What amazes me is how editors simply dismiss blogs/twitter etc as ephemeral nonsense, while all the time their readers desert them and they can’t work out why … if they had more nous they’d have more chance — but they’re their own worst enemy!

Thanks, Anton. As you can tell, I agree with your prognosis wholeheartedly, but what I find interesting, having been a blogger for two years now, is the extent to which, in that time, bloggers have stepped forward to fill the mainstream media’s void — and, as a result, are steadily drawing in readers that the papers are losing. It amazes me that the big boys don’t seem able to grasp this properly.

Hello! And I’ve just been reading the website — excellent. Of course I’ve put a link up on the blog.

One of the things that frustrates me (and motivates me to do my blog) is how human rights abuses such as those perpetrated by the UK and US are either not mentioned, or if they are ever covered, defended as necessary. I find it inhuman that people should be jailed without trial (in Britain) and tortured … most newspapers couldn’t care less, or actively applaud it, citing stories about spectral threats that often don’t even exist. So writing like yours is so important, and I will read much more of it I hope.

Anton’s site is here: http://enemiesofreason.blogspot.com/

Andy:

Thank you for that timely and poignant post; we all need to be reminded of the multifarious abuses of not merely our “laws,” but every aspect of so-called civilized humanity that Guantánamo continues to represent with every minute it continues to operate. One activist who has taken on the specific issue of the force-feedings (and their status as unethical in the medical profession) is Dr. David Nicholl, whom I interviewed here: http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/000511.html

To me, the post’s key paragraph is this:

While this reflects badly on the prison authorities, I believe it also reflects badly on the Obama administration. After two months, the new President has only released one prisoner from Guantánamo: the British resident and torture victim Binyam Mohamed, whose case established that, if the stakes are high enough — in other words, if you were subjected to extraordinary abuse, whose disclosure could cause enormous embarrassment (or even a call for criminal investigations) on both sides of the Atlantic — you can be fast-tracked to the front of the new administration’s review process.

This takes me lo these many years to the very first interview I did with a Guantánamo lawyer, Josh Dratel, then representing David Hicks, interviewed here: http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/000261.html, who observed the same thing back in 2005:

Talking Dog: Any further comment with respect to your representation of Mr. Hicks you think our readers should be aware of?

Joshua Dratel: Of the people released from Guantánamo so far, there seems to be something in common: they are let at out at a critical moment when due process from the American government would have to be provided otherwise. This is quite galling, actually.

It seems that the Obama Administration has done more than just adopt the Bush Administration’s procedural playbook: it appears to have wholly adopted its sensibilities. None of this is a terrible surprise, as other than replacing Jim Haynes with Jeh Johnson at DOD General Counsel, I am not aware of a single change in the personnel in the GTMO hierarchy (from SecDef Gates, to “Convening Authority” Crawford, on down to SOCOM and the JTF commanders)… so why should anything change?

Frankly, none of this is even all that shocking — even as Dick Cheney goes around trying to re-stoke fear and loathing of the detainees as the most dangerous terrorists in the world (though the only one even alleged to have shot someone is… Dick Cheney), even as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson publicly disabuses everyone of… everything Dick Cheney said, and insists that all but the 2 dozen or so actual terrorists be released immediately!
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/03/18/lawrence-wilkerson-tells-the-truth-about-guantanamo/

Though not shocking, it is galling. Honestly, I would have had less of a problem with a President John McCain behaving this way, as he did not promise to “close Guantánamo within a year” (though he vaguely suggested it be closed)… McCain continuing the Bush Administration policies would have been par for the course. That the Obama Administration is doing it — for any reason at all — is simply beyond galling. Worse, it is taking it upon itself to try to overstep the courts, insisting that even if courts find other detainees “eligible for release,” that those men may nonetheless be detained at GTMO, potentially for life, if the executive branch decides it’s too inconvenient to release them. This is not “change we can believe in” or the “change” so many of us were voting for.

The difference, however, is that the Obama Administration has made it clear it is willing to be pressured on these issues. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we started our pressure cookers, and ended any “benefits of the doubt” or unjustified faith in the good faith of the people making the ongoing decisions.

It is snowing this morning in New York City. I am going to the dentist. I have been dreading it all week. I will climb in a chair that no one has defecated in. I will be given Novacaine. My dentist and her assistant will both smile at me and sympathize at the sight of the long needle, which will pinch when it enters the gum. Because she is lovely and caring, she will put two gloved fingers over the place of insertion and massage the gum to help ease the pain, and the discomfort will quickly subside. The ordeal, such as it is, will soon be over. I will not have to return this afternoon for another session, or tomorrow, or the next day, and the next…