Inside America's Second Guantanamo: Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan's "Black Jail"

The prison in Guantanamo Bay has been a symbol of the War on Terror, a perverse enactment of justice upon those who attacked us on 9/11. Though the legal justification for the Bush-era institution is convoluted, it’s not the only evolving relic of our overseas interventions in the Middle East.

Take Bagram Airfield, which currently houses over 65 Afghan prisoners who have been affiliated with Al-Qaeda, yet not formally charged with anything. With American troops leaving in 2014, their fate is uncertain.

If Guantanamo has taught us anything, it’s that our overseas interventions have serious ethical quandaries and dangerous consequences. These not only cost us financially, but strike at the morality of the legal relationship that Americans have with our government.

Bagram, also known as the “Black Jail” by local Afghans, is located about seven miles from Charikar in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, one of the secured provinces in the country. Most attacks by insurgents in the area rely on roadside bombs or grenade attacks. The prison itself consists of windowless, concrete cells that are illuminated by a single lightbulb. The detainees have no human contact, except for two interrogation sessions per day. Other detainees claim to have been held in solitary confinement, photographed naked, and deprived of sleep.

If we are going to detain prisoners on foreign soil during a military occupation, they should have the right to legal process we have reserved for both citizens and non-citizens alike. The Bush administration’s John Yoo successfully argued that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to “enemy combatants” or individuals in country-less organizations like Al-Qaeda. In a positive and often forgotten action in 2009, the Obama administration retired that term, but still retained a broad “right to detain” those who provide assistance to Al-Qaeda and its associates around the globe.

This designation, while not specifically identifying any Islamic organization, could reasonably affect anyone in contact with a mosque or a madrasa. In light of the fact that the NSA has made it clear it needs the haystack to find the needle in surveillance of the enemy, there should be serious concerns. The definition is so broad; it is meaningless.

This doesn’t bode well for future foes of American foreign policy, both abroad and at home. While these detainees aren’t “enemy combatants,” they are still in murky legal territory.

It appears that the Obama administration doesn’t have any really decent options, but they have three realistic choices: turn them over to Karzai’s government, try them as soon as possible and unfairly, or transfer them to another location for further uncertainty.

Karzai has made it clear that he doesn’t like U.S.-run prisons, but was under agreement to let the Americans run it until 2014. What happens to the detainees afterwards will probably be less severe if the first option is chosen. The second option is logistically unfeasible since it’s August already. Therefore, the third choice is the most likely scenario. After all, the United States has network of domestic terrorism prisons and undocumented immigrant prisons. If those don’t work, we can siphon them off to other countries like the Obama administration did a couple of weeks ago when he transferred two detainees from Guantanamo to Algeria.

But what the Obama administration does with those at Bagram may well be a precursor to his ever-verbalized desire to close Guantanamo, the prison in Cuba which currently houses 166 inmates and is currently enduring a waining hunger strike over indefinite detention. The strike seems to be tapering off due to a pardon allowing prisoners to be with one another for the holy month of Ramadan. The irony of a country that espouses religious freedom not allowing people in prison to practice their religion is one that continues to be pervasive in the way we prosecute the War on Terror.

The reasons there is such uncertainty around these inmates is because in our rush to create a whole new kind of global conflict in the War on Terror, the country never stopped to ask ourselves the legal questions involved. As a result, Americans are stuck with the same issue that a drunken college student has the following morning: that glaring uncertainty about the repercussions of your actions, since you aren’t quite sure what they caused. Until there is a publicly available, clearly defined legal process on how America is going to deal with these situations, and our enemies both foreign and domestic, we will sit in this state of Orwellian limbo.

Obama would do an historic move if he were to step forward and present such a vision. He should clearly define the boundaries and rationale for trying these individuals and what their crimes are. Another extremely important question that must be answered is the role of religion in this process. The focus of the War on Terror has been squarely on Islamic terrorism, but what happens if there’s another threat? Do the same legal rules apply? If Obama were to step up and provide a clear, human rights based proposal, he would take a great step forward to ending key portions of our massive overseas interventions and illegal practices. He could, at least in one situation, be a champion of global human rights. Providing such legal ideas shouldn’t be that hard for a former constitutional law professor.

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Obama Leno YouTube Video: The President Says He Has "No Patience" For Russia

Last night, President Obama made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The president started off his appearance on the show on a more serious note than expected, addressing the recent embassy closings, counter-terrorism, and the flood of NSA stories about the agency's surveillance programs. The second segment followed a similar path, as the president answered questions about Edward Snowden, whistle blower mechanisms, and even the role of public sector vs. private sector in regards to intelligence gathering.

Interview part one

Interview part two

The president’s best moments came when he spoke on the recent discriminatory laws targeted toward gay people in Russia, declaring wholesale support of Olympic athletes and expressing dismay at any potential discrimination they may face. While speaking on the economy, Leno asked the President about the political possibility of a new Works Progress Administration-style program geared at rebuilding the collapsing infrastructure that has come to symbolize fallen cities like Detroit and Baltimore, a question many have come to ponder recently.

In the final segment, the interview turned to the 2016 presidential race, and Obama's recent lunch with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his relationship with her. The president then transitioned to speaking on his healthcare plan and it’s market exchange system, his recent comments on Trayvon Martin, and the first lady’s obesity initiatives. The president capped the interview by giving Leno a model of the limo he rides in, nicknamed “The Beast.”

President Obama’s appearance marked the sixth time he’s been on Leno’s program. While it may not rank up there with some of the all-time recognizable late-night presidential appearances, like Ronald Reagan’s sketch with Sonny and Cher, or Bill Clinton’s saxophone rendition of Heartbreak Hotel on Arsenio, or even the president’s “slow jam” on Fallon. But it was informative, and that’s ok.

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Two Males Arrested in Rehtaeh Parsons Case

Two men were arrested Thursday morning at 8 a.m. in Halifax for their involvement in the case of the Rehtaeh Parsons case.

After the 17-year-old teenager died as a result of a suicide attempt in April, her story made international headlines. Her parents claim that she tried to kill herself after being bullied by classmates following an alleged gang-rape in 2011. After a photo of the assault started circulating online, she received online threats from classmates and continued to be ostracized even after changing schools.

READ MORE: Viral Rape is Trending And We Should All Be Very Worried

The two males who were arrested, questioned, and are now in custody have not yet been identified. The police hasn't divulged the nature of the arrests, but there is speculation that they were involved in the alleged sexual assault.

Rehtaeh's mother is relieved but knows that her daughter could have still been alive if her case had been investigated properly by the police and RCMP: "I feel that the investigation wasn't handled properly from the beginning and I've never seen the file, so I don't really know why or how that happened. I'm just glad that it was reopened and I'm really happy that they have two people to question."

READ MORE: Rehtaeh Parsons' Dad:"My Daughter Was Going to Be Raped All Over Again By the Justice System"

Although the timing is coincidental, the CBC reports that the arrests come only one day after new cyberbullying legislation comes in place in Nova Scotia. Activists and politicians lobbied for the bill following Rehtaeh's tragic death.

It's just a shame that justice will be served only once injustice already took her life away.

For more updates on this story, follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

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China is Forcing 250 Million Rural Dwellers to Relocate

Over the next two decades, the Chinese government is expecting to move 250 million rural inhabitants to cities and towns. It is to be revealed that 21 million people each year are projected to migrate.

In an attempt to shift from a manufacturing economy to a consumer-based economy, the government says that farmers and villagers who choose to stay may do so, although they must eventually relocate. This rapid urbanization of China is called chengzhenhua (transitioning to cities and towns), and the current plan to establish urban centers and to encourage rural-urban migration is the most massive, deliberate, and centrally organized to date. Rather than taking hundreds of years to occur, as this process did in many Western European cities, this migration will quickly fill up “ghost towns” and dramatically shift the social configuration in already sprawling metropolitan areas as well as challenge provincial, municipal, and local governments.

The plan is already being enacted in places such as the mountainous regions of Shaanxi Province, where Li Yongping is in charge of removing 2.4 million farmers in one of the largest peacetime migrations in recorded human history. New towns are being built on or near previous farmlands, comprising housing units complete with “modern” amenities such as heaters, air conditioners, and washing machines.

For many who have farmed for generations, they have to abandon their previous way of life in order to comply with the demands of the government. Even though they will live in more up-to-date accommodations and have modern utilities, employment opportunities are scarce in these newly constructed urban concentrations. This places a great financial burden on the farmers, who have primarily grown and consumed their own crops instead of earning the consistent wages of urban residents. Although the government provides subsidies that cover one-quarter of the cost and offers interest-free loans, the roughly 93,000 RMB ($15,000) needed to purchase a unit is still considered a huge strain on a family’s meager financial resources.

Adapting to a modern lifestyle is also costly. For example, many do not use their new heaters or washing machines because they can’t afford the monthly payments of electricity and natural gas. And those who want to return to their previous homes have found their houses destroyed and farmlands gone.

For rural migrants who have been moving to large, established urban centers such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, they maintain a precarious existence due to the constraints of the hukou, a registration record assigned to each Chinese citizen in order to track his birth, death, moves, and other identifying information. This record is used by the government for more than compiling demographic statistics, though — it is also a tool for population control.

Each hukou has two classifications. The first is the place of registration, which restricts the holder to an area of residence, making it difficult to move to another district or another city without changing the hukou. The second, arguably more important classification is the status of registration, which labels a holder as either an agricultural or non-agricultural (urban) hukou holder.

The agricultural vs. non-agricultural distinction has significant implications for one’s status in society because constraints placed on a type of hukou can determine the economic opportunities available to its holder. Urban residents who have the non-agricultural hukou have educational opportunities, jobs, healthcare and other social benefits available to them that the agricultural status holders may not.

In the past, those who possessed the agricultural hukou were primarily rural residents, but with greater population movement into the cities as a result of the high demand for cheap labor, this distinction lost its bearing. The hukou status is inherited from the mother, so those born in the cities can still possess an agricultural hukou. This means that there are youth who are raised in the same city, but are denied the social mobility available to their non-agricultural hukou counterparts. This serves to socially and economically segregate those who possess different residential statuses, encourage a caste-like discrimination against agricultural holders, and contribute to a growing sense of inequity and restlessness.

The government has created special hukou that grant de-facto urban residents greater benefits and access to education and employment, but the massive influx into the cities that will result from this planned relocation may require more drastic policy changes in order to ensure that the transition to a consumer economy is not a wellspring of discontent.

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Ebony Magazine Cover Shows We Can't Give Up On Young Black Men

Ebony Magazine, a monthly magazine geared toward the African-American community, is releasing a special issue on the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin murder trial. The venerable magazine's September issue will feature four separate Trayvon Martin themed covers. One cover will feature Martin’s family. The other three will feature an African-American male celebrity and his son wearing grey hoodies. The celebrities are Dwayne Wade of the NBA champion Miami Heat, film producer and director Spike Lee, and actor Boris Kodjoe.

Ebony Magazine, along with others, is committed to not letting the tragic and senseless death of a 17-year-old boy go to waste. They are rallying and using this opportunity to drive the conversation on everything from the impact of “Stand Your Ground" laws to how to implement solutions that address the problems plaguing African-American youth. Ebony’s Editor-in-Chief Amy Barnett said in her press release, “We simply cannot allow the conversations on this issue to come to a standstill.”

In May 2013, the magazine launched a five-part series authored by Nick Chiles called “Saving our Sons,” featuring solutions to the problems that are plaguing young African-American men. Writing for mybrownbaby.com, the noted author explained, “The educational plight of black boys was a topic that hung over my head like a storm cloud — and became an even more acute interest when I had a little black male of my own at home.”

The solutions offered in the series include using sports, arts, after-school programs, and after-school jobs to keep boys interested and focused on school and to burn off excessive energy. Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, stated, “You have to help boys develop other loves, something they can be passionate about so they will discipline themselves.” David Banks, founder of Eagle Academy for Young Men, encouraged the use of mentors and role models to address the lack of fathers in the home, and Dr. Dana Suskind, a cochlear implant surgeon and professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, encouraged mothers to talk to their sons early and often, noting that poor children hear as many as 30 million fewer words by their third birthday than middle-class children — a condition that is exacerbated among boys. Child development expert Jelani Mandara noted that setting high expectations is critically important and Chiles pointed out boys need compassionate love, not just tough love. "Without love, they more easily succumb to the destructive forces that swirl around them,” wrote Chiles.

Hip-hop artist Talib Kweli has also been motivated to action by the death of Trayvon Martin. The politically and socially conscious rapper is joining with the legendary singer, actor, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte and the Dream Defenders in their protest of Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws. Kweli told The Grio, “They said they really need people to come down and support them so I decided to try to make a trip.” Kweli encouraged critics of hip-hop to engage musicians directly by asking political questions and listening to all of the songs released by mainstream and popular rappers, not just the ones that promote negativity. He said, “None of these albums are devoid of political content. All of their work has it in there.”

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Guess Which Continent is Home to 14 of the 15 Most Optimistic Countries?

Are you optimistic about your future? Do you think that, in five years, your life will be better than it is now? If you live in sub-Saharan Africa, your answer is probably a strong, “Yes,” according to a recent Gallup poll. It is, by far, the most optimistic region in the world. In countries like Burkina Faso, Comoros, and Niger, nearly all citizens are looking forward to a better future.

But the conclusion that Gallup draws about the reason for the optimism stands on trite, stale notions of Africa (of course, regarded as a single entity, though there are over 55 countries on the continent) as a place of unremitting war, poverty, and suffering.

It’s a remarkably uninformed and improper explanation from the venerable organization, and it should be changed to reflect an obvious reality: People are optimistic about their future because their recent pasts give them reason to be optimistic about their futures, too.

The poll looked at respondents’ answers to the Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale, which works like this: "Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top." The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.

On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now?

The common characteristic of 14 of the top 15? Geography:

Excluding Turkmenistan, they’re all in sub-Saharan Africa.

What’s going on here? Gallup offers two explanations.

First, because the scale is relative, if a person indicates that right now they’re “at the top of their ladder,” by definition they can’t be more optimistic about the future. Unfortunately, there’s not enough free, publicly-available data to get a sense for how much this affects the results.

Gallup completely misses the mark in its second explanation:

“Some of the most optimistic countries are those with the lowest current life ratings, reflecting the belief that their current situations are poor and can only get better. Optimism may be more widespread in these countries simply because people cannot imagine that their lives could get any worse.”

That claim doesn’t hold up to even the barest scrutiny. It’s destructive and pernicious to view sub-Saharan African countries as little more than places where life can’t get worse.

Three simple anecdotes should help show why:

- Almost 20 years ago, 800,000 Rwandans – men, women, and children – were massacred in genocide

- The murderous, dictatorial regimes of Idi Amin and Milton Obote are childhood memories for many Ugandans, when opposition members would “disappear” without warning

- The DRC’s current issues are dwarfed by its issues 15 years ago, when two massive wars led to an estimated 5,400,000 Congolese dying from starvation and disease.

I suspect Rwandans, Congolese, and Ugandans can pretty easily imagine their lives being worse than they are today.

Getting past simple anecdotes, though, let’s use Gallup’s own publicly-available data to see if they’re making a data-driven explanation, or defaulting to lazy tropes.

Above are the mean Cantril scores for almost all of the most optimistic countries (Comoros’ data was tough to find), with the BRICs for comparison. Some of the African countries which just can’t possibly get any worse are, on average, currently more satisfied than India, China, and South Africa.

Do you think Gallup would argue that Indians and Chinese believe their lives couldn’t get any worse?

Let’s take it one step further, and look at the recent past for these countries, using economic growth and maternal mortality as general indicators of improvement:

Most of the optimistic countries have seen high economic growth and improvements in health in recent years. In other words, life’s already better than it was, and there’s every reason to think it’s going to be even better in five years.

These countries are optimistic because the recent past gives them reason to feel good about the future.

If Greece was growing at 7% annually, it’d be optimistic, too. It’s not, and it isn’t; 38% of Greeks believe their lives will be worse in five years.

To be sure, absolute per capita GDP is incredibly low in many of these countries, and too many mothers will not live to see their children grow up all across the region. We all hope that the future will be better than the present.

But it’s not because “things can’t get worse,” a false statement that leads to readers having an extremely distorted view of sub-Saharan Africa.

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Gay Couple Forced to Back Of the Bus Gets An Apology, But It's Not Enough

The couple was so happy to arrive in Albuquerque that they were singing. On the shuttle bus from the airport, they smiled and laughed and held hands. Then the driver made them sit in the back.

There was no doubt that the driver did so because a gay couple displayed mild affection in public. When confronted by the couple, the driver made no attempt to apologize or justify his actions. When another passenger said that the treatment of the couple was appalling, he directly pointed at the couple and called them "what's appalling."

The incident happened at the end of June. The company released an official apology on Tuesday, a few days after the story first ran in the local paper. The driver has so far said nothing.

There are a few takeaways from all of this. We now know that there are some people excited enough about Albuquerque to actually sing upon arrival. We can predict that the symbolism of the story will resonate with multiple meanings throughout a country currently struggling with a racial legacy whose fight for equality has drawn many comparisons with contemporary efforts to legalize gay marriage.

More importantly, though, the incident provides a revealing portrayal on the state of tolerance towards homosexuals in American society.

This summer has marked a watershed for civil rights in the United States. Amidst the historic Supreme Court decisions this summer, the continuing advance of same-sex marriage in states throughout the country, and the majority support for same-sex marriage nationwide, many observers have argued that the political battle for marriage equality is over.

Although the legal battle continues throughout individual states, marriage equality appears inevitable, the result of a societal acceptance of homosexuality that has rapidly expanded over the past decade.

While the progress of marriage equality in the past few years, and even the past few months, is a cause for celebration, it by no means signifies the end of discrimination against homosexuality. While the political battle is over, the cultural battle wages on just as intensely throughout the country.

The recent events in Albuquerque, from the driver's obvious prejudice to the company's boilerplate apology only released in the wake of public pressure, represent the manifestation of those culture wars.

American society as a whole will condemn such blatant discrimination, and companies will respond accordingly if only for their own personal economic interests, but isolated individuals who will never accept homosexuality will continue to make their discomfort evident. Some would say this is evident in the statements of many GOP political candidates.

The reality is that nothing will change the minds of these particular individuals, particularly as marriage equality continues to advance. The good news is that the swift condemnation, which the driver and company received as soon as the story broke, has become the dominant viewpoint of American society as a whole. And it will only grow. Local, state, and federal governments have an obligation to prosecute alleged acts of illegal discrimination, but those who engage in more casual forms of discrimination, technically legal though still immoral, will move towards the margins of society until their presence is negligible. That is progress.

The comparison to Rosa Parks, for better or worse, may seem inevitable. Yet, the comparison is misguided, if only because they occurred at different points in the political development of their respective civil rights movements.

Rosa Parks' act of resistance, though not the first to openly resist racial segregation, became one of the primary symbols through which the civil rights movement mobilized. Her actions became a catalyst for political action. It is partly because of her that the civil rights movement gained momentum in the late fifties and early sixties.

The recent events in Albuquerque, though unfortunate, represent a different situation entirely. The intolerance of the driver has already been defeated politically, though not culturally. More so than a catalyst, these events mark the gradual end of discrimination rather than the beginnings of equality. They represent the slow death of an outdated worldview struggles to remain relevant, defeated by the social progress of human society and the political mobilization of tolerance.

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