Gangland-Style

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We in Tallahassee tend to be retro, but not always in the hippest way.

The 1st District Court of Appeals here has ruled that a 16-year-old murderer convicted in 2010 must be re-sentenced because of a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case that found laws mandating juveniles be sentenced to life in prison without parole are cruel and unusual punishment. The case being reconsidered is that of a Jacksonville youth, which falls under the purview of the Tallahassee Appeals Court, but not all District courts in the state have found the S.C. decision to be retroactive. (Florida Grapples with what to do with underage killers.)

Some nasty spree shootings lately have prompted gun control debate, but we do not know what to do with the killers (the 16-year-old killed his target, Grady Williamson, 49, with a knife, after robbing him of $3.) Norway has dealt with their recent spree shooter -- Anders Breivik -- by cordoning off a wing of prison for him and hiring "friends" to [presumably] keep him sane during the length of his 21 year sentence.  Norway officials were adamant about not changing their gun laws in capitulation to his heinous action, however.

In the United States, we let the weakest links among us determine the strictures for all, like the bad kid in class who earns detention for all. It is not sensible as not everyone talks out of turn, nor does everyone decide to kill.

In Florida, we may no longer sentence stone cold underage killers to life as this is viewed as "cruel and unusual punishment", and we are currently sans legal protocol for this cohort.  But no such civilized niceties hamstring our program of drone killings of American youths abroad.

Unlike actual killers here in the Gunshine State, the U.S. without compunction dropped a bomb on 16- year-old U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, former BBF of White House habitues. Another U.S. friendship, down the drain.  Another Arab de-friended in our own unique Chicago gangland-style killing. (Working with the Pentagon can be a literal career-killer these days.)

Al-Awlaki's son did not participate in any crime, yet he received a Presidentially-approved death penalty. So why is one 16-year-old American death o.k., while stateside 16-year-old actual murderers may not even receive a life sentence as that is deemed beyond the pale of civilized behavior?

[Further, al-Awlaki Sr. did not commit a capital offense, yet he also received a drone death sentence sans trial; meanwhile, the man he supposedly influenced,"Underwear Bomber" manque Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received only a 25-year sentence.]

We are walking a thin line when execution-style murder is accepted as just and equitable in the absence of a trial or hard evidence that might possibly result in a conviction of murder, should it stand before a court of law.  If we are a humanistic, liberal and democratic nation, why do our citizens lose those rights in Yemen?

Why such consternation over sentencing actual child murderers in the States, and why such disinhibition about killing our juvenile citizens abroad? If we don't kill underage murders in the U.S. legal system, how can we justify killing them in international waters?

Fall Leaves, Winter Comes

--Owl Moon, Megan Richards

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray.
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
--California Dreamin',
Mamas and the Papas

Strange fascination,
fascinating me
Ah changes are taking the pace
I'm going through
--Changes, David Bowie

Whoever has no house already
will build none now
Whoever is now alone
will long remain so
--Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
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The leaves are changing and the cycle of nature moves on, except in the Middle East, where the promised greening of the Arab Spring didn't quite mature; it was simply not gravid.

Arab Autumn would show some sort of quickening and maturation; it is not, because it did not arrive. The movement fell on fallow ground. Democracy avoids taking hold in Egypt and will not blossom in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq or any other Middle Eastern society. Spring signals an efflorescence, something more than a few mild days. It is a riot of sprouts and buds which fast become fruit and flowers.

The Arab Spring was a largely orchestrated event Twittered around the world and then a quick fizzle. Social media will have to do more than figure only the most outrageous events for a 15-second viewing if its promise as an agent of social change is to come to fruition.

Nature has not failed us, and her colors blaze around us now, but the man-made seasons don't follow through on their promise. Moreover, why are U.S. citizens were provoked to be so crazy over protest against governments abroad, while we squelch such appearances here in The Homeland ™? That the people are so vulnerable to be riled up on behalf of others while they are tamped down at home is a travesty and a tragedy.

We believe in witches, vampires, zombies and democracy, and just know that these things are fain to pop up at any time. Unfortunately (for the latter), these are diaphanous and ephemeral constructs; maybe none of them are really the thing we think they are.

There may be no Arab Autumn, but just as sure as there's a Santa Claus, we are enjoying an American Autumn. It was heralded in by unreasonable searches of electronic communications sans warrants and evidence of criminality and secret panels dictating the deaths of U.S. citizens like recently murdered cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

It will be a cold, hard winter.

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[click on above image to vote]

Radical Clerics

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Ranger has written on the illegality and meaninglessness of Anwar al-Awlaki -- U.S. citizen and Muslim cleric in Yemen, being placed on the U.S. president's "kill list" (U.S. of Assassination, 11.09.10).

Al-Awlaki is a basic, one each radical cleric who preaches death to Americans. Serves him right, you say. But an 11.20.10 editorial in the NYT backs Ranger up -- "A False Target in Yemen":

"[N]o one should remain under the mistaken assumption that killing Mr.Awlaki will somehow make us safer.

"Mr. Awlaki isn’t the group’s top religious scholar (Adil al-Abab), its chief of military operations (Qassim al-Raymi), its bomb maker (Ibrahim Hassan Asiri) or even its leading ideologue (Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaysh).

"Rather, he is a midlevel religious functionary who happens to have American citizenship and speak English. This makes him a propaganda threat, but not one whose elimination would do anything to limit the reach of the Qaeda branch.

"He’s not even particularly good at what he does: Mr. Awlaki is a decidedly unoriginal thinker in Arabic and isn’t that well known in Yemen. ..."

If a Muslim cleric is radical, we slap a death sentence on him -- but what about the radical Christian clerics, to include military chaplains who are cheerleaders of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) and five-by behind our invasions of sand box nations (the sort Ranger wrote about in "The Chaplain")? Why can radical Christian clerics do the same thing we condemn their clerics to death for doing?

For not only do the worst of the Christian clerics pump up their flocks behind killing the Islamic Infidel, they also call fatwas on abortion providers.

A Tallahassee abortion provide, Dr. John Britton, was shot and killed by a shotgun round to the head from Reverend Paul Jennings in Pensacola, Florida in 1994. Hill also killed Britton's bodyguard, retired Air Force lieutenant James Barrett, and wounded Barrett's wife June, a retired nurse. Hill could be called an "anti-abortion terrorist", for his goal and that of his fellows is to intimidate any future doctors from performing the procedure. (Hill was inspired by the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn.)

This is a perfect double-standard as they support killing certain people deemed un-Christian in their support of the "pre-born", but we expect that from the religious realm.

This is a national hypocrisy and shame when it becomes institutionalized.

The U.S. of Assassination

--Hunting Taliban,
Manny Francisco (Manilla)

I wish I was a neutron bomb,
for once I could go off.
I wish I was a sacrifice
but somehow still lived on
--Wishlist, Pearl Jam

We’ll spend a month obsessing about Terri Shiavo.
But dare we show the body of a fallen soldier?
--Boston Legal (206)

We should never confuse dissent
with disloyalty
--Edward R. Murrow
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Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S. citizen, is officially on a U.S. "kill list". Do democracies remain liberal when they run hit lists? Does the President have the legal authority to sentence a U.S. citizen to death, sans trial?

"if the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes in an enemy of the state," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, who presented arguments in the case. "It's the government's responsibility to protect the nation from terrorist attacks, but the courts have a crucial role to play in ensuring that counterterrorism policies are consistent with the Constitution (Obama's Administration Claims Unchecked Authority).

FBI investigators sayAl-Awlaki's function may have been to keep the 9-11-01 hijackers "spiritually on-track". That IS the function of spiritual advisers, after all. And one could argue that U.S. military chaplains do the same for our soldiers. Both sides kill civilians, so the label terrorist could depend on which side of the fence one resides.

The U.S. did not target Shiite cleric Musa al-Sadr, whose preachings obviously led to U.S. deaths. How is one exempt, and another slated for dispatch into oblivion?

Truly, the U.S. President lacks the authority to sentence any one to death, nor can he legitimately authorize assassination. Assassination is not an option in the U.S. legal pantheon for responses to terrorist actions.

Definitions matter in a country under rule of law. Is al-Awlaki a belligerent, as claimed? Belligerent is a term of warfare as defined by the Geneva Conventions. Yet if we capture belligerents, we fail to afford them prisoner of war (POW) status and all rights that issue from that.

Further, we predict that al-Awlaki presents an imminent danger to U.S. citizens. Going with this line of predictability, do not serial killers also pose imminent threats to life? Yet, we do not target them for assassination. Likewise, we do not target Mexican or Columbian drug lords, yet just as surely they are imminent threats to life which bleeds over our borders. The U.S. has precedent for dealing with criminals, and it does not involve assassination.

We are assured that the Central Intelligence Agency will be prudent and apply due process in their assemblage if their kill lists and this elicits a snicker, for surely the CIA is composed of extremists every bit as much as the group al-Qaeda. There have been no charges of terrorism filed against al-Awlaki, and the administration refuses to release evidence (State secret, y'know.)

When the U.S. must maintain a death list and cannot extract a small-time operator like al-Awlaki from tribal areas in Yemen, how can we say we are a world power?