-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 19, 2007 6:50:20 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans
With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention
without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court
oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations
between lawyers and their clients, and with the judicial branch now
infested by rightwing judges who would have been at home in
courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, the only real
thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has
been the jury.
Now, with Jose Padilla -- a U.S. citizen who was publicly accused
(though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a so-
called "dirty" nuclear device (this a guy without a high school
education!), based upon a few wiretapped conversations where
prosecutors claimed words like "zucchini" were "code" for explosive
devices -- convicted on a charge of "planning to murder," we see
that juries in this era of a bogus "war on terror" are ready to
believe anything.
Our last line of defense --the common sense of ordinary citizens in
a jury box-- is gone too.
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: August 19, 2007 4:57:05 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18208.htm
*Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans*
By Dave Lindorff
08/18/07
"ICH" -- With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and
detention
without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court
oversight all the
rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers
and their
clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing
judges who would
have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler's
Germany, for all
they seem to care about common law tradition, the only real thing
holding the
line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the jury.
Now, with Jose Padilla -- a U.S. citizen who was originally picked
up and held
incommunicado on a military base for three and a half years,
publicly accused
(though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a so-
called
"dirty" nuclear device (this a guy without a high school
education!), all based
upon hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a few overheard
wiretapped
conversations where prosecutors claimed words like "zucchini" were
code for
explosive devices-convicted on a charge of "planning to murder," we
see that
juries in this era of a bogus "war on terror" are ready to believe
anything.
That last line of defense-the common sense or ordinary citizens in
a jury box-is
gone too.
The jury in this case apparently accepted the government's
contention that
Padilla was a member of Al Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to
Pakistan full
of plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not a whit
for the fact
that the government had used methods against Padilla (three years
of isolation
and total sensory deprivation that had driven him insane) which
would have made
medieval torturers green with envy. They cared not a whit that
there was no real
evidence against Padilla.
This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled the famous
"Saturday
Night Live" skit in which witches were dunked underwater to "prove"
whether they
were in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were found to
be innocent.
In the end, Padilla's jury simply bought the government's wild and
wild-eyed
story. They decided he hadn't drowned, so he must be guilty.
Padilla can now expect to spend what's left of his life in prison.
Since the
government has already driven him insane, he will have the added
burden of being
mentally unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His
survival prospects
are not good.
The president promptly thanked the jury for their "good judgment."
We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the way has been
paved for
this kind of totalitarian approach to law enforcement.
Beginning today, we can expect the government to begin arresting
people on an
array of trumped-up charges, locking them away in black sites, on
military bases,
or maybe even overseas, subjecting them to all manner of torture,
and then
finally bringing them to trial on trumped-up charges. We can also
expect juries,
made fearful by breathless warnings that "evil ones" mean us and
our nation harm,
to buy the government's stories.
Who is at risk? That's hard to say, but it's clear that it won't
just be
hardened terrorist types. A presidential executive order signed by
Bush on July
17 declares that anything that "undermining efforts to promote
economic
reconstruction (sic) and political reform (sic) in Iraq" could be
deemed a crime
making the perpetrator subject to arrest. Would writing essays
critical of the
president, the war in Iraq, or the "reconstruction" effort in Iraq
meet that
standard? Who knows? Would being interviewed for commentary as
part of a news
story on English-language Al Jezeera TV (which Bush and Cheney have
declared to
be supportive of the Iraqi insurgency, and which Bush reportedly at
one point
considered bombing!)?
And how about anti-war protesters? We already have Washington,
D.C., under
pressure from Homeland Security, threatening the organization World
Can't Wait
with multiple $10,000 fines for posting flyers around the city
announcing an
anti-war march and rally on September 15. If they go ahead with
the protest,
will they be joining Padilla?
I have little doubt that this administration would love to lock up
journalistic
critics and protesters in military brigs, so the question is: how
would juries
respond to charges that American journalists and protesters against
the war were
treacherously undermining the Bush war effort?
I used to be confident that most juries would laugh such cases out
of court.
After the Padilla decision, I'm not so sure.
You want to think that your fellow citizens have at least some
measure of common
sense, but this case suggests otherwise -- that they are easily
frightened,
gullible, and willing to believe the most fantastic claims of the
government.
The future does not look good for freedom in America.
~~~
[Dave Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment," co-
authored by
Barbara Olshansky.]
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