Obama reprieve for CIA illegal
April 19th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
U.N. rapporteur on torture is challenging Barack Obama’s decision to grant CIA torturers a reprieve.
VIENNA (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who used waterboarding on terrorism suspects amounts to a breach of international law, the U.N. rapporteur on torture said.
“The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court,” U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.
Nowak did not think Obama would go as far as to seek an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel and therefore U.S. courts could still try torture suspects, he said on Saturday.
Taliban v. Taliban
April 18th, 2009 § 1 Comment
India in Afghanistan. Graham Usher writes that ‘peace in Afghanistan rests on peace between India and Pakistan. The road out of Kabul goes through Kashmir.’
Pakistan and India have been at war since 1948. There have been occasional flare-ups, pitched battles between the two armies, but mostly the war has taken the form of a guerrilla battle between the Indian army and Pakistani surrogates in Kashmir. In 2004 the two countries began a cautious peace process, but rather than ending, the war has since migrated to Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas on the Afghan border. ‘Safe havens’ for a reinvigorated Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida, the tribal areas are seen by the West as the ‘greatest threat’ to its security, as well as being the main cause of Western frustration with Pakistan. The reason is simple: the Pakistan army’s counterinsurgency strategy is not principally directed at the Taliban or even al-Qaida: the main enemy is India.
In the Bajaur tribal area, for example, the army is fighting an insurgency led by Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of one of Pakistan’s three Taliban factions, but it’s not because he is a friend of al-Qaida. What makes him a threat, in the eyes of Pakistan’s army, is that he is believed to be responsible for scores of suicide attacks inside Pakistan (including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto). He is also thought to have recruited hundreds of Afghan fighters, among them ‘agents’ from the Afghan and Indian intelligence services – ‘Pakistan’s enemies’, in the words of a senior officer.
America needs a witch-hunt
April 18th, 2009 § 1 Comment
The problem with a lot of British journalists who report from the US is that their analysis is inevitably hampered by their historical ignorance. In such circumstances conventional wisdom becomes a convenient refuge. It is easily available, and it can always be defended through references to years of accumulated nonsense. So here we have Rupert Cornwell of the Independent warning that ‘America doesn’t need a witch-hunt‘. To support his view he recycles one of Washington’s most discredited myths.
A month after taking office in August 1974, President Gerald Ford issued a full pardon to his predecessor Richard Nixon for his crimes in the Watergate affair. The public fury that followed probably cost him the 1976 election. Today, however, few historians doubt that Ford was right to spare the country further instalments of what he called “an American tragedy”.
This is bullshit perpetuated by Washington pundits. The pardon set a precedent for future abuses, and promoted the culture of impunity of which the present scandal is merely a symptom. The consequences of the pardon, as Keith Olbermann points out below, are very much to blame for the new ‘American tragedy’ (It is never a tragedy for those on the receiving end of course).
“Why Do You Kill?”: A former German Parliament Member Speaks on the Iraqi Resistance
April 17th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Crossposted at Huffington Post.
In one of his final interviews, former president George W. Bush told ABC News Martha Raddatz that the war in Iraq was justified because of al-Qaeda. But Raddatz said that wasn’t “until the U.S. invaded.” Then Bush responded with So what? The point is that al-Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand… we have denied al-Qaeda a safe haven because a young democracy is beginning to grow, which will be an important sign for people in the Middle East.”
But how much of a presence does al-Qaeda really have? Very small according to Jurgen Todenhofer, author of the new book, Why Do You Kill? The Untold Story of the Iraqi Resistance. Todenhofer was a member of the German parliament for 18 years and spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria political parties on development aid and arms control. He has visited the Middle East several times over the last 50 years and has written two best sellers about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his latest book, Todenhofer travels to Iraq as an unembedded journalist and gives an inside look at what is the Iraqi resistance. His firsthand observations reveal the myths and realities behind the resistance fighters and the terrorists and Todenhofer tries to set the record straight by talking directly with those who fight the occupation. Todenhofer is currently on an American speaking tour and I caught up with him in Washington, DC where he was giving a talk.
Nightmares made law
April 17th, 2009 § 1 Comment
‘Obama is right not to target CIA interrogators. The torture memos show where blame truly lies,’ Philippe Sands.
The four secret US department of justice opinions released this week are jaw-dropping in their detail. They reveal how far the Bush administration was prepared to go in sanctioning interrogation techniques that plainly amount to torture.
The long-awaited publication of the August 2002 memo, signed by Jay Bybee but largely written by John Yoo, authorises 10 previously unlawful interrogation techniques. These include slapping, stress position and sleep deprivation, right up to waterboarding. It is doubtful a more shocking legal opinion has ever been written. It even purports to analyse if incarcerating a detainee in a small box with an insect for company would amount to mental torture (it depends what you tell him about its sting).
Bush’s willing torturers
April 17th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
‘The newly-published Bush administration memos show a chilling, Orwellian abuse of language to justify torture,’ writes David Cole.
“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.” So Dennis Blair, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, stated as he sought to minimize the significance of four previously secret Justice Department memos that employed tortured legal reasoning to authorise CIA agents to use cruel and abusive tactics to interrogate suspects inside secret prisons.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” So begins George Orwell’s classic novel of the security state, 1984. It seems unlikely that Blair intended the allusion. Maybe every incoming US director of national intelligence is required to read 1984, and the opening line just stuck with him. But the reference could not have been more appropriate. The four Justice Department memos, spanning 124 pages of dense legal analysis and cold clinical descriptions of sustained, systematic abuse of human beings, do precisely what Orwell foretold: twist the English language in order to approve the unthinkable.
Cuban Education & Healthcare
April 17th, 2009 § 16 Comments
The following short documentary is interesting not just for its look at Cuban healthcare and education but also due to its Japanese persepective.
Japan is one of the most equal and wealthy societies with more of a collectivist persepective than Western nations and has a good healthcare system. However the panelists on the following show believe there’s much to learn from Cuba (one of the worlds poorest countries thanks to a brutal US blockade).
I’ve also included some enlightening interviews with US medical students studying in Cuba.
A Lexicon of Disappointment
April 17th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Hopebroken and hopesick, Obama fans need a new start. ‘The penny has dropped: hope alone won’t save the world,’ writes Naomi Klein. ‘Time for a fresh lexicon. And to hope less, demand more.’
All is not well in Obamafanland. It’s not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury’s latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama’s silence during Israel’s Gaza attack.
Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.
The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.
Torture Memos Released
April 16th, 2009 § 1 Comment
The Obama administration has released the four torture memos in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information request today. The redactions are not as extensive as initially thought. All the memos are available here. See the characteristically brilliant commentary by Glenn Greenwald below and Democracy Now’s interview with Greenwald and Justice Department whistleblower Thomas Tamm.
Obama to release OLC torture memos; promises no prosecutions for CIA officials
(updated below - Update II)
In a just-released statement, Barack Obama announced that — in response to an ACLU FOIA lawsuit — he has ordered four key Bush-era torture memos released, and the Associated Press, citing anonymous Obama sources, is reporting that “there is very little redaction, or blacking out, of detail in the memos.” Marc Ambinder is reporting that only the names of the CIA agents involved will be redacted; everything else will be disclosed. Simultaneously, and certainly with the intend to placate angry intelligence officials, Attorney General Eric Holder has “informed CIA officials [though not necessarily Bush officials] who used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that they will not be prosecuted,” and Obama announced the same thing in his statement.
