CHICAGO UNDER SIEGE

 

The Artists who Carried Guantanamo in their hands...

 Find the link below...

Edited by Spencer Ackerman

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SPENCER HERE. Longtime subscribers will remember our occasional contributor Mansoor Adayfi, who spent 15 years caged at Guantánamo Bay. Mansoor recently reconnected with two friends from Guantánamo who were part of the Biden administration's final detainee release. His friends, Moath al-Alwi and Khalid Qassim, were known within the detention camp for their artwork and solidarity. When Mansoor sent me the piece that follows, I wanted to make sure you got to know Moath and Khalid as well. 

The Artists Who Carried Guantánamo in Their Hands

From our friends down under at Justinian

 Fitch claims he is retiring.... I hope not. read the whole Fitch here.

Wither the Republic

Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Justinian in Donald Trump, Murdoch, Roger Fitch Esq, US Supreme Court, US politics

Twenty years of Roger Fitch ... He says this is his last column from Washington ... A brief history of American law and governance since Bush II ... The Roberts' court and reshaping the Constitution ... Hollowing out the Bill of Rights ... Murdoch's malign influence ... Shakedowns and bribes 

 

The American republic that followed the revolution is gone, overthrown, not by a subsequent revolution, but following an election, by the autogolpe of a fascist. 

 

History will record that the coup had the passive assistance of congress and the active support of a supreme court that, especially during its last two terms (here and here), exploited constitutional weaknesses, effectively abandoning the rule of law established by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The federal republic launched by North American colonies in 1789 lasted 236 years, more than any other modern republic. France, which began its initial republic about the same time, is in its Fifth Republic.

The American constitution was novel and superior, despite allowing the continuation of slavery in some states (slavery was at that time countenanced in many nations), and notwithstanding the fact that it was set-up by a non-representative group of white male property-owners.

There are many reasons the Americans' constitution eventually failed: the unplanned party system and bad faith of party members; the rude understanding of its basic tenets by the citizens; and ultimately, by indifferent or (as now) openly hostile supreme courts.

It's fitting that Roger Fitch has appeared in the pages of a legal journal like Justinian, as the decline of the US is closely associated with perverse actions of institutional lawyers. Under George Bush, they were incompetent (e.g, Alberto Gonzales), immoral (e.g, the Torture Memo lawyers) or simply unethical; under Donald Trump they are dedicated lawbreakers.

We've seen it before. This column began in August 2005, at the birth of the Roberts Court, with your columnist writing about the Australian David Hicks and Guantánamo, the illegal offshore detention camp set up by GW Bush in January 2002. 

Guantánamo was and remains a blot on the rule of law, with invented "enemy combatants" and kangaroo military commissions for prosecuting civilian terrorists and, sometimes, lawful belligerents. It prefigured Trump's due process-free migrant detention at Guantánamo and abroad, and officially-sanctioned torture, now outsourced to foreign despots like El Salvador's Nayib Bukele.

Bukele: running Trump's offshore prison

In August of 2005, the supreme court's chosen president, George Bush, had recently obtained a second term in an election he actually won. The supreme court's "swing vote" in decisions, the Reagan-appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, had announced her retirement. O'Connor had been one of two members of the Bush v Gore majority with no ethical conflict, and was the only one of the five majority justices to regret, if not repent, that case.

The present chief justice, John Roberts (then a DC Circuit judge) was being considered for O'Connor's position, and then, when CJ William Rehnquist died, for chief justice. Cynics said he auditioned for appointment through his role in a pending DC Circuit case, one of two Guantánamo Cases of utmost concern to the Bush administration, treating, as they did, the legality of Bush's Guantánamo scheme to imprison newly-invented "enemy combatants" in his figurative "war on terror", men apprehended, not just in Afghanistan, but as far away as the Gambia, and Bosnia, where "combatants" were abducted by the US despite rulings by that country's highest courts. 

Helpfully, Roberts ruled against habeas.

When Roger Fitch took up his pen 20 years ago this month, early in the second Bush administration, he thought the republic had already been fatally injured by the judicial coup of December 12, 2000, the supreme court's unprecedented and partisan intervention on specious grounds in a presidential election in order to install a mediocrity as president, apparently based on the brand he was wearing. 

With that president's appointments to the court, a new majority faction of conservatives coalesced with a  mission to reshape the constitution. It depended largely on altering the precedents previously established by justices of every hue, and entailed constitutional alterations that hollowed-out and subverted some of the most important protections of the Bill of Rights. 

Roberts CJ: Trump's man

Over time, the Roberts Court converted those amendments into tools and playthings of corporations, religious zealots, gun fanatics, and other corporate or religiously-badged special interests. 

The winners have been mostly conservative groups allied with and depending upon the venality of Republicans, whose election successes and fund-raising have been turbocharged, respectively, by the court's Shelby County and Citizens United decisions. The final blow: the Rucho decision greenlighting partisan gerrymanders.

The Republicans used to be the party of the establishment and upper-crust, their voices heard in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, a party that included liberal and independent voices. Sadly, after Eisenhower, and under Richard Nixon's cynical Southern Strategy, the "Grand Old Party" was taken over by special interests who had not previously played the leading role.

It was the time when the old class system in the US began to crumble under the assault of television and popular culture, when the nouveaux riche arrived on the partisan scene, when the polemicist William F Buckley and subversive economist Milton Friedman introduced a new and edgier conservatism where corporations and (conservative) Catholics began to more openly ally with monopolists and the previous untouchables: evangelicals, and the dregs of white southern segregationists. 

The finishing touches to today's Republican party were provided by the malignant influence of Australian blow-in Rupert Murdoch and his fanatical rightwing News Corp, which now owns the Wall Street Journal. 

Murdoch: fanatical

Many of the party participants in the December 2000 Putsch are still around, including two of the Bush v Gore rogue justices (Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas), the present chief justice, John Roberts, and two Republican lawyers who have since joined the court, appointed by Donald Trump.

2000 also entrenched the Republican Party in the rising sunbelt states of Florida and Texas, with the results we have seen, both nationally and in other ex-Confederate states.

≈   ≈   ≈

In 2025, the US may have the trappings of a government, but Trump's administration is a giant protection racket, a MAGA mafia presided over by the Capo and chief gangster, the convicted fraudster and felon Donald Trump, supported by a supine congress and neo-fascist popular movement. Cruelty, greed and revenge are the ruling passions of this corrupt, illegitimate regime.

Trump's shakedowns are working. Large "settlements" have been extorted in claims with no legal basis (e.g, foreign tariffs, Big Law threats and media intimidation), and Trump's crude ransom demands are being met by universities (e.g, Columbia and Harvard).

Trump and his Project 2025 minders still have a to-do list, involving destruction of various parts of the US constitution, most notably the separation of powers, by usurping the powers of congress and the judiciary. 

Trump is meanwhile flouting the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments, ignoring Article I's prohibition against bills of attainder, and emasculating civil rights in general.

Roger Fitch bids farewell to all that.

RIP Tom Lehrer

 

RIP Tom Durkin

 Fellow Chicago Guantanamo attorney Tom Durkin, died yesterday. Tom was my friend and a legendary defense attorney in Chicago -- even before he took on Guantanamo cases. You can read more about Tom here.

“We’re having a two-tiered system of justice in the federal criminal courts,” Mr. Durkin told a Sun-Times reporter during Daoud’s case in 2014. “We have cases in the war on terror, which we allow secret proceedings in because it’s so sensitive, and then we have our regular old justice system, and I think that’s … very frightening.”

Rest in peace Tom.

MEN IN CAGES

 I hope the American people are more alarmed about the men in cages today than they were in January 2002: a time when my government opened Guantanamo to the men who were randomly picked up in its "war on terror." Those men, who as we later learned were primarily innocent of any crime, were also put in cages- subjected to the elements and with buckets for toilets. 

Camp X-Ray was ultimately closed when the men were moved to a "more sheltered" prison setting (but similarly inhumane). However, if you look at the photos from Wikipedia (at the link) setting up Camp X Ray was eerily similar to the scene at today's Internment Camp being set up in Florida.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was the umbrella organization for the Guantanamo attorneys. At one point CCR moved to preserve Camp X Ray, so that we here in the U.S. do not forget our inhumanity.

Unfortunately, it seems the trumpers have not forgotten. 

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, these goons are continuing to follow the Guantanamo rule book. One big difference, is that they are now doing this on U.S. soil.  

The only question is, will they get away with this too?

I hope CCR will pick up the mantle and enlist a cadre of attorneys to fight this new battle.

Please donate to CCR NOW.

DC Circuit Court rules against plea deal

 On Friday the federal court of appeals for the district of columbia ruled that the Sec'y of Defense (under Biden) had the authority to scrap the plea deal for the men subject to the military commission and held at Guantanamo (note only 7 of the men currently held at Guantanamo are subject to the military commissions the other 6 men still being held at the base have never been charged with anything!). The deal, which was being negotiated over a period of two years, was for 3 of the men to plead guilty in return for not facing the possibility of a death sentence.  Biden's sec'y of defense Benson, who in theory should have had no say in the deal, tried to cancel it. The military court said Benson had no authority to stop the deal. However, the majority of the Court, in what the dissent called a "stunning" decision, agreed majority that Benson had the authority. It will be interesting to see if the en banc court will take the case.

I discussed the military court's decision here.

Read more about Friday's decision here. 

And on more direct routes from Ireland to the U.S.

 Both of my grandmothers are Irish descendants. My grandmother on my father's side was first generation. Her father fought for Irish independence and fled on the heels of the british. My mother's mother, from all I have gleaned, (long story) was also first generation. This is dedicated to my grandmothers.

THOSE NOT NATIVE BORN ARE IMMIGRANTS

 The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Both of my grandfathers came to the U.S. from  Canada. My father's father was second generation Canadian after his grandfather came from Ireland to Quebec. i still have family in Quebec. The last song posted here is "Ma Liberte" and sung by a famous Quebecois folk singer. With that song I honor my father's father and that side of the family on their journey to the US from Ireland through Quebec. 

My mother's father's family came to the U.S. on an unknow route from Ireland to Nova Scotia. However, we also know now that my grandfather's roots included roots to Nigeria, Africa. This song is saluted to my Nigerian roots. Of which I am equally proud.

musical interlude

 

The New Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

 "We the billionaires, and our King, in order to deform and sicken our Union, establish injustice, ensure domestic servility, weaken our peoples defenses, undermine our general welfare, and reserve to ourselves and our posterity staggering debt servitude for eternity, do herby instruct the Republicans in Congress to strip 17 million people of their healthcare, increase copays, premiums and deductibles for everyone else, cut 42 million people off of nutritional assistance, increase the national debt by 4 trillion dollars, trash renewable energy systems, increase our electric bills for the carbon kings, all to weaken and destroy the Constitution of the people of these United States of America." 

h/o to congressman Raskin.

Happy 4th of July.

TRUTH Pt. 4 (updated)

 The most dangerous part of this NO LONGER  proposed budget but the actual budget passed by our congress- is not the fact that we will be taking health insurance (and food assistance) away from millions here in this country-- but is the fact that we will officially be turning our country into a police state.  100 Billion dollars is earmarked for ICE. The amount of money being targeted for ICE should make everyone shiver. 

TRUTH Pt. 3

 

My country is as racist as they come and a majority of the voters (who happen to be white) are willing to give up a lot of their freedoms and their health insurance to hurt black and brown people.

TRUTH pt. 2

 The dumbing down of the American people started with Reagan and his cuts to education- with the help of a republican congress.

TRUTH