The New Republic : Gulag v GITMO David Bosco v Chicago Democrat

[Chicago Democrat]

GULAG V. GITMO
Equivalency Test
by David Bosco Only at TNR Online
Post date: 06.03.05
n a recent report, Amnesty International referred to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo as "the gulag of our time." The term--a Russian abbreviation for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or Main Camp Administration--refers to the network of Soviet labor camps established during Stalin's rule that continued, in a different form, for much of the Soviet Union's history. During a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush rejected the charge as "absurd." Amnesty has defended its use of the term. Below, a comparison of the two prison systems, with the aid of Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gulag: A History.

Individuals Detained:

Gulag: Approximately 20 million passed through the Gulag. The population at any one time was generally around two million.

Guantánamo: 750 prisoners have passed through the camp. The current population is about 520.

Number of Camps:

Gulag: 476 separate camp complexes comprising thousands of individual camps. By the end of the 1930s, camps were located in each of the Soviet Union's twelve time zones.

Guantánamo: Five small camps on the U.S. military base in Cuba.

Reasons for Imprisonment:

Gulag: Opposition to the Soviet regime's forced collectivization, including efforts to hide grain in cellars; owning too many cows; need for slave labor to complete massive industrialization and mining projects; political opposition to the Soviet system; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious; being middle class; being in need of reeducation; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about Stalin.

Guantánamo: Fighting for the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan; being suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

rest of article at

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050531&s=bosco060305

[Chicago Democrat]

1. My letter to David Bosco

Fri, 3 Jun 2005 18:03:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Chicago Democrat
Subject: Blatant Errors in Gulag vs Guantamino , David Bosco carries water for war crimes
To: [e-mail]


First of all the term 'gulag' is now almost generic term for any concentration style camp, its a short hand term that is short and conveys a host of meanings. Amnesty International didn't proclaim Guantanamo, and its related systems worldwide run by the Bush regime, to be exactly like the Soviet Gulags for 50 years of the Soviet Union, it said it was "the gulag of our time". Which is exactly what it is.

Guantanamo is only one of our many, many, many US detention centers all over the world. There are some we know about and some we don't know about. Comparing one detention center, when we have our own vast system, to the entire historic Soviet gulag is a false comparison. So the Soviets took 60 years to process 20 million political prisoners, that's about 333,000 per year. How many has the US processed, in Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Uzbekistan over the last 4 years? No idea.. 1 million? I don't know and neither do you. Why do you hide this crime with your sophistry? So Stalin is now the measure of civilized behavior?

Your 'article' is so full of lies 200 words is hardly adequate space to delineate them all. The "Reasons for Imprisonment" and "Judicial Review" comparisons are laughable if the subject wasn't US War Crimes. In case no one told you, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been rounded up for no good reason at all. Many have been tortured and killed because of expressed orders from our Generals based on legal findings of our current Attorney General and the direct involvement of the Secretary of Defense. In Afghanistan, hundreds were cooked alive. Untold thousands are being held in despicable horrific conditions. Instead of trials for these war criminals at the top, all we have been given is a few sacrificial lambs like Lyndee England. Apologists like you for fake used-to-be liberal magazines are simply carrying water for war criminals and war crimes.

Its disgusting that you don't even notice that "most of" if not all the 'detainees' are totally innocent or at the very least, prisoners of war covered under the Geneva Convention.
In Iraq, the number of innocent people rounded up is upward of 90% per the Red Cross. In Afghanistan people were sold into detention for bounty. There is nothing good or right about the US system of gulags as it actually exists right now and it all started at Guantanamo, yet you blithely state they are all guilty 'terrorists'. What about 'Rendition' the policy where the US simply ships a 'detainee' to be tortured or killed or boiled alive in Uzbekistan? Any boiling people alive in Stalin's time?What horrors you defend, for what?

Its disgusting, you ignore the 100,000 innocent people who have died as a result of this US Iraqi occupation. The Gulags killed 2 million over 60 years, that's 33,000 per year! The US is worse than Stalin having killed 50,000 Iraqis in only 2 years. All of Iraq is like a gulag. Our soldiers are holed up in castles exactly like the crusaders. Bush is creating a growing insurgency and another Viet Nam; these atrocities are part of the problem. For the Iraqis, Bush is as bad as Stalin or Saddam except the lights don't work.

[Inland]

2. He minimizes the American Gulag

Although he might make a point that we aren't exactly the Stalinist USSR--hey, one cheer for America, still better than the world's most brutal totalitarian state--he goes out of the way of minimizing our gulag

After all, we have detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, AND Gitmo. Add us a few time zones.

Our detainees are said to be suspected of being bad guys. Well, the Stalinist system always said they had suspicions about the people they kept, too. They never said that they were imprisoning people for nothing at all. The real question isn't what our government says, its what is true in reality. Are our detainees bad guys? Our government says so, just like Papa Joe's. At least he gave them show trials.

Yeah, Papa Joe had two million in camps at any one time. But that's a difference of degree, not of kind. It's still a gulag. Just a smaller one, as befits a nation that is only a little evil. In a country where we used to believe it was wrong to imprison people permanently without trial, we now accept it, as long as it remains under seven figures. One cheer for America.

In conclusion, I would like to know the precise, measured and proper word for a country that imprisons one of its citizens indefinitely without trial, as Bush wishes to do with Jose Padilla. Maybe gulag is wrong. But it is closer than a term like "democracy".

[cap]

3. he's forgotten the camps in Afghanistan and other countries.

gulag is the right word for it.

It just hasnt grown to the size of the Soviet Occupation. It hasnt been in business for 50 years, yet.