From the Times Online:
AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.
Read the full story here.
So far from being “world police” as seems to be the dream of many an American statesman, now the US as a foreign policy has announced that if it feels like kidnapping anyone, anywhere in the world who is wanted by its authorities, then it will do so on the grounds that the SCOTUS (supreme court of the United States) says it’s okay.
Well guess what – it’s NOT okay. Not by a long way.
I’ve watched with interest the current US President and his party tear the US Constitution to bits. I do believe, on the balance of available evidence, that particularly Vice President Cheney had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Bush knew about it in advance too. Certainly big business did, how else do you explain the massive amount of money made by the tragedy, in mysteriously placed “put” and other share options. Even if you think the US Government was entirely guiltless, most believers of that are still at a loss to explain the enormous increase in put options applied solely to airlines involved in 9/11. And don’t even get me started on how the BBC were able to report the collapse of WTC7 a full 20 minutes before WTC7 collapsed.
Now the same government that has turned the American democracy into a police state has formally and publicly declared that they consider it perfectly acceptable to kidnap ANY non US citizen, anywhere in the world, just for being suspected of a crime in the United States.
I thought the whole idea of the “land of the free” was that everyone was free – or presumed to be innocent – until it was proved otherwise. When did that change? When did it get so that not only could any US citizen be declared an ‘enemy combatant’ and stripped of all legal rights, including the right not to be tortured, but now citizens from other countries are fodder for any gung-ho gang of Americans who feels like kidnapping them because there’s just a suspicion that they might have violated US law?
Waterboarding and similar methods are torture. (don’t believe me? here’s instructions on how to do it to yourself – try it and see if you still don’t believe me!) Even if the US government somehow makes the bulk of its own citizens believe otherwise, that doesn’t change the truth. US Citizens are quick to answer “it could never happen to me” when pointed out that yes, it could. Chileans learned that lesson. At a recent family dinner with some Chilean people as guests, one related to me the tale that he was told “Be out of the country in 24 hours, or we’ll hunt you down and shoot you because you’re a friend of the wrong political party.” He managed to get out. Others of his family weren’t so lucky, and were indeed hunted down and shot dead. You only have to see the way Republicans and (admittedly to a lesser degree, but they still do it) Democrats go at one another. Dehumanizing by reducing people under those political headings to “Rethuglicans” and “Donkaroaches”. It’s happening. It’s happening already. Democrats hate Republicans, Republicans hate Democrats, and the spiral of hatred seems to be growing worse every year.
So yes, it’s bad enough in America, but at least if it’s kept to America and someone lives there, they deserve all they get; if they don’t like it they should emigrate someplace else. But now that’s not satisfactory. America wants to rule the world, and if anyone crosses the law, they can be kidnapped from anywhere in the world and taken back to America. If they’re suspected of crimes against national security, they can be taken ANYWHERE, including countries where even more brutal tortures than waterboarding are acceptable practice – anywhere that will get a confession that the US can hold up to prove it is right in its original kidnapping policy, because “this dangerous terrorist who is a threat to our national security has confessed.”
If there is a “land of the free” it isn’t America any more. Hasn’t been for some time. And if such a land still exists, and you do find it and live in it, be warned – America still considers itself quite within its rights to kidnap you and bring you back, if it’s suspicious of your activities.