A fair trial would have been a natural step. To have all of the parties heard and resolve the crisis, believes Clive Stafford Smith, founder of legal group Reprieve, and an attorney for several detainees in the Guantánamo Bay camp.RT spoke to the activist who was first to reveal some of the harsh methods allegedly used in Guantanamo, including degrading body searches, which inmates have to undergo just to phone their representatives.RT: Why haven’t the U.S. authorities tried to negotiate an end to the hunger strike – instead of using controversial tactics like force-feeding or denying drinking water?Clive Stafford Smith: Of course in order to negotiate an end to the strike, we have to give justice to these prisoners. And we are talking about 96 of the 166 prisoners, who have been cleared for release, and that’s 52 per cent of them, including most of the people I represent. There’s only one way to end this strike fairly, and that’s to take prisoners who’ve been cleared for release and set them free. And Shaker Aamer, the last British resident, he could come back to London tomorrow if only President Obama would show him redemption and use the National Defense Authorization Act to let people go free. That’s the only way to solve this problem.RT: Is it not possible though, because Washington is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Here we have people who were scooped up from places like Afghanistan, put into Guantanamo Bay. Even if they weren’t radicalized before they arrived, they may have become radicalized because of their prison experience. CSS: I’ve been radicalized, I’m radicalized for justice not for violence. And that’s true for all the people I’ve represented. Every single prisoner, who’s been set free in Great Britain, and there’s been 14 of them, has behaved impeccably, when they came back here. Unless you think it’s wrong to go around telling the truth, giving speeches and writing books. None of them have done any criminal offense, save for one who got a traffic ticket one time. And it would be so perverse if we argued that we can snatch innocent people, abuse them for 11 years and say, because we’ve abused them, they might hate us, therefore we keep them forever. That’s ridiculous. RT: The hunger strike has gone on for 100 days. It is a long time without food. What can you tell us about the health conditions of your clients?CSS: Well I can, and I’m actually glad that a standard operating procedure for Guantanamo Bay was leaked this Monday. I have a copy of it. It’s not classified. And it corroborates everything my clients have been telling me about how the force-feeding is being done. And you know what’s really worrying about this is General Bantz Craddock of SOUTHCOM – back when they changed the protocol to make it more painful for prisoners – said they were doing it to make it “inconvenient” for the prisoners to keep on hunger striking. In the earlier days they used a smaller tube up one’s nose, it’s a 120cm long, and they would leave that tube in for weeks at a time. Now what they are doing is they are using larger tubes and they are sticking those up one’s nose twice a day and pulling them out again.RT: You revealed that Guantanamo detainees undergo full body cavity searches before they can contact their representatives. Camp authorities claim everything they do is lawful and justified. Isn’t this just normal practice in prisons?CSS: No, it’s not normal practice. But let’s face it – when my clients are coming to have a telephone call with me they can’t smuggle anything on a telephone line. And so the idea that they threaten the prisoners with full body search, and I won’t go into the really graphic part, but it’s basically a sexual assault, is just a threat to try to get them not to talk to us and frankly the reason for this is fairly obvious. That there’s been an awful lot of information coming out of Guantanamo Bay that doesn’t suit the authorities. Now they say what they say is the truth, we say what we say is the truth. Of course, the natural thing to do about this is to have a proper trial, but we are not allowed one of those. I’m confident that my clients are telling me the truth and just want that truth to come out of there.RT: How long has the practice of body searches been in place and has it prevented inmates from contacting their lawyers?CSS: The threat of the anal cavity search only came about ten or twelve days ago, and yes indeed it has. Last Friday two of my clients refused to have a call with me for the simple reason that they didn’t want to go through that process. I had one of the other lawyers from Reprieve, who was at the base last week and twice prisoners didn’t want to come out for a visit, because of what they’ve been threatened with. This is just not civilized. I speak as an American when I say we should not be doing this sort of thing. We are upholding the rule of law, not trying to suppress it. What’s sad about it is of course people at Guantanamo have studied what Muslim man are particularly sensitive to. And so one thing that obviously a conservative traditional Muslim male is not used to is having a stranger basically assault them sexually. And this is something which is far more humiliating for someone from Yemen, than it would be for someone perhaps from America. And these things have been studied rather carefully, so it’s a great tragedy that the US has used studies on how to be sensitive to Muslims and turned these around to use them to humiliate them. … Read More
Japanese author Haruki Murakami: Writing is like going to a ‘dark second basement’
Bestselling author Haruki Murakami said Monday that writing a novel is like descending to a very dark second basement of your psyche, where you are not even sure where the corridors are. In a rare public appearance by the publicity-shy but wildly popular writer, Murakami spoke at a seminar entitled…
“Where Islam meets America”: the making of Zaytuna College
Light without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim Collegeby Scott KorbBeacon Press, 2013 What inspired you to write Light Without Fire? In the wake of the Fort Hood mass shooting by Army Medical Corps officer Nadil Malik Hasan, Forbes published an essay under the headline “Going Muslim,” written by Tunku Varadarajan, who today often writes for The Daily Beast. At the time, Varadarajan was working at NYU, where I teach writing courses, often about religion. The coinage he explained this way:“This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American—a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood—discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.”Continue Reading… … Read More
School apologizes for asking students to recreate Nazi propaganda
Albany High School apologized for a persuasive writing exercise that encouraged students to read Nazi propaganda and argue that Jews are evil, the Albany Times-Union reported on Friday. Te assignment asked students to “pretend you are a member of the government in Nazi Germany” and…
Ten amazing memories: Heartwarming stories of my dog, Brando (2000-2013)
When I was in first grade, I wrote my first “published” story, for our school’s mimeographed weekly publication. It was a memoir actually. It was the story of our family cat, Puss, who had just passed away. It was only relatively recently that the significance of this first piece of writing came clear to me: This was, at that point in my life, a huge, mysterious event. It read, in its entirety, “My cat died. My cat is dead.” I hadn’t learned to be sentimental. Later that year, I discovered one of my first favorite books, “The Tenth Good Thing About Barney,” by Judith Viorst. It was about a boy whose cat dies, and his mother tells him he should think of 10 good things to say about Barney when they have a funeral in their yard.Continue Reading… … Read More
Will schools stop teaching typing?
DALLAS (AP) — The time-honored skill of typing is still helpful, but it’s becoming less necessary. And that raises the question: Does typing have a future?In high schools and community colleges where keyboarding classes have been a staple for decades, some fear the courses may go the way of cursive writing lessons in elementary schools.Dallas typing instructor Julie Phillips says predictive keyboards on smartphones and tablet touch screens that guess which words are being typed have taken the skill out of keyboarding. She says fewer students are coming in with keyboarding knowledge.Mobile technology analysts say keyboards likely won’t disappear from computers. But mobile phone-makers say speed is important, and predictive screens decrease the time needed to type — or thumb — each word. Continue Reading… … Read More
Inside the topsy-turvy world of contronyms
Here’s an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, “Because the agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some transgression” or does it mean, “Because the agency was inattentive, they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default”? We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of “contronyms” — words that are their own antonyms.1. Sanction (via French, from Latin sanctio(n-), from sancire ’ratify,’) can mean “give official permission or approval for (an action)” or conversely, “impose a penalty on.”2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” “Oversee,” from Old English ofersēon ”look at from above,” means “supervise” (medieval Latin for the same thing: super- ”over” + videre ”to see.”) “Overlook” usually means the opposite: “to fail to see or observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.”3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If the gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner cigars, who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)Continue Reading… … Read More
