Bush's actions amount to book-burning

Read this article about the White House's cuts to the EPA budget. The White House has begun closing the Enviromental Protection Agency's research libraries to the public and to its own staff, cementing Bush's reputation as usher of a new dark age.

Secret CIA prisons suck

If you haven't had a chance to read the news lately, let me bring you up to speed: President Bush announced that all the 9/11 terror suspects are being moved from secret CIA prisons in foreign countries to Guanantamo Bay where they will be brought to justice.

YAY! Right? Not so much.

Read between the lines...

• Why do secret CIA prisons exist?
• What occurs at these secret CIA prisons? If you think the Geneva Conventions are upheld, you are in lala land. In fact, if you think there is any oversight whatsoever, you are deluding yourself. Nobody even knew (until yesterday) who was in these prisons. We still don't really know.
• Why are they being transferred to Guantanomo Bay... a hellhole of injustice and despair? Over the last 5 years, 770 prisoners have been held there. Up until July of this year, the Administration has been adamant and very vocal in saying they don't think the Geneva Conventions apply to these people. There have been at least 44 suicide attemps - at least 3 successful. (Amazing, considering the circumstances.) Up to 200 prisoners at a time have gone on hunger strikes, and were then force-fed through tubes. No one held at Guantanamo has been charged.
• The court system that President Bush wants to use is, at this point, illegal. ILLEGAL. The Supreme Court struck down their idea a couple months ago, and said Congress had to authorize it first.
• The court system President Bush wants to use would allow for secret evidence. Evidence that the accused person would not know about, and maybe not even the accused person's lawyer. Is that American?
• The court system President Bush wants to use would allow for testimony gathered through coercion. Not torture, granted... but coercion. Do you see what a fine line this is? Do you see how problematic it is to accepted testimony that was extracted under coercive circumstances? Especially when these prisoners were interrogated in secret prisons. Who exactly is certifying that it was coercion and not torture?

In conclusion, let me just say, WHAT THE FREAK.

Let me put a little patriotic disclaimer here. Why do I care about terrorists' rights? What about the rights of the people who died on 9/11? And so on.

To me, terrorists are still humans. And if we want to operate in a undemocratic, inhumane, illegal, militant way... well that is just the kind of world we will create.

Rewriting the Geneva Conventions

I hope George W. Bush is unsuccessful in his attempts at Rewriting the Geneva Conventions. This NYT editorial explains a little more about what the administration is doing and why it is abhorrent.