US Plans Massive Embassy in Pakistan
The US is planning a massive diplomatic presence in Pakistan similar to its current embassy in Iraq. In a recent funding request, the Obama administration asked Congress for $736 million to build a new US embassy as well permanent housing for US officials in Islamabad. The request falls just below the $740 million cost of the US embassy in Baghdad.
736 million? there's not a person here who could use that money, is there?
i suppose we are going to be there a while.
as the old song asked...how many deaths will it take for us to see that too many people have died?"
and how much money will it take?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Israel destroying Gaza's farmlands
May 28, 2009 By Eva Bartlett
Source: The Electronic Intifada
Eva Bartlett's ZSpace Page
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On the morning of 4 May 2009, Israeli troops set fire to Palestinian crops along Gaza's eastern border with Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that 200,000 square meters of crops were destroyed, including wheat and barley ready for harvest, as well as vegetables, olive and pomegranate trees.
Local farmers report that the blaze carried over a four-kilometer stretch on the Palestinian side of the eastern border land. Ibrahim Hassan Safadi, 49, from one of the farming families whose crops were destroyed by the blaze, said that the fires were smoldering until early evening, despite efforts by the fire brigades to extinguish them.
Safadi says he was present when Israeli soldiers fired small bombs into his field, which soon after caught ablaze. He explained that "The Israeli soldiers fired from their jeeps, causing a fire to break out on the land. They burned the wheat, burned the pomegranate trees ... The fire spread across the valley. We called the fire brigades. They came to the area and put out the fire. But in some places the fire started again." According to Safadi, he lost 30,000 square meters to the blaze, including 300 pomegranate trees, 150 olive trees, and wheat.
In the border areas it has long since become nearly impossible to work on the land due to almost daily shooting from the Israeli soldiers. The crops that were burned on 4 May were dried and ready to harvest, meaning that they were extremely flammable.
"It took only three minutes for the fire to destroy 65,000 square meters," said Nahed Jaber Abu Said, whose farmland lies a few kilometers down the road from Safadi. He added that "It was nearly 9am. I was here when the Israeli jeeps came. An Israeli soldier at the fence shot an explosive into our field of wheat. It went up in flames immediately."
Safadi said that the arson attack was the third major time his farm has suffered from an Israeli attack. In previous attacks over the last decade, he explained, Israeli soldiers bulldozed his land, razing his lemon, olive and clementine trees as well as demolishing greenhouses.
"We've suffered great losses. The Israeli soldiers have destroyed so much of our land, trees and equipment. They've cost us a lot of money," he said, citing cumulative losses of $330,000 since 2000 when the heightened invasions began. In the last attack, Safadi said that $130,000 worth of crops, trees and irrigation piping was destroyed.
On top of the destruction, Safadi complains of not being able to replace destroyed items like the plastic hosing used to irrigate his fields. These, along with fertilizers and machinery replacement parts, are banned from entering Gaza due to the Israeli-led and internationally-backed whole-scale siege of the territory.
Abu Said reports losses of $2,000 on one patch of his land alone. "This isn't including the land closest to the border fence," he said. "I'm so sad now, what can I do?"
His experiences also extend beyond the 4 May attacks, and beyond the loss of land. In 2008, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 11 of his sheep and seriously injured a 15-year-old cousin, Jaber, by shooting him in the mouth.
Attacks by Israeli soldiers occur on a near-daily basis along Gaza's borders with Israel. Nearly a decade ago, Israel unilaterally imposed a "buffer" or "no-go" zone solely on the Gaza side of their shared borders. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, the initial 100-meter "off-limits" area has now extended to one kilometer across much of Gaza's eastern border and two kilometers along the Strip's northern border. FAO further reports that roughly one-third of Gaza's agricultural land lies within the confines of the "buffer zone."
Since the 18 January ceasefire, three Palestinian civilians, including one child, have been killed in the "buffer zone" area from shooting and shelling by Israeli forces. Another 12 Palestinians have been injured, including three children and two women, due to Israeli fire along the border.
In addition to the physical threat and the destruction of agricultural land and equipment, Gaza's farming sector is further devastated by the destruction of what is believed to be hundreds of wells and sources of water and the contamination of farmland due to Israel's invasion of Gaza at the beginning of the year. As reported by the Guardian newspaper in February 2009, these attacks have left nearly 60 percent of Gaza's agricultural land useless.
The consequences of the active destruction of Gaza's farming sector are amplified within the context of Israel's siege and the stagnant state of rebuilding efforts since the ceasefire. With only a trickle of aid entering Gaza and poverty and malnutrition rates soaring, the ability to produce food is all the more vital to Palestinians in Gaza.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel's ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel's recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks
May 28, 2009 By Eva Bartlett
Source: The Electronic Intifada
Eva Bartlett's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
On the morning of 4 May 2009, Israeli troops set fire to Palestinian crops along Gaza's eastern border with Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that 200,000 square meters of crops were destroyed, including wheat and barley ready for harvest, as well as vegetables, olive and pomegranate trees.
Local farmers report that the blaze carried over a four-kilometer stretch on the Palestinian side of the eastern border land. Ibrahim Hassan Safadi, 49, from one of the farming families whose crops were destroyed by the blaze, said that the fires were smoldering until early evening, despite efforts by the fire brigades to extinguish them.
Safadi says he was present when Israeli soldiers fired small bombs into his field, which soon after caught ablaze. He explained that "The Israeli soldiers fired from their jeeps, causing a fire to break out on the land. They burned the wheat, burned the pomegranate trees ... The fire spread across the valley. We called the fire brigades. They came to the area and put out the fire. But in some places the fire started again." According to Safadi, he lost 30,000 square meters to the blaze, including 300 pomegranate trees, 150 olive trees, and wheat.
In the border areas it has long since become nearly impossible to work on the land due to almost daily shooting from the Israeli soldiers. The crops that were burned on 4 May were dried and ready to harvest, meaning that they were extremely flammable.
"It took only three minutes for the fire to destroy 65,000 square meters," said Nahed Jaber Abu Said, whose farmland lies a few kilometers down the road from Safadi. He added that "It was nearly 9am. I was here when the Israeli jeeps came. An Israeli soldier at the fence shot an explosive into our field of wheat. It went up in flames immediately."
Safadi said that the arson attack was the third major time his farm has suffered from an Israeli attack. In previous attacks over the last decade, he explained, Israeli soldiers bulldozed his land, razing his lemon, olive and clementine trees as well as demolishing greenhouses.
"We've suffered great losses. The Israeli soldiers have destroyed so much of our land, trees and equipment. They've cost us a lot of money," he said, citing cumulative losses of $330,000 since 2000 when the heightened invasions began. In the last attack, Safadi said that $130,000 worth of crops, trees and irrigation piping was destroyed.
On top of the destruction, Safadi complains of not being able to replace destroyed items like the plastic hosing used to irrigate his fields. These, along with fertilizers and machinery replacement parts, are banned from entering Gaza due to the Israeli-led and internationally-backed whole-scale siege of the territory.
Abu Said reports losses of $2,000 on one patch of his land alone. "This isn't including the land closest to the border fence," he said. "I'm so sad now, what can I do?"
His experiences also extend beyond the 4 May attacks, and beyond the loss of land. In 2008, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 11 of his sheep and seriously injured a 15-year-old cousin, Jaber, by shooting him in the mouth.
Attacks by Israeli soldiers occur on a near-daily basis along Gaza's borders with Israel. Nearly a decade ago, Israel unilaterally imposed a "buffer" or "no-go" zone solely on the Gaza side of their shared borders. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, the initial 100-meter "off-limits" area has now extended to one kilometer across much of Gaza's eastern border and two kilometers along the Strip's northern border. FAO further reports that roughly one-third of Gaza's agricultural land lies within the confines of the "buffer zone."
Since the 18 January ceasefire, three Palestinian civilians, including one child, have been killed in the "buffer zone" area from shooting and shelling by Israeli forces. Another 12 Palestinians have been injured, including three children and two women, due to Israeli fire along the border.
In addition to the physical threat and the destruction of agricultural land and equipment, Gaza's farming sector is further devastated by the destruction of what is believed to be hundreds of wells and sources of water and the contamination of farmland due to Israel's invasion of Gaza at the beginning of the year. As reported by the Guardian newspaper in February 2009, these attacks have left nearly 60 percent of Gaza's agricultural land useless.
The consequences of the active destruction of Gaza's farming sector are amplified within the context of Israel's siege and the stagnant state of rebuilding efforts since the ceasefire. With only a trickle of aid entering Gaza and poverty and malnutrition rates soaring, the ability to produce food is all the more vital to Palestinians in Gaza.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel's ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel's recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks
An Early Call for Obama's Resignation
With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?
by Ted Rall
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?
Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.
I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.
Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.
Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.
"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.
It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.
© 2009 Ted Rall
With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?
by Ted Rall
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?
Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.
I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.
Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.
Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.
"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.
It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.
© 2009 Ted Rall
Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape'
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
by Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
[PHOTOGRAPHS of Iraqi prisoner abuse which US President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. Prison guards secure the main gate of the newly named Baghdad Central Prison in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib February 21, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen]PHOTOGRAPHS of Iraqi prisoner abuse which US President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. Prison guards secure the main gate of the newly named Baghdad Central Prison in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib February 21, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
In April, Mr Obama's administration said the photographs would be released and it would be "pointless to appeal" against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: "The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: "I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been "identified, and appropriate actions" taken.
Maj Gen Taguba's internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses."
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: "I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid's ***.... and the female soldier was taking pictures."
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman's "stick" all of which were apparently photographed.
let's think about this for a moment. supposedly, these deeds were done by a "few bad apples." if so, how are there 2,000 photos depicting the brutalities that took place? then, they tell us about the rape and torture, but then say that they can't release the pictures for fear of how people will react. well, you are telling us what happened!
of course, this was entirely predictable. as bad as the photos were that were initially released, it was logical that the photos that weren't released might go even further in demonstrating the brutality of the imperial project in iraq. when you bomb a nation, you create the conditions in which you can then commit further crimes. this is not new, for we have been torturing and raping people for a long time. i seem to recall 1492 as a crucial year in this regard, but i could be mistaken.
memorial day just passed. did anyone have the integrity to mention these deeds on that day? just how were these actions heroic? for that matter, how is dropping bombs from 30,000 feet an act of courage? such questions go unasked, never mind unanswered, by our compliant corporate media, a media owned by the same forces that wage the wars.
and so it goes. rape, assault, war. instead of stopping the actions, we stop the pictures of the actions from being made public. the trick is not to get caught, and once caught, to not furnish the world with the physical evidence of our collective guilt. but, it's too late for such games. the world knows, and so do we. despite this, we cling to the mythologies of american goodness. facts lose to fiction.
it is not the individual actions here which are the worst part, thought they are surely despicable. rather, it is the climate from which those actions sprung.
and that climate of war and imperial arrogance is an ongoing american project.
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
by Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
[PHOTOGRAPHS of Iraqi prisoner abuse which US President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. Prison guards secure the main gate of the newly named Baghdad Central Prison in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib February 21, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen]PHOTOGRAPHS of Iraqi prisoner abuse which US President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. Prison guards secure the main gate of the newly named Baghdad Central Prison in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib February 21, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
In April, Mr Obama's administration said the photographs would be released and it would be "pointless to appeal" against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: "The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: "I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been "identified, and appropriate actions" taken.
Maj Gen Taguba's internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses."
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: "I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid's ***.... and the female soldier was taking pictures."
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman's "stick" all of which were apparently photographed.
let's think about this for a moment. supposedly, these deeds were done by a "few bad apples." if so, how are there 2,000 photos depicting the brutalities that took place? then, they tell us about the rape and torture, but then say that they can't release the pictures for fear of how people will react. well, you are telling us what happened!
of course, this was entirely predictable. as bad as the photos were that were initially released, it was logical that the photos that weren't released might go even further in demonstrating the brutality of the imperial project in iraq. when you bomb a nation, you create the conditions in which you can then commit further crimes. this is not new, for we have been torturing and raping people for a long time. i seem to recall 1492 as a crucial year in this regard, but i could be mistaken.
memorial day just passed. did anyone have the integrity to mention these deeds on that day? just how were these actions heroic? for that matter, how is dropping bombs from 30,000 feet an act of courage? such questions go unasked, never mind unanswered, by our compliant corporate media, a media owned by the same forces that wage the wars.
and so it goes. rape, assault, war. instead of stopping the actions, we stop the pictures of the actions from being made public. the trick is not to get caught, and once caught, to not furnish the world with the physical evidence of our collective guilt. but, it's too late for such games. the world knows, and so do we. despite this, we cling to the mythologies of american goodness. facts lose to fiction.
it is not the individual actions here which are the worst part, thought they are surely despicable. rather, it is the climate from which those actions sprung.
and that climate of war and imperial arrogance is an ongoing american project.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel?
Doublespeak on North Korea
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up To’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”
Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.
North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet, the president of the US thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.
We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.
The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.
The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.
The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?
Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?
Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?
Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel.
Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to N. Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”
Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?
Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population?
Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced four million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?
Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?
Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?
Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees?
“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?
On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.
What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?
Who is North Korea bombing?
The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.
No countries on earth rival the US and Israel for barbaric murderous violence.
But Obama gives assurances that the US will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”
Where is the media?
Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?
Doublespeak on North Korea
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up To’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”
Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.
North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet, the president of the US thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.
We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.
The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.
The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.
The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?
Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?
Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?
Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel.
Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to N. Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”
Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?
Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population?
Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced four million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?
Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?
Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?
Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees?
“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?
On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.
What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?
Who is North Korea bombing?
The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.
No countries on earth rival the US and Israel for barbaric murderous violence.
But Obama gives assurances that the US will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”
Where is the media?
Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
freedom of the press?
Published on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 by Rebel Reports
If Iran Freed Roxanna Saberi, Why Won't the US Release Journalist Ibrahim Jassam?
The US has bombed media outlets, killed reporters and imprisoned journalists without charge for years at Gitmo and elsewhere. The US war on the media must end.
by Jeremy Scahill
Last week, we reported on how retired US Army Colonel Ralph Peters penned an essay for a leading neocon group calling for future US military attacks on media outlets and journalists. Writing for the journal of the the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Col. Peters wrote, "future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media... a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom. The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win."
Of course, what Col. Peters is advocating is not new, nor does he need to propose it as a policy for "future wars." It is already a de facto US policy to target journalists. The US has consistently attacked journalists and media organizations in modern wars. In the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, General Wesley Clark, then the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, ordered an airstrike on Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers, including make-up artists and technical staff, an action Amnesty International labeled a "war crime." Richard Holbrooke, who is currently Obama's point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan, praised that bombing at the time.
The US bombed Al Jazeera in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, attacked it multiple times in the 2003 Iraq invasion, and killed Jazeera correspondent Tarek Ayoub. On April 8, 2003, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters's Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco. In a chilling statement at the end of that day in Iraq, then-Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke spelled out the Pentagon's policy on journalists not embedded with US troops. She warned them that Baghdad "is not a safe place. You should not be there."
Last week, a Spanish judge reinstated charges against three US soldiers in Couso's killing, citing new evidence, including eyewitness testimony contradicting official US claims that soldiers were responding to enemy fire from the hotel. One year ago, former Army Sergeant Adrienne Kinne told Democracy Now! she saw the Palestine Hotel on a military target list and said she frequently intercepted calls from journalists staying there.
As I have reported previously, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was shot by US forces near Abu Ghraib prison when his camera was allegedly mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The US listed as "justified" the killing of Al Arabiya TV's Mazen al-Tumeizi, blown apart by a US missile as he reported on a burning US armored vehicle on Baghdad's Haifa Street.
There have also been several questionable killings of journalists at US military checkpoints in Iraq, such as the March 2004 shooting deaths of Ali Abdel-Aziz and Ali al-Khatib of Al Arabiya. The Pentagon said the soldiers who shot the journalists acted within the "rules of engagement." And Reuters freelancer Dhia Najim was killed by US fire while filming resistance fighters in November 2004. "We did kill him," an unnamed military official told The New York Times. "He was out with the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked, and we fired back and hit him."
The Obama administration has recently paid a lot of lip service to freedom of the press, particularly around the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who was released May 11 from an Iranian prison. Yet, the US military continues to hold journalists as prisoners without charges or rights in neighboring Iraq. Ibrahim Jassam, a cameraman and photographer for Reuters has been a US prisoner in Iraq since last September despite an Iraqi court's order last year that he be freed.
As The Los Angeles Times reported:
His case represents the latest in a dozen detentions the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has documented since 2001.
No formal accusations have been made against Jassam, and an Iraqi court ordered in November that he be released for lack of evidence. But the U.S. military continues to hold him, saying it has intelligence that he is "a high security threat," according to Maj. Neal Fisher, spokesman for detainee affairs.
The Obama administration harshly criticized Iran for its imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, the U.S.-Iranian journalist who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison before being freed last week. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Iran's treatment of Saberi as "non-transparent, unpredictable and arbitrary."
Washington also has called upon North Korea to expedite the trial of two U.S. journalists being held there on spying charges.
Yet the United States has routinely used the arbitrary powers it assumed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks to hold without charge journalists in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists points out.
None of the detained journalists has been convicted of any charge, said Joel Simon, executive director of the group, undermining the United States reputation when it comes to criticizing other countries on issues of press freedom.
"The U.S. has a record of holding journalists for long periods of time without due process and without explanation," he said. "Its standing would be improved if it addressed this issue."
Reuters has expressed disappointment at Jassam's detention and has said there is no evidence against him.
[...]
Jassam was detained without a warrant "as the result of his activity with a known insurgent organization," Fisher alleged.
No evidence against Jassam was presented at his court hearing in November, Fisher said, because the military intelligence against him had not yet been verified.
Under the wartime rules in place at the time, he said, "there was no requirement to link the military intelligence with rule of law type of evidentiary procedures."
After the court ordered Jassam's release, Fisher said, fresh evidence came to light that suggested he was a "high security threat."
This reminds me of how the US held Al Jazeera journalist Sami al Hajj at Guantanamo from December 2001 to May 2008. He alleges he was tortured at Guantanamo and that he had been interrogated over 130 times (as of 2005) with his interrogators insisting in 125 of those interviews that he link al Jazeera to terrorism and Al Qaeda, which he wouldn't. "He is completely innocent," his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said during al Hajj's imprisonment. "He is about as much of a terrorist as my granddad. The only reason he has been treated like he has is because he is an Al Jazeera journalist. The Americans have tried to make him an informant with the goal of getting him to say that Al Jazeera is linked to Al Qaida." Al Hajj was eventually released after an international campaign and the tenacious work of his lawyers.
When you hold up Iran's handling of Roxanna Saberi against the US handling of Jassam, the comparison is striking. So too is the level of outcry from other journalists. Loud voices demanded Saberi's freedom. Websites were established. Some 400 people reportedly joined a hunger strike in solidarity with Saberi. The same is not true for Jassam, who has spent many months in US custody without charges. It is time for journalists, particularly US journalists, to break their silence and demand Jassam's release. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released Saberi pretty swiftly after her arrest on espionage charges (and subsequent conviction and sentencing). Obama should follow Iran's example and release Ibrahim Jassam. But, in the absence of outcry and protest from other journalists, Obama has little to lose by ignoring Jassam's case.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
If Iran Freed Roxanna Saberi, Why Won't the US Release Journalist Ibrahim Jassam?
The US has bombed media outlets, killed reporters and imprisoned journalists without charge for years at Gitmo and elsewhere. The US war on the media must end.
by Jeremy Scahill
Last week, we reported on how retired US Army Colonel Ralph Peters penned an essay for a leading neocon group calling for future US military attacks on media outlets and journalists. Writing for the journal of the the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Col. Peters wrote, "future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media... a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom. The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win."
Of course, what Col. Peters is advocating is not new, nor does he need to propose it as a policy for "future wars." It is already a de facto US policy to target journalists. The US has consistently attacked journalists and media organizations in modern wars. In the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, General Wesley Clark, then the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, ordered an airstrike on Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers, including make-up artists and technical staff, an action Amnesty International labeled a "war crime." Richard Holbrooke, who is currently Obama's point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan, praised that bombing at the time.
The US bombed Al Jazeera in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, attacked it multiple times in the 2003 Iraq invasion, and killed Jazeera correspondent Tarek Ayoub. On April 8, 2003, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters's Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco. In a chilling statement at the end of that day in Iraq, then-Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke spelled out the Pentagon's policy on journalists not embedded with US troops. She warned them that Baghdad "is not a safe place. You should not be there."
Last week, a Spanish judge reinstated charges against three US soldiers in Couso's killing, citing new evidence, including eyewitness testimony contradicting official US claims that soldiers were responding to enemy fire from the hotel. One year ago, former Army Sergeant Adrienne Kinne told Democracy Now! she saw the Palestine Hotel on a military target list and said she frequently intercepted calls from journalists staying there.
As I have reported previously, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was shot by US forces near Abu Ghraib prison when his camera was allegedly mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The US listed as "justified" the killing of Al Arabiya TV's Mazen al-Tumeizi, blown apart by a US missile as he reported on a burning US armored vehicle on Baghdad's Haifa Street.
There have also been several questionable killings of journalists at US military checkpoints in Iraq, such as the March 2004 shooting deaths of Ali Abdel-Aziz and Ali al-Khatib of Al Arabiya. The Pentagon said the soldiers who shot the journalists acted within the "rules of engagement." And Reuters freelancer Dhia Najim was killed by US fire while filming resistance fighters in November 2004. "We did kill him," an unnamed military official told The New York Times. "He was out with the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked, and we fired back and hit him."
The Obama administration has recently paid a lot of lip service to freedom of the press, particularly around the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who was released May 11 from an Iranian prison. Yet, the US military continues to hold journalists as prisoners without charges or rights in neighboring Iraq. Ibrahim Jassam, a cameraman and photographer for Reuters has been a US prisoner in Iraq since last September despite an Iraqi court's order last year that he be freed.
As The Los Angeles Times reported:
His case represents the latest in a dozen detentions the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has documented since 2001.
No formal accusations have been made against Jassam, and an Iraqi court ordered in November that he be released for lack of evidence. But the U.S. military continues to hold him, saying it has intelligence that he is "a high security threat," according to Maj. Neal Fisher, spokesman for detainee affairs.
The Obama administration harshly criticized Iran for its imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, the U.S.-Iranian journalist who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison before being freed last week. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Iran's treatment of Saberi as "non-transparent, unpredictable and arbitrary."
Washington also has called upon North Korea to expedite the trial of two U.S. journalists being held there on spying charges.
Yet the United States has routinely used the arbitrary powers it assumed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks to hold without charge journalists in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists points out.
None of the detained journalists has been convicted of any charge, said Joel Simon, executive director of the group, undermining the United States reputation when it comes to criticizing other countries on issues of press freedom.
"The U.S. has a record of holding journalists for long periods of time without due process and without explanation," he said. "Its standing would be improved if it addressed this issue."
Reuters has expressed disappointment at Jassam's detention and has said there is no evidence against him.
[...]
Jassam was detained without a warrant "as the result of his activity with a known insurgent organization," Fisher alleged.
No evidence against Jassam was presented at his court hearing in November, Fisher said, because the military intelligence against him had not yet been verified.
Under the wartime rules in place at the time, he said, "there was no requirement to link the military intelligence with rule of law type of evidentiary procedures."
After the court ordered Jassam's release, Fisher said, fresh evidence came to light that suggested he was a "high security threat."
This reminds me of how the US held Al Jazeera journalist Sami al Hajj at Guantanamo from December 2001 to May 2008. He alleges he was tortured at Guantanamo and that he had been interrogated over 130 times (as of 2005) with his interrogators insisting in 125 of those interviews that he link al Jazeera to terrorism and Al Qaeda, which he wouldn't. "He is completely innocent," his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said during al Hajj's imprisonment. "He is about as much of a terrorist as my granddad. The only reason he has been treated like he has is because he is an Al Jazeera journalist. The Americans have tried to make him an informant with the goal of getting him to say that Al Jazeera is linked to Al Qaida." Al Hajj was eventually released after an international campaign and the tenacious work of his lawyers.
When you hold up Iran's handling of Roxanna Saberi against the US handling of Jassam, the comparison is striking. So too is the level of outcry from other journalists. Loud voices demanded Saberi's freedom. Websites were established. Some 400 people reportedly joined a hunger strike in solidarity with Saberi. The same is not true for Jassam, who has spent many months in US custody without charges. It is time for journalists, particularly US journalists, to break their silence and demand Jassam's release. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released Saberi pretty swiftly after her arrest on espionage charges (and subsequent conviction and sentencing). Obama should follow Iran's example and release Ibrahim Jassam. But, in the absence of outcry and protest from other journalists, Obama has little to lose by ignoring Jassam's case.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
what kind of society...
what kind of society uses bulldozers to destroy a community garden? what kind of society has people that use the language and style of the oppressed to further an elitist agenda? what kind of society favors the rich individual over the poor masses? what kind of society uses race, ethnicity, and class to divide the people? what kind of society uses the courts and politicians to implement a pretend democracy that, in actuality, favors the rich and powerful at every turn?
such a society is ours, in the year of your lord, 2009. for proof, watch the garden, a fine film about a 13 acre community garden in los angeles. it demonstrates the eternal battles of race, class, and ethnic bigotry, and shows the true function of our court system and politicians. it also shows the dignity of working people and their ability to come together. finally, it speaks to another way of using the land, a way that makes clear that a cooperative, shared approach to growing food is the way to go. this approach implicitly questions the capitalist system, and is therefore, vital to our collective future. however, because it does question capitalism, it is under constant attack by the powerful. these attacks are proof that those involved with community gardening and other collective enterprises out side of the structures of capitalism, are onto something. these efforts need to be deepened, and must expand.
even if these further efforts are also bulldozed, as they surely will be.
in the attempt, there is victory.
as we suffer defeat, time and time again, we must try to remember that.
such a society is ours, in the year of your lord, 2009. for proof, watch the garden, a fine film about a 13 acre community garden in los angeles. it demonstrates the eternal battles of race, class, and ethnic bigotry, and shows the true function of our court system and politicians. it also shows the dignity of working people and their ability to come together. finally, it speaks to another way of using the land, a way that makes clear that a cooperative, shared approach to growing food is the way to go. this approach implicitly questions the capitalist system, and is therefore, vital to our collective future. however, because it does question capitalism, it is under constant attack by the powerful. these attacks are proof that those involved with community gardening and other collective enterprises out side of the structures of capitalism, are onto something. these efforts need to be deepened, and must expand.
even if these further efforts are also bulldozed, as they surely will be.
in the attempt, there is victory.
as we suffer defeat, time and time again, we must try to remember that.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
where do people go?
every time there is a long weekend, people go some place. why? where are they going? is there some secret paradise that i am unaware of? as far as i know, there is nowhere to go, because in order to get there, you have to bring yourself, and that always drags the experience down a peg. but, one doesn't even need to get too philosophical to question these comings and goings. for sure, there will be a lot of cook outs tomorrow. people will stick american flags on their lawn. there will be a lot of eating and drinking, two things that americans still do well. even us traitors have to admit that.
so, they will get in their cars, waste money on gas and help to fuck the environment once more. they will stuff themselves with cows who never did them a bit of harm. others will remember butchers whom we prefer to think of as heroes. war will once again be romanticized, when what it needs is some good old fashioned demonization. war, the way we do it, needs to be abolished, but how can that be when we celebrate its practioners? we are a culture that celebrates the wrong things. we have columbus day, and murder sacco and vanzetti. we listen to kissenger, and deport emma goldman. we elect obama, and kill malcolm. the heroes are there; we just don't celebrate them. we have it upside down, and things won't flip anytime soon, for the powerful have set it up this way for a reason.
but what do we care, for we are off for the long weekend and the beer and the burgers and the patriotic songs and the american flags. hey, our parents did it, and that's good enough for us. change? growth? what are you, some kind of a nut?
yes, i suppose i am.
so, they will get in their cars, waste money on gas and help to fuck the environment once more. they will stuff themselves with cows who never did them a bit of harm. others will remember butchers whom we prefer to think of as heroes. war will once again be romanticized, when what it needs is some good old fashioned demonization. war, the way we do it, needs to be abolished, but how can that be when we celebrate its practioners? we are a culture that celebrates the wrong things. we have columbus day, and murder sacco and vanzetti. we listen to kissenger, and deport emma goldman. we elect obama, and kill malcolm. the heroes are there; we just don't celebrate them. we have it upside down, and things won't flip anytime soon, for the powerful have set it up this way for a reason.
but what do we care, for we are off for the long weekend and the beer and the burgers and the patriotic songs and the american flags. hey, our parents did it, and that's good enough for us. change? growth? what are you, some kind of a nut?
yes, i suppose i am.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
z is last but not least
We stand and sing “God Bless America” during the 7th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium to support, among other things: water boarding, Daisy Cutters, cluster bombs, napalm, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and the launching of cruise missiles into crowded cities.
P.S. Don’t support our (sic) troops…
yeah mickey! if you oppose the war, how can you support the troops? no one has given me a decent answer to this question yet. i suppose i will be 6 feet under, or hopefully, cremated, before a thoughtful response could be fashioned.
mickey, finish it off...
And one more thing: Let’s stop with the “our troops” charade. You and I may foot the bill, but “we” have no say in what they do. If those truly were “my” men and women, I’d bring them right home and put them to work doing something useful…like turning the Long Island Expressway into the world’s longest organic farm.
Don’t support the troops…inform them.
P.S. Don’t support our (sic) troops…
yeah mickey! if you oppose the war, how can you support the troops? no one has given me a decent answer to this question yet. i suppose i will be 6 feet under, or hopefully, cremated, before a thoughtful response could be fashioned.
mickey, finish it off...
And one more thing: Let’s stop with the “our troops” charade. You and I may foot the bill, but “we” have no say in what they do. If those truly were “my” men and women, I’d bring them right home and put them to work doing something useful…like turning the Long Island Expressway into the world’s longest organic farm.
Don’t support the troops…inform them.
people sitting outside my window
for it's memorial day weekend, and what good would it be if americans weren't making themselves sick with hamburgers and hot dogs? yes, they have the friends over, and the little kids, and the obligatory jack off holding a beer bottle. i have countered by opening my windows and blasting george russell's ezz-thetics. they haven't moved, but at least i am hearing a great album. i got a couple of looks when i put it on, but hey man, you are chilling outside my window, not the other way around! fuck you! and it's always the same dudes too...young white guys in dockers or shorts, thin, with short hair. today they are renting, but in a couple of years, they will own a big house with at least three bathrooms. they think they are cool, but are every bit the stiffs as the townies they feel themselves superior too. they voted for obama, never use racial slurs, and never do a damn thing for anybody. first of all, if you barbeque on memorial day, you are an automatic fuckhead. end of story. even if they do throw in a few token veggie burgers. especially if they throw in a few token veggie burgers. i think i just heard a few of the turds mention how the red sox are doing. that was obligatory, and was likely proof that they don't know what the hell to talk about. now, somebody is putting a sheet on the grass for them to sit on. this one just had a kid, and that one is unhappy with their job, and bob is going back to school, and henry just got a house. fuck it all. why don't these fuckers take a walk?
my guess is they really aren't that into it, but it's something to do, and nobody really knows what to do. recently, they have taken to throwing little balls on the grass. i think they are trying to see who can get the ball into a little enclosed area they created. you should see these stiffs...gutless liberals. fellow crackers, is this the best we can do? while the world suffers, the good whites get drunk and eat hamburgers.
and they wonder why everybody is pissed.
hopefully this isn't something that occurs more than once in a blue moon you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart without a love of my own.
as dolphy finishes the album with his killer version of round midnight, it looks like they plan on being here a while.
it's not that they are doing anything wrong. it's just their presence.
if only the human race were somewhere else.
far, far from me.
my guess is they really aren't that into it, but it's something to do, and nobody really knows what to do. recently, they have taken to throwing little balls on the grass. i think they are trying to see who can get the ball into a little enclosed area they created. you should see these stiffs...gutless liberals. fellow crackers, is this the best we can do? while the world suffers, the good whites get drunk and eat hamburgers.
and they wonder why everybody is pissed.
hopefully this isn't something that occurs more than once in a blue moon you saw me standing alone without a dream in my heart without a love of my own.
as dolphy finishes the album with his killer version of round midnight, it looks like they plan on being here a while.
it's not that they are doing anything wrong. it's just their presence.
if only the human race were somewhere else.
far, far from me.
Friday, May 22, 2009
imagine if your neighbors weren't mediocre? what if the guy practicing clarinet next door was buddy defranco? what if the old guy sitting out on the porch was howard zinn? what if manny ramirez was taking his cuts at the park across the street, instead of high school softball players? what if the local library stacks were filled with leftist texts? what if the landlord was an old marxist who didn't believe in charging more than a couple of bills? instead of the apolitical bums getting drunk and bothering people up the street from my joint, imagine a group of down and out drifters who know the deal.
why is it that the world we are stuck in is so far behind the ideal society which exists in our minds? it seems we are forever doomed to spend our lives in the company of stiffs. it is not an issue of race or class or gender, but one of the species. the stiffs are large in number, and growing exponentially. they already inhabitant the next apartment, own the house you live in, employ you at your job, and ring up your groceries. they act in the films you see, and sing the songs you hear on the radio. there are so many of them that they are not seen as stiffs. the horror is common. the every day man spreads his sickness to those already ill. swine flu would be a great improvement from this enveloping pandemic.
so, i am back to the beginning. the guy next door practices his scales. he has chops, but no inspiration. pee wee russell and defranco are long gone, and if they were alive, they wouldn't live next door. no one great ever lives next door, and even if they did, i wouldn't take the time to meet them, thinking that only stiffs could live next door to me.
the greats are always far away, or under the earth.
the mediocrities? they are with us always.
always.
why is it that the world we are stuck in is so far behind the ideal society which exists in our minds? it seems we are forever doomed to spend our lives in the company of stiffs. it is not an issue of race or class or gender, but one of the species. the stiffs are large in number, and growing exponentially. they already inhabitant the next apartment, own the house you live in, employ you at your job, and ring up your groceries. they act in the films you see, and sing the songs you hear on the radio. there are so many of them that they are not seen as stiffs. the horror is common. the every day man spreads his sickness to those already ill. swine flu would be a great improvement from this enveloping pandemic.
so, i am back to the beginning. the guy next door practices his scales. he has chops, but no inspiration. pee wee russell and defranco are long gone, and if they were alive, they wouldn't live next door. no one great ever lives next door, and even if they did, i wouldn't take the time to meet them, thinking that only stiffs could live next door to me.
the greats are always far away, or under the earth.
the mediocrities? they are with us always.
always.
war is a zinn
Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe (from the Zinn Reader)
Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?
by Howard Zinn
Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.
In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year's Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.
* * * * *
Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.
It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.
It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.
There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon's and Kissinger's war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?
No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.
"The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground...Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies."
Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.
And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.
And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.
And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.
Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of "defense," our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called "the biggest floating lemon," which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.
Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There's 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don't have money to pay hospital bills.
We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn't deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.
Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.
Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?
by Howard Zinn
Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.
In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year's Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.
* * * * *
Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.
It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.
It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.
There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon's and Kissinger's war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?
No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.
"The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground...Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies."
Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.
And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.
And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.
And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.
Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of "defense," our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called "the biggest floating lemon," which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.
Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There's 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don't have money to pay hospital bills.
We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn't deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.
Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
i am actually not troy davis, but i wish him well. free troy davis!
AMY GOODMAN: Events are being held around the country today to demand a new trial for the Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. Davis, African American, convicted for the 1989 killing of a white police officer. Since the trial, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony. Three witnesses say another man later admitted to the killing. That man, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, was at the scene of the shooting and is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted their testimony against Davis. The other witness to stand by his testimony initially told police he could not identify the shooter except by his clothes. There is also no direct physical evidence tying Davis to the crime scene.
A thirty-day stay of execution expired Saturday, following last month’s decision by a federal appeals court to reject a new trial for Davis. Davis’s lawyers are filing last-ditch appeals today to the Supreme Court. The attorneys will ask that the case be sent back to a federal judge for an evidentiary hearing that would include witnesses whose testimony has never been heard in court.
Today’s Global Day of Action for Troy Davis is being marked with rallies in cities including Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC. The day also coincides with Malcolm X’s birthday, born seventy-nine years ago today.
Well, I’m joined now by two guests. Larry Cox is executive director of Amnesty International USA, which has vocally been championing Davis’s case. Larry Cox joins me here in the firehouse studio. Via video stream, we’re joined by Troy Davis’s older sister, Martina Correia. She has led the campaign to save her brother’s life.
Larry Cox, start off by laying out this case very quickly for people who aren’t familiar with it and why you’re so involved, why Amnesty is so involved.
LARRY COX: Because for those of us who have been working on this for a long time, and I’ve been doing it for more than three decades, I don’t know of another case that screams out injustice like this case. This is someone where seven of the nine witnesses, as you said, have recanted their testimony. There’s no physical evidence linking him to the crime. There’s such a strong presumption or such a reasonable doubt about his—that to put him to death would be really a crime upon a crime. So, we have—are deeply concerned about this case.
And it’s not only people in this country; it’s people all around the world. There will be rallies in many different countries around the world. The European Union just issued an appeal. The Pope has issued an appeal. Anyone who looks at the evidence knows that this is an egregious injustice.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet, the federal appeals court had a two-to-one decision, although the dissenting judge in the case wrote, “To execute Davis in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
LARRY COX: Yeah. What is most shameful about this is the way the courts have hid behind technicalities to not even look at the evidence. He has never had a chance to present this new evidence of innocence in a court of law. That’s all he’s asking. But they have hidden behind the technicalities, and that’s been easier to do because of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which makes it very, very difficult, even in cases where there’s strong evidence of innocence, to get it heard before a court.
AMY GOODMAN: Martina Correia, you have been fighting your own battle for life, as you fight breast cancer. You’re very well-known as a breast cancer survivor, fighter for people to get healthcare. You were honored along with Nancy Pelosi here in New York by the National Breast Cancer Coalition. President Jimmy Carter has issued an appeal on your brother’s behalf. Where does your hope lie right now, speaking to us from Savannah, Georgia?
MARTINA CORREIA: My hope lies with the people, because people are standing up all over the world in solidarity for Troy, in solidarity for justice. And that’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to take people to start demanding that these barbaric and archaic laws are repealed and never put on the books again. It’s going to take people fighting and saying that it should be an abomination that in the United States, one of the global powers of the world, that it’s not unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
And so, we are standing, not only people from Amnesty International, but a coalition of organizations that have actually never come together, that are all saying we must stand against this, we must fight this injustice, and we need to end the death penalty, because we can’t afford to keep executing innocent people.
AMY GOODMAN: The case, with one person after another, the non-police witnesses, recanting their testimony, why did they give false testimony, to begin with? Let me put that to Martina.
MARTINA CORREIA: Well, you know, in the recantations, in the affidavits that these people put forth, you know, a lot of them had criminal background. Some of them were teenagers. Some of them were—they were interrogated for six and seven hours without lawyers, without parents, and they were, you know, threatened to be charged as accessory to murder of a police officer and to never come out of prison. And when you have those type of people that you can manipulate, and when you’re interrogating somebody for six and seven hours, like the witnesses said, they were so tired of being there that they just started repeating what the police wanted them to say. Some people—one person couldn’t even read and write the statement that he signed against my brother. He just wanted to leave. One witness had parole violations, and she was scared of losing her children and going back to prison. So these were people that were very easily manipulated.
They had really no case against Troy. They knew nothing about what was going on, until Sylvester “Redd” Coles, the only person that night that had a .38-caliber weapon, the same caliber weapon the police officer was killed with, that came forward with a lawyer and said, “Oh, Troy did it.” But he never told the police ’til some weeks later that he even was carrying a gun that night and that he got into an altercation.
So, the thing about it is that these people were easily manipulated. They built this case around Troy with no physical evidence, no DNA. And what they did is they ran on the excitement and the adrenaline that we have to get somebody for this police officer’s murder, we have to appease community. And, you know, it got to the point where they were attacking so many black men that it’s like any black man will do. And when Sylvester Coles came and pointed at Troy, everything dropped, and they just built a case around Troy.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we end this broadcast, I wanted to ask you, Larry Cox, about another case, about a man who is scheduled to die tomorrow.
LARRY COX: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: His name is Dennis Skillicorn. Twelve current and former prison staffers at Potosi gave statements for his clemency petition. Their efforts were joined last week by the Missouri legislator Steven Tilley, the Majority Leader of the Missouri House, who has called for the commutation of Skillicorn’s sentence to life in prison. He doesn’t deny he’s been involved with crimes, though he wasn’t the shooter. Why are you pushing hard on this case? Why are these people all coming out?
LARRY COX: Well, there are two reasons. One is, it’s another example of the insanity of the system. Here’s another case where somebody made a statement that was never heard in the court, but if it had been heard, he probably would not have been given the death penalty. The man who did commit the murder said he had—Skillicorn had no idea that a murder was going to take place.
AMY GOODMAN: And that man is on death row, but he is not—he will not die before Skillicorn—
LARRY COX: No.
AMY GOODMAN: —if he’s killed tomorrow.
LARRY COX: That’s correct, and one of the other people that was given life imprisonment. So it just shows the arbitrariness of it.
But the other reason is that Skillicorn himself has, by all accounts, become an extraordinary human being. And this illustrates one of the central truths about the death penalty, that the person you kill is often not the same person who committed the crime. He has become a model prisoner. He has reached out to the victims of crime, to restorative justice. He’s worked in a hospice. He has helped young offenders. And that’s the reason why you have this incredible assembly of people from the Corrections Department, you have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have people of faith, all speaking out, saying, “What purpose could possibly be served by killing this man, who has become, by all accounts, a very good man?”
AMY GOODMAN: In Dennis Skillicorn’s case, he said, “If I had three lifetimes, I know I can’t repay society for the things I’ve done, but I think we have a responsibility to build up what we once tore down with our criminal behavior.”
I want to thank you both for being with us. We just have ten seconds, but, Martina, what is Troy Davis saying today on this global day of action, your brother, on death row?
MARTINA CORREIA: Well, I actually just talked to Troy maybe like thirty minutes ago, and he said that he wants everybody to know that even though this is the hardest thing he’s had to face in his life, that he knows, with all of us, a change is coming and that that change is more powerful because people are standing up for human rights. And that’s what it’s all about. And he wants them know that continue to fight, that this is bigger than Troy Davis. This is about human rights for all.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Martina Correia, from Savannah, Georgia. Her T-shirt, for our radio listeners, says, “I Am Troy Davis.” And Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for all of our coverage of the Troy Davis case.
A thirty-day stay of execution expired Saturday, following last month’s decision by a federal appeals court to reject a new trial for Davis. Davis’s lawyers are filing last-ditch appeals today to the Supreme Court. The attorneys will ask that the case be sent back to a federal judge for an evidentiary hearing that would include witnesses whose testimony has never been heard in court.
Today’s Global Day of Action for Troy Davis is being marked with rallies in cities including Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC. The day also coincides with Malcolm X’s birthday, born seventy-nine years ago today.
Well, I’m joined now by two guests. Larry Cox is executive director of Amnesty International USA, which has vocally been championing Davis’s case. Larry Cox joins me here in the firehouse studio. Via video stream, we’re joined by Troy Davis’s older sister, Martina Correia. She has led the campaign to save her brother’s life.
Larry Cox, start off by laying out this case very quickly for people who aren’t familiar with it and why you’re so involved, why Amnesty is so involved.
LARRY COX: Because for those of us who have been working on this for a long time, and I’ve been doing it for more than three decades, I don’t know of another case that screams out injustice like this case. This is someone where seven of the nine witnesses, as you said, have recanted their testimony. There’s no physical evidence linking him to the crime. There’s such a strong presumption or such a reasonable doubt about his—that to put him to death would be really a crime upon a crime. So, we have—are deeply concerned about this case.
And it’s not only people in this country; it’s people all around the world. There will be rallies in many different countries around the world. The European Union just issued an appeal. The Pope has issued an appeal. Anyone who looks at the evidence knows that this is an egregious injustice.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet, the federal appeals court had a two-to-one decision, although the dissenting judge in the case wrote, “To execute Davis in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
LARRY COX: Yeah. What is most shameful about this is the way the courts have hid behind technicalities to not even look at the evidence. He has never had a chance to present this new evidence of innocence in a court of law. That’s all he’s asking. But they have hidden behind the technicalities, and that’s been easier to do because of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which makes it very, very difficult, even in cases where there’s strong evidence of innocence, to get it heard before a court.
AMY GOODMAN: Martina Correia, you have been fighting your own battle for life, as you fight breast cancer. You’re very well-known as a breast cancer survivor, fighter for people to get healthcare. You were honored along with Nancy Pelosi here in New York by the National Breast Cancer Coalition. President Jimmy Carter has issued an appeal on your brother’s behalf. Where does your hope lie right now, speaking to us from Savannah, Georgia?
MARTINA CORREIA: My hope lies with the people, because people are standing up all over the world in solidarity for Troy, in solidarity for justice. And that’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to take people to start demanding that these barbaric and archaic laws are repealed and never put on the books again. It’s going to take people fighting and saying that it should be an abomination that in the United States, one of the global powers of the world, that it’s not unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
And so, we are standing, not only people from Amnesty International, but a coalition of organizations that have actually never come together, that are all saying we must stand against this, we must fight this injustice, and we need to end the death penalty, because we can’t afford to keep executing innocent people.
AMY GOODMAN: The case, with one person after another, the non-police witnesses, recanting their testimony, why did they give false testimony, to begin with? Let me put that to Martina.
MARTINA CORREIA: Well, you know, in the recantations, in the affidavits that these people put forth, you know, a lot of them had criminal background. Some of them were teenagers. Some of them were—they were interrogated for six and seven hours without lawyers, without parents, and they were, you know, threatened to be charged as accessory to murder of a police officer and to never come out of prison. And when you have those type of people that you can manipulate, and when you’re interrogating somebody for six and seven hours, like the witnesses said, they were so tired of being there that they just started repeating what the police wanted them to say. Some people—one person couldn’t even read and write the statement that he signed against my brother. He just wanted to leave. One witness had parole violations, and she was scared of losing her children and going back to prison. So these were people that were very easily manipulated.
They had really no case against Troy. They knew nothing about what was going on, until Sylvester “Redd” Coles, the only person that night that had a .38-caliber weapon, the same caliber weapon the police officer was killed with, that came forward with a lawyer and said, “Oh, Troy did it.” But he never told the police ’til some weeks later that he even was carrying a gun that night and that he got into an altercation.
So, the thing about it is that these people were easily manipulated. They built this case around Troy with no physical evidence, no DNA. And what they did is they ran on the excitement and the adrenaline that we have to get somebody for this police officer’s murder, we have to appease community. And, you know, it got to the point where they were attacking so many black men that it’s like any black man will do. And when Sylvester Coles came and pointed at Troy, everything dropped, and they just built a case around Troy.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we end this broadcast, I wanted to ask you, Larry Cox, about another case, about a man who is scheduled to die tomorrow.
LARRY COX: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: His name is Dennis Skillicorn. Twelve current and former prison staffers at Potosi gave statements for his clemency petition. Their efforts were joined last week by the Missouri legislator Steven Tilley, the Majority Leader of the Missouri House, who has called for the commutation of Skillicorn’s sentence to life in prison. He doesn’t deny he’s been involved with crimes, though he wasn’t the shooter. Why are you pushing hard on this case? Why are these people all coming out?
LARRY COX: Well, there are two reasons. One is, it’s another example of the insanity of the system. Here’s another case where somebody made a statement that was never heard in the court, but if it had been heard, he probably would not have been given the death penalty. The man who did commit the murder said he had—Skillicorn had no idea that a murder was going to take place.
AMY GOODMAN: And that man is on death row, but he is not—he will not die before Skillicorn—
LARRY COX: No.
AMY GOODMAN: —if he’s killed tomorrow.
LARRY COX: That’s correct, and one of the other people that was given life imprisonment. So it just shows the arbitrariness of it.
But the other reason is that Skillicorn himself has, by all accounts, become an extraordinary human being. And this illustrates one of the central truths about the death penalty, that the person you kill is often not the same person who committed the crime. He has become a model prisoner. He has reached out to the victims of crime, to restorative justice. He’s worked in a hospice. He has helped young offenders. And that’s the reason why you have this incredible assembly of people from the Corrections Department, you have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have people of faith, all speaking out, saying, “What purpose could possibly be served by killing this man, who has become, by all accounts, a very good man?”
AMY GOODMAN: In Dennis Skillicorn’s case, he said, “If I had three lifetimes, I know I can’t repay society for the things I’ve done, but I think we have a responsibility to build up what we once tore down with our criminal behavior.”
I want to thank you both for being with us. We just have ten seconds, but, Martina, what is Troy Davis saying today on this global day of action, your brother, on death row?
MARTINA CORREIA: Well, I actually just talked to Troy maybe like thirty minutes ago, and he said that he wants everybody to know that even though this is the hardest thing he’s had to face in his life, that he knows, with all of us, a change is coming and that that change is more powerful because people are standing up for human rights. And that’s what it’s all about. And he wants them know that continue to fight, that this is bigger than Troy Davis. This is about human rights for all.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Martina Correia, from Savannah, Georgia. Her T-shirt, for our radio listeners, says, “I Am Troy Davis.” And Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for all of our coverage of the Troy Davis case.
don't hate haiti, hate clinton
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, you wrote another piece at rebelreports.com on Bill Clinton being named as—could be today—the new UN envoy to stabilize Haiti.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this would be—this would be humorous for its irony, if it wasn’t so deadly serious. Bill Clinton, as President of the United States, was someone who participated in the systematic destabilization of Haiti.
In a nutshell, what happened was that Aristide was overthrown in a violent US-backed coup—you covered it—under the George H.W. Bush administration. Clinton campaigned on a pledge to stop the cruel treatment of Haitian detainees being held at Guantanamo and also to reverse the Bush administration’s cruel policy in general toward Haiti. Instead, what Clinton did is he kept Aristide in exile for years, until they could squeeze out of Aristide a commitment to uphold US neoliberal economic programs in Haiti and that Aristide would agree not to lay claim to the years he spent in exile as part of his presidency.
He was a democratically elected president. He, fair and square, beat a US candidate. The US violently overthrew him. They butchered Haiti. And then Clinton refused to put Aristide back in power, even though he could have done it with one phone call. And instead, what he did is he implemented a vicious regime of economic neoliberalism inside of Haiti. The Haitian people now are suffering under that neoliberal economic model and the aftermath of this repression force that just terrorized the people of Haiti.
To have Bill Clinton now be sent in explicitly to be the person who’s going to, quote-unquote, “stabilize” Haiti and dabble in the economics of this incredibly poor suffering nation, to me, is just a grotesque act on the part of the United Nations. And I think that anyone who’s about justice for Haiti should rise up and say that Bill Clinton has no business stepping foot in Haiti in any official capacity with the United Nations at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you for being with us. Jeremy’s reports can be found at rebelreports.com. He is a correspondent for Democracy Now!, award-winning investigative journalist.
JEREMY SCAHILL: The piece is at AlterNet. The story I did is at AlterNet, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And the piece that you wrote was at AlterNet.org. Democracy Now!’s Jeremy Scahill is author of the award-winning book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this would be—this would be humorous for its irony, if it wasn’t so deadly serious. Bill Clinton, as President of the United States, was someone who participated in the systematic destabilization of Haiti.
In a nutshell, what happened was that Aristide was overthrown in a violent US-backed coup—you covered it—under the George H.W. Bush administration. Clinton campaigned on a pledge to stop the cruel treatment of Haitian detainees being held at Guantanamo and also to reverse the Bush administration’s cruel policy in general toward Haiti. Instead, what Clinton did is he kept Aristide in exile for years, until they could squeeze out of Aristide a commitment to uphold US neoliberal economic programs in Haiti and that Aristide would agree not to lay claim to the years he spent in exile as part of his presidency.
He was a democratically elected president. He, fair and square, beat a US candidate. The US violently overthrew him. They butchered Haiti. And then Clinton refused to put Aristide back in power, even though he could have done it with one phone call. And instead, what he did is he implemented a vicious regime of economic neoliberalism inside of Haiti. The Haitian people now are suffering under that neoliberal economic model and the aftermath of this repression force that just terrorized the people of Haiti.
To have Bill Clinton now be sent in explicitly to be the person who’s going to, quote-unquote, “stabilize” Haiti and dabble in the economics of this incredibly poor suffering nation, to me, is just a grotesque act on the part of the United Nations. And I think that anyone who’s about justice for Haiti should rise up and say that Bill Clinton has no business stepping foot in Haiti in any official capacity with the United Nations at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you for being with us. Jeremy’s reports can be found at rebelreports.com. He is a correspondent for Democracy Now!, award-winning investigative journalist.
JEREMY SCAHILL: The piece is at AlterNet. The story I did is at AlterNet, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And the piece that you wrote was at AlterNet.org. Democracy Now!’s Jeremy Scahill is author of the award-winning book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
reading about torture is torture
AMY GOODMAN: A coalition of advocacy groups have launched a campaign to disbar twelve former Bush administration attorneys connected to the administration’s torture program. The coalition, called the Velvet Revolution, filed legal ethics complaints with state bar associations Monday, saying the twelve attorneys violated the rules of professional responsibility by approving interrogation methods, including waterboarding, that constituted torture.
While there’s been a lot of focus on torture under the Bush administration, what about under President Obama? In a new article, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill writes the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes, dousing them with chemicals.
This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal, Jeremy writes.
Jeremy Scahill is an award-winning investigative journalist, author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at RebelReports.com.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, describe what you call as this “little known military thug squad.”
JEREMY SCAHILL: When the Bush administration established the US prison camp at Guantanamo, of course, we know well that they set up a system where detainees were going to be systematically tortured. And, of course, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed on this program, despite what they’re saying right now.
And while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantanamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force that was torturing prisoners in a variety of ways, including waterboarding them, and that is this riot squad of sorts that you referred to called the Immediate Reaction Force. The prisoners and their lawyers at Guantanamo call it the “Extreme Repression Force.”
And basically what this is is a thug squad that is used to mercilessly punish prisoners who show the slightest bit of resistance or who do things that technically they’re not supposed to do, infractions like having two Styrofoam cups in their cell instead of one.
Guards will call in this goon squad. They come in with their Darth Vader outfits, and they literally gang-beat prisoners. There are five men, generally, that are sent in. Each of them is assigned to one body part of the prisoner: the head, the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg. They go in, and they hogtie the prisoner, sometimes leaving them hogtied for hours on end. They douse them with chemical agents. They have put their heads in toilets and flushed the toilets repeatedly. They have urinated on the heads of prisoners. They’ve squeezed their testicles in the course of restraining them. They’ve taken the feces from one prisoner and smeared it in the face of another prisoner.
And while Barack Obama, almost immediately upon taking office, issued an executive order saying he was going to close down Guantanamo within a year and that he was going to respect the Geneva Convention while his administration reviewed Guantanamo, this force has continued to operate and torture prisoners under the Obama administration.
In fact, in February of this year, about a month after Obama was inaugurated, there were sixteen prisoners on a hunger strike at Guantanamo. The Immediate Response—or Immediate Reaction Force was used to go in and violently shove massive tubes down their noses into their stomachs. And what the IRF teams, as they’re called—when they beat someone, it’s called IRF-ing, or to be IRF-ed up by these teams. They would use no anesthetics or any painkillers, shove this massive tube by force down their nose into their stomach and then yank it out. Some prisoners have described this as torture, torture, torture. And many have passed out from the sheer pain of this operation.
This force has received almost no scrutiny in the US Congress or the US media and operates at this moment.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you know about this?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I discovered these teams, because I’ve been covering the investigation being done by Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain into the Bush torture system. What’s interesting is that the most aggressive investigation at this point into the Bush war crimes is being done an ocean away in Madrid.
And I came across a story of a prisoner named Omar Deghayes, and he is one of the four people that is cited directly in the Spanish investigation as having been tortured by the United States. He’s originally Libyan, is a British resident and is one of the subjects of Baltasar Garzon’s investigation. Omar Deghayes was repeatedly IRF-ed, was repeatedly abused by one of these squads. And so, when I came across this reference to this team that he was referring to in his testimony, I started to look into it and realized that there has been a multi-year pattern of abuse on the part of this team.
And yet, the only time when it’s really made any kind of a flash in the corporate media was when a US soldier, a young guy named Sean Baker, who was a Gulf War vet, was participating in a training exercise in Guantanamo in January of 2003, where he was ordered, he says, by his superiors to dress up in an orange jumpsuit and play the part of a restive or combative detainee at Guantanamo. He was told that the team that was going to come in to handle him knew that he was a US soldier, knew that it was a training drill, and he was given a word, a codeword, “red,” that when he said it, the beating was supposed to stop, or the subduing of him was supposed to stop. When he was in the cell, the team comes in. He describes them just mercilessly beating him, and he’s yelling out “Red!” and they continue to beat him, even after he then said, “I’m a US soldier! I’m a US soldier!” He describes how one of his fellow soldiers continued to beat him.
That young man, Sean Baker, has permanent brain damage, suffers from multiple seizures, and had actually sued Rumsfeld and other officials because of his treatment. So you had a flash, a moment in time in 2005, where this case came to public light, because of this lawsuit brought by a US soldier. As Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert I talked to, said, you know, this is one US soldier who received this kind of treatment; imagine what happens to these detainees.
And let’s be clear here, you read the New York Times today, and you realize that despite Obama’s rhetoric about how he’s going to reform the military tribunal system, we understand that it’s all cosmetic changes. The fact is, torture continues at Guantanamo. The place has not shut down. Interestingly, Ari Fleischer, the former propaganda chief for the Bush administration, said the other day, quite clearly, that he doesn’t believe Obama, in any universe, is going to be able to shut down Guantanamo in a year.
So, Amy, as far as I can tell from this in-depth investigation, we see the status quo alive and well, and it’s very, very damaging to the US Constitution, international law and the lives of these prisoners who remain in legal limbo.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, this force, known as the Immediate Reaction Force, or Emergency Reaction Force, IRF or ERF, are they being filmed when they go into these cells?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, according to—I’ve been reading the now-declassified Standard Operating Procedures for Guantanamo that were written by Major General Geoffrey Miller, the man was—who is believed to have started all of this, in terms of the tactical level at Guantanamo, and then Gitmo-ized Abu Ghraib and other US prisons. After he left Guantanamo, he went elsewhere and brought these torture tactics with him.
In the Standard Operating Procedures that General Miller issued in 2003, he said that all of the IRF teams, when they would go in to restrain a prisoner, that they had to videotape the operation and that all of the members on a team, immediately following an incident where they had to restrain a prisoner, had to give sworn statements. Well, the fact is that we know that at least 500 hours of video were filmed. The ACLU tried a few years ago to get those videos, and they failed to do so. The government resisted it.
But Brandon Neely, who is an Army specialist that was on one of the first IRF teams—and I talk about his story in here—says that his experience with IRF teams is that either the video camera wouldn’t have any tape in it, wouldn’t be turned on, or it would be pointed in a direction that was nowhere near what was actually happening.
And I went through hundreds of pages of incident reports, where these military police officers, as part of the IRF teams, gave their sworn statements. They were so robotic in their uniformity. They all had the exact same phrases to describe operations that went off without a hitch, detainees were never hurt, procedures were followed. Case closed. End of the day, a few handwritten sentences, almost uniformly identical in each instance.
So, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights asks a very simple question: “Where are the tapes?” Presumably, if the Standard Operating Procedures were followed, we could see Omar Deghayes having his head repeatedly put in a toilet and flushed. We could see a prisoner, under the Obama administration, having his head urinated on after he was doused with chemicals by these forces. We could see the breaking of noses and other body parts on the part of prisoners. But in order to do that, we would have to have an administration that was going to come completely clean with the crimes of the past and make these videos available, along with the thousands of photos that show the systematic abuse of US prisoners.
But what we see at every turn is the Obama administration, backed up by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, backed up by the neoconservatives, backed up by the hawkish Republicans, on one side, and then the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and social justice and antiwar activists and human rights advocates, on the other side. This is a sad reality in America today, where you have a president that campaigned on a change that we can believe in continuing the most repressive policies of the Bush administration.
AMY GOODMAN: And medical personnel there?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Medical personnel not only were there during the operations of these IRF teams, particularly when they were force-feeding detainees by shoving these massive tubes down their noses, but in the case of Omar Deghayes, this prisoner that I’ve been referring to, he actually says that the medical personnel participated directly in his torture, would join in the torture with these IRF teams.
You, probably, Amy, on this show, have covered this issue of medical and psychological and psychiatric professionals participating in the US torture structure. Their role as part of these teams of repression should be thoroughly investigated, because this is an utter scandal and should be a scandal for every medical professional in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say Nancy Pelosi knew about the torture?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, the fact is that Nancy Pelosi was fumbling in her press conference through a statement that someone else clearly wrote for her. This is not some secret that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on this. In fact, the Washington Post reported on this in 2007, that she had been briefed and that other Democrats that were senior figures in the Democratic leadership, particularly on the Intelligence Committee, had received briefings about the tactics that were being used at Guantanamo.
I think what’s going to be important is that we know that some of the members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, who were briefed actually pushed for stronger tactics to be used during these briefings. I think one of the reasons why the Democrats are—the Democratic leadership is not pushing for a special independent prosecutor in this case is because if you actually examine the record, you will find that the Democrats funded these programs, supported these programs, and refused to speak up when it actually mattered. That’s the pattern we saw through the eight years of the Bush administration. Now that the Democrats are in power, you see Obama—the right wing tries to say flip-flopping—you see Obama upholding the consistent one-party system in this country when it comes to foreign policy.
While there’s been a lot of focus on torture under the Bush administration, what about under President Obama? In a new article, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill writes the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes, dousing them with chemicals.
This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal, Jeremy writes.
Jeremy Scahill is an award-winning investigative journalist, author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at RebelReports.com.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, describe what you call as this “little known military thug squad.”
JEREMY SCAHILL: When the Bush administration established the US prison camp at Guantanamo, of course, we know well that they set up a system where detainees were going to be systematically tortured. And, of course, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed on this program, despite what they’re saying right now.
And while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantanamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force that was torturing prisoners in a variety of ways, including waterboarding them, and that is this riot squad of sorts that you referred to called the Immediate Reaction Force. The prisoners and their lawyers at Guantanamo call it the “Extreme Repression Force.”
And basically what this is is a thug squad that is used to mercilessly punish prisoners who show the slightest bit of resistance or who do things that technically they’re not supposed to do, infractions like having two Styrofoam cups in their cell instead of one.
Guards will call in this goon squad. They come in with their Darth Vader outfits, and they literally gang-beat prisoners. There are five men, generally, that are sent in. Each of them is assigned to one body part of the prisoner: the head, the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg. They go in, and they hogtie the prisoner, sometimes leaving them hogtied for hours on end. They douse them with chemical agents. They have put their heads in toilets and flushed the toilets repeatedly. They have urinated on the heads of prisoners. They’ve squeezed their testicles in the course of restraining them. They’ve taken the feces from one prisoner and smeared it in the face of another prisoner.
And while Barack Obama, almost immediately upon taking office, issued an executive order saying he was going to close down Guantanamo within a year and that he was going to respect the Geneva Convention while his administration reviewed Guantanamo, this force has continued to operate and torture prisoners under the Obama administration.
In fact, in February of this year, about a month after Obama was inaugurated, there were sixteen prisoners on a hunger strike at Guantanamo. The Immediate Response—or Immediate Reaction Force was used to go in and violently shove massive tubes down their noses into their stomachs. And what the IRF teams, as they’re called—when they beat someone, it’s called IRF-ing, or to be IRF-ed up by these teams. They would use no anesthetics or any painkillers, shove this massive tube by force down their nose into their stomach and then yank it out. Some prisoners have described this as torture, torture, torture. And many have passed out from the sheer pain of this operation.
This force has received almost no scrutiny in the US Congress or the US media and operates at this moment.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you know about this?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I discovered these teams, because I’ve been covering the investigation being done by Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain into the Bush torture system. What’s interesting is that the most aggressive investigation at this point into the Bush war crimes is being done an ocean away in Madrid.
And I came across a story of a prisoner named Omar Deghayes, and he is one of the four people that is cited directly in the Spanish investigation as having been tortured by the United States. He’s originally Libyan, is a British resident and is one of the subjects of Baltasar Garzon’s investigation. Omar Deghayes was repeatedly IRF-ed, was repeatedly abused by one of these squads. And so, when I came across this reference to this team that he was referring to in his testimony, I started to look into it and realized that there has been a multi-year pattern of abuse on the part of this team.
And yet, the only time when it’s really made any kind of a flash in the corporate media was when a US soldier, a young guy named Sean Baker, who was a Gulf War vet, was participating in a training exercise in Guantanamo in January of 2003, where he was ordered, he says, by his superiors to dress up in an orange jumpsuit and play the part of a restive or combative detainee at Guantanamo. He was told that the team that was going to come in to handle him knew that he was a US soldier, knew that it was a training drill, and he was given a word, a codeword, “red,” that when he said it, the beating was supposed to stop, or the subduing of him was supposed to stop. When he was in the cell, the team comes in. He describes them just mercilessly beating him, and he’s yelling out “Red!” and they continue to beat him, even after he then said, “I’m a US soldier! I’m a US soldier!” He describes how one of his fellow soldiers continued to beat him.
That young man, Sean Baker, has permanent brain damage, suffers from multiple seizures, and had actually sued Rumsfeld and other officials because of his treatment. So you had a flash, a moment in time in 2005, where this case came to public light, because of this lawsuit brought by a US soldier. As Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert I talked to, said, you know, this is one US soldier who received this kind of treatment; imagine what happens to these detainees.
And let’s be clear here, you read the New York Times today, and you realize that despite Obama’s rhetoric about how he’s going to reform the military tribunal system, we understand that it’s all cosmetic changes. The fact is, torture continues at Guantanamo. The place has not shut down. Interestingly, Ari Fleischer, the former propaganda chief for the Bush administration, said the other day, quite clearly, that he doesn’t believe Obama, in any universe, is going to be able to shut down Guantanamo in a year.
So, Amy, as far as I can tell from this in-depth investigation, we see the status quo alive and well, and it’s very, very damaging to the US Constitution, international law and the lives of these prisoners who remain in legal limbo.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, this force, known as the Immediate Reaction Force, or Emergency Reaction Force, IRF or ERF, are they being filmed when they go into these cells?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, according to—I’ve been reading the now-declassified Standard Operating Procedures for Guantanamo that were written by Major General Geoffrey Miller, the man was—who is believed to have started all of this, in terms of the tactical level at Guantanamo, and then Gitmo-ized Abu Ghraib and other US prisons. After he left Guantanamo, he went elsewhere and brought these torture tactics with him.
In the Standard Operating Procedures that General Miller issued in 2003, he said that all of the IRF teams, when they would go in to restrain a prisoner, that they had to videotape the operation and that all of the members on a team, immediately following an incident where they had to restrain a prisoner, had to give sworn statements. Well, the fact is that we know that at least 500 hours of video were filmed. The ACLU tried a few years ago to get those videos, and they failed to do so. The government resisted it.
But Brandon Neely, who is an Army specialist that was on one of the first IRF teams—and I talk about his story in here—says that his experience with IRF teams is that either the video camera wouldn’t have any tape in it, wouldn’t be turned on, or it would be pointed in a direction that was nowhere near what was actually happening.
And I went through hundreds of pages of incident reports, where these military police officers, as part of the IRF teams, gave their sworn statements. They were so robotic in their uniformity. They all had the exact same phrases to describe operations that went off without a hitch, detainees were never hurt, procedures were followed. Case closed. End of the day, a few handwritten sentences, almost uniformly identical in each instance.
So, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights asks a very simple question: “Where are the tapes?” Presumably, if the Standard Operating Procedures were followed, we could see Omar Deghayes having his head repeatedly put in a toilet and flushed. We could see a prisoner, under the Obama administration, having his head urinated on after he was doused with chemicals by these forces. We could see the breaking of noses and other body parts on the part of prisoners. But in order to do that, we would have to have an administration that was going to come completely clean with the crimes of the past and make these videos available, along with the thousands of photos that show the systematic abuse of US prisoners.
But what we see at every turn is the Obama administration, backed up by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, backed up by the neoconservatives, backed up by the hawkish Republicans, on one side, and then the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and social justice and antiwar activists and human rights advocates, on the other side. This is a sad reality in America today, where you have a president that campaigned on a change that we can believe in continuing the most repressive policies of the Bush administration.
AMY GOODMAN: And medical personnel there?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Medical personnel not only were there during the operations of these IRF teams, particularly when they were force-feeding detainees by shoving these massive tubes down their noses, but in the case of Omar Deghayes, this prisoner that I’ve been referring to, he actually says that the medical personnel participated directly in his torture, would join in the torture with these IRF teams.
You, probably, Amy, on this show, have covered this issue of medical and psychological and psychiatric professionals participating in the US torture structure. Their role as part of these teams of repression should be thoroughly investigated, because this is an utter scandal and should be a scandal for every medical professional in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say Nancy Pelosi knew about the torture?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, the fact is that Nancy Pelosi was fumbling in her press conference through a statement that someone else clearly wrote for her. This is not some secret that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on this. In fact, the Washington Post reported on this in 2007, that she had been briefed and that other Democrats that were senior figures in the Democratic leadership, particularly on the Intelligence Committee, had received briefings about the tactics that were being used at Guantanamo.
I think what’s going to be important is that we know that some of the members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, who were briefed actually pushed for stronger tactics to be used during these briefings. I think one of the reasons why the Democrats are—the Democratic leadership is not pushing for a special independent prosecutor in this case is because if you actually examine the record, you will find that the Democrats funded these programs, supported these programs, and refused to speak up when it actually mattered. That’s the pattern we saw through the eight years of the Bush administration. Now that the Democrats are in power, you see Obama—the right wing tries to say flip-flopping—you see Obama upholding the consistent one-party system in this country when it comes to foreign policy.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
very few know how evil this country is. most will admit that we make some mistakes, or that some of our presidents have been bad, but fundamentally, they think we live in a great society. if only it were so.
two great men were born on this day. both ho chi minh and malcolm x were born on may 19th. both had short stints in boston. in fact, both worked in local hotels. malcolm was a petty hustler in his beantown days, ho a young scholar of distinction. they turned out to be two of the greats. millions of children went to school today, and i know that very few will learn about these men on this day. i suppose that proves just how great they were.
james moody could play the shit out of a sax.
one of our kids struggled with the mcas for close to four hours. and he's got to do it all over again starting tomorrow. hey, just leave these fucking kids alone! it's not like what we are teaching them means anything anyway.
there has to be more to life than rooting against the lakers and the celtics. at least i hope there is.
sometimes i wish that i cared about the things that everybody else cares about. but only for a few seconds.
i would like to move, but it requires moving.
the warm weather is here. time to brace myself for half nude mediocrities strutting all over town. at least i haven't seen an obese white girl with no figure yet. but i will. this ain't boston for nothing.
seeing the celtics lose almost proves that god exists. almost. then i listen to the guys on the other team, remember that they are all wildly overpaid, and get pissed all over again.
hey life ain't fun unless you're angry over meaningless shit.
two great men were born on this day. both ho chi minh and malcolm x were born on may 19th. both had short stints in boston. in fact, both worked in local hotels. malcolm was a petty hustler in his beantown days, ho a young scholar of distinction. they turned out to be two of the greats. millions of children went to school today, and i know that very few will learn about these men on this day. i suppose that proves just how great they were.
james moody could play the shit out of a sax.
one of our kids struggled with the mcas for close to four hours. and he's got to do it all over again starting tomorrow. hey, just leave these fucking kids alone! it's not like what we are teaching them means anything anyway.
there has to be more to life than rooting against the lakers and the celtics. at least i hope there is.
sometimes i wish that i cared about the things that everybody else cares about. but only for a few seconds.
i would like to move, but it requires moving.
the warm weather is here. time to brace myself for half nude mediocrities strutting all over town. at least i haven't seen an obese white girl with no figure yet. but i will. this ain't boston for nothing.
seeing the celtics lose almost proves that god exists. almost. then i listen to the guys on the other team, remember that they are all wildly overpaid, and get pissed all over again.
hey life ain't fun unless you're angry over meaningless shit.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
thoughts
miles really ruins his early 60's gigs with coltrane, stitt, mobley, and george coleman. of course, you're not allowed to say that.
the house just voted for 96 billion in additional war funding. remember the excitement over the democratic majorities in the house and senate, as well as a democratic president. tell it to the bombed.
not to go after miles again, but i often can't stand his live playing. too many mistakes, not enough chops. for sure, he was a studio guy. knew how to get it just right, but i don't think he's a monster improvisor, and since this is jazz we are talking about, that works against him big time. right now, i'm listening to this thing he did with stitt shortly after trane left the group. god, he sounds awful. cracked note after cracked note, and mushy speed. stitt kills him, as does his trio, but when you are the leader, you get credit for your group. hey, don't get me wrong, i dig miles. yes, kind of blue is an essential, as are several other things he did, but as time went on, his name carried him. people stopped trusting their ears, and started bull sucking him. "oh, if it's miles, it must be good." i hate that shit. it should come down to how good something is, and not who is doing it. you would think that the obscure dudes, many of whom could blow rings around miles, would have been bitter, but in fact, it was miles who was the bitter one. well, here's to louis smith and benny bailey, who are somewhere in heaven, having their laundry done by miles davis.
so, some torture photos have come out. it ain't pretty folks. fascist is not too strong a word. and yet, within our own minds, we remain perpetually innocent. just a few bad apples, or maybe it was all just stress. hey, support our boys. they are doing the best they can. for sure, these words have been spoken elsewhere, by far away lands we care not to be compared to. the fact is, torture is systemic in our society, as is war. it is not a matter of who wrote what memo, or what party is in power, or of bad apples. rather, it the fruit we harvest. all the apples are bad, for our actions are evil. you can not do an evil thing decently. you can't invade and bomb, and avoid war crimes, for invading and bombing is a war crime. in fact, it is the war crime, for it leads to all the other war crimes.
so, show all the pictures. each one gives a little hint to the totality of evil we collectively practice against the world. perhaps one day, we will be shamed by what we see.
perhaps.
the house just voted for 96 billion in additional war funding. remember the excitement over the democratic majorities in the house and senate, as well as a democratic president. tell it to the bombed.
not to go after miles again, but i often can't stand his live playing. too many mistakes, not enough chops. for sure, he was a studio guy. knew how to get it just right, but i don't think he's a monster improvisor, and since this is jazz we are talking about, that works against him big time. right now, i'm listening to this thing he did with stitt shortly after trane left the group. god, he sounds awful. cracked note after cracked note, and mushy speed. stitt kills him, as does his trio, but when you are the leader, you get credit for your group. hey, don't get me wrong, i dig miles. yes, kind of blue is an essential, as are several other things he did, but as time went on, his name carried him. people stopped trusting their ears, and started bull sucking him. "oh, if it's miles, it must be good." i hate that shit. it should come down to how good something is, and not who is doing it. you would think that the obscure dudes, many of whom could blow rings around miles, would have been bitter, but in fact, it was miles who was the bitter one. well, here's to louis smith and benny bailey, who are somewhere in heaven, having their laundry done by miles davis.
so, some torture photos have come out. it ain't pretty folks. fascist is not too strong a word. and yet, within our own minds, we remain perpetually innocent. just a few bad apples, or maybe it was all just stress. hey, support our boys. they are doing the best they can. for sure, these words have been spoken elsewhere, by far away lands we care not to be compared to. the fact is, torture is systemic in our society, as is war. it is not a matter of who wrote what memo, or what party is in power, or of bad apples. rather, it the fruit we harvest. all the apples are bad, for our actions are evil. you can not do an evil thing decently. you can't invade and bomb, and avoid war crimes, for invading and bombing is a war crime. in fact, it is the war crime, for it leads to all the other war crimes.
so, show all the pictures. each one gives a little hint to the totality of evil we collectively practice against the world. perhaps one day, we will be shamed by what we see.
perhaps.
Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off
From My Lai to Bala Baluk
By MIKE WHITNEY
Barack Obama is aggressively stepping up the war in Afghanistan. He's intensified the cross-border bombing of Pakistan and he is doubling the number of U.S. troops to 68,000 by 2010. He's also a strong proponent of pilotless drones even though hundreds of civilians have been killed in bombing raid blunders.
On May 4, 2009, 143 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Bala Baluk, a remote area south of Herat. Obama brushed off the incident with terse apology never intimating that the US policy for aerial bombardment would be reviewed to avoid future mishaps. Patrick Cockburn gave a summary of the incident:
I did not meet survivors but I did talk to a reliable witness, a radio reporter called Farooq Faizy, who had gone to Bala Baluk soon after the attack happened. He (had) some 70 or 80 photographs and they bore out the villagers' story: there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.
US military spokesmen denied the news reports and concocted a wacky story about Taliban militants rampaging through the village hurling grenades into buildings. It was a ridiculous narrative that no one believed. The facts have since been verified by senior government officials, high-ranking members of the Afghan military and representatives of the Red Cross. The United States military killed 143 unarmed villagers and then they tried to cover it up with a lie. None of the victims were fighters. After the bombing, the villagers loaded body parts onto carts and took them to the office of the regional governor who confirmed the deaths. The photos of grief-stricken Afghans burying their dead have been widely circulated on the Internet.
From Reuters:
Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies.
The list, obtained by Reuters, bears the endorsement of seven senior provincial and central government officials, including an Afghan two-star general who headed a task force dispatched by the government to investigate the incident.
Titled "list of the martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province", it includes the name, age and father's name of each alleged victim.
The youngest was listed as 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, son of Sayed Adam. Fifty-three victims were girls under the age of 18, and 40 were boys. Only 22 were men 18 or older. ("List of 140 Afghan Killed In US Attack Includes 93 Children", Reuters)
Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has acknowledged that 93 children were killed by American bombs.
Military operations in Afghanistan have increased under Obama especially in the south where the Taliban are most heavily concentrated. The fighting has spread into Pakistan where President Asif Ali Zardari has been pressured into deploying his troops the Swat Valley to fight militants despite growing public disapproval. Nearly 850,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last few weeks to seek shelter in the south. For the most part, the humanitarian crisis has gone unreported in the western media, but Obama knows what is going on and is sticking with the same policy. Hundreds of thousands of people are now living in tent cities without food or clean water because of the escalation in the violence. It's a disaster.
OBAMA PICKS A GENERAL: Enter the assassination squads
This week, General David McKiernan was replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. Here's how the Washington Post summarized McChrystal's qualifications for the job:
"McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer....
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.("High-value-target hunter takes on Afghan war" Washington Post)
Obama chose McChrystal because of his "black ops" pedigree, which suggests that the conflict in Afghanistan is about to take a very ugly turn. According to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, McChrystal ran the "executive assassination wing" of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC) The experts believe that he will breeze through congressional confirmation hearings because many Senators believe that his counterinsurgency theories helped the surge in Iraq to succeed. There's some truth to this, too. But it would be more accurate to say that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad helped to reduce the violence. That is the truth about the surge; it's a public relations moniker for ethnic cleansing.
McChrystal's appointment suggests that Obama supports the idea that hunter-killer units and targeted assassinations are an acceptable means of achieving US foreign policy objectives. Obama supporters should pay close attention; this is a continuation of the Rumsfeld policy with one slight difference, a more persuasive and charismatic pitchman promoting the policy. Other than that, there's no difference.
Obama knows of McChrystal's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama, just as he knows of his role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. None of this matters to Obama. What matters is winning; not principle, ideals, human rights or civilian casualties. Just winning.
FROM MY LAI TO BALA BALUK
On March 16, 1968, the US military was involved in a similar incident which soured the public on Vietnam and eventually helped bring the war to a close. Barack Obama was only seven years old when Charlie Company--led by platoon leader second Lieutenant William Calley--entered the small hamlet of My Lai and proceeded to slaughter 347 unarmed civilians. This is Sam Harris's account of what took place on that day 40 years ago:
"Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as they spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired on Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped woman and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disemboweled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant woman had there stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machined-gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed." (Sam Harris from his book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason")
The only difference between My Lai and Bala Baluk is the degree of savagery. In both cases the guilt can be traced directly back to the White House.
Obama believes that civilian casualties are an unavoidable part of achieving one's policy goals. The end justifies the means. He has strengthened the Bush policy, not repudiated it. So much for "change".
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
From My Lai to Bala Baluk
By MIKE WHITNEY
Barack Obama is aggressively stepping up the war in Afghanistan. He's intensified the cross-border bombing of Pakistan and he is doubling the number of U.S. troops to 68,000 by 2010. He's also a strong proponent of pilotless drones even though hundreds of civilians have been killed in bombing raid blunders.
On May 4, 2009, 143 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Bala Baluk, a remote area south of Herat. Obama brushed off the incident with terse apology never intimating that the US policy for aerial bombardment would be reviewed to avoid future mishaps. Patrick Cockburn gave a summary of the incident:
I did not meet survivors but I did talk to a reliable witness, a radio reporter called Farooq Faizy, who had gone to Bala Baluk soon after the attack happened. He (had) some 70 or 80 photographs and they bore out the villagers' story: there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.
US military spokesmen denied the news reports and concocted a wacky story about Taliban militants rampaging through the village hurling grenades into buildings. It was a ridiculous narrative that no one believed. The facts have since been verified by senior government officials, high-ranking members of the Afghan military and representatives of the Red Cross. The United States military killed 143 unarmed villagers and then they tried to cover it up with a lie. None of the victims were fighters. After the bombing, the villagers loaded body parts onto carts and took them to the office of the regional governor who confirmed the deaths. The photos of grief-stricken Afghans burying their dead have been widely circulated on the Internet.
From Reuters:
Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies.
The list, obtained by Reuters, bears the endorsement of seven senior provincial and central government officials, including an Afghan two-star general who headed a task force dispatched by the government to investigate the incident.
Titled "list of the martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province", it includes the name, age and father's name of each alleged victim.
The youngest was listed as 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, son of Sayed Adam. Fifty-three victims were girls under the age of 18, and 40 were boys. Only 22 were men 18 or older. ("List of 140 Afghan Killed In US Attack Includes 93 Children", Reuters)
Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has acknowledged that 93 children were killed by American bombs.
Military operations in Afghanistan have increased under Obama especially in the south where the Taliban are most heavily concentrated. The fighting has spread into Pakistan where President Asif Ali Zardari has been pressured into deploying his troops the Swat Valley to fight militants despite growing public disapproval. Nearly 850,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last few weeks to seek shelter in the south. For the most part, the humanitarian crisis has gone unreported in the western media, but Obama knows what is going on and is sticking with the same policy. Hundreds of thousands of people are now living in tent cities without food or clean water because of the escalation in the violence. It's a disaster.
OBAMA PICKS A GENERAL: Enter the assassination squads
This week, General David McKiernan was replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. Here's how the Washington Post summarized McChrystal's qualifications for the job:
"McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer....
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.("High-value-target hunter takes on Afghan war" Washington Post)
Obama chose McChrystal because of his "black ops" pedigree, which suggests that the conflict in Afghanistan is about to take a very ugly turn. According to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, McChrystal ran the "executive assassination wing" of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC) The experts believe that he will breeze through congressional confirmation hearings because many Senators believe that his counterinsurgency theories helped the surge in Iraq to succeed. There's some truth to this, too. But it would be more accurate to say that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad helped to reduce the violence. That is the truth about the surge; it's a public relations moniker for ethnic cleansing.
McChrystal's appointment suggests that Obama supports the idea that hunter-killer units and targeted assassinations are an acceptable means of achieving US foreign policy objectives. Obama supporters should pay close attention; this is a continuation of the Rumsfeld policy with one slight difference, a more persuasive and charismatic pitchman promoting the policy. Other than that, there's no difference.
Obama knows of McChrystal's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama, just as he knows of his role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. None of this matters to Obama. What matters is winning; not principle, ideals, human rights or civilian casualties. Just winning.
FROM MY LAI TO BALA BALUK
On March 16, 1968, the US military was involved in a similar incident which soured the public on Vietnam and eventually helped bring the war to a close. Barack Obama was only seven years old when Charlie Company--led by platoon leader second Lieutenant William Calley--entered the small hamlet of My Lai and proceeded to slaughter 347 unarmed civilians. This is Sam Harris's account of what took place on that day 40 years ago:
"Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as they spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired on Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped woman and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disemboweled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant woman had there stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machined-gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed." (Sam Harris from his book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason")
The only difference between My Lai and Bala Baluk is the degree of savagery. In both cases the guilt can be traced directly back to the White House.
Obama believes that civilian casualties are an unavoidable part of achieving one's policy goals. The end justifies the means. He has strengthened the Bush policy, not repudiated it. So much for "change".
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
free troy davis
Executions and the Advancing Police State
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis
By RON JACOBS
One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial.
This is the case of Troy Davis in one paragraph. The bulk of the prosecutor's evidence presented at Davis 1991 trial in the murder of an off-duty policeman in Georgia was based primarily on that of prosecution witnesses who later recanted their testimony. In addition, most of them have claimed repeatedly that they were pressured by police to point to Davis as the perpetrator. No murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. One of the two main witnesses who has not recanted was the original suspect in the crime.
Despite a bulk of new evidence, the state of Georgia has refused to grant a new trial. As recently as April 16th, 2009, Davis’ appeal for a new trial was rejected by a federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge was unsparing in her criticism of the Georgia's legal case and his death sentence. She wrote: "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional." Yet, the execution of Troy Davis looms in the distance.
Like almost every other case of this nature, the fundamental action that has kept Davis alive is a popular movement that spans the globe. From the streets of Atlanta to the chambers of the European Parliament, thousands have called for Davis's death sentence to be commuted, with many demanding a new trial based on the new evidence. I recently communicated with Marlene Martin, an organizer for the National Campaign to End the Death Penalty--one of the organizations spearheading the campaign around Troy. When I asked her about the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th, she wrote me this:
The coming global day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th--which also happens to be Malcolm X’s birthday--is really important. Troy Davis is alive today in spite of our legal system, not because of it. The fact that he hasn’t ever been allowed to present new and compelling evidence of his innocence to a jury--and could be executed without ever having the opportunity to do so--is mind-boggling.
The state of Georgia has already tried three times to kill Troy. They would rather kill him than admit wrongdoing. But they have been stopped in their tracks each and every time by the movement outside the courthouse, spearheaded by Troy’s sister Martina Correia. As a result of her efforts, and Amnesty International and many other organizations coming together to fight for Troy, people around the country and around the world know about his case. I get e-mails from all over -- England, Germany, France, New Zealand Canada--all people that support Troy.
One thing that’s clear in this fight is we can’t rely on the courts. We need to build for the day of action to be as big as it can be, and to keep organizing. Troy represents many, many others who are in prison today--too poor to afford good representation at trial, and a person of color.
Also at issue in this case is the entire question of the death penalty. The United States is one of the few nations in the so-called free world that continues to practice this barbaric form of justice. In addition, it also ranks near the top among nations that do execute some of their criminals. Add to that the well-documented racial disparity in these executions, especially when looking at the numbers of whites executed for killing blacks versus the number of blacks executed for killing whites and those executions seem even more barbaric. When one considers this, it becomes essential to challenge not only the execution of Troy Davis, but the political system that supports the practice of state-sanctioned murder. This challenge becomes even more necessary when that system also tortures those it has arrested in its "war on terror" and imprisons them indefinitely without trial. A land with such a system is closer to a police state than the land of the free. Unless those who live within its borders resist these authoritarian policies, there may come a time when such resistance will find them subject to them.
Not only is the movement to commute Troy Davis' execution and get him a new trial an effort to save a man's life, it is also part of an effort to prevent an increasingly authoritarian nation from becoming even more so. Please consider joining the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19, 2009.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis
By RON JACOBS
One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial.
This is the case of Troy Davis in one paragraph. The bulk of the prosecutor's evidence presented at Davis 1991 trial in the murder of an off-duty policeman in Georgia was based primarily on that of prosecution witnesses who later recanted their testimony. In addition, most of them have claimed repeatedly that they were pressured by police to point to Davis as the perpetrator. No murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. One of the two main witnesses who has not recanted was the original suspect in the crime.
Despite a bulk of new evidence, the state of Georgia has refused to grant a new trial. As recently as April 16th, 2009, Davis’ appeal for a new trial was rejected by a federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge was unsparing in her criticism of the Georgia's legal case and his death sentence. She wrote: "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional." Yet, the execution of Troy Davis looms in the distance.
Like almost every other case of this nature, the fundamental action that has kept Davis alive is a popular movement that spans the globe. From the streets of Atlanta to the chambers of the European Parliament, thousands have called for Davis's death sentence to be commuted, with many demanding a new trial based on the new evidence. I recently communicated with Marlene Martin, an organizer for the National Campaign to End the Death Penalty--one of the organizations spearheading the campaign around Troy. When I asked her about the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th, she wrote me this:
The coming global day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th--which also happens to be Malcolm X’s birthday--is really important. Troy Davis is alive today in spite of our legal system, not because of it. The fact that he hasn’t ever been allowed to present new and compelling evidence of his innocence to a jury--and could be executed without ever having the opportunity to do so--is mind-boggling.
The state of Georgia has already tried three times to kill Troy. They would rather kill him than admit wrongdoing. But they have been stopped in their tracks each and every time by the movement outside the courthouse, spearheaded by Troy’s sister Martina Correia. As a result of her efforts, and Amnesty International and many other organizations coming together to fight for Troy, people around the country and around the world know about his case. I get e-mails from all over -- England, Germany, France, New Zealand Canada--all people that support Troy.
One thing that’s clear in this fight is we can’t rely on the courts. We need to build for the day of action to be as big as it can be, and to keep organizing. Troy represents many, many others who are in prison today--too poor to afford good representation at trial, and a person of color.
Also at issue in this case is the entire question of the death penalty. The United States is one of the few nations in the so-called free world that continues to practice this barbaric form of justice. In addition, it also ranks near the top among nations that do execute some of their criminals. Add to that the well-documented racial disparity in these executions, especially when looking at the numbers of whites executed for killing blacks versus the number of blacks executed for killing whites and those executions seem even more barbaric. When one considers this, it becomes essential to challenge not only the execution of Troy Davis, but the political system that supports the practice of state-sanctioned murder. This challenge becomes even more necessary when that system also tortures those it has arrested in its "war on terror" and imprisons them indefinitely without trial. A land with such a system is closer to a police state than the land of the free. Unless those who live within its borders resist these authoritarian policies, there may come a time when such resistance will find them subject to them.
Not only is the movement to commute Troy Davis' execution and get him a new trial an effort to save a man's life, it is also part of an effort to prevent an increasingly authoritarian nation from becoming even more so. Please consider joining the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19, 2009.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown
Sexual Torture
By DAVID ROSEN
“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.
“Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody”
The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the “New York Review of Books.” These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls “suffocation by water”) and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
The media paid less attention to the host of what the ICRC calls the other “methods of ill-treatment.” The Senate report identifies these techniques as: use of military dogs, stress positions and physical training, sleep adjustment/sleep management, sensory deprivation and removal of clothing. The ICRC identifies them as: prolonged stress standing, beating by use of a collar, beating and kicking, confinement in a box, sleep deprivation and use of load music, exposure to cold temperature/cold water, prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles, threats, forced shaving, deprivation/restricted provision of solid food and prolonged nudity.
These reports, together with the recent release of Bush-administration “torture memos,” helped focus national attention on a shameful, if not illegal, aspect of mad king George’s War on Terror. However, these reports are “official” documents based on revelations of a very limited number of sources. The information gathered, while invaluable, is limited by these sources.
The limited sources limit the public’s knowledge of the full scope of the torture committed by American intelligence agents, military officers and private contractors. Focusing on the issue of sexual torture, which includes prolonged nudity, reveals what has been made public but also what has yet to become publicly acknowledged.
Failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of sexual torture, along with all the other “harsh” interrogation techniques, creates a sanitized, “official,” history. Americans will never know what torture was committed in their name, nor be able to hold accountable those who ordered and executed these actions unless they go beyond “official” sources.
* * *
The ICRC conducted interviews with fourteen “enemy combatants” from eight countries. The detainees were arrested over a nearly three-year period, from March 2002 through May 2005. Eleven of the detainees were subject to prolonged nudity “during detention and interrogation, ranging from several weeks continuously up to several months intermittently.”
The ICRC recounts what it calls the “alleged” experiences of seven detaineesm subject to prolonged nudity:
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – kept naked for one month in Afghanistan.
• Abu Zubaydah– kept naked for two-and-a-half weeks in Afghanistan after recovering at a Pakistan hospital; he reports subsequently being repeatedly provided with clothing and then stripped naked for weeks at a time.
• Walid Bin Attash – kept naked two weeks in Afghanistan and again for a month in a second but unknown detention facility.
• Encep Nuraman (aka Hambali) – kept naked for four or five days in Thailand and a week in Afghanistan, followed by intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
• Majid Khan – kept naked for three days in Afghanistan and seven days in his third place of detention.
• Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep – kept naked three to four days in Thailand and nine days in Afghanistan.
• Unnamed detainee – kept naked for two to three months in Afghanistan and then faced intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
The sources of these reports were interviews with the detainees.
The Senate report provides a far different assessment on what it calls “removal of clothing.” It makes clear that the use of prolonged nudity found strong support within the CIA and military as an interrogation technique. It reports that nudity was imported into Iraq, especially Abu Ghraib prison, from Afghanistan and GTMO.
It states that this technique served a number of critical interrogation purposes, including to “humiliate detainees,” to “renew ‘capture shock’ of detainees” and as an incentive for good behavior. It use was extensive, as indicated by two of the many officers interviewed. COL Jerry Philabaum, the Commander of the 320th MP, reports seeing “between 12-15 detainees naked in their own individual cells.” CPT Donald Reese, the Commander of the 372nd MP Company, acknowledged that prolonged nudity was “known to everyone” and it was “common practice to walk the tier and see detainees with clothing and bedding.” Other officers made similar statements.
Like the ICRC report, the Senate report draws extensively on interviews, but these interviews are with Army officers from the Military Police and intelligence. In addition, the Senate report draws on a number of publicly released military report, most notably by Major General George Fay, known as the Fay Report. One of its quotes is remarkably candid, perhaps more revealing than originally intended: detention created an “environment that would appear to condone depravity and degradation rather than humane treatment of detainees.” The report also makes a single passing reference to Major General Antonio Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib.
* * *
The first “enemy combatants” arrive at Guantánamo on January 11, 2002, nearly a year before Rumsfeld officially authorized the use of sexual torture. According to a CBS timeline, a “U.S. Air Force plane from Afghanistan touches down at Guantanamo carrying 20 prisoners, marking the start of the detention operation.” [CBS News Gitmo Timeline, August 24, 2004] In the Senate report, SMU [Special Mission Unit] TF [Task Force] Commander [name blacked out] states that when he “took command [of Guantánemo] he ‘discovered that some of the detainees were not allowed clothes’ as an interrogation technique [blacked out] said he terminated the practice in December 2003 or January 2004.”
The disclosures about prolonged nudity received little public discussion. Compared to the many far worse techniques employed, most notably “suffocation by water,” head beating, kicking, stress positions, uses of dogs and sleep deprivation, sexual torture seems rather modest. But its purpose was, along with the other techniques, clear. As the ICRC notes, it “was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and create a sense of futility … resulting in exhaustion, depersonalization and dehumanization.”
However, drawing upon other sources paints a different picture, one far less sanitized and much more sadistic. What is not known is whether these additional techniques were approved by U.S. military and civilian leaders or were the improvised actions of frontline officers and contractors? A few examples illustrate these techniques.
The best single source on the use of sexual torture at Abu Ghraib remains the Taguba report. In the report’s executive summary, the following "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” are identified as having been used at the prison:
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
* forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
* forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
* forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
* arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
* positioning a naked detainee on a MRE [meals ready to eat] Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
* placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture;
* sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Why did this part of the Taguba report not appear in the Senate report? Its absence speaks to the way official reports are sanitized and an “inside the Beltway” history is written. [see "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008]
The U.S. and international press revealed disturbing episodes of sexual terror used by American forces. For example, The Associated Press reported that a former inmate, Dhia al-Shweiri, was ordered by American soldiers to strip naked, bend over and place his hands on a wall; while not sodomized, he says he was humiliated: “We are men. It’s OK if they beat me,” al Shweiri said. “Beatings don’t hurt us; it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered.”
Scotland’s “Sunday Herald” reported that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming, … and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
London’s “Independent” reported on the experience of Hayder Sabbar Abd, immortalized as the man in the hood in infamous Abu Ghraib photo of Lynndie England. Abd alleges that he was ordered to masturbate as Ms. England “put her hands on her breasts," which he couldn’t; and to simulate fellatio with another prisoner, which he appears to have done.
The “Sydney Morning Herald” noted: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.”
* * *
Sexual torture served two purposes on those subjected to such abuse: to physically harm and to emotionally scar. It was intended to break male inmates. It sought to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loathe himself. Sexual torture attempted to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche.
With Obama’s election, the U.S. military has probably ceased employing “harsh interrogation techniques.” Unfortunately, given Obama’s pragmatism, the Congress’ complicity, the military’s bureaucratic zealotry and the CIA’s (and private contractors’) immorality, one can only wonder what would happen if another September 11th occurred.
The full scope of “harsh interrogation techniques” used during the War on Terror is unknown. Nor is it fully known who within the Bush administration approved the use of such technique, not who within the U.S. military and intelligence community (along with private contractors) used such techniques. Answers to these questions should be the first task of any “official” investigation of the War on Terror. And those undertaking the investigation should use a far wider assortment of sources than those deemed “official.” Only then will the American people understand what was done in their name and, hopefully, how to stop it from happening again.
David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” and can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com
Sexual Torture
By DAVID ROSEN
“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.
“Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody”
The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the “New York Review of Books.” These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls “suffocation by water”) and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
The media paid less attention to the host of what the ICRC calls the other “methods of ill-treatment.” The Senate report identifies these techniques as: use of military dogs, stress positions and physical training, sleep adjustment/sleep management, sensory deprivation and removal of clothing. The ICRC identifies them as: prolonged stress standing, beating by use of a collar, beating and kicking, confinement in a box, sleep deprivation and use of load music, exposure to cold temperature/cold water, prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles, threats, forced shaving, deprivation/restricted provision of solid food and prolonged nudity.
These reports, together with the recent release of Bush-administration “torture memos,” helped focus national attention on a shameful, if not illegal, aspect of mad king George’s War on Terror. However, these reports are “official” documents based on revelations of a very limited number of sources. The information gathered, while invaluable, is limited by these sources.
The limited sources limit the public’s knowledge of the full scope of the torture committed by American intelligence agents, military officers and private contractors. Focusing on the issue of sexual torture, which includes prolonged nudity, reveals what has been made public but also what has yet to become publicly acknowledged.
Failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of sexual torture, along with all the other “harsh” interrogation techniques, creates a sanitized, “official,” history. Americans will never know what torture was committed in their name, nor be able to hold accountable those who ordered and executed these actions unless they go beyond “official” sources.
* * *
The ICRC conducted interviews with fourteen “enemy combatants” from eight countries. The detainees were arrested over a nearly three-year period, from March 2002 through May 2005. Eleven of the detainees were subject to prolonged nudity “during detention and interrogation, ranging from several weeks continuously up to several months intermittently.”
The ICRC recounts what it calls the “alleged” experiences of seven detaineesm subject to prolonged nudity:
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – kept naked for one month in Afghanistan.
• Abu Zubaydah– kept naked for two-and-a-half weeks in Afghanistan after recovering at a Pakistan hospital; he reports subsequently being repeatedly provided with clothing and then stripped naked for weeks at a time.
• Walid Bin Attash – kept naked two weeks in Afghanistan and again for a month in a second but unknown detention facility.
• Encep Nuraman (aka Hambali) – kept naked for four or five days in Thailand and a week in Afghanistan, followed by intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
• Majid Khan – kept naked for three days in Afghanistan and seven days in his third place of detention.
• Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep – kept naked three to four days in Thailand and nine days in Afghanistan.
• Unnamed detainee – kept naked for two to three months in Afghanistan and then faced intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
The sources of these reports were interviews with the detainees.
The Senate report provides a far different assessment on what it calls “removal of clothing.” It makes clear that the use of prolonged nudity found strong support within the CIA and military as an interrogation technique. It reports that nudity was imported into Iraq, especially Abu Ghraib prison, from Afghanistan and GTMO.
It states that this technique served a number of critical interrogation purposes, including to “humiliate detainees,” to “renew ‘capture shock’ of detainees” and as an incentive for good behavior. It use was extensive, as indicated by two of the many officers interviewed. COL Jerry Philabaum, the Commander of the 320th MP, reports seeing “between 12-15 detainees naked in their own individual cells.” CPT Donald Reese, the Commander of the 372nd MP Company, acknowledged that prolonged nudity was “known to everyone” and it was “common practice to walk the tier and see detainees with clothing and bedding.” Other officers made similar statements.
Like the ICRC report, the Senate report draws extensively on interviews, but these interviews are with Army officers from the Military Police and intelligence. In addition, the Senate report draws on a number of publicly released military report, most notably by Major General George Fay, known as the Fay Report. One of its quotes is remarkably candid, perhaps more revealing than originally intended: detention created an “environment that would appear to condone depravity and degradation rather than humane treatment of detainees.” The report also makes a single passing reference to Major General Antonio Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib.
* * *
The first “enemy combatants” arrive at Guantánamo on January 11, 2002, nearly a year before Rumsfeld officially authorized the use of sexual torture. According to a CBS timeline, a “U.S. Air Force plane from Afghanistan touches down at Guantanamo carrying 20 prisoners, marking the start of the detention operation.” [CBS News Gitmo Timeline, August 24, 2004] In the Senate report, SMU [Special Mission Unit] TF [Task Force] Commander [name blacked out] states that when he “took command [of Guantánemo] he ‘discovered that some of the detainees were not allowed clothes’ as an interrogation technique [blacked out] said he terminated the practice in December 2003 or January 2004.”
The disclosures about prolonged nudity received little public discussion. Compared to the many far worse techniques employed, most notably “suffocation by water,” head beating, kicking, stress positions, uses of dogs and sleep deprivation, sexual torture seems rather modest. But its purpose was, along with the other techniques, clear. As the ICRC notes, it “was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and create a sense of futility … resulting in exhaustion, depersonalization and dehumanization.”
However, drawing upon other sources paints a different picture, one far less sanitized and much more sadistic. What is not known is whether these additional techniques were approved by U.S. military and civilian leaders or were the improvised actions of frontline officers and contractors? A few examples illustrate these techniques.
The best single source on the use of sexual torture at Abu Ghraib remains the Taguba report. In the report’s executive summary, the following "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” are identified as having been used at the prison:
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
* forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
* forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
* forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
* arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
* positioning a naked detainee on a MRE [meals ready to eat] Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
* placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture;
* sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Why did this part of the Taguba report not appear in the Senate report? Its absence speaks to the way official reports are sanitized and an “inside the Beltway” history is written. [see "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008]
The U.S. and international press revealed disturbing episodes of sexual terror used by American forces. For example, The Associated Press reported that a former inmate, Dhia al-Shweiri, was ordered by American soldiers to strip naked, bend over and place his hands on a wall; while not sodomized, he says he was humiliated: “We are men. It’s OK if they beat me,” al Shweiri said. “Beatings don’t hurt us; it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered.”
Scotland’s “Sunday Herald” reported that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming, … and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
London’s “Independent” reported on the experience of Hayder Sabbar Abd, immortalized as the man in the hood in infamous Abu Ghraib photo of Lynndie England. Abd alleges that he was ordered to masturbate as Ms. England “put her hands on her breasts," which he couldn’t; and to simulate fellatio with another prisoner, which he appears to have done.
The “Sydney Morning Herald” noted: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.”
* * *
Sexual torture served two purposes on those subjected to such abuse: to physically harm and to emotionally scar. It was intended to break male inmates. It sought to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loathe himself. Sexual torture attempted to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche.
With Obama’s election, the U.S. military has probably ceased employing “harsh interrogation techniques.” Unfortunately, given Obama’s pragmatism, the Congress’ complicity, the military’s bureaucratic zealotry and the CIA’s (and private contractors’) immorality, one can only wonder what would happen if another September 11th occurred.
The full scope of “harsh interrogation techniques” used during the War on Terror is unknown. Nor is it fully known who within the Bush administration approved the use of such technique, not who within the U.S. military and intelligence community (along with private contractors) used such techniques. Answers to these questions should be the first task of any “official” investigation of the War on Terror. And those undertaking the investigation should use a far wider assortment of sources than those deemed “official.” Only then will the American people understand what was done in their name and, hopefully, how to stop it from happening again.
David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” and can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com
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