Pork rinds and pretzels...
She was the rose of Sharon from paradise lost | From the city of seven hills near the place of the cross | I was playing a show in Miami in the theater of divine comedy. | Told about Jesus, told about the rain, | She told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain | By a man who danced on the roof of the embassy.
Bob Dylan | Caribbean Wind
The first prisoners were moved from the runway to a truck, from there to a launch across the bay, and from there to the bare mesh cages which would be their home for the first few months of 2002, the original detention centre, Camp X-Ray. Those initial images of blinded, deafened, mute and bound men in glaring orange became a potent weapon in the hands of those who opposed the manner in which the Bush administration was coping with terrorism, particularly in Europe and the Muslim world. A country which would not countenance an international criminal court, the pictures seemed to say, had built a harsh international jail. The bizarre setup of Guantanamo itself, a fortified American toehold in one of the world's last outposts of communism, added to the sense of prisoners being cast into the centre of concentric circles of isolation. Cubans remember, if few others do, that the world's first concentration camps were built on their island by the Spanish in the 1890s.James Meek | People the Law Forgot Part I
Atlantic City by the cold grey sea | I hear a voice crying, "Daddy," I always think it's for me, | But it's only the silence in the buttermilk hills that call. | Every new messenger brings evil report | 'Bout armies on the march and time that is short | And famines and earthquakes and hatred written upon walls.
The first thing that strikes the lay student of military commissions is the enormous power vested in the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the commissions' 'appointing authority'. The judges - seven in a capital case - are appointed by Wolfowitz. Any judge can be substituted up to the moment of verdict, by Wolfowitz. The military prosecutors are chosen by Wolfowitz. The suspects they charge, and the charges they make, are determined by Wolfowitz. All defendants are entitled to a military defence lawyer, from a pool chosen by Wolfowitz. The defendants are entitled to hire a civilian lawyer, but they have to pay out of their own funds, and by revealing where the funds are, they risk having them seized on suspicion of their being used for terrorist purposes, on the order of Wolfowitz. Defendants need not lose heart completely if convicted. They can appeal, to a panel of three people, appointed by Wolfowitz. When it has made its recommendation, the panel sends it for a final decision to Wolfowitz.James Meek | People the Law Forgot Part II
Of possible further interest...
- Sam Smith (May 2003) | The Iraqis Will Have to Learn Democracy Someplace Else
- Lt. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., USAF (1992) | The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012
- Lt. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., USAF (1996) [308 KB] | Melancholy Reunion: A Report from the Future on the Collapse of Civil-Military Relations in the United States
Bob Dylan | Caribbean Wind
