Wednesday the Supreme Court heard the third incarnation of the Guantanamo Bay case. The first two times this case was brought before the high court it was ruled against the Bush administration. Since these two cases, legislation has been passed allowing Bush to, in essence, do what he’s been doing all along. The fight, however, continues.
The men at Guantanamo Bay are being held on American soil; the country the air base land is being leased from can not allow the prisoners to be tried within their courts because that imposes itself upon American sovereignty.
The men at Guantanamo Bay are not being held on American soil; they are not subject to a writ of habeas corpus because the only people this is available to are citizens and those being held within the United States.
The men at Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war and thus should not be subject to a writ of habeas corpus even if they are held on American soil because never in the past have we provided detainees with this opportunity.
The men at Guantanamo Bay can not be prisoners of war because there is not a declared war going on and, further, many of the men are not even citizens of the countries that we have engaged in any combat with.
The men at Guantanamo Bay are not subject to a writ of habeas corpus; in addition to what is listed above, the Constitution allows suspension of these rights if an adequate and equally effective alternative is put into place.
The men at Guantanamo Bay must be subject to a writ of habeas corpus; the Bush administration’s arguments against them are flimsy. The new evaluation system put into place does not allow for lawyers or access to the evidence against them, immediately assumes the Government’s evidence to be fully correct and allows for innumerable retrials if, somehow, the detainee wins the case.
Clearly, the Bush administration wishes only to rob these men of their right to be proven innocent. Why would they do so unless they were afraid that just that were true? Should they not concern themselves with finding and holding the men who are guilty, or are they afraid that there are, simply, no guilty men to be found?
Is the incompetence of a nation a good reason to hold innocent men prisoner for six years, away from their homes, away from their families, away from their lives. Is the incompetence of a nation a good reason to punish these families in such a manner as depriving them of the only person in the household whom is, feasibly, allowed to go out and make any decent sum of money? Is the incompetence of a nation a good reason to allow said nation to deprive a group of people of their rights? Does allowing them to this, now, setting this standard of conduct only allow them to do the same thing to us in the future? Does allowing such a flimsy trial system to stand as fair and just and right only facilitate the government’s ability to do the same thing to us, it’s citizens, at a later date?
This battle is about the rights of the imprisoned. Why should it matter what country their citizenship belongs to? A man is still a man, no matter the length of his hair or the country of his patriotism. As such, we should disregard the fact that this has never happened before, that rights have never been given in such a manner and we should move past that.
Just because rights had never been given to black men and women doesn’t mean we should not have given them those rights. This is no different.
The men at Guantanamo Bay must be given fair trials and, once it is realized that they are innocent men, Guantanamo Bay must be closed.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Friday, December 7, 2007
Nightmare of Moloch
(Hello! I'm Josh, a new contributor here. I was once the editor of A More Pleasant Blog, a now-defunct blog similar to this one. Hopefully A Less Pleasant Blog will have more success than mine did! I'm a full-time student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and I write poetry, prose, play blues harmonica and piano, enjoy long walks on the beach, and S&M.)
“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?” –Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (Part II, lines 1-3)
As American citizens and, indeed, as human beings, no right is more sacred to us than our right to freedom of expression. The freedom of expression fosters the growth of the qualities that separate man from less-intelligent beings (animals, small rocks, Rush Limbaugh): namely communication, creativity, an understanding of self and a general understanding of the world around us. All other liberties stem from this crucial right, for without it we are simply zombies controlled by the will of power and corruption.
Free speech is a right, not a privilege. It is the freedom we are born with and the freedom it is our duty to use and protect. Were it not for the brave actions of some men and women to express their thoughts and feelings at the least “convenient” times, human history as we know it would have slowed to a standstill. If free speech was not fostered as it were women would not have the right to vote, slavery would not have been abolished, the United States would have never sought independence, and science would have bowed to the supreme authority of the Bible and the Catholic Church. With such monumental stakes on the line, defending one’s right to think for themselves has cost the lives of many.
A landmark for modern free speech occurred fifty years ago in1957 when an obscenity trial was brought against poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his City Lights Bookstore for their publication of “Howl,” a poem by Allen Ginsberg which contains numerous references to both heterosexual and homosexual acts (as in the lines “…who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly/motorcyclists, and screamed with joy…”) and drugs (as in the lines “…or purgatoried their/torsos night after night/with dreams, with/drugs, with waking nightmares,/alcohol and cock and endless balls,/incomparable blind…), as well as containing many uncensored expletives (including, but not limited to: fuck, fucked, ass, cock, cocksucker, cunt, snatch, and other variations). After a widely publicized case, the court ruled in favor of Ferlinghetti and for free speech. To quote San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Clayton Horn, “the theme presents unorthodox and controversial ideas. Coarse and vulgar language is used in treatment and sex acts are mentioned, but unless the book is entirely lacking in social importance it cannot be held obscene” (Garofoli, “’Howl’ Too Hot to Hear,” final paragraph).
But now, even fifty years after the rule of law declared the poem not obscene, a new controversy is brewing over the poem’s content. In one of the finest examples of irony to be seen in a long time, the radio station WBAI, “long the radio flagship of cocky resistance to government excess, decided last week that it couldn’t risk a 50th anniversary broadcast of the late poet’s recording of ‘Howl’” (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 2). This brazen step back for free speech in this country occurred because of “fear that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would levy large obscenity fines that might bankrupt the small-budget station” (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 2).
What kind of country do we live in when the population lives in fear of an agency designed to serve us? We have become a people that shriek out in horror when Janet Jackson’s breast is exposed on live TV, or cry foul at musicians for the content of their lyrics. Where is that starry spangled-eyed wonder that we lost which produced a poem of such magnitude? What gives the Moloch-like federal government the arrogance to scare a small radio station into self-censorship? This same government has stepped even further into blasphemy to censor the words of our greatest generation, removing the word “fuck” from verbal accounts of World War II veterans in broadcasts of Ken Burns’ latest documentary (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 4). Where is the line drawn? Who draws the line? Is it us? Is it them? Is the line a reflection of society, what society will not hear? How many eyes must we have in order to see the looming tragedy that is gradually unfurling itself over the landscape of the American continent?
The FCC argues that it is acting in the best interests of the population, but we have the liberty of choice, of choosing what we want and do not want to hear. Whether it is hearing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University or a late American’s poem on the radio, we all have the choice to either listen, or not. We can choose not to watch a madman speak; we can choose to change the station. Why must we let Moloch decide for us?
Om.
Nightmare of Moloch
“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?” –Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (Part II, lines 1-3)
As American citizens and, indeed, as human beings, no right is more sacred to us than our right to freedom of expression. The freedom of expression fosters the growth of the qualities that separate man from less-intelligent beings (animals, small rocks, Rush Limbaugh): namely communication, creativity, an understanding of self and a general understanding of the world around us. All other liberties stem from this crucial right, for without it we are simply zombies controlled by the will of power and corruption.
Free speech is a right, not a privilege. It is the freedom we are born with and the freedom it is our duty to use and protect. Were it not for the brave actions of some men and women to express their thoughts and feelings at the least “convenient” times, human history as we know it would have slowed to a standstill. If free speech was not fostered as it were women would not have the right to vote, slavery would not have been abolished, the United States would have never sought independence, and science would have bowed to the supreme authority of the Bible and the Catholic Church. With such monumental stakes on the line, defending one’s right to think for themselves has cost the lives of many.
A landmark for modern free speech occurred fifty years ago in1957 when an obscenity trial was brought against poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his City Lights Bookstore for their publication of “Howl,” a poem by Allen Ginsberg which contains numerous references to both heterosexual and homosexual acts (as in the lines “…who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly/motorcyclists, and screamed with joy…”) and drugs (as in the lines “…or purgatoried their/torsos night after night/with dreams, with/drugs, with waking nightmares,/alcohol and cock and endless balls,/incomparable blind…), as well as containing many uncensored expletives (including, but not limited to: fuck, fucked, ass, cock, cocksucker, cunt, snatch, and other variations). After a widely publicized case, the court ruled in favor of Ferlinghetti and for free speech. To quote San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Clayton Horn, “the theme presents unorthodox and controversial ideas. Coarse and vulgar language is used in treatment and sex acts are mentioned, but unless the book is entirely lacking in social importance it cannot be held obscene” (Garofoli, “’Howl’ Too Hot to Hear,” final paragraph).
But now, even fifty years after the rule of law declared the poem not obscene, a new controversy is brewing over the poem’s content. In one of the finest examples of irony to be seen in a long time, the radio station WBAI, “long the radio flagship of cocky resistance to government excess, decided last week that it couldn’t risk a 50th anniversary broadcast of the late poet’s recording of ‘Howl’” (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 2). This brazen step back for free speech in this country occurred because of “fear that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would levy large obscenity fines that might bankrupt the small-budget station” (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 2).
What kind of country do we live in when the population lives in fear of an agency designed to serve us? We have become a people that shriek out in horror when Janet Jackson’s breast is exposed on live TV, or cry foul at musicians for the content of their lyrics. Where is that starry spangled-eyed wonder that we lost which produced a poem of such magnitude? What gives the Moloch-like federal government the arrogance to scare a small radio station into self-censorship? This same government has stepped even further into blasphemy to censor the words of our greatest generation, removing the word “fuck” from verbal accounts of World War II veterans in broadcasts of Ken Burns’ latest documentary (“A Muse Unplugged,” par. 4). Where is the line drawn? Who draws the line? Is it us? Is it them? Is the line a reflection of society, what society will not hear? How many eyes must we have in order to see the looming tragedy that is gradually unfurling itself over the landscape of the American continent?
The FCC argues that it is acting in the best interests of the population, but we have the liberty of choice, of choosing what we want and do not want to hear. Whether it is hearing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University or a late American’s poem on the radio, we all have the choice to either listen, or not. We can choose not to watch a madman speak; we can choose to change the station. Why must we let Moloch decide for us?
Om.
Works Cited
"A Muse Unplugged." The New York Times 8 Oct. 2007: A-22.
Garofoli, Joe. "’Howl’ Too Hot to Hear." The San Francisco Chronicle. 3 Oct. 2007.
Ginsberg, Allen. "Howl." Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956.
"A Muse Unplugged." The New York Times 8 Oct. 2007: A-22.
Garofoli, Joe. "’Howl’ Too Hot to Hear." The San Francisco Chronicle. 3 Oct. 2007.
Ginsberg, Allen. "Howl." Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956.
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