thank all of you for your kind words after my preceding post. i was in a very bad/sad mood, not the least of which was (and still is) withdrawal symptoms at not being able to access the internet from my home computer. this situation is ongoing, and perhaps it's even healthy as an object lesson to me in how addicted to the internet, and to Journals, i am. i'm in the college library again, finished with classes for the week (yeeehaaaaw! so there!), catching up on email, reading some journals, blogs, internet mags. i'm nervous doing it here, the sorts of things i read are likely to get me reported to the gestapo as a Suspicious Person. i might even read The Old Farmer's Almanac sometimes.
so, anyway, i'm glad Arianna H. is finished with being a candidate and all that entailed and back to writing her weekly column. she currently has a good one, on what she calls the "No Bride Left Behind Act." in my funk at not being able to get online last night, and since i had finished The Murder Room, i actually turned on the TV and surfed around. did anyone else catch whatever newsmag program that was with Maher Arar telling his story? imagine my surprise to see him there on network TV. if you are not aware of his story, and didn't catch him being interviewed, here is a series of 16 blog entries from Obsidian Wings that will bring you up to speed. and then you can join me in wondering how much of this is going on? is this a sub rosa policy of this government? sending Suspicious Persons to countries where torture is a routine affair? since of course it's not what We Do Here to obtain information or confessions. but, i guess it's okay if the Syrians or Saudis or Jordanians do it for us?
2 comments:
Sadly, I think this case is just the tip of the iceberg. I vaguely remember the uproar about this case when it happened, but lost track of it in all the other stuff going on.
The most frightening case is that of Jose Padilla -- a US citizen, captured on US soil, who's been held in a military prison as an enemy combatant for about 18 months. There have been no charges files against him, no trial, no tribunal, no visits from a lawyer or a family member.
I caught this report on 60 Minutes and was totally outraged. But as Old Hickory astutely pointed:""the Bush administration puts a lot of emphasis on fighting terrorism as a war, not as a criminal act, therefore the idea is you fight the war on terrorism without having to worry about criminal statutes. Well, that seems to apply as long as it doesn't affect someone in their own administration."
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