STARTLING: US Supreme Court's Monday Decision

RE: US Supreme Court decision issued MONDAY: majority opinion was
written by Roberts; Justice Breyer wrote the dissent in which he was joined
by Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor; several groups, including the ACLU, had
filed an amicus arguing that the statute's ambiguity renders it
unconstitutionally vague as applied to human rights activity. Look for further updates, an amicus and a Press Release from various rights groups including Center for Constitutional Rights and ACLU dot org

Related News Digest for June 22, 2010 Find the following at nogitmos dot org/news/ or CLICK here Also find related items at nomorecrusades dot blogspot dot com or GO here and/or GO to Bill of Rights Defense Committee or bordc dot org or GO here

And yet more:

here

Supreme Court ruling barring aid to terrorist groups: why some lament it
Humanitarian and peace organizations say their direct interaction with violent or terrorist groups is vital to intervention efforts. The Supreme Court decision Monday means they do it at their peril.

...“The ‘material support law’ – which is aimed at putting an end to terrorism – actually threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organizations that must interact directly with groups that have engaged in violence,” said former President Jimmy Carter, founder of the Carter Center.

“The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom,” he said....

[and, other stories on this at Google News]

here

Also see related posts below -- look for more in Comments Section or Updates...

Anne Lamott’s “Imperfect Birds” : A Speaking of Faith Interview

Anne Lamott credit for Photo: James Hall

June 12, 2010

Kate Moos, managing producer at Speaking of Faith (Radio Program)

“Everything I write is for spiritual reasons—to help people keep their spirits up, to help transform misery into laughter or healing, to help people remember the truth of their spiritual identities.”
Anne Lamott from the following email interview



Krista Tippett, who is conducted this interview says in introduction:

Anne Lamott appeared on SOF years ago, in 2003, in a show we titled “The Meaning of Faith.” I had been fan of hers for some time prior, but I was especially captivated at that time with her personal story of redemption and recovery, and her life as a thoroughly 21st-century writer.

So, when her new fiction, Imperfect Birds, showed up in the mail, the volume floated to the top of the stack of books on my desk — and I took it home and read it. And then I read the two novels that preceded this one and decided to put some questions to her about this very moving story of recovery and human frailty.

What follows are her replies that took place via email:

KT: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss your new book, Imperfect Birds, with me. In this story you bring us back into the lives of the Fergusons—a story begun in your book Rosie (1983) and continued in Crooked Little Heart (1997). So, the first thing I want to ask is, what is it about this story that makes it necessary to write it in intervals of 13 years or so? Is that because it’s a hard story? A sad one?

AL: Novels take a lot more stamina and time—at least two and half years—I much prefer self-contained stories and essays that I can begin and finish in a week. Novels are years worth of needing to keep the plates spinning in the air; hardly ever really knowing what you are doing, and lurching forward slowly, backtracking, flailing, falling, losing hope and confidence, getting back up, lurching onward.

KT: The Fergusons, especially in this last book, really embody the idea that alcoholism is a family disease. (I am a recovering alcoholic and the daughter of a recovering alcoholic, so I am grateful for this portrayal.) Elizabeth, the mother of the teenager Rosie, is a middle-aged recovering alcoholic whom I found sympathetic at the same time her helplessness made me want to wring her neck. Of the primary characters in the novel, she seemed most incomplete, in a way, most damaged, even though it’s her daughter who is in trouble. Will she stop living her incomplete life through Rosie?

AL: I don’t see her the same way you do. She has really been a late bloomer, not even getting to the full expression of grief following her beloved husband’s death, until Rosie is 13 -— 8 years or so later.

I see her small actions towards truth and tough decisions as heroic, because emotional expression does not come easily to her, as it does to James and Rae. Truth does not come easily to most people in this culture—a good appearance is the dominating value. Rae and James’s adoration of her is one of the things that most helps me experience what a profound, if introverted, person she is—how brilliant and rare, to be able to have a husband and best friend of this quality.

KT: Your portrayal of Rosie’s drug use seems to me to describe a sort of 21st century story about addiction. In an older sort of story about teenage drug use, the kid would hook up with a bad crowd, her grades would crash, and she would start stealing cars or running away from home. In this case, the teenage junkie is extremely high functioning—a model student who volunteers at church. But she’s morally bankrupt, a schemer and liar and manipulator. I think this change in the nature of story reflects a change out there in the world. Do you agree? What has changed?

AL: The pressure on these modern kids is infinitely more intense than it was on me—I’ve heard it said by high school teachers whose kids are almost cracking up under the strain to get into the great colleges, that exceptionalism is the new normal.

KT: At the same time, there’s a kind of terrible feeling of inevitability and doom that begins to unfold. Rosie clearly has fallen into this vortex and there is only one outcome possible. For me, that really hits when it becomes clear that she and her boyfriend Finn are taking a horse tranquilizer with complete whimsy, as if they were tasting chocolates. Her tone is one of complete innocence. Is this the function of denial? Sin? Is she even a moral agent at this point?

AL: She’s a late bloomer too. She didn’t develop until fourteen and fifteen, whereas her best friend in junior high is a luscious voluptuous vanilla blondie who gets pregnant at fourteen. So partly I think she has a lot of catching up to do—she spent the bulk of her youth on the tennis court, which injured her in many ways, and now she wants to experience being desired and larger than life, wild, intense, young, loved, and normal, part of a whole.

KT: In Crooked Little Heart, it seems like Rosie’s moral education really begins, or anyway gets interesting, when she is becoming a competitive tennis player, and she starts cheating, and then she keeps that secret, and we begin to actually feel the spiritual corrosion that secret causes. She starts lying to herself first, about whether she is even cheating. As I read it I actually started thinking about my own reflexive dishonesty and the perils of that. Is there a connection between this cheating and keeping it a secret and where Rosie ends up at the end of Imperfect Birds?

AL: I don’t think so. Almost all of us are pretty secretive, and maybe especially those who had a genetic predisposition to substance abuse, as Rosie does. Then you hear that we are only as sick as our secrets, and it takes a little while to truly get that, and to make the decision to try living a different way.

KT: In the last year or so, I was aware of five people in my orbit who died of alcoholism. I wasn’t close to any of them—they were family members of co-workers or uncles of friends. The people who died were in their 50s (roughly my age) and they just finally wore out. One of them died with full-blown cirrhosis but others were just-you know, their heart gave out, or they fell off a roof, or just came to the end active drunks inevitably come to. It’s such a staggering thing to see people come to that end. Why do you think some of us manage to get better and some of us don’t?

AL: I literally have no idea. Grace?

KT: Elizabeth’s good friend Rae at one point counsels her that she needs to accept the truth, and that even if it is bitter and frightening and difficult, it is beautiful and she should find a way to be grateful for it. That seems like hard advice. Does Elizabeth come to terms with her hard truth? Doesn’t it take her a long time?

AL: It does take her a long time. It has always taken me a long time, too—as a parent, as a daughter, as a sister. You just keep trying not to see what is going on in front of you—especially if you were raised among alcoholics, it’s one of the first things you learn: that what seems to be going on between your parents can actually be explained so that they do not seem crazy or out of control. So you develop a habit of not seeing what you’re seeing—of colluding with the lie machine. And this is a very hard thing to turn around, which is why I said earlier that Elizabeth’s growth, while slow, is so heroic.

KT: I hope this isn’t too personal. You’ve spoken in interviews and in your other, nonfiction writing, about your own experience of addiction, and how your religious awakening happened. I remember, in the interview you did with Speaking of Faith several years ago, you told a story about coming down from drugs on a houseboat, and that—I believe the story was—Jesus was there with you. And I seem to remember that for a while, you said, Jesus was nipping at your heels like a little kitten. Not like Deus Omnipotens, but like a playful lovely kitten. That image is so unexpected and has always sort of stayed with me. Do you still have the experience of Jesus, or of grace, like that? Do you see these novels as religious or spiritual stories?

AL: I have a very unsophisticated relationship with Jesus. I do not have one interesting theological thought in my head. I just feel him, and did from the beginning: I feel the intense love he has for us, especially when we are suffering, and I feel his delight in me, which is something most of us are starved for most of our lives, and I feel his unwavering companionship. I feel his purity and goodness, and I see it wherever people are suffering, and others show up to help. I see Christ Crucified in the world’s abject poverty and despair and unfairness, how horrible horrible horrible it is for most people, and when I see this, I desperately want to be there beside him, helping in any way I can. Maybe just bringing a glass of water, or sitting there breathing with him, like you sit with someone in child birth.

Everything I write is for spiritual reasons—to help people keep their spirits up, to help transform misery into laughter or healing, to help people remember the truth of their spiritual identities. I try to shine a little light in the world, to be the light for whomever is there, whether at the market, or in a bookstore. It is my spiritual calling. I do a very meager job most of time, but this is my intention.

Doctors Ending Torture: More Important than Tax on Plastic Surgery

Jeffrey Parks Buckeye Surgeon PHR

The Nobel prize winning NGO Physicians for Human Rights(PHR) has published a widely circulated white paper detailing “experiments” conducted by physicians and other medical personnel on detainees at Guantanamo. Read the paper. It’s a grisly, soul-sapping compendium of state-sanctioned, state-organized human experimentation.

Remember those OLC torture memos that war criminals John Yoo and Jay Bybee wrote, alleging that the US policy of “enhanced interrogation” was both legal and safe? Well, the “safety” of the techniques was determined based on results of “studies” conducted by medical personnel on actual human beings. The effects of waterboarding and extreme sleep deprivation and sustained severe pain were all meticulously recorded and studied. Conclusions were then drawn. Just like a happy little science project! Only instead of making acetaminophen in the lab and determining the yield of product (the only actual science experiment I remember from college), these criminals were distorting the scientific method for totalitarian, undemocratic purposes.

To wit:

1) Experimenters were able to conclude that saline was a far safer liquid to pour over the faces of restrained inmates, rather than pure water. The simulation of drowning wasn’t altered (thank god!) but the higher sodium concentration of saline helped prevent the unfortunate side effect of severe hyponatremia and subsequent brain edema seen with the forced swallowing of large amounts of pure water.

2) Clinical investigators determined that combination of techniques that cause severe pain did not lead to an overall increased susceptibility to the perception of severe pain (someone please feel free to interpet whatever the hell that means). Consequently, researchers felt comfortable recommending that Gitmo torturers could freely combine walling, stress positions, and other pain eliciting techniques. In other words, the detainee felt equally shitty whether you just rammed his head into a wall or combined that with forcing him to also stand on his right leg for three hours without moving.

3) Researchers concluded that sleep deprivation up to 180 hours (that’s about 8 days of sleeplessness for the math impaired) did not lead to any long term psychological or physical consequences. And then as long as you let the subject sleep uninterruptedly for 8 hours, you could resume another 180 hours of wakefulness! Sweet!

Yes, this happened in America. This is what even the Obama Administration defends to its core. We don’t look back in this country. We gaze only toward the future, wide eyed and full of hope. With our blinders on. No one is held accountable for lawlessness and immoral actions. We invade countries under false pretenses. We torture suspects. We detain indefinitely “suspicious Muslims” for years at a time only to release them without any charges. We send unmanned Predator drones into Pakistan and Afghanistan, strafing villages, collateral damage be damned. Our former President can smugly proclaim, “hell yeah I waterboarded KSM….and I’d do it all over again!”. We have government employed doctors who conducted illegal, immoral experiments on human subjects, not for some greater good, mind you, but to provide a sham scientific cover for the inhumane torture and abuse of completely subjugated prisoners.

Maybe the AMA could advocate for some transparency on this issue. I realize they are busy fighting the good fight for the doctor fix and against the special tax on plastic surgery procedures. But perhaps it would be beneficial to their moral standing and ethical credibility to update their statement on the torture doctors from April 2009…

Source: Medcity News Find this under "Physicians for Human Rights « MedCity News
Jun 16, 2010" ... The Nobel prize winning NGO Physicians for Human Rights ...
here where there is a place to read and leave comments.

End article

=======================


See initiation of this current dialogue - The Physicians for Human Rights Torture Papers GO here

Find related articles here and/or in COMMENTS below...Also Recent: Experiments in Torture: Action and Media Recap Physicians for Human Rights - By Ben Greenberg on June 15, 2010: Last Monday, June 7, PHR released Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program to immediate, overwhelming response.

Upon release of the report, PHR issued a statement and held a press conference. In the first 24 hours, PHR received over 467 press mentions. Major press covering the story on day 1 included the New York Times, Nature, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Washington Independent, Scientific American and Alternet. The report was featured on the front page of the Daily Kos and Boing Boing—two of the most heavily trafficked blogs on the internet—as well as on the prestigious legal affairs blog, Balkinization, on the highly influential blog Hullabaloo, and on numerous other notable blogs, including - Firedoglake (multiple bloggers), Religion Dispatches, The American Prospect, On Faith (Washington Post) and Political Animal. News of the report also ran on numerous major network local TV and radio news shows around the country. NBC4 TV Washington, DC coverage of Experiments in Torture |

June 7, 2010 - On Tuesday, June 8, PHR’s report was the subject of the lead editorial of the New York Times. Day 2 coverage also included - The Nation, New York Observer, LA Times, New Scientist, Inter Press Service and fulsome treatments by bloggers Andrew Sullivan (at The Atlantic) and Glenn Greenwald (at Salon.com), who are both widely read and highly influential for new media and mainstream news, alike.

On Wednesday, PHR, along with 9 other groups submitted a formal complaint to the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP). We issued a new statement and held another press conference—and attracted a new round of press coverage, with at least 200 press outlets covering the story, including wire stories on AFP and AP and detailed reporting on The Great Beyond blog from Nature.com.

Our OHRP complaint was co-signed by Amnesty International USA, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Network of Concerned Anthropologists and Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

Anyone can file an OHRP complaint, so we’ve opened ours to the public in cooperation with a number of our partner organizations. If you haven’t signed on yet, please do.

Also on Wednesday, the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement to blogger Jeff Kaye: “the findings of the new report from Physicians for Human Rights will be considered,” Feinstein said, in the Committee’s review of the CIA detention and interrogation program.

By the end of the week on Friday, PHR was mentioned nearly 900 times in press source and had over 9000 total downloads of Experiments in Torture. The report authors have been interviewed numerous times for print, radio and TV. We’ve posted a few of their appearances on The Torture Papers.

A number of outside academic experts have spoken supportively on the record about PHR’s evidence and the allegation of experimentation, including, Olivier Ribbelink, researcher at the Asser Institute in The Hague; Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania; Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; and Nancy Berlinger, a research scholar who studies clinical ethics at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York.

See June 18, 2010 and earlier for some humor and some solid facts on RENDITION and torture complicity see this Jon Stewart Video and Serious Commentary on this leader's site and more from leader in seeking the end of Torture Complicity, Stephen Soldz - Plz GO here - to see the Blog of Stephen Soldz: Psychoanalyst, Psychologist, Researcher, and Activist - see his earlier and ongoing posts and comments = Dr. Stephen Soldz, President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, at Press Conference Announcing the Filing - And find this on this same site: - Barbour: When research is torture - Ginny Barbour, Chief Editor of Plos Medicine discusses the new Physicians for Human Rights report on torture researh, Experiments in Torture. She concurs that the evidence strongly suggests that the CIA engaged in illegal and unethical experimentation on its prisoners. She understands the essential function of investigation and accountability. She endorses the idea of an Office of Human Research Protections investigation; and Rabbi David Saperstein's Stopping torture needs unswerving commitmentmment (Rabbi Saperstein is the director and counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and explains the connection of "Never Again" and US torture:

Somewhat Older Items:

Editorial - Doctors Who Aid Torture - NYTimes.com
A physicians' group has raised important questions about the role of doctors in helping the CIA subject terrorism suspects to torture.
here

Letters - Tortured, Under the Eyes of a Doctor - NYTimes.com Jun 14, 2010 Re “Doctors Who Aid Torture” (editorial, June 8) GO here

Related to the above reference see RECAP of news related to the original Press Release from Physicians for Human Rights and the NYTimes editorial - GO
Mar 3, 2010 Your editorial “The Torture Lawyers” urges the American Bar ...here

Could a new UN resolution end doctors' participation in torture? A new UN resolution has the potential to fight torture and cruelty say experts in the British Medical Journal. here or GO here

US Doctors Experimenting in Torturing Detainees - Shades of Nazi's ...
Jun 10, 2010 ... US Doctors Experimenting in Torturing Detainees - Shades of Nazi's Dr. ... to healing torture survivors and ending the practice of torture. GO here

How Individuals Can Help End Torture?
Jun 7, 2010 07 min 34 sec ... Did CIA Doctors Test Torture Techniques on Prisoners? 01 min 32 sec: here (see more from the docs themselves in following article and in their human rights sites.) SEE related videos from this site as well.

MUCH Earlier:

Mike Whitney: The Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Aug 20, 2004 ... The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology. Gila Svirsky .... The Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib. By MIKE WHITNEY GO here

US doctors lobby for end to torture of terrorism suspects -- Roehr by B Roehr - 2006
Washington, DC Bob Roehr. Doctors and human rights activists in the United States have formed...here (SEARCH for B Roehr and US Doctors Lobby to End Torture)
Heidi Boghosian: Rx to End Torture

En General:

Torture is Wrong: Ending the policy which allows torture has become synonymous with Guantanamo ,most specifically doctors and psychologists (as well as lawyers) in facilitating torture...GO here

LIVE NOW: World Refugee: Day 20 June 2010

Sudanese Refugee Camp
source for photo credit goes to "world refugee day hpr1.com" (found only via search with complete phrase)

If you get here in time (Until 9pm EST) there is a LIVE Stream World Radio Program about the plight of World Refugees. Also look for Stop Genocide Now and groups which make the connections between war, torture and inequality with the plight of refugees.

I have been listening and find these LIVE connections so bonding as far as the many conversations which are so personal and about topics to which most of us might relate. These are heart-wrenching yet not all about gloom. Sometimes the topics concern sports played at the camps, goals and education of children, what people did back home and cultural/religious ritual.

FIRST EVER LIVE-STREAMED TV/RADIO with live conversations right from various camps: GO to World Refugee Day 2010 Live - June 20, 9am - 9pm EST (so on this posting at 3pm EST there's another 6 hours.) UNHCR has set up three live video links to share stories with supporters while helping ask questions:

GO here

Also GO here

================================

The Following is from AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL:

Refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons

Every day across the world people make the difficult decision to leave their homes. War, persecution, environmental disaster and poverty are just some of the reasons why a person might feel that they have to leave their family, community or country.

Refugees leave their country because they have no other choice and fear for their own life or safety or that of their family. Refugees also flee their country when their government will not or cannot protect them from serious human rights abuses.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) and those forced to move within their own country because of war, persecution or environmental disasters, rather than cross national borders.

Asylum seekers are people whose have reached another country and have submitted or will submit claims for refugee status ; they have not been formally recognized as refugees. They have the same human rights as everyone else. Article 14 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that: “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another to live, and usually to work, either temporarily or permanently. They may be forced to leave because they do not have access to adequate food, water or shelter, or in order to ensure the safety and security of themselves and their families. They may move to take up employment, or to be reunited with family members. Many leave for a combination of reasons.

People often have more than one reason for leaving their home. Whatever the reason, however, all have human rights. In addition, refugees have a right to international protection.
Key facts

* an estimated 200 million people live outside the country in which they were born – about 3% of the global population of 6.5 billion

* there are an estimated 14.2 million refugees in the world, roughly 0.21% of the world’s population

* the numbers of internally displaced persons are currently estimated to be around 24.5 million – 0.4% of the world’s population

* the majority of refugees and IDPs are in Asia and Africa, which between them host a total of 9.2 million refugees and 18.1 million IDPs

What Amnesty International is doing

Amnesty International campaigns for the rights of refugees, IDPs and migrants around the world and exposes human rights abuses and failures in their protection.

Amnesty International also brings attention to the risks people would face if they were forced to return to their country.

Amnesty International activists and sections around the world lobby their governments for changes in national laws, policies and practices, as well as working alongside other organizations to protect the rights of all refugees and migrants.

The staff at the International Secretariat in London and Geneva work to influence international policy and standard setting.

Amnesty International calls on all states to share responsibility for the protection of refugees, asylum-seekers, IDPs and migrants and to adhere to obligations set out under international law.

Amnesty International also has a global network of refugee coordinators in more than 50 countries who work with other non-government organizations to protect the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and IDPs.

We do not represent individuals in asylum processes, although we may take action on individual cases or issues.
Key issues

One of the most important principles in the 1951 Geneva Convention is that of non refoulement – a refugee’s right not to be returned to a country where they are in danger of persecution. Amnesty International opposes any individual being forcibly returned to a country where he or she is at risk of suffering serious human rights abuses.

Amnesty International wants to see an end to the unlawful detention of asylum seekers in the countries where they seek safety. Detention affects the elderly, victims of torture, unaccompanied children and others particularly badly.

Amnesty International calls on governments and other authorities to respect the key rights of the internally displaced. It opposes the forcible relocation of people on account of their religion, ethnic origin, sex, colour or language.

Amnesty International promotes the ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. The treaty is one of the nine core international human rights treaties and guarantees migrants’ rights to education, freedom of religion and expression, equal access to courts and rights at work.
Case study: Iraq

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq and the subsequent sectarian violence, millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee to neighbouring Syria and Jordan, where resources are being stretched to breaking point. Humanitarian assistance is now reaching only a small proportion of Iraqis in Jordan and Syria.

More than two million Iraqis have now left the country and almost two million are internally displaced. There is a desperate need for assistance – financial and otherwise – to ease the situation. There has so far been little support from those countries involved in the conflict.

Amnesty International is calling for the US, the UK and other states to increase resettlement for the most vulnerable refugees, including survivors of torture and others who urgently need medical care.

Also go to International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent

Refugees in America: Faces and Stories Behind the Refugee Protection Act

By Erin Hustings on June 20, 2010

Find at Physicians for Human Rights

A 29-year-old mother of three from the Republic of Congo who was arrested, detained, accused of anti-government activities because of her ethnicity, tortured and raped repeatedly by military officers for more than a year before escaping and finding her way to the US to seek asylum.

A Nepalese nurse who was kidnapped at gun point and forced to treat injured Maoist rebels, only to be subsequently accused by his own government of complicity with the rebels and detained and tortured on that basis.

A gay man from Mexico who was kicked out of school, shunned by his family, beaten by a mob in his hometown and sexually assaulted by the police who should have protected him.

Each of these people is an actual asylum seeker in the US who overcame great odds and dangers to seek safety from persecution in the United States.

The 30th anniversary this year of the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 is an appropriate time to pause and reflect on who asylum seekers are and why we should care about them, as Patrick Giantonio, Executive Director of Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates, said in his testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Refugee Protection Act on May 19. It is also the time to re-examine what more must be done to ensure the protection and healing of survivors of torture and abuse who seek safe haven in the US.

The Refugee Protection Act is a bill that would make a number of needed reforms to the laws governing granting of asylum and resettlement of asylees and refugees. Among its important provisions discussed at the May 19 hearing are elimination of an arbitrary filing deadline for asylum claims of one year after entry into the US and changes that would mitigate the overbroad interpretation of the law that excludes from the country persons who allegedly have provided “support” to terrorists. (For more detailed information about the Refugee Protection Act of 2010, see PHR’s statement from the May 19 hearing.)

Since it was enacted in 1996 as a misguided solution to fraud in the US asylum system, the one year filing deadline has led to denial of the asylum claims of hundreds, if not thousands, of legitimate asylum seekers for reasons that pale in comparison to the degree of danger the individuals would confront if returned to their home countries. People miss the one-year deadline for a plethora of reasons, including ignorance of the law, lack of counsel (indigent asylum-seekers are not provided with free counsel) and post-traumatic stress due to torture suffered in the country of persecution. A technicality of which very many survivors of persecution are not aware should not prevent consideration of the merits of their claims. Many other effective practices are in place to root out and prevent fraudulent claims, including DHS’s forensic testing of documents and security investigations on asylum seekers. Instead of an important tool to combat fraud, the deadline serves to bar deserving survivors of severe human rights violations, and it burdens the Immigration Court system by requiring additional adjudication of complex issues, including whether an individual qualifies for an exemption to the deadline.

Who are the victims of the one year filing deadline? They include a Burmese student who fled to the US after being jailed for several years for his pro-democracy activism. When he arrived in the United States, the student did not know anyone here. He did not speak English, and did not know about the availability of asylum, which he only learned of several years later when he met other Burmese refugees who explained the process. Even though the Immigration Judge who heard his case found that he faced probable future persecution in Burma, this student was denied asylum because he had not met the filing deadline. Another casualty was a Senegalese woman who fled forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) planned by her parents. Four years after arrival in the US, the woman attempted to change her parents’ minds so that she could safely return home, to no avail. She applied for asylum after four years in the US, when she learned that her younger sister had been forced to undergo FGM. Again, even though a judge who heard her case found it compelling, she was denied protection solely for having failed to file for asylum within one year of coming to the US.

Unreasonably broad interpretation of the ban on admission of people who have provided so-called “support” to terrorists likewise has prevented large numbers of deserving asylum seekers from winning protection in the US. As currently implemented by DHS, “supporters of terrorism” include a multitude of individuals who no rational person would deem a security threat, such as health professionals, who treat anti-government rebels brought in to their clinics and hospitals, and villagers, who are threatened with death unless they give food, water, shelter, or money to guerillas. The US government’s definition of a “terrorist organization” is also overbroad and encompasses any group of people engaged in any kind of armed resistance, even those whose cause our country clearly supports, such as organizations fighting genocide in Darfur. The authority granted by Congress to immigration officials three years ago to exempt sympathetic cases from the terrorism support bar has been implemented far too slowly, as nearly 7,000 people currently remain in limbo awaiting further consideration of their cases.

There is a better way to identify and exclude terrorist sympathizers while ensuring that victims of persecution are not mislabeled as threats. Immigration authorities can use existing policies that deny immigration relief to serious criminals and people who have persecuted others, while appropriately limiting application of the “terrorism supporter” label to those who voluntarily undertake intimidating or coercive measures on behalf of known, designated terrorist organizations. Until immigration authorities implement this change, the US will see more and more people come into harm’s way because of policy on material support to terrorism. Among those who have already fallen victim are a Bangladeshi man denied a green card, because he took part in his country’s 1971 struggle for independence, and a Congolese girl kidnapped by rebels at age 12, who eventually became an advocate against use of child soldiers, but was nonetheless flagged as a “material support” case because of her unwilling involvement with anti-government fighters.

Where the Inner Work is Great...

Carsten Clasohm Clasohm.org


"Where the inner work is great, the outer work cannot be small." Meister Eckhardt

"Life is not divisible...the more the life of the ego identifies itself with the life of the non-ego, the more intensely one lives. The transfusion of the ego into the non-ego is made by means of a gift that is more or less ritual, conscious, or voluntary...the art of giving is the principal secret of the Great Work."
Abdul-Hadi, "L'universalite en l'Islam" Le Voile d'Isis, January, 1934

"By digging deeply they alertly examine their consciences so that nothing sordid may lie hidden within them. They carefully probe all the depths or their hearts for the hidding places of empty thoughts and draw them out with the hand of conscientious discretion so that they can prepare a firm and restful throne within themselves for that strong rock...and through his presence they persevere amid the fearful adversities of this world and amid its allurements as well." Bede -Homilies-

Maher Arar: US Senator Patrick Leahy Comments on SC Decision

Comment On The Supreme Court’s Denial Of Certiorari In Arar v. Ashcroft -“The United States’ secret rendition of Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for nearly a year, remains a stain on this nation’s legacy as a human rights leader around the world” Senator Patrick Leahy

(From PoliticalNews.me)

“The United States’ secret rendition of Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for nearly a year, remains a stain on this nation’s legacy as a human rights leader around the world. We know that Mr. Arar was detained by American authorities, who deported him not to his country of residence, Canada, where he would have been questioned and investigated, but to Syria, a country known for torturing detainees. The Canadian government has publicly cleared Mr. Arar of any links to terrorism, yet the United States has continued to deny culpability in this case, citing the too-often used state secrets privilege*. I am disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision to deny certiorari in this case.”

About Senator Patrick Leahy

Patrick Leahy of Middlesex was elected to the United States Senate in 1974 and remains the only Democrat elected to this office from Vermont. At 34, he was the youngest U.S. Senator ever to be elected from the Green Mountain State. Leahy was born in Montpelier and grew up across from the Statehouse. A graduate of Saint Michael's College in Colchester (1961), he received his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center (1964). He served for eight years as State's Attorney in Chittenden County. He gained a national reputation for his law enforcement activities and was selected (1974) as one of three outstanding prosecutors in the United States. Leahy is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a senior member of the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees. He ranks third in seniority in the Senate.

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