Tag: injustices

Arizona: Papers Please/Papeles Por Favor

Please add the following update to your travel guides about visiting Arizona. It may be of assistance in avoiding unwanted, undesirable discussions with Arizona law enforcement, arrest and detention, and police harassment. If you already live in Arizona, something I wish on no one today, you already know everything I am about to write.  I am writing this so that others may reflect on your situation.

This is a bus stop in Tucson, Arizona.  I know it doesn’t look like a bus stop in New York, or Chicago, or New Orleans.  This is an Arizona bus stop:

tucson bus stop

There are some things that are very important if you are waiting for the bus at such a stop in Arizona.  

Another Sham Trial In Iraq

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Oh please.  The New York Times says that a trial date has been set for “the Iraqi Shoe-Thrower” for February 19.  But this trial is unlikely to resemble anything you’d call fair.  Let us parse the news together:

Lawyers for the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, had tried to reduce the charges stemming from the incident, which made him a folk hero in much of the Arab world and beyond, but in setting a trial date a higher court let the most serious charges stand. If convicted, he could face as many as 15 years in prison….snip

Security guards quickly subdued him, as he continued to shout about the fate of widows and orphans, and he has remained in detention ever since. His relatives and lawyers say he has been tortured in custody, and complain that they have been allowed minimal opportunities to see him or to discuss his case.

The incident occurred on December 14, so Mr. al-Zaidi has been incarcerated now for almost 2 months without reasonable access to counsel.  And he’s been tortured.  That sounds like a fair trial in the making to me. Not.

The Times ends its brief article with this remarkable zinger:

His trial could become an important – and highly visible – test of Iraq’s still-evolving judicial system. It was not clear how much of his trial, if any, will be open to the public.

“Still-evolving” has to be one of the most remarkable euphemisms of all time.  “Still-evolving” in this case means that the accused can be tortured, kept away from family and counsel for almost two months, tried in secret, and then sentenced up to 15 years.  I wouldn’t exactly call that “still-evolving.”   Or justice. Truth be told, we should call it what it is, a sham.  

Saving 49 Lives (Part 3)

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

There are 49 people presently facing the federal death penalty.  If we want to, we might be able to spare them.  We might be able to get the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the decisions by the three Bush Administration Attorney Generals to pursue the death penalty in these cases, and if the new Attorney General thought, if there were convictions, that the defendants shouldn’t be killed, he could require prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, to be satisfied with a maximum sentence of life without parole.  This would be a remarkable development.  It would save lives.  The United States would join the civilized world that has stopped state killing.  The essential hypocrisy of an eye for an eye would be abandoned.  It would be a new era.  We would not have these people’s blood on our hands.