I’m tired. Not a lot of sleep last night. I spent it in one of those semi-states of sleep, the sort where you’re aware that you have to be mindful of something that requires that you remain somewhat conscious but are still trying to sleep at the same time.

It’s clear and sunny here again today, as it has been this past week. In fact, it’s been uncommonly beautiful for this time of year, even given the chill the wind provides here on the West Coast that has the annoying ability to cut through everything that you’re wearing and go straight to your bones. We share that phenomenon with the UK, where it’s routine business as well.

I’m rambling, and I’m aware of it. I’m rambling because I’m having one of those mornings that I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. I’m having one of those mornings because, as has been the case over the last month, the list of things to touch upon grows so quickly every day that it seems almost impossible to retain it all and then translate it into something cogent.

Just off the top of my head there’s…

The recent revelation that the Canadian Armed Forces have stopped the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities because of a report of abuse on the 5th of November of last year despite the fact that last May, after a scandal broke regarding the Canadian transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities that were known for their use of torture, the government claimed that it was taking steps to immediately rectify the situation.

The recently released Manley Report, which, although critical of numerous aspects of the mission in Afghanistan, has basically provided the government with what can only be viewed as a blank cheque with regards to Canadian combat operations in that country. Of course, the report is non-binding, but its ramifications on a political level are extremely convenient. Canada, of course, is only one of three nations involved in direct combat operations in Afghanistan, and of the three represents the smallest contingent. That being the case, our losses, compared to those of the United States and the UK, are wholly disproportionate. The debate, however, remains transfixed on our continued support of the mission’s objectives, to help stabilize the nation and provide it security, even though other members of ISAF, with considerably larger forces in country, continue to refuse to have their contingents involved in direct combat operations. There is also the concern that even though our efforts are aimed at ensuring democratic stability in Afghanistan, that its implementation is, in effect, the representation of Western regional aspirations, and therefore not dissimilar to Soviet regional aspirations in the 70’s when the USSR was responsible for aiding in the supplanting of a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Thus, the real test of Afghan democracy will come when the nation has been secured and Western exploitative practices begin in earnest.

That is certainly not to say that the Taliban should be allowed to run rampant and plunge the nation into complete chaos, only that precluding the possibility of negotiations for the purposes of resolution is counter productive. Ultimately, there are always going to be those that support some, if not all, of the Taliban’s agenda, which raises a very important question: must those that do be wholly eliminated before progress can be made? And if they are not, what assurances do we have that there will not be a resurgence in the future that could seriously threaten the stability of the country, even after it possesses a well trained and equipped military? Given that, is it not fair to say that Western military involvement, on even the smallest of levels, will be required in Afghanistan for years to come?

Of course, all of that doesn’t even touch on the realities of the Pakistani frontier and the support covertly supplied those in opposition to the current Afghan government by elements within the Pakistani military establishment itself.

The possibility that Kenya could explode at any moment despite last minute attempts at political reconciliation aimed at stemming violence. As it stands now, the country is already in the early stages of a humanitarian crisis and also on the cusp of what could quickly turn into a genocidal event.

The recent disparity of global markets.

The continuing unrest in Pakistan.

The case of Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, who has been held at the facility since 2002. Khadr was captured at the age of 15 and, as the French Foreign Ministry recently pointed out…

“…all children associated with an armed conflict should be treated accordingly. As a minor at the time of the events, Mr. Khadr must be given special treatment — a point on which there is a universal consensus.”

The Canadian government has refused to intercede in Khadr’s case.

Gaza. While many have taken to illegally entering Egypt so that they can attempt to get food, fuel, and other sundries, Israel’s position remains steadfast, that being that the blockade is a move against the continued rocket attacks emanating from Gaza into Israel. The majority of the United Nations Security Council has labeled the blockade a violation of international humanitarian law and a collective punishment against the entire population, but the United States refuses to support that position without the inclusion of language that supports Israel’s concerns regarding the actions of Palestinian militants. Caught in the middle are, as usual, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza itself.

The firing of Linda Keen, President of The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, hours before she was to appear before a House committee in Ottawa. Keen was fired, according to Federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, due to the government’s ‘lack of confidence in her leadership’. This, of course, happened after the Commission’s attempt to have the Chalk River facility closed due to safety concerns and government’s decision to ignore the Commission.

The realities of the sanctions against Iran.

The ruinous economic reality of America’s imperialist adventures.

The frightening resurgence of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Media attacks on Heath Ledger following his death.

The Jose Padilla affair.

The continued humanitarian crisis unfolding in Somalia.

The Sudanese government’s decision to make Musa Hilal, a man accused of coordinating the Janjiweed militias in Darfur, an advisor to Federal Affairs Minister Abdel Basit Sabderat.

And So Forth

In truth, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Iraq is, of course, absent – primarily recent events in Baquba - as is the ever-evolving telecommunications scandal in the US and the Sibel Edmonds affair, the unrest in Zimbabwe, and events in Chiapas.

Last, but certainly not least, there are also those voices that tend to make excellent arguments on a routine basis, such as Robert Fisk, Stephen Zunes, and (for your viewing pleasure), the always brilliant Chalmers Johnson…

Six years ago today the US detention facility at Guantanamo opened. Since that time it has been home to hundreds of detainees that have been held in a legal black hole by a nation whose government claims to champion the rule of law and human rights. That same government claims that the facility is necessary because it houses some of the world’s foremost terrorists and that the ambiguity of The War On Terror does not require that they be legally classified as anything that would grant them rights under both international and federal laws.

While groups such as the UNHRC and the International Red Cross have been granted limited access to the facility at times, for the most the detainees remain held incommunicado. Some of those that have been released have gone public about their experience at the facility, the most notably the Tipton Three, whose story was turned into the 2006 documentary The Road To Guantanamo. Held at the facility for two years after their capture, they were eventually released without charge.

In December, a United Nations investigator went on record stating that he “highly suspected” the CIA of employing torture practices on prisoners at the facility, adding that he believed many of the detainees would never face prosecution to ensure that damning information regarding such occurrences would not become public. In 2006, the Bush administration openly criticized the United Nations after it called for the facility’s closure claiming that it lacked accurate information.

Of the 300 or so detainees currently being held at the facility, only 80 are expected to face military tribunals. Another 80 prisoners have, according to Martin Scheinin, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, been cleared for release. That leaves some 180 others still in limbo, with 80 facing a mock justice system without the possibility of being granted prosecutorial disclosure.

Obviously, those that are to be released have met certain criteria regarding not only their threat status, but also their limited knowledge of illegal practices.

There is no arguing the fact that the facility at Guantanamo represents a complete contradiction of American principles, and that is something that more Americans need to concern themselves with. Because when a government that professes to invade foreign nations to promote the rule of law and human rights defends the existence of a facility that adheres to neither, one must ultimately question what that contradiction is ultimately hiding. Even more, who it is actually protecting.

As we’re all aware, Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Neither does the tooth fairy, Frosty the Snowman, the Boogieman, the Easter Bunny, and, of course, Black Sites, nor the illegal seizure and transport of foreign nationals by the United States, a practice known as Rendition.

Were one to ask Maher Arar, he would certainly tell you that Rendition is a very real practice, having been a victim of it. US intelligence leaned on the RCMP, the RCMP offered up a lamb, Arar was seized at JFK, flown to Washington and then to Jordan where he was driven to the Syrian border and handed over to the Syrian authorities who then, over the course of a year, held him in prison and tortured him in an attempt to extract information regarding a subject he knew nothing about – al-Qaeda.

Of course, the inquiry into Arar’s Rendition resulted in the sacking of the head of the RCMP, an apology from the government, and a financial settlement. But thus far US courts have rejected Arar’s attempts to hold the government that was actually responsible for the Rendition accountable.

No real surprise there.

Unfortunately, Canada is not alone in complicity when it comes to aiding and abetting the practice of Rendition. Others have willfully allowed planes Rendering detainees to use their airspace and even land within their borders, fully aware of their cargo and purpose…

“The secret flight plans of American military planes have revealed for the first time how European countries helped send prisoners, including British citizens, to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Despite widespread criticism of alleged human rights abuses and torture at the US base in Cuba, a Sunday Times investigation has shown that at least five European countries gave the United States permission to fly nearly 700 terrorist suspects across their territory.

Three years ago, The Sunday Times published flight logs of CIA civilian jets in Europe, setting off a controversy over the whether countries across the continent have been secretly involved in America’s rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that carry out torture.

The row is now set to be reignited. Inquiries by Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European parliament, have uncovered not only more CIA flight logs but also more sensitive military flight plans, which until now have remained a closely guarded secret.

The logs show how most prisoners changed planes at a Turkish military airbase and flew across Greek, Italian and Portuguese airspace. Others reached Cuba after touching down in Spain, whose governing socialist party once expressed indignation at conditions in Guantanamo.

The flight logs show that three Britons - Shafiq Rasul, Jamal Udeen and Asif Iqbal - were flown across Europe to Cuba on January 14, 2002. Moazzam Begg, another Briton, was taken by the same route to Guantanamo on February 2, 2003; and Binyam Mohamed, a British resident whose release the British government is now trying to negotiate, arrived in Cuba after crossing Europe in a special flight in September 2004.

According to the flight plans, the first 23 prisoners to arrive at Guantanamo - including another British citizen, Feroz Abbasi, then 21, and an Australian, David Hicks - had arrived at the American naval base in Cuba after flying from the Moron airbase in Spain.

Abbasi has claimed in a statement that prisoners were abused within hours of arriving. “We were made to sit on our heels, one foot over the other, supported by one foot’s toes alone, for hours. Some of us were old, weak, fatigued, and injured - they were the ones to drop first in the searing Caribbean heat.”

Described by the Pentagon as the “worst of the worst” from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the images of prisoners such as Abbasi dressed in orange jumpsuits, their heads shaved and shackled by their wrists and ankles, shocked the world. Within a day, Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, announced that the Geneva conventions would not apply to what were now called “enemy combatants”.

Last week, Europe’s leading watchdog on human rights alleged that European countries had breached the international convention against torture by giving the US secret permission to use its airspace.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said: “What happened at Guantanamo was torture and it is illegal to provide facilities or anything to make this torture possible. Under the law, European governments should have intervened and should not have given permission to let these flights happen.”

Gomes added: “It’s clear to me that Guantanamo could not have been created without the involvement of European countries.”

Methods used at Guantanamo Bay, condemned by Britain’s Court of Appeal as a legal “black hole” and as a “monstrous failure of justice” by one law lord, have included the prolonged use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and use of stress positions. “These are methods that have been declared as unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights,” Hammarberg said.

The military flight plans show that all key flights arriving in Guantanamo had come across European airspace either through Spain or the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey. The Sunday Times compared the military flight plans against a database compiled by Reprieve, the British-based charity that represents Guantanamo prisoners, of when prisoners first weighed in at the camp.

The investigation, cross-checked against other Pentagon documents, shows for the first time which prisoner arrived on which flight at Guantanamo, and by what route. At least 170 other prisoners flew over Spanish territory, more than 700 crossed Portuguese space, and more than 680 were transshipped at Incirlik. Most flights also crossed Greek and Italian airspace, according to a source in European air traffic control.

On February 2 2003, for example, a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster plane took off from Incirlik with 27 prisoners on board for Cuba. The same day, prisoner number 558 weighed in at 136lb (62kg) at the camp. He can be named as Moazzam Begg, now 39, from Birmingham, who was released in January 2005, and has never been charged with a crime.

Interviewed by phone last week, Begg recalled: “Inside the plane there was a chain around our waist, and it connected to cuffs around my wrists, which were tied in the back, and to my ankles. We were seated but it was so painful not being able to speak, to hear, to breathe properly, to look, to turn left or right, to move your hands, stretch your legs, or anything.” At the time flights were landing in Spain and crossing Spanish airspace, socialist leaders there were expressing “indignation” over conditions in Guantanamo. Now the socialists are in government after winning an election in March 2004 just after the Madrid train bombings and they are being asked to defend Spain’s continued collaboration with American operations. Under international law, government and military planes can cross another country’s territory only with diplomatic permission.

In a statement to the European parliament on the visits of CIA planes to Spain, the foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has testified: “Our territory may have been used not to commit crimes on it, but as a stopover on the way to committing crime in another country.”

Spain, it has now emerged, had a specific agreement with the US to allow flights and visits to Spanish airbases for American planes.

In Portugal, the foreign minister Luis Amado has said flights across his country’s airspace took place “under the aegis of the UN and Nato and that Portugal naturally follows the principle of good faith in the relations with its allies”. Nato’s role in Guantanamo stems from a secret agreement made in Brussels on October 4 2001 by all Nato members, including Britain. Although never made public, Lord Robertson, the former British defence secretary who was later Nato’s secretary-general, explained that day that Nato had agreed to provide “blanket overflight clearances for the United States and other allies’ aircraft for military flights related to operations against terrorism”.

Today, Nato is more coy about its role in helping send prisoners to Guantanamo.

In a letter to Gomes, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the current secretary-general, said no Nato planes had “flown to or from Guantanamo Bay” and that Nato “as an organisation has no involvement or co-ordinating role in providing clearance or overflight rights for other flights”. Turkey, meanwhile, has declared that its agencies had “reached no findings regarding any unacknowledged deprivation of liberty conducted by foreign agencies within the territory of the republic of Turkey or any transport by aircraft or otherwise of the persons deprived of their liberty”.

In London, Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, said, with America threatening that Guantanamo prisoners faced the death penalty, European governments had made “pious statements” that they would never send prisoners to the US without obtaining assurances they would not be executed.

Stafford Smith added: “Some European governments, it’s now clear, systematically assisted in clandestine flights and illegal prisoner transfers to Guantanamo Bay. We need a full investigation and Europeans need to face their responsibility for these crimes.”

If Guantanamo is, as the United States has repeatedly claimed, filled with some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, and they have overwhelming proof of culpability, then why not try them based on the evidence that they have in a wholly transparent fashion? What does the US have to lose by refusing to engage in such a process compared to the military kangaroo court that has been fashioned to deal with it? Of course, given the legal ambiguity of the status given those detained, to undertake truly transparent proceedings would, of course, thrust to the forefront the afore mentioned ambiguity that has been employed by the United States regarding the classification of those being detained. Serious questions would have to be confronted regarding the Geneva Conventions, access to the International Red Cross/Red Crescent, and, most importantly, the legal classification of detainees as it applies to either international law or the laws of the United States itself.

How long will the detainees at Guantanamo be held? If an individual has been interned there for years, what actionable intelligence could they still possess now? And if they possess none, or have run their course as a mole within the population in exchange for God knows what, then they either have to be tried for a crime or released. That’s how the law works, especially as it applies to a nation founded on the rule of law that is holding them beyond the law.

Of course, there are other options to consider. That some of the individuals that were held, and endured God knows what, were flipped because they were told they would spend the rest of their lives as prisoners if they didn’t. Thus, they could be shuttled off to various locations around the world in an attempt to have them infiltrate various known radical elements within certain communities. Then again, who’s to say they wouldn’t simply disappear given the chance? Perhaps threats were made against their families, maybe members of their families are also being detained – the truth is that the possibilities are endless. But one thing that remains constant is the fact that there are hundreds of individuals being held incommunicado and outside of the strictures of any truly recognized legal platform. US Combatant Status Review Tribunals do not apply, no matter the justifications given by the US government, because the rights afforded those that face them are overwhelmingly limited, not to mention the fact that such proceedings, that are without legal precedent both internationally and under US law, are considered matters of national security and thus entirely suspect to the influence of policy objectives.

It’s eight in the morning and I’m awake. To most that statement will sound ludicrous because most get up well before now to go to work. I did most of my work last night after midnight, so being up this early isn’t good for form. Nonetheless, some interesting results…

It may, or may not, come as shock to some, but a recent report has concluded that US and Iraqi forces control less than one-third of the Iraqi capital. Five years after the invasion, which found ‘victorious’ US forces in the center of Baghdad within days, the city is not secure, sectarian violence and territoriality has divided the city, and attempts to increase the military presence within the city itself have been largely ineffectual. Never mind the five or so hours of intermittent electricity a day while the Green Zone is lit up like a Christmas tree 24/7, one wonders how any sane person can refer to that country as a working democracy when its leadership is confined to a highly secured zone of the city for its own protection from the very people it’s supposed to represent.

For those of you interested in discovering just how much Iraq resembles the Wild West when it comes to private security contractors, seeing Shadow Company will be a must. One of the aspects of how private military contractors conduct themselves in Iraq that should not be overlooked is that their actions actually fall outside of Iraqi law, making them forces unto themselves. I say ‘forces’ because there is more than one company reaping the benefits of the conflict, all of which operate with legal impunity.

US Military judges have dropped all war crimes charges against two detainees at Guantanamo facing trail, a precedent that could very well preclude trying the remaining 380 detainees being held…

“The judges said they lacked jurisdiction under the strict definition of those eligible for trial by military tribunal under a law the U.S. Congress enacted last year.

“It’s another demonstration that the system simply doesn’t work,” said the tribunals’ chief defense counsel, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan.

The rulings did not affect U.S. authority to indefinitely hold the 380 foreign terrorism suspects detained at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in southeast Cuba.

But it was the latest setback for the Bush administration’s efforts to put the Guantanamo captives through some form of judicial process. It was forced to rewrite the rules last year after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal.

Charges were dropped for Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15. Khadr, now 20, was accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

Charges were also dropped for Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, who is accused of driving and guarding Osama bin Laden. Hamdan last year won a U.S. Supreme Court challenge that scrapped the first Guantanamo tribunal system.”

Thus, while the results are hopeful in some respects with regards to the farce of the tribunals themselves, the illegality of holding detainees at Guantanamo outside of the auspices of international law and conventions has not been altered.

“…defense lawyers and rights groups said any trials should be moved to the regular U.S. federal court system or the long-established court-martial system.

“At this point, detainees have been more successful committing suicide in Guantanamo than the government has been successful in getting detainees to trial,” Amnesty International observer Jumana Musa said.”

Michael Winship does a good job examining the wealth of some of the Presidential candidates. One of the more telling findings has to do with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani…

“Rudy Giuliani, on the other hand, would have you believe that God and Fate had somehow aligned the spheres to place him — and only him — at the helm of New York City on 9/11. He bestrode the metropolis to save it from certain doom, even though he had less than four months to go in his second, up-until-then undistinguished term as mayor.

After the September 11 catastrophe, despite term limits, he made a last ditch attempt to change the rules so we could continue to have him as our fearless leader for — oh, how about forever? — but cooler heads prevailed.

Instead, Giuliani decided to parlay his new reputation for in extremis leadership into megabucks. When he left City Hall, his gross assets were listed at between $1.16 million and $1.83 million, most of it in retirement funds and two Manhattan apartments. Since then, his company, Giuliani Partners, has pulled in more than $100 million in consulting, security, management and financial service fees, and has quadrupled in size.

As reported on the front page of the May 13 Washington Post, “That success helped transform the Republican considered the front-runner for his party’s 2008 presidential nomination from a moderately well-off public servant into a globe-trotting consultant whose net worth is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Over the next year, whenever you hear Giuliani refer to 9/11 in a negative light, you might also want to remember that it made him an extremely rich man.

Lastly, according to The Raw Story, the Bush administration has, over the last several years, given the CIA the green light to conduct propaganda operations against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon…

“The Central Intelligence Agency has received approval at least twice in the last several years to conduct an “information war” against several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Lebanon and Syria, according to current and former intelligence officials.

In addition, the Bush Administration has been running operations out of the Defense Department that are not subject to Congressional oversight, intelligence sources say. These programs appear murkier, and have included support for an alleged terrorist group in Iran.

A recent ABC News report revealed that President George W. Bush had signed a presidential finding giving the CIA the authority to conduct “non-lethal” covert operations against Iran. Former and current intelligence sources tell RAW STORY, however, that there have been “at least two” presidential findings over the past few years which have empowered the agency to run an “open-secret” information war against Iranian interests, mainly leveraging resources and assets “within the United States and France.”

What is of extreme import here are operations run out of the DOD that effectively run below Congressional radar – something for which we largely have the Rumsfeld era to thank, as it was during his tenure that the Defense Department began to increase the use of such progams, the first most likely being Special Access Programs (SAP’s) controlled by Stephen Cambone, then Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

It’s best not to comment on international affairs at 5am when you’re cross-eyed. That said, having reflected on recent events, and given a comment left in a previous entry about the press conference given by the 15 Britons recently released by Iran, I wanted to present the entire issue in a new light.

According to the released Britons they were blindfolded, held in solitary confinement, made to confess to being in Iranian waters while be threatened with extensive jail terms, and, of course, having to undergo an event that would be traumatic for anyone, no matter who they were.

This treatment, no matter what has been done over the last six years by the United States, British, and others in The War On Terror (or in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have perished), is unjustifiable. To some extent it can be viewed as the less of monumental evils that have taken place since 2001, but there is still no excuse for it. As a human rights advocate I must concede that point.

I first want to say that I give credit to the Britons for, as one of them put it, not causing an international incident by firing on the Iranians when they were first captured. That, in itself, showed tremendous bravery and forethought, and all of us should be thankful that cooler heads prevailed. But what the thirteen days of their captivity, and the debate surrounding it, have shown us is, I am afraid, something which many are unwilling to really and openly examine – the global reduction in human rights standards that has only been amplified by The War On Terror.

In an entry dated April 4th I wrote the following…

“Unlike our supposedly ‘civilized’ approach to dealing with those we detain - the British sailors and marines held by the Iranians were not shackled and forced to wear hoods, were not flown to undisclosed locations to be interrogated and tortured, and they will not rot in prison camps for years awaiting show trials. No video footage of Iranian military personnel will be uncovered showing the sailors and marines piled in human pyramids with their captors gleefully giving the thumbs up whilst resting against their naked, humiliated bodies.�?

A reader commented soon after the press conference held by the released Britons that…

“Obviously the Iranians wouldn’t release any evidence of detrimental treatment as they’re fighting a propaganda war, but it’d be safe to assume that whent he cameras were off the actions that took place wouldn’t fall under the category of ‘civilized’ either.

According to this CBC story, and contrary to Matt’s quote above, the sailors content that they WERE blindfolded, they WERE interrogated and they WERE held in undisclosed locations (albeit, still in Iran). I think it’s naive and premature to suggest that a country such as Iran that operates largely on a primitive and barbaric legal system would have treated these prisoners much better than we should’ve expected.�?

While the correction regarding the Britons being blindfolded and interrogated must be recognized as a fair counter argument, I wanted to place all of this in a broader context. By doing so, and please let me be clear about this, I am in now way condoning the actions of the Iranians. But the broader reality of prisoner detention and the legal black holes dug by nations that supposedly do not operate largely on primitive and barbaric legal systems should be brought into focus, and this incident is certainly a catalyst for such self examination.

I don’t want to enter into a discussion about the legalities of where the British were when they were apprehended by the Iranians (on that subject I would point you to the assessment of former British Minister Craig Murray), nor will I claim that the entire episode was not a propaganda coup for the Iranians, or that they didn’t purposely capitalize on it – they most certainly did, which was the primary point of my April 4 entry. Of course, the second that the 15 Britons were back in the UK, the spin doctors on both sides of the fence were hard at work trying to get what they could out of what had happened. To use the words of the commenter quoted, it would be naïve and premature to think that there isn’t damage control being asserted by the Blair government, just as the Iranians have certainly gone to great lengths to over amplify their position.

But the question ultimately has to be asked – at what point to we view this incident in a larger context with regards to human rights and the abuses that have taken place, and continue to, the world over?

At present there are literally hundreds of foreign detainees being held incommunicado at Guantanamo by the United States. Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have been denied access to them, as has the international Red Cross. The UNHRC itself has condemned the existence of the facilities there to no effect. Meanwhile, individuals such as President Bush and ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have claimed that conditions at the facility are humane and adhere to the Geneva Conventions.

So what has befallen those that have been detained there?

Besides being in legal limbo, or made to adhere to a legal process that is, for lack of a better term, a complete sham, they have endured, from what has been recounted by those released from the facility, such as the Tipton Three, abuses that far exceed those permitted by the Geneva Conventions.

Everything from water boarding to placing detainees in dark rooms with strobe lights for hours on end while music is blasted at high volume. Extreme physical abuse at the hands of interrogators and guards. Being confined in small, metal box-like rooms for months for failing to ‘cooperate’ with interrogators. Being denied the ability to stand or speak for excessive amounts of time. Having the Qur’an debased in front of them, in some instances urinated on. And that, in all honesty, is probably just the tip of the iceberg. While still in Kabul, detainees bound for Guantanamo were treated even worse, in some cases resulting in deaths. Upon the capture of alleged Taliban fighters, some were placed in an enclosed metal container truck which soon after ran out of oxygen. The solution to providing those inside the container oxygen was for Northern Alliance troops to simply shoot holes in the side of the container, killing dozens inside. These same people were allied with the United States during its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

I wish Guantanamo were the extreme example, but unfortunately it probably isn’t. The CIA has been operating rotating Black Sites throughout the world where ‘high priority’ detainees have been taken. Such individuals simply fall off the face of the earth and there is no way to even begin to determine how they have been treated or where they have been move to and from. It is known that Black Sites have existed in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, though one can only speculate as to how many others there might be. Again, all access to such detainees has been denied, and it has only been recently that admissions of such sites have been forthcoming after pressure brought to bear by the European Parliament.

Lastly, there is the matter of Extraordinary Rendition, a process in which The United States and its allies, Canada included, ‘render’ suspects to nations known for their torture practices or to Black sites where prisoners can be interrogated off the books, so to speak. For those of you familiar with the case of Canadian Maher Arar, you know all too well the outcome of such operations.

“Manfred Nowak, a special reporter on torture, has catalogued in a 15-page U.N. report presented to the 191-member General Assembly that the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan are violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.�?

If we are to look at the legalities of the detention of the 15 British sailors and marines and claim it unjust, then how are we to view the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr who, on February 17th of 2003, was snatch off of a Milan street, flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then rendered to Egypt where he spent four years in detention and was tortured before being released by an Egyptian court that claimed his detention had been ’unfounded’?

It might startle you to know that in February an Italian Judge indicted 26 Americans and 5 Italians over Nasr’s abduction, though all of the Americans have since left the country.

Be it the human rights abuses feeble justified by the War On Terror, those at the hands of the Khartoum backed Janjiweed militias in Darfur, the treatment of Chinese dissidents, or the detention of 15 Britons for 13 days by the Iranian government – there is a greater issue here that is constantly overlooked by far too many…

…at what point do human rights transcend the requirements of what a nation perceives is in its best interests? For no nation can claim itself just that would sacrifice the basic human rights of others for their own ends, no matter what those ends may be.

When I first saw images of the detainees at Guantanamo and the horrifying images from Ab Ghraib I naively thought to myself ’this is it, people simply will not stand for this’. But as time passed I came to realize that we will tolerate the debasement of humanity so long as we refuse to come to terms with the fact that there is no moral high ground when it comes to the declination of human rights. Because human rights are a universal proposition, and being such requires us to be universally humane.

It could all be true, it could be nothing more than the staged ramblings of a man that has been held in a black hole for four years. I am referring, of course, to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured by the Pakistani ISI in Rawalpindi in 2003. He has, since that time, been held by the United States as a detainee.

Now, before I continue, let me make plain the intentions of this entry before it’s thought that I am openly defending a man that has been linked to crimes from the planning of the 9/11 attacks to the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. I am not suggesting that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent, nor that he isn’t the devotee of a militant ideology. What I am saying, with regards to the recent release of the transcript in which he confesses to numerous crimes and plots, is that not only is the release of this information politically timely given the impact of the Libby verdict and the Walter Reid scandal, but moreso something that should be far more troubling to us all, no matter the man’s nefarious reputation or allegiances.

I will begin by saying, quite simply, that even Hermann Göring was afforded the right to a defense at Nuremberg. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, no matter your views on the subject, was not. His confessions before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing in Guantanamo Bay this month, which included confessing to the “September 11th terrorist attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other attacks that were foiled�? were all heard in a closed proceeding from which defense lawyers and the media were banned.

No matter the man’s reputation or the crimes that he is believed to have committed, during his rather lengthy confession to the power that has held him for four years, part of that time at undisclosed locations, at whose hands anything could have been done to him – his confessions, which by all accounts, were the media granted access to the proceedings, should provide the Bush administration with some much needed positive press, even though the process with which that information was obtained is entirely criminal – has done nothing more than produce a confession that is wholly tainted by the fact that the fundamental beliefs in the rule of law that the United States professes to encourage in locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan were notoriously absent.

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty of everything that he has confessed to, and was willing to confess to it, then what would the inclusion of the press and proper legal council at the proceeding have mattered? After all, his confession was released in detail by every major news organization in the world the second it was available.

Under international and human rights law, even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has rights. And if we fail to grant those rights, then all we have permitted is the failure of justice itself. And that, no matter the crime or criminal, demonstrates our own willingness to abandon the very principles that we claim to cherish and champion. Ultimately, what separates us from the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s of the world? In this case, it’s surely not our belief in the law.

That said, it should never be forgot that once you cross that line and assume the omnipotence of being able to disregard the rights of others at will, then it should be expected that those among the disregarded with the resolve to strike back will act accordingly, by the example set.

Ultimately, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions could all be true. Many of them could also be false. The fact that the people can’t be sure of the authenticity of the information is, at best, a sign of the times. At worst, the harbinger of our society’s demise.

Updated: The BBC’s have your say on this topic is eliciting some interesting responses.