Already getting started President Obama signed the order to close Guantanamo Bay, the high security prison housed on the shores of Cuba…where thousands of detainees had been stored and warehoused since post-9/11…not to mention where they had been tortured by the Bush Administration.

Obama also ordered a review of all the trials and then placed a banned upon the harsh methods of interrogation used to extract information from detainees within that prison.

http://news.aol.com/?feature=310532

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/politics/23GITMOCND.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1232650854-OzqyteNFK2JEY7RNpZO+Jg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/01/22/VI2009012201779.html?sid=ST2009012101583&s_pos=list

The behavior of the Bush Administration concerning enemy combatants and those thought

 to be enemy combatants…or possessing information went against the Geneva Convention concerning the handling and treatment of detainees, combatants and non-combatants.  The time has long been overdue for Bush’s policies regarding such matters to change…and the standards lifted once again as to how America carries herself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012102009.html

The problem, however, that arises with the closing of Guantanamo Bay is what to do with all those angry prisoners?

And, yes…I can see them being very angry…particularly those who may have been housed in that high security prison system for years now…who may have been innocent of any wrong doing.  But are now more than ready to blow America to smittereens due to what happened to them.  That is what a bunch of bad policies can do.  It creates long time and hardened hatred…and lasting enemies

Two semesters ago I had to pay a visit to the court house in regards to some family matters.  While before the judge…I was ordered to put my hands behind my back.  I could not imagine what was going on.

They were arresting me…and the charge was…  Well…  ’Not serving Jury Duty.’

The only problem here was…was that I had served my jury duty.  Not only there but in New York a couple of years earlier. 

I protested before the court.  I called it an ‘outrage.’ 

I called it an ‘injustice.’

I proclaimed my innocence. 

But no one heard me.   In fact, they took my actions for a joke. 

I was outraged.  

I was enraged….I was mad…insulted…and had been made to be embarrassed. 

And I knew while I sat down in that cold jail cell after they un-handcuffed me and bent to remove the shackles…that that day was going to be revisited.  And I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.   Because yes…I had already made up in my mind that I was going to sue them.

So, I can understand the outrage and anger of people treated badly or unfairly…and those even treated in such as way…without due cause.  You don’t forget.

http://news.aol.com/article/obama-signs-order-to-close-guantanamo-in/314749?cid=12

Well, Hillary Clinton is looking happier these days…and certainly more confident.  And there is little wonder.   Today she was sworn in as Secretary of State.   

Though Hillary was indeed truly a heated contender in her fight to the White House…it is evident that the President saw something in her.  Perhaps he admired her aggressiveness…or maybe her doggit determination.  I imagine that these type of qualities are much needed when dealing various world leaders and other big time politicans.  If so…then she certainly has all the right credentials.

…and in a vote of 18 to 5 of the Senate Finance Committee Timothy Geithner was approved as consideration as Treasury Secretary of the United States of America.  Now, his confirmation goes up for  a full Senate vote in order for him to take over that position. 

http://news.aol.com/article/clinton-takes-the-reins-at-state/314201?cid=12

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-clinton,1,3732593.story

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090122/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/clinton

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=11658795&ch=4226716&src=news

Caroline Kennedy has withdrawn her name from consideration as the replacement for Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat, as the Senator from New York.  Though the Governor of New York, David Patterson, had been toying with who his decision would fall upon…he has now allowed too much time to slip by.  What seems to me…should have been a fairly easy decision by way of choice…he now longer has. 

Having spent much of her younger years growing up on 5th Avenue in New York…I am sure that Caroline would have brought much to the State of New York.  Whatever the reason…it is New York’s great lost.  Too bad it was not seized upon earlier…it might have made a difference.

Boy, it is amazing that little Carline Kennedy is now 51 years old.   Seems only like yesterday when she and her brother, John, were the 2 little kids in the White House.

http://news.aol.com/article/kennedy-associate-says-decision-was/287640?cid=12

CLICK on this LINK  BELOW to see how Obama’s team is shaping up and where they currently stand in the process of their confirmations.

http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/new_team

IBM set to lay off  800 employees.  

I bought an IBM computer a few years back…but haven’t seen any more of them around since.  So, I knew that IBM had folded her hand in the desktop business.  But who knows what IBM sells any more? 

UNIX…Servers…LINUX…Power Systems…massive digital storage systems… 

So, I guess IBM is still pretty much in the computer industry…and as they have pretty much have been in the past…more corporate use…and less commercial consumer use.  Maybe, IBM needs to get it’s feet back into the everyday consumer market again.

Well, God bless…

Thank you for reading this blog…and  my others.  Please be sure to continue to share this blog site with your family, co-workers and all your friends… “pass it on” www.bsmith101.wordpress.com ©2009  

Can You Help a Sistha Out?

For the life of me I cannot figure out how it is that America came to be in possession with that piece of property on the other side of Cuba, where since 9/11 people have been picked up, imprisoned and/or detained.

Just how did Castro allow that?

This past semester I took a course called “Just War Theory.” Near the end of the semester the chapters touched upon non-enemy combatants and the Geneva Convention etc…  As I sat in the class I was appalled to hear 3th and 4th year college students defending this country’s treatment of international prisoners whom the Bush Administration labeled as Al Qaeda agents…people whom the US Government claims are directly associated with the Taliban, bin Laden and/or other dissident groups…or people who may…or may not know some type of information concerning these groups.  Several of our classes discussions centered around the Geneva Convention which clearly states how prisoners are suppose to be treated, their care, their living quarters, their rights etc…and what type of interrogation techniques could or could not be employed against them.

The many acts of degrading and torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib were all acts going against the standards of treatment of enemy prisoners as set forth by the Geneva Convention…as well as those acts of torturing and degrading prisoners in the prison in Guantanamo Bay.  Grabbing up people and shuffling them off to undisclosed locations is illegal, also, and amounts to nothing more than shear kidnapping…of which this country is also guilty of.

General Colon Powell, as Secretary of State, said it well when he sent out his memo laying out for the Bush Administration that they could take one of two roads…the high road or take the low road in regards to prisoners and torture.  And Bush and Cheney’s choice was and has been the low road.  Having chosen that road only has made America look as bad as those who attacked us on 9/11…because they could…and because we can. 

Nuclear War…

I also found it curious while sitting in my class and listening to my fellow classmates that they felt that no country had ever dropped a nuclear bomb…this mind you as they even refused to accept this fact out of our own textbook.  Now, I have read mis-information in textbooks…but there is one country which has dropped an atomic bomb.

 Does anybody remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki???? 

My classmates tried hard not to accept this…but I kept hammering it in that we, America, had…not one but two of them…(check your history…and absorb it).

I heard somewhere that history…always repeats itself. 

What better way to cure yourself, than to first say I need to be cured.  To hope over time that what has been done will be washed away as folks die off…and that our tainted history will go to the grave with them…is a fallacy…and certainly a false hope.

During the days of the Cold War…the days of ol’…the Cold War worked only because there were two major players only…us and the USSR, the Soviet Union.  But today with everybody and his brother running around trying to arm themselves, and buying most of this stuff on the black market…and I do believe in the black market (wherever there is a dime…or a quarter to be made…somebody is going to try and make it…it is what they call capitalism…and it is global)…and this all makes the world a very unstable place.  Better to rid the world of the atomic bomb than to have everybody suit-up.  The unfortunate thing, however…someone is bound to want to keep theirs.

Destiny graduated last night.  So, we were all out at Texas Road House getting our order of steak and double loaded sweet potatoes.  Hope you’re having fun…happy to be out of school.  Just gonna kick up my heels and talk to you for the rest of the summer.  Holla back…and God Bless…  ©2008