jose padilla

Here is a recent Z-Net piece marking the 4th anniversary of Jose Padilla's imprisonment as an "enemy combatant".

In Justice John Paul Stevens scathing dissent (to the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Padilla case) Stevens articulates the gravity of Padilla vs. Rumsfeld. He said the Padilla case poses “a unique and unprecedented threat to the freedom of every American citizen…At stake is nothing less than the essence of a free society…For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny.”

padilla likely to face terror trial in miami

Miami Herald: Padilla likely to face terror trial in Miami

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive ''dirty bomb,'' to be released from a military brig and moved to Miami, where he faces a criminal trial on lesser terror-related charges.

In some sense this is a good thing for Padilla because it ends his Kafka-esque status of being in a legal limbo. On the other hand, according to the Herald, Padilla is being released from military custody in order to prevent the Supreme Court from making a ruling on the administration's "right" to consider U.S. citizens as enemy combatants.

shssh! don't tell americans how we treat enemy combatants

The future of freedom foundation: Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How We Treat “Enemy Combatants” by Jacob G. Hornberger deals with Jose Padilla's approaching trial and the governments efforts to downplay what it did to Padilla while he was in custody as an "enemy combatant".

Planet Grenada and Jose Padilla

jose padilla and the death of the republic

Padilla and the Death of the Republic By Tom Gorman is a reflection on what Jose Padilla's continued imprisonment means for American democracy.

public enemy no. 43,527

From Slate: Public Enemy No. 43,527 takes an insightful Big Picture view on the Jose Padilla situation. And Umar Lee makes similar comments in his own blog entry: Padilla Indictment a Complete Joke; Media Duped Again

jose padilla indicted

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held by the Bush administration for three years without charges as an enemy combatant plotting a "dirty bomb" attack in the United States, has been indicted on charges unrelated to any potential terrorist attack in this country.
Washington Post
BBC News

guantanamo and planet grenada

This week's topic for the Progressive Blogger Union is the Guantanamo hunger strike. Given that the abuses at Guantanamo are being done by my government, to my co-religionists, in my family's homeland, one could argue that I haven't been blogging nearly enough on the subject. What is going on there mostly makes me sad and angry in a way which is hard to articulate. Besides, there are only so many ways to say that a certain situation is obscenely wrong and shouldn't be happening. In any case, here are most of the past Planet Grenada posts on Guantanamo plus a few more on related subjects:

yo soy un hombre sincero...
fast for justice
amnesty international and guantanamo bay
guantanamo action center
guantanamo hunger strikes serious
guantanamo hunger strike
guantanamo medics accused of abusive force-feeding
james yee
as ramadan approaches
guantanamo and the quran
benito juarez and quran desecration at guantanamo
us admits to torturing prisoners
shut down guantanamo!
"you can't handle the truth"
guantan-ramera?
jose padilla and the death of the republic
jose padilla
secret cia map indicating the location of the taliban
let us be moors
disappeared in america

why muslims get mad

In the media, people tend to focus on the "last straw" and don't even pay attention to everything else which comes before it. Abu Gharaib, Guantanamo, Kashmir, Gujurat, the latest atrocities in Palestine, 9/11 backlash, the Patriot Act, Jose Padilla, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all of the other ways in which Muslim life and honor is disrespescted.

Al-Jazeera: US radio host upsets Muslim body A Muslim civil liberties group has demanded an apology from the host of a Los Angeles-area radio show for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

amnesty international and guantanamo bay

Here is Amnesty International's page of resources on US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. It includes dozens of documents on the camp going as far back as 2002, some suggestions for ways you can help, and links to over a thousand documents from Amnesty International on various other aspects of the human rights situation in the US.

One such report is called Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power and discusses not just Guantanamo but case of Jose Padilla and others.

guantanamo and the quran

Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog for May 17th has a good summary of some of the issues behind Newsweek's original story, and their retraction (strongly encouraged by the White House). Personally, the whole discussion seems really bizzare to me. If the U.S. military is willing to discount the lives of Muslim civilians as "collateral damage" in military campaigns and if they are willing to totally degrade civilians at Abu Gharaib and if they are willing to curtail civil liberties, even in the case of U.S. citizens like Juan Padilla, etc. then why would there be ANY reluctance at all in desecrating something which they believe to be just a silly book made out of paper and ink?

let us be moors

This piece, entitled Let Us Be Moors - Islam, Race And "Connected Histories" by Hisham Aidi connects incredibly well with the themes brought up all over Planet Grenada. Historical connections are discussed along with more contemporary ones: The Cuban patriot, Jose Marti declaring "Somos Moros!" (We are Moors!) in solidarity with African independence movements, Jose Padilla's indefinite incarceration, the rich cross-cultural fertilizations happening in hip-hop, Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay, a Brazilian telenovela about Morocco, Shakira, the Murabitun in Mexico, and to Granada itself.

This amazing and wide-ranging paper ends on an inspiring tone:

With African-American and Latino converts speaking of the tragedy of 1492, and with Muslim minorities in the West becoming increasingly race-conscious and inspired by black America, the world is witnessing a new fusion between Islam and pan-Africanism. Today, however, this racialized Islamic internationalism contains elements of other cultures and diasporas as well. Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental counter-modernity" that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity...constructed in order to fight global imperialism."