musical interlude

Sometimes this is the only thing we can do... sit back and listen to the music and forget how fucked up things are:

Razak's loss in DC Circuit

My poor client is doomed to die at Guantanamo. The DC Circuit just denied his latest attempt to get the hell out of that place. Seems he should have known by 18 days that he was staying at the wrong guest house...
I could go on about how fucked up this is -- on so many levels-- but it will do no good. You can read about it here.

Speaking of where we are, how about how did we get here...

We (here in the US of A) got here because, as a nation, we were too busy watching TV, taking photos of ourselves, playing on social media and just acting like nothing mattered. Because nothing did matter. Do you want to know more of the details that are leading to the fall of the US?

Then read this:

And here we are....

It has been a while since I have linked to my friend The Talking Dog. The dog has been living in the trenches of NYC (Brooklyn to be exact) and reports on life from there is his latest post (you can read the entire post here, which I do recommend):

And so, now approaching two months of a local "half-assed lockdown" (the powers that be only recently mandated facial masks in all closed spaces like grocery stores and pharmacies, and near as I can tell, public parks, and of course, the NYC subways, remain open; and it seems our very own Secretary of Education is paying people to protest public health measures as a matter of a psychotic "personal freedom" that involves the peasantry conducting armed revolt to ensure more privileges for the aristocracy), most of the United States finds itself in a strange form of house arrest (as does a huge swath of the world's population). As we approach two months of this, we note a sudden resurgence in media interest in one of our themes of permanent house arrest inside a shipping container (that would be Guantanamo Bay), we have a Pulitzer Prize winning story of one of the released men, Mohamedou Salahi (I interviewed one of his attorneys Nancy Hollander), and a new podcast out detailing Abdul Latif, one of the poor bastards still held there. Perhaps a country that has unjustly held so many men without charge or trial based on its own irrational (and carefully media driven) fears of dark-skinned people now gets a perverse form of karmic payback. Indeed, while nearly 3,000 Americans died on 9-11, the coronavirus sometimes kills that number daily, and of course, most Americans are more or less pinned down in their homes. But I digress. We typical Americans (except for the over 2 million incarcerated persons!) aren't exactly living in GTMO.

Here in Brooklyn, of course, there aren't any gendarmes who will stop one from leaving their house and walking around, although a mask and social distancing will be required (especially for people of color). Even getting in a car or the subway and "going somewhere" aren't expressly prohibited, although most public gathering spaces such as bars and restaurants are shuttered (except for take out and delivery).

And so most of us have little choice but to "stay home," the prevailing public health advice that rational public officials would dispense, except of course, for that orange monster, who keeps saying "we have to open up America," even though it was never effectively shut down in the first place. Needless to say, state and local officials who are his political allies (and hence, more likely to value money over human life, especially the lives of the non-white and non-rich) are more likely to embrace this scientifically and economically insane "strategy" which is pretty much guaranteed to destroy both countless more lives and what remains of "the economy," but our "leader" operates on a twelve-hour time scale and lives in his own peculiar media bubble where the only thing that matters are some self-selected (and always favorable) polling data and of course that day's Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Mother's Day-- USA

Trump Death Clock

40,371

Estimated Portion U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction

In January 2020, the Trump administration was advised that immediate action was required to stop the spread of COVID-19. According to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there was a lot of pushback” to this advice. President Trump declined to act until March 16^th. Epidemiologists now estimate that, had mitigation measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.

More at:

Get updates by clicking on the title above:

Total Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Cases:	1,212,415
Total Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths:	67,285
Deaths Due to POTUS Inaction (60%):	40,371
* Source: https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily

Pulitzer Prize Winner -- Ben Taub

You might remember Ben Taub's investigative piece "Guantanamo's Darkest secret" in the New Yorker. Ben just won the pulitzer prize for that wonderful writing.

"Taub won in the feature-writing category for a devastating account of a man who was kidnapped, tortured, and deprived of his liberty for more than a decade at Guantánamo Bay. Despite this litany of horrors, Mohamedou Salahi survived with his spirit intact and gained a new friend, a former Guantánamo guard with whom he reconnected after he was released. In its citation, the Pulitzer Board praised Taub for “blending on-the-ground reporting and lyrical prose to offer a nuanced perspective on America's wider war on terror.”

Congrats to Ben and thank you for brining Mr. Salahi's saga to the forefront.

Asadullah Haroon Gul, a detainee still held at Guantanamo wrote this article for the Afghanistan Times:

I AM A SERIAL NUMBER

Faizi mansour April 5, 2020 Latest Updates, Nation Leave a comment 141 Views

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April 22, 2020

By Guantánamo ISN 3148 (aka Asadullah Haroon)

The Guantánamo military base is almost invisible to the world; the detainees held here have totally vanished from the world. We are nameless, faceless, referenced by an internment “serial number” – as if we are pieces of hardware, no longer human. A name makes a person individual and unique.  Serial numbers are for inanimate objects. I am No. 3148. It is easy to mistreat something called No. 3148. A number does not have dignity.

Importantly, then, I am also Asadullah Haroon, the Afghan citizen from Nangarhar. My wife waits year after year for news that her husband is coming home. My infant baby, Mariam, is now a teenager.

Twenty-three of us “nobody numbers” remain here in Guantánamo. None is Afghan but me, so there is nobody who speaks either Pashto or Dari and I am in danger of losing my language. At least No. 1094, No. 1460 and No. 1461 are Pakistani, and we can speak some Urdu. No. 1460 was so badly tortured, though, that he would rather live in another block essentially alone with his sad thoughts.

Read the rest here.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under

SORRY FOR THE LATE POST- I HAVE BEEN A BIT BUSY!

The war-time president

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2020

Managing the pandemic in the US of A ... Letting the virus out of the bottle as the president bloviates and botches ... Ideology trumps science ... Misinterpreting the Defence Procurement Act ... Disbanding and closing programs for pandemic preparedness ... US manufacturers busily exporting vital equipment ... Oversight provisions in rescue legislation to be ignored ... Roger Fitch's Letter from Washington 

....

"I didn't know people die from the flu."

Donald Trump, unaware that Frederick Trump, his enterprising immigrant grandfather, died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

*   *   *

"We've had a big problem with the ... woman governor ... from Michigan. We don't like to see the complaints ... Now, she wants a declaration of emergency, and, you know, we'll have to make a decision on that ... [but] all she does is ... blame the federal government."

Donald Trump, bullying a blue state governor through threats to withhold coronavirus aid.

*   *   *

"They had things [in the Democrats' proposed legislation], levels of voting that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." 

Donald Trump, conceding that improved access to voting during the pandemic would cost his party office.  

*   *   *

Character is destiny, and America's kakistocrat president is dealing with the coronavirus crisis as only he would. The Post has an overview of Trump's shocking, dysfunctional response.

Mr Trump seized on the crisis, not to save lives, but to preen and bloviate about himself, and punish Democrats, too. For example, presidential declarations of a local state of emergency trigger federal financial support and assistance, and Trump has mostly green-lighted these for Republican states, while delaying them for Democrat-governed states. More here and here.

Read the whole Fitch here.

A sad musical interlude

RIP John Prine

Could things really get even more secret at Gitmo?

The NY Times (Carol Rosenberg) has a look at what looks to be a growing culture of even more secrecy at Gitmo -- this on the heels of another judge for the military commission stepping down.
Read the story here.

h/o to Don for passing this on to me!

Gitmo during Covid- 19

For the 40 men remaining at Gitmo the risk of infection is as high as any other prison in these here "united" states. In other words, the risk is very high. This is also an at-risk population as many of the men are older now (senior category) and many have had their immune systems compromised after more than 18 years of captivity. We have heard that there has been exposure to the virus at the base, although typical of the secrecy that has surrounded this base all of the years it has been open, we do not know the specifics. New rules have been implemented and if we wanted to go and visit our clients we would have to plan a trip of more than 14 days as we would be quarantined the first 14 days. That leads to many questions, for example, how would we get food while quarantined? Anyway, I don't think many of us are thinking of heading that way right now. The trip is also made difficult by the lack of flights going down there and the inability of habeas counsel to utilize some of those flights.
Other measures are in place if one of us decides to make the trip but most of those make sense in the time of this virus -- having your temperature taken, staying 6 feet away, no sharing of food, etc.

Ramadan starts in late April and that will add new challenges as many of the men will be fasting during the day. One of the habeas counsel has, for the last few years, taken on the task of gathering items for the men for the feast at the end of Ramadan. Many of us contribute to her effort but clearly the big job is collecting everything and getting it down to the base. Hats off to Beth for coordinating that effort.

musical interlude

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT....

Musical interlude during a "stay in place" order...

Yesterday at 5pm (1700 hours) Illinois became the 4th state to order everyone to stay in place in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. At 7pm last night Chicagoan's (and others across the state and in other states) joined in a mass singalong --- from their porches, balconies, backyards, open windows etc. Read about it here. The song was Bon Jovi's "Livin on a prayer..." and Bon Jovi heard about it too and joined in.

So, in honor of our group effort to stop the virus I leave you with this: