The first Guantanamo detainee to speak to the press, Jamal Udeen, a web designer and father of three, describes inhumane conditions , beatings, and psychological torture used against detainees. (BBC)

Finally it's becoming clear(er) to me why the US doesn't want to participate in international bodies that punish flouters of international law...

The US has decided to try a bit harder to capture bin Laden. (news.yahoo.com) And, consistent with the 'kill 'em first and ask questions later' approach the US has been on for some time, they are killing lots of suspects. From the same item:

An Afghan army commander in southern Kandahar province, Haji Granai, told The Associated Press that U.S. aircraft killed 12 suspected Taliban in a pickup truck there Thursday.

Granai said the planes struck in Maruf district, some 160 miles east of Kandahar city, where suspected Taliban killed seven Afghan soldiers in a March 3 raid on a border post.

That's kind of convenient: it saves all that messy fact finding and justice system work that would ordinarily be associated with depriving a dozen individuals of their lives...

Today I saw on the front page of our local paper a HUGE photograph of the demonstrations in Spain against terrorism. (SFGate.com) Now that I've read the accompanying article, I find it odd that the paper didn't contest attendance, happy to accept that 2.5 million people participated.

Odd, that. And there was no insinuation that the demonstrators were not patriotic. And there was no attribution of any violence or crime in the region being blamed automatically on the demonstrators.

It was such a contrast to the sort of reporting we get about our own local demonstrations. 'Quite amazing.

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(As a related aside, one of the same central squares in Madrid was the site of a huge anti-war protest prior to the US' attack on Iraq. THAT didn't make the front pages here, unlike the assembly in that same square this time.)

How long has it been since I mentioned the possibility of the US starting to draft soldiers? Too longer, perhaps. The US Government is considering a 'special skills' draft of people with computer and language skills. (sfgate) The article notes that a draft is "far off" because the effort "is strictly in the planning stage" and could take two years.

I think the people who don't think two years is far off are well over the age limit for draftees...

The US holds about 640 people without charge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As of Tuesday, 105 people have now been released from Guantanamo Bay without charges. (audio file - theworld.org) While members of the British government note that two years of life has been stolen without cause for the 5 Britons just released, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would rather imply that everyone captured is guilty of something, even if the US can't figure out what that is, perhaps in hopes of limiting sympathy for those wrongly held.

In this audio clip, Rumsfeld acknowledges a very poor statistic to justify wrongly holding hundreds of people:

"...I've been told by senior people in this department that of the people who have been released, we know of at least one who has gone back to being a terrorist. So life isn't perfect! In other words, you can make mistakes in evaluating these people. Let's hope that none of these do."

(Transcription mine.) Yes, even after holding hundreds of people for two years, the US has released 105, and believes that just one of those people it released has become a terrorist! Less than 1 percent of those RELEASED!! So 104 of 105 people released were... well, how shall I put this... innocent of any crime they could be charged for.

More disturbing language from Rumsfeld:

The goal was to take these people off a battlefield, and keep they away from killing other people. And that's been accomplished. That's a good thing, for two years, that's not a bad thing. Second, the goal was to interrogate them, find out what do they know...so they get interrogated for a couple of years, then at some point you say, 'we think we got what we need out of this crowd' of 5 people, and let's move 'em along, we don't want to keep everybody at Guantanamo...

(transcription again mine) THIS is what repressive governments have always done: sloppy work that denies individuals of liberty and human rights, for NOTHING.

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The follow up interview with human rights attorney Clive Stafford-Smith is very informative. (audio file, theworld.org) A $4500 bounty was offered to anyone in Afghanistan who could hand over "Taliban" members, which resulted in some greedy people abducting foreigners for the money. (I'd never heard that before.) He also points out that several Britons were abducted from other countries, such as Pakistan and the Zambia, and there is documentation of this, but the Bush Administration's line still remains that everyone swept up was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan.

Stafford-Smith notes that even perpetrators of Nazi war crimes got TRIALS, had lawyers, and went through a proper process to establish their guilt or innocence, and that the US isn't bothering to meet any similar justice standard.

Why is the US government afraid to do things right? (Does that less than 1% non-success rate of correctly identifying terrorists have anything to do with it?)

There have been some very sad suggestions on the 'home front' that the U.S. government is sliding into totalitarian modes of thinking.

President Bush's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called American Teacher's Unions "terrorist organizations" for suggesting that education is underfunded. (firepaige.org) We all KNOW that education is underfunded in this country, so why the overreaction? Why the implication that wanting to be sure our kids all have books and learn in safe buildings has somehow become a threat to national security? Are Bush officials using the Cranky Soviet Communist Playbook to choose their statements?

Perhaps more classically self serving, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said "...if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election, it's that simple." (news.yahoo.com) In a lovely version of Orwell-speak, "The lawmaker from Bush's Republican Party added, however, that 'the patriotism of candidates and voters who oppose the president is not in question.'"

Yeah, right.

Democracy is losing ground quickly here.