From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian.

 

The Disunited States of America

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2024

The cowboys of Texas ... Asserting control over immigration ... Operation Lone Star ... Confederate theory of secession is alive and kicking ... Usurping federal powers ... Trump judges to the rescue ... Wild defence claims in election conspiracy case ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington 

Texas has always asserted its enduring sovereignty, claiming to be the only state that was previously a republic (Vermont disagrees). The state bolted from the Union once: it was almost the first to secede in 1861, and in 1870 it was one of the last readmitted.

Why? It was among the last to ratify the 15th amendment guaranteeing the right of "males" to vote without racial discrimination. 

In fact, the original admission of Texas in 1846 was so contentious and unpopular that, alone among the states, it was done by joint congressional resolution. Texas reserved the right to subdivide into five states, which, happily, never occurred; 108 US senators, ten of them Texans, doesn't bear thinking about. 

When British author John Bainbridge's seminal book about Texas, The Super-Americans, appeared in 1961, the state was still ruled by the same conservative Democrats (today's Republicans) who defended the "White Primary" (disallowed in Smith v Allwright, 1944) and segregated state universities (struck down in Sweatt v Painter, 1950). 

The Bainbridge paperback bore the cover blurb, "an incipient fascist state". Perhaps incipient no more: the majority-minority Texas has been tightly controlled by white-minority Republicans for a generation. Since George Bush's 1994 election as governor, most state-wide officers (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney-general, members of the supreme court and court of criminal appeals) have been Republicans. 

Since the Republicans' unprecedented 2003 do-over of the previous (Democrat) legislature's 2000 census-based redistricting, the party's unshakeable gerrymanders have guaranteed perpetual Republican control of the legislature and state congressional delegation.

In 2019 (in Rucho v Common Cause), a Republican-dominated US supreme court stopped all federal judicial review of partisan gerrymanders at the moment when most gerrymanders favoured Republicans. 

With permanent government assured, Texas Republicans have taken increasingly bold stances against the federal government, and with Donald Trump's extreme Federalist Society judges now in place at all levels of the federal judiciary, the state is reasserting its independence, bringing test cases of Texas's purported sovereign supremacy in sympathetic federal courts. 

It's the 1830s and "Nullification" again, with Texas standing-in for South Carolina. Indeed, 24 of the 25 Republican governors have piled on with what is essentially the Confederate Theory of Secession.

Operation Lone Star appropriates immigration control, though states have no right or power to participate in immigration policy, a federal matter. No matter, Texas found a friend in Drew Tipton, the district judge alternating with fellow Texan Matthew Kacsmaryk as worst Trump-appointed judge.

Texas governor Greg Abbott has also attacked immigration law in Kacsmaryk's court, where ultra vires interventions in federal immigration policies have succeeded. 

READ THE REST HERE.

You might ask??

Why were these men at Guantanamo? Captured in Thailand for a bombing in Bali back in 2002.

Well maybe they are one step closer to leaving Guantanamo. We shall see.

Two Malaysian prisoners at Guantánamo Bay pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring in the October 2002 nightclub bombings in the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, that killed more than 200 people.

The guilty pleas were the first step in a slowly unfolding proceeding that began when the men, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, 48, and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, 47, were charged in 2021 — 18 years after their capture in Thailand. Sentencing is scheduled for next week.

Read the rest here.

Former U.N. Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain on Gitmo's 22nd anniversary

The former Rapporteur was a tremendous help in freeing my client, Saeed Bakhouch from the clutches of the Algerian government after his release from Guantanamo last spring. Click here for her reflections on Guantanamo and what the Biden administration could be doing....

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (@NiAolainF) is Executive Editor at Just Security. She served as the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism from 2017-Nov 2023. She also concurrently serves as Regents Professor and Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School and Professor of Law at the Queens University School of Law in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The Talking Dog.... on the 22nd anniversary of Gitmo.

 Sigh.  read the dog here---

and yes, it is exhausting and frustrating and infuriating.

And even with my two men out (and yes, my second client is now home with family- hopefully without further intrusion from the Algerian government) I still cannot fathom the idea that this place is still open.

read the talking dog here:

http://thetalkingdog.com/2024/01/11/22/

22nd anniversary of Guantanamo's opening next week- Jan. 11.

 Next week is the 22nd anniversary of the opening of the torture prison at Guantanamo. There are several events if you would like to participate in protesting the continuation of the prison:

Thursday January 11: 22 years since the Bush/Cheney regime set up the U.S. torture camp on Guantanamo, to imprison people outside the law. We demand it be closed now! Join us in cities across the U.S.

Join Vigils and Rallies Across the U.S. January 10, 11, 12 and 13

Sponsors: World Can’t Wait, Amnesty International US, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Victims of Torture, CloseGuantanamo.org, CODEPINK, Muslim Counterpublics Lab, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, No More Guantanamos, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Witness Against Torture.

We will protest this terrible anniversary, knowing that even the close of the prison will not bring justice. Mansoor Adayfi, released in 2016 from Guantanamo, has become an energetic and eloquent advocate for released prisoners, many of whom are still not "home," still separated from their families, never having received the tiniest acknowledgment of their illegitimate imprisonment, or the means to carry on their lives. Mansoor wrote in Common Dreams.org on New Year's Day:

"...Despite the fact that the transfer out of Guantánamo was supposed to offer survivors some reprieve from the abuse at the prison, many of those who have been repatriated to their home country or resettled in a third country have found themselves in either another prison or in what we call Guantánamo 2.0. Those of us who remained in Guantánamo while our brothers were released heard shocking stories about their predicaments. This includes Uyghur prisoners being released to a refugee camp in Albania and having their beards forcibly shaved by the Albanian police; a prisoner who was resettled in Slovakia and beaten by police so severely he had to be hospitalized; and many former prisoners who have simply disappeared in prisons where they were abused, tortured, and killed..."

Wednesday January 10 webinar: From Gaza to Guantanamo: Resisting State Violence & Occupation

View a presentation by Katherine Gallagher, presenter in the webinar above, to the UN

Friday January 12 webinar: Guantanamo, Where Do We Go From Here?

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Remember guantanamo survivors - Human rights day. matching funds.

 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines inalienable rights for all, including the right to be free from torture and arbitrary detention, and to a fair trial with presumption of innocence until proven guilty.  But these rights are meaningless unless upheld.  No one knows this better than Guantanamo prison survivors, who have endured countless and repeated violations of their human rights inside the prison, and whose ordeal often doesn’t end when they leave.  Please support Guantanamo survivors with a tax-deductible donation to the Guantanamo Survivors Fund.  Today on Human Rights Day and for the rest of  the year, a generous donor will match your donation dollar for dollar up to $22,000 - $1,000 for each of the 22 years that the prison has been opened in the War on Terror.  This means that with your generous donation, we can double this amount to $44,000, to help up to 15 more Guantanamo survivors and their families!    Since Witness Against Torture joined other groups to establish the Fund in April 2022, it has raised over $93,000 and provided small grants to 29 former Guantanamo prisoners.  The Fund's success depends on our support.  Donate to the Guantanamo Survivors Fund! In peace and solidarity, The WAT Organizing Team

musical tribute to the dead one....

 

One war criminal dead….so many more to go.

 And yes rolling stone nailed it. 

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under.

Letter from Washington

ROGER FITCH ESQ • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2023

The 2023 supreme court term has opened, producing understandable unease because of the bad cases on its docket. The first of such cases, predicted to be its worst, was a 2nd Amendment, "gun rights" case, US v Rahimi, and concerned the right to keep and carry firearms when subject to a domestic violence order. 

Applying Clarence Thomas's bizarre test from last season's Bruen case, the Fifth Circuit found Rahimi was entitled to access his firearms as there were no comparable restrictions on gun ownership in the 18th-century. 

That's quite true: there were few, if any, colonial prosecutions for domestic violence. 

Rahimi has now been argued, and contrary to expectations it doesn't look good for "gun enthusiasts".  The court may finally be drawing a line on "gun rights". Michael Dorf has more. 

The supreme court will also be hearing a South Carolina redistricting case that could decide the majority in the next congress. The new districting is pretty clearly racist, but since the 2019 supreme court ruling (in Rucho v Common Cause) that partisan gerrymanders are non-justiciable, the Republican legislature has rebranded the districts as merely partisan. 

It's an irrelevant co-incidence that the voters are black; they were  actually targeted for voting Democrat… 

Meanwhile, on the tenth anniversary of Shelby County v Holder, Americans should reflect on the damage caused by one of the most outrageous decisions in US supreme court history, the opinion that judicially annulled the essential section of Lyndon Johnson's landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

The VRA had only recently been reconfirmed by a near-unanimous bipartisan majority of congress; its extralegal invalidation by the supreme court has never been adequately explained.

The immediate consequence of Shelby County was the introduction of state restrictions on voting that are now notorious: the decision is directly responsible for the ten years of voter disenfranchisement that have followed in Red States, and for the gerrymandered legislatures that are able to perpetuate themselves, as  well as pack and crack congressional districts for the benefit of the Republican party.

Although the US constitution famously lacks an explicit right to vote, 49 state constitutions do contain this right. That's why it's important that state supreme courts remain free of partisan control.

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READ THE REST HERE

Special Rapporteur enters the End of Mission Statement and Mandate into UN permanent records

 

This GA report supplements the End of Mission statement and puts the mandate report into the permanent record of the United Nations.

 

The link is here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a78520-report-special-rapporteur-promotion-and-protection-human-rights

 

It may also be useful to listen to the interventions of Member States in the interactive dialogue, a number of whom made strong statements about the necessary closure of the facility as well as reparation and remedy to those previously and currently detained there.

 

The link to the interactive dialogue is here:

 

https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1u6y61hz3

 

Some Good News UPDATED

 On April 20th of this year my last client at Guantanamo was released from the that hellhole after 21 years of detention with no charges ever filed against him. When he was released it was expected that he would be in the custody of the Algerian government for about 10 days. What was not expected, but what happened, is that the Algerian government threw him in prison. It was a fiasco that our government should have prevented - and in fact I had been assured by our state department representatives that everything was taken care of and he would be safe- but in fact the state department did not to insure Saeed's safe transfer. Now, after almost 6 months, Saeed has apparently been released. I am still trying to get confirmation on his release and also confirmation about his health- which I understand is not good.  

My thanks go out to all of the organizations that stepped in to help put pressure on my government to do the right thing- and the Algerian government to release Saeed.

And Special thanks to Fionnuala Ni Aolain the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism and her staff  for their help in righting this wrong. 

Saeed is going to need a lot of help after the trauma of 21 years of captivity and torture. I don't expect he will get that help from my government or the Algerian government but one step at a time.

UPDATE-  true to form,  the State Department is not responding to my request for more information. However, I did learn through my own sources that yes, Saeed has been released, but unfortunately he is released pending his trial. In other words the Algerians are still planning on trying him for something or other related to his 21 year detention at Guantanamo.

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

 

The travesty of America's judiciary

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2023

Transformation of SCOTUS ... Alito and Thomas's ethical voids ... Rorting and stacking the courts in the Red States ... Circuit mischief ... Trump judges on the loose ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington 

After Donald Trump's presidency, no US government institution, however respected, may be considered safe or immutable. 

Perhaps the most striking change has been the installation of a reactionary and theocratic majority on a rogue supreme court.

The court's new term is about to start, with grave consequences likely; with a prospect that the court may claim even more power. 

Perhaps it's time to reflect on the court's transformation under its tiresome Chief Justice John Roberts, in the years leading up to this term. In the view of the veteran court observer Linda Greenhouse, the CJ has already achieved everything he set out to do in 2005.

He had the help of justices who had all worked in Republican administrations (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch,  Kavanaugh) or participated as loyalist Republican lawyers in Bush v Gore (Kavanaugh, Barrett).

During the CJ's early years, the sleeper cell of Sam Alito (appointed 2005) and Clarence Thomas (1991) lay low, awaiting the moment some timely death (e.g, that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) might make them part of an originalist majority. 

The Republican Senate's refusal to confirm Obama's appointee Merrick Garland (now Biden's AG) brought forward plans, and the unexpected 2016 election of Trump fully activated the two men and their intractable rightwing agenda - witness last year's full-throated implementation by Alito of Catholic abortion policy (Dobbs), and Thomas's expansive, indeed shocking, gun decision (Bruen).

Justices Thomas and Alito both have shocking ethical standards, but the court has declined to adopt an ethics code. Alito actually claims congress has no power to legislate respecting the court, but that's clearly wrong.

Compounding his own ethics problems, Alito recently gave a controversial WSJ interview refuting a yet-unpublished Pro Publica article about him. The interviewer? A lawyer with business before the court. 

Alito: enforcing Catholic abortion policy on the court 

Thomas's ethics offences are even greater, and arguably impeachable. 

One law prof's suggestion: a declaratory judgment of violations under the federal recusal statute, to "clarify for the voters whether they should accord legitimacy to the high court". 

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READ THE REST HERE.

Lest we forget...

 

THE TALKING DOG ON 9-11..(fixed)

Our 9/11 that is...

 The real (most poignant, anyway) legacy of 9-11, near as I can tell, is that the US government’s official policy went from torture is wrong and a serious crime (indeed, a crime against humanity) to what we’re doing isn’t really torture and if it is torture it’s not a big deal, and FUCK IT, TORTURE IS AWESOME! A military judge at GTMO of all places… kind of disagreed, and in an old school ruling, held that torture is still… a problem. Not a problem for likely Republican nominee Donald Trump, of course… who is in the torture is awesome camp. Oh, did I say that out loud?

Read the rest here.

Military Commission Judge says no to torture

 

From Andy Worthington:

At the heart of Col. Acosta’s measured and devastating opinion is an appalled recognition that the extent of al-Nashiri’s torture, and its location with a system designed to break him and to make him entirely dependent on the whims of his interrogators to prevent further torture, made it impossible for him to have delivered any kind of uncoerced self-incriminating statement to the "clean team" who interviewed him in 2007.

To establish this compelling conclusion, Col. Acosta painstakingly pieces together a narrative of al-Nashiri’s torture that tells this brutal story in more agonizing and forensic detail than any previous account has done, drawing largely on the accounts of al-Nashiri’s torture in the revelatory 500-page unclassified summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report about the CIA torture program — technically, the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program — which was released in December 2014, on the testimony of numerous experts called by the defense team in hearings between July 2022 and June 2023, and on the testimony of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two staff psychologists from the U.S. Air Force SERE school, who were recruited to direct the torture program on the ground.

Read the whole 50 page Opinion here.

Read Andy Worthington's entire piece here.