By William Fisher
This is apparently the season when the American commentariat trots out its love of America. They express this deep emotion in many ways.
Rick Perry tells us it’s exceptional to link the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s to the struggle of the Republic Party to absolve the wealthiest Americans from paying a fair share of their debt to their country. He also thinks it’s exceptional to secede from the USA. Sarah Palen finds us exceptional because she can have her guns, Michelle Bachmann seems to define American exceptionalism as our ability to achieve just about anything we set our sights on, no matter how unlikely, if our oversized, over-regulating government would only get out of the way.
For Mr. Romney, American execptionalism seems to turn on the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate and make a ton of money, even if we’re selling
off bits and pieces of once-healthy companies. For TV Host Chris Matthews, (I’m paraphrasing) it’s his riff about Obama being born of mixed race and yet making it to the presidency. Chris then goes on to say this couldn’t happen in any other country in the world. “You can’t go to China or Japan and become Chinese or Japanese. Obama came to the US and became an American and is now in the White House (Chris leaves out the minor truth that Obama didn’t have to become American -- he already was, having been born in Hawaii).
Virtually since the beginning of our Republic we have been spinning a variety of narratives to reassure ourselves that we are the greatest nation ever invented and that no other comes even close. That, presumably is one of the reasons we seem to have this irresistible urge to teach the rest of the world how to be exceptional too.
But one of the wisest men I know is injecting a dose of reality into the patriotic mishmash being cooked up by those seeking to get themselves elected to something.
That man is Doug Speth or more formally, James Gustave Speth. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School, after which he became a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Then on the White House, as a Member and then for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. Later, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown, teaching environmental and constitutional law.
In 1982 he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.
Still later, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Program; dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School.
Now, why I am going to such lengths to introduce you to some of the details of this outstanding career? Because those folks who believe in American exceptionalism – or think they’re simply good for the political aspirations – are wont to blame the messenger who brings actual proof that Americans may once have been exceptional but today that achievement is crumbling and our favorites narratives with it.
Prof. Speth has produced an index that should embarrass the exceptionalists by shining a bit of light on those areas where we’re not so exceptional.
For example, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:
the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
the greatest inequality of incomes;
the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of
children”;
the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
the lowest social mobility;
the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion
of GDP, the highest infant mortality rate; prevalence of mental health problems; obesity rate; portion of people going without health care due to cost; low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan); consumption of antidepressants per capita;
the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);
the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
the largest international arms sales;
the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and
Portugal);
the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal
and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
the highest homicide rate;
and the largest prison population per capita.
Now this is a pretty sorry scoresheet for our country – which used to excel in many of these categories.
The reasons for our fall from exceptionalism are far too lengthy to explore here, but some of the major factors, in no particular order, are substandard education; globalization; the voracious greed and dishonesty of banks, mortgage brokers, government institutions and rating agencies, whose actions created a bubble which they knew was unsustainable and issued insurance guarantees which they knew to be bogus.
There there’s the US Tax Code, which encourages foreign investment and demands local, not American, labor; a health care system that provides first-rate health to the very wealthy or the very old – but not to the poor, who have no health insurance; unemployment and under employment, partly because of the Great Recession, but starting long before that catastrophe as a result of the increase in worker productivity caused by substituting machines for humans in the workplace; and the consequent widening income disparity between the very rich and the very poor.
But the picture is not all hopeless. Gus Speth says, “It took a generation or more for most of these challenges to mature, and it will take a generation or more to climb out of the depths into which we have let things slide. More realistically, given that the U.S. government today is nowhere near ready to launch such efforts, it will take longer.”
He says, “If this analysis is correct, the devastating conclusion is that most of America’s problems will get worse or, at best, will continue to fester more or less as they currently are for the foreseeable future. That is a difficult
conclusion to have to face. But face it we must. Of course, we have to fight to correct these problems with all the strength progressive communities can muster, but we must also prepare and pursue another path forward.”
In short, he says, “America must complement ongoing efforts at reform and working within the system with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change leading to a new political economy—a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet at home and around the world. The current system is simply not delivering economically, socially, environmentally, or politically. We need a new one. This type of systemic change will require a great struggle, and it will not come quickly. The truth is we are still in the design stage of building a new operating system.”
He adds: “That system won’t be socialism, by the way, and it won’t be today’s American capitalism either.”
“The possibility of system change suggests there can be a very bright light at
the end of this gloomy tunnel. America is in the midst of a period of decline,
and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. The imperatives its citizens face are therefore
fourfold:
(1) to slow and then halt the descent, minimizing human suffering and planetary damage along the way;
(2) to prevent a collapse, the emergence of a fortress world, or any of the dark scenarios that have been plotted for us in science fiction and increasingly in serious analysis;
(3) to minimize the time at the bottom and to start the climb upward, building a new operating system; and
(4) to complete, inhabit, and flourish in the diversity of alternative social arrangements, each far superior to what we will have left behind.
“There is hope especially in three things. The decline now occurring will
progressively delegitimize the current order. Who wants an operating system that is capable of generating and perpetuating such suffering and destruction? The one good thing about the decline of today’s political economy is that it opens the door to something much better. Second, people will eventually rise up, raise a loud shout, and demand major changes. That is already happening with some people in some places. Eventually, the chorus will grow to become a national and global movement for transformation. And third, Americans are already busy with numerous, mostly local initiatives that point the way to the future.”
“AMID ongoing decline, Americans must now summon the hope and courage to dream up something new and better and to fight for it. It has been said that the genius of America is to turn crisis into opportunity. Let us now dream a new America, the country we want for our grandchildren.”
That’s a Herculean order. And the question is: Will our political leaders find the smarts and the courage and the humility to become truly exceptional Americans?
On the basis of what we’ve seen so far, what do you think?
Monday, September 05, 2011
Abandoned by the Arabs. Forsaken by the West. Forgotten by the world.
By William Fisher
As we listen to the nightly news, we hear about Arab uprisings in Libya and Syria (a lot because these stories are current and they hold the promise of showing some really gruesome images); post-revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt (much less exposure because there aren't many bloody images to show; and a group of other countries (where practically nothing of a breaking-news nature is happening, so the MMM can safely ignore them).
But what about Bahrain? Bahrain has all the blood, death, torture, injustice, conflict, international involvement, and cruelty of a current-day Syria or Libya.
So why is there "radio silence" about this Shia majority country? After all, it would seem to have meet all the basic requirements for exposure in mainstream media. The self-appointed Sunni King has ordered his security goons to fire live ammo at peaceful protesters. He has killed scores of them. He has arrested more than 50 doctors, nurses and other health workers for caring for those wounded in the demonstrations. He has effectively closed the main hospital where they were being treated. He has demolished the monument in Pearl Square, where protesters had gathered.
He has gone after the press, the teachers, the students, and the lawyers as well, to say nothing of Bahrain's incredibly courageous human rights volunteers. Hundreds of faculty and students have been fired from the University of Bahrain. The head of the teachers' and nurses' unions were arrested in the middle of the night, jailed, and staged a 12-day hunger strike before their jailers were forced to free them on bail.
While all this was going on, the King was making noises about a "dialogue", and the Crown Prince was dispatched to Washington and European capitals to persuade these governments that all the King's men were doing all they could to bring the conflict to a peaceful and productive end.
The Crown Prince told them he was worried about Bahrain's image among tourists.
And Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and others, bought this flagrant bit of PR BS.
From among this panoply of powerful Western nations, there were none -- NONE -- who spoke out in favor of the people's right to peacefully protest.
President Obama and various State Department folk met with the Crown Prince, and Washington remained silent. After all, Bahrain has great strategic importance to America, since it is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Guess who didn't remain silent? Right! Saudi Arabia.
And that should give you a pretty accurate clue about why America remained silent. Oil!
Bahrain is SA's neighbor. SA’s Eastern oilfields are a mere hour-and-a-half from Bahrain -- and the largely Shia communities located there. For the Saudis, too close for comfort.
The Saudis also made a big deal about the influence of Shia Iran in the affairs of Shia Bahrain. The King alternately described the demonstrators as Iran-inspired operatives or as criminal street gangs.
And to show it was deadly serious, the Saudis mobilized several thousand
troops and, along with soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, rumbled across the causeway that separates the two nations and into the thick of the conflict. These two countries were operating under the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Persian Gulf countries organized to protect from hostile attack.
One of those countries is Qatar. Which is also the owner of Al Jazeera television.
Throughout the Arab Awakening, I have been getting my news through a combination of BBC television, Al Jazeera, and The Real News Network. There is no question in my mind that Al Jazeera's coverage of the Middle East and North Africa was more comprehensive, more insightful and more accessible -- and arguably more courageous -- than any of the other networks.
Its coverage of the fight in Bahrain was exceptional -- until. Until the channel's Qatari owners figured out that Qatar was very close to Bahrain, and very much a country with many similarities to Bahrain.
Thereafter, Al Jazeera’s visual coverage of Bahrain was virtually gone. Verbal coverage was down to a few words here and there. It was over, much to the consternation of Al Jazeera staff members who put out so much effort, energy and talent to tell this compelling story.
Luckily for us, before the lights went out, these staffers put together a documentary film on their work in Bahrain. It is entitled, "Shooting in the Dark," and it is one of the most compelling pieces of film I have ever seen.
I'm including a link to the full-length film below, and I hope you will find the time to watch it.
I promise, Bahrain will never ever have the same meaning for you.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2011/08/201184144547798162.html
As we listen to the nightly news, we hear about Arab uprisings in Libya and Syria (a lot because these stories are current and they hold the promise of showing some really gruesome images); post-revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt (much less exposure because there aren't many bloody images to show; and a group of other countries (where practically nothing of a breaking-news nature is happening, so the MMM can safely ignore them).
But what about Bahrain? Bahrain has all the blood, death, torture, injustice, conflict, international involvement, and cruelty of a current-day Syria or Libya.
So why is there "radio silence" about this Shia majority country? After all, it would seem to have meet all the basic requirements for exposure in mainstream media. The self-appointed Sunni King has ordered his security goons to fire live ammo at peaceful protesters. He has killed scores of them. He has arrested more than 50 doctors, nurses and other health workers for caring for those wounded in the demonstrations. He has effectively closed the main hospital where they were being treated. He has demolished the monument in Pearl Square, where protesters had gathered.
He has gone after the press, the teachers, the students, and the lawyers as well, to say nothing of Bahrain's incredibly courageous human rights volunteers. Hundreds of faculty and students have been fired from the University of Bahrain. The head of the teachers' and nurses' unions were arrested in the middle of the night, jailed, and staged a 12-day hunger strike before their jailers were forced to free them on bail.
While all this was going on, the King was making noises about a "dialogue", and the Crown Prince was dispatched to Washington and European capitals to persuade these governments that all the King's men were doing all they could to bring the conflict to a peaceful and productive end.
The Crown Prince told them he was worried about Bahrain's image among tourists.
And Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and others, bought this flagrant bit of PR BS.
From among this panoply of powerful Western nations, there were none -- NONE -- who spoke out in favor of the people's right to peacefully protest.
President Obama and various State Department folk met with the Crown Prince, and Washington remained silent. After all, Bahrain has great strategic importance to America, since it is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Guess who didn't remain silent? Right! Saudi Arabia.
And that should give you a pretty accurate clue about why America remained silent. Oil!
Bahrain is SA's neighbor. SA’s Eastern oilfields are a mere hour-and-a-half from Bahrain -- and the largely Shia communities located there. For the Saudis, too close for comfort.
The Saudis also made a big deal about the influence of Shia Iran in the affairs of Shia Bahrain. The King alternately described the demonstrators as Iran-inspired operatives or as criminal street gangs.
And to show it was deadly serious, the Saudis mobilized several thousand
troops and, along with soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, rumbled across the causeway that separates the two nations and into the thick of the conflict. These two countries were operating under the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Persian Gulf countries organized to protect from hostile attack.
One of those countries is Qatar. Which is also the owner of Al Jazeera television.
Throughout the Arab Awakening, I have been getting my news through a combination of BBC television, Al Jazeera, and The Real News Network. There is no question in my mind that Al Jazeera's coverage of the Middle East and North Africa was more comprehensive, more insightful and more accessible -- and arguably more courageous -- than any of the other networks.
Its coverage of the fight in Bahrain was exceptional -- until. Until the channel's Qatari owners figured out that Qatar was very close to Bahrain, and very much a country with many similarities to Bahrain.
Thereafter, Al Jazeera’s visual coverage of Bahrain was virtually gone. Verbal coverage was down to a few words here and there. It was over, much to the consternation of Al Jazeera staff members who put out so much effort, energy and talent to tell this compelling story.
Luckily for us, before the lights went out, these staffers put together a documentary film on their work in Bahrain. It is entitled, "Shooting in the Dark," and it is one of the most compelling pieces of film I have ever seen.
I'm including a link to the full-length film below, and I hope you will find the time to watch it.
I promise, Bahrain will never ever have the same meaning for you.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2011/08/201184144547798162.html
Syrian Jails = Syrian Graves
By William Fisher
At least 88 people are believed to have died in Syria prisons – with evidence that at least 52 of them were tortured or subjected to other ill-treatment -- during five months of pro-reform protests, according to a new report from Amnesty International. The dead included 10 children, some as young as 13.
The report, “Deadly detention: Deaths in custody amid popular protest in Syria,” documents reported deaths in custody between April and mid-August in the wake of sweeping arrests.
The report says the 88 deaths represent a significant escalation in the number of deaths following arrest in Syria. In recent years Amnesty International has typically recorded around five deaths in custody per year in Syria.
“These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s researcher on Syria.
“The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale,” he said.
The victims recorded in the report were all swept up in arrests after Syrians
took to the streets en masse from March this year. All the victims are believed to have been detained because they were involved, or suspected of being involved, in the pro-reform protests, Amnesty said.
Amnesty clams it has seen video clips of 45 of the cases – taken by
relatives, activists or other individuals – and has asked independent forensic
pathologists to review a number of these.
Injuries on many of the victims’ corpses indicate that they may have suffered horrendous beatings and other abuses. Signs indicating torture include burns, blunt force injuries, whipping marks and slashes.
Most of the cases in the report occurred in Homs and Dera’a governorates, which have seen major protests. Deaths in detention have also been reported in five other governorates, namely Damascus and Rif Damashq, Idlib, Hama and Aleppo.
Thirteen-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb disappeared on 29 April during protests against the siege of Dera’a, and was later found dead with apparent blunt force injuries and a severed penis.
One video clip seen by Amnesty International shows the body of Tariq Ziad Abd al-Qadr from Homs, which was returned to his family on 16 June. His injuries included pulled-out hair, marks to the neck and penis possibly caused by electric shocks, an apparent cigarette burn, whipping marks, stab wounds and burns.
The body of Dr. Sakher Hallak, who ran an eating disorders clinic in Aleppo, was discovered by the side of a road a few days after his arrest on 25 May. Sources told Amnesty International that his injuries included broken ribs, arms and fingers, gouged eyes and mutilated genitals.
Amnesty International is not aware of any independent investigation having been carried out into the causes of death in any of the cases in the report.
The organization has compiled the names of more than 1,800 people reported to have died in Syria since pro-reform protests began. Thousands of others have been arrested, with many held incommunicado at unknown locations at risk of torture or death.
Amnesty International has called on the UN Security Council to refer the
situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, to impose an arms
embargo on Syria and to implement an asset freeze against President Bashar
al-Assad and his senior associates.
“Taken in the context of the widespread and systematic violations taking place in Syria, we believe that these deaths in custody may include crimes against humanity,” said Amnesty’s Sammonds.
“The response from the Security Council has been utterly inadequate so far, but it is not too late for them to take firm and legally binding action,” he added.
Peaceful demonstrations have been growing in Syria since March. The regime of Basher el Assad has taken an unforgiving hard line, deploying snipers from his security forces on rooftops to kill protesters in the streets. He has moved heavy weapons into a number of cities and towns, attacked the people there, and left many of these communities ghost-towns. Thousands have been arrested. Thousands more have fled over the border to refuges camps in Turkey.
Basher al-Assad is a son of Syria’s long-time strongman, Hafez al-Assad, who is responsible for the deaths of approximately 10-40,000 Syrians who attempted a peaceful uprising in 1982.
The Assad family are Alowites, a branch of Shia Islam. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Since the start of the demonstrations, there have been credible reports that Shia Iran is providing assistance to the Assad regime. Iran has blamed the current problems in Syria on the Americans and pro-Israel Zionists.
At least 88 people are believed to have died in Syria prisons – with evidence that at least 52 of them were tortured or subjected to other ill-treatment -- during five months of pro-reform protests, according to a new report from Amnesty International. The dead included 10 children, some as young as 13.
The report, “Deadly detention: Deaths in custody amid popular protest in Syria,” documents reported deaths in custody between April and mid-August in the wake of sweeping arrests.
The report says the 88 deaths represent a significant escalation in the number of deaths following arrest in Syria. In recent years Amnesty International has typically recorded around five deaths in custody per year in Syria.
“These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s researcher on Syria.
“The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale,” he said.
The victims recorded in the report were all swept up in arrests after Syrians
took to the streets en masse from March this year. All the victims are believed to have been detained because they were involved, or suspected of being involved, in the pro-reform protests, Amnesty said.
Amnesty clams it has seen video clips of 45 of the cases – taken by
relatives, activists or other individuals – and has asked independent forensic
pathologists to review a number of these.
Injuries on many of the victims’ corpses indicate that they may have suffered horrendous beatings and other abuses. Signs indicating torture include burns, blunt force injuries, whipping marks and slashes.
Most of the cases in the report occurred in Homs and Dera’a governorates, which have seen major protests. Deaths in detention have also been reported in five other governorates, namely Damascus and Rif Damashq, Idlib, Hama and Aleppo.
Thirteen-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb disappeared on 29 April during protests against the siege of Dera’a, and was later found dead with apparent blunt force injuries and a severed penis.
One video clip seen by Amnesty International shows the body of Tariq Ziad Abd al-Qadr from Homs, which was returned to his family on 16 June. His injuries included pulled-out hair, marks to the neck and penis possibly caused by electric shocks, an apparent cigarette burn, whipping marks, stab wounds and burns.
The body of Dr. Sakher Hallak, who ran an eating disorders clinic in Aleppo, was discovered by the side of a road a few days after his arrest on 25 May. Sources told Amnesty International that his injuries included broken ribs, arms and fingers, gouged eyes and mutilated genitals.
Amnesty International is not aware of any independent investigation having been carried out into the causes of death in any of the cases in the report.
The organization has compiled the names of more than 1,800 people reported to have died in Syria since pro-reform protests began. Thousands of others have been arrested, with many held incommunicado at unknown locations at risk of torture or death.
Amnesty International has called on the UN Security Council to refer the
situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, to impose an arms
embargo on Syria and to implement an asset freeze against President Bashar
al-Assad and his senior associates.
“Taken in the context of the widespread and systematic violations taking place in Syria, we believe that these deaths in custody may include crimes against humanity,” said Amnesty’s Sammonds.
“The response from the Security Council has been utterly inadequate so far, but it is not too late for them to take firm and legally binding action,” he added.
Peaceful demonstrations have been growing in Syria since March. The regime of Basher el Assad has taken an unforgiving hard line, deploying snipers from his security forces on rooftops to kill protesters in the streets. He has moved heavy weapons into a number of cities and towns, attacked the people there, and left many of these communities ghost-towns. Thousands have been arrested. Thousands more have fled over the border to refuges camps in Turkey.
Basher al-Assad is a son of Syria’s long-time strongman, Hafez al-Assad, who is responsible for the deaths of approximately 10-40,000 Syrians who attempted a peaceful uprising in 1982.
The Assad family are Alowites, a branch of Shia Islam. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Since the start of the demonstrations, there have been credible reports that Shia Iran is providing assistance to the Assad regime. Iran has blamed the current problems in Syria on the Americans and pro-Israel Zionists.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Looking for Frank Church
William Fisher
When I read the brilliant report by the Associated Press about the cozy and very secret relationship between the New York City Police Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, I had a distinct but inchoate feeling of déjà vu.
Seems that after 9/11, the NYPD decided it couldn’t depend on the Feds -- the FBI, that is -- as their sole source of intelligence. So they turned to the CIA. And that initial contact blossomed into a robust partnership. CIA operatives were given leaves of absence to work with the NYPD. New York cops were sent to Langley to train. A special unit was setup within the NYPD. It was kept largely secret from all but a handful of the most senior officials. It was also not revealed to the FBI, which is the agency mandated to service counter-terrorism needs within the US.
Together, officers from the new unit recruited a network of informants – mostly immigrants from each of the important countries of the Middle East. These undercover officers were to become familiar figures in the New York neighborhoods that were home to significant numbers of Muslim Americans. They were to “rake the coals” for information; they were known internally as “rakers.”
They were to hang out at neighborhood cafes, attend local mosques, reporting back to NYPD headquarters what the imams were saying. If someone voiced approval for the killing of an American soldier on television in a bar or restaurant, that too was sent back to the NYPD. Other “hot spots” might be an ethnic book store or a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation. Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot.
And if any of this produced a lead that was out of the NYPD’s jurisdiction, it simply followed the lead to wherever it went. New Jersey seemed to be a favorite venue. And, of course, neither local nor state police in that state had any inkling they were there.
The civil liberties community was up in arms about this unusual collaboration. It had all the signs of entrapment. And racial profiling. And violation of citizens’ First Amendment rights.
As I processed all this information, a picture of Frank Church formed in my mind. Frank Church was a U.S. Senator from Idaho from the late 50s to the early 80s. He Church gained national prominence during his service in the Senate through his chairmanship of the Church Committees, which conducted extensive hearings investigating extra-legal FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering and covert operations.
The Church Committee hearings laid the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Then I turned to Michael Ratner, an Internet friend and President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, to refresh my memory. Here’s what he said:
“In the 70s, the congressional Church committee hearings exposed CIA domestic spying and infiltration of peaceful groups. The public was outraged. That anger aroused hope that the CIA's political police role would end. After all, it was illegal then and it's illegal today.”
He went on: “For good reason. The CIA is trained in unlawful acts; it knows no law and the constitution is meaningless to its actions. The CIA should not operate even overseas much less on a domestic population. Stalin had his KGB; the United States and now NYC has its CIA. NYC should establish itself as a CIA-free zone.”
Well, that’s a mouthful.
But not all that different from other authorities whose views I trust.
I spoke to Chip Pitts, a law professor and board/executive committee member of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He told me: “The New York City Police Department’s illegal (and trust-destroying) profiling is matched only by the CIA’s illegal domestic spying. With the NYPD now roaming the nation and the world unchecked in its quest to prevent terrorism, and the CIA encroaching not only on foreign military operations and drone attacks but also domestic policing, it is past time to ask whether there are any limits at all to the ambitions and blatant boundary crossing by these increasingly unaccountable organs of government.”
And historian Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University. He said:
“As to the CIA, NYPD, FBI, etc. I think that they have all begun to go rogue. Of course, ‘begun’ is a relative term. All these ‘police’ or ‘intelligence’ agencies constantly walk a thin line between legality and illegality. And, predictably, when something happens to allegedly justify their crossing the line, they do (sometimes gleefully). The courts usually ok the process after the fact. That is what is happening now. Eventually, these agencies will go a bit too far -- which usually entails ruining the lives of innocent people -- and then there will be an expose and they will retreat a bit, until the next time. Right now the law is being tossed out the window.”
And Kathy Manley, an attorney and Vice President of Capitol Region Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She told me: “This is just one more in a long line of revelations which shows that this country is turning into a police state. The ‘security’ apparatus is completely out of control and beholden to no one. Of course NYPD shouldn't be operating outside of its jurisdiction and shouldn't be sending people into mosques without any factual predicate - the fact that they are denying it despite clear evidence shows they know it's illegal!”
There has been zero oversight of this collaboration. Not Federal, Not State. Not City. The CIA probably violated its charter by getting involved in a domestic operation. And the NYPD has likely broken laws dealing with racial profiling, privacy, and religious freedom.
There needs to be an investigation – and before this CIA-NYPD romance goes any further.
Senator Church, where are you when we need you?
When I read the brilliant report by the Associated Press about the cozy and very secret relationship between the New York City Police Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, I had a distinct but inchoate feeling of déjà vu.
Seems that after 9/11, the NYPD decided it couldn’t depend on the Feds -- the FBI, that is -- as their sole source of intelligence. So they turned to the CIA. And that initial contact blossomed into a robust partnership. CIA operatives were given leaves of absence to work with the NYPD. New York cops were sent to Langley to train. A special unit was setup within the NYPD. It was kept largely secret from all but a handful of the most senior officials. It was also not revealed to the FBI, which is the agency mandated to service counter-terrorism needs within the US.
Together, officers from the new unit recruited a network of informants – mostly immigrants from each of the important countries of the Middle East. These undercover officers were to become familiar figures in the New York neighborhoods that were home to significant numbers of Muslim Americans. They were to “rake the coals” for information; they were known internally as “rakers.”
They were to hang out at neighborhood cafes, attend local mosques, reporting back to NYPD headquarters what the imams were saying. If someone voiced approval for the killing of an American soldier on television in a bar or restaurant, that too was sent back to the NYPD. Other “hot spots” might be an ethnic book store or a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation. Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot.
And if any of this produced a lead that was out of the NYPD’s jurisdiction, it simply followed the lead to wherever it went. New Jersey seemed to be a favorite venue. And, of course, neither local nor state police in that state had any inkling they were there.
The civil liberties community was up in arms about this unusual collaboration. It had all the signs of entrapment. And racial profiling. And violation of citizens’ First Amendment rights.
As I processed all this information, a picture of Frank Church formed in my mind. Frank Church was a U.S. Senator from Idaho from the late 50s to the early 80s. He Church gained national prominence during his service in the Senate through his chairmanship of the Church Committees, which conducted extensive hearings investigating extra-legal FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering and covert operations.
The Church Committee hearings laid the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Then I turned to Michael Ratner, an Internet friend and President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, to refresh my memory. Here’s what he said:
“In the 70s, the congressional Church committee hearings exposed CIA domestic spying and infiltration of peaceful groups. The public was outraged. That anger aroused hope that the CIA's political police role would end. After all, it was illegal then and it's illegal today.”
He went on: “For good reason. The CIA is trained in unlawful acts; it knows no law and the constitution is meaningless to its actions. The CIA should not operate even overseas much less on a domestic population. Stalin had his KGB; the United States and now NYC has its CIA. NYC should establish itself as a CIA-free zone.”
Well, that’s a mouthful.
But not all that different from other authorities whose views I trust.
I spoke to Chip Pitts, a law professor and board/executive committee member of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He told me: “The New York City Police Department’s illegal (and trust-destroying) profiling is matched only by the CIA’s illegal domestic spying. With the NYPD now roaming the nation and the world unchecked in its quest to prevent terrorism, and the CIA encroaching not only on foreign military operations and drone attacks but also domestic policing, it is past time to ask whether there are any limits at all to the ambitions and blatant boundary crossing by these increasingly unaccountable organs of government.”
And historian Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University. He said:
“As to the CIA, NYPD, FBI, etc. I think that they have all begun to go rogue. Of course, ‘begun’ is a relative term. All these ‘police’ or ‘intelligence’ agencies constantly walk a thin line between legality and illegality. And, predictably, when something happens to allegedly justify their crossing the line, they do (sometimes gleefully). The courts usually ok the process after the fact. That is what is happening now. Eventually, these agencies will go a bit too far -- which usually entails ruining the lives of innocent people -- and then there will be an expose and they will retreat a bit, until the next time. Right now the law is being tossed out the window.”
And Kathy Manley, an attorney and Vice President of Capitol Region Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She told me: “This is just one more in a long line of revelations which shows that this country is turning into a police state. The ‘security’ apparatus is completely out of control and beholden to no one. Of course NYPD shouldn't be operating outside of its jurisdiction and shouldn't be sending people into mosques without any factual predicate - the fact that they are denying it despite clear evidence shows they know it's illegal!”
There has been zero oversight of this collaboration. Not Federal, Not State. Not City. The CIA probably violated its charter by getting involved in a domestic operation. And the NYPD has likely broken laws dealing with racial profiling, privacy, and religious freedom.
There needs to be an investigation – and before this CIA-NYPD romance goes any further.
Senator Church, where are you when we need you?
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Egypt: NGOs Accuse Army of Smear Campaign
By William Fisher
Thirty-six of Egypt’s most respected civil society organizations are denouncing Egypt’s military rulers for “conducting organized smear campaigns designed to impugn these groups’ patriotism as well as ongoing attempts to intimidate” them, the organizations said in a statement.
The groups accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of ordering investigations conducted by the State Security Prosecution into “complaints accusing unnamed NGOs and political groups of receiving foreign funds and grants in violation of the law.”
The groups also condemned the authorities’ “manipulation of the media to publicize investigations into associations and political groups accused of receiving US funding without identifying the groups in question.” They added that “it is well known that the majority of US funds have been disbursed as grants to US institutions operating in Egypt in a public, official capacity.”
“These Egyptian organizations and groups, which remain unidentified, have even been accused of high treason—charges that the Mubarak regime did not dare to level at its political enemies or at those organizations that bravely confronted crimes and human rights abuses under his rule,” the statement said.
It declared that “those currently administering the country’s affairs after the January 25 revolution are using the same methods as the Mubarak regime to confront their critics.” It said this “reveals the irritation of the SCAF with the criticisms raised against it, whether directed at its management of the political course of the transitional period or at the grave human rights abuses for which it is responsible.”
The groups said, “These abuses include the widespread use of exceptional military trials—before which more people have been tried in the past six months than in the 30 years of Mubarak’s rule—and the use of the military judiciary to harass revolutionary youth who have criticized SCAF policies.”
In addition, the groups said, “torture continues to be carried out in detention facilities run by the military police and has even reached unprecedented levels, as female political activists face sexual assault by being subjected to forcible virginity tests. Excessive force has also been used on several occasions to disperse sit-ins by political groups and the families of martyrs of the January 25 Revolution.”
“The heart of the dispute between human rights organizations and both the Mubarak regime and the SCAF is not foreign funding,” the groups declared. It is “the critical stances taken by these groups when confronting human rights crimes, both before and after the January 25 Revolution.”
The statement said. “Foreign funding is not prohibited for the state and its institutions or for the official state councils on human rights, women, or children. Nor is foreign funding a sensitive issue for thousands of development associations and charitable groups who receive foreign grants, as the activities of these groups and institutions are not based on a critical evaluation of the performance of the state and its institutions in the sphere of human rights. As such, foreign funding has never been a cause for dispute between the state and these institutions, neither during Mubarak’s rule nor after him.”
The groups charged that the issue of foreign funding was being used “as a tool to isolate and stifle human rights groups in an attempt to undermine their moral position within society or to arbitrarily ban certain activities by drying up funds for them, including anti-torture activities and election monitoring, as occurred during Mubarak’s rule.”
This context, they said, “helps explain why the military police, accompanied by State Security Investigations and hired thugs, raided the Hisham Mubarak Legal Center on February 3, 2011, just one day after the so-called ‘Battle of the Camel’, arrested several lawyers, including the founder of the group well-known attorney Ahmed Seif al-Islam, and detained them in a military camp, along with researchers with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International who were meeting at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.”
They added, “It is noteworthy that while the military police were arresting lawyers and researchers on the upper floor, thugs stood outside the door of the building, accusing them of being ‘traitors and agents’.” Although this occurred while Mubarak was still president, these same accusations are now being used in a government smear campaign six months after Mubarak was deposed.
The groups concluded, “Using the pretext of national security to restrict human rights groups and funding for their activities is not an invention of Mubarak or his successors; it is the standard operating procedure of all authoritarian regimes.”
The groups demanded the dismissal of the Minister of International Cooperation, Fayza Abu al-Naga, and the Minister of Social Solidarity, Gouda Abd al-Khaleq, in light of their “hostile stance to civil society associations, their active role in restricting the activities of these associations, and their yielding to the dictates of the security apparatus.”
They also called for the SCAF to “immediately end the referral of civilians to military courts or any other exceptional investigative bodies, conduct civilian retrials for all those imprisoned based on sentences issued by these courts, and immediately release all prisoners of conscience and drop all charges against them.”
The SCAF must “end the government smear campaign against civil society associations and rights organizations… despite the arsenal of repressive laws used under Mubarak to enforce all manner of supervision and dominance over civil society and political parties.
The organizations also sent their complaint to various United Nations offices responsible for human rights.
The 36 groups include the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the Association of Researchers in Egyptian Universities and Institutes, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, and Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination .
Heels Dug In, Cheney Rewrites History
By William Fisher
Human rights advocates and legal experts are hitting back at statements made by former vice president Dick Cheney in his new book, “In My Time,” that abusive interrogation methods – torture -- yielded information that saved lives and that he had “no regrets” about their use.
Cheney has been unshakable in defense of his decision to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read torture) including waterboarding. “I would strongly support using it again if we had a high value detainee and that was the only way we could get him to talk,’’ he said.
But Human Rights First (HRF), one of the advocacy groups weighing in against the book, said, “The former Vice President has long claimed that abusive interrogation methods yielded information that ultimately saved lives, but national security experts and retired military leaders – including Senator John McCain, CIA Director General David Patraeus and former Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak (Ret.) – disagree.”
Numerous official and private investigations and congressional testimony by an FBI interrogator strongly suggest that conventional interrogation techniques yield far more reliable results.
In conjunction with the release of Cheney’s memoir, HRF is launching an online ad campaign featuring prominent voices denouncing torture and highlighting the detrimental effect it has had on the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts. The ad links to an original 30 second video and will be seen on Google and YouTube, as well as in messages sent by the New York Times’ “Today’s Headlines” and Politico’s “The Huddle.”
“Former Vice President Cheney can write and say whatever he wants, but torture is torture and there’s no disputing the harm its use brought the United States,” said Human Rights First’s Elisa Massimino. “Torture eroded the nation’s standing as an international leader in human rights. It undermined our ability to gather reliable intelligence, and it has no place in U.S. national security policy. Two days after he took office, President Obama closed the book on torture and it needs to stay shut.”
Other like organizations expressed similar disapproval of the new memoir, which was released this week.
Amnesty USA said “The failure to hold the architects of policies of torture and disappearance during the ‘global war on terror’ to account remains an enduring stain on the global reputation of the United States. Those most responsible for the shameful abuses at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and other black sites around the world continue to boast of their ‘accomplishments’ with complete impunity.”
Since leaving office, AI said, “Cheney has been without question the most prominent apologist for the regime of indefinite detention and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ instituted by the Bush administration.
AI has revisited some of the former Vice President’s previous statements to “demonstrate how they contrast not only with the reality of the situation, but also with the United States’ obligations.” For example:
Speaking on September 16, 2001, on NBC’s Meet the Press Cheney “set the tone for the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks. He said ‘We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world… it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective’.”
AI counters with: “As a party to of a wide range of international human rights and international humanitarian law instruments, including the U.N. Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, the United States is simply not free to use ‘any means’ at its disposal – it is constrained by the applicable international law to operate within lawful parameters.”
In an interview with CNN on June 24, 2005, AI says Cheney “spun a rosy picture of conditions in Guantanamo.” ‘We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want’."
The reality, says AI, is that “since January 2002, eight inmates have died while in custody at the U.S.-controlled detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Six of these deaths have been declared suicides. Hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are known to have engaged in hunger strikes at the prison in protest of conditions and their prolonged confinement without trial.”
AI reminds us that Cheney said in 2005 of the 520 detainees then held at Guantánamo: “Hard-core terrorists is the only way to describe them. They’re unlawful combatants. They’re out to kill Americans. And if you put them back on the streets, that’s exactly what they’ll do… [W]e absolutely need to have a facility like that to house some very violent and evil people.”
It also reminds us that, by the end of President Bush’s second term, his administration had released 525 former Guantanamo detainees without charge. A January 2011 study of some 600 former Guantanamo inmates conducted by the New America Foundation put the recidivism figure at six percent.
Former Vice President Cheney has consistently maintained that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” prevented terrorist attacks and claimed that the release of classified memos would support his claim. In a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in May 2009 Cheney stated: “I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed…The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
Amnesty contends that “there is no evidence that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved as a result of the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. In August 2009 a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Amnesty International and coalition partners resulted in the release of the two CIA memos that the former Vice President had claimed would vindicate his public statements. In fact, the memos confirmed that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information obtained.”
The organization charges that “Information obtained through coercion led directly to one of the greatest intelligence failures of the past decade – the assessment that Iraq posed an imminent security threat to the United States. Suspected Al Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured. To make his interrogators stop, he told them that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This intelligence was used in part to justify the Iraq War. No such link existed.”
In an October 2006 interview, former Vice President Cheney told radio host Scott Hennen that authorizing waterboarding was “a no-brainer” and denied that it amounted to torture. Similarly, in a February 2008 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Cheney told his audience: “The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture – it’s against our laws and against our values.”
Amnesty responds: “Torture is indeed against the law, and water boarding – or simulated drowning – has consistently been considered to be torture under both international and U.S. jurisprudence. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, Japanese officials were convicted of torturing captured U.S. pilots by subjecting them to waterboarding. In 1983, Texas sheriff James Parker and his deputies water-boarded a number of prisoners in an effort to elicit confessions. Parker was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for his actions and the judge presiding over the case repeatedly described waterboarding unambiguously as torture in his judgment.”
Amnesty adds, “In April 2009, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee issued the conclusions of its ‘Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody’. Among its findings is that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
The organization makes similar claims regarding the issue of trials before military commissions v. trials in the civilian justice system. Cheney has repeatedly asserted that military commissions are the most appropriate venue for alleged terrorist trials. But Amnesty points out that Federal courts successfully prosecuted 523 terrorism-related defendants between September 11th, 2001, and December 31st, 2009. Approximately 235 defendants are still on trial. About 70 have been acquitted or had charges dismissed. The present conviction rate is 88 percent.
Military commissions have only convicted six people to date, which represents less than one percent of the inmates who have passed through GTMO.
Tom Parker, AI’s policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, said in advance of the release of Cheney’s memoir: "One can only hope that former Vice President Cheney’s memoir will not serve as yet another vehicle through which to peddle the same discredited mix of half-baked assertions and dark threats that marked his time in office. These have been comprehensively debunked by every new piece of information that emerges about the Bush administration’s failed counterterrorism policies.
Amnesty is also reiterating its call to US citizens to urge US Attorney General Eric Holder to “immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. government custody.”
A large number of human rights and justice organizations have taken similar positions. These include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the public service law firm that has provided many of the pro bono lawyers who volunteered to defend GTMO inmates. Cheney’s daughter Liz, a former Assistant Secretary of State, has attacked the loyalty of the volunteer lawyers.
Chip Pitts, former president of Amnesty USA, perhaps summed up the deeply held feelings of Cheney's opponents. He told The Public Record, "By debasing the United States and its commitment to the rule of law, encouraging unjustified yet devastatingly expensive and corrupt foreign wars, and even attempting to re-legitimate torture in a way not seen since the Middle Ages, Dick Cheney has likely done more damage than any other Bush administration official – or indeed anyone else in US history -- to our nation’s authentic security and future prospects.
“His continued obliviousness to the catastrophic consequences and severe harm he has caused to so many people evinces, at a minimum, an obstinate and pathological inhumanity. This memoir will no doubt serve to further incriminate him rather than exonerate him."
Human rights advocates and legal experts are hitting back at statements made by former vice president Dick Cheney in his new book, “In My Time,” that abusive interrogation methods – torture -- yielded information that saved lives and that he had “no regrets” about their use.
Cheney has been unshakable in defense of his decision to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read torture) including waterboarding. “I would strongly support using it again if we had a high value detainee and that was the only way we could get him to talk,’’ he said.
But Human Rights First (HRF), one of the advocacy groups weighing in against the book, said, “The former Vice President has long claimed that abusive interrogation methods yielded information that ultimately saved lives, but national security experts and retired military leaders – including Senator John McCain, CIA Director General David Patraeus and former Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak (Ret.) – disagree.”
Numerous official and private investigations and congressional testimony by an FBI interrogator strongly suggest that conventional interrogation techniques yield far more reliable results.
In conjunction with the release of Cheney’s memoir, HRF is launching an online ad campaign featuring prominent voices denouncing torture and highlighting the detrimental effect it has had on the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts. The ad links to an original 30 second video and will be seen on Google and YouTube, as well as in messages sent by the New York Times’ “Today’s Headlines” and Politico’s “The Huddle.”
“Former Vice President Cheney can write and say whatever he wants, but torture is torture and there’s no disputing the harm its use brought the United States,” said Human Rights First’s Elisa Massimino. “Torture eroded the nation’s standing as an international leader in human rights. It undermined our ability to gather reliable intelligence, and it has no place in U.S. national security policy. Two days after he took office, President Obama closed the book on torture and it needs to stay shut.”
Other like organizations expressed similar disapproval of the new memoir, which was released this week.
Amnesty USA said “The failure to hold the architects of policies of torture and disappearance during the ‘global war on terror’ to account remains an enduring stain on the global reputation of the United States. Those most responsible for the shameful abuses at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and other black sites around the world continue to boast of their ‘accomplishments’ with complete impunity.”
Since leaving office, AI said, “Cheney has been without question the most prominent apologist for the regime of indefinite detention and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ instituted by the Bush administration.
AI has revisited some of the former Vice President’s previous statements to “demonstrate how they contrast not only with the reality of the situation, but also with the United States’ obligations.” For example:
Speaking on September 16, 2001, on NBC’s Meet the Press Cheney “set the tone for the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks. He said ‘We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world… it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective’.”
AI counters with: “As a party to of a wide range of international human rights and international humanitarian law instruments, including the U.N. Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, the United States is simply not free to use ‘any means’ at its disposal – it is constrained by the applicable international law to operate within lawful parameters.”
In an interview with CNN on June 24, 2005, AI says Cheney “spun a rosy picture of conditions in Guantanamo.” ‘We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want’."
The reality, says AI, is that “since January 2002, eight inmates have died while in custody at the U.S.-controlled detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Six of these deaths have been declared suicides. Hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are known to have engaged in hunger strikes at the prison in protest of conditions and their prolonged confinement without trial.”
AI reminds us that Cheney said in 2005 of the 520 detainees then held at Guantánamo: “Hard-core terrorists is the only way to describe them. They’re unlawful combatants. They’re out to kill Americans. And if you put them back on the streets, that’s exactly what they’ll do… [W]e absolutely need to have a facility like that to house some very violent and evil people.”
It also reminds us that, by the end of President Bush’s second term, his administration had released 525 former Guantanamo detainees without charge. A January 2011 study of some 600 former Guantanamo inmates conducted by the New America Foundation put the recidivism figure at six percent.
Former Vice President Cheney has consistently maintained that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” prevented terrorist attacks and claimed that the release of classified memos would support his claim. In a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in May 2009 Cheney stated: “I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed…The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
Amnesty contends that “there is no evidence that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved as a result of the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. In August 2009 a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Amnesty International and coalition partners resulted in the release of the two CIA memos that the former Vice President had claimed would vindicate his public statements. In fact, the memos confirmed that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information obtained.”
The organization charges that “Information obtained through coercion led directly to one of the greatest intelligence failures of the past decade – the assessment that Iraq posed an imminent security threat to the United States. Suspected Al Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured. To make his interrogators stop, he told them that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This intelligence was used in part to justify the Iraq War. No such link existed.”
In an October 2006 interview, former Vice President Cheney told radio host Scott Hennen that authorizing waterboarding was “a no-brainer” and denied that it amounted to torture. Similarly, in a February 2008 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Cheney told his audience: “The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture – it’s against our laws and against our values.”
Amnesty responds: “Torture is indeed against the law, and water boarding – or simulated drowning – has consistently been considered to be torture under both international and U.S. jurisprudence. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, Japanese officials were convicted of torturing captured U.S. pilots by subjecting them to waterboarding. In 1983, Texas sheriff James Parker and his deputies water-boarded a number of prisoners in an effort to elicit confessions. Parker was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for his actions and the judge presiding over the case repeatedly described waterboarding unambiguously as torture in his judgment.”
Amnesty adds, “In April 2009, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee issued the conclusions of its ‘Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody’. Among its findings is that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
The organization makes similar claims regarding the issue of trials before military commissions v. trials in the civilian justice system. Cheney has repeatedly asserted that military commissions are the most appropriate venue for alleged terrorist trials. But Amnesty points out that Federal courts successfully prosecuted 523 terrorism-related defendants between September 11th, 2001, and December 31st, 2009. Approximately 235 defendants are still on trial. About 70 have been acquitted or had charges dismissed. The present conviction rate is 88 percent.
Military commissions have only convicted six people to date, which represents less than one percent of the inmates who have passed through GTMO.
Tom Parker, AI’s policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, said in advance of the release of Cheney’s memoir: "One can only hope that former Vice President Cheney’s memoir will not serve as yet another vehicle through which to peddle the same discredited mix of half-baked assertions and dark threats that marked his time in office. These have been comprehensively debunked by every new piece of information that emerges about the Bush administration’s failed counterterrorism policies.
Amnesty is also reiterating its call to US citizens to urge US Attorney General Eric Holder to “immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. government custody.”
A large number of human rights and justice organizations have taken similar positions. These include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the public service law firm that has provided many of the pro bono lawyers who volunteered to defend GTMO inmates. Cheney’s daughter Liz, a former Assistant Secretary of State, has attacked the loyalty of the volunteer lawyers.
Chip Pitts, former president of Amnesty USA, perhaps summed up the deeply held feelings of Cheney's opponents. He told The Public Record, "By debasing the United States and its commitment to the rule of law, encouraging unjustified yet devastatingly expensive and corrupt foreign wars, and even attempting to re-legitimate torture in a way not seen since the Middle Ages, Dick Cheney has likely done more damage than any other Bush administration official – or indeed anyone else in US history -- to our nation’s authentic security and future prospects.
“His continued obliviousness to the catastrophic consequences and severe harm he has caused to so many people evinces, at a minimum, an obstinate and pathological inhumanity. This memoir will no doubt serve to further incriminate him rather than exonerate him."
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
American Exceptionalism
By William Fisher
This is apparently the season when the American commentariat trots out its love of America. They express this deep emotion in many ways.
John Perry links the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s to the struggle of the Republic Party to absolve the wealthiest Americans from paying a fair share of their debt to their country. He also thinks it’s legitimate to secede from the USA. To the Perry version of American exceptionalism, add some others: Sarah Palen finds us exceptional because she can have her guns; Michelle Bachmann seems to define American exceptionalism as our ability to achieve just about anything we set our sights on, no matter how unlikely, as long as our oversized, over-regulating government only gets out of the way.
For Mr. Romney, American execptionalism seems to turn on the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate and make a ton of money, even if we’re selling
off bits and pieces of once-healthy companies. For TV Host Chris Matthews, (I’m paraphrasing) it’s exemplified by Obama being born of mixed race and yet making it to the presidency. Chris says this couldn’t happen in any other country in the world. “You can’t go to China or Japan and become Chinese or Japanese. Obama came to the US and became an American and is now in the White House (Chris leaves out the minor truth that Obama didn’t have to become American - he already was, having been born in Hawaii).
Virtually since the beginning of our Republic we have been spinning a variety of narratives to reassure ourselves that we are the greatest nation ever invented and that no other comes even close. That, presumably is one of the reasons we seem to have this irresistible urge to teach the rest of the world how to be exceptional too.
But one of the wisest men I know is injecting a dose of reality into the patriotic mishmash being cooked up by those seeking to get themselves elected to something.
That man is Doug Speth or more formally, James Gustave Speth. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School, after which he became a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Then in the White House, as a Member and subsequently for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, he served in the Executive Office of the President. Later, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown, teaching environmental and constitutional law.
In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.
Still later, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Program; dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School.
Now, why I am going to such lengths to introduce you to some of the details of this outstanding career? Because those folks who believe in American exceptionalism – or think they’re simply good for the political aspirations – are wont to blame the messenger who brings actual proof that Americans may once have been exceptional, but today that achievement is crumbling and our favorites narratives with it.
Prof. Speth has produced an index that should embarrass the exceptionalists by shining a bit of light on those areas where we’re not so exceptional.
For example, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:
the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
the greatest inequality of incomes;
the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of
children”;
the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
the lowest social mobility;
the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion
of GDP, the highest infant mortality rate; prevalence of mental health problems; obesity rate; portion of people going without health care due to cost; low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan); consumption of antidepressants per capita;
the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);
the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita; the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
the largest international arms sales;
the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and
Portugal);
the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal
and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
the highest homicide rate;
and the largest prison population per capita.
Now this is a pretty sorry scoresheet for our country – which used to excel in many of these categories.
The reasons for our fall from positive exceptionalism are far too lengthy to explore here, but some of the major factors, in no particular order, are inadequate education; globalization; the voracious greed and dishonesty of banks, mortgage brokers, government institutions and rating agencies, their
actions creating a bubble which they knew was as unsustainable as were the the insurance guarantees they issued bogus.
Then, there’s the US Tax Code, which encourages foreign investment and demands local, not American, labor; a health care system that provides first-rate health to the very wealthy or the very old – but not to the poor, who have no health insurance; unemployment and under-employment, partly because of the Great Recession, but starting long before that catastrophe as a result of the increase in worker productivity caused by substituting machines for humans in the workplace; and the consequent widening income disparity between the very rich and the very poor.
But the picture is not all hopeless. Gus Speth says, “It took a generation or more for most of these challenges to mature, and it will take a generation or more to climb out of the depths into which we have let things slide. More realistically, given that the U.S. government today is nowhere near ready to launch such efforts, it will take longer.”
He says, “If this analysis is correct, the devastating conclusion is that most of America’s problems will get worse or, at best, will continue to fester more or less as they currently are for the foreseeable future. That is a difficult
conclusion to have to face. But face it we must. Of course, we have to fight to correct these problems with all the strength progressive communities can muster, but we must also prepare and pursue another path forward.”
In short, he says, “America must complement ongoing efforts at reform and working within the system with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change leading to a new political economy—a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet at home and around the world. The current system is simply not delivering economically, socially, environmentally, or politically. We need a new one. This type of systemic change will require a great struggle, and it will not come quickly. The truth is we are still in the design stage of building a new operating system.”
He adds: “That system won’t be socialism, by the way, and it won’t be today’s American capitalism either.”
“The possibility of system change suggests there can be a very bright light at
the end of this gloomy tunnel. America is in the midst of a period of decline,
and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. The imperatives its citizens face are therefore
fourfold:
(1) to slow and then halt the descent, minimizing human suffering and planetary damage along the way;
(2) to prevent a collapse, the emergence of a fortress world, or any of the dark scenarios that have been plotted for us in science fiction and increasingly in serious analysis;
(3) to minimize the time at the bottom and to start the climb upward, building a new operating system; and
(4) to complete, inhabit, and flourish in the diversity of alternative social arrangements, each far superior to what we will have left behind.
“There is hope especially in three things. The decline now occurring will
progressively delegitimize the current order. Who wants an operating system that is capable of generating and perpetuating such suffering and destruction? The one good thing about the decline of today’s political economy is that it opens the door to something much better. Second, people will eventually rise up, raise a loud shout, and demand major changes. That is already happening with some people in some places. Eventually, the chorus will grow to become a national and global movement for transformation. And third, Americans are already busy with numerous, mostly local initiatives that point the way to the future.”
“Amid ongoing decline, Americans must now summon the hope and courage to dream up something new and better and to fight for it. It has been said that the genius of America is to turn crisis into opportunity. Let us now dream a new America, the country we want for our grandchildren.”
That’s a Herculean order. And the question is: Will our political leaders find the smarts and the courage and the humility to become truly exceptional Americans?
This is apparently the season when the American commentariat trots out its love of America. They express this deep emotion in many ways.
John Perry links the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s to the struggle of the Republic Party to absolve the wealthiest Americans from paying a fair share of their debt to their country. He also thinks it’s legitimate to secede from the USA. To the Perry version of American exceptionalism, add some others: Sarah Palen finds us exceptional because she can have her guns; Michelle Bachmann seems to define American exceptionalism as our ability to achieve just about anything we set our sights on, no matter how unlikely, as long as our oversized, over-regulating government only gets out of the way.
For Mr. Romney, American execptionalism seems to turn on the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate and make a ton of money, even if we’re selling
off bits and pieces of once-healthy companies. For TV Host Chris Matthews, (I’m paraphrasing) it’s exemplified by Obama being born of mixed race and yet making it to the presidency. Chris says this couldn’t happen in any other country in the world. “You can’t go to China or Japan and become Chinese or Japanese. Obama came to the US and became an American and is now in the White House (Chris leaves out the minor truth that Obama didn’t have to become American - he already was, having been born in Hawaii).
Virtually since the beginning of our Republic we have been spinning a variety of narratives to reassure ourselves that we are the greatest nation ever invented and that no other comes even close. That, presumably is one of the reasons we seem to have this irresistible urge to teach the rest of the world how to be exceptional too.
But one of the wisest men I know is injecting a dose of reality into the patriotic mishmash being cooked up by those seeking to get themselves elected to something.
That man is Doug Speth or more formally, James Gustave Speth. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School, after which he became a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Then in the White House, as a Member and subsequently for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, he served in the Executive Office of the President. Later, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown, teaching environmental and constitutional law.
In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.
Still later, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Program; dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School.
Now, why I am going to such lengths to introduce you to some of the details of this outstanding career? Because those folks who believe in American exceptionalism – or think they’re simply good for the political aspirations – are wont to blame the messenger who brings actual proof that Americans may once have been exceptional, but today that achievement is crumbling and our favorites narratives with it.
Prof. Speth has produced an index that should embarrass the exceptionalists by shining a bit of light on those areas where we’re not so exceptional.
For example, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:
the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
the greatest inequality of incomes;
the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of
children”;
the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
the lowest social mobility;
the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion
of GDP, the highest infant mortality rate; prevalence of mental health problems; obesity rate; portion of people going without health care due to cost; low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan); consumption of antidepressants per capita;
the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);
the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita; the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
the largest international arms sales;
the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and
Portugal);
the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal
and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
the highest homicide rate;
and the largest prison population per capita.
Now this is a pretty sorry scoresheet for our country – which used to excel in many of these categories.
The reasons for our fall from positive exceptionalism are far too lengthy to explore here, but some of the major factors, in no particular order, are inadequate education; globalization; the voracious greed and dishonesty of banks, mortgage brokers, government institutions and rating agencies, their
actions creating a bubble which they knew was as unsustainable as were the the insurance guarantees they issued bogus.
Then, there’s the US Tax Code, which encourages foreign investment and demands local, not American, labor; a health care system that provides first-rate health to the very wealthy or the very old – but not to the poor, who have no health insurance; unemployment and under-employment, partly because of the Great Recession, but starting long before that catastrophe as a result of the increase in worker productivity caused by substituting machines for humans in the workplace; and the consequent widening income disparity between the very rich and the very poor.
But the picture is not all hopeless. Gus Speth says, “It took a generation or more for most of these challenges to mature, and it will take a generation or more to climb out of the depths into which we have let things slide. More realistically, given that the U.S. government today is nowhere near ready to launch such efforts, it will take longer.”
He says, “If this analysis is correct, the devastating conclusion is that most of America’s problems will get worse or, at best, will continue to fester more or less as they currently are for the foreseeable future. That is a difficult
conclusion to have to face. But face it we must. Of course, we have to fight to correct these problems with all the strength progressive communities can muster, but we must also prepare and pursue another path forward.”
In short, he says, “America must complement ongoing efforts at reform and working within the system with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change leading to a new political economy—a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet at home and around the world. The current system is simply not delivering economically, socially, environmentally, or politically. We need a new one. This type of systemic change will require a great struggle, and it will not come quickly. The truth is we are still in the design stage of building a new operating system.”
He adds: “That system won’t be socialism, by the way, and it won’t be today’s American capitalism either.”
“The possibility of system change suggests there can be a very bright light at
the end of this gloomy tunnel. America is in the midst of a period of decline,
and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. The imperatives its citizens face are therefore
fourfold:
(1) to slow and then halt the descent, minimizing human suffering and planetary damage along the way;
(2) to prevent a collapse, the emergence of a fortress world, or any of the dark scenarios that have been plotted for us in science fiction and increasingly in serious analysis;
(3) to minimize the time at the bottom and to start the climb upward, building a new operating system; and
(4) to complete, inhabit, and flourish in the diversity of alternative social arrangements, each far superior to what we will have left behind.
“There is hope especially in three things. The decline now occurring will
progressively delegitimize the current order. Who wants an operating system that is capable of generating and perpetuating such suffering and destruction? The one good thing about the decline of today’s political economy is that it opens the door to something much better. Second, people will eventually rise up, raise a loud shout, and demand major changes. That is already happening with some people in some places. Eventually, the chorus will grow to become a national and global movement for transformation. And third, Americans are already busy with numerous, mostly local initiatives that point the way to the future.”
“Amid ongoing decline, Americans must now summon the hope and courage to dream up something new and better and to fight for it. It has been said that the genius of America is to turn crisis into opportunity. Let us now dream a new America, the country we want for our grandchildren.”
That’s a Herculean order. And the question is: Will our political leaders find the smarts and the courage and the humility to become truly exceptional Americans?
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