Surprise! US Immigration System is Brutal and Inhumane!

There’s a shocker, huh? From Democracy Now!, a brief interview with Rosa Clemente, the immigrant rights campaign director for Amnesty International USA:

…a new report from Amnesty International lambast[s] the state of the immigrant detention system in this country. 400,000 people are arrested by immigration officials each year, some of them US citizens. On average, over 30,000 people are in immigrant detention facilities. That’s three times the number of immigrants who were in custody a decade ago.

The report is called “Jailed Without Justice.” It says tens of thousands languish in immigration prisons in deplorable conditions without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted. Those detained include lawful permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, survivors of torture and human trafficking. At least seventy-four people have died in immigration custody in the past five years…

The Amnesty International Report can be read here.

Gaza Diary

Courteousy of The Real News, Hatem al-Shurrab, an aid worker for Gaza-based Islamic Relief, with a video diary from Gaza a couple days ago. Can’t figure out how to embed, so here’s the link. Lots more good reporting on Gaza at The Real News, along with great reporting and commentary about everything else.

On Gaza

Not me on Gaza, but some articles I’ve read and had recommended. Personally, I don’t have the words.

 

First, to support Gazans in desperate need of aid, try these links:

 

Medical Aid for Palestinians

 

Gazan Community Mental Health Programme

 

Palestinian Medical Relief Society

Those in the USA wishing to make a tax free donation can send checks to:

Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel
Friends of PMRS Inc.
P.O. Box 450554
Atlanta
Georgia, 31145

 

 

Here is Illan Pappe, from Electronic Intifada, on “Israel’s Righteous Fury:

There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its “surgical” operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.

This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli, and before that Zionist, dispossession of Palestine. Every act whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction was always portrayed as morally just and as a pure act of self-defense reluctantly perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings.

 

Via Huffington Post, Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories):

 The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a ‘total war’ against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale.

 

Also from Falk (posted at ZNet) through the UN Human Rights Council:

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza’s besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas’ diplomatic initiatives to reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.

The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel’s violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel’s serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a ‘total war’ against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale.

 

 

What Does “Change” Look Like?

Not Obama’s foreign policy. From Jeremy Scahill:

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Scahill points out that many of Obama’s cabinet members-to-be come straight from the Clinton Administration (or have neoconservative credentials). What’s wrong with the Clinton adminsitration, you ask? Well, nothing. Unless you’re Haitian. Or Iraqi. Or from any other part of the world. Under Clinton, Scahill explains…

Sudan and Afghanistan were attacked, Haiti was destabilized [invaded, actually] and “free trade” deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade radically escalated the spread of corporate-dominated globalization that hurt U.S. workers and devastated developing countries. Clinton accelerated the militarization of the so-called War on Drugs in Central and Latin America and supported privatization of U.S. military operations, giving lucrative contracts to Halliburton and other war contractors. Meanwhile, U.S. weapons sales to countries like Turkey and Indonesia aided genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the East Timorese.

Scahill is not off base, by any means. The history on the Clinton record is clear, and pretty gruesome. He goes on to discuss in detail both the troubling proposals from Obama himself (escalating the war in Afghanistan, belligerent rhetoric towards Iran, continuing the so-called War on Drugs in Latin America) as well as the records of those he has chosen to surround himself with, from Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton on down. At the very least, these appointments deserve far greater scrutiny than they’ve received so far; the traditional press seem incapable of discussing them, and the liberal blogs are, for the most part, so incensed at any critique of Obama that they are incapable of discussing the issue seriously.

For a balanced, reality-based understanding of where we might be headed with Obama’s foreign policy, Scahill’s article is as good a place to start as any.

On the Election…

I’m still processing the 2008 election, and plan to post at least some of my thoughts. For now, this is the best commentary I’ve seen:

Curiousity Didn’t Kill This Cat

The great Studs Terkel died Friday at his home in Chicago. He was 96.

[His] searching interviews with ordinary Americans helped establish oral history as a serious genre… In his oral histories, which he called guerrilla journalism, Mr. Terkel relied on his enthusiastic but gentle interviewing style to elicit, in rich detail, the experiences and thoughts of his fellow citizens. Over the decades, he developed a continuous narrative of great historic moments sounded by an American chorus in the native vernacular.

From the NY Times obitutary: “I don’t have to stay curious, I am curious, about all of it, all the time,” he once said. “ ‘Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.”

His 1974 collection of interviews Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do was an important book for me.

Rest in peace, brother.

ZNet Interview with Rosa Clemente

Saw this on Znet this morning, an interview with Green Party vice-presidential candidate Rosa Clemente. An excerpt:

As you know, the government has increasingly targeted immigrants, with devastating results for individuals and families. Round-ups, imprisonments and deportations are widespread, and ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has conducted illegal raids with impunity. Can you critique the proposals of the Democratic and Republican candidates on immigration, and explain how the Green Party would address immigration?

 

Well, when the Green Party developed its platform this year, there was a struggle, and luckily the Latino caucus won the struggle to remove language promoting guest worker visas, and instead supports amnesty. With guest workers, at least under the Democratic proposal, certain people from border countries could come here for six to nine months, work, and then go home. Then they could renew their guest worker visa, and would have the same labor rights as any other “American” citizen working in this country. But that’s really just indentured servitude. It’s like “come work for us for a while, pay off, then come back for a little while, and pay off a little more.” You can come for a short period of time, but then you have to leave, and you may never be able to achieve the goal of becoming an American citizen, a goal probably shared by most people who would take a guest worker visa.

 

But there should be a complete moratorium on all raids, ICE should be dismantled, and then there should be a process by which people can receive amnesty in this country. Cynthia has noted that many people have been forced to come here; there are so many who did not want to come here. The fee to apply for legal entry is now almost doubled what it was last year just to begin the process for citizenship. No one talks about the thousands and thousands of dollars people have to spend in order to become citizens. That’s why Cynthia has called for a moratorium on raids, rejected a guest-worker program, called for a repeal of NAFTA and all “free trade” agreements, and called for amnesty. That’s very different from what the Democrats want, and the Republicans want deportation along with “reform.” I don’t think reform is going to help. Other third parties want some kind of reformist policy, like half amnesty and half “get out of the country.” That’s not acceptable to me as a Latina; I would never be part of any organization that didn’t support full amnesty.

F*ckin’ A. Read the whole interview, it’s really good.