Thanks with a Giggle from Yours Truly, Dot Calm

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have been visiting my blog. To show my appreciation, I’ve hunted down the link to a version of “Hang on, Sloopy” that will surely give you a giant giggle. Click here, turn your speakers up, and relax for a moment.

A June 29 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court against the Bush administration’s creation of military tribunals for terror suspects said this would violate U.S. law as well as the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions consist of four separate treaties that set out standards for the treatment of civilians and military personnel during wartime. The Third Geneva Convention, last revised in 1949, specifically covers the treatment of prisoners of war. The Bush administration had argued that the terror suspects being held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba, were not POWs and therefore not subject to the Geneva Conventions.

PRAGUE, June 30, 2006
At a Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, correspondent Jeremy Bransten (JB) interviewed Jarna Petman (JP), professor of international law at the University of Helsinki, on what the Supreme Court ruling means for the application of these international conventions.

JB: Do you consider the U.S. Supreme Court decision a victory for the Geneva Conventions? And if so, in what way?

JP: The whole setting up of "light torture" mechanisms [interrogation techniques that interrogators say do not constitute torture, but human rights groups say do] and the intensified interrogation mechanisms, the unusual detention centers set up all over -- these are all violations of the Geneva Conventions. And [the Bush adminstration has] been pushing and pulling the convention to areas and places where the convention has not been before. So this is a victory for the convention as it has traditionally been interpreted and the way it has traditionally stood.

This version of “Hang on, Sloopy” is in celebration of this landmark Supreme Court decision challenging the Bush administration.