Anti-war vs. Anti-American

I have heard many times people who are anti-war being labelled anti-American. Indeed, my fellow travellers and I up here in Canada hear that quite a bit as well. I distinctly remember hearing that a lot when I was in the peace movement during the time leading up to the war in 2003.

Of course, it should be obvious to the objective reader that the failure to make a distinction between anti-American and anti-Bush is a gross intellectual one. I can simultaneously love my country and hate what my government is doing.

I think that there are basically two groups of people who make this kind of comment. The first group are those who say it out of just plain ignorance. They are gullible to right-wing propaganda put out there that one necessary equals the other. Their minds, due to either stupidity or intellectual laziness, are either unable or unwilling to make a distinction between the two. The second group are those who know full well that there is a distinction between the two, but have a vested interest, be it ideological, political, economic, or some combination thereof, to blur the distinction in the minds of the larger public.

I would submit that American's who are opposing the Bush administration's war on Iraq and drive for global empire are in fact exemplifying patriotism in its highest form. Let me use an analogy. Martin Luther King, in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," argued that there is a distinction between just and unjust laws, and that those who engaged in civil disobedience with respect to unjust laws were in fact showing the highest regard for the law, because they are upholding the spirit of truth and justice upon which law is based. Likewise, I would argue that those who oppose the war in Iraq and other US foreign policy decisions are in fact displaying the highest form of patriotism, because they are demanding a higher standard from their national goverment, defending the spirit of America as a beacon of truth and justice, and defending the right to free expression by exercising that right.

Naomi Klein on Iraq and the anti-war movement

I just came across a great interview with Naomi Klein on Alternet. She talks alot about what she thinks is wrong with the anti-war movement, and where it can go from here, what specific issues it can latch onto:

The great error made during the electoral campaign was that the anti-war movement allowed itself to turn into an anti-Bush movement. So as the logic of anyone-but-Bush set in — and there wasn't a candidate speaking on these issues — the war itself disappeared. What I mean by that is that the reality of war itself disappeared. The truth is that we were talking about Iraq in the past tense — not about what was happening on the ground during the campaign. And indeed, I believe that continues to be true to a scandalous degree, especially what we've just seen in recent months in Iraq. I'm worried that we haven't learned from that mistake yet.

We also need to more clearly focus on policy demands. I have been arguing for a long time that the anti-war movement should turn itself into a pro-democracy movement, i.e., support the demands for democracy in Iraq.

As an aside, I want to make a clear distinction between democracy in Iraq and the elections being held right now because they're not the same. The elections are, in fact, being used as a weapon in Iraq at the moment.

One of our great failures was in January of 2004, when there were a hundred thousand people in the streets in Baghdad demanding direct elections and rejecting the idea of an interim government. We didn't mirror those protests, unlike the time when we had protests around the world opposing the war.

This is just an example to make the point that it's not a question of us deciding what the demands are from here. There are clear demands that are coming out of Iraq. And if we care to listen, we can mirror them and bring them home to where the decisions are being made in Washington, in London, and so on. We haven't done much of that.

What we've really done a lot of is proving ourselves right to have even opposed the war in the first place. And I even sometimes get the sense — in some anti-war circles — that we who oppose the war don't have any responsibility to talk about how to improve the situation in Iraq beyond just advocating pulling out the troops.

She also talks about the issue of Iraq's dept, and how the US is playing that to its advantage:

I agree that there's a profound responsibility not to abandon Iraq. But the presence of troops is not the solution, which is why we need to talk about reparations. What we need to talk about is the fact that so little of the reconstruction money has actually made it to the ground. That money is still owed. The reason why this money was approved was because Americans accepted that as part of the invasion they did owe something to Iraq in terms of the reconstruction. But that money hasn't gone to Iraq's reconstruction, and is an ongoing debt. There are programs that could be developed that could bring real hope to Iraq — that can be a real bulwark against civil war.

One of the ways in which the Kerry campaign was morally bankrupt was that it refused to speak about this issue. Bush and Cheney talked about what was owed to Iraq and talked about the responsibility of not to cut and run.

I have heard people on the left in the U.S. say that we don't owe Iraq anything, that they have oil revenue, that our only responsibility is to just pull out. That is wrong. Our responsibility goes far beyond that. Anybody who says that has really not taken a hard look at the level of devastation of that country.

I also just heard recently from some people who said that they don't want another U.S. taxpayer dollar going to Iraq. Barely any U.S. taxpayer dollars have gone to Iraq. In fact, Iraqi money has gone to U.S. companies because it's the Iraqi oil money that's bankrolled their reconstruction contracts.

What's a specific policy or issue that the anti-war movement could rally around?

For me the easiest issue is debt. The Iraqis should not have to inherit Saddam's debt. This is a very simple issue. Now this is something Bush has said and James Baker has said. And that's why we feel we don't have the right to say it. The truth is that when Bush and Baker say it, they're lying. What they've actually done to Iraq instead is reduce the debt just enough to make sure that Iraqis can repay it. It was at a completely unsustainable level and was never going to be repaid previously so it was restructured — so that they could demand that it be repaid. Then it was attached to an IMF structural adjustment program that makes debt forgiveness contingent on adherence to incredibly damaging and dangerous new economic (free market) policies.

We said nothing about this in the anti-war movement when we should have been demanding total debt erasure. We had a window when Bush was using our language, but instead we responded as if we didn't have any responsibility to do so because he was using that language.

Of course, there are some exceptions. There's this great group called Jubilee Iraq that has been working on these issues. I think that these campaigns — which are working on issues that are real practical solidarity — need to be funded better and get more support.

There's another campaign that's evolving around plans to eliminate the food ration program in Iraq — which is just another brilliant idea. Right now, the whole country receives a food basket, and 60 percent of Iraqis depend on them for basic nutrition. But this program is seen as a relic of state socialism by the neocons in charge. So in the middle of this brutal economic recession in Iraq where 70 percent of the country is unemployed, they're proposing eliminating the main source of nutrition for the country and giving people cash instead so they participate in a market economy.

We need to develop an agenda based on the demands coming from Iraq for reparations, for total debt erasure, for complete control over the oil revenues, for a cancellation of the contracts signed under the occupation, and so on. This is what real sovereignty would look like, real self-determination — we know this.

See the full interview here.

Arundhati Roy: Where from here?

Arundhati Roy, speaking on the World Social Forum, and where resistance to the US Empire must go from here:

This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It's not good enough to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it's important to win something. In order to win something, we - all of us gathered here and a little way away at Mumbai Resistance - need to agree on something. That something does not need to be an over-arching pre-ordained ideology into which we force-fit our delightfully factious, argumentative selves. It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or another form of resistance to the exclusion of everything else. It could be a minimum agenda.

If all of us are indeed against Imperialism and against the project of neo-liberalism, then let's turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable culmination of both. Plenty of anti-war activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.

Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the U.S. army's capture of Saddam Hussein and therefore, in retrospect, justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler. And that - after a quarter century partnership in which the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. It's an in-house quarrel. They're business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jack's the CEO.

So if we are against Imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the U.S. occupation and that we believe that the U.S. must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something really small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old Killer Ba'athists, are they Islamic Fundamentalists?)

We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.

Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the U.S. government's plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.

I suggest that at a joint closing ceremony of the World Social Forum and Mumbai Resistance, we choose, by some means, two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to win.

Read the full speech here.

Iraqi election

The Iraqi farce of an election is taking place tomorrow, and here are some thoughts from a Common Dreams article by Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood which largely reflect my views:

This is an election that U.S. policymakers were forced to accept and now hope can entrench their power, not displace it. They seek not an election that will lead to a U.S. withdrawal, but one that will bolster their ability to make a case for staying indefinitely.

This is crucial for anti-empire activists to keep in mind as the mainstream media begins to give us pictures of long lines at polling places to show how much Iraqis support this election and to repeat the Bush administration line about bringing freedom to a part of the world starved for democracy. Those media reports also will give some space to those critics who remain comfortably within the permissible ideological limits -- that is, those who agree that the U.S. aim is freedom for Iraq and, therefore, are allowed to quibble with a few minor aspects of administration policy.

The task of activists who step outside those limits is to point out a painfully obvious fact, and therefore one that is unspeakable in the mainstream: A real election cannot go on under foreign occupation in which the electoral process is managed by the occupiers who have clear preferences in the outcome.

That’s why the U.S.-funded programs that “nurture” the voting process have to be implemented “discreetly,” in the words of a Washington Post story, to avoid giving the Iraqis who are “well versed in the region’s widely held perception of U.S. hegemony” further reason to mistrust the assumed benevolent intentions of the United States.

Post reporters Karl Vick and Robin Wright quote an Iraqi-born instructor from one of these training programs: “If you walk into a coffee shop and say, ‘Hi, I’m from an American organization and I’m here to help you,’ that’s not going to help. If you say you’re here to encourage democracy, they say you’re here to control the Middle East.”

Perhaps “they” -- those well-versed Iraqis -- say that because it is an accurate assessment of policy in the Bush administration, as well as every other contemporary U.S. administration. “They” dare to suggest that the U.S. goal is effective control over the region’s oil resources. But “we” in the United States are not supposed to think, let alone say, such things; that same Post story asserts, without a hint of sarcasm, that the groups offering political training in Iraq (the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, International Republican Institute, and International Foundation for Election Systems) are “at the ambitious heart of the American effort to make Iraq a model democracy in the Arab world.”

Be still my heart. To fulfill that ambition, U.S. troop strength in Iraq will remain at the current level of about 120,000 for at least two more years, according to the Army’s top operations officer. For the past two years, journalists have reported about U.S. intentions to establish anywhere from four to 14 “enduring” military bases in Iraq. Given that there are about 890 U.S. military installations around the world to provide the capacity to project power in service of the U.S. political and economic agenda, it’s not hard to imagine that planners might be interested in bases in the heart of the world’s most important energy-producing region.

Read the full article here.

"We've Been Taken Over by a Cult" -- Hersh

Read the transcript of this speech by Seymour Hersh. Here are a couple of excerpts:

About what's going on in terms of the President is that as virtuous as I feel, you know, at The New Yorker, writing an alternative history more or less of what's been going on in the last three years, George Bush feels just as virtuous in what he is doing. He is absolutely committed -- I don't know whether he thinks he’s doing God's will or what his father didn't do, or whether it's some mandate from -- you know, I just don’t know, but George Bush thinks this is the right thing. He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He's going to expand it, I think, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference to him. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he's inured in a very strange way to people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much. So, the day-to-day anxiety that all of us have, and believe me, though he got 58 million votes, many of people who voted for him weren’t voting for continued warfare, but I think that's what we're going to have.

It's hard to predict the future. And it's sort of silly to, but the question is: How do you go to him? How do you get at him? What can you do to maybe move him off the course that he sees as virtuous and he sees as absolutely appropriate? All of us -- you have to -- I can’t begin to exaggerate how frightening the position is -- we're in right now, because most of you don't understand, because the press has not done a very good job. The Senate Intelligence Committee, the new bill that was just passed, provoked by the 9/11 committee actually, is a little bit of a kabuki dance, I guess is what I want to say, in that what it really does is it consolidates an awful lot of power in the Pentagon -- by statute now. It gives Rumsfeld the right to do an awful lot of things he has been wanting to do, and that is basically manhunting and killing them before they kill us, as Peter said. “They did it to us. We’ve got to do it to them.” That is the attitude that -- at the very top of our government exists. And so, I'll just tell you a couple of things that drive me nuts. We can -- you know, there's not much more to go on with.

and...

On the other hand, the facts -- there are some facts. We can’t win this war. We can do what he's doing. We can bomb them into the stone ages. Here's the other horrifying, sort of spectacular fact that we don't really appreciate. Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, who was a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, long before he became a critic, and is basically Saddam-lite. Before we installed him, since we have installed him on June 28, July, August, September, October, November, every month, one thing happened: the number of sorties, bombing raids by one plane, and the number of tonnage dropped has grown exponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. There are no embedded journalists at Doha, the Air Force base I think we’re operating out of. No embedded journalists at the aircraft carrier, Harry Truman. That's the aircraft carrier that I think is doing many of the operational fights. There’s no air defense, It's simply a turkey shoot. They come and hit what they want. We know nothing. We don't ask. We're not told. We know nothing about the extent of bombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing is going to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq -- some of you remember Vietnam -- Iraq is being turn into a “free-fire zone” right in front of us. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be as unobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people -- I don't call people at work. I call them at home, and he has one of those caller I.D.’s, and he picked up the phone and he said, “Welcome to Stalingrad.” We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it.

We have a President that -- and a Secretary of State that, when a trooper -- when a reporter or journalist asked -- actually a trooper, a soldier, asked about lack of equipment, stumbled through an answer and the President then gets up and says, “Yes, they should all have good equipment and we're going to do it,” as if somehow he wasn't involved in the process. Words mean nothing -- nothing to George Bush. They are just utterances. They have no meaning. Bush can say again and again, “well, we don't do torture.” We know what happened. We know about Abu Ghraib. We know, we see anecdotally. We all understand in some profound way because so much has come out in the last few weeks, the I.C.R.C. The ACLU put out more papers, this is not an isolated incident what’s happened with the seven kids and the horrible photographs, Lynndie England. That's into the not the issue is. They're fall guys. Of course, they did wrong. But you know, when we send kids to fight, one of the things that we do when we send our children to war is the officers become in loco parentis. That means their job in the military is to protect these kids, not only from getting bullets and being blown up, but also there is nothing as stupid as a 20 or 22-year-old kid with a weapon in a war zone. Protect them from themselves. The spectacle of these people doing those antics night after night, for three and a half months only stopped when one of their own soldiers turned them in tells you all you need to know, how many officers knew. I can just give you a timeline that will tell you all you need to know. Abu Ghraib was reported in January of 2004 this year. In May, I and CBS earlier also wrote an awful lot about what was going on there. At that point, between January and May, our government did nothing. Although Rumsfeld later acknowledged that he was briefed by the middle of January on it and told the President. In those three-and-a-half months before it became public, was there any systematic effort to do anything other than to prosecute seven “bad seeds”, enlisted kids, reservists from West Virginia and the unit they were in, by the way, Military Police. The answer is, Ha! They were basically a bunch of kids who were taught on traffic control, sent to Iraq, put in charge of a prison. They knew nothing. It doesn't excuse them from doing dumb things. But there is another framework. We're not seeing it. They’ve gotten away with it.

Kennedy: Fascist America

Hi, I'm back. I have a new computer. Yay! Anyway, a few days ago, there was an article that pointed out that Robert Kennedy Junior in his book released last year called "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy" observed that the US is becoming a fascist state:

In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.

"While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as 'a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.' Sound familiar?"

He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring: "It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly grasped the lesson."

Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that "fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

"The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power," Kennedy told us. "There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy."

An Appeal to Global Conscience

An Appeal to Global Conscience

Posted January 15, 2005.

An appeal to the peace and justice movement, calling for a long-term strategy for undermining the foundations of war. We appeal to all peace and justice movements to stand together as a conscience of the world against the Bush administration’s bloody occupation of Iraq and drive towards an American Empire. We may be in for a long war.

We who stand for democracy in the United States should continue and widen our protests especially at local community levels to:

oppose further Congressional funding for war and occupation;

develop public support for military withdrawal;

support local referendums on withdrawal and peace candidates in 2006 and 2008;

build non-partisan peace alliances across all party lines, from left to right;

support dissenting combat veterans, reservists and their families;

call for boycotts and termination of profiteering from war and occupation by American corporations in Iraq;

transition from fossil fuel dependency to renewable resources, conservation and energy efficiency.

A global behemoth can only be fought through global resistance, locally based. We express gratitude to the global peace movement for activating world opinion against collaboration with the U.S. occupation, and call for further efforts, including:

support for asylum in Canada and other nations for U.S. soldiers who refuse for reasons of conscience to fight in occupied Iraq;

demonstrations and political mobilizations in Europe and Latin America against President Bush’s frustrated search for “willing” allies;

continued efforts to force the withdrawal of British, Italian and other foreign troops from the occupation;

opposition to European participation in military training of Iraqi troops for an illegitimate U.S.-dominated regime.

Together we can undermine the foundations of war and occupation, make it impossible for the American government to continue its course, and begin to plant the pillars of peace.

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. occupation is the principal cause of the violent insurgency and growing civil war. We disagree with those who, while admitting that that the war was a mistake based on fabricated evidence, nevertheless claim it would be a bigger mistake to end the occupation and withdraw. We ask the question raised decades ago during another unwinnable war: who can justify sending more Americans to be the last to die for a mistake?


Over 40 million Americans already say we should withdraw from this war. These are not uncaring isolationists, but Americans who know better than to kill and die for a mistake, to throw good money after bad, and to ruin what is left of our good name in the world.

These tens of millions of Americans are completely unrepresented in the political process and media discussion. It is time that their frustration, and that of the majority who consider the war a mistake, be met with more than cowardly silence in the halls of power.

To those who say the war must continue three, five or 10 more years, we demand to know what will be left of the Iraq they claim to be saving? What loss in American and Iraqi lives, what cost in dollars wasted, what level of anti-American hatred in the world, are they willing to bear?

To those who consider the war a mistake but still fear the consequences of military withdrawal, we ask these questions: when will enough be enough? If not now, when?

We further believe the struggle to stop the occupation of Iraq is a first and essential step to unite forces against the U.S. government’s current political designs for global dominance. We oppose any ambitions to create an empire dominated by the United States or global networks of capitalism. Nor do we believe that the issue of terrorism can be addressed by permanent war, increased secrecy and suspensions of democratic liberties, but principally through an all-out effort to bring hope to two billion people now festering in humiliation and poverty.

We stand with those who believe in the reality of a multi-polar and multi-cultural world, and especially with those who believe "another world is possible" through social movements fighting for enforceable standards of human rights, fair trade, social justice and environmental protection, and for new institutions that foster a just distribution of global wealth and power and respect for the dignity of the human spirit. The challenge for us all is to imagine, strive for, and begin to live a better life beyond Empire altogether.

TOM HAYDEN (drafter)
IRA ARLOOK
ANTHONY ARNOVE
REV. ED BACON, rector, All Saints Church, Pasadena
GIOCONDA BELLI, poet and author
MEDEA BENJAMIN, Global Exchange
LARRY BENSKY, Pacifica Radio
NORMAN BIRNBAUM, author
REV. RICHARD BUNCE, Progressive Christians Uniting
LESLIE CAGAN, United for Peace and Justice
TIM CARPENTER, Progressive Democrats of America
JEFF COHEN, media critic
REV. JAMES CONN, United Methodist Urban Ministry
DAVID CORTWRIGHT
HARVEY COX, professor, Harvard Divinity School
PETER DREIER, professor, director, Urban and Environmental Studies, Occidental College
JODIE EVANS, Code Pink
CHELLIS GLENDENNING, psychologist, author
ROBERT GOTTLIEB, professor, UEPI, Occidental College
ROBERT GREENWALD, filmmaker
RICHARD FALK, professor, global studies, UC Santa Barbara
RABBI STEVEN JACOBS, Temple Kol Tikva
MIMI KENNEDY, actress
REV. PETER LAARMAN, director, Progressive Christians Uniting
SAUL LANDAU, author, professor, CSU Pomona
ROBERT J. LIFTON, Harvard Seminar on Mass Violence
STAUGHTON LYND, historian
ANURADHA MITTAL, founder, Oakland Institute
SARAH PILLSBURY, producer
LUIS RODRIGUEZ, author
JOAN SEKLER, filmmaker
RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW, Shalom Institute
LEONARD WEINGLASS, attorney
PAULA WEINSTEIN, producer
GAIL ZAPPA
HOWARD ZINN, historian

Amnesty International letter to Bush

Amnesty International has sent a letter to President Bush on the event of his inauguration. Bush has been proclaiming a respect for human rights and the rule of law. Amnesty is pointing out that his own government and military has been responsible for numerous human rights violations, and outlines the government orders that have been behind these abuses:

The struggle against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment requires a government’s one hundred per cent commitment and constant vigilance. It requires stringent adherence to safeguards and an absolute rejection of loopholes. It demands a policy of zero tolerance. Mr President, your administration has manifestly failed in this regard. At best, it set the conditions for torture and ill-treatment by lowering safeguards and failing to respond adequately to allegations of abuse raised by Amnesty International and others from early on in the "war on terror". At worst, it has authorized interrogation techniques and detainee transfers which have flouted the country’s international obligation to reject torture and ill-treatment under any circumstances and at all times.

Amnesty International takes this opportunity to list some of the detention or interrogation techniques that are alleged to have been authorized or used by the USA during the "war on terror". Some of the techniques appear to have been tailored to specific cultural or religious sensitivities of the detainees, thereby introducing a discriminatory element to the abuse. Neither gender nor age has offered protection. Children, the elderly, women and men are reported to have been among the subjects of torture or ill-treatment. The following list does not claim to be exhaustive:

Abduction
Death threats
Dietary manipulation
Dogs used to threaten and intimidate
Dousing in cold water
Electric shocks, threats of electric shocks
Excessive and cruel use of shackles and handcuffs, including "short shackling"
Excessive or humiliating use of strip searches
Exposure to weather and temperature extremes
"False flag", ie making a detainee think his interrogators are not US agents
Forced shaving, ie of head, body or facial hair
Forcible injections
Forced physical exercise
Hooding and blindfolding
Humiliation, eg forced crawling, forced to make animal noises, etc.
Immersion in water to induce perception of drowning
Incommunicado detention
Induced perception of suffocation or asyphxiation
Isolation for prolonged periods, eg months or more than a year
Light deprivation
Loud music, noise, yelling
Photography as humiliation
Physical assault, eg beating, punching, kicking
Prolonged interrogations, eg 20 hours
Racial and religious taunts, humiliation
Religious intolerance, eg disrespect for Koran, religious rituals
Secret detention
Sensory deprivation
Sexual humiliation
Sexual assault
Sleep adjustment
Sleep deprivation
Stress positions, eg prolonged forced kneeling and standing
Stripping
Strobe lighting
Threats of reprisals against relatives
Threat of transfer to third country to inspire fear of torture or death
Threat of transfer to Guantánamo
Threats of torture or ill-treatment
Twenty-four hour lighting
Withdrawal of "comfort items"
Withholding of medication
Withholding of food and water
Withholding of toilet facilities, leading to defecation and urination in clothing

As the Pentagon’s April 2003 Working Group report states, interrogation techniques are "usually used in combination". This can be illustrated by the recently revealed observations of FBI agents in Guantánamo. One reported seeing a detainee "sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing". Another wrote:
"On a couple of occassions (sic), I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defacated (sic) on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion (sic), the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the MPs what was going on , I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion (sic), the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night. On another occassion (sic), not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor".

Secretary Rumsfeld authorized interrogation techniques including stripping, environmental manipulation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, isolation, hooding, and the use of dogs to inspire fear. A number of detainees have alleged that they were subjected to such treatment in Guantánamo. An FBI agent also tells of having witnessed the use of a dog to intimidate a Guantánamo detainee, who was also subjected to three months of isolation in cell with 24-hour illumination. The detainee was later witnessed to be displaying conduct "consistent with extreme psychological trauma. Secretary Rumsfeld has also admitted to authorizing the exclusion of at least one detainee in Iraq from any prison register. Amnesty International has yet to see a satisfactory explanation of what appears to have been Secretary Rumsfeld’s participation in a "disappearance", which is a crime under international law.

Mr President, Amnesty International also notes that on 17 September 2001 you reportedly signed a Memorandum of Notification granting "exceptional authorities" to the CIA in the "war on terror". Amnesty International is further concerned by reports that you authorized the CIA to set up secret detention facilities outside the USA and to use harsh interrogation techniques. As noted further below, it appears that you have granted an exemption to the CIA and other non-military personnel from a 7 February 2002 directive stating that detainees in US custody would be treated humanely. If so, the ultimate responsibility for any resulting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment would lie squarely at your door. In addition, an FBI agent’s email sent from Iraq, recently made public, refers to an Executive Order signed by you which authorizes interrogation techniques which should be considered contrary to international law and standards. Amnesty International is aware that the administration has denied the existence of such an order.

The problem with such rebuttals is that previous denials have been shown to be inaccurate. The stock response of US officials during the "war on terror" to allegations of torture or ill-treatment – namely that all detainees in US custody are treated humanely and with respect for human dignity – can now be seen either to have been a stock falsehood or else an indication that your administration’s view of what constitutes humane treatment and respect for human dignity differs markedly from wider understandings of such terminology. With this in mind, the following assertion may be instructive:

"Of course, our values as a Nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment" (emphasis added).

No detainee can fall outside the prohibition on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. To suggest otherwise, as this line does, points to a serious gap in a government’s understanding of international law and indicates that it views fundamental human rights as privileges that can be granted, and therefore taken away, by the state. The sentence in question was in your memorandum, dated 7 February 2002, classified as secret for 10 years, and distributed to the main office-holders in your administration.

At the 22 June 2004 press briefing at which a selection of administration documents was made public, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales referred to your 7 February 2002 memorandum as the "most important" from among them. He repeated aloud to the assembled media your central holding – that the USA would treat detainees humanely, "including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment" – without any apparent recognition of the disturbing message contained in it. Earlier this month, Judge Gonzales’ responses to questions from Senators as your nominee for the post of Attorney General left a similarly troubling impression. Two examples will suffice:
Senator Patrick Leahy: "Do you think that other world leaders would have authority to authorize the torture of US citizens, if they deemed it necessary for their national security?"

Judge Gonzales: "Senator, I don’t know what laws other world leaders would be bound by… I’m not in a position to answer that question".

Senator Richard Durbin: "Can US personnel legally engage in torture under any circumstances?... Of course that would include military as well as intelligence personnel or others who are under the auspices of our government".

Judge Gonzales: "I don’t believe so, but I’d want to get back to you on that and make sure I don’t provide a misleading answer."

As with your 7 February 2002 memorandum, Judge Gonzales’ inability to respond with an immediate and simple "no" to either of the above questions fuels concern that your administration’s commitment to the international prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment remains less than absolute. Amnesty International urges you to withdraw the 7 February 2002 memorandum and to replace it with an unequivocal public directive against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It must contain this full-spectrum phrase and not be limited to torture alone. The directive must apply to all officials, all agencies and all circumstances, including international detainee transfers. For example, as Amnesty International pointed out in its October 2004 report (see below), the existing memorandum only applies to the US Armed Forces – it did not include the CIA or those working with them, and omitted any reference to persons "rendered" to states that use torture for interrogation. In his just-released written responses to questions from Senators at his nomination hearing, Judge Gonzales has reportedly confirmed that officers of the CIA and other non-military personnel are outside the bounds of your 7 February 2002 memorandum.

Your administration recently replaced the now notorious 1 August 2002 memorandum on torture from the Justice Department to the White House Counsel. This had reportedly been drafted following a request by the CIA for legal protections for its interrogators engaged in the "war on terror". Its contents were shocking, and presumably would still represent the administration’s position if it had not been forced to reassess it by the furore that accompanied its leaking and subsequent official release. The 1 August 2002 memorandum drew, inter alia, the following three erroneous conclusions:
that interrogators could cause a great deal of pain before crossing the threshold to torture. Specifically, it suggested that torture would only occur if the pain caused rose to the level "that would ordinarily be associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions";
that even though US law makes it a criminal offence for anyone in an official position to commit or attempt to commit torture against a detainee outside the USA, and even though the USA has ratified treaties prohibiting torture, the US President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief could override these laws;
even if interrogators were prosecuted for torture, there were defences available to them by which they could escape criminal liability, such as "necessity" or "self-defence".
At his nomination hearing earlier this month, the White House Counsel stated that the 1 August 2002 memorandum "represented the position of the executive branch at the time it was issued", and presumably this remained the case for the next two years.
The revised version of the 1 August 2002 memorandum, dated 30 December 2004, is undeniably an improvement on its infamous predecessor, and Amnesty International broadly welcomes it as far as it goes. It nevertheless leaves a number of questions unanswered. For example, although it says that it "supersedes the August 2002 Memorandum in its entirety", it sidesteps the question of the President’s Commander-in-Chief power to authorize torture and immunize a US agent from criminal liability for torture. The new memorandum claims that an analysis of this issue is "unnecessary" as you have directed that US personnel will not engage in torture. The 30 December 2004 memorandum gives as an example of this "unequivocal directive" your June 2004 statement against torture quoted at the beginning of this letter. Yet as already pointed out, you made a similarly unequivocal statement asserting the USA’s leadership of the struggle against torture in June 2003, at a time when the then still secret August 2002 memorandum presumably "represented the position of the executive branch". To coin a phrase, one is either against torture or, de facto, one is for it. One cannot have it one way in public and one way in private. Your statements against torture and ill-treatment must be unambiguous, consistent, and matched by actions.

In any event, the spirit of the August 2002 memorandum lives on. Much of it is repeated in the April 2003 final report of the Pentagon’s Working Group on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism. For example, the latter states that "[i]n order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the US law prohibiting torture]... must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority". The Working Group report is believed to remain in force, and its recommendations were adopted by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, whose memorandum of 16 April 2003 doe not rule out any interrogation method that goes beyond those promoted in the report, as long as he authorizes it personally on a case-by-case basis. Amnesty International urges you to ensure that the Working Group report is also withdrawn.

Amnesty also recommends that the Bush administration adopt a 12 point plan to prevent torture. In summary, they are:

1. Condemn torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
2. Ensure access to prisoners
3. No secret detention
4. Provide safeguards during detention and interrogation
5. Prohibit torture in law
6. Investigate
7. Prosecute
8. No use of statements extracted under torture
9. Provide effective training
10. Provide reparation
11. Ratify international treaties
12. Exercise international responsibility

If the Bush administration does nothing else, could they at least pay head to this long-standing nonpartisan nonideological international human rights organization that is beyond disrepute, and promptly implement its recommendations?

Anti-inauguration protests

The inauguration of Gerore Bush for a second term is nopthing to celebrate. He is the worst president ever, a man who has lied to his people, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocents. That said, it is good to hear that there were numerous protests in Washington, DC, in response to the Bush inauguration.

Jonathan Schell on torture

Here is Jonathan Schell, in an article that will appear in The Nation, on why torture is wrong:

Torture is not wrong because someone else thinks it is wrong or because others, in retaliation for torture by Americans, may torture Americans. It is the torture that is wrong. Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy. The tortured person is bound and helpless. The torturer stands over him with his instruments. There is no question of "unilateral disarmament," because the victim bears no arms, lacking even the use of the two arms he was born with. The inequality is total. To abuse or kill a person in such a circumstance is as radical a denial of common humanity as is possible. It is repugnant to learn that one's country's military forces are engaging in torture. It is worse to learn that the torture is widespread. It is worse still to learn that the torture was rationalized and sanctioned in long memorandums written by people at the highest level of the government. But worst of all would be ratification of this record by a vote to confirm one of its chief authors to the highest legal office in the executive branch of the government.

Torture destroys the soul of the torturer even as it destroys the body of his victim. The boundary between humane treatment of prisoners and torture is perhaps the clearest boundary in existence between civilization and barbarism. Whether the elected representatives of the people of the United States are now ready to cross that line is the deepest question before the Senate as it votes on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales.

Pentagon may infilitrate Iranian rebel group

Here is more evidence, revealed in a Guardian article, that the US has its sights set on Iran. Read this excerpt:

Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday: "Mr Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."

However, the Guardian has learned the Pentagon was recently contemplating the infiltration of members of the Iranian rebel group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) over the Iraq-Iran border, to collect intelligence. The group, based at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, and is under US guard while Washington decides on its strategy.

The MEK has been declared a terrorist group by the state department, but a former Farsi-speaking CIA officer said he had been asked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon to travel to Iraq to oversee "MEK cross-border operations". He refused, and does not know if those operations have begun.

"They are bringing a lot of the old war-horses from the Reagan and Iran-contra days into a sort of kitchen cabinet outside the government to write up policy papers on Iran," the former officer said.

He said the policy discussion was being overseen by Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy who was one of the principal advocates of the Iraq war. The Pentagon did not return calls for comment on the issue yesterday. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Mr Feith's Office of Special Plans also used like-minded experts on contract from outside the government, to serve as consultants helping the Pentagon counter the more cautious positions of the state department and the CIA.

Crazy


"They think in Iran you can just go in and hit the facilities and destabilise the government. They believe they can get rid of a few crazy mullahs and bring in the young guys who like Gap jeans, all the world's problems are solved. I think it's delusional," the former CIA officer said.

conscientious objectors

I think conscientious objectors are great. I would like it even better if there were no wars for them to dissent from in the first place. That said, I am grateful to them for the stand that they make. I think they add a unique character to the peace movement.
There are a couple of conscientious objectors, Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, applying for refugee status up here in Canada right now. Prime Minister Paul Martin has said that his government is willing to accept conscientious objectors.

Jeremy and Brandon both have websitges to which you can go, learn more about their reasons, and offer support. I would strongly encourage you to check them out.

Seymour Hersh: Iran's next

Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article is on the web now. Here are a few excerpts:

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”

and...

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

and...

The Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.

finally...

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

US operatives in Iran

Seymour Hersh has reported that US operatives have been in Iran, collecting information on nuclear weapons sites for the purpose of targeting them. I will post the original Hersh article when it is available.

Recalling a 'Drum Major for Peace'

From Common Dreams:

Published on Sunday, January 16, 2005 by New York Newsday (Long Island)
Recalling 'A Drum Major for Peace'
by Les Payne

The birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. is a fine time to weigh the cost of war.

His worst detractors all this time later still judge him a man of peace. His nonviolent war-mongering at home saw him opposing most wars waged abroad. King especially opposed those wars of suppression so favored by the techno-military complex that came into flower after Korea. These usually featured a hand-off from a European colonial power that swore the enemy was trapped at home and ripe for U.S. plucking.

The Vietnamese were a bitter fruit, more dangerous than America had imagined. King came out against the war in 1967 not because the United States could not win but because it was not her war to fight. The cost was too high at home.

Even King's closest aides during the Jim Crow wars missed his hankering for a campaign broader still. Some claimed it was the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize that turned King's head toward the Vietnam War. I doubt it. Like most such August awards, the Swedish medallion has a record of banking more fires than it lights.

What mountains left to conquer could still tempt the middle-aged over-achievers who customarily win the Nobel?

In King's case, the unsuspected laureate, who won the prize at 35, had many more arrows in his quiver. His rights agenda was graduated to the Vietnam War, I suspect, more by the young Turks gobbling up the civil-rights turf he had dominated for a decade. And then there was Malcolm X, the acerbic, avenging angel, thumbing through King's dossier and noting contradictions. "How can you be nonviolent in Mississippi," Malcolm charged black men under King's swoon, "as violent as you were in Korea?" He chided them for bleeding "when the white man says bleed," but when it came to defending blacks' rights at home, "you haven't got any blood."

King was increasingly confronted with watered-down versions of Malcolm's sharp critique. At any rate, King's riveting April, 1967, speech at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, came out forthrightly against the Vietnam War.

Criticism of his dramatic anti-war stance was acidic and relentless, and it issued from friends and foes alike. Much of it was condescending, critics demanding to know what right did a black civil-rights leader have to question U.S. foreign policy on matters of war. This, despite the disproportionate number of African-Americans who were dying in the highlands and rice patties of Vietnam.

One of the sharpest critiques came from Carl Rowan, who had covered King's campaign in the South. The former chief of U.S. information agencies, Rowan was something of a former-day Armstrong Williams - that is, a dagger hired to draw black blood. In his column, Rowan accused King of caring little about blacks or the Vietnamese and, in a Reader's Digest piece, he said King was laboring under the influence of Communists.

King stuck to his anti-war guns to the end. But his chief legacy was ridding the nation its Jim Crow laws. The white majority, he maintained, deprived blacks of their liberty, happiness and - all too often - their lives, by cracking heads, drafting laws and shutting Negroes out of the economy. This tyranny of the majority had declared a needless war in Vietnam and was sending black men to fight it who did not share equal rights at home.

As President George W. Bush imposes his brand of democracy upon Iraq, this tyranny of the majority is raising its head as a threat to the Sunni minority. Under the U.S.-imposed electoral system, the Sunni minority has expressed grave concerns about what would happen to their rights and quality of life under an almost certain victory at the polls for the 60-percent Shiite majority. It does not help matters, of course, that as head of the Sunni minority, Saddam Hussein cracked down murderously on the Shia majority in his quarter-century in power.

Were he alive, King would likely oppose the war. The unwillingness of the United States to learn from the mistakes of Vietnam he might find quite baffling; that is, until he discovers what little contact the draft evaders who planned the Iraq invasion actually had with that earlier war.

Though we observe King's birthday, it would do well to recall the words he left us about his legacy: "If any of you are around when I meet that day, I don't want a long funeral. If you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards. . . . I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King tried to give his life helping others. I want you to say that I tried to be right on the war question. . . .

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, that I was a drum major for peace."

Martin Luther King Day (US)

Martin Luther King was a pivotal influence in my life. Yeah, I know, I never met the man. However, when I was goin g through a period of intellectual transformation toward the progressive side, I read a biography of MLK, and it resounded within me on a very deep level. I think he is still relevant today, and more than ever, in these dangerous times whithin which we live, we must recall his messages of justice, especially is lesser known anti-war message. Here is an article form Paul Rockwell on Alternet, in its entirety.

More Than a Dreamer

By Paul Rockwell, AlterNet. Posted January 15, 2005.

Dr. Martin Luther King's oft-quoted "I have a dream" speech was not about far-off visions, it was a call to action. Every year, millions of Americans pay tribute to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King. We often forget, however, that King was the object of derision when he was alive. At key moments in his quest for civil rights and world peace, the corporate media treated King with hostility. Dr. King's march for open housing in Chicago, when the civil rights movement entered the North, caused a negative, you've-gone-too-far reaction in the Northern press. And Dr. King's stand on peace and international law, especially his support for the self-determination of third world peoples, caused an outcry and backlash in the predominantly white press.

In his prophetic anti-war speech at Riverside Church in 1967 (recorded and filmed for posterity but rarely quoted in today's press), King emphasized four points: 1) that American militarism would destroy the war on poverty; 2) that American jingoism breeds violence, despair, and contempt for law within the United States; 3) the use of people of color to fight against people of color abroad is a "cruel manipulation of the poor"; 4) human rights should be measured by one yardstick everywhere.

The Washington Post denounced King's anti-war position, and said King was "irresponsible." In an editorial entitled "Dr. King's error," The New York Times chastised King for going beyond the allotted domain of black leaders – civil rights. TIME called King's anti-war stand "demogogic slander ... a script for Radio Hanoi." The media responses to Dr. King's calls for peace were so venomous that King's two recent biographers – Stephen Oates and David Garrow – devoted whole chapters to the media blitz against King's internationalism.

Dr. King may be an icon within the media today, but there is still something upsetting about the way his birthday is observed. Four words – "I have a dream" – are often parrotted out of context every January 15th.

King, however, was not a dreamer – at least not the teary-eyed, mystic projected in the media. True, he was a visionary, but he specialized in applied ethics. He even called himself "a drum major for justice," and his mission, as he described it, was, "to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." In fact, the oft-quoted "I have a dream" speech was not about far-off visions. In his speech in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963, Dr. King confronted the poverty, injustice, and "nightmare conditions" of American cities. In its totality, the "I have a dream" speech was about the right of oppressed and poor Americans to cash their promissary note in our time. It was a call to action.

In 1986, Jesse Jackson wrote an essay on how Americans can protect the legacy of Dr. King. Jackson's essay on the trivialization, distortion and emasculation of King's memory is one of the clearest, most relevant appreciations in print of Dr. King's work. Jackson wrote: "We must resist this the media's weak and anemic memory of a great man. To think of Dr. King only as a dreamer is to do injustice to his memory and to the dream itself. Why is it that so many politicians today want to emphasize that King was a dreamer? Is it because they want us to believe that his dreams have become reality, and that therefore, we should celebrate rather than continue to fight? There is a struggle today to preserve the substance and the integrity of Dr. King's legacy."

Today, the media often ignores the range and breadth of King's teachings. His speeches – on economlc justice, on our potential to end poverty, on the power of organized mass action, his criticism of the hostile media, his opposition to U.S. imperialism (a word he dared to use) – are rarely quoted, much less discussed with understanding. In fact, successors to Dr. King who raise the same concerns today are again treated with sneers, and their "ulterior motives" are questioned. A genuine appreciation of Dr. King requires respect for the totality of his work and an ongoing commitment to struggle for peace and justice today.

Paul Rockwell, formerly assistant professor of philsophy at Midwestern University, is a writer who lives in Oakland, California.

Here also is King's "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam," presented by King in 1967.

WMD lies

George W.Bush awarded Geroge Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to Randy Scholield in Common Dreams, the person who really should have received it was Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector who was sayiikng all along that there were no WMDs in Iraq:

He was adamant: Saddam Hussein had no WMDs -- at least none of any consequence or that posed an imminent danger to the United States. Certainly nothing that would warrant a rushed invasion. "We can't go to war based on rhetoric and speculation," he told the crowd. "We'd better make sure there is a threat out there worth fighting."

He argued that 90 percent to 95 percent of Saddam's WMDs had been dismantled by the U.N. inspection team in which he served from 1991 to 1998. And that Saddam was otherwise well-contained by U.S. forces.

Now we know: He was right.

You've probably heard that the Bush administration this week quietly called off the weapons search.

There aren't any WMD stockpiles. As in none. Zip. And, no, they weren't moved to Syria.

The weapons didn't exist.

And thusly, the US has closed down its search for WMDs after two years of futile "searhing.". Not only that, but misleading the American people is a serious offense. By doing so in claiming that Iraq had WMDs, he committted a criminal offense. Matthew Good said that at minimum, Bush should be impeached, and at best, he should be tried for war crimes.

Frank McKenna

I remember Frank McKenna from the 80s. I was a teenage, and he was the New Brunswick Liberal leader who swept New Brunswick, literally. No seats for the opposition. He was so impressive in the way he carried himself. Though he was the Liberal leader, he did not appear beholden to the federal leader of the time by grovelling and so forth.

Well, after being out of political for quite a few years, he's back in the headlines, as Canada's new Ambassador to the United States.. Upon first hearing thijsx, I thought, well, OK. That should be a good choice, with his reputation for integrity. Problem is, it has surfaced that he has connections with the Carlyle Group. For those who don't know, the Carlyle Group is a US investment firm controlled by a number of Republicans, including James Baker III, and US Ambassador to Canada James Carlucci. Furhtermore, they are a key member of the US military-industrial complex that has put considerable money into the companies that are complicit in the war on Iraq. This all clearly places McKenna in a conflict of interest.

So, Frank McKenna is our new Ambassador to the US. His connections to Carlyle don't mean necessarily that he will be a bad ambassador, or that we shouldn't give him the opportunity to display his impartiality. However, it does mean that we should watch him very closely.

Abbas wins election

I think that this is hopefully good news, Mahmoud Abbas winning the Palestinian election. He obviously has developed a following amongst rank and file Palestinians. He has spoken out against violence, and wants to resume negotiations with Israel for the creation of a Palestinian state. Of course, the line from the Israelis and the US conservatives is "now, without Arafat, there's a better chance for peace." Maybe, maybe not. But what I can tell you is that peace is completely up to the Israelis. They need to admit that the creation of a Palestinian state is necessary for peace, because it is. And a fair deal, one that gives the Palestinians real power. Arafat was right to reject the Clinton-Barak deal in 2000, because it left the Israeli's in control of many of the resources and services. Let us hope that Abbas, while rightfully opposing violence, stands firm on the principle of a Palestinian state, and that Sharon recognizes that the only solution is a completely autonomous Palestinian state.

Tsunami

Well, close too about 200,000 are probably dead from the tsunami in Asia by now, and god knows how many more will fall from disease or other afteraffests. I can't imagine what the folks over there are going through.

There are benefit concerts coming up in Vancouver and Calgary, with funds going to different aid groups. Sarah McLachlan, Avril Lavigne, Chantal Kraviavchuk, Raine Maida, Bruce Cockburn, Tom Cochrane, Barenaked Ladies and others will be there.

To donate, please give to one or more of the following organizations:
Red Cross
Oxfam
Doctors Without Borders
CARE
UNICEF

Alberto "what Geneva Convention?" Gonzales

From WorkingForChange.com, on the comfirmation process for US Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales:

Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
01.05.05

Backing Gonzales is backing torture
Is there bipartisan congressional support for torture?

Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on the confirmation of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as the next attorney general of the United States. At stake is whether Congress wants to conveniently absolve Gonzales of his clear attempt to have the president subvert U.S. law in order to whitewash barbaric practices performed by U.S. interrogators in the name of national security.
Gonzales ignored the objections of State Department and military lawyers to strongly endorse the determination of Justice Department lawyers that neither the Geneva Convention nor corresponding U.S. laws on prisoner protections should be applied in the "war on terror."

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote in a legal memo to President Bush on Jan. 25, 2002. Declaring the war-on-terror prisoners exempt from the Geneva Convention, he argued, "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

Acting like a sleazy attorney advising a client on how not to be convicted of an ongoing crime, Gonzales was apparently not worried about irrational foreign courts or high-minded jurists in The Hague, but rather U.S. prosecutors who might enforce federal laws that ban torture of foreign prisoners of war. Indeed, Gonzales made the case for a legal end run around the 1996 War Crimes Act, which mandates criminal penalties, including the death sentence, for any U.S. military or other personnel who engage in crimes of torture.

"It is difficult to predict the motives of [U.S.] prosecutors and [U.S.] independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441" of the act, Gonzales wrote. "Your determination [that Geneva protections are not applicable] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

In light of what we have learned since about the rationalization and use of torture by U.S. interrogators over the last three years, it is difficult to ignore the possibility that Gonzales already had knowledge that such violations had occurred and expected more.

Read the full article here.

true patriotism

"The most un-American acts have never been committed by radicals, but by those anxious critics who have attempted to stigmatize and suppress them. And those people were always sure to call themselves patriots." -- Richard Bradley, in Sizing Up Sontag

indifference

Specific moments of insight on our part which leads to benevolent behaviour does not outweigh our moments of ignorance or indifference. I saw a picture on the cover of the Globe and Mail today which disgusted me: two Western tourists in Thailand soaking up the sun, while devastation is evident in the background of the photo, so even in this moment, indifference does exist.

Anyway, while I think we give ourselves too much of a pat on the back, I also think that these moments of virtuosity are positive in that they show what we are capable of. As wel know that we have the capability for compassion, the next step in our evolution hopefully will be an increased level of other-consciousness. Hopefully, that consciousness will spread to the disseminators of information through the mass medeia as well