December 9, 2005

The Bush administration’s addiction to torture on this holiday season may end and the “cold turkey” shakes begins. In “British court rejects evidence obtained through torture” by the Press Democrat News Services spelled that Britain’s highest court have ruled that evidences obtained through torture in other countries cannot be used in the British courts. British Law Lords question the detention of a group of foreigners whose rights to hear the evidences against them were never told. The Law Lords found this unacceptable; especially those abuses involved which are popular in Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, in Belgium, Condoleezza Rice objected, stating that the U.S. can’t guarantee that detainees won’t be abused. Aside from offering assurances that violators of the detainees will be punished Rice’s plead is as empty as President Bush’s denial that he had no knowledge that extraordinary retention involved torture. Bad as Bush’s denials are what’s worse are Rice’s reassurances that everything is going to be okay. At this moment that okay offers little comfort for someone who is being torture in some spider hole in Russia, courtesy of the U.S. of A.

December 10, 2005

Bush’s secret backyard fence is crumbling as the international Red Cross demanding to visit detainees in “undisclosed locations.” International Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger has been pushing the U.S. for access to all detainees. Although the Red Cross had visit detainees in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq access to secret U.S. detainees in Europe were denied. The excuse is that U.S. has the authority to say no, stating that members of al-Qaeda are not cover by the Geneva Convention. All this begs the question: Has the overall revelation of detainee abuse convince the U.S. that rendering the Geneva Conventions “quaint” is the source of our government’s discontent in its widespread abuse at U.S. prisons? The answer is yes. Although the Geneva Conventions, signed and ratified by the United States to protect those involved in international armed conflicts a January 2002 memorandum issued by the Bush administration claims the war on terrorism renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of al Qaeda detainees, exempting them from the Geneva Conventions’ provisions on the legal treatment of prisoners. Thus opened the door for widespread abuse of detainees which Bush would rather have it shut.

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Pro-life leaders defend system of forced abortion

“Alas� reader Glaivester emailed me a link to this item on Clarkstooksbury.

Officials on Tuesday also confirmed what an ABCNEWS 20/20 investigation had found–that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs.

“When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion,� said Tu Xiao Mei, a woman who lost her job after refusing an abortion.

“With 11,000 Chinese workers here, I have never seen a Chinese garment factory worker have a baby,� said human rights worker Eric Gregoire.

Saipan, by the way, is an American territory. We own it. But a loophole in the law gives Saipan the right to set its own labor laws. The result is a system that’s hard to distinguish from slavery.

Most of the workers are “young women from China who have been promised by recruiters that they are going to good jobs in America,� Ross reported.

“Instead many find themselves kept behind barbed wire, in rat-infested labor camps, and put to work in huge Chinese- and Korean-owned garment factories–often under sweatshop conditions–making clothes for the American market,� he said.

The clothes can legally be labeled “Made in the USA.�

Okay, so let’s consider Tom DeLay. This is a man who can’t stand the idea of “Plan B,� because he thinks it’s abortion. So why does he passionately defend a system in which pregnant women are forced to get abortions against their wills?

Saipan has spent millions on Washington lobbyists and given top Republicans in Congress free trips to the beautiful Pacific island, including one over Christmas for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

“You represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America,� he told outgoing Governor Froilan Tenorio, a distant cousin of the current governor, at a dinner in Saipan this past New Year’s eve.

DeLay and other Republicans have vowed to fight to keep the laws the way they are on Saipan.

As far as I – and I suspect all pro-choicers – are concerned, it’s cause for horror for any woman, anywhere, to have reproductive decisions forced on her. That’s true regardless of if it’s a woman being forced to give childbirth because her government has banned abortion, or a woman being forced to abort because she’s been tricked into a job in a US territory with no labor rights.

Do pro-lifers see anything wrong with this situation? I’m sure the pro-lifers who occasionally post on “Alas� (hi, Glaivester! hi, Robert! hi, Emily!) will find it objectionable. Maybe they’ll even send an outraged letter to DeLay’s office.

But will the pro-life leadership care at all? Will the pro-life leadership organize to pressure “pro-life� Republicans to take a stand against forced abortions in a US territory? I’m not holding my breath. They’ve pushed policies that increase abortion in the past, and I’m sure they’ll keep doing so in the future. If they can be judged by their actions, it seems that pro-life leaders are actually comfortable with increased and forced abortions, so long as it’s happening to women who aren’t from the first world.

Clark Stooksbury is a freelance writer who has published in The American Conservative, Chronicles and Liberty; among other publications.

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