago it was a mere possibility and no one took it seriously."

Unfortunately Schuman's innovative technology and his solar powered predecessors have been placed on the back burner, as world economies lean toward less expensive, but more dangerous fossil fuel. This dependence on fossil fuels has become a monkey on our back that we cannot seem to shake. Almost 100 years later, we are still facing the threats of oil shortages and struggling with an addiction to this dangerous, life threatening commodity. But why?

Why. Because the fossil fuel industry is so addicted to the profits from controlling the masses with oil and coal, that they even have the audacity to call it "clean".

Please, don't believe the hype. Ain't no such thing as clean coal. Ask the parents of the children at Marsh Fork Elementary, who live in the Appalachian mountains, and work in the coal mines blowing up mountaintops to gather up coal.

Thedirtylie.com, found that in the past twenty years, "mountaintop removal has obliterated an estimated 470 mountains in Appalachia, crushing 1 million acres of the world’s most productive and diverse temperate hardwood forests and smothering 1,200 miles of streams. At the current pace, the coal industry will have decimated a piece of Appalachia the size of Delaware - more than 1.4 million acres — by the end of the next decade."

The falling rock from mountaintop removal tumbles and hits the homes of the Appalachian people below. With one stroke, seven, nine, ten generations of memory falls to pieces. The rock breaks the homes, but the work breaks the soul.

In Nigeria, the quest and acquisition of fossil fuels has also lead to oil related violence. A 2004 Fact Finding Report by the Human Rights Watch, “Rivers and Blood: Guns, Oil and Power in Nigeria’s Rivers State,” found companies like Shell have taken over indigenous land and partnered with corrupt politicians to maintain control over oil markets and Nigeria's government. Since late 2003, the running fight for control of these villages and towns has resulted in the deaths of dozens of local people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. Schools and businesses have closed. Homes and property worth millions of dollars has been destroyed. Hundreds of mostly young male fighters have also been killed. The violence has created a profound climate of fear and insecurity in Rivers State, leaving local people reluctant to return to their homes or to seek justice for the crimes committed. Although it is dangerous, the people work in the mines because that is all they know. They are now addicted too, but crying for a twelve step program.

Please America, check-in to rehab from fossil fuels. Please America, go into rehab for our souls. We are watching the earth die, not realizing that the same things that are killing our planet are the same thing that are killing us too.Greenhouse gases are the number one cause for climate change around the world. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that over half of the greenhouse gas emissions from United States come from power plants like the Benning Road Peaking Plant, in the River Terrace Community, in Washington, DC. Another third comes from transportation and the exhaust that comes from automobiles fueled with oil from oil refineries like the ones in Nigeria's River State. As one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, our energy usage is causing the world to heat up with vengeance.

This addiction is worse than any drug, and runss so deep that most of us don't even realize we are fiends; from petrolatum jelly vaseline to cars that run on gasoline, to month after month of making ends meet to pay a light bill, or heating bill — while Mother Earth continues to be pimped for our comfort and satisfaction.

But can you really blame the people when you have fossil fueled fiends running our markets and our country? They introduced us to the good stuff and said we had to have it to succeed; to run that red-hot corvette and thaa private jet is what will really make you feel free. Unfortunately, this type of "freedom" doesn't come to many. So most people in the world are just reading the advertisement and breathing the fumes from car exhausts and jet fuels. Particulate matter slowly falling is inhaled, causing yet another child to miss a day of school. The doctor will say it's just another asthma attack.

There is another way to freedom. Today, more and more countries are revisiting the work of engineers like Frank Schuman who saw renewable energy such as wind and solar as more than just a "beautiful possibility". As an activist in the Youth Climate Movement and organizer with the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, I've had the honor to work with amazing leaders from around the world, all working together to spark a truly clean and just energy revolution that creates healthy and sustainable jobs, preserves our planet and frees millions of people around the world from addiction to fossil fuels.

In 2007 the Energy Action Coalition, which is made up of 50 organizations, including EJCC, came together to host the first ever youth summit on the Climate Crisis. The event gathered together over 6,000 young people from the U.S. and Canada. With Power Shift 2007, we held the largest lobby day on climate in U.S. history. Power Shift 2007 engaged a nation and helped to make climate change and renewable energy a major topic in state and national elections.

In January of 2009 the Energy Action Coalition came together once again within the first 100 days of President Barack Obama's term for Power Shift 2009. Through Power Shift 2009, we gathered 12,000 young people from around the U.S. and the world, all in solidarity for a truly just renewable energy economy. We gained the attention of our local senators and congress people by storming the halls of Capitol Hill, wearing green hard hats symbolizing a unified call for more green jobs and investment in a new green economy.

With a new administration, the voices of the Youth Climate Movement and the calls from the grassroots advocacy of communities living near the coal fields, power plants and oil refineries are finally starting to be heard. On March 24, 2009 the Environmental Protection Agency announced it will suspend and review permits for two mountaintop removal coal mining operations — and putting hundreds more mountaintop coal-mining permits on hold until it can evaluate their impact on our nation’s streams and wetlands. On April 17th, the agency announced its findings from a 2007 Supreme Court Ordered report and found that greenhouse gases are a serious threat to public health and welfare. With a sense of hope for the future, EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson announced, “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations....This pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

Within the first 100 days of the Obama Administration, the United States has taken the first steps in a twelve step process to end our addiction to fossil fuels. We have acknowledged that we have a problem and it is directly connected to the fossil fuels we consume. If we want to live free, if we want to continue living in our perceived luxuries, we must take a moment to reduce our waste, reduce our pace of energy consumption, and thinkt.

Today is the time to make a decision. Just like the workers in the coal mines of West Virginia, we are reaching our rock bottom and it is time for an intervention and introduction to a twelve step program to end this addiction to fossil fuels. By reviewing the twelve step program developed in 1935 by Alcoholics Anonymous founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, I have created 12 steps the United States and the American people must take to alleviate this addiction and truly reach Eco-freedom and Environmental Justice.

Step 1. Admitting we have a problem, and that the United States is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. We are dependent on unhealthy and unstable fossil fuels, and are playing a role in the destruction of ourselves, others and the planet.

Step 2. Start to believe there is a power higher than ourselves. For whatever reason, that higher power allowed us to live on this planet. We must give thanks by tending to this planet as the planet has tended to us.

Step 3. Make a decision to embrace the "WE" mentality instead of the "ME" mentality. The world is more that one person. At this stage, we begin to live our lives with conscious respect for the planet and all beings inhabiting this world.

Step 4. Take a soul searching and fearless inventory of our personal practices, and the social circumstances that have allowed this addiction to fossil fuels to run our lives.

Step 5. Continue our soul searching quest, and publicly admit to ourselves, Mother Earth, and the world the exact wrongs we have done to the earth and to our bodies through this addiction to fossil fuels.

Step 6. Be entirely ready to transition off of fossil fuels and unsustainable habits, purchases and practices.

Step 7. Work together to create a grassroots and mainstream culture of support in removing our countries over materialistic and consumerist shortcomings that allow this addiction to fossil fuels to grow larger as a threat to our planet and our humanity. Humbly ask and listen for guidance and support from Mother Nature and the international greater good.

Step 8. Making a list of people countries and environments we have harmed and be willing to make amends to them all. This will be quite a feat for United States, or almost any developed nation, to accomplish. However, in our own lives we can begin by making a list of environmental hazards in our communities or in communities that may receive the waste from our community.and pledging to advocate for land remediation and support with environmental justice concerns.

Step 9. Making direct amends to the communities, countries and environments that we have harmed due to our addiction to fossil fuels, except when to do so would injure them or others. While we must make amends for our wrongs, we must listen to the needs of people we have wronged first, and make sure they even want our help. We can make direct amends to the earth and to communities impacted by our environment by giving back through tree planting, advocacy work, fundraising support for local grassroots actions and clean-up/service projects to restore our communities and our environment.

Step 10. Continuing taking personal inventory and not be afraid to admit when we are wrong. As a world leader, America must shred an misconceived image of superiority. This image has helped greatly in allowing us to fall into one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. At this step we won't allow our pride to keep us from saving people and the planet.

Step 11. Staying connected and in tune with a higher power, grassroots community efforts and to the mission of our country that is expressed in the constitution. Through a process of deep thought and research making sure that we realize who we truly are in this world and in this universe. Becoming more aware of the deeper role America can play in protecting our environment and reducing the threat of drastic climate change.

Step 12. At this point our country will have experienced such a dramatic sociological and cultural shift that if asked we could truly work with other countries like China, India and Europe as we all overcome our addiction to fossil fuels.

However in order to reach step twelve, we must all take step one.

The Environmental Protection Agency, grassroots environmental advocates and everyday people around the world have started taking the first steps towards Eco-freedom. We are gathering together to make sure our country makes the first step as well. This year, 2009, is a critical turning point in our future. Major legislation on climate change is being debated on the floors of Capitol Hill, and in December, leaders of industrialized nations around the world will come together in Copenhagen, Denmark for the 15th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference.

For 8 years the world has been waiting for the U.S. to make a statement. This year will be the first time the Obama administration will be a part of the negotiations, and it is the hope of the world that the U.S. will take a lead in addressing global climate change by making true steps to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. The decisions we make today will decide the future of our children and generations to come. It's time to listen to seven generations from today. It's time to drop the fossil fuel habit and start creating the beautiful reality of a renewable energy economy that is based on justice, human rights and sustainability!

To learn more about what you can do to advocate for getting the United States into a Fossil Fuel Rehab program visit powershift09.org, ejcc.org and checktheweather.net.

Kari Fulton

Kari Fulton — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:49:48 -0700

Featured as a young leader to watch by both Elle and Glamour Margazine, Kari Fulton is a noted activist in the Environmental Justice and Youth Climate Movement. Currently she is the National Campus Campaign Coordinator for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative. Through EJCC Fulton works to mobilize young people of color around environmental justice and campus sustainability. Recently Fulton was awarded the Brower New Leaders Award (Earth Island Institute) and the Damu Smith Power of One Young Professional Award (Deep South Center For Environmental Justice at Dillard University). Currently, Fulton acts as a spokesperson for the Energy Action Coalition is a senior fellow with Young People For the American Way (YP4) and a member of the YP4 Leadership Academy. She is also a graduate of the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University. In her spare time Fulton is a blogger on checktheweather.net a member of the board of directors for the Lets Raise A Million Project and Dreaming Out Loud, an after-school program in DC.

Don’t Fall For It

Eric Lotke — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:49:36 -0800

Don’t fall for it. The Republicans are attacking President-elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general. There are “red flags,” says Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, starting with the pardon of financier Marc Rich.

Don’t fall for it. Losing the election, lacking ideas about how to fix the Bush-era mess, and unsure how or even whether to attack Obama personally, the conservatives are digging into the old bag of tricks. Karl Rove is the point man. The 1990s are the time frame.

Conservatives are practiced at this attack. The talking points have long since been written and mastered. Talk radio needs the exercise. The Holder nomination represents an attempt to relive the glory days of the past.

First, the facts. In the closing days of the Clinton presidency, then-Deputy Attorney General Holder approved a pardon of questionable quality. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and fled to Switzerland. President Clinton ended the case with a pardon on January 20, 2001, the last day of his presidency. The pardon was not without some merit, although even Holder admits that “in hindsight I wish I had done some things differently.”

But some other facts are also worthy of note. Most importantly, it’s 2009. The country lost 2 million jobs last year. More than 2.5 million homes were foreclosed. The national debt doubled to $10 trillion. We’re in the midst of a recession that’s reaching historical scale. There’s a war on. Two of them. 47 million people in America don’t have health insurance.

Did I miss anything? The Interstate 35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. The levees failed in New Orleans. Thirty-six million Americans live in poverty. The cost of tuition at a public university went up 35 percent during the Bush years, while incomes dropped 1percent.

Maybe the President and the Congress could pay attention to these things. Maybe they could do something about it.

Actually, some of them are. The President-elect has put forward a plan to create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

But the Republicans are complaining about an eight-year-old pardon. The same Republicans who sat around while George Bush turned the Department of Justice into a political tool, including hiring his White House counsel as Attorney General and firing U.S. Attorneys who refused to undertake political prosecutions. Now they’re worried that this well-proven civil servant, who earned his stripes on public corruption, might have made a mistake eight years ago.

Maybe he did. Or maybe he didn’t. But the world has moved on since then. We have other things to think about. Don’t fall for the distraction of litigating this long-dead case. Resist even the temptation to point out Bush’s own dubious pardons. Our people need doctors, our bridges need building, and the economy needs fixing. There’s work to do.

Politics here count for more than anything. If the conservatives win, it energizes the base for future battles. If the conservatives lose, they are driven farther into their corner. That’s why Karl Rove chose the battleground here, on fertile Clintonian soil.

The answer for progressives is to play this one like a team. Maybe your issue is health care and jobs. Maybe it’s reproductive choice or wounded veterans or the environment. It all wraps together here. You don’t have to cheer but at least don’t pile on. Let’s band together like a movement and put the past behind us. That’s the change we need.

Devin West

Devin West — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:41:49 -0800

Using Justice Against Us

Batocchio — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:54:22 -0800

Among the many decisions facing Barack Obama is what to do about the military prison at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, and the many prisoners held there for years, in most cases without trials or charges. On a larger scale, Obama and his team will be judging the Bush administration's very notions of justice, and the world will be watching.

Everything's gotten further entangled in recent months, thanks in part to the Bush administration. On the one hand, a judge ruled that seventeen Chinese prisoners should be released from Guantánamo after being held there for seven years without evidence being produced against them. However, not long ago, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the CIA can hide torture allegations. The Pentagon has dropped charges against some Guantánamo prisoners so they can reset the clock to avoid deadlines for bringing them to trial, all with the full intent of reinstating charges later. CIA officers could be put on trial for alleged torture of a British resident. Just yesterday, "a Justice Department lawyer... urged a federal judge to continue the detention of six Algerians at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, contending they would "take up arms" and attack Americans if released." Their lawyers claim the men, who have been held for seven years, are innocent. That's not to mention all the issues of torture and general treatment, as well as the problems of a trial system Scott Horton's called "The Great Guantánamo Puppet Theater."

There are many more sorry tales, of course. Bush spoke last year about shutting down Guantánamo, but unsurprisingly, he's left it to be someone else's problem. And as David H. Schanzer writes:

Bush's decision represents a victory for Vice President Dick Cheney, who, according to reports, believes that keeping the prison open under a new administration would 'validate' Bush's detention policies. But there is no redeeming the detention and prosecution system at Guantánamo -- a system that has produced only two convictions in seven years, has been rebuked by the Supreme Court three times and has caused four military prosecutors to step down in disgust.

I don't see how the Cheney-Bush policies could be "validated," but regardless, the Obama administration will have to confront those policies and their consequences. To that end, I wanted to take a closer look at an older argument by John Yoo that I think epitomizes the Bush approach toward justice.

Yoo, of course, features heavily in accounts of the Bush administration's efforts to legalize torture, and he remains a prominent advocate for their Guantánamo trial system. On December 3rd, 2007, shortly before the Supreme Court heard arguments about Guantánamo and habeas corpus in Boumediene v. Bush, NPR ran arguments from Georgetown professor David Cole and (current Berkeley professor) John Yoo. Cole basically argued that everyone deserves a trial. Yoo argued something very different, employing some interesting rhetoric in the process. You can hear both statements here (it runs 5:22), but I've transcribed Yoo's argument:

Tomorrow, lawyers in the Supreme Court will demand that terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay get their day in federal court. Sounds reasonable. But granting terrorists this right would make for unprecedented judicial micromanagement of war. The writ of habeas corpus has never benefited enemy POWs in war, any war. In World War II, the U.S. held millions of POWs. None were allowed to use our civilian courts against us, except for the rare case of citizens who joined the Axis.

In 1950, twenty-one Nazi war criminals captured in China brought a suit, exactly like this one. They had passed intelligence to the Japanese, even after Germany had surrendered. Justice Robert Jackson, who'd been the Nuremberg prosecutor, wrote for the court that granting their plea would hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy. His words are just as true today.

We can't expect our soldiers in the field to worry about warrants, lawyers and Miranda. Making the military act like a police force will dull the sharp edge of their spears. Until September 10th, 2001, we tried to rely solely on law enforcement to stop terrorism. I don't want the military to hold POWs arbitrarily. I don't want to hold civilians. The Pentagon doesn't want to be the world's jailer. Detainees are screened and reviewed multiple times. Only those who present the highest threat or have the most intelligence are sent to Guantanamo Bay. More procedures will mean less resources and less information for fighting al-Qaeda.

This is not a case of reining in an out-of-control president. The September 11th bombings put us at war. Congress authorized hostilities a week later. But in 2006, for the first the time in our nation's history, the Supreme Court tried to grant review of POW cases. Congress immediately overturned them in the Military Commissions Act. No court has ever challenged the president and Congress during war time. But our judges have already declared abortion, race and religion off-limits from the democratic process. Allowing them to interfere in core military decisions would represent yet another grasp of power by an imperial judiciary. This time, though, it may come at a steep cost.

Yoo's argument can be dissected and challenged many different ways, but I'd argue it's overflowing with implicit assertions that are challengeable, misleading or false. To go in rough order, he suggests that: all Guantánamo prisoners are terrorists, they are all guilty, civilian courts are the wrong method to deal with them, the Nuremberg trials support Yoo's argument, soldiers on a battlefield have to issue warrants and read Miranda rights to enemy combatants, a law enforcement approach to terrorism is ineffective, such an approach allowed the 9/11 attacks, John Yoo wants justice, all Guantánamo prisoners have been reviewed, they are all dangerous, using existing trial systems would endanger the "war on terror," using existing trial systems would somehow "interfere with core military decisions," giving due process to prisoners will somehow lead to "less resources and less information," Bush is not out of control, this is all about 9/11, Bush, Congress and the will of the people are being thwarted by the Supreme Court, which is overreaching as they always do, but this time in unprecedented and dangerous fashion, and it is the Supreme Court, not the Bush administration, that is acting in an "imperial" manner and must be curtailed – or else horrible things may happen. Whew! Shorter version: We know what we're doing, these are really bad guys who deserve to be punished, and don't question us.

It would take a long time to rebut every point of Yoo's thoroughly, and that's a key element to his technique – throw out as many claims as he can, make an emotional appeal, and try to sell some key falsehoods without anybody noticing. It generally takes longer to rebut a misleading claim than to make one. Feel free to challenge any of my characterizations above, or to delve into a different line of Yoo's, but when I first heard his argument, the line that leapt out at me and that has stuck with me almost a year later is: "None were allowed to use our civilian courts against us."

Yoo's got a pretty flat delivery if you listen to the audio, but to my ear it sounds like he's trying to sound wounded here – what a horrible, horrible thing this is – but regardless, it's a bizarre argument. How can a process of justice possibly be used "against us"? Doesn't justice entail punishing the guilty and exonerating that innocent? How can that possibly be bad? Yoo says these men are terrorists. Does Yoo mean that civilian courts can't be trusted to find them as such, to keep them imprisoned, or perhaps execute them? Does Yoo mean these men don't deserve trials, because that would be too good for them? Does he mean civilian courts or the normal military judicial system can't be trusted to punish these (supposedly) evil men sufficiently? I think this last one is precisely what he's implying, but even the most charitable reading doesn't hold up well for Yoo, because of a key, false premise implicit throughout his entire argument. He uses the word "terrorists" twice in two sentences, and later on throws in Nazis and 9/11 for good measure. Yoo is claiming all these men are guilty. They have done or tried to do us harm. He wants us to accept these premises without question. His other points are largely a smokescreen compared to selling this.

Now if only there was a way to determine the guilt or innocence of these men. Hmm.

Yoo is trying to sell a bypassing of existing systems of justice here, or really justice altogether. It's similar to what Cheney, Addington, Libby, Feith and others did with manipulating intelligence to sell the Iraq War. The Bush administration has often followed this pattern, asserting that it is right, it is infallible, and don't question it. Most arguments that Bush officials or their advocates have made in defense of Guantánamo (indefinite imprisonment, not bringing charges, the treatment of prisoners, the special trial system) have depended on Yoo's stealth thesis, that everyone they've imprisoned is guilty. I also think Yoo and his colleagues are appealing to fear, a desire for vengeance, and in some cases, bigotry. It's an element that deserves its own post, but their basic pitch is: These prisoners are guilty, they're foreign, they speak a different language, and they don't look like Peggy Noonan. Who can tell them apart? And why should you care about what happens to them? They're the Evil Other, and they're scary.

I'm not going to delve into every other point of Yoo's, but there are a few others I find interesting. His last rush, talking about activist judges and "abortion, race and religion" is rather odd, intentionally vague, and almost nonsensical. It sounds like a pander to right-wing attitudes, but that breaks with the "I'm a reasonable guy" persona he's trying to sell earlier. Still, if taken seriously, is Yoo suggesting fundamental rights should be decided by majority rule? Even if we say that Yoo is somehow defending the 'will of the people,' it contradicts his relentless advocacy of unlimited power for the president. Most infamously, he asserted that no treaty or law could prevent the president from crushing the testicles of a child. Meanwhile, the "Miranda" talking point remains as popular as it is ludicrous among many conservatives, and at best is a slippery slope argument. On the war time powers front, in Boumediene v. Bush the Supreme Court somehow disagreed with the Yoo point of view, instead reaffirming that habeas corpus is a fundamental right that can only be suspended in times of rebellion or invasion. Glenn Greenwald has also delved into this issue on many occasions.

It's also noteworthy that Yoo cites Robert Jackson and invokes Nuremberg. (The case he cites, Johnson v. Eisentrager, is here. An overview is here, and refers to "German nationals" and not Yoo's more charged "Nazi war criminals." The Germans, in China, had told the Japanese about U.S. troop movements in China after Germany had surrendered, committing a crime significantly different from what was being prosecuted at Nuremberg.) In actuality, as many observers have noted, the Guantánamo trial system is the antithesis of the Nuremberg trials. Yoo also glosses over the fact that the Germans he mentions actually received a trial, something denied most Guantánamo prisoners for years. Scott Horton put it well when discussing the Hamdan trial at Guantánamo:

The Bush Administration could have handled this matter in the tradition that the nation’s greatest modern attorney general, Robert Jackson, set out at Nuremberg. Jackson personally took charge of the first prosecutions, delivering mesmerizing opening and closing statements and a dramatic cascade of evidence that targeted some of the most heinous criminals from the Second World War. Jackson had two important objectives before he reached the question of the guilt or innocence of the individual defendants: he needed to validate the fairness of the process, and he needed to demonstrate, clearly and convincingly in the eyes of the world, that heinous crimes had been committed which justified this extraordinary tribunal process. Jackson accomplished both goals. He also secured the conviction of key kingpins in the Nazi terror state. He did it all within the first year of the Allied occupation of Germany, through a process that helped transform the German people from enemies to friends. In the end, Jackson and his team demonstrated that the American tradition of justice was a potent tool to be wielded against the nation’s enemies.

By contrast, America has now endured seven years of an administration which fears the rule of law, which operates in the shadows as it contravenes criminal statutes and long-cherished traditions and retaliates mercilessly against civil servants who stand for law and principle. George Bush and his political advisors openly castigate law and justice as weaknesses or vulnerabilities–as public suspicions grow that they have darker reasons to be concerned about the law. Instead of following the historic route and using military commissions that follow the nation’s long-standing traditions, they have crafted embarrassing kangaroo courts. When the Supreme Court brought its gavel down on one of their shameful contraptions, they simply concocted another, equally shameful one, openly proclaiming an inferior brand of justice for those who were “not citizens,” exalting in the right to use torture-extracted evidence and to transact the proceedings in secret.

Or, as Lance Mannion put it, "Nuremberg? Nuremberg? Weren't the torturers the ones on trial in that one?"

Wouldn't have legitimate trials of actual terrorists, years ago, helped the Bush administration's crediblity? No one has ever said that actual, proven terrorists should not be kept in prison. Instead, critics of Guantánamo have pushed for due process, transparency, and humane treatment. They have pushed for justice, in an American tradition that includes Jackson at Nuremberg, but runs far deeper. That push for justice over the past seven years has come from both liberals and rule-of-law conservatives such as former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora and members of the JAG corps.

Yoo's premises, so central to the Bush administration's approach to justice, don't hold up well to scrutiny. They can be tested in terms of rhetoric and logic, they can be examined in terms of case law - and they can be challenged by reality. A McClatchy series on Guantánamo has shown that the U.S. imprisoned or still holds dozens or even hundreds of men who are innocent. Furthermore:

The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren't "the worst of the worst." From the moment that Guantanamo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least a third of the population didn't belong there.

There are more well known cases, too, but claiming that all these men are guilty - and so should be denied due process – becomes indefensible when one knows of innocent people, and also knows that the Bush administration knows they are innocent. The Bush administration's support for indefinite imprisonment without charges and an "inferior brand of justice" for those who actually receive a trial seems to hinge more on the issue of torture - admitting coerced confessions as evidence, squelching torture allegations, and never admitting blame. It's a subject treated in far greater depth in books such as Torture Team, The Dark Side and Angler, documentaries such as Torturing Democracy and Taxi to the Dark Side, and on quite a few blogs (law-oriented and otherwise). There's a question of whether John Yoo and some of his compatriots could be found guilty of war crimes. Seen in that light, it's not just that they continue to deny prisoners justice – they want to evade justice themselves.

The Guantánamo prison has long been some nightmare out of Orwell and Kafka. Men and women in power who fear justice are not likely to want to see it pursued. Perhaps when John Yoo said, "none were allowed to use our civilian courts against us," he didn't mean "us" as in "Americans," but rather "us" as in "me and my colleagues." The Obama administration will have plenty of messes to clean up, but this one can go far in restoring America's image in the world. It may in fact be one of the starkest contrasts an Obama administration can make, re-establishing the American tradition of humane treatment, due process and justice for all, in opposition to the perverse notion that some are infallible, unaccountable, and "more equal than others."

matty parks

matty parks — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:51:34 -0700

RN for 30 yrs, last decade in Home Health nursing. Wide exposure to complications, injustice & extortion by medical system & pharma within very broken system. Volunteer & student of mediation practice @ this time. Life-long bibliophile & daughter of social activists.

Howard Bowen

Howard Bowen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:29:19 -0700

Janet Elfring

Janet Elfring — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:29:57 -0700