Martin Kreickenbaum

While the German government has publicly condemned the illegal abductions, in practice it tolerated them or even collaborated with Washington. With the Strasbourg judgement, the systematic violation of basic democratic rights by the United States and its European allies has finally been acknowledged for the first time in a court of law.

In mid-December 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg awarded damages of €60,000 to Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin. The judges accepted that Macedonian security services had illegally seized El-Masri at the end of 2003, subjected him to abuse and finally handed him over to agents from the CIA.

The CIA then transported El-Masri to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was tortured and mistreated for months. The court saw this as a serious violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the Republic of Macedonia has acceded.

Although only representatives of the Macedonian government were accused, the verdict has broader significance. For the first time the brutal intrigues of the US government and its European accomplices in the so-called “war on terror” have been condemned by an international court for breaching international laws.

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Bill Van Auken

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials. ~ Chris Floyd (December 2009)

Conscious that its policy of imposing the full burden of the crisis on the backs of working people will provoke revolutionary upheavals, the ruling establishment is preparing the framework for a police dictatorship. The working class must make its own preparations.

As the Obama administration prepares to begin its second term, with its liberal and “left” apologists speculating on prospects for progressive action, events have once again made clear that the Democratic president is continuing and deepening the crimes of his predecessor.

In his first four years in office, Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, worked aggressively to shut down all investigations into CIA torture and other crimes committed in the name of the “war on terrorism.” It intervened in case after case to quash lawsuits seeking to hold accountable those who had illegally abducted and tortured thousands of individuals. It sought dismissal of legal actions seeking to uncover information about these crimes by invoking state secrecy.

The result of this sordid policy is that the torturers and those who gave them orders, from the CIA interrogators all the way to the White House, have enjoyed complete immunity. This is the foul political climate in which a fascistic film like Zero Dark Thirty, implicitly justifying torture and implicating the entire American people in this crime, can receive multiple awards and critical acclaim.

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Eric Peters

The Chimp pursed his pouty lips and announced that he’d “decided” – and you Republicans (you conservatives) didn’t object. Many of you actually cheered. So, please – don’t complain when Obama “decides.” As I expect him to in the weeks and months ahead. When Congress declines to “act” to “protect our children” from evil pieces of metal, composite and wood – Obama will do exactly as his predecessor did. He will “decide” that “we cannot wait” for Congress to act.

And so he will.

An Executive Order – the Americanized form of a Führerbefehl – will simply decree that henceforth certain types of firearms shall be unlawful for anyone not a costumed goon to possess. Perhaps all types of firearms. And with the stroke of his pen, that will be that. No Sieg, no Heil, perhaps – but the thing’s the same: An absolute autocrat asserting his personal will.

That is what the presidency of the United at Gunpoint States has become – a sort of occasionally revolving autocracy – led by a person we might properly call The Decider. So, kudos to the Chimp. He let slip the truth, just that once.

The Decider himself changes every so often – but the power of The Decidership remains. And today, it has become all-but-omnipotent. Limited, not by societal expectations (quite the opposite) much less by any document or set of codified restrictions; certainly not by that “goddamned piece of paper,” as the first openly avowed Decider put it – but only by the extent of the brazenness of whomever happens to be The Decider at any given moment.

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