Fred Mazelis

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a 41-year-old Yemeni prisoner

One of the five Guantánamo detainees facing a possible death sentence was repeatedly ejected from the courtroom during the military commission hearing at the US base when he shouted that he had been tortured by the authorities.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a 41-year-old Yemeni prisoner, has been held for years by the US military, and was transferred to Guantánamo, along with other “high value” detainees, in 2006.

When asked by Col. James L. Pohl, the presiding judge, whether he understood his rights at the proceeding, bin al-Shibh said,

“I totally refuse to answer this question as long as the judge is taking positions against me and my allegations.”

According to the report in the New York Times, he shouted words to the effect that, “I am not a war criminal; you are a war criminal,” as he was removed from the courtroom.

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Fred Mazelis

A spokesman for the US military announced this week that the authorities will no longer provide public information on how many prisoners at the American gulag at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are participating in hunger strikes to protest their indefinite detention.

A report by the Associated Press cited an email from Navy Commander John Filostrat, speaking for the Joint Task Force Command Guantánamo.

“JTF-Guantánamo allows detainees to peacefully protest, but will not further their protests by reporting the numbers to the public,” Filostrat said. “The release of this information serves no operational purpose and detracts from the more important issues, which are the welfare of detainees and the safety and security of our troops.”

The latest policy and its Orwellian defense (“the welfare of the detainees!”) are in some ways the logical extension of the longstanding practice of brutal force-feeding of hunger striking prisoners, in which a nasogastric feeding tube is forced into their stomachs, causing great pain. The practice has been widely denounced as a form of torture.

The American military had earlier concluded that force-feeding was necessary because it feared that deaths caused by the protests would focus greater worldwide attention on the inhuman conditions at Guantánamo, as well as the by now well-known fact that the vast majority of the detainees are guilty of nothing, even by the legally dubious standards of the US “war on terror.” Apparently the US government has now decided that it would be even more effective to pretend that the remaining 162 prisoners at Guantánamo do not exist.

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Fred Mazelis

The extension of drone surveillance for domestic purposes lays the basis for the use of armed drones as well. [This is] only the beginning of what is raised by the relentless militarization of daily life in America.

The enormous expansion of the use of drones - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) - over US territory has received increasing bipartisan support within the political establishment, and has provoked growing popular opposition.

Attention was called to the subject of official use of drones for surveillance purposes by a recent comment from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a radio interview, the billionaire mayor offhandedly dismissed the growing concern over drone use by critics who raised issues of privacy and civil liberties. Bloomberg compared drones to surveillance cameras already in use around Manhattan. “What’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building?” Bloomberg said on a WOR-AM program. “We’re going into a different world, uncharted…you can’t keep the tide from coming in.”

The mayor’s remarks were significant not because they announced a brand new policy, but because he was signaling the growing approval in ruling class circles for measures that amount to the scaffolding of a police state. Bloomberg does not worry that his own privacy will be infringed – he regularly uses his private jet for weekend trips to his luxury beach house in Bermuda with barely a mention in the media. For the lower orders, however, Bloomberg’s advice can be summed up in four words: “Get used to it.”

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