There was an UN vote to try to stop the sanction against cuba... the result? 185 vs 2 - 185 to stop the sanctions, 2 (brazil, ukraine) abstained and 2 countries voted to continue the sanctions (israel and of course USA).
Until this becomes an internal USA issue affecting the elections, and when the propaganda doesn't help anymore with that, things will change... but for now, nothing will happen, waterbordings will continue while the politicians point fingers at other countries for stuff way less sever than whan usa has done in the last few decades.
Isn't this because Florida is likely to make or break the US Presidential election? There are many ex-Cubans in the Miami area that despise the current Cuban government. Enough, that as a bloc they can decide the election and they will mostly vote for whoever's policy is against the Cuban government. Either party defecting from status quo to drop sanctions will just be handing the US government to the other party.
Is Florida really a swing state anymore? It seems Georgia and maybe NC are the new battlegrounds. I’ve lived in all of those states and it has been interesting to see.
Well, it's currently a "must-win" for Republicans that's reasonably close, so first and foremost they won't be the ones to upset their chances at all. In the last election, it wasn't razor-thin like Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, or NC, but if the Democrats lose a few of those then they need the next runner-up like Florida. Florida was Democrat in '08, '12, and only lost by 1.29% in '16. With Republicans winning Florida by 3.36% in 2020, maybe Cuba's best chance is for Florida to actually be a lost cause to Democrats so that they go ahead with dropping the sanctions. Although, Democrats won '08 by 3% and still flipped the other way, so it's very possible to consider it fair game.
If true, I've discovered why voting for your opposite choice could be a valid option if you care about a specific issue like this.
No, it isn’t. The Florida Democratic Party is the equivalent of a 2-15 team in American football. Zero talent, zero bench, zero promising newcomers, to first order.
How can prisoners file appeals or control their mental illness if they are isolated can't function properly? These prisons are beyond punishment and the steps Supermax takes to prevent suicide also seems inhumane considering the conditions.
> most people accept that out of 8,000,000,000 people, there are 35 that need to sent to a facility like Guantanamo.
Most people do not accept that most Guantánamo detainees have been/are being held without ever being charged or tried. The terrorist in this case is the US as harsh as that sounds.
> Most people do not accept that most Guantánamo detainees have been/are being held without ever being charged or tried.
People are right not to accept that because it isn't true. Of the 35 Guantanamo Bay detainees, 3 are being held without charge. https://www.closeguantanamo.org/Prisoners
The goal of Guantanamo Bay was to try to evade the Constitution. It failed, however: SCOTUS still ruled that non-US citizens held by the US in non-US territory still retained certain constitutional rights with regards to criminal trials.
This could be a quote about gulags or death camps. What's "necessary" is subjective, but at least we've got a fairly universal basis for "evil", as consolation.
>The goal is simply isolation to prevent recidivism.
Simply? The goals is to have a prison outside of the US where the US (i think mainly CIA) can do things that it cannot when in the US. The goal is clearly to subvert the "rules based order" they so vocally claim to uphold.
No it's not. As the person you responded to pointed out it's basically torture when you're preventing suicide. If someone is such a permanent problem, execution and suicide are obviously options, but there are also many prisons that provide the isolation you want without being as bad. There's no excuse and it's far from "needed."
This is just a cheap excuse. If they are guilty, any other jail in the country would work perfectly
If they are found innocent in a trial, they should be at their home with a compensation. If this is not possible they could be offered the citizenship as a way to repair the injustice after a careful examination of each case. One case at a time
My bet would be that that keeping opened guantanamo with a stream of taxes is making somebody, somewhere really rich
> If they are guilty, any other jail in the country would work perfectly
In theory you are 100% correct. In practice this would require authorization from Congress, and would never get passed for fear of having to campaign against "So-and-so put terrorists in your backyard." It's a perverse NIMBYism.
They don't know that, but there is really zero political upside for any state governor to accept the transfer of any of those prisoners. It's not their problem.
Not arguing for gitmo’s continued existence, but I would point out that the gulag system was a primary tool of oppression in the Soviet Union, and an estimated 18M soviet citizens were sent there.
Over the course of Guantanamo’s existence under 1000 men and boys have been extrajudicially detained and tortured there. Expanding this well known data by an order of magnitude (plus a little) gives a conservative estimate of 50000 individuals extrajudicially detained under post 9/11 foreign policy (just a guess at totals based on roughly how many of these prisons were built in the bush era).
Depending on how you define "detained under post 9/11 foreign policy", it could include people the US imprisoned in countries where there were wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the US worked with local authoritarian governments to lock up "religious fundamentalists", etc, and my guess is it's a lot higher than 50K.
And that doesn't count people killed or otherwise uprooted.
I was mainly trying to highlight the difference in scale and focus between these two programs of detaining people. Even if we add another order of magnitude of people for your upper bound it’s still smaller in scale than the gulags, and it’s focused on foreign nationals instead of the government’s own citizens.
> The amount of people affected doesn't change the abstract nature of the thing, which is what the comparison tests on.
Actually it kind of does, a pretty important quality of a "gulag" is the scale, and another was its domestic focus.
Also, the comparison also fails because (I understand) a major goal of the gulag system was the acquisition of slave labor.
So on the one hand, you have a massive prison system used for domestic oppression, imprisoning citizens in physically lethal conditions and exploited for slave labor. On the other hand you have a much smaller prison, exclusively housing foreigners, used for no profitable labor of any kind.
If you don't pay attention to the details, you can make any comparison you want, but they'll be worthless comparisons.
Yes, I see what you're saying, but I think it depends which details are being highlighted. In this case the metaphor was based on the commonality of detention without trial. Of course it's not a perfect one for one; they're not literally gulags, but there are elements which are shared and I think those are what the person was trying to highlight.
> In this case the metaphor was based on the commonality of detention without trial. Of course it's not a perfect one for one; they're not literally gulags, but there are elements which are shared and I think those are what the person was trying to highlight.
The problem is that this particular analogy isn't helpful because it's more misleading than elucidating and there are better analogies that could be made. The only thing going for this analogy was its tendentiousness.
Also, IIRC, people who were sent to the gulags did have trials, they were just unfair.
Murdering one person is murder; murdering a substantial number of people in a region is genocide. Scale can definitely change the fundamental nature of something.
Not really. Genocide is about intent, about who you target. Killing all Sami people in Sweden would be a genocide. Dropping a nuke on Washington D.C. would not be a genocide.
Some had some kind of process (fairness is, at best, dubious in most cases), but even some of those who were never charged under any system, and have been cleared for transfer or release, remain detained to this day.
There have been some military tribunals. But it is essentially impossible to conduct a civilian criminal trial of alleged illegal combatants and terrorists captured under battlefield conditions in a manner consistent with US federal court procedures. The circumstances at the time the prisoners were captured made it impossible to maintain proper chains of evidence and key witnesses are unavailable. And who could even serve as jury members?
So America rounds a large number of people based on tenuous evidence or no evidence at all, tortures them for 20 fucking years, and then says, "There was never even a way to give them a trial in the first place"?
It would have been a lot kinder just to murder them.
It's disgusting. America is just the shittiest place.
The even recently killed US citizens (dad and his children) in several drone strikes without any due process. Obama first (dad and son), then Trump (daughter). Maybe he did commit crimes that deserve capital punishment, but he was given no trial.
Doesn't matter. What matters is was there any system of justice, even military justice, or were people detained and absurd with reckless disregard for potential innocence.
Detaining people as POWs, and treating them well, prevents them from causing harm without oppressing innocents.
Those people were not detained as prisoners of war but as unlawful combatants. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and similar terrorist groups were not signatories to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and their fighters did not wear uniforms, therefore they have no legal rights beyond what the US government chooses to grant. (I am not making any argument about the morality of this situation, just explaining the legal reality.)
> The Taliban, Al Qaeda, and similar terrorist groups were not signatories to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and their fighters did not wear uniforms, therefore they have no legal rights beyond what the US government chooses to grant.
Incorrect – this issue was specifically litigated; they are entitled under international law, because the war is war where one of the belligerents is not a state, occurring in the territory of a party to the Conventions, to the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which applies to “conflicts not of an international character”. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006).
The evidence varies by case. For some prisoners there is very little evidence, or at least none that would be admissible in a legitimate civilian criminal court. Some of the prisoners may be innocent.
But as a practical matter the decisions aren't being made based on evidence. There is non-zero risk that the prisoners could be dangerous and no US state or foreign country is willing to take the political risk of accepting them. And the US federal government can't really force anyone to take them.
You went to the gulag in the Soviet Union for relatively minor offenses, real or imagined. You might be sent there if you annoyed the local party leadership, or maybe broke his daughter's heart. Maybe someone wanted something of yours, so they reported you. You'd be snatched up on the way to the grocery store. Interrogated, made to sign a confession that someone else wrote. Then you were then shipped off, and none of the people you hold dear ever heard from you again.
Meanwhile, you went to gitmo if you were an armed combatant in an insurgency, or had a leadership/support role in a terrorist attack against US or her allies.
Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago for a clear example of a) how Communist/Marxist/Leninist states are irrevocably totalitarian and b) how GITMO is not even remotely comparable to a gulag.
The book is a remarkable and often painful read. Not because of how it is written, but because what it is written about - a demonstration of the machinations and inevitable outcome of socialist states.
> Meanwhile, you went to gitmo if you were an armed combatant in an insurgency, or had a leadership/support role in a terrorist attack against US or her allies.
> 779 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo. Although most of these have been released without charge, the United States government continues to classify many of these released detainees as "enemy combatants". As of January 5, 2017, 55 detainees remained at Guantanamo. By January 19, 2017, at the end of the Obama Administration, the detention center remained open with 41 detainees remaining.
Assuming all released are innocent and all that remaining are guilty, there is a 95% chance to go to Guantanamo and be innocent. (The number goes up following basic human right like "innocent until proven guilty".)
>Meanwhile, you went to gitmo if you were an armed combatant in an insurgency, or had a leadership/support role in a terrorist attack against US or her allies.
Common dude, read Solzhenitsyn. Then you will clearly see that the American word is law. To be accused by America, is the same as being satan incarnate. Do you even Solzhenitsyn bro?
> Meanwhile, you went to gitmo if you were an armed combatant in an insurgency, or had a leadership/support role in a terrorist attack against US or her allies.
That is a lie.
Mere suspicion, or a similar name, or being a relative or associate, was sufficient.
Back under the Obama Administration they tried exactly that. It didn't pan out as no State wanted them and no Senator wanted to be the one to tell their constituents "we'll accept terrorists in our borders" Federal prison system or not.
There is an interesting workaround in housing them at the District of Columbia Jail. The DC Jail being located outside of any state, wouldn't have the problem of the state or senators being held accountable by constituents as DC isn't a state nor does it have any senators.
Technically true but you’re forgetting about the 4 Senators from Virginia and Maryland and the DC government that Congress has setup. They might not be directly answerable to DC residents but they’re sure as hell answerable to the people that live around DC and they still have to work in the same city as DC residents live. Less political power doesn’t mean zero political power.
I feel like I have something to learn, but the equivalent would be as if the CT and MA senators were upset if RI decided to house the prisoners? (ignoring the politics inside RI completely)
If Rhode Island were offering to hold them in its own State prison system, MA & CT wouldn’t have a say in the holding of prisoners, although they could maybe make the transfer messy. DC is not a separate sovereign from the Federal government, the DC government exists as an administrative convenience for Congress in the guise of self-government; which is to say the interests of DC and the White House are legally subordinate to the interests of the Senators and Representatives of the 50 States.
The Federal Prison system like all aspects of the Federal government are subject to Senatorial review and while technically you only need enough votes, not necessarily the home Senators approval, the Senate does like to remain collegial and so there’s some things they don’t do unto each other when there’s a Presidential agenda to hold up instead, like at the time: Obama’s. Every Federal penitentiary is in some Senator’s State, and given how controversial it was to put militant combatants anywhere near, let alone through the United States criminal justice system, it’s not happening.
Technically, if Congress wanted to house foreign terrorists in the DC city jail, there wouldn’t be anything that could legally hold up an Act of Congress to do so. They’re not motivated nor interested enough to do so, and a city jail isn’t the best place when there’s a Federal Supermax over in Colorado and Guantanamo Bay over in Cuba.
It’s not that legally we can’t, it’s just whatever political benefits there are to it are outweighed by political risks to individual members of Congress. The prisoner population of Gitmo is a problem nobody wants, and keeping them there is as good a reason as any to maintain sovereignty in the area in the face of a hostile foreign government.
There are ~10 million illegal immigrants in the US [1], and it is the policy of many "sanctuary" state and city governments to sabotage any federal deportation efforts. But immigration law is suddenly strict and implacable for these 35?
Reading the linked article, a law was passed early in Obama's term to prevent them from moving any of those prisoners to American soil. The legation was created to intentionally frustrate Obama's promise to close the prison.
Congress would have to change the law. That would be hard enough by itself, but with the new House of Representatives I doubt anything will be accomplished for the next couple years.
It's unbecoming to exclusively blame Republicans for bipartisan decisions. Democrats in Congress love when you do that.
A great example is when the Democrats pretended to oppose the 2017 tax reform law and then refused to repeal it when they had the majority and Presidency.
Immigration cannot be illegal. Only behaviors after immigration can be illlegal under domestic law.
The US can take actions against immigrants,
How can the US pass a law that exclusively binds to foreigners in a foreign country? That violates sovereignty.
It’s sad that we live in a world where politicians just blatantly lie about their campaign promises and we all accept it as normal and award them with high approval ratings.
> It’s sad that we live in a world where politicians just blatantly lie about their campaign promises and we all accept it as normal and award them with high approval ratings.
Though, part of that problem is that we also live in a world where the electorate also makes unrealistic demands on politicians, and will punish them if they don't get the promises they demand. I think that's especially true in primaries when it's mainly activists that can really push for promises that are not especially popular.
Which isn't to let anyone off the hook, just to note it's one of those difficult problems that's composed of interlocking problems that reinforce each other.
I agree, but would go further and argue that the belief that "all politicians lie" is itself a problem with negative effects. Since we have a competitive system and a self described political entertainment complex, everyone running for office will be described as a liar. However, when an actual compulsive (pathological and self admitted?) liar is elected to congress, the belief that "everyone does it" serves as a justification for doing nothing.
It misses the forest for the trees and provides an excuse for allowing the very problem it describes to grow and become worse.
The article I posted earlier shows some of the effort that went into the attempt to close Guantanamo Bay. Your definition of what constitutes trying hard sets an unreasonably high bar.
> Naively one might think the former would be politically difficult, and the latter easy.
The latter is much more difficult because it involves securing funding and purchasing land and then getting building permits that require impact reports and obtaining the services of a contractor. The US had already completed all the prerequisites to execute an airstrike in Iraq.
All the reasons you give can be circumvented by simply breaking the law. Which is exactly what Soleimani's assassination involved. It was easy to break the law to assassinate a foreign high-ranking government official (and the press barely complained!), but hard to enforce standing immigration law (yet the press howled anyway).
Breaking the law does not solve all the issues I listed so easily. It does easily solve the issue of killing somebody who had taken military action in a country that the US military is already in.
Which specific international law is that? I am not aware that the US has ratified any treaty which would outlaw perpetual leases. If Cuba is unhappy with the terms of the agreement then they are welcome to renegotiate.
US real estate and contract law has zero relevance here so I don't know why you would bring that up.
> I am not aware that the US has ratified any treaty which would outlaw perpetual leases.
So if Russia did not ratify UN convention on war crimes, then their behaviour in Ukraine is okay?
You seem to have no grasp of international law at all.
Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:
“a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force.”
The Platt Amendment and accompanying Agreement could have violated this article because the leasing provision was a threatening ultimatum. The first Cuban government extended the lease with unequal bargaining power: Cuba understood that U.S. military forces would remain on the island if the leasing arrangement was not made
Cuba may hold that the United States breached the lease Agreement under Article 60 of the Vienna Convention - Lease was for a naval base, not an illegal detention camp.
I come from a different angle where I see these as the vestigial artefacts of colonialism and we should be adults in the room entrusted to "fix the map".
Point Roberts should go to Canada. St Pierre and Miquelon should also be part of Canada. Puerto Rico should be a either a US state or a sovereign nation. Same goes for Guam, Marina Islands, Virgin Islands and American Samoa. There's dozens of things like this.
I frankly don't care about arguments of power. We should be relying on better behavior and not devolve into covetous impudent children acting like whiney teenaged monarchs from 500 years ago.
We will never be able to successfully tackle the global problems of 21st century pollution, climate change, resource allocation, etc, if we insist on acting like adolescent brats playing Risk.
It'll probably save a bunch of money as well. The British maintaining the Falklands and Gibraltar probably isn't cheap.
After that we should start returning cultural artifacts captured in war that have been requested back but held up in the victors museums for decades. It's time to move forward and start being adults.
We're going to have to do it eventually. Whether that's now or in a hundred years after making things worse is up to us.
It's been over 20 years. Let 'em go or kill 'em, and close the base. And never do anything like this again.
There is no best outcome, only least worst outcome, at this point.
EDIT: and for the downvoters, you realize that if we do nothing they will spend the rest of their lives in prison without a trial, right? And worse, the base will remain open and available for more torture.
Maybe 'PM_me_your_math' does know, like what if all rapists have like one big telegram channel and he is in the club? I mean, he would never engage in Libel and defamation.
Perhaps because they think the US government should practice what it preaches? It remains a mystery to me why so many people aspire to be no better than their enemies.
I see. Your response suggests that the U.S. is not currently practicing what it preaches. So, do you believe the Hamdan and Boumedienne decisions were wrongly-decided? Or do you believe the Biden administration is not abiding by them?
Maybe the members of these organizations would be willing to take responsibility for the prisoners? /s
Seriously, these are non-state actors who were detained for some reason or another. From a political point of view there's no real downside to keeping these people there forever, and there are no real upsides to releasing them.
The various ISIS brides are in the same boat: nobody wants them back and nobody wants to re-integrate them. They've shown red by abandoning their society for the caliphate of barbarians, so that point why not just leave them to rot? Because we're nicer?
> They've shown red by abandoning their society for the caliphate of barbarians, so that point why not just leave them to rot? Because we're nicer?
Innocent untillvproven guitly.
You are advocating a slippery slope to medieval justice: If you float, you're a witch; if you drown you were guilty of some other crime. Only divine intervention was evidence of "true" innocence.
There was an UN vote to try to stop the sanction against cuba... the result? 185 vs 2 - 185 to stop the sanctions, 2 (brazil, ukraine) abstained and 2 countries voted to continue the sanctions (israel and of course USA).
Until this becomes an internal USA issue affecting the elections, and when the propaganda doesn't help anymore with that, things will change... but for now, nothing will happen, waterbordings will continue while the politicians point fingers at other countries for stuff way less sever than whan usa has done in the last few decades.