America's Guantanamo

I really, really want to tell you about the Rijksmuseum’s website, which has to be the most totally cool museum website around. Where else can you get a tab for “immoral women” and then see a collection of scandalous ladies—all right, women—from eight centuries of Western Art? Oh, and you can download these immoral women—quite a feat—and the resolution is high quality. No more blurry images. And best of all, the good Dutch have decided to give all away for free. So that means that if you want a tattoo of the night watchmen on your chest—and I’m very much considering it—you can go right ahead.

I also really, really want to tell about Amanda Palmer, who is following a parallel track with the Rijksmuseum. She has a band—a mixture of cabaret and something-or-other-else—and she has decided to give her music away for free. It seems her CD with a major label sold “only” 25,000 copies and that wasn’t good enough. So she cut loose from the label, and gave her music away. Why? Well, a fan approached her after the show, gave her ten bucks, and told her sheepishly that he had burned a copy of her CD from a friend’s CD. And he felt bad. So then Amanda decided to give her music away, but ask for donations. And guess what? It’s working!

In addition, I really, really want to tell you about a seriously unlucky or untalented guy working on ripping up the street in front of my apartment. What he is supposed to be doing is making six inch holes in the pavement. What he has just done is perforated a water main—for the second time in three days. Yes, last Friday there was a geyser of water spewing ten feet upward in the air; Puerto Ricans were merrily saluting him, tourists were snapping photos. Today, more ingeniously, he has covered the geyser with a plywood plank, and is using the jackhammer contraption on his tractor to hold it down.

As interesting as all this is—and you should definitely check out the Rijksmuseum website—I cannot, as a responsible blogger, neglect my duties. So here it is—a pop quiz of only one question….

1.     The country that has held a political prisoner for the longest period of time is

a.     China

b.     Nigeria

c.     Cuba

d.     The United States of America

And the answer is…

The USA. Yes, our country—OK, my country—jailed Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican Vietnam veteran, 32 years ago for something called seditious conspiracy. And today, 54 minutes ago, the mayoress of San Juan got into a replica of the cell in which López Rivera currently resides. In this, she is joined by several other mayors, writers, entertainers, and noteworthy folk.

So what did López Rivera do to warrant 32 years in the can? After all, the average murder sentence is a bit over 10 years—so was he a multiple killer?

No. His crime was to be associated with FALN—the Puerto Rican nationalist group which yes, did over 100 bombings. However, López Rivera never was charged with any bombings, but was instead brought in on seditious conspiracy, armed robbery, and moving stolen vehicles across state lines.

He wasn’t alone—there were at least 14 Puerto Rican political prisoners who had received, in one case, 90 years in jail. That prompted Bill Clinton, in 1999, to offer commutation with parole to all of them. Twelve said yes, López Rivera and another said no. López Rivera’s sister explained that he felt that exchanging prison for parole was simply to move the prison outside.

OK—you can argue: he had his chance, he didn’t take Clinton’s offer, why feel sorry for him?

You can also say that it is totally unreasonable—no, let’s not mince words. It is outrageous and a heinous violation of human rights to be holding this guy in jail for 32 years for nothing more than armed robbery, moving stolen vehicles and—essentially—bad think.

Oh, and the sentence—how long will it last? Well, his next parole review will be in January of 2026, at which point López Rivera will be 83—not an age routinely associated with violent behavior.

Nor is it only the length of time that López Rivera has served—it’s also the fact that for twelve years of that time, he was in total isolation. The prison has also refused to let him speak to the press since 1999, and they have refused as well to allow him to attend the funerals of his father, mother, and sister. They even refused to let him purchase more telephone time so that he could be in contact with his family during the illnesses preceding these deaths.

Everything on this island is political. But today, members of all three parties are getting into cages built on town squares in protest against this outrageous jailing.

Well, you may be wondering, how long is his sentence? 70 years.

He’ll be 107 years old.

Monday Morning Workout

Well, it’s Monday morning and let me get right down to work. The question of the day is whether or not the FBI possibly dropped the ball in not following up a request from the Russian government to check out why Tamerlan Tsarnaev wanted to spend six months in Russia.

For those of you who have just emerged from spending last week at a Buddhist retreat—in which case you definitely had a better week than the rest of us—Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers who put a bang into the Boston Marathon, wasn’t working, wasn’t going to school, and had a wife and infant. So the FBI looked into the matter, and went to the house to ask, presumably, “hey, you’re not a terrorist, are you, Buddy?” And he said, “Nah, who, me?” 

(Sorry, been a while since I’ve written any dialogue—wanted to see if I still could….)

Well, that was absolutely the right answer, so the FBI went home, turned on the TV, and forgot the whole thing. Now, some of our good senators—that loveable bunch of nearly all white guys who squelched background checks last week—are raising the question. Did the FBI blow it?

Gentlemen, skip the investigation, save yourselves the dough (or better, send it to me…). Here is your answer:

Duhhhhhhh….

It’s right up there with the 20 or so Saudi Arabians who were so interested in flight school, in flying the plane but had not interest in getting it down. Or the immigration people, who months after 9/11 authorized one of the terrorists to continue to stay in the US.

OK, let me proceed to the next issue (wow, working at this pace, I’ll have the deficit whittled down by the weekend….). Should we hold the younger brother as an “enemy combatant?”

Well, you know who’s coming down where on this issue. The Republicans say yes; the Democrats say no. Now then, what’s my answer? Well, let’s rephrase the question: is it justified, in this case, to suspend the 800-year old right of habeas corpus?

The New York Times has already quoted an official who says he’s not going to “Mirandize”—and I’m surprised the Times let that get by—Dzhokhar, something that is, apparently, now constitutional. But calling him an enemy combatant puts him in the same status as all those prisoners in Guantanamo, with presumably the same stuff directed at him as at the prisoners in Cuba.

“Hey,” you say, “this kid KILLED four people, maimed over 150, and spread terror over the entire city of Boston. Of course he’s an enemy combatant!”

OK—but be careful, driving down that road; I give you the case of José Padilla, our very own Puerto Rican Taliban.

Or not—just a guy of Puerto Rican descent who grew up in Brooklyn but was arrested in Chicago and charged with some serious stuff—traveling to Afghanistan to work with al-Qaeda, planning to stage attacks in the US, and finally plotting to build and detonate a “dirty bomb,” an explosive containing radioactive material. So for three years, Padilla was held as an enemy combatant, where, in his version, this was done to him:

Padilla alleged that he was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being “periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty- four hours”; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of “stress” positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet, or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for “serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions.”

–      United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 2012.[1]

Nice, hunh? Well, for three years lawyers wrangled about the whole thing, and finally it was decided: Padilla had to be tried as a civilian. And then the government finally had to charge him, and guess what? Well, let Democracy Now tell you the story:

There is no mention in the indictment of Padilla's alleged plot to use a dirty bomb in the United States. There is also no mention that Padilla ever planned to stage any attacks inside the country. And there is no direct mention of Al-Qaeda. Instead the indictment lays out a case involving five men who helped raise money and recruit volunteers in the 1990s to go overseas to countries including Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo. Padilla, in fact, appears to play a minor role in the conspiracy. He is accused of going to a jihad training camp in Afghanistan but his lawyers said the indictment offers no evidence he ever engaged in terrorist activity."[26]

Oh, so I guess they were wrong. So sorry! Here’s what a guy named Andy Worthington had to say:

[Seventeen] years and four months seems to me to be an extraordinarily long sentence for little more than a thought crime, but when the issue of Padilla's three and half years of suppressed torture is raised, it's difficult not to conclude that justice has just been horribly twisted, that the president and his advisers have just got away with torturing an American citizen with impunity, and that no American citizen can be sure that what happened to Padilla will not happen to him or her. Today, it was a Muslim; tomorrow, unless the government's powers are taken away from them, it could be any number of categories of 'enemy combatants' who have not yet been identified.

Right—we have or we think we have a video of Tsarnaev putting a backpack with a bomb right in front of an eight-year old boy. That’s pretty hard to defend.

Which may be my point—does anyone think that Tsarnaev is not going to prison? Of course not. My question is should we throw out our constitutional rights to get information through torture, information which most experts say is unreliable?

Answer: no.

Well, quite a morning’s work!