guantanamera... guajira guantanamera

[rone]

aDe pointed me towards a story on the al-Guardian (attribution dammit: palecur) about Dubya's Web site blocking foreign visitors; aDe confirmed that .au, .uk, and .nl sites were not able to access it. Also, Bob Harris links to a New York Times story regarding this most munificent administration's latest wacky hijink:

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

Comments

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Well, there's definitely a couple of plausible arguments for saying the irregulars aren't covered by the Conventions, especially the non-Iraqis. In general, not respecting the Conventions strips you of claims to protection under them.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Sure. Who gets to determine that the Conventions weren't respected, though?

[crankysysadmin.livejournal.com]

But does that apply to individuals or nations? And if I'm accused of something that would be a violation of the GC's, does that mean you get to violate them with me just because of the suspicion?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

That presumably means that US citizens, military or otherwise, have relinquished all rights to protection under the Geneva Convention.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

It's been pointed out to me that the bush website is viewable by IP address: going to http://65.172.163.222/ (http://65.172.163.222/) means that it works.

Do we think this is analogous to the "security measures" being implemented at the borders, then?

[crankysysadmin.livejournal.com]

Now this is really sad. Yes, in .de as well, the name http://www.georgewbush.com gives me this message:

Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this server.

The IP works great. dig works great. Jeez.