The Supreme Court and "Enemy Combatants"
Covert Action Quarterly (Spring 2005)

This Week in the War on Terror
Beyond Chron (January 7, 2005)
See "Beyond Chron Scoops New York Times" below...

The Felonious Five Ride Again:
The Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
CounterPunch (July 6, 2004 online edition)

The Enemy Combatant Blues: Part Two
Beyond Chron (May 4, 2004)

The Enemy Combatant Blues: Part One
Beyond Chron (April 23, 2004)

Trashing the Constitution
CounterPunch (January 1, 2004 print edition)

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BEYOND CHRON SCOOPS NEW YORK TIMES
Beyond Chron (January 27, 2005)

On Tuesday, January 25, the New York Times and the corporate national press services ran stories about a mass suicide attempt at Guantánamo which took place late in 2003. This event had been hidden from the public because authorities at Guantánamo had classified the attempted suicides not as suicides, but as "self-injurious behavior," or SIBs. This was the first time, to our knowledge, that the Orwellian SIB classification was acknowledged in the mainstream media. The existence of the SIB classification was first revealed in David Rose's excellent new book, "Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights."

But readers of Beyond Chron already knew about SIBs back on January 7, from staff writer Marc Norton's article, "This Week in the War on Terror." Citing Rose's book, Norton wrote that "the guardians of our concentration camp in Guantánamo reduced the incidence of suicide there by redefining suicide. If a prisoner at Gitmo, as it is affectionately called, manages to tie a noose around his neck, but doesn't succeed in killing himself, he may only have been engaging in 'manipulative self-injurious behavior,' or SIB for short. That's when a prisoner's 'state of mind is such that they did not sincerely want to end their own life.' In one recent period, there were about two SIBs per week, but suicide attempts were way down."
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See also:
'ENEMY COMBATANT' or ENEMY OF THE GOVERNMENT?
by Jean-Claude Paye
Monthly Review (September 2007)

As the Supreme Court reconvenes for its 2007-2008 term, much is being made of the latest Guantánamo case before it. Paye reminds us that earlier Supreme Court decisions "hailed by civil liberties organizations as a return to law" constituted, in fact, "a veritable coup d'etat at the judicial level" by recognizing the Bush administration's unconstitutional category of enemy combatants.

The Military Commissions Act, enacted by Congress virtually at the invitation of the Supreme Court, codifies enemy combatants into the law, with a definition, according to Paye, "so broad that it can be applied to social movements or actions of civil disobedience, in fact to any action that challenges the policies of the American government or allied powers," inside or outside the borders of the US.

Thus, Paye writes, we now have a "new imperial political order" based  on a "global system of non-law."

Paye's latest book, Global War on Liberty, has recently been translated into English from the original French. It is available from Telos Press Publishing. In the words of the renowned lawyer and legal scholar Michael Tigar, some observers outside the US political milieu can "see what is happening... more clearly perhaps than many who live in the United States."

-Marc Norton (October 1, 2007)_____________________________________________________________________________