meta-roj

i’ve posted a bunch of things i consider pretty disturbing about law and justice and america… so i think i’ll wrap up for now with the current results.

World terror attacks tripled in 2004 by U.S. count [reuters, 2005.04.26]

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

mission accomplished. april 30, 2003.

[it’s worth emphasizing that this is based on the administration’s own criteria for “significant”]

and now for a quick trip back to the forgotten detainees at guantanamo…

Interrogations faked at Guantanamo, witness says [reuters, 2005.04.28]

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar told CBS television show 60 Minutes that he believes “only a few dozen” of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.

“Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation … a mock interrogation, basically,” Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.

“They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information,” he said, calling it “a fictitious world” created for the visitors.

that’s an interesting approach. so to justify the continued detention, interrogation, torture and killing of people in my name, my government may have put on a little theater.

we may never know.

we’re on a roll with justice and law tonight…

Witness in Marine Case Taken Off Stand [ap via wired news, 2005.04.27]

A key witness in the case against a Marine officer accused of murdering two Iraqi civilians was abruptly taken off the stand Wednesday on suspicion of violating orders on giving interviews about the case.

Marine Sgt. Daniel Coburn was testifying at a hearing in the case against 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano when the investigating officer, Maj. Mark E. Winn, read him his rights and told him he was suspected of violating orders from superior officers.

i guess if someone could possibly give damning testimony, this is one way to affect that testimony.

worse, the presiding officers let this happen? and we’re supposed to have faith in the military justice system?

representative michael debose has a great idea to save our children…

Pink Plates Proposed For Sex Offenders [nbc 4, columbus, ohio, 2005.04.27]

“It identifies them,” said Rep. Michael DeBose, (D) 12th District. “The primary reason they can prey is because they’re camouflaged from who they really are.”

DeBose introduced a bill this week in the Ohio House suggesting mandatory pink license plates for sexual offenders so children know to stay away, Tate reported.

“There’s such a problem — around rec centers, parks, school yards,” he said. “There’s no way to identify them and to protect children.”

now, don’t get me wrong, this is serious stuff, but i have to relate this to the politics of fear governing this country, and the insane, useless and otherwise offensive-to-american-principles solutions that keep showing up.

tagging sex offenders with a pink license plate is about as useful as the no-fly lists to keep people off airlines. if these people are so dangerous, and we know who they are (so we can give them a pink plate or put them on a no-fly list), then why aren’t they lost in the american prison economy already?

at least two dozen municipalities across pennsylvania can’t write parking tickets for a while.

$5 Parking Ticket Causes Chaos For All Pa. Meters [the pittsburgh channel, 2005.04.29]

Pascal showed that Butler was in violation of a state law that requires parking meters to be certified as accurate every three years.

Now, cities and towns are clamoring for the state’s Division of Weights and Measures to certify their meters.

The division, which has to inspect everything from gasoline pumps to delicatessen scales, is overwhelmed.

this is just costing the cities in question revenue, but it’s still breaking the law…

if whole cities can’t keep themselves on the right side of the law, with all the people they have in their bureaucracies to keep track of these things, what are the rest of us supposed to do?

since two little items came through my sphere of awareness, let’s go ahead and put them together.

item, the first:

Florida judge blocks abortion for 13-year-old [news.telegraph, 2005.05.01)

A pregnant 13-year-old has been blocked from having an abortion after state authorities in Florida won an emergency injunction against her, arguing that she was too immature to make such a decision.

…

“It would make no sense to have the baby,” said LG, who became pregnant after running away from her care home in January. “I’m 13, I’m in a shelter and I can’t get a job.”

sense, in this case, is not relevant to policy or law. apparently, the child in question (the mother) is a ward of the state, and her legal guardian, the state of florida, cannot consent to an abortion.

item, the second,

Kenyan Women Take Risks with Backstreet Abortions [reuters, 2005.04.29]

It was futile to keep on wishing that the baby would disappear, so Anne decided to take fate into her own hands and a kitchen knife to her belly.

The teen-age schoolgirl was rushed to a Kenyan hospital, her stomach a mess of stab wounds.

Surgeons struggled to patch up her shredded uterus and stem the bleeding, but Anne died on the operating table — another statistic in Kenya where up to 2,000 women die every year because of complications arising from botched abortions.

welcome to kenya, florida.

Kenyan Women Take Risks with Backstreet Abortions [reuters, 2005.04.29]

The picture is amplified across sub-Saharan Africa where 30,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer life-long problems.

…

For every death, 20-30 women suffer permanent damage to their uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, intestines or bladder.

this is not my culture.

update: there’s another story that managed to escape my attention. fortunately, there’s a lot of attention available on this internet, and ann bartow has it at sivacracy:

“Flores resorted to an abortion using illegal drugs sent to her from Mexico and wound up in jail for four months under a rarely used state law that makes it a crime for a woman to perform an abortion on herself.

update (2005.05.03): Fla. Judge OKs Abortion for 13-Year-Old and Florida ends fight against abortion for 13-yr-old.

if you’re cool, you’ll figure out what this means someday

update: just feeding the “vicious cycle of lies.”

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