Today's Stories

February 19, 2009

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

February 19, 2009

Good and Bad News for Gitmo Detainees

Obama's Uighur Problem

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

First, the good news. Adel Abdul Hakim, one of five Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who was released from Guantánamo in May 2006, has had his asylum claim accepted by the Swedish government.

The Uighurs’ story

It has been a long journey for Adel. Seized in Pakistan and sold to U.S. forces in December 2001, with 17 of his compatriots, Adel had been living in a run-down hamlet in the Tora Bora mountains, dreaming of rising up against the Chinese government, when the settlement was hit in a U.S. bombing raid. Although it was clear from the very start of their detention that the Uighurs had nothing to do with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, the Pentagon initially milked them for information about the Chinese government, and then, as a favor to that same government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, obligingly designated the Uighurs’ separatist group, the East Turkestan Independence Movement (based on the Uighurs’ name for their homeland), as a terrorist organization, and attempted to claim that the Uighurs in Guantánamo were all members.

Even if this had been the case, it was stretching Guantánamo’s rationale to suggest that anyone involved in any independence movement anywhere in the world should be held indefinitely as a “terrorist” on the basis of pragmatic deals struck with foreign governments, but it was not, in fact, clear that any of the men had actually been members of the group. Adel was, initially, one of the lucky ones. While the Pentagon squabbled over the verdicts of different tribunals at Guantánamo (the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, convened in 2004-05 to assess whether the prisoners were correctly designated as “enemy combatants”), secretly reconvening at least two when the tribunal members dared to conclude that their own government had failed to establish an adequate case, Adel and four of his companions managed to avoid the “do-over” tribunals, and were declared to be “not enemy combatants,” although the Pentagon -- ever-inventive and ever-unapologetic -- soon decided to label them “No Longer Enemy Combatants” instead.

Adel and his four compatriots then languished in Guantánamo for nearly two years, while State Department officials scoured the world looking for third countries prepared to risk the wrath of China by accepting them. This was because, in an ironic twist that was lost on the Bush administration, it was decided that they could not be sent home to China, where there were legitimate fears that they would be tortured. The irony, of course, worked on two levels: firstly, because the Bush administration, which had painstakingly shredded almost every law and treaty it had come across, had decided to abide by the prohibition on returning foreign nationals to countries where they faced the risk of torture (as prohibited in the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and in Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture); and secondly, because so much of their treatment since they were first seized -- especially at Kandahar, the U.S. prison in Afghanistan that was used to process the majority of the prisoners who ended up in Guantánamo -- was saturated with the kind of abuse that many observers identified as torture.

Eventually, Albania was prevailed upon to accept Adel and his compatriots, and in May 2006, just three days before a U.S. appeals court was scheduled to hear a habeas corpus claim on their behalf, they were hastily bundled out of Guantánamo and deposited in a UN refugee camp in the Albanian capital, Tirana. Although grateful to be freed from Guantánamo, the men had difficulty adjusting to life in Albania, which is a Muslim country, but is also one of the poorest countries in Europe, with little opportunities for work and no other Uighurs to provide them with any kind of support network. 

Asylum in Sweden

18 months later, in November 2007, Adel secured a visa to visit Sweden, to speak at a human rights conference, and to be reunited with his sister Kavser, a registered refugee and part of a sizeable Uighur community in Stockholm. He then took the opportunity to claim asylum, and was backed up by ten human rights groups, from the U.S. and Europe, who pointed out in a submission last January that Sweden was a more appropriate location for a Uighur refugee than Albania, as it fulfilled many of the UN’s requirements for refugees that were not being met in Albania. According to the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook (2004), “resettlement as a durable solution must be accompanied by meaningful prospects for local integration, characterized in part by access to work that provides a living wage; education; fundamental medical (including necessary psychological) services; property; and family support or the support of a similarly situated refugee community.”

Last June, however, the Swedish government turned down Adel’s asylum application. He promptly appealed, and today’s decision therefore marks the end of his seven and a half year journey to find a new home. As the BBC reported, the Swedish migration court accepted that Adel (described in the article as Adel Hakimjan) “was not a terrorist and granted him permanent residency as a refugee.” Speaking to the Associated Press, Adel declared, “It feels like I am starting again, a rebirth. It is now that I am alive.”

The Uighurs’ U.S. court victories

Unfortunately, for the 17 Uighurs still in Guantánamo, today’s bad news rather overshadows the successful outcome of Adel’s long quest for justice. Ignored for years, they gained an unexpected reprieve last June, when three judges in the Court of Appeals in Washington -- noticeably, two Republicans and a Democrat -- were finally granted an opportunity to review the government’s evidence against Huzaifa Parhat, one of the 17, and decided that the government’s attempts to link him to the East Turkestan Independence Movement were thoroughly unpersuasive. As a result, they “held invalid a decision of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal” that Parhat was an “enemy combatant,” and “directed the government to release or transfer” him (or to hold a new tribunal “consistent with the Court’s opinion”).

In the months that followed, the government gave up trying to prove that any of the other 16 Uighurs were “enemy combatants,” and last October, when their case was reviewed in a District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that their continued detention in Guantánamo was unconstitutional, and, because no other country had been found that would accept them, ordered their release into the care of communities in the D.C area and in Tallahassee, Florida, who had prepared detailed plans for their resettlement.

Predictably, the government appealed, insisting, disgracefully, that the men still constituted a threat to the United States because they had received weapons training in Afghanistan, even though it had already abandoned all pretense that this was the case. This was Kafkaesque enough, but it was backed up by a claim that, “under the separation of powers the decision on whether to admit the petitioners into the United States ‘rests solely with the political branches,’” and that “immigration laws preclude a habeas court from ordering the release of an inadmissible alien into the United States.”

Sadly, for justice, and for the Uighurs, two of the three judges in the appeals court -- A. Raymond Randolph and Karen LeCraft Henderson, Bush nominees who will ensure that the Bush administration’s peculiarly aberrant approach to justice will live on for years (or decades) -- approved the government’s request for a stay on the Uighurs’ release last October, pending an appeal the following month.

On that occasion, the majority verdict was heavily criticized by the dissenting judge, Clinton nominee Judge Judith W. Rogers, who argued that the government’s immigration argument “misstates the law,” because “the Supreme Court has made clear that, in at least some instances, a habeas court can order an alien released with conditions into the country despite the wish of the Executive to detain him indefinitely,” and “It is thus both inadequate and untrue to assert that the political branches have ‘plenary powers over immigration.’”

In particular, however, Judge Rogers was incensed that the government was attempting to undermine the powers granted to the courts in Boumediene v. Bush, the case last June in which the Supreme Court reiterated that the prisoners at Guantánamo had habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the basis of their detention). These rights had first been granted by the Supreme Court in June 2004, but had then been removed in two disturbing pieces of legislation -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Insisting that the Supreme Court’s intention had been to empower the lower courts to act as they saw fit (rather than to have their teeth removed by the Executive), Judge Rogers noted that the Supreme Court not only granted Guantánamo prisoners “the privilege of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detention,” but also held that “a court’s power under the writ must include ‘authority to … issue … an order directing the prisoner’s release.’”

Bush’s judges deny Uighurs’ resettlement in the United States

Yesterday, however, Judges Randolph and Henderson went one step further than they had in November, reversing Judge Urbina’s ruling, and concluding, as Judge Randolph declared (PDF),

Petitioners … invoke the tradition of the Great Writ [habeas] as a protection of liberty. As part of that tradition, they say, a court with habeas jurisdiction has always had the power to order the prisoner’s release if he was being held unlawfully. But … petitioners are not seeking “simple release.” Far from it. They asked for, and received, a court order compelling the Executive to release them into the United States outside the framework of the immigration laws. Whatever may be the content of common law habeas corpus, we are certain that no habeas court since the time of Edward I ever ordered such an extraordinary remedy.

Judge Randolph added, “An undercurrent of petitioners’ arguments is that they deserve to be released into this country after all they have endured at [the] hands of the United States. Such sentiments, however high-minded, do not represent a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of the political branches.”

Surprisingly, perhaps, Judge Rogers, whose dissenting opinion was remorselessly dissected by her colleagues, also voted to overturn Judge Urbina’s order to release the Uighurs into the United States, although she had different reasons for doing so, and, as SCOTUSblog described it, “denounced the majority’s reasoning.”

Judge Rogers concurred in the judgment not because she agreed with the judges’ assertions about the executive branch, but rather because the District Court “has yet to hear from the Executive regarding the immigration laws, which the Executive had asserted may form an alternate basis for detention,” and that therefore Judge Urbina had “erred in granting release prematurely.” Elsewhere, however, she returned to Boumediene, reiterating that the Supreme Court held that prisoners in Guantánamo are “entitled to the privilege of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detentions,” and that a “habeas court must have the power to order the conditional release of an individual unlawfully detained,” and boldly declaring,

Today the court nevertheless appears to conclude that a habeas court lacks authority to order that a non-“enemy combatant” alien be released into the country (as distinct from be admitted under the immigration laws) when the Executive can point to no legal justification for detention and to no foreseeable path of release. I cannot join the court’s analysis because it is not faithful to Boumediene and would compromise both the Great Writ as a check on arbitrary detention and the balance of powers over exclusion and admission and release of aliens into the United States recognized by the Supreme Court to reside in the Congress, the Executive and the habeas court. 

President Obama’s problem

Quite where this leaves the Uighurs is difficult to discern. As SCOTUSblog reported, Judges Randolph and Henderson were ”not deciding whether the 17 Uighurs could qualify for admission into the U.S. under immigration law.” Even though the Bush administration had argued that they could not, the judges declared that they were unable to “resolve that question ‘at this stage’ since the Uighurs had not applied for admission as immigrants.” Furthermore, although the judges’ ruling reversed Judge Urbina’s release order, they required him to conduct “further proceedings,” which were unspecified, and impossible to gauge, as Judge Urbina has already clearly stated his case, and concluded that the Uighurs “no longer may be held legally by the Executive branch under constitutional habeas principles.”

In many ways, therefore, Bush’s judges have thrown the problem of the Uighurs back into the hands of the Executive -- although now, of course, it is Barack Obama who will have to decide whether to find new homes for the Uighurs in the United States, or to keep them imprisoned at Guantánamo until, perhaps, various European countries step forward to relieve him of the burden.

To that end, I can’t help wondering if the Swedish announcement, in the case of Adel Abdul Hakim, just happened to fall on the same day as the appeal court ruling, or if it was part of a bigger picture that may enable President Obama not to have to act on the Uighurs’ behalf. For many of us, this would be a capitulation to the injustices of the Bush administration, and it would be preferable if the new President were to follow Judge Urbina, Judge Rogers and the Supreme Court, rather than being obliged to support the stance taken by George W. Bush and his Justice Department, as it lingers on in the dubious legal opinions of two of his judges.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk 

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