Day: May 26, 2024

Humanitarian aid arrives in Gaza  Voice of America – VOA News

Armenians throng center of the capital to demand the prime minister’s resignation  Toronto Star

Federal Election Commission: Sen. Menendez paid $2M to Paul Hastings law firm, defense attorneys  Appalachian News-Express

Thanks to NBC News, and the four anonymous US government officials who spoke to them, for exposing the latest scandal involving the US prison at Guantánamo Bay — the refusal of the Biden administration to release eleven men, for whom long months of negotiation had secured a safe and viable resettlement option, because of the perceived “political optics” of freeing them after the attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7.

Within Guantánamo circles, this scandal was well known, but attorneys for the men had been subjected to a Protective Order issued by the government, preventing them from talking about it, and, as a result, they had all dutifully kept quiet, as had others, like myself, who had got to know about it.

Their silence is, in itself, an indictment of how the US government operates at Guantánamo, as I also recognised when I refused to publicize it, because of the fundamentally lawless situation in which these men are held.

It’s crucial to understand that the decisions that were taken to release these men — made unanimously by high-level US government review processes — were purely administrative, and completely outside the US legal system.

This not only prevents the men and their attorneys from being able to appeal to a court if the government fails to release them; it also, more crucially, means that they are essentially prisoners of the executive branch, and that, therefore, criticizing the executive runs the risk of endangering their release.

If you’re reading this, I hope you recognize quite how grotesque this situation is — that men unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo cannot seek their release through the courts, because the decision to release them rests solely with the executive branch, and that, if senior officials fail to prioritize their release, there is nothing that anyone can do about it; there is no court to appeal to, and no way of even publicly criticizing the government’s inaction, because doing so risks the wrath of the handful of powerful men — President Biden and his senior officials — who hold the keys to the jail.

The predicament the prisoners and their lawyers face disgracefully confirms that, despite having been open for over 22 years, Guantánamo is as fundamentally lawless now as it was when the prison first opened.

A brief history of Guantánamo’s persistent lawlessness

When Guantánamo was first established, in January 2002, the Bush administration declared that the men and boys it had rounded up and sent there had no rights whatsoever as human beings.

Long years of legal struggles eventually secured habeas corpus rights for the prisoners, and led to 32 men having their release ordered between 2008 and 2010 after District Court judges examined their cases, and ruled that the government had failed to establish that they had any meaningful connection to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces.

This period, from 2008 to 2010, was the only time that the law had any meaning for the men held at Guantánamo. Sadly and shamefully, it came to an end when politically motivated appeals court judges rewrote the rules governing the habeas cases, in particular by requiring the lower court judges to regard everything submitted as “evidence” by the US government — however risible — as “presumptively accurate,” making it almost impossible for the lower courts to continue to order the release of prisoners.

Since the summer of 2010, only one habeas corpus petition has been granted by the courts, and, as the law was shut down, administrative reviews took over instead — Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, which, in 2009, reviewed the cases of the 240 men inherited from George W. Bush, and recommended two-thirds of them for release (all but three of whom were eventually freed), and the Periodic Review Boards (PRBs), established in 2013, an ongoing parole-type process that led to an additional 38 men being approved for release in Obama’s second term in office.

All but two of these men were freed before Obama’s presidency came to an end, and, after the horrors of Donald Trump’s four years as commander in chief, when Guantánamo was fundamentally sealed shut, Periodic Review Boards under Joe Biden once more began approving release for the majority of the men whose ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial had been previously upheld by the PRBs.

The eleven men who were supposed to be released in October are amongst 16 men in total (over half of the 30 men still held at the prison) who have been approved for release by the PRBs (and in three cases by the earlier Guantánamo Review Task Force). I have been focusing on their stories for the last 16 months — through posters, updated every month, showing quite how long they have been held since the decisions were taken to release them, and, between February and April this year, in a series of ten articles published on the Close Guantánamo website and on my website here.

Every month these tallies become ever more shocking. As of today, May 22, these 16 men have been held for between 607 and 1,301 days since they were approved for release, and, in the three outlying cases based on the deliberations of the Guantánamo Review Task Force, for 5,234 days.

The NBC News story

In NBC News’ story, none of the above was mentioned. The journalists who wrote it — and their editors — either didn’t know or didn’t care that these men are as fundamentally without rights as they were when Guantánamo opened — or that they are essentially prisoners of the president and his senior officials.

These are major journalistic failings, but we must at least be grateful that they have finally brought this shocking story to light.

As they describe it, the eleven men “are either citizens of Yemen or have ties to the country,” according to the officials, and “were scheduled to be resettled in Oman,” located on the south eastern coast of the Arabian peninsula, just to the north of Yemen, which successfully resettled 28 Yemeni prisoners between January 2015 and January 2017. The reason that Yemenis need resettling in third countries is because of provisions inserted by Republicans into the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which prevent the repatriation of prisoners to proscribed countries including Yemen, Libya and Somalia.

According to NBC News’ sources, officials — presumably led by former ambassador Tina Kaidanow, who was appointed as the Special Representative for Guantánamo Affairs in August 2021, and is “responsible for all matters pertaining to the transfer of detainees from the Guantánamo Bay facility to third countries” — “spent months negotiating the terms for the detainees to be transferred to Oman, including measures intended to guarantee the men wouldn’t become a security threat and any possible compensation they would receive.”

“Compensation,” I should note, is highly unlikely, as the US government has never offered any kind of compensation to former prisoners, refusing, ever, to acknowledge any kind of wrongdoing on their part. It is more probable, therefore, that the reference in NBC News’ article was to whatever money the US would provide to Oman to support the resettlements, as arranged via strictly confidential “diplomatic assurances.”

The sources added that the planned release of the men in October “was imminent when it was called off at the last minute,” as the administration had “already notified Congress that the transfer would take place,” a requirement that Congress imposed on the executive branch under President Obama, requiring the administration, by law, to provide Congress with 30 days’ notice prior to the release of any prisoners.

Several of the officials who spoke to NBC News said that “the decision to stop the transfer was not related to any concerns raised by Oman or last-minute disagreements between the US and Oman.” Instead, they expressed their belief that “it was the result of members of Congress, primarily Democrats close to the president, privately raising concerns about the timing” — the “political optics after Hamas’ attack on Israel,” as NBC News described it.

The officials’ decision to speak out came about because, although Republican administrations seem to have completely lost touch with any sense of outrage about their own government’s actions, Democratic administrations still harbor some individuals who care about flagrant and ongoing abuses of justice like Guantánamo.

They explained that, more than seven months since the planned release was abandoned, “the administration has not set a new date for the transfer,” and “the detainees remain at Guantánamo with no clarity on when, or if, it will happen.”

The officials said they were “concerned” that “the likelihood that the transfer takes place before November’s presidential election diminishes the closer the election gets,” and feared that, if Donald Trump is re-elected in November, the eleven men “will remain at the detention facility for at least another four years.”

The officials also explained that they were worried that “the stalled process” that has left these men “sitting in detention for months without clarity about when they could be transferred could become a human rights concern” — although, on that latter point, every administration that has been in charge of Guantánamo has shown little or no concern for human rights criticisms, and the Biden administration is no exception, as was shown last year when they essentially blanked high-level and damning criticisms of the prison’s operations that were submitted by United Nations Special Mandate holders.

In a report issued last June, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, concluded, after becoming the first ever UN Rapporteur to visit the prison in February, that, despite some improvement in conditions over the years, the prison’s operations overall constitute “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” and “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.” Two other devastating opinions were issued by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, one of which indicated that the very basis of the detention system at Guantánamo “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

According to the officials, the deal for the transfer of the eleven Yemenis “is still under discussion with Oman, including about specific timing and conditions.” They added that “it could happen this year,” although they were all clearly concerned that the importance of freeing these men has fallen off President Biden’s radar.

One senior administration official, perhaps seeking to provide cover for the president, suggested that Oman “has at times since October not wanted the transfer to take place,” although they stressed that the cases were not “collecting dust somewhere,” adding that the administration was “actively looking at all those administrative steps to make it happen,” while acknowledging that “there are frustrations.”

Pressure is needed to prioritize these men’s release

All of us who care about Guantánamo — and the desperate need for these men to be freed from what has become their unforgivably long executive imprisonment — need to put pressure on President Biden and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to overcome their “political optics” problem, to re-energize the transfer process for these eleven men, and also to commit resources to finding homes for the five other men who have long been approved for release, but who are not part of the Oman deal — a Tunisian and a stateless Rohingya who have been refusing, since 2010, to deal with the authorities regarding their release, a Kenyan whose government apparently doesn’t want him back, and a Somali and a Libyan.

In addition, it should be noted that, by refusing to free these eleven men because of “political optics” regarding Hamas’ attacks on Israel, the Biden administration has, lamentably, slipped into an all too familiar pattern of casual Islamophobia, whereby all Muslims, whether Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, or Yemenis at Guantánamo, are allowed to be perceived as terrorists.

In Gaza, this refusal has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, with barely a murmur of dissent from the administration, and at Guantánamo it has, not for the first time, led to men without rights becoming political playthings, as though it means nothing that they have never been charged with a crime, that high-level US government review processes have concluded unanimously that it is safe to release them, and that they are, fundamentally, the personal prisoners of just two men — President Biden and Antony Blinken.

They need to be freed.

• I wrote the above article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

On the internet, we witness a lively and dynamic scene of political, social, professional, and cultural activities by Iranians. A considerable portion of these diverse activities is devoted to the struggle against the mullahs’ dictatorship and sheds light on the regime’s crimes and corruption.

When we consider many of these valuable activities together, we arrive at a collection that is happening in parallel but lacks the characteristics of an alternative. For example, many articles, speeches, interviews, and podcasts are published with the theme of exposing and shedding light on the crimes, but their totality does not possess the character and features of an alternative that would pose a real challenge to the regime.

History of uprisings and revolutions has shown that an alternative carries clear signs and concerns from the dominant dictator.

An alternative is always at the center of the issue, the nightmare, and its activities pose challenges to the dictator at home and across the globe.

An alternative always prioritizes its activities in service of the struggle to overthrow the dictator.

An alternative never engages itself in fueling the contradictions within the opposition front.

An alternative always considers organizing the front seeking the overthrow as a necessary condition to negate the ruling dictator and commits to it.

These characteristics, in political and diplomatic activities and in setting the relationship with the opposition front, both highlight the sign of the alternative in the eyes of the regime and attract internal and international credibility towards the seriousness of their struggle for major transformation.

For years, the protests of social groups such as retirees, workers, and wage-earners have been ongoing and are increasing. These are ongoing movements to achieve their legitimate labor rights that the regime has plundered and looted. Although these protests are pursuing economic demands, their essence and core are political and against the incumbent management and authority.

Despite these persistent labor protests with political undertones, and despite the various political, social, and cultural activities of Iranians inside and outside the country, we must look to the main battle against the dictator, with the criteria and standards for recognizing the alternative; a battle at the center of the political arena in Iran; a battle that determines the fate of the two fronts.

Based on the characteristics being outlined alluding to the current political landscape of Iran from both domestic and international perspectives, we can see that the persistent battle at the core and center of the Iranian political arena, with the determining balance of political forces, is the comprehensive struggle between the People’s Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the ruling clerical regime.

Based on the developments over the past one-and-half years following the 2022 uprising, a few key realities have become clear:

1. By going through four major uprisings, it has become evident that neither demands, nor negotiations, reforms, engagement, nor protests are the ultimate solution to negate the totality of the mullahs’ regime.
2. It has become clear that the rejection of this regime, a comprehensive break with it, and decisiveness in the struggle, are the only effective and national means to overthrow the regime.
3. It has become evident that the organization and cohesion of the resistance movement is the indispensable necessity for advancing the above two pivotal points.

The above three pillars are the defining characteristics of the alternative to the clerical system. The reality is that currently, in the political arena of Iran, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), with the PMOI at its core, is the concrete and tangible embodiment and bearer of these three principles.

It was the realization of these three principles in the outcome of the 2022 uprising that caused the regime to focus all of its political, propaganda, and judicial power against PMOI, both inside and outside of Iran. This is because the PMOI is currently the enduring, organized, and capable force that can serve as the center of the ongoing struggle for the overthrow of the regime, given its internal and international credibility as an alternative.

This is a factual, critical, and transparent political assessment, free from any form of propaganda or specific ideological leaning. Any serious observer of the Iranian political landscape, even if they are opposed to the PMOI, can see the reality that Iran’s regime fears no opposition other than the PMOI, and considers them the only threat to its very existence.

The months-long mobilization of the entire political, judicial, and propaganda apparatus of the mullahs’ regime against the PMOI is indicative of a fateful struggle at the center of Iran’s political arena between the mullahs’ dictatorship on one side and NCRI and the PMOI on the other.

For nearly 30 years, the propaganda apparatus of the clerical regime has been engaged in a media blackout of the PMOI and, at the same time, has been perpetrating astonishing demonization and slander campaigns against them. Several Persian-language media outlets outside of Iran have also been carrying out this boycott and defamation in parallel with the regime’s efforts against the PMOI, and they continue to do so even now.

Now, what has happened that neither the 30-year media blackout nor the astounding volume of slanders against the PMOI have borne fruit? The spokesman of the regime’s Judiciary was recently forced to admit that the youth of Iran should “not be deceived by the PMOI.” Undoubtedly, the regime and its domestic and foreign allies have realized that the solution proposed by the PMOI for rescuing Iran from hereditary dictatorships, as well as the penetration of this solution among the youth and those seeking the overthrow of the regime, has become the central issue in Iran’s political arena. An issue that the regime is pointing to more than ever.

Every Iranian who cares about the fate of their country should always, free from any bias, prejudice or inclination, study and recognize the characteristics of the forces present on the Iranian political scene. For now, the characteristics of the center of the Iranian political arena indicate a fateful struggle between the PMOI and the totality of the ruling regime. Future developments, measured by the existence and recognition of an alternative, will further elucidate this reality.

By Wanjiru Njoya

Some philosophers, drawing upon Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, have questioned the nature and limits of reason. By contrast, human reason plays a central role in libertarian thought. In the ordinary dictionary sense, human reason means simply “the ability of a healthy mind to think and make judgments, especially based on practical facts.”

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises depicts reason as a universal quality common to all human beings, emphasizing that reason is “the mark that distinguishes man from animals and has brought about everything that is specifically human.” As all humans have the ability to reason, human logic can only proceed by reference to reason. Reason is the only basis on which we can conduct inquiry and endeavor to expand the frontiers of knowledge. As Mises explains: “Scientists are bound to deal with every doctrine as if its supporters were inspired by nothing else than the thirst for knowledge.”

Those who reject the universality of human reason attempt thereby to avoid grappling with its dictates. They reject conclusions that follow from “an irrefutable chain of reason” and brazenly promote their own unreasonable theories if they regard such theories as politically expedient. For example, critical race theorists argue that objective truth, reason, and rationality are simply cover for the imposition of European values on nonwhite people and should therefore be rejected by those who favor multiculturalism. Their answer to the accusation that critical race theories are unreasonable is that the very concepts of reason and rationality are Eurocentric, and they are therefore justified in rejecting them:

Because critical theory rejects reason, it cannot be questioned. Under this rubric, [Allen C.] Guelzo says, the only purpose of questions is to serve the interests of the oppressive class, and “any answer you come up with, which doesn’t speak in terms of some hidden structure of oppression, can simply be dismissed as part of the structure of oppression.”

Critical race theorists argue that rather than being universal, logic is determined by personal characteristics such as one’s race or sex. Therefore, they embrace polylogism, which Pierre Perrin defines as “an epistemological view based on the proposition that the logical structure of the mind is substantially different between different groups.”

Mises explains that “the main motive for the development of the doctrines of polylogism, historicism, and irrationalism was to provide a justification for disregarding the teachings of economics in the determination of economic policies.” Mises’s response to that is that

it is a poor makeshift to dispose of a theory by referring to its historical background, to the “spirit” of its time, to the material conditions of the country of its origin, and to any personal qualities of its authors. A theory is subject to the tribunal of reason only. The yardstick to be applied is always the yardstick of reason.

Mises shows that rejecting human reason is incompatible with human flourishing, economic progress, and civilization itself.

Murray Rothbard also argues that human reason “dictates to man his proper ends as well as the means for their attainment.” He emphasizes the distinctive quality of reason in understanding human nature: “And here we come to a vital difference between inanimate or even non-human living creatures, and man himself . . . man, ‘the rational animal,’ possesses reason to discover such ends and the free will to choose.” Rothbard grounds the natural law principles that underpin his theory of ethics in “reason and rational inquiry.”

Mises does not link reason in that way to natural law principles, arguing instead that “the teachings of utilitarian philosophy and classical economics have nothing at all to do with the doctrine of natural right. With them the only point that matters is social utility.” From a utilitarian perspective, the reason why people should not choose to go on a murderous rampage is not because it violates an alleged natural right to life but rather because such conduct is inimical to man’s ultimate desires: “If you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forego many other desires. You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand other things which only society can provide.” Nobody will achieve their life goals if everybody attacks each other with impunity.

Other libertarians who do not accept the natural rights philosophy, relying instead on these types of consequentialist or contractual explanations for human action, have questioned the link drawn by Rothbard between human reason and natural law principles. For example, Butler Shaffer asks:

How does one discover the content of these principles? How do we distinguish one person’s identification of a transcendent “moral principle” from another person’s expression of a private prejudice? Are the natural rights theorists doing anything more than projecting their subjective preferences onto the universe and then characterizing them as “eternal principles”?

Rothbard’s answer to that is that the content of natural rights is derived through reason. In The Ethics of Liberty, he argues:

One common, flip criticism by opponents of natural law is: who is to establish the alleged truths about man? The answer is not who but what: man’s reason. Man’s reason is objective, i.e., it can be employed by all men to yield truths about the world. To ask what is man’s nature is to invite the answer. Go thou and study and find out!

In this way, albeit from different philosophical foundations, both natural rights and utilitarian philosophers uphold the importance and indispensability of human reason. Human reason is universal, but its universal quality does not mean that all people have equal reasoning ability—it means that all people can reason. Nor does this mean that people are always reasonable or that they are never influenced by their emotions or irrational feelings, or that all reasonable opinions should be treated as objective and universal. Further, the claim is not that the process of reasoning will lead to perfection or omniscience or that people will never fall into error. To err is human. However, as Mises asserts: “Man has only one tool to fight error: reason.”

• About the author: Dr. Wanjiru Njoya is a Scholar-in-Residence for the Mises Institute. She is the author of Economic Freedom and Social Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Redressing Historical Injustice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, with David Gordon) and “A Critique of Equality Legislation in Liberal Market Economies” (Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2021).
• Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute

Israel strikes back, 35 killed in Rafah after Hamas attack in Tel Aviv: ‘They burned people alive’ | 10 updates  Hindustan Times

Israel-Hamas War Latest: Dozens Killed in Assault on Rafah  Bloomberg