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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#41

Post by mudil »

dublinben wrote: post #21
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

dublinben:

Can you substantiate your claim that Congress is responsible for this?

Seems like Obama is the Commander in Chief and is the head of the Executive branch...

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#42

Post by nwh »

skyraider wrote: post #22
pixelcort wrote: post #8

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

Build better proxies/tools of resistance, generally fight authority, just be a hacker and be on the lookout for ways to empower the downtrodden. The hacker instinct is to get around the system and fight authority. There's another hacker instinct, too, which is being totally and absurdly pedantic. Maybe there is an idea here. Sometimes the first world chooses leaders who are, at day's end, okay with a some of the horr…

Unfortunately if people can go to jail for increnting a variable in a public URL, any effort of this nature is sure to draw the fire of United States law.

I don't even live in the place, and it still scares the crap out of me.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#43

Post by atsaloli »

pixelcort wrote: post #8

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

If you're in the US, pixelcort, may I invite you to consider the Downsize DC effort? (http://www.downsizedc.org/)

Here is a quick summary of what DownsizeDC.org is about:

We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.

The strategy of Downsize DC is to leverage technology to make it easier for people to make their voices heard to the State. They make it easier to contact your Senate and House representatives regularly.

The primary bill DownsizeDC is advocating is the Read the Bills Act -- make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law. That action alone would slow down the legislating machine.

The other one is the One Subject at a Time act -- make each bill deal with one subject at a time, instead of bundling subjects, which would make it very clear about politician's positions on various issues, and let each issue stand on its own merit.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#44

Post by stellar678 »

pixelcort wrote: post #8

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

It's pretty overwhelming at times because it seems so big, far away, impenetrable. But there are some contributions you can make pretty easily:

1. Financial support to the organizations fighting for whatever your believe in. (See: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International)

2. Talking about it. If our politicians think we don't care, there's no pressure to do anything.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#45

Post by daegloe »

lwat wrote: post #26
dublinben wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

What was his solutions? Moving the detainees to another facility? Or did he actually want to give them trials and send the innocent ones home?

No state will have them. Literally.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#46

Post by Locke1689 »

Zak wrote: post #38
Locke1689 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility. Introducing them to the justice system would require the same. As every American should know, Congress holds the purse strings here and has denied said request. The President has no power here.

It seems unlikely that Congress micromanages the budget of the Department of Justice to the degree that it could not initiate prosecution of detainees in the civilian legal system. Whether that would be a reasonable solution is debatable, but it's certainly within the President's authority to attempt. There's always the nuclear option: threaten to release the detainees if Congress doesn't provide funding for another…

This back and forth has happened many times. The Defense Appropriations bills that have passed Congress have forbid the President from using fund for any of these activities.

There is no nuclear option. Veto is not an option.

What people don't seem to understand is that this isn't a failure of democracy to act: this is what the American people want. We don't care that Guantanamo is open and we'd rather see it stay open than give these people a chance at a fair trial.

We are a government by the people, of the people, and the people have spoken.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#47

Post by trimbo »

dublinben wrote: post #21
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

Guantanamo has nothing to do with congress. It was effectively authorized in this 2001 executive order:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/mo-111301.htm

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#48

Post by natmaster »

ck2 wrote: post #10

Obama could order it closed tomorrow. Congress could refuse to fund that action but it would still be ordered closed and his hands would be a tiny bit cleaner. But he likes his drones and gitmo now, so that's pretty much it until Hillary becomes president and I think she likes the idea of gitmo too.

It costs money to run Gitmo, not to stop running it. How would closing it require more money?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#49

Post by laurent123456 »

Zak wrote: post #36
tamersalama wrote: post #20

As a non-American - can I ask an American to submit a white-house petition. Perhaps as a form of the least that can be done.

It's been tried. Somebody should probably try again. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/close-guantanamo-d...

It's strange that the result of the petition is apparently not public. I would expect this kind of petition to largely meet the signature threshold.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#50

Post by asveikau »

jebblue wrote: post #23
richardjordan wrote: post #3

The hypocrisy of the New York Times in printing this is shocking. The newspaper which did so much to whip up hysteria during the years of the Bush administration now trying to raise concerns about the inmates of Guantanamo is shockingly cynical. It's a shameful state of affairs that our political process is so broken we cannot deal with this situation in a civilized fashion, with investigations, trials and an end res…

>>The newspaper which did so much to whip up hysteria during the years of the Bush administration I lived through those years, I don't recall people running around the streets of American cities in a state of hysteria.

I remember those times as well. I remember how they convinced so many people that the biggest issue facing the United States was Saddam Hussein ... Even liberals were buying it, or prefacing their statements with "I know he's a bad guy who has to go right away, but..." It was pretty crazy.

Or, how about that they successfully convinced the American voter to elect more Republicans in 2002 because ... Saddam. Makes no sense right? But it worked. It was successful enough to convince the opposition party to also support the war.

Let's not forget that Dick Cheney's office leaked a fake story to the New York Times, then cited that story as a reason for going to war... People forget that now, and just how fucked up it is.

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