Obama on his first day

[nuune]

He requested a halt to military trials at the Guantanamo detention camp. One judge has already suspended a case.

 

 

That is good news, Amnesty would welcome this as his first greatest day

 

 

Barack Obama is begining his first full day as US president, in the midst of an economic crisis and two wars.

 

Within hours of his inauguration, he requested a halt to military trials at the Guantanamo detention camp. One judge has already suspended a case.

 

Despite celebrating his inauguration through the night, Mr Obama plans to meet economic and military advisers.

 

He is expected to discuss plans for an $825bn rescue economic package - as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

 

Mr Obama became America's 44th president - and its first black leader - at noon on 20 January, and attended numerous events to mark the historic occasion as millions of supporters also enjoyed a party atmosphere.

 

 

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[Blessed]

Good on him. That zoo needs to close ASAP!

 

Do you think he got the Amnesty check list, Nuune?

[nuune]

Blessed, Obama uses the internet too much, if he doesn't seen it his buddies oo ayukana internet mad ah would forward him that list, so am sure he has seen it or by his aides

 

 

He has to exircise his powers, shut that camp, do talks with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hamas, withdrew from Iraq, engage and solve African problems by hitting on their leaders and telling them to speed up things and not to abuse their powers.

 

 

He can change alot by just saying it

[SCORPION_SISTA]

I read this earlier on CNN and I was excited to hear he was jumping in right away on this issue...I am interested in seeing how they would be handling this economic stimulus package, it would be a disastrous if it was mishandled, to the economic recovery of this nation.

[NGONGE]

No surprise. He did say he'll do these things months ago anyway. Still did not say HOW he'll close the camp and what will become of the inmates. For all we know it may just be a case of 'moving the furniture'.

[Ibtisam]

Don't be fooled by what Obama did today. If they close guantanamo, the US government is only going to move the people imprisoned to new sites that are "secret." They have talked about places in Europe, and multiple places in the US. This is not an end to torture or detaining people without evidence, it is merely a cover. Closing Guantanamo will satisfy many people, but those who protest guantanamo should keep a watchful eye on where the prisoners are being sent. They are not going to free all of those in the prison.

 

I do not believe Obama is the man the western media portrays him to be. Watch his actions not his words, because his actions will be closely aligned with Bush's.

[cynical lady]

12th Jan 09:

 

Obama 'softens' Guantanamo pledge

 

 

Obama said he supports a new approach on Iran that would "show respect for the Iranian people" [AFP]

 

Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has appeared to soften his election campaign promise to shut the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay as one of his first acts as US president, saying its closure would be "a challenge".

 

"It is more difficult than a lot of people realise ..." Obama said during an interview aired on Sunday with US broadcaster ABC.

 

"I think it's going to take some time ... but I don't want to be ambiguous about this - we are going to close Guantanamo," he told the This Week programme.

 

Sunday also marked the seventh anniversary of the first prisoners arriving at Guantanamo.

 

Global protests

 

Demonstrations calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay occurred around the world on Sunday. Amnesty International, the international rights organisation, held a protest outside the US embassy in Madrid, the Spanish capital, calling on Obama to investigate allegations of abuse at the prison.

 

Video

 

Guantanamo Bay protester speaks about fast

 

 

Rallies also took place in Montreal, London and Lima, in Peru.

 

In Washington DC organisers of a protest said that 60 protesters had also begun a nine-day fast in support of Obama keeping his promise to close the prison.

 

The Cuba-based camp, which has been widely criticised amid reports of inmates being tortured and abused, was opened in 2002 to hold prisoners captured during the Bush administration's so-called "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

Among problems to be dealt with are how the US legally resolves ongoing military tribunals and the fate of about 60 detainees that US officials have approved for transfer to their home countries, Obama said.

 

'Heartbreaking' war on Gaza

 

During Sunday's interview, he was asked for his response to criticisms of his silence on Israel's war on Gaza, which many in the Arab world have interpreted as callousness.

 

He said he stood by comments he made in July supporting Israel's "right to defend itself," adding: "When you see civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, harmed, under hardship, it's heartbreaking.

 

"[but] we cannot have two administrations at the same time simultaneously sending signals in a volatile situation."

 

He said he was creating a team to handle the Middle East conflict "as a whole" once he takes office on January 20, that would "be engaging with all of the actors there ... [and] work to create a strategic approach that ensures that both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations".

 

'New approach'

 

His comments came shortly before Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said for the first time on Sunday that Israel was "nearing the goals that it set for itself" in its war on Gaza, amid some of the heaviest clashes of an offensive that has killed nearly 900 people in the territory, nearly half of them believed to be women and children.

 

 

Demonstrators in the US have asked Obama to push for a ceasefire in Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]

 

Obama said he would seek much broader engagement with Iran, in a shift from the administration of George Bush, the US president.

 

The new approach would include "sending a signal that we respect the aspirations of the Iranian people, but that we also have certain expectations in terms of how an international actor behaves," he said.

 

Obama has said he was prepared to offer Iran economic incentives to stop its nuclear work but warned tougher sanctions could be imposed if it refused.

 

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

 

:rolleyes:

[Blessed]

Perhaps, Ibti. But gitmo still needs to close down and trails taken to proper courts. There also needs to be more pressure on the EU who refuse to take in ex-GB detainees.

 

 

Moazzem Begg - Cage Prisoners

 

 

Moazzam's replies to all answers about the coming of Obama saddened me. But he is only expressing the feelings of everybody right now. He says the whole OBAMA = FANTASTIC = CIVIL RIGHTS buzz, of the summer, is totally gone now. He, aswell as the current and past detainees, and their support group, Cage Prisoners, all lost hope for "change" a long time ago. He says that Obama's promise to close Guantanamo, will possibly be coupled with some changes in laws that continue to facilitate the illegal gathering and holding of prisoners by US military and intelligence, so this practice of rendition and detainment looks set to continue. And with it, the torture too.

 

He also points out that, although Obama has promised to take troops out of Iraq, he has vowed to build up troop numbers in Afghanistan. Moazzam says this can only make matters worse, and particularly for detainees at current US prisons in Afghanistan. He made the point that prisons that are in, or near, active war zones, are known to be more brutal places to spend your time. This is because of that aggressive war mentality that is just outside your door. It often steps inside, and things are taken out on the prisoners, with prisoner abuse always rife. Moazzam says that the prisoners who came from Afghanistan would actually be looking forward to getting to Guantanamo.

Source and full interview...

http://www.blatantnews.com/news/interview_moazzam_ begg_on_guantanamo.html

 

p.s Cage Prisoners still support Amnestys 100 days campaign.

[AYOUB]

^ Sad indeed.

 

Out With the Old Gitmo, In With the New?

[Blessed]

Cageprisoners

 

If Guantanamo Bay is the cancer is Obama the cure? A crucial aspect of cancer care is to determine whether it has spread (metastasized) and if so how far, since any surgical removal would generally be considered of dubious benefit, if the original tumour has metastasized. Naturally the crucial question is whether Guantanamo and its malignancy has already spread, rendering Obama’s proposals laudable but futile.

 

Cageprisoners, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Center Human Rights & Global Justice and Reprieve, recently sent a letter to President Obama applauding his efforts but urging caution; our collective experiences whilst campaigning against detention without trial,upholding the rule of law and respecting international conventions, has made us aware that Guantanamo was only the iconic face of abuses in the global War on Terror. Soon after its inception in January 2002, numerous prisons were established on the same principle of holding and interrogating terrorist suspects. Evidence of this early spread is apparent when one of the early camp commandants at Guantanamo Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller had been sent to Abu Ghraib to “guantanomize” it. However the most pernicious aspect of Guantanamo is that the mindset engendered by its architects and supporters has spread globally and contaminated the political, legal and public domains which will require a far greater effort in redressing the violations committed by the Bush administration.

 

This mindset is encapsulated in the 1% doctrine espoused by Dick Cheney and articulated in Ron Suskind’s book of the same name. To quote “Even if there is just a 1% chance of the unimaginable coming true, act as if it’s a certainty. It’s not about our analysis it’s about our response”. This effectively opened the floodgates to allow fear, suspicion and “intelligence analysis”, often obtained by torture to become the arbiters of who should be detained rather than what would be admissible in a court of law.

 

The malign effects on the political and legal levels is ironically being played out in the Liberty City trial in the US, where despite the case already being deemed a mistrial twice, proceedings recommenced last week. In the original arrests the Deputy FBI leader John Pistole had stated publicly that these were “aspirational rather than operational terrorists” as their plot to blow up the Sears Tower consisted of them possessing combat boots, a Samurai sword and a pledge of allegiance to Al Qaeda given to an FBI informant. Despite the paucity of evidence press conferences were held and the former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made much political and legal capital out of it. The juries on two occasions thought otherwise , yet this trial is still going before the American public. Bruce Winnick, a law professor at University of Miami summed it up when he said ”The fear card was what they were playing. 3 years after the arrests, the public mindset has changed.” Let us hope so.

 

Unfortunately this emphasis on catching “aspirational” terrorists in the embryonic stages of plots has proliferated across the Anglosphere and beyond and is illustrated in numerous “plots” with similar levels of evidence. However these trials have become nothing short of inquisitions over the religious and political beliefs, books and internet pages read and affiliations of the suspects. The objective seems to be to prove a suspect is “Islamist positive” and warrants incarceration or being placed under house arrest with a control order because of what they might do rather than what they have done or are capable of doing. Control orders are the most Kafkaesque tools produced from this pre-emptive thinking and are totally dependent on “intelligence” rather than evidence necessitating the notorious institution of SIAC where this intelligence cannot be challenged on grounds of national security. Despite the emphasis on terrorism, this phenomenon is not just targeting Muslims; civil libertarians have noted the abuse of these powers in stifling dissent and Green and Animal rights` activists have already felt the effects of pre-emption. Farcically in 2006 BAA attempted to stop members of the National Trust, RSPB and Woodland trust from using the Picadilly line, Heathrow Express and certain motorways to ensure they could not access Heathrow based on the premise that their membership might make them a risk to BAA property.

 

Returning to the original question of whether closing Guantanamo and secret prisons will cure the cancer, the answer has to be no. These institutions were built on the tragedy of 9/11 and nourished by the fear and paranoia of the Bush administration who deemed it necessary to incarcerate thousands of suspects in Guantanamo Bay and beyond. Additionally, torture and rendition were normalised in an attempt to create a safer world for America and its allies. The judgement of the American people in voting out the Bush administration and embracing the politics of hope rather than fear are signs of real change. However, a lesson that was rapidly learnt by ourselves and the other signatories of our open letter, was the need to continually challenge and investigate the claims made by those in power. In almost all cases we have been vindicated in our allegations of torture, disappearances and renditions. Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons are not a few “anomalies” in the words of former PM Tony Blair, but symptomatic of a cancer that has spread widely. It is imperative that the architects of this are held accountable, thus ensuring this dark period of American and global history is never repeated and the necessary safeguards are established.