Zangana, a former prisoner under the Baathist regime in Iraq, speaks out against the occupation and increasing violence in Iraq. She also warns that hundreds of Iraqi academics have been assassinated since the war began. [includes rush transcript]
We turn now to the war in Iraq. The latest bloodshed comes amid a spike of killings following the bombing of one of the holiest sites to Shiite Muslims. As many as 1,300 Iraqis were killed the week following the February 22nd bombing of the gold dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra. It marked one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S. invaded the country nearly three years ago.
Today we are going to look at the targeting of one group that has received little attention -- hundreds of Iraqi academics and scientists have been assassinated since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The exact figure of deaths is unknown; estimates range from about 300 to more than 1,000. Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana wrote in the Guardian last month that Baghdad universities alone have lost 80 members of their staffs. These figures do not include those who have survived assassination attempts.
Zangana writes there is a systematic campaign to assassinate Iraqis who speak out against the occupation.
Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi-born novelist and artist, and former prisoner of the Baathist regime.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Haifa Zangana writes there is a systematic campaign to assassinate Iraqis who speak out against the occupation. She joins us here in London. She was a prisoner under the Baath regime. She left Iraq in the 1970s and eventually came here and lives in Britain. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
HAIFA ZANGANA: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don't we start off by talking about this group of people that get very little attention?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, it started immediately after the occupation, and the main target used to be, then, scientists. And we believe that there was a list of scientists being handed over by the Baath regime under Saddam to the United Nations during the inspection period in Iraq, but we haven't got really to the point of comparing the names of the killed scientists immediately after the occupation with that list. But we are working on it.
The main problem is, of course, it's moved on to include academics and academics from wide-spectrum backgrounds, political backgrounds, and also various subjects, whether they are teaching English literature, Arabic poetry or Islamic studies. So it's covering all and didn't spare even women. We have four of our top law academics and other teaching other subjects being killed. And it is a systematic way. It's unlike the rest of the killing and kidnapping. Usually you'll be kidnapped in Iraq. There will be negotiations about your release. You pay the ransom, you'll be released or not released. So there is this whole process of it.
In case of academics, it is systematic in the way you are shot or assassinated in the streets, mostly, while you're leaving your university or going ahead to your house. And the shot is in the head, so there's no chance of survival. And we -- obviously, no one, none of those killings being investigated, whether by the interim government or the occupation forces. Also, I mean, the tragedy of the whole thing, in Iraq you cannot, because all occupation forces, plus diplomats, plus contractors, subcontractor, everybody involved with the occupation enjoy immunity, and we cannot prosecute them under Iraqi law or international law of that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have any idea who is doing it?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, I mean, if we go back to the beginning of the shooting, assassination of the scientists, the men that pointed -- Iraqis, if you ask any Iraqi, they will say, “Well, the Mossad were involved,” because those are scientists, and Israel at one point in the 1980s, they targeted the nuclear plant in Iraq, so it's connected within that. But the rest of the academics -- but we, I mean, we don't know exactly, because no investigation whatsoever.
People talk about it. People can really speculate about the killing or who’s -- but mainly, the main issue is: why are they targeted? We feel this is a kind of intimidating. What connect all of them, the main factor is they are people who spoke against occupation. They are outspoken against occupation. A few cases we know about, they were speaking on television, satellite Arab TV, condemning the occupation and also the interim government. So that could indicate, with the chaos taking place in Iraq at the moment, that could implicate Badr Brigade, for example, occupational forces themselves directly, if they don't like what they’ve been said, or anybody else.
The main issue is, we need an independent inquiry, independent questioning of what’s happening and whose responsibility is this in the end. This is a brain drain. This is going to affect future generations in Iraq, because we are losing our academics. Also, by this campaign of terror, we are sending people outside the country. They are escaping. Academics, teachers, consultants, they are escaping the country, leaving it. In fact, at the medical school in Baghdad University, and this is the oldest medical school in the whole Middle East, at the moment we have only two professors teaching, and they are based in Jordan. So they go back for exams time and they leave Baghdad, because of the lack of security. So what kind of level of qualifications are our doctors going to have under these circumstances?
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Haifa Zangana, born in Iraq, imprisoned in Iraq under the Baath regime, escaped, came to Britain, and is a fierce critic of the occupation and invasion of Iraq. You write regularly for the Guardian here in Britain; also Al-Quds Al-Arabi, you have a weekly column. What about the situation now? Are you seeing a civil war or something near to it?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, it is, yes. We were really refusing to admit this for a long time. We thinking that Iraqi people are solid enough not to be dragged into this mayhem of killing, but it is happening. It is happening, not on the level of our neighbors killing neighbors, no, but it seems also it’s kind of organized civil war. It's imposed civil war. It's almost similar to the timetable imposed by the occupation, the political process that there should be the writing of constitution at this time, there should be an election at that time, regardless of the priority of Iraqi people, because what is ignored from the beginning, from day one of the occupation or what's called liberation, Iraqi people and their priorities. So what's happening now, we’re almost living into imposed with a timetable of civil war. They've been banging from day one, like asking you, “What are you? A Sunni or a Shia?” I would not dream nowadays of even giving an interview on the BBC without being asked whether I’m a Sunni and a Shia. That’s never happened before occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, there's a sense, especially in the United States, maybe here as well and all over, there’s this discussion of sectarian violence, which gives us the sense of something that's gone on for centuries. It's sort of hopeless.
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, in Iraq we never had any civil war, not in the last 1,500 years. So this is a totally novel idea.
AMY GOODMAN: When you were growing up, did you know who was Sunni and who was Shia?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Not at all. I mean, one day I was arguing with a close friend, who I had been brought up with, and we were discussing -- he was defending the coalition now. And I said, “Why? Why are you doing this? What are you?” And apparently, he is a Christian. I didn't even know that. This is someone, a close friend for 30 years. We do not really discuss these things. It's not because we ignore it, no, but because we live together for such long time. The culture is one for the whole country.
And if you see, I mean, some of the prominent people who are against the occupation are either Christians, Assyrians, and some of the prominent people who supported the Saddam Hussein regime were either Christians, Assyrians or Kurds or all -- if we want, one has to say something about the previous regime. We have to admit that previous regime altogether persecuted Iraqi people equally, at various stages, regardless of this -- what kind of background or sect or religion or whatever. We never had that before.
But now, it is almost established as a daily fact. And, of course, the media is playing a very important role in that, in establishing it. They don't look -- I read the headline that Turkmani woman was killed by Sunnis. And you read into it, and you realize, well, this particular Turkmani woman, in fact, not being assassinated or shot because she was Turkmani; on the contrary, because she is working as interpreter for the American forces. So, this is a totally different story. And if you deal with it in this prospect, from this angle, it will be totally different than sectarian, but people choose now this manufactured labeling of Iraqis, and we are going through it.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the answer right now?
HAIFA ZANGANA: The answer is, as from the beginning, we should not have war. Also, now we have the war, we have the occupation, and we are asked to move on. Let's move on. Withdraw the troops. It is bad for the Americans. They are in a mess. It's bad for the American troops [inaudible] British.
AMY GOODMAN: The whole discussion in the United States right now is if the U.S. troops pull out, the U.S. and some British troops, that there will be full-scale civil war, that the troops are preventing that war.
HAIFA ZANGANA: Yeah, but that's -- I mean, we heard that from the beginning. They were threatening us with a civil war day after day after day. And the things are getting worse by the day. If we see just a slight improvement, they are welcome to stay. If we can only see an extension of, instead of one hour electricity per day, let's have three hours of electricity per day. They are welcome to stay. If we start drinking clean water rather than filthy water mixed with sewage, they are welcome to stay. If they are building our libraries, which have been burned and looted under their supervision, if they are building our museums, if they are helping to protect our archaeological sites -- we have 10,000 archeological sites in Iraq, none of them is protected; it’s been looted completely, they’re digging them and moving them outside the country -- if we see some troops, American or British, helping us, doing this, they are welcome to stay. They are our guests. But they are doing the opposite. They are really creating atmosphere of terror. The killing is continuing. They are a problem in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Haifa Zangana, what about the women in Iraq?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Women are abused. Women are really imprisoned in their houses, more or less, because it's not safe for them to go outside. Women used to work, doctors. Doctors are leaving now. In general, we have the general problems, which is the whole thing, regarding all Iraqis, and also because of their gender, they are targeted more than anybody else.
AMY GOODMAN: How does the situation compare to under the Saddam Hussein regime?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, let me just say one thing. I never thought I would live to hear some Iraqis regretting getting rid of Saddam Hussein. We are going through this. I've never thought I’ll live that day, because we struggled, we fought against Saddam's regime, continuously, all Iraqis did that.
AMY GOODMAN: You, yourself, were imprisoned under the Baath regime.
HAIFA ZANGANA: Yes, but I don't regret it, because I’m not living continuously there, but some people are that. See how we’re being reduced --
AMY GOODMAN: You don't regret that?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Not at all. Not at all. But that wasn't the way. You see, there were alternatives. There were other options. None of the -- either the British government or the U.S. administration looked into alternatives, looked into what Iraqi people really wanted. They confused the issue according to what they wanted. They confused the issue of getting rid of Saddam Hussein with occupation. Iraqis would not, would not accept occupation. If they have even -- if they only had the chance of looking at one page of Iraqi history, they would have realized that.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Saddam Hussein's trial that's going on now?
HAIFA ZANGANA: It's a farce. It's a complete farce. I think it's a mockery of Iraqi’s suffering and pains.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Because a trial should be a real legal trial, so you can see justice done. You don't make it into a farce, a laughable thing. Iraqis, they don't even watch it any more. They lost interest. They think, “What's going on? This is not really what justice should be done.” It should be a chance for people to look at their past, to understand their present, in order to make better future for us, not to repeat the cycle, the vicious cycle of torture, of imprisonment. It's not happening, because they have doubts about it now. This is orchestrated by the Americans. Some people even think, “Well, he's a hero,” they're standing, saying something good against the Americans. So the whole thing has been turned upside-down, a mockery of justice we are witnessing there.
AMY GOODMAN: Haifa Zangana, as we flew into London, there were protests and vigils. It was the 100th day that the four Christian Peacemaker Team members had been held, kidnapped in Iraq. Norman Kember is a British citizen. He's one of the four. And so, all the news one day was about him, with his friends speaking out. You've also written about them.
HAIFA ZANGANA: Yes. I think they were doing fantastic job there inside Iraq, and they were a group of people who, almost the last group of people staying there and working with the Iraqi people. In fact, the day they were kidnapped, they were collecting information regarding Iraqi detainees, and they were working on that list with some of the -- a woman organization called Iraqi Women Will, regarding Iraqi women detainees. They were working together on that. And immediately after they left her office, that organization's office, they were kidnapped.
So, why is that? I mean, I leave it to you to think why they’re being kidnapped. Are they really the kidnappers? Who are the kidnappers? Why the Iraqi interim government or the occupation forces doing something about them? No one knows. How come when the sister of the Ministry of the Interior was kidnapped, it took them a few days? Everybody knew about Baghdad. Baghdad, the whole city came to a standstill of looking for that lady, and she was released. And it’s good for her; she shouldn't be kidnapped in the first place. But they knew how to deal with the problem. Why are they not dealing with this problem?
AMY GOODMAN: And Jill Carroll, the American freelance journalist?
HAIFA ZANGANA: She -- I don't know. I don't know who is doing this and why, because we need journalists. We need independent journalists in Iraq. Everything going on, inside, the crimes, the killing, the slaughtering, going unreported at the moment. We are relying on the whole story coming out from here and there, and when Iraqis themselves talk about it or write about it, nobody believes them. They say, “Well, bring us figures and facts, and this and that.” We talked about Abu Ghraib prison one year, one year before it's being declared this is the story that's worth publishing in the western media. We were talking about torture, about people in prison. I wrote about it seven months before that.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the wife of the Prime Minister, an attorney herself, Cherie Booth, speaking out against torture this past week?
HAIFA ZANGANA: Well, that's good. Anyone can speak about torture, but are they doing anything about it? We have a saying: talking is cheap. It's free, actually. So you can talk forever. But what she is doing -- what is, in fact, Tony Blair's human rights [inaudible] for Iraq and [inaudible] is doing about torture in Iraq? Has she ever said anything about the use of phosphorus in Fallujah, the white phosphorus in Fallujah, about the MK-77, which is a new generation of napalm in Iraq, about the depleted uranium? Do you need -- why is it selective? Why human rights becoming a selective issue?
AMY GOODMAN: Haifa Zangana, you brought in a poem you wanted to end with.
HAIFA ZANGANA: Yes, this is a poem by a woman poet. Her name is Nedhal Abbas, and she's a mother of two. She wrote the poem immediately after the siege of Samarra. And Samarra, as we know recently, the al-Askari mosque in it, but last year there was the siege, where people were shot in the street by U.S. snipers, and during the siege, bodies were left in the streets and scattered. And, you know, in Islam, we have to bury our dead immediately, the same day or the day after. So people were – couldn’t even reach them, for the fear of their lives, being shot by the snipers. She is calling the city by its old name. It’s called “Sarre men ra’a,” and it means “a delight to the seer,” and she's talking about it. “Sarre men ra’a.”
On a Friday morning in Sarre men ra’a,
a young man lays in pieces,
torn apart by snipers’ fire.
A woman in a black abaya passes by,
holding her toddler by the hand.
The child stares at the remains.
At the hand open to the sky,
he reaches for a touch,
wondering,
could it be his father’s?
Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Haifa Zangana, thank you for joining us, novelist, artist, journalist, Iraqi, imprisoned there under the Baathist regime, fierce critic of the U.S. occupation and the invasion, and living now in Britain.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Defiling the Grave of an American Hero: The Censoring of Rachel Corrie by Jack Random
After all the outcry concerning the intolerance of the Islamic world in their impassioned response to the degrading cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed, where is the outrage in response to the silencing of Rachel Corrie by the New York Theater Workshop?
Is there a double standard in western values of free speech? You bet there is. The hypocrisy runs so deep that the vast majority of Americans does not know who Rachel Corrie is and, thanks to the self-imposed gag rule of cultural and media institutions, they never will.
In a year when Hollywood embraced such groundbreaking movies as Goodnight & Good Luck, Syriana, Trans America, Brokeback Mountain and Crash, a New York theater company cancelled a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie on the grounds that the public outcry would be unbearable.
The rationale is a lie on its face. As anyone in theater knows, controversy is manna from heaven. It was not public outcry that silenced the voice of a martyr; it was the censorship imposed by Israeli loyalists. It was the promise that generous public funding and contributions would suddenly come up short. It was intolerance for any view, any story, that does not portray Israel as the righteous party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Who was Rachel Corrie?
She was an all-American girl who was impassioned by the cause of the Palestinian people. In an act of civil disobedience, like the anonymous hero of Tiananmen Square, she stood before an Israeli bulldozer preparing to demolish a Palestinian neighborhood. She stood against injustice and oppression. She stood courageously for the values that all Americans cherish and she was crushed by the heavy and heartless hand of Israeli indifference.
She stood in the way of the “Road Map” to peace. She stood in the way of Ariel Sharon’s new deal for the Palestinians: let them eat dirt and suffer as we assassinate their leaders with American-made precision bombs and reduce their homes to rubble.
Rachel Corrie had the audacity to care and, beyond caring, to act on her convictions. Without regard to any judgments you may impose on the validity of her cause or means, Rachel Corrie was the essence of courage and heroism. She was what every mother’s child should endeavor to be. She chose the ground upon which she would make her stand and paid for it with her life.
Like Marla Ruzicka and so many others, most of whom will never have a public name, whose stories will never be told, Rachel Corrie will never speak for herself again. From the silence of her grave, she will never answer her detractors. She will never marry. She will never have children. She will never be elected to Congress. She will never know the joy and sorrow of a life fully lived.
The essential question of whether her life, her cause and her sacrifice were worthwhile and the greater question of whether or not she made a difference in this indifferent world can only be answered by the living.
If we do not possess the courage even to tell her story for fear of public outcry, then we are truly complicit in the actions of her murderers. We are enabling when all that we know and feel begs us for retribution.
Imagine what being crushed by a bulldozer would feel like. Linger on that gruesome deed and allow your tears to flow like a river of redemption. Even the vilest creature on earth would not deserve such a death.
Rachel Corrie was no such creature.
Let her voice be heard. Let her story be told.
Is there a double standard in western values of free speech? You bet there is. The hypocrisy runs so deep that the vast majority of Americans does not know who Rachel Corrie is and, thanks to the self-imposed gag rule of cultural and media institutions, they never will.
In a year when Hollywood embraced such groundbreaking movies as Goodnight & Good Luck, Syriana, Trans America, Brokeback Mountain and Crash, a New York theater company cancelled a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie on the grounds that the public outcry would be unbearable.
The rationale is a lie on its face. As anyone in theater knows, controversy is manna from heaven. It was not public outcry that silenced the voice of a martyr; it was the censorship imposed by Israeli loyalists. It was the promise that generous public funding and contributions would suddenly come up short. It was intolerance for any view, any story, that does not portray Israel as the righteous party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Who was Rachel Corrie?
She was an all-American girl who was impassioned by the cause of the Palestinian people. In an act of civil disobedience, like the anonymous hero of Tiananmen Square, she stood before an Israeli bulldozer preparing to demolish a Palestinian neighborhood. She stood against injustice and oppression. She stood courageously for the values that all Americans cherish and she was crushed by the heavy and heartless hand of Israeli indifference.
She stood in the way of the “Road Map” to peace. She stood in the way of Ariel Sharon’s new deal for the Palestinians: let them eat dirt and suffer as we assassinate their leaders with American-made precision bombs and reduce their homes to rubble.
Rachel Corrie had the audacity to care and, beyond caring, to act on her convictions. Without regard to any judgments you may impose on the validity of her cause or means, Rachel Corrie was the essence of courage and heroism. She was what every mother’s child should endeavor to be. She chose the ground upon which she would make her stand and paid for it with her life.
Like Marla Ruzicka and so many others, most of whom will never have a public name, whose stories will never be told, Rachel Corrie will never speak for herself again. From the silence of her grave, she will never answer her detractors. She will never marry. She will never have children. She will never be elected to Congress. She will never know the joy and sorrow of a life fully lived.
The essential question of whether her life, her cause and her sacrifice were worthwhile and the greater question of whether or not she made a difference in this indifferent world can only be answered by the living.
If we do not possess the courage even to tell her story for fear of public outcry, then we are truly complicit in the actions of her murderers. We are enabling when all that we know and feel begs us for retribution.
Imagine what being crushed by a bulldozer would feel like. Linger on that gruesome deed and allow your tears to flow like a river of redemption. Even the vilest creature on earth would not deserve such a death.
Rachel Corrie was no such creature.
Let her voice be heard. Let her story be told.
Enough of every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch D.C. Democrat By Molly Ivins
Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.
Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.
Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.
What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”
I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.
We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.
Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is “Who Let the Dogs In?”
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.
Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.
Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.
What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”
I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.
We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.
Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is “Who Let the Dogs In?”
Here’s what the Home of the Brave was up to...61 years ago today:
The attack area was 87.4% residential
Here's what the Home of the Brave was up to...61 years ago today:
Here's what the Home of the Brave was up to...61 years ago today:
Acting upon General George C. Marshall’s 1941 idea of torching the poorer areas of Japan’s cities, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, Curtis LeMay’s bombers laid siege on Tokyo. Tightly packed wooden buildings were assaulted by 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that a few explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died).
One Japanese doctor recalled "countless bodies" floating in the Sumida River. These bodies were "as black as charcoal" and indistinguishable as men or women. The total dead for one night was an estimated 85,000, with 40,000 injured and one million left homeless. This was only the first strike in a firebombing campaign that dropped 250 tons of bombs per square mile, destroying 40 percent of the surface area in 66 death-list cities (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The attack area was 87.4 percent residential.
It is believed that more people died from fire in a six-hour time period than ever before in the history of mankind. At ground zero, the temperature reached 1,800° Fahrenheit. Flames from the ensuing inferno were visible for 200 miles. Due to the intense heat, canals boiled over, metals melted, and human beings burst spontaneously into flames.
To read the complete article, please click here.
NDM: Non-Lethal Weapon May Spark Controversy
[COMMENT: Marine Col. Dave Karcher complains below about FOIA requests with JNWLD, and how the public finding out about JNLWD weapons might "kill the program". Well, killing a lot of JNLWD's hobbies is squarely in the public interest.
Karcher apparently has something against people that want to know about government development of illegal weapons, like JNLWD's biochemicals. And Karcher apparently doesn't like people wanting to know if the ADS is going to fry their private parts if they have coin in their pocket. Or their eyes if they have myopia. Or if the pulsed energy projectile is going to give them a heart attack, or be a great tool for torture.
FOIA is a declawed and toothless housecat of a law already, and Karcher's FOIA office at Quantico, headed by Mr, James Bennett, is frequently hostile to requesters. If Karcher is afraid of FOIA, then that says a lot about the lack of quality and, probably in some cases, the legality of JNLWD science and technology. - EH]
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2006/march/nonlethal.htm
No speakers elicited more questions from the audience at a recent directed energy conference than Stephanie Miller, a researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s human effects directorate.
The attendees, composed of military and industry directed energy experts, peppered her with questions about the active denial system, a non-lethal weapon that employs microwave millimeter technology to make human targets recoil from attack by causing debilitating pain.
Can the weapon cause cancer or severe burns? What happens to intoxicated individuals who can’t step out of the way? Can it stop a suicide bomber? Does it cause heart attacks? Has it been tested on tortoises and other animals?
The intense curiosity from experts in the field is perhaps a harbinger of things to come once the public learns of the weapon, which Pentagon officials have indicated may be deployed in Iraq within a year.
As for the animal question, Miller didn’t crack a smile or appear surprised. The effect of the weapon on tortoises is a serious consideration, she pointed out. Some may fall under the Endangered Species Act, and their well-being must be taken into account when tests in the New Mexico desert are conducted.
Concerning the weapon’s effects on humans, Miller said more than 500 military personnel have volunteered to stand in its path totaling more than 9,000 exposures.
The energy causes water molecules at one-third of a millimeter below the skin’s surface to vibrate, thus creating heat picked up by nerve endings. The sensation has been described as a bee sting all over the body. Miller said test subjects have a reflexive reaction to the pain, which causes them to immediately move out of its path. “Mind over matter doesn’t work particularly well in this case,” she said of potential suicide bombers.
For those who are incapacitated and can’t move away, the weapons will be set at a timed exposure, Miller said. No test subjects have ever been burned, and limits for eye safety have been tested.
"We know the safety margins for skin and eye injuries," she said.
The directorate has not tested for heart attacks, she said. The weapon does not react to the body that way, she insisted. Since the waves only penetrate one-third below the surface of the skin, they do not interact with internal organs. While victims of the Taser, another non-lethal tool used widely by law enforcement, have suffered heart failure, there is no evidence directly linking the intense pain to the weapon. Taser victims may have had drugs in their systems or other mitigating factors, she said.
As for cancer, the weapon uses non-ionizing radiation that does not have the ability to initiate the disease, Miller said.
Marine Corps Col. David Karcher, commander of the joint non-lethal weapons directorate, said Defense Department public affairs personnel have been ordered to take a “passive stance” on the active denial system, meaning they will answer questions on the weapon when asked, but are not actively touting its abilities.
The directorate nevertheless must brace itself for such questions from the public, and have clear answers on what the weapon can and can’t do, Karcher added. Opponents of non-lethal weapons may submit Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the results of bio-effects testing, and could start a campaign to shut programs down before they reach the battlefield.
"And that may kill the program," he warned.
Karcher apparently has something against people that want to know about government development of illegal weapons, like JNLWD's biochemicals. And Karcher apparently doesn't like people wanting to know if the ADS is going to fry their private parts if they have coin in their pocket. Or their eyes if they have myopia. Or if the pulsed energy projectile is going to give them a heart attack, or be a great tool for torture.
FOIA is a declawed and toothless housecat of a law already, and Karcher's FOIA office at Quantico, headed by Mr, James Bennett, is frequently hostile to requesters. If Karcher is afraid of FOIA, then that says a lot about the lack of quality and, probably in some cases, the legality of JNLWD science and technology. - EH]
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2006/march/nonlethal.htm
No speakers elicited more questions from the audience at a recent directed energy conference than Stephanie Miller, a researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s human effects directorate.
The attendees, composed of military and industry directed energy experts, peppered her with questions about the active denial system, a non-lethal weapon that employs microwave millimeter technology to make human targets recoil from attack by causing debilitating pain.
Can the weapon cause cancer or severe burns? What happens to intoxicated individuals who can’t step out of the way? Can it stop a suicide bomber? Does it cause heart attacks? Has it been tested on tortoises and other animals?
The intense curiosity from experts in the field is perhaps a harbinger of things to come once the public learns of the weapon, which Pentagon officials have indicated may be deployed in Iraq within a year.
As for the animal question, Miller didn’t crack a smile or appear surprised. The effect of the weapon on tortoises is a serious consideration, she pointed out. Some may fall under the Endangered Species Act, and their well-being must be taken into account when tests in the New Mexico desert are conducted.
Concerning the weapon’s effects on humans, Miller said more than 500 military personnel have volunteered to stand in its path totaling more than 9,000 exposures.
The energy causes water molecules at one-third of a millimeter below the skin’s surface to vibrate, thus creating heat picked up by nerve endings. The sensation has been described as a bee sting all over the body. Miller said test subjects have a reflexive reaction to the pain, which causes them to immediately move out of its path. “Mind over matter doesn’t work particularly well in this case,” she said of potential suicide bombers.
For those who are incapacitated and can’t move away, the weapons will be set at a timed exposure, Miller said. No test subjects have ever been burned, and limits for eye safety have been tested.
"We know the safety margins for skin and eye injuries," she said.
The directorate has not tested for heart attacks, she said. The weapon does not react to the body that way, she insisted. Since the waves only penetrate one-third below the surface of the skin, they do not interact with internal organs. While victims of the Taser, another non-lethal tool used widely by law enforcement, have suffered heart failure, there is no evidence directly linking the intense pain to the weapon. Taser victims may have had drugs in their systems or other mitigating factors, she said.
As for cancer, the weapon uses non-ionizing radiation that does not have the ability to initiate the disease, Miller said.
Marine Corps Col. David Karcher, commander of the joint non-lethal weapons directorate, said Defense Department public affairs personnel have been ordered to take a “passive stance” on the active denial system, meaning they will answer questions on the weapon when asked, but are not actively touting its abilities.
The directorate nevertheless must brace itself for such questions from the public, and have clear answers on what the weapon can and can’t do, Karcher added. Opponents of non-lethal weapons may submit Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the results of bio-effects testing, and could start a campaign to shut programs down before they reach the battlefield.
"And that may kill the program," he warned.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Gore Vidal: "This Place is Broken"
Last week, Gore Vidal spoke with Truthdig’s Sheerly Avni about a range of topics, including this year’s Oscar-nominated films (see Part I). He also commented at length about many of the real-life concerns these films attempt to address, including terrorism, war, propaganda movies, and, finally, the troubling relationship between the U.S. government and the American entertainment industry, which Vidal refers to as White House East and White House West.
Sheerly Avni: We were talking about “Munich,” “Paradise Now” earlier, and how both of those films faced the criticism that they were too soft on terrorists.
Gore Vidal: I wish the word terrorist would be erased from our language. All meaning has been pumped out of it by our rulers and their media who wish to demonize everyone or thing they dislike starting with Us The People. Certainly under the name of fighting terrorism we are conducting wars with everyone on Earth, shifting feverishly from old loyal employees like Noriega and Saddam Hussein to new servants to be abandoned in due course. We are treacherous friends. Meanwhile, thanks to all this maneuvering, more and more of our freedoms are being erased.
So you would be comfortable using the word fascism to describe the direction we are heading in now?
No, most uncomfortable. After all, the original fascist Mussolini could never explain just what fascism was in his native Italy. Let's say arbitrary, dictatorial government that says any law may be ignored if the leadership dislikes it in the interest of fighting terrorism which is... whatever the controlled media tells us that morning. Although the 9/11 bombings released all sorts of fascistic measures, as I listed in my "President Jonah" piece, the detonating trigger was not 9/11 but Oklahoma City. When the federal building was struck, the Clinton administration came up with an anti-terrorist Bill of Wrongs which is still at the heart of the USA Patriot Act and other curtailments of our liberties. And it is also clear that there is no terrorist army supported by an evil empire out there. Angry Muslims who have nothing to lose will always do some suicide bombing, to blow up our buildings and so forth, but with decent intelligence and a moderately competent government we can anticipate them and thwart them.
If I had been in charge of things at the time of 9/11, I would have called the police. You don't declare war on an innocent – two innocent countries – Afghanistan and Iraq that had nothing to do with September 11th. A bunch of crazy religious zealots from Saudi Arabia did it all, and I would go to Interpol. I'd say, "Arrest these guys," out of religious frenzy, they've just blown up a part of New York, a part of Washington. Arrest them, try them, do whatever you like with them, but get them.
Unfortunately we were waiting for an excuse to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and establish American bases up and down the Middle East, for all sorts of nefarious purposes, starting, dare I say?, with oil.
How far back does this "waiting" go?
The early terrorism legislation was cooked up by Janet Reno and the Justice Department under Clinton: as usual, a lone crazed killer, T. McVeigh, was found guilty. But it's my impression that there was a considerable conspiracy, and the FBI didn’t follow up. One newspaper editor, Joel Dyer, got hold of all the FBI interrogations of suspects who might have been involved in the blowing up of the federal building in Oklahoma City. They didn’t follow up on one of them.
I remember reading that you said it would have taken nine people to load the bomb in the truck.
Yes, this skinny little guy could not have loaded it, much less – have you ever driven as much explosives as he is supposed to have driven? A forensic expert in Ireland who had examined a lot of explosions found that the IRA was constantly blowing themselves up, they would put the bomb on a board across their lap, and then drive the car across bumpy roads, and the car would often explode. And all that would be left of the drivers would be the genitals, because they'd been covered by a board.
Everything else blew up, except that treasured part, which would be in the dust under the cars. It was a grimly funny report.
This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against, the Palestinian Oscar nominee, "Paradise Now," with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with "terrorists."
Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can't repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we've just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we're not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we're pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we've been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only "homeland security." But there's no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!
Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels....
Oh it's just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?
As far as the American media goes, though, you've spoken out strongly against The New York Times, but I’m thinking now of a Bush-voting friend of mine who gets most of his information from Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. The reason he won't read The New York Times is that he thinks it's a left-wing mouthpiece.
Ignorance is an epidemic in our country, and it's kind of virulent. No, they don't have any information, they don't have access to it, and the newspaper they like to hate, they might very well hate for other reasons if they had any other reasons, but they don't have any. They have no evidence.
Or if they’re told about the lies of Judith Miller—it would take you 10 years to explain who she was and how she got to tell lies. And what the lies were about. There's no such time for us. By the time you are grown and able to read The New York Times without moving your lips, you've been had.
So how can the media get to my red-state friend?
I don't think you can get to him. You can get to him if something blows up somewhere--he certainly grasps that. I think what's most apt to be getting to him these days is the firing of people at Ford, and General Motors, and people being out of work. He's no fool when it comes to his own welfare. If he sees that jobs are drying up, he may be inclined to think "well, we'd better get another war" because he's learned from experience that when we have a war we have full employment....
In 1940 the Depression had returned. It had not been defeated in '33 by Roosevelt: alas, it was back, so Roosevelt put 8 billion dollars into defense to build up particularly our air force, and we had full employment for the first time in 50 years. By the time Truman got to be president we were totally militarized, which was a very bad thing for us, but he had thought it was for a good reason. I mean, he feared, as did Dean Acheson and the others, that we would slip back into the Depression unless we had all this fueling, with federal money, of the military-industrial complex, as General Eisenhower so nicely advised us. Having served it all of his life, so he knew what he was talking about.
And the need for war now is systemic. There's no going back. You can't just say OK, we're just stopping and we’re going to cut down the Pentagon budget by 50%, we'll build some hospitals, we'll do this, we'll actually try to educate people.
[If you do] you’ll find a huge movement against it. Look, there are all those enemies out there: The Mexicans are armed with anthrax, and they’re entering El Paso even as we speak though hidden tunnels. Isn't that good for conspiracy theorists? Those tunnels are great symbols.
And then there are the Canadians . Who knows what they'll do to us from up north!
[sotto voce] They’re the most vicious of all, because they pretend to be quiet and orderly.
Altogether, this is not a very optimistic prognosis.
Well, I'm not very optimistic. This place is broken. It's going to take a generation to repair what's been done to the Bill of Rights, what has been done to the legal system.
Meanwhile, they’ll get a chance to add a couple more Supreme Court justices giving us, for a generation, a very, very right-wing interpretation of our liberties, because they don't like them.
Quite openly they don’t like the freedoms we have, particularly freedom of speech, so they classify it – Top Secret. Don't speak, whisper.
What will it take?
Organization, there will be quite a few demagogues who will say let's burn Lawrence, Kan., like Quantrill, but there will be others, like Huey Long: Every Man a King. Make the Standard Oil pay—which is what he did in Louisiana. Built Tulane, built hospitals, siphoned all that money right into the state so everyone could benefit.
Roosevelt was scared to death of him in 1936, because Huey was going to run on a third ticket. And he could have denied Roosevelt a second term, and Huey's plan was that he himself would be—in 1940—he would be the Democratic nominee and Roosevelt would be finished. And then we would get Huey Longism, which was true populism. The money was going to go to the people for the things that would make the people's lives better. Then he was killed in the state capitol at Baton Rouge, by a crazy MD, a doctor, who wasn't political at all.
Then there were rumors that Roosevelt had hired people to kill him. Seems to me a little far-fetched since I'm pro-Roosevelt.
FDR gave a presidential address from the Academy Awards thanking them for being so patriotic. How much has Hollywood changed since you first started working there, in terms of its relationship to the government?
The change had started much earlier than Roosevelt. The change began with Woodrow Wilson. And Wilson.... the whole country did not want to go to war in Europe, nor did we care about whether Germany organized Europe or whether France organized Europe. It was not a matter of concern to the average American. Nor should it have been. There was no Hitler in Germany. Those days, there was the Kaiser, he was no worse than the French leaders, so it was just a continuation of that long war that had gone on and off and on for centuries between [the] French and Germany. Who's the heir to Charlemagne? That's what it was about.
Wilson wanted to go to the war very early, and the American people didn't. So he found a great public relations man called George Creel.... And George Creel, he sent out to Hollywood to get people to make anti-German movies. So we had nothing but blind nuns being raped by German soldiers. "The Huns are coming! The Huns are coming!" A lot of those movies were made, and then others to show how great the British were, how great the French were. And Wilson, he was shameless; he went so far as to put himself into a number of movies.
That’s how it all started, the marriage between Washington and Hollywood. And I remember when I was first under contract to MGM, in about '54, I had nothing but deja vu every time I looked around the Thalberg Building. I said, "What does this remind me of?" These little offices, these whitewashed walls and powerful producers on every other floor, talented people like Scott Fitzgerald working in little cubbyholes....
And I said, "This is the White House. This is the White House West, the Thalberg Building. And the White House itself is the Thalberg Building East. And they're bound to marry.
With an oligarchy bureau chief on each side.
Yes, and George Creel was the bridge.
How was that marriage going in the '60s?
In the '60s, well, it got a big boost when Jack got to be president. Everybody out here was very pro-Kennedy. So it looked like a new generation had picked up the torch, and would "Bear any burden" – a pretty terrible inaugural speech, when you think about it. It was sort of a period of nostalgia: "Since You Went Away," "Best Years of Our Lives," it was putting a golden haze over WWII and perhaps over Korea, which had been a total mess. It was getting us comfortable and relaxed, homebodies at last, but really once again, to march and follow the flag, wherever it might lead.
That's what Kennedy's speech was about: We will bear any burden. To which the answer is, well, why? We’re not in charge of the world. There are a lot of places that we have no business bearing any other burden.
So does the marriage ever get rocky? In the '70s when you have start having these more acerbic films, you have people like Robert Altman....
Oh yes, and as Vietnam got worse, that was what the '70s were about, and the movies began to push back, and you have Altman doing it with satire wonderfully well, and quite a few others making their contributions, showing that war is hell... not too much picking of sides either.
Woodrow Wilson would have seen to it that we did.
And then we have Reagan....
"It's morning in America," he said – just as night fell.
And Clinton, the most telegenic president we’ve ever had.
Probably the most intelligent one we've ever had. It does not necessarily make him the very best, but certainly he was the only one who understood economics and could get up and explain it to the public--for example his first State of the Union. The teleprompter broke down, he did the entire speech from memory; now that's over two hours of nothing but statistics and analysis. It was a brilliant coup of memory and showed that he thoroughly understood what he was talking about, he wasn't reading.
What were some of his big errors?
Well, ending welfare as we have known it brought on disastrous effects. The business about "don’t ask, don't tell," whatever that was about. People who were interested in same sex in the services, so the officers were not supposed to ask questions and they weren't supposed to give answers. This proved to be totally disastrous. And still is, to the extent that it's enforced.
If Washington West is Democrat and liberal and Washington East is Republican, who gets custody of how the nation thinks?
Hollywood won't. Washington East picks up all the marbles: They have the Congress, they have the courts, and of course they have the executives.
They also have the Christian right, making advances in Hollywood. What about that?
Oh they all get locked up as rapists sooner or later. [chuckles]
Sheerly Avni: We were talking about “Munich,” “Paradise Now” earlier, and how both of those films faced the criticism that they were too soft on terrorists.
Gore Vidal: I wish the word terrorist would be erased from our language. All meaning has been pumped out of it by our rulers and their media who wish to demonize everyone or thing they dislike starting with Us The People. Certainly under the name of fighting terrorism we are conducting wars with everyone on Earth, shifting feverishly from old loyal employees like Noriega and Saddam Hussein to new servants to be abandoned in due course. We are treacherous friends. Meanwhile, thanks to all this maneuvering, more and more of our freedoms are being erased.
So you would be comfortable using the word fascism to describe the direction we are heading in now?
No, most uncomfortable. After all, the original fascist Mussolini could never explain just what fascism was in his native Italy. Let's say arbitrary, dictatorial government that says any law may be ignored if the leadership dislikes it in the interest of fighting terrorism which is... whatever the controlled media tells us that morning. Although the 9/11 bombings released all sorts of fascistic measures, as I listed in my "President Jonah" piece, the detonating trigger was not 9/11 but Oklahoma City. When the federal building was struck, the Clinton administration came up with an anti-terrorist Bill of Wrongs which is still at the heart of the USA Patriot Act and other curtailments of our liberties. And it is also clear that there is no terrorist army supported by an evil empire out there. Angry Muslims who have nothing to lose will always do some suicide bombing, to blow up our buildings and so forth, but with decent intelligence and a moderately competent government we can anticipate them and thwart them.
If I had been in charge of things at the time of 9/11, I would have called the police. You don't declare war on an innocent – two innocent countries – Afghanistan and Iraq that had nothing to do with September 11th. A bunch of crazy religious zealots from Saudi Arabia did it all, and I would go to Interpol. I'd say, "Arrest these guys," out of religious frenzy, they've just blown up a part of New York, a part of Washington. Arrest them, try them, do whatever you like with them, but get them.
Unfortunately we were waiting for an excuse to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and establish American bases up and down the Middle East, for all sorts of nefarious purposes, starting, dare I say?, with oil.
How far back does this "waiting" go?
The early terrorism legislation was cooked up by Janet Reno and the Justice Department under Clinton: as usual, a lone crazed killer, T. McVeigh, was found guilty. But it's my impression that there was a considerable conspiracy, and the FBI didn’t follow up. One newspaper editor, Joel Dyer, got hold of all the FBI interrogations of suspects who might have been involved in the blowing up of the federal building in Oklahoma City. They didn’t follow up on one of them.
I remember reading that you said it would have taken nine people to load the bomb in the truck.
Yes, this skinny little guy could not have loaded it, much less – have you ever driven as much explosives as he is supposed to have driven? A forensic expert in Ireland who had examined a lot of explosions found that the IRA was constantly blowing themselves up, they would put the bomb on a board across their lap, and then drive the car across bumpy roads, and the car would often explode. And all that would be left of the drivers would be the genitals, because they'd been covered by a board.
Everything else blew up, except that treasured part, which would be in the dust under the cars. It was a grimly funny report.
This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against, the Palestinian Oscar nominee, "Paradise Now," with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with "terrorists."
Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can't repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we've just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we're not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we're pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we've been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only "homeland security." But there's no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!
Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels....
Oh it's just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?
As far as the American media goes, though, you've spoken out strongly against The New York Times, but I’m thinking now of a Bush-voting friend of mine who gets most of his information from Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. The reason he won't read The New York Times is that he thinks it's a left-wing mouthpiece.
Ignorance is an epidemic in our country, and it's kind of virulent. No, they don't have any information, they don't have access to it, and the newspaper they like to hate, they might very well hate for other reasons if they had any other reasons, but they don't have any. They have no evidence.
Or if they’re told about the lies of Judith Miller—it would take you 10 years to explain who she was and how she got to tell lies. And what the lies were about. There's no such time for us. By the time you are grown and able to read The New York Times without moving your lips, you've been had.
So how can the media get to my red-state friend?
I don't think you can get to him. You can get to him if something blows up somewhere--he certainly grasps that. I think what's most apt to be getting to him these days is the firing of people at Ford, and General Motors, and people being out of work. He's no fool when it comes to his own welfare. If he sees that jobs are drying up, he may be inclined to think "well, we'd better get another war" because he's learned from experience that when we have a war we have full employment....
In 1940 the Depression had returned. It had not been defeated in '33 by Roosevelt: alas, it was back, so Roosevelt put 8 billion dollars into defense to build up particularly our air force, and we had full employment for the first time in 50 years. By the time Truman got to be president we were totally militarized, which was a very bad thing for us, but he had thought it was for a good reason. I mean, he feared, as did Dean Acheson and the others, that we would slip back into the Depression unless we had all this fueling, with federal money, of the military-industrial complex, as General Eisenhower so nicely advised us. Having served it all of his life, so he knew what he was talking about.
And the need for war now is systemic. There's no going back. You can't just say OK, we're just stopping and we’re going to cut down the Pentagon budget by 50%, we'll build some hospitals, we'll do this, we'll actually try to educate people.
[If you do] you’ll find a huge movement against it. Look, there are all those enemies out there: The Mexicans are armed with anthrax, and they’re entering El Paso even as we speak though hidden tunnels. Isn't that good for conspiracy theorists? Those tunnels are great symbols.
And then there are the Canadians . Who knows what they'll do to us from up north!
[sotto voce] They’re the most vicious of all, because they pretend to be quiet and orderly.
Altogether, this is not a very optimistic prognosis.
Well, I'm not very optimistic. This place is broken. It's going to take a generation to repair what's been done to the Bill of Rights, what has been done to the legal system.
Meanwhile, they’ll get a chance to add a couple more Supreme Court justices giving us, for a generation, a very, very right-wing interpretation of our liberties, because they don't like them.
Quite openly they don’t like the freedoms we have, particularly freedom of speech, so they classify it – Top Secret. Don't speak, whisper.
What will it take?
Organization, there will be quite a few demagogues who will say let's burn Lawrence, Kan., like Quantrill, but there will be others, like Huey Long: Every Man a King. Make the Standard Oil pay—which is what he did in Louisiana. Built Tulane, built hospitals, siphoned all that money right into the state so everyone could benefit.
Roosevelt was scared to death of him in 1936, because Huey was going to run on a third ticket. And he could have denied Roosevelt a second term, and Huey's plan was that he himself would be—in 1940—he would be the Democratic nominee and Roosevelt would be finished. And then we would get Huey Longism, which was true populism. The money was going to go to the people for the things that would make the people's lives better. Then he was killed in the state capitol at Baton Rouge, by a crazy MD, a doctor, who wasn't political at all.
Then there were rumors that Roosevelt had hired people to kill him. Seems to me a little far-fetched since I'm pro-Roosevelt.
FDR gave a presidential address from the Academy Awards thanking them for being so patriotic. How much has Hollywood changed since you first started working there, in terms of its relationship to the government?
The change had started much earlier than Roosevelt. The change began with Woodrow Wilson. And Wilson.... the whole country did not want to go to war in Europe, nor did we care about whether Germany organized Europe or whether France organized Europe. It was not a matter of concern to the average American. Nor should it have been. There was no Hitler in Germany. Those days, there was the Kaiser, he was no worse than the French leaders, so it was just a continuation of that long war that had gone on and off and on for centuries between [the] French and Germany. Who's the heir to Charlemagne? That's what it was about.
Wilson wanted to go to the war very early, and the American people didn't. So he found a great public relations man called George Creel.... And George Creel, he sent out to Hollywood to get people to make anti-German movies. So we had nothing but blind nuns being raped by German soldiers. "The Huns are coming! The Huns are coming!" A lot of those movies were made, and then others to show how great the British were, how great the French were. And Wilson, he was shameless; he went so far as to put himself into a number of movies.
That’s how it all started, the marriage between Washington and Hollywood. And I remember when I was first under contract to MGM, in about '54, I had nothing but deja vu every time I looked around the Thalberg Building. I said, "What does this remind me of?" These little offices, these whitewashed walls and powerful producers on every other floor, talented people like Scott Fitzgerald working in little cubbyholes....
And I said, "This is the White House. This is the White House West, the Thalberg Building. And the White House itself is the Thalberg Building East. And they're bound to marry.
With an oligarchy bureau chief on each side.
Yes, and George Creel was the bridge.
How was that marriage going in the '60s?
In the '60s, well, it got a big boost when Jack got to be president. Everybody out here was very pro-Kennedy. So it looked like a new generation had picked up the torch, and would "Bear any burden" – a pretty terrible inaugural speech, when you think about it. It was sort of a period of nostalgia: "Since You Went Away," "Best Years of Our Lives," it was putting a golden haze over WWII and perhaps over Korea, which had been a total mess. It was getting us comfortable and relaxed, homebodies at last, but really once again, to march and follow the flag, wherever it might lead.
That's what Kennedy's speech was about: We will bear any burden. To which the answer is, well, why? We’re not in charge of the world. There are a lot of places that we have no business bearing any other burden.
So does the marriage ever get rocky? In the '70s when you have start having these more acerbic films, you have people like Robert Altman....
Oh yes, and as Vietnam got worse, that was what the '70s were about, and the movies began to push back, and you have Altman doing it with satire wonderfully well, and quite a few others making their contributions, showing that war is hell... not too much picking of sides either.
Woodrow Wilson would have seen to it that we did.
And then we have Reagan....
"It's morning in America," he said – just as night fell.
And Clinton, the most telegenic president we’ve ever had.
Probably the most intelligent one we've ever had. It does not necessarily make him the very best, but certainly he was the only one who understood economics and could get up and explain it to the public--for example his first State of the Union. The teleprompter broke down, he did the entire speech from memory; now that's over two hours of nothing but statistics and analysis. It was a brilliant coup of memory and showed that he thoroughly understood what he was talking about, he wasn't reading.
What were some of his big errors?
Well, ending welfare as we have known it brought on disastrous effects. The business about "don’t ask, don't tell," whatever that was about. People who were interested in same sex in the services, so the officers were not supposed to ask questions and they weren't supposed to give answers. This proved to be totally disastrous. And still is, to the extent that it's enforced.
If Washington West is Democrat and liberal and Washington East is Republican, who gets custody of how the nation thinks?
Hollywood won't. Washington East picks up all the marbles: They have the Congress, they have the courts, and of course they have the executives.
They also have the Christian right, making advances in Hollywood. What about that?
Oh they all get locked up as rapists sooner or later. [chuckles]
Bush's death squads and assassins to be posted to embassies around the world
Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence 07 Mar 2006 The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops [Bush's death squads] in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.
Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence
The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.
Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf.
Officials said small groups of Special Operations personnel, sometimes just one or two at a time, have been sent to more than a dozen embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. These are regions where terrorists are thought to be operating, planning attacks, raising money or seeking safe haven.
Their assignment is to gather information to assist in planning counterterrorism missions, and to help local militaries conduct counterterrorism missions of their own, officials said.
International Women's Day - This is your life (if you are a woman)
This is your life (if you are a woman)
1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women
A baby girl born in the UK is likely to live to 81 - but if she is born in Swaziland, she is likely to die at 39
70% of the 1.2 bn people living in poverty are women and children
21% of the world's managers are female
62% of unpaid family workers are female
9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women
Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80
£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector
85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.
700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)
Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men
Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men
67% of all illiterate adults are women
1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)
1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)
In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms
In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies
12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)
Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Monsters: Dick Cheney and O.J. Simpson
Oh, big surprise. Dick Cheney, according to a CBS poll, is less popular than the wife-beating murderer O.J. Simpson, convicted in civil court in 1997. In fact, Cheney is several times more murderous and infinitely more dangerous than Simpson, although Dick is careful to not get any blood spattered on his expensive suit. “Michael Jackson, who was alleged of sexually harassing an underage boy, and American football player O.J. Simpson, who caused a huge clamor for being suspected of murdering his wife in 1994, each maintained 25 percent and 29 percent favorable impression rates, respectively,” while Cheney came in at 18 percent. The Washington Post “pointed out that even vice president Spiro Agnew during the Nixon presidency who resigned due to tax evasion allegations still maintained a 45 percent support rate right until he resigned in 1973.”
No specific reason for Cheney’s unpopularity is cited in the article. Maybe it has to do with Cheney’s scowl, his propensity to swear at critics, or his drunken shooting of a rich fellow hunter.
Most Americans, however, are only vaguely aware of Cheney’s massive crimes against humanity, rarely put into context by the corporate media. Cheney is a vicious repeat offender, beginning with his oversight of the 43-day bombing campaign against Iraq in the summer of 1991. As a Harvard “study team had reported … the attack on Iraqi electrical, water, and sewage treatment systems,” engineered by Cheney as Bush’s Secretary of Defense (or rather Offense), was responsible for killing “thousands of civilians, especially the most vulnerable—children, the elderly, the sick,” as Robert Jensen writes. Cheney, not much different than a garden variety serial murderer, told the corporate media that “if I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing,” as Ted Bundy probably would if he was still on the loose. Of course, unlike Ted Bundy, Cheney has not personally engaged in murder, but then Hitler and Charlie Manson didn’t either.
“Cheney has never repudiated this comment, never expressed contrition for the deaths of innocents that he had to have known would result from policies he helped shape and implement,” Jensen notes. “But instead of being challenged for defending the targeting of civilians, Cheney is being heralded as a politician with ‘principles’ willing to stand by his ‘convictions,’” that is to say his conviction that he is above the law (specifically, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War).
Cheney is equivalent to the Marquis de Sade, the French aristocrat, imprisoned in the Bastille in Paris for his “dissolute imagination,” including fantasizing beating a prostitute with a red hot cat-o-nine-tails and various “blasphemous impieties.”
Cheney, according to a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, “should face war crimes charges” for his support of torturing dirt farmers and taxi drivers kidnapped in various Muslim countries and imprisoned in Guantánamo, Bagram, the “prison of darkness” in Kabul, and various CIA dungeons in Poland and Romania, the latter documented by the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
Last October, “Mr. Cheney [asked] Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture,” opined the Washington Post. “It’s not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration’s decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military.”
And then, of course, Cheney was the prime mover behind Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He repeatedly lied about Saddam’s illusory weapons of mass destruction, whole cloth fantasies dreamed up by the Straussian neocon Office of Special Plans. Cheney personally browbeat CIA analysts into adopting his lies about Iraq and WMD, and attempted to link “al-Qaeda” with Saddam (and then lied, insisting he never made this claim). In other words, in addition to getting off on mass murder and torture, Cheney is a pathological liar (mental health professionals claim pathological liars share deviant behavior such as inappropriate aggression, destruction, and serious violations of rules and laws).
Finally, as if pit bull John Bolton’s threat against Iran, delivered before the AIPAC, was not enough, now Cheney has amplified Bolton’s threat before the same audience, in fact the numero uno constituency in Washington. Cheney has threatened “meaningful consequences” against Iran, and the standard “keeping all options on the table,” in other words pursuing a campaign of shock and awe mass murder of the Iranian population and destruction of Iranian society and culture in much the same way Cheney and the Straussian neocons did and continue to do in Iraq.
Indeed, Cheney and the Straussian neocons are many times worse than O. J. Simpson or even Charlie Manson, incorrigible criminal monsters of a Hitlerian caliber, determined to pursue their lethal and even genocidal policies until they are arrested, convicted, and punished for their crimes, however remote such a prospect may be.
However, the question is not if they will continue to inflict damage on the world—beginning with the Muslim Middle East, and then moving on to North Korea, China, and eventually Russia, as promised, a series of devastating and insane campaigns that will last generations, possibly hundreds of years—but rather if we, the American people, will step forward and put an end to this madness.
Unfortunately, the way things look at present, I do not believe we will because most of us have succumbed to years of unrelenting propaganda, xenophobia, intellectual laziness, and daily two minute hate sessions via the all-pervasive idiot box, the very mantle of our civilization. In short, we give very little indication of doing much of anything except going along to get along.
No specific reason for Cheney’s unpopularity is cited in the article. Maybe it has to do with Cheney’s scowl, his propensity to swear at critics, or his drunken shooting of a rich fellow hunter.
Most Americans, however, are only vaguely aware of Cheney’s massive crimes against humanity, rarely put into context by the corporate media. Cheney is a vicious repeat offender, beginning with his oversight of the 43-day bombing campaign against Iraq in the summer of 1991. As a Harvard “study team had reported … the attack on Iraqi electrical, water, and sewage treatment systems,” engineered by Cheney as Bush’s Secretary of Defense (or rather Offense), was responsible for killing “thousands of civilians, especially the most vulnerable—children, the elderly, the sick,” as Robert Jensen writes. Cheney, not much different than a garden variety serial murderer, told the corporate media that “if I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing,” as Ted Bundy probably would if he was still on the loose. Of course, unlike Ted Bundy, Cheney has not personally engaged in murder, but then Hitler and Charlie Manson didn’t either.
“Cheney has never repudiated this comment, never expressed contrition for the deaths of innocents that he had to have known would result from policies he helped shape and implement,” Jensen notes. “But instead of being challenged for defending the targeting of civilians, Cheney is being heralded as a politician with ‘principles’ willing to stand by his ‘convictions,’” that is to say his conviction that he is above the law (specifically, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War).
Cheney is equivalent to the Marquis de Sade, the French aristocrat, imprisoned in the Bastille in Paris for his “dissolute imagination,” including fantasizing beating a prostitute with a red hot cat-o-nine-tails and various “blasphemous impieties.”
Cheney, according to a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, “should face war crimes charges” for his support of torturing dirt farmers and taxi drivers kidnapped in various Muslim countries and imprisoned in Guantánamo, Bagram, the “prison of darkness” in Kabul, and various CIA dungeons in Poland and Romania, the latter documented by the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
Last October, “Mr. Cheney [asked] Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture,” opined the Washington Post. “It’s not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration’s decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military.”
And then, of course, Cheney was the prime mover behind Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He repeatedly lied about Saddam’s illusory weapons of mass destruction, whole cloth fantasies dreamed up by the Straussian neocon Office of Special Plans. Cheney personally browbeat CIA analysts into adopting his lies about Iraq and WMD, and attempted to link “al-Qaeda” with Saddam (and then lied, insisting he never made this claim). In other words, in addition to getting off on mass murder and torture, Cheney is a pathological liar (mental health professionals claim pathological liars share deviant behavior such as inappropriate aggression, destruction, and serious violations of rules and laws).
Finally, as if pit bull John Bolton’s threat against Iran, delivered before the AIPAC, was not enough, now Cheney has amplified Bolton’s threat before the same audience, in fact the numero uno constituency in Washington. Cheney has threatened “meaningful consequences” against Iran, and the standard “keeping all options on the table,” in other words pursuing a campaign of shock and awe mass murder of the Iranian population and destruction of Iranian society and culture in much the same way Cheney and the Straussian neocons did and continue to do in Iraq.
Indeed, Cheney and the Straussian neocons are many times worse than O. J. Simpson or even Charlie Manson, incorrigible criminal monsters of a Hitlerian caliber, determined to pursue their lethal and even genocidal policies until they are arrested, convicted, and punished for their crimes, however remote such a prospect may be.
However, the question is not if they will continue to inflict damage on the world—beginning with the Muslim Middle East, and then moving on to North Korea, China, and eventually Russia, as promised, a series of devastating and insane campaigns that will last generations, possibly hundreds of years—but rather if we, the American people, will step forward and put an end to this madness.
Unfortunately, the way things look at present, I do not believe we will because most of us have succumbed to years of unrelenting propaganda, xenophobia, intellectual laziness, and daily two minute hate sessions via the all-pervasive idiot box, the very mantle of our civilization. In short, we give very little indication of doing much of anything except going along to get along.
Capitol Hill Blue Investigated by FBI
Let's see here... the Bushites and their shadow lurking Straussian minions have managed to kill, or at least freeze dry, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Amendments to the besieged Constitution.. Now, as Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue writes, they are in the process of murdering the First Amendment. "Just how widespread, and uncontrolled, this latest government assault has become hit close to home last week when one of the FBI's National Security Letters arrived at the company that hosts the servers for this web site, Capitol Hill Blue," writes Thompson. "The letter demanded traffic data, payment records and other information about the web site along with information on me, the publisher... Now that's a problem. I own the company that hosts Capitol Hill Blue. So, in effect, the feds want me to turn over information on myself and not tell myself that I’m doing it. You'd think they’d know better." Read Thompson's column here, including his closing comment, definitely apropos, considering the state of the nation.
U.S. plan for subverting Venezuela - the Yugoslav model?
U.S. plan for subverting Venezuela - the Yugoslav model?
In order to achieve the destruction of socialism in Yugoslavia, Western powers pursued a "divide and conquer" strategy, encouraging the piecemeal breakup of the country. Could the same plan be in the works for Venezuela? Could be:
President Hugo Chavez accused the United States of attempting to foment the secession of an oil-rich region in western Venezuela on Sunday and demanded independence for the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.
Chavez said U.S. officials were working behind the scenes with the governor of Zulia state, which is home to much of Venezuela's all-important oil industry, to create a secession movement loyal to U.S. interests.
Of course the U.S. denies involvement. Sort of:
The head of the ruling MVR party, William Lara, has accused the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, of meeting with the group. But the U.S. embassy in Caracas told the Daily Journal newspaper there is no record of such a meeting.
That's because they don't keep records of meetings like that.
The Venezuelan people are not standing still, as you might expect:
Broad sectors of Venezuelan society began mobilizing today to express their disapproval of secession plans by the wealthy state of Zulia, believed to be part of U.S. interventionist designs.I'm sure you're shocked by the last bit of news, right? Yeah, "liberal capitalism," that's the ticket. The Venezuelan people, and the rest of Latin America, have done so well under that system.
Apparently, a group called Rumbo Propio is planning to organize a referendum that would propose the establishment of the Republic of Zulia, with its own president and constitution, and a system of "liberal capitalism."
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE: The World Social Forum 2006 in Caracas Venezuela by Stephen Sinsley
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE:
The World Social Forum 2006 in Caracas Venezuela
by Stephen Sinsley
I have been following the World Social Forum from a distance since its inception in 2001, but given the major social changes occurring in this year’s host country, I decided to participate in this year’s forum and see the changes in Venezuela up close.The World Social Forum 2006 in Caracas Venezuela
by Stephen Sinsley
We live in what Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano described as an “upside down world.” We live in “upside down times.” Nevertheless, many magical things are stirring in Latin America — things that couldn’t even have been dreamt of under the U.S. supported dictatorships of just 20 or 30 years ago. There is a movement afoot. High hopes and dreams that stretch from the Pampas of Argentina to the plains of Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, and now from Washington’s current nemesis Venezuela. A dream — Bolivar’s dream is stirring in the hearts of hundreds of millions to the South and the WSF highlighted this hope.
The first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil in 2001, and it was there that the it's Charter of Principals was adopted to provide a framework for the forum (see http://milfuegos.blogspot.com/2006/02/world-social-forum-charter-of.html ). The forums in 2002 and 2003 saw the movement grow rapidly, as the WSF came to symbolize the strength of the anti-globalization movement and became a rallying point for worldwide protest against the American invasion of Iraq. The WSF has thus far taken place four times in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001, 2002, 2003, 2005); once in Mumbai, India in 2004; and, this year, 2006, in a "polycentric" manner and in three parts of the world: first in Bamako, Mali (January 19-23), then in Caracas, Venezuela (January 24-29), and finally in Karachi, Pakistan (March 25-28).
This year’s Forum in Caracas began on January 24 with a massive anti-imperialism march through the streets of this capital city. Over the next five days, delegates from 140 countries from around the world gathered in over 2200 workshops, panels, and sessions to discuss and debate a wide variety of issues in venues scattered throughout the city. Officially there were 80,000 registered delegates (with 20 - 30 thousand more unregistered participants) representing 2,500 organizations. Many participants complained, it is true, of the excessive distances between Forum sites, unlike Porto Alegre in 2005. Although the Caracas subway runs well and was free for all people sporting Forum badges, it was impossible to keep track of events in 10-12 widely dispersed sites of activity. The "nerve center" of the Forum was the Bellas Artes district, and in particular the Caracas Hilton (a fact that struck many as ironic) and the elegant Teresa Carreño theater. These sites and the nearby Parque Central boasted the best meeting rooms and the best-promoted Forum activities. In places as far-flung as the military airport of La Carlota or the Parque del Este, on the other hand, events, regardless of interest, were condemned to lesser attendance.
The largest delegation came from Brazil, with the next largest group being from the host country of Venezuela, followed by the neighboring country of Colombia. The United States provided the fourth largest group with about 2,000 delegates. U.S. participation in the forum has been small but growing, and this was the first year that the U.S. had a significant presence.
The Caracas forum was much more monolingual than the previous forums. In Porto Alegre, the official languages were the four main colonial languages in the Americas—Portuguese, Spanish, English and French. In Caracas, the lingua franca was Spanish, with most people from Venezuela and neighboring Andean countries speaking only that language and expecting conversations to be in Spanish. Furthermore, a growing U.S. presence also introduced a sizable, unfortunately, mono-lingual English audience who at times felt frustrated in the Spanish environment. Many indigenous speakers from throughout Latin America and North America–in a show of cultural pride–gave their talks or posed their questions first in their native languages, and then in either Spanish or English.
The leading slogan setting the tone for the forum and reflecting its central issues was: “No to war, no to imperialism, another world is possible, another America is possible.” The dominant discourse at the forum, rather than being about war and globalization, increasingly shifted to one of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism. Reflecting this, volunteers greeting delegates at the airport sported shirts with the slogan “A better world is possible, if it is Socialist.” Another common slogan proclaimed “Another world is necessary, and with you it is possible.” One thing made crystal clear by the Forum, the other delegates, the Venezuelans on the street and by Hugo Chávez himself is the distinction between the U.S. government and it’s imperialist foreign policies– and the American people– themselves victims of these same policies. We all felt welcome, as brothers and sisters in the same struggle.
Alliance Sought with U.S. Movements
The World Social Forum was originally created to provide an open platform to discuss strategies of resistance to the model for globalization formulated at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland by large multinational corporations, national governments, the WTO, and the World Bank the latter organizations being thugs and enforcers for the former. In contrast, the WSF is in itself a transparent, open process that invites the participation of progressive social movements & networks, progressive non-governmental and non-profit groups, and other civil society organizations to gather under the banner, “Another World is Possible.”
While many in the U.S. corporate media and even among sectors of the Democratic opposition to the Bush administration, seek to portray Hugo Chávez as a determined "enemy" of the United States, it must be recognized that he, and many others on the Latin American left, are making a direct and open appeal to U.S. progressives to join their Latin American counterparts in forging alternatives to an oppressive world-system. What the vectors and dynamics of such North-South political cooperation might one day become cannot be predicted, but it occurred to many at this Forum that the potential for such cooperation is enormous.
The size and format of the Caracas WSF made it difficult to analyze an event that may have raised more questions than found answers. How can the WSF’s base act globally when the process is so deliberately diverse and most participants are preoccupied with their local and sectoral concerns? How can the elite of the movement, no matter how much they talk of solidarity with the oppressed, truly represent the very people who could never afford to attend such an event? How can a global movement dedicated to improving the lives of the marginalized of the world avoid the stark class, gender, and even racial imbalances that sometimes seemed evident? How can Venezuela progress when cheap oil fuels pollution and other problems?
Notwithstanding these dilemmas and concerns, visionaries seeking to make the world better seemed strengthened by the exhilarating experience of global solidarity in their local struggles for justice, peace, freedom, and the integrity of creation. Many participants, myself included, have returned to their homes renewed in their commitment to reverse the growing gap between the world’s rich and poor, to address the environmental crisis, to act on behalf of human rights of people, to care especially for children, and in many instances to bring a deep spirituality to bear on all these problems.
President Hugo Chavez stated, at the World Social Forum that currently there are two superpowers in the world today: one is the imperialist behemoth to the north, and the other, even more powerful — public opinion of the people of the world. We have much to learn from the Bolivarian Revolution, and we should take to heart Ralph Nader’s message that the “highest position in a democracy is that of the Citizen.” Power is in the people, and we all need to accept the challenge of working together to form “a more perfect union” before it is too late.
The word used time and again by US participants to describe the experience at this year’s WSF was hope. The opportunity to meet activists and social workers from 140 countries made us believe that Another World is Possible and that we want to be part of its construction. After the Forum ended I traveled for a week in the interior of Venezuela to see Chavez’s social programs—Misiones—and to talk to the people working in them. I truly believe these programs to be the best answer to the Forums hopes, embodying Bolivar’s dream of a democratic Latin America ruled by and for its people. Galeanos’s upside down world may just be one day standing on its feet again.
The Value of George Orwell
George Orwell remains a valuable writer, though he died in 1950. He was a man who was an active participant in his times, and since the new century appears to be going down the same road as the last one, we can still learn from him.
His essay "Politics and the English Language" ought to be read by every journalist and by everyone who reads journalists or listens to the babble on television.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," he wrote. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," Orwell wrote. Earlier in the essay he had said, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
Our time and his time remain the same. We invade a sovereign nation based on lies, destroy its infrastructure, depose its government and kill 30,000 of its people, and we call that "spreading democracy" or "defending freedom."
The phrase "war on terror" is a phony metaphor. We are not at war. Ninety-nine and 99/100ths percent of the American people are living the same way they've always lived. We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting an insurrection that our invasions of those countries caused. They are at war – a war of their own country's making – but the rest of us are not. Waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker on one's car cannot be called a war effort.
The "war" is being relegated to the inside pages, and it's a safe bet that no matter what happens in Baghdad, the Academy Awards will receive more coverage and notice than the war. In our nutty society, the choice of a comedian to emcee a Hollywood trade show is considered big, national news.
What distinguishes us from other animals is language, and when we use language not to communicate truth as best we can determine it, but to deceive, mislead, obfuscate and obscure the facts, then we are committing the ultimate sin against humanity. We are playing a dangerous game with our own sanity.
Our own journalists sanitize even their skimpy coverage of the war. The American people must not be allowed to see the real face of war, lest they withdraw their support. The real face of war, of course, is broken bodies, blood, splattered brains and innards, horrible burns and other mutilations. There are no pleasant aspects of war. So, Americans are allowed to see soldiers giving candy to children, and occasionally an explosion on the horizon or the wreckage after the bodies have been removed.
In the meantime, the president and his folks blather on in carefully chosen euphemisms and newspeak just as if they were characters in an Orwell novel. At least the American people are at last beginning to catch on, and Bush's approval rating is 34 percent and his vice president's rating is 18 percent. That speaks well of the American people. They do trust their politicians, though that trust is often abused, but eventually they begin to check actions against words, facts against claims. Once they realized they've been bamboozled, then all the fancy words and euphemisms in the world won't restore their trust.
Bush has been in trouble in Iraq and Europe and Asia, and now he appears to be in trouble at home. He has three more years, so it would be a great help if this year one or both of the houses of Congress shifted to Democratic control. That would restore the checks and balances so necessary to preserve liberty, not that Democrats are any prize. That doesn't matter. The genius of our Founding Fathers is that they realized that as long as government fights itself, the liberty of the people is safe.
His essay "Politics and the English Language" ought to be read by every journalist and by everyone who reads journalists or listens to the babble on television.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," he wrote. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," Orwell wrote. Earlier in the essay he had said, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
Our time and his time remain the same. We invade a sovereign nation based on lies, destroy its infrastructure, depose its government and kill 30,000 of its people, and we call that "spreading democracy" or "defending freedom."
The phrase "war on terror" is a phony metaphor. We are not at war. Ninety-nine and 99/100ths percent of the American people are living the same way they've always lived. We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting an insurrection that our invasions of those countries caused. They are at war – a war of their own country's making – but the rest of us are not. Waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker on one's car cannot be called a war effort.
The "war" is being relegated to the inside pages, and it's a safe bet that no matter what happens in Baghdad, the Academy Awards will receive more coverage and notice than the war. In our nutty society, the choice of a comedian to emcee a Hollywood trade show is considered big, national news.
What distinguishes us from other animals is language, and when we use language not to communicate truth as best we can determine it, but to deceive, mislead, obfuscate and obscure the facts, then we are committing the ultimate sin against humanity. We are playing a dangerous game with our own sanity.
Our own journalists sanitize even their skimpy coverage of the war. The American people must not be allowed to see the real face of war, lest they withdraw their support. The real face of war, of course, is broken bodies, blood, splattered brains and innards, horrible burns and other mutilations. There are no pleasant aspects of war. So, Americans are allowed to see soldiers giving candy to children, and occasionally an explosion on the horizon or the wreckage after the bodies have been removed.
In the meantime, the president and his folks blather on in carefully chosen euphemisms and newspeak just as if they were characters in an Orwell novel. At least the American people are at last beginning to catch on, and Bush's approval rating is 34 percent and his vice president's rating is 18 percent. That speaks well of the American people. They do trust their politicians, though that trust is often abused, but eventually they begin to check actions against words, facts against claims. Once they realized they've been bamboozled, then all the fancy words and euphemisms in the world won't restore their trust.
Bush has been in trouble in Iraq and Europe and Asia, and now he appears to be in trouble at home. He has three more years, so it would be a great help if this year one or both of the houses of Congress shifted to Democratic control. That would restore the checks and balances so necessary to preserve liberty, not that Democrats are any prize. That doesn't matter. The genius of our Founding Fathers is that they realized that as long as government fights itself, the liberty of the people is safe.
Torture orders came from the top
From Dahr Jamil on Truthout.org:
While President Bush has regularly claimed - as with reporters in Panama last November - that "we do not torture," Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Brigadier General whose 800th Military Police Brigade was in charge of 17 prison facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib back in 2003, begs to differ. She knows that we do torture and she believes that the President himself is most likely implicated in the decision to embed torture in basic war-on-terror policy.
While testifying this January 21 in New York City at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, Karpinski told us: "General [Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] himself signed the eight-page memorandum authorizing literally a laundry list of harsher techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission."
All this, as she reminded us, came after Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been "specifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operation," was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to "work with the military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved interrogation techniques."
Karpinski met Miller on his tour of American prison facilities in Iraq in the fall of 2003. Miller, as she related in her testimony, told her, "It is my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well. At Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners know that we are in charge and they know that from the very beginning. You have to treat the prisoners like dogs. And if they think or feel any differently you have effectively lost control of the interrogation."
Miller went on to tell Karpinksi in reference to Abu Ghraib, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation."
When she later asked for an explanation, Karpinski was told that the military police guarding the prisons were following the orders in a memorandum approving "harsher interrogation techniques," and, according to Karpinski, "signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld."
* * * *
For the full article by Dahr Jamail, go to: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606L.shtml
We are in the midst of making more material from the Bush Crimes Commission widely available through expansion and development of the Commission web site. The whole world needs to read the documentation of these crimes against humanity.
While President Bush has regularly claimed - as with reporters in Panama last November - that "we do not torture," Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Brigadier General whose 800th Military Police Brigade was in charge of 17 prison facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib back in 2003, begs to differ. She knows that we do torture and she believes that the President himself is most likely implicated in the decision to embed torture in basic war-on-terror policy.
While testifying this January 21 in New York City at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, Karpinski told us: "General [Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] himself signed the eight-page memorandum authorizing literally a laundry list of harsher techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission."
All this, as she reminded us, came after Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been "specifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operation," was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to "work with the military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved interrogation techniques."
Karpinski met Miller on his tour of American prison facilities in Iraq in the fall of 2003. Miller, as she related in her testimony, told her, "It is my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well. At Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners know that we are in charge and they know that from the very beginning. You have to treat the prisoners like dogs. And if they think or feel any differently you have effectively lost control of the interrogation."
Miller went on to tell Karpinksi in reference to Abu Ghraib, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation."
When she later asked for an explanation, Karpinski was told that the military police guarding the prisons were following the orders in a memorandum approving "harsher interrogation techniques," and, according to Karpinski, "signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld."
* * * *
For the full article by Dahr Jamail, go to: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606L.shtml
We are in the midst of making more material from the Bush Crimes Commission widely available through expansion and development of the Commission web site. The whole world needs to read the documentation of these crimes against humanity.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Tomgram: Dahr Jamail Follows the Trail of Torture
The other day on Jerry Agar's radio show
<http://www.dod.mil/transcripts/2006/tr20060302-12599.html>, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to accusations about American
atrocities at our prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He accused the
detainees there of manipulating public opinion by lying about their
treatment. He said, in part:
"They're taught to lie, they're taught to allege that they have been
tortured, and that's part of the [terrorist] training that they
received. We know that torture is not occurring there. We know that for
a fact… The reality is that the terrorists have media committees. They
are getting very clever at manipulating the media in the United States
and in the capitals of the world. They know for a fact they can't win a
single battle on the battlefields in the Middle East. They know the only
place they can win a battle is in the capitol in Washington, D.C. by
having the United States lose its will, so they consciously manipulate
the media here to achieve their ends, and they're very good at it."
Statements like this have been commonplaces from an administration whose
President repeatedly insists it doesn't do "torture,"
<http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/21/usint9925.htm> while its
assembled lawyers do their best to redefine torture out of existence.
Here's how, for instance, our Vice President has described the lives of
detainees at Guantanamo Bay: "They're living
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24cheney.html?ex=1141621200&en=1d5cd8e9ae63ab53&ei=5070>
in the tropics… They're well fed. They've got everything they could
possibly want. There isn't any other nation in the world that would
treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're
treating these people."
As a matter of fact, the record of detainee abuse, humiliation, and
torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere is by now overwhelming -- and it's
been laid out by a remarkably wide-ranging set of sources. In June 2005,
for example, Time Magazine
<http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1169322,00.html>
released excerpts from official interrogation logs on just one
Guantanamo prisoner, Mohammad al-Qahtani, reputedly the 20th September
11th hijacker who never made it into the U.S. This stunning record
<http://reasonablereflection.net/1101> of mistreatment over time so
threatened the detainee's health that it should certainly have qualified
as torture under this administration's definition ("must be equivalent
in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as
organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death") in its
famed "torture memo
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23373-2004Jun7.html>" of
2002.
Or let's remember two years' worth
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14936-2004Dec20?language=printer>
of blistering memos and e-mails by disgusted FBI agents stationed at
Guantanamo Bay (obtained and released by the American Civil Liberties
Union) laid out styles of detainee mistreatment that should have
staggered someone's imagination:
"'On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee
chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair,
food or water,' the FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. ‘Most times they
had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18
to 24 hours or more.' In one case, the agent continued, ‘the detainee
was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He
had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the
night.'"
Just in the last week, the administration that doesn't do torture found
itself in court fighting hard for a torture exemption from the McCain
anti-torture amendment, thanks to extreme force-feeding methods being
used on a prisoner on a Guantanamo hunger strike. According to Josh
White and Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030202054_pf.html>,
"Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a
Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does
not apply to people held at the military prison. In federal court
yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended
that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted
by Sen. John McCain... to challenge treatment that the detainee's
lawyers described as ‘systematic torture.'"
In the meantime, U.S. military officers, "breaking with
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060302/pl_afp/usattacksrightstrialguantanamo_060302072952>
domestic and international legal precedent," refused to rule out the
admission of evidence obtained by torture at the military trials the
Pentagon is now running at Guantanamo.
The week before, Jane Mayer
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0220-03.htm> wrote a thoroughly
depressing New Yorker piece, "Annals of the Pentagon," about former U.S.
Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora, a conservative military man who
just happened to believe in the law. Hers was a gripping tale of Mora's
losing battle to stop Donald Rumsfeld and his followers from
circumventing the Geneva Conventions and instituting a "gloves-off"
policy of torture and abuse at Guantanamo. Tim Golden and Eric Schmitt
of the New York Times produced a front-page story that same week
(Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantanamo
<http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/ZNYT/602260357/1011>),
pointing out something well covered by the British Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1440836,00.html>
almost a year ago: We now have a second Guantanamo on our hands, a
prison at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that may indeed make
Guantanamo look like the "tropics." There, 500 or so detainees, beyond
all law or oversight, have been kept under barbaric conditions, in some
cases for two to three years.
The week before that, the latest Abu Ghraib photos
<http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444> were released, even
grimmer than the previous batch -- a huge story around the world -- to
largely "been there, done that" coverage in the United States. Each day,
it seems, more and worse pours out, largely to no obvious effect here.
It is in this context that Dahr Jamail, who began hearing of American
torture practices while covering the war in Iraq in 2003 as an
independent journalist, looks back on the last several years and
considers the nature of our torture regime. Tom
They told him, "We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell."
Ali Abbas, a former detainee from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was filling
me in on the horrors he endured at the hands of American soldiers,
contractors, and CIA operatives while inside the infamous prison.
It was May of 2004 when I documented his testimony in my hotel in
Baghdad. "We will take you to Guantanamo," he said one female soldier
told him after he was detained by U.S. forces on September 13, 2003.
"Our aim is to put you in hell so you'll tell the truth. These are our
orders -- to turn your life into hell." And they did. He was tortured in
Abu Ghraib less than half a year after the occupation of Iraq began.
Continue reading this piece here
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=65894>.
<http://www.dod.mil/transcripts/2006/tr20060302-12599.html>, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to accusations about American
atrocities at our prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He accused the
detainees there of manipulating public opinion by lying about their
treatment. He said, in part:
"They're taught to lie, they're taught to allege that they have been
tortured, and that's part of the [terrorist] training that they
received. We know that torture is not occurring there. We know that for
a fact… The reality is that the terrorists have media committees. They
are getting very clever at manipulating the media in the United States
and in the capitals of the world. They know for a fact they can't win a
single battle on the battlefields in the Middle East. They know the only
place they can win a battle is in the capitol in Washington, D.C. by
having the United States lose its will, so they consciously manipulate
the media here to achieve their ends, and they're very good at it."
Statements like this have been commonplaces from an administration whose
President repeatedly insists it doesn't do "torture,"
<http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/21/usint9925.htm> while its
assembled lawyers do their best to redefine torture out of existence.
Here's how, for instance, our Vice President has described the lives of
detainees at Guantanamo Bay: "They're living
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24cheney.html?ex=1141621200&en=1d5cd8e9ae63ab53&ei=5070>
in the tropics… They're well fed. They've got everything they could
possibly want. There isn't any other nation in the world that would
treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're
treating these people."
As a matter of fact, the record of detainee abuse, humiliation, and
torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere is by now overwhelming -- and it's
been laid out by a remarkably wide-ranging set of sources. In June 2005,
for example, Time Magazine
<http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1169322,00.html>
released excerpts from official interrogation logs on just one
Guantanamo prisoner, Mohammad al-Qahtani, reputedly the 20th September
11th hijacker who never made it into the U.S. This stunning record
<http://reasonablereflection.net/1101> of mistreatment over time so
threatened the detainee's health that it should certainly have qualified
as torture under this administration's definition ("must be equivalent
in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as
organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death") in its
famed "torture memo
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23373-2004Jun7.html>" of
2002.
Or let's remember two years' worth
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14936-2004Dec20?language=printer>
of blistering memos and e-mails by disgusted FBI agents stationed at
Guantanamo Bay (obtained and released by the American Civil Liberties
Union) laid out styles of detainee mistreatment that should have
staggered someone's imagination:
"'On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee
chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair,
food or water,' the FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. ‘Most times they
had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18
to 24 hours or more.' In one case, the agent continued, ‘the detainee
was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He
had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the
night.'"
Just in the last week, the administration that doesn't do torture found
itself in court fighting hard for a torture exemption from the McCain
anti-torture amendment, thanks to extreme force-feeding methods being
used on a prisoner on a Guantanamo hunger strike. According to Josh
White and Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030202054_pf.html>,
"Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a
Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does
not apply to people held at the military prison. In federal court
yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended
that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted
by Sen. John McCain... to challenge treatment that the detainee's
lawyers described as ‘systematic torture.'"
In the meantime, U.S. military officers, "breaking with
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060302/pl_afp/usattacksrightstrialguantanamo_060302072952>
domestic and international legal precedent," refused to rule out the
admission of evidence obtained by torture at the military trials the
Pentagon is now running at Guantanamo.
The week before, Jane Mayer
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0220-03.htm> wrote a thoroughly
depressing New Yorker piece, "Annals of the Pentagon," about former U.S.
Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora, a conservative military man who
just happened to believe in the law. Hers was a gripping tale of Mora's
losing battle to stop Donald Rumsfeld and his followers from
circumventing the Geneva Conventions and instituting a "gloves-off"
policy of torture and abuse at Guantanamo. Tim Golden and Eric Schmitt
of the New York Times produced a front-page story that same week
(Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantanamo
<http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/ZNYT/602260357/1011>),
pointing out something well covered by the British Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1440836,00.html>
almost a year ago: We now have a second Guantanamo on our hands, a
prison at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that may indeed make
Guantanamo look like the "tropics." There, 500 or so detainees, beyond
all law or oversight, have been kept under barbaric conditions, in some
cases for two to three years.
The week before that, the latest Abu Ghraib photos
<http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444> were released, even
grimmer than the previous batch -- a huge story around the world -- to
largely "been there, done that" coverage in the United States. Each day,
it seems, more and worse pours out, largely to no obvious effect here.
It is in this context that Dahr Jamail, who began hearing of American
torture practices while covering the war in Iraq in 2003 as an
independent journalist, looks back on the last several years and
considers the nature of our torture regime. Tom
*Tracing the Trail of Torture
Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq*
By Dahr Jamail
Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq*
By Dahr Jamail
They told him, "We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell."
Ali Abbas, a former detainee from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was filling
me in on the horrors he endured at the hands of American soldiers,
contractors, and CIA operatives while inside the infamous prison.
It was May of 2004 when I documented his testimony in my hotel in
Baghdad. "We will take you to Guantanamo," he said one female soldier
told him after he was detained by U.S. forces on September 13, 2003.
"Our aim is to put you in hell so you'll tell the truth. These are our
orders -- to turn your life into hell." And they did. He was tortured in
Abu Ghraib less than half a year after the occupation of Iraq began.
Continue reading this piece here
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=65894>.
Dubai and the Straits of Hormuz By Mike Whitney
"If you want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map." Napoleon BonaparteGeography is fate.
United Arab Emirates is located at the center of an oil-dependent world. This tiny state forms the promontory that juts out into the famed Straits of Hormuz through which 40% of the world’s oil passes every day. Across the narrow straights sits Iran, the next victim on the list of “axis of evil” nations. Any attack on Iran will require that military forces quickly deploy to Dubai to forestall the closing of the straits and the subsequent devastation that would cost to world oil supplies and financial markets.
This is the critical point which is being intentionally concealed by America’s diversionary media. This is the reason that President Bush continues to force the Dubai port-plan even though 70% of the American people and Congress resoundingly oppose it.
The importance of UAE as a staging area for future hostilities cannot be overstated. No military strategy can hope to succeed without first establishing a beachhead across the straits in Iran so that the danger of blowing up oil tankers and blocking passage is removed. This tells us that plans for an attack may be on track for late March as originally threatened by Israel.
For its part, Iran has been trying to work out an agreement for enriching uranium with Russia, although Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still insists that the NPT provides an “inalienable right” for the peaceful development of nuclear fuel.
Ahmadinejad is right, of course, but it makes little difference. The United States has already brushed aside the Iran-Russia plan and is pushing to have the Security Council censure Iran at its next meeting. So too, talks have broken off between Iran and the EU-3 without producing any positive results. The Euro-leaders are clearly abetting Washington’s gambit; paving the way for another war.
Why?
Ahmadinejad has done nothing to help his cause by blurting out absurd statements that have made him look foolish and irrational. (Israel should be “wiped off the map”) Still, it’s doubtful that anyone could withstand the withering “swift-boating” of the western media once they commence their campaign of character-assassination, the likes of which we have seen many times before.
Ahmadinejad recently said, “We want peace, security, and progress for all the countries of the region, especially our neighbors. History has shown that Iran is a good neighbor. We are just working on nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.” His comments, of course, were not covered in the western media since they conveyed the message of a responsible leader with benign motives rather than the ridiculous blather of madman.
As far as we know, however, Ahmadinejad has been straightforward in his claims. The IAEA has consistently found that Iran has fully complied with the terms of the NPT and that there “is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program”.
That hasn’t stop Washington, though. The die was cast for war with Iran nearly a decade ago in policy papers drawn up by far-right political ideologues who now control all the levers of foreign policy in the Bush White House.
The situation with Iran is bound to reach crisis-level this week as the IAEA’s board off governors is expected to issue a statement expressing its fears that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.
Al Jazeera reported that, “Diplomats in Washington and Vienna said the Security Council could adopt a "presidential declaration" calling on Tehran to heed IAEA calls to suspend uranium enrichment and co-operate with inspections.”
A “presidential declaration”?
This is a clear admission that the IAEA has NOT found Iran in violation of its treaty obligations, but is looking for some way to accommodate the United States’ insistence that Iran should be publicly scolded by the international body.
Will this public humiliation be used as a pretext for war?
A Western diplomat told AFP the European countries had “decided against a resolution” at this week’s board meeting, after hearing from Russia and China that there was no support for one. (Al Jazeera)
Again, this suggests that there is no proof of foul-play.
Nevertheless, European leaders and the United States want to issue a “statement” that would call on Iran to voluntarily suspend all enrichment-activities and submit to more extensive investigations”. In other words, Iran is being asked to voluntarily give up all of its rights under the terms of the NPT.
But why would Iran willingly accept being treated like a pariah when there is “no evidence” that it has done anything wrong?
The hypocrisy of this Bush-backed plan is breathtaking. Bush just finished a trip to India and Pakistan where he effectively declared himself the final arbiter of who will get nuclear technology and fuel and who won’t. His actions were a clear affront to the IAEA, the UN, the NPT, and the United States Congress, who is supposed to determine such matters as treaties.
Bush has apparently elected himself the god of all-things nuclear.
He has successfully destroyed the already feeble credibility the NPT by capriciously handing out nuclear technology to friends and withholding it from enemies. He turned the notion of evenhandedness and international law into a private fiefdom where science and technology are distributed according to the whims of Washington mandarins.
The NPT is dead.
Will this final assault on international agreements clear the path for war with Iran?
It is hard to say, but the Financial Times reported that, “Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the Islamic government (Iran) and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault-lines that are splitting Iraq.”
So, along with the $85 million Congress just voted to provide for “pro-democracy” movements in Iran; Marine Intelligence is looking for ways to exacerbate ethnic tensions to foment revolution to topple the Tehran government. The plan for “regime change” in Iran is still being aggressively pursued, even though neighboring Iraq is in utter chaos.
The UAE port deal is just more indication that an attack on Iran is forthcoming. Its location is crucial to the success of any American invasion.
For Pentagon warlords Dubai has become the strategic-epicenter of the global resource war. As peace-activist and author Uri Avnery said, “Regimes come and go, rulers rise and fall, ideologies flourish and wither, but geography stands forever. It’s geography that decides the basic interest of every state.”
All eyes should be focused on Dubai and the tenuous future of the Straits of Hormuz.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Libertad? Maybe - Puerto Rican independence activists rally 'round an FBI crackdown
On September 23, 1868, a gutsy band of Puerto Rican nationalists launched a revolt against their Spanish rulers. The uprising failed within 24 hours. On September 23, 2005, FBI agents shot and killed a fugitive Puerto Rican independence leader. Now New York's independista community is hoping that anger over that death ends Puerto Rico's 100-plus years as a U.S. possession.
It's not just the killing of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos that has outraged many Puerto Ricans. On February 10, heavily armed FBI agents with search warrants raided six locations on Puerto Rico, citing a terrorist threat from an independence group; at one site, the feds pepper-sprayed reporters. The commonwealth's elected government got no advance warning of what the feds were planning. It's hard to imagine that happening in, say, Montana with so little hubbub.
Washington dubs Puerto Rico, seized by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War in 1898, a "commonwealth," but some activists call it a colony. Puerto Ricans pay no federal taxes, cannot vote for president, and have no voting representative in Congress. For years, a minority of Puerto Ricans has argued the case for independence but found few takers.
But the furor over the FBI's moves seems to have spread beyond New York's small, dogged band of independence activists. Now, says assemblyman and Bronx Democratic chairman Jose Rivera, speaking at a meeting last week about the events in the Caribbean, "because of what happened on February 10, everyone on Puerto Rico is angry." At his side at the Burgos Center in East Harlem is Congressman Charles Rangel, who calls the FBI crackdown "the only thing in recent history to unite the people of this island."
"This could be for all of us a very historic moment," Rangel adds. Cheers of "Yes!" answer him. Indeed, Congress is considering proposals for a new vote on the future of the island. Rangel has called for a congressional investigation into the FBI actions, and at the very least he promises unofficial hearings run by Democrats. Rivera, who planned to join a march on the island on February 26, has called for the FBI to get off the island ahora.
Ojeda Ríos, a fugitive since 1990, had been sentenced in absentia to 55 years in prison for his role in an armed robbery in Connecticut. Last September the feds finally tracked him down to a safe house in Hormigueros. The FBI says that when its agents first approached Ojeda Ríos, he opened fire first, hitting three of them. The feds fired back and surrounded the house. The next day, the FBI went in and found Ojeda Ríos dead. The feds insist they waited to go in because they feared a bomb, but critics suggest they were obligated to provide medical attention to a man they shot. The FBI's inspector general is reviewing the shooting.
The FBI claims the February 10 raids were part of a "domestic terrorism investigation" related to Ejército Popular Boricua (Puerto Rican Popular Army), a/k/a Los Macheteros ("the Machete Wielders"), an active pro-independence militia. The supposed plot involved bombs "directed at privately owned interests in Puerto Rico, as well as the general public," the FBI says. No one has been arrested. The commonwealth government wasn't informed about the raids until the morning they were occurring, says local FBI spokesman Harry Rodriguez, who adds that the inspector general hasn't decided yet whether to investigate the February 10 raids.
Whether the IG weighs in or not, the raids pump new blood into the movement to change Puerto Rico's status. "It serves those who want to organize and mobilize and say, 'This is the type of abuse that we suffer as a colony,'" says El Diario columnist Gerson Borrero.
Local independence activists have already formed a coalition to try to rally locals around the events back home. The activists say there's a buzz. "We're no longer talking to ourselves," says Miguel Melendez, a co-founder of the Young Lords and veteran activist. "Other people are actually coming to events." Even mainstream pols like Rangel are on board. New York City councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, who organized last week's meeting in El Barrio, calls the terrorism story a "ruse."
New York's neighborhoods echo with foreign struggles: old Village haunts of radical John Reed, the docks from where volunteers left to fight for Israel, the Staten Island hangout of exiled Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, the East Side site where Irish nationalist Eamon de Valera was born.
Landmarks of the movement to free Puerto Rico are here, too, if you know where to look. At 336 East 110th Street, a construction company now occupies the site where on December 11, 1974, a New York cop opened a door and was blinded by a booby-trap bomb apparently set by the FALN, a Puerto Rican radical group.
That wasn't New York's only link to either the peaceful or violent side of the independence struggle. The city was a base for the pioneering revolutionary Eugenio María de Hostos, as well as for the gunmen who tried to kill Harry Truman in 1950. In the '70s and '80s there were bombings here; in 2000 there was a peaceful occupation of the Statue of Liberty to protest U.S. target practice on Vieques.
The successful movement to stop the Vieques bombardment is being held up as a model for what has to happen now. "It was not until we in New York got involved that we were able to foster debate in this nation," says Rivera. But the mass media can't be counted on. Word of mouth may have to do the trick. "We are all linked somehow to Puerto Ricans around the planet," Rivera notes. Indeed, around him at the Burgos Center are pols in suits and scrappy-looking activists, black and white, old and young. There's even a nationalist youth organization, Juventud Nacionalista.
Trouble is, it has about 20 members. The graffiti on 110th Street might shout, "Todos Boricuas Macheteros!" but most Puerto Ricans, far from being militants, aren't independence supporters at all. In three plebiscites on the island, the vote share for independence has never hit double digits.
Congressman José Serrano, who championed an effort to get the FBI to release 1.9 million pages of files on Puerto Rican movements from the 1930s to the 1990s, says the limited appeal of independence is largely because "the FBI criminalized it and gave the impression that it was a violent group of people and never let it grow."
Blame, however, goes beyond the feds. Some see the independistas as intellectual elites to whom most Puerto Ricans can't relate. Others say Puerto Ricans are just as disengaged from politics as most every other U.S. constituency. Harry Rodríguez Reyes, a professor at Hunter College, faults the fragmented independence movement for ignoring issues other than independence and vanishing on the island between elections.
But mostly Rodríguez Reyes blames the effects of colonization itself, which has locked Puerto Rico into dependence on the mainland. The island reports a poverty rate of 45 percent, yet it is the fifth largest market for U.S. exports per capita: People are buying American goods with credit from American banks. Its residents receive $1.5 billion a year in food stamps, which many are afraid of losing if the island becomes an independent state. That federal money, says Rodríguez Reyes, "plays a role in pacifying the people and reinforces the dependency."
It would help if the cause of Puerto Rico's status could be wedded to an issue with broader appeal, and the people who are raising a stink over the FBI raids— including those who don't necessarily support independence—are attempting to do that. They link the FBI operations to U.S. hostility toward radical regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia. And activists depict Puerto Rico's treatment as a chip off the same block as the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and the extrajudicial detention of "enemy combatants" like Jose Padilla.
Independence activists claim to have information that the FBI has 100 or so search warrants—that the six executed on February 10 were just the tip of the iceberg. It's unclear whether the feds' interest is confined to the island. "We are all feeling under new pressure," Vicente "Panama" Alba, who was pictured on an August 1977 Village Voice cover as a suspect in a bombing, for which he was later acquitted, says. "Being targets of operations such as this is definitely a possibility."
It's not just the killing of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos that has outraged many Puerto Ricans. On February 10, heavily armed FBI agents with search warrants raided six locations on Puerto Rico, citing a terrorist threat from an independence group; at one site, the feds pepper-sprayed reporters. The commonwealth's elected government got no advance warning of what the feds were planning. It's hard to imagine that happening in, say, Montana with so little hubbub.
Washington dubs Puerto Rico, seized by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War in 1898, a "commonwealth," but some activists call it a colony. Puerto Ricans pay no federal taxes, cannot vote for president, and have no voting representative in Congress. For years, a minority of Puerto Ricans has argued the case for independence but found few takers.
But the furor over the FBI's moves seems to have spread beyond New York's small, dogged band of independence activists. Now, says assemblyman and Bronx Democratic chairman Jose Rivera, speaking at a meeting last week about the events in the Caribbean, "because of what happened on February 10, everyone on Puerto Rico is angry." At his side at the Burgos Center in East Harlem is Congressman Charles Rangel, who calls the FBI crackdown "the only thing in recent history to unite the people of this island."
"This could be for all of us a very historic moment," Rangel adds. Cheers of "Yes!" answer him. Indeed, Congress is considering proposals for a new vote on the future of the island. Rangel has called for a congressional investigation into the FBI actions, and at the very least he promises unofficial hearings run by Democrats. Rivera, who planned to join a march on the island on February 26, has called for the FBI to get off the island ahora.
Ojeda Ríos, a fugitive since 1990, had been sentenced in absentia to 55 years in prison for his role in an armed robbery in Connecticut. Last September the feds finally tracked him down to a safe house in Hormigueros. The FBI says that when its agents first approached Ojeda Ríos, he opened fire first, hitting three of them. The feds fired back and surrounded the house. The next day, the FBI went in and found Ojeda Ríos dead. The feds insist they waited to go in because they feared a bomb, but critics suggest they were obligated to provide medical attention to a man they shot. The FBI's inspector general is reviewing the shooting.
The FBI claims the February 10 raids were part of a "domestic terrorism investigation" related to Ejército Popular Boricua (Puerto Rican Popular Army), a/k/a Los Macheteros ("the Machete Wielders"), an active pro-independence militia. The supposed plot involved bombs "directed at privately owned interests in Puerto Rico, as well as the general public," the FBI says. No one has been arrested. The commonwealth government wasn't informed about the raids until the morning they were occurring, says local FBI spokesman Harry Rodriguez, who adds that the inspector general hasn't decided yet whether to investigate the February 10 raids.
Whether the IG weighs in or not, the raids pump new blood into the movement to change Puerto Rico's status. "It serves those who want to organize and mobilize and say, 'This is the type of abuse that we suffer as a colony,'" says El Diario columnist Gerson Borrero.
Local independence activists have already formed a coalition to try to rally locals around the events back home. The activists say there's a buzz. "We're no longer talking to ourselves," says Miguel Melendez, a co-founder of the Young Lords and veteran activist. "Other people are actually coming to events." Even mainstream pols like Rangel are on board. New York City councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, who organized last week's meeting in El Barrio, calls the terrorism story a "ruse."
New York's neighborhoods echo with foreign struggles: old Village haunts of radical John Reed, the docks from where volunteers left to fight for Israel, the Staten Island hangout of exiled Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, the East Side site where Irish nationalist Eamon de Valera was born.
Landmarks of the movement to free Puerto Rico are here, too, if you know where to look. At 336 East 110th Street, a construction company now occupies the site where on December 11, 1974, a New York cop opened a door and was blinded by a booby-trap bomb apparently set by the FALN, a Puerto Rican radical group.
That wasn't New York's only link to either the peaceful or violent side of the independence struggle. The city was a base for the pioneering revolutionary Eugenio María de Hostos, as well as for the gunmen who tried to kill Harry Truman in 1950. In the '70s and '80s there were bombings here; in 2000 there was a peaceful occupation of the Statue of Liberty to protest U.S. target practice on Vieques.
The successful movement to stop the Vieques bombardment is being held up as a model for what has to happen now. "It was not until we in New York got involved that we were able to foster debate in this nation," says Rivera. But the mass media can't be counted on. Word of mouth may have to do the trick. "We are all linked somehow to Puerto Ricans around the planet," Rivera notes. Indeed, around him at the Burgos Center are pols in suits and scrappy-looking activists, black and white, old and young. There's even a nationalist youth organization, Juventud Nacionalista.
Trouble is, it has about 20 members. The graffiti on 110th Street might shout, "Todos Boricuas Macheteros!" but most Puerto Ricans, far from being militants, aren't independence supporters at all. In three plebiscites on the island, the vote share for independence has never hit double digits.
Congressman José Serrano, who championed an effort to get the FBI to release 1.9 million pages of files on Puerto Rican movements from the 1930s to the 1990s, says the limited appeal of independence is largely because "the FBI criminalized it and gave the impression that it was a violent group of people and never let it grow."
Blame, however, goes beyond the feds. Some see the independistas as intellectual elites to whom most Puerto Ricans can't relate. Others say Puerto Ricans are just as disengaged from politics as most every other U.S. constituency. Harry Rodríguez Reyes, a professor at Hunter College, faults the fragmented independence movement for ignoring issues other than independence and vanishing on the island between elections.
But mostly Rodríguez Reyes blames the effects of colonization itself, which has locked Puerto Rico into dependence on the mainland. The island reports a poverty rate of 45 percent, yet it is the fifth largest market for U.S. exports per capita: People are buying American goods with credit from American banks. Its residents receive $1.5 billion a year in food stamps, which many are afraid of losing if the island becomes an independent state. That federal money, says Rodríguez Reyes, "plays a role in pacifying the people and reinforces the dependency."
It would help if the cause of Puerto Rico's status could be wedded to an issue with broader appeal, and the people who are raising a stink over the FBI raids— including those who don't necessarily support independence—are attempting to do that. They link the FBI operations to U.S. hostility toward radical regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia. And activists depict Puerto Rico's treatment as a chip off the same block as the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and the extrajudicial detention of "enemy combatants" like Jose Padilla.
Independence activists claim to have information that the FBI has 100 or so search warrants—that the six executed on February 10 were just the tip of the iceberg. It's unclear whether the feds' interest is confined to the island. "We are all feeling under new pressure," Vicente "Panama" Alba, who was pictured on an August 1977 Village Voice cover as a suspect in a bombing, for which he was later acquitted, says. "Being targets of operations such as this is definitely a possibility."
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