Hello Funny One here. I found some interesting books on Guantanamo Bay Detention. Read more about what’s going on in the detention camp.
Inside the Wire by Erik Saar and Viveca Novak
Inside the Wire is a gripping portrait of one soldier’s six months at the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – a powerful, searing journey into a surreal world completely unique in the American experience. (Amazon)
Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice In Guantanamo Bay by Clive Stafford Smith
At a July 17, 2003 press conference held jointly with Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush described the prisoners held in Guantanamo: “The only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people. ” They are, supposedly, the worst of the worst of the world’s terrorists. Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith is one of the few people in the world who has had independent access to the prisoners at Guantanamo, representing more than fifty. Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is his remarkable account of his descent into the darkly comic world of Guantanamo, a legal black hole in which the bleakness of the surroundings are punctuated by moments of humor and absurdity. From the absence of security at the airport, to the army protecting iguanas on the roads, Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side goes beyond the headlines to tell the true story of life at Guantanamo. By bearing witness to the prisoner’s stories, Smith also asks what is done to our understanding of American democracy when the rule of law is jettisoned in the name of combating terrorism. (Book Description, Amazon)
Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies
The detention system established by the Bush Administration at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba is like no other in our nation’s history. Joseph Margulies traces the development of this detention policy from its ill-conceived creation in 2002 as “the ideal interrogation chamber” to its present form, where most prisoners are held without charges in a super-maximum security prison, even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that many have been cleared for release and most of the others are not even alleged to have committed a hostile act against the United States or its allies. Margulies, who was the lead attorney in the Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, writes that Guantanamo and other secret CIA and Defense Department detention centers around the world have become “prisons beyond the law,” where the Administration claims the right to hold people indefinitely, incommunicado, and in solitary confinement without charges, access to counsel, and without benefit of the Geneva Conventions. Weaving together firsthand accounts of military personnel who witnessed the interrogations at Guantanamo along with the words of the prisoners themselves, Margulies exposes the chilling reality of a “war on terror” that masks an assault on basic human rights – rights to which the United States has always subscribed. (Book Description, Amazon)
The Terror Courts by Jess Bravin
Soon after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States captured hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world. By the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the U.S. military’s prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were subject to President George W. Bush’s executive order authorizing their trial by military commissions. Jess Bravin, the Wall Street Journal’s Supreme Court correspondent, was there within days of the prison’s opening, and has continued ever since to cover the U.S. effort to create a parallel justice system for enemy aliens. A maze of legal, political, and moral issues has stood in the way of justice—issues often raised by military prosecutors who found themselves torn between duty to the chain of command and their commitment to fundamental American values.
While much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following 9/11, Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagon’s prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies. Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees, and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems. With the Obama administration planning to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo—and vindicate the legal experiment the Bush administration could barely get off the ground—The Terror Courts could not be more timely. (Amazon)
Guantanamo: Why the Illegal US Base Should Be Returned to Cuba by Fidel Castro
“There are many desecrations of human rights taking place in our world. Many involve conflicts of great complexity, religious or factional: it is immensely difficult to create just solutions to them. Guantánamo is the outstanding exception. The just solution is simple . . . the US must leave Guantánamo unconditionally.”—From the foreword by Noam Chomsky, Nadine Gordimer, Rigoberta Menchu, and others
“Imagine if after we defeated the British in our revolution, we then let them keep a few thousand troops and a bunch of battleships in New York Harbor. Weird!”—Michael Moore
“To keep a military base against the will of our people is a violation of the most elemental principles of international law.”—Fidel Castro
How is it that Guantánamo Bay, seized after the Spanish-American War over one hundred years ago, is still held by the United States as a naval base? President Obama has proposed to close the prison for those captured in the “war against terrorism,” but Fidel Castro argues in this extended essay, “The Empire and the Independent Island,” written in 2007, that the illegal occupation must end and the territory be returned to Cuba.
This book also features a comprehensive chronology of the base’s history and extensive appendices, including some key historical documents through which Washington has justified its continued occupation and recently declassified documents from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It also includes a foreword by Noam Chomsky, Nadine Gordimer, Salim Lamrani, Rigoberta Menchu, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
(Amazon)
The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law by Mark P. Denbeaux
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These men, ranging from teenage boys to men in their eighties from over forty different countries, were detained for years without charges, trial, and a fair hearing. Without any legal status or protection, they were truly outside the law: imprisoned in secret, denied communication with their families, and subjected to extreme isolation, physical and mental abuse, and, in some instances, torture. These are the detainees’ stories, told by their lawyers because the prisoners themselves were silenced. It took habeas counsel more than two years – and a ruling from the United States Supreme Court – to finally gain the right to visit and talk to their clients at Guantanamo. Even then, lawyers were forced to operate under severe restrictions designed to inhibit communication and envelop the prison in secrecy. In time, however, lawyers were able to meet with their clients and bring the truth about Guantanamo to the world. The Guantanamo Lawyers contains over one hundred personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees held at Guantanamo as well as at other lawless detention centers such as Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base. Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz – themselves lawyers for detainees – collected stories that cover virtually every facet of Guantanamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantanamo’s legal, human, and moral failings, and provide a window into America’s catastrophic effort to create a prison beyond the law.
(Book Description, Amazon)
Anyways, Here is a picture of the Funny One with the “hooding” This is what happens to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Detention.
The Prisoners Week Prayer
Lord, you offer freedom to all people.
We pray for those who are held in prison.
Break the bonds of fear and isolation that exist.
Support with your love: prisoners, their families and friends,
prison staff, chaplains and all who care.
Heal those who have been wounded by the activities of others,
especially the victims of crime.
Help us to forgive one another, to act justly, to love mercy,
and walk humbly together with Christ
in his strength and in his Spirit,
now and every day.
Amen.
funnyone2012 