World View

Iraq: War of Mass Deception

2005-06-17T17:53:00.000-06:00

Mislead into War
Will America Demand Accountability or Remain Complicit in the War of Mass Deception?
Adam Hodges

It’s June 2005, over two years after the invasion of Iraq. The war continues under different monikers—e.g. “security operations”, “building democracy”—but it is war all the same. No Orwellian double-speak can erase the lived reality of those on the ground in Iraq. And the costs continue to mount on many fronts.

Front #1: Human suffering. As of June 2005, over 1,700 US soldiers are dead, over 12,000 wounded, and more than 22,000 Iraqi civilians have died as directly reported by the media. In addition, an October 2004 study published in the medical journal Lancet projected a conservative estimate of an excess of 100,000 Iraqi deaths between the March 2003 invasion and the release of the study.

Front #2: Starving domestic needs to feed the war. Since the start of the war, the US Congress has allocated $207.5 billion in funding. These costs are above and beyond the over $400 billion annual military budget, which has also continued to rise during the Bush administration. The additional money allocated for the war in Iraq has come in the form of supplemental requests by the administration: approximately $54.4 billion for the war enacted in April 2003, $70.6 billion enacted in November 2003, $21.5 billion passed with regular Defense Department appropriations for 2005, and a request made by the administration in February 2005 for an $81.9 billion package with $61 billion of that marked for the war. The annual US military budget—which accounts for about half of the world’s military expenditures—is staggering in itself, let alone the extra $207.5 billion allocated through September 30, 2005 for the war in Iraq. The National Priorities Project provides a telling comparison of these war costs in terms of what the same money could do for pre-school, children’s health, public education, college scholarships, public housing, world hunger, the global AIDS epidemic, and world immunization. (See also, “The ‘Warfare’ State and Military Keynesianism”, Oct 11, 2004.)

Yet the costs of war don’t end here. The tally continues to mount on American democracy and international law.

Wars are costly, devastating and unwanted. No democratic nation desires war. International law and the ethos of democracy in the modern world condemn any unprovoked act of aggression by one nation-state against another. In short, war is something only to be waged with just cause, in self-defense, by proportional means, and as a last resort.

Modern democracies are marked by transparency and important checks that hold government accountable to the rule of law and the ethos of the international community. In theory, democracies don’t wage illegal wars; which is to say, if a democracy engages in war, it must be for defensive reasons—or, as in the case of the war against Iraq, attempt to appear that way.

And this brings us to the thorn in the Achilles’ heel of the Bush administration that won’t go away. Why was war waged against Iraq?

Yes, we know the administration’s reasoning and rationale. In a post-9/11 world, Saddam Hussein, who supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, could not be trusted for fear he would slip a nuclear bomb to al Qaeda terrorists. And the administration wove a beautiful narrative that positioned a war against Iraq as part of its broader ‘war on terror.’

It didn’t matter that Osama bin Laden detested the secular regime of the ‘infidel’ Saddam. Nor did it matter that the two never engaged in any collaborative relationship prior to or after 9/11—facts verified by the 9/11 Commission (see Staff Statement No. 15 as well as the commission’s final report); the administration narrative created an image of an Iraq/al Qaeda alliance in the minds of many Americans so powerful that as recently as March 2005, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 61% of respondents still erroneously believed that Iraq provided direct support to al Qaeda before the war—numbers that are similar to previous studies by the Program on International Policy Attitudes in April 2004 and October 2003, as well as a Pew Research Center poll in October 2002.

The administration narrative also convinced many, evidently including a majority of Congress, that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMDs, an assertion that has become so thoroughly discredited that even the administration had to explain why it was wrong. The official party line, of course, put the blame on ‘faulty intelligence.’

Yet myriad contradictory pieces of evidence were available to dispute administration claims in the lead up to war. Outside the borders of the United States, foreign governments weren’t so convinced, and media outside the United States and independent media within provided a much more open discussion about the (lack of) evidence and underlying motives for waging war against Iraq.

Yet within the administration, counter-evidence was ignored and supportive evidence highlighted. The (seemingly selective) intelligence gathering was helped along by the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

According to a Pentagon official cited in a May 2003 article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, “Special Plans was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States.”

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, among others including arms inspectors, provided further counter-evidence. His trip to Niger had discredited information that nevertheless ended up in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union—information that claimed Iraq had purportedly purchased uranium from Niger.

At issue, then, is whether the intelligence was ‘faulty’, as the official administration interpretation claims, or whether it was selectively manipulated to justify a preordained policy—a policy dead set on regime change in Iraq by war.

The administration’s long-standing desire for regime change in Iraq has been no secret; and by all accounts, it was part of Bush administration foreign policy prior to taking office, let alone before the events of 9/11. Documents produced by neo-conservative strategists that detail this objective stretch back to a 1992 draft of the Defense Planning Guidance supervised by then-under secretary of defense for policy Paul Wolfowitz, who became Deputy Secretary of Defense after Bush was elected in 2000. Additional documents written by those associated with Wolfowitz and the current Bush administration include a 1996 memo to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that advocates removing Saddam Hussein, a 1998 letter to President Clinton on Iraq policy, and a 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century think tank whose co-authors include six officials who came to serve in the Bush administration. (See also, “Origins of Regime Change in Iraq” by Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 19, 2003, for further discussion of these issues.)

In addition, we have the accounts of former administration officials, such as terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil that testify to this policy; and the 9/11 Commission Report cites Secretary of State Colin Powell as having “recalled that Wolfowitz…argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq was behind 9/11. ‘Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with,’ Powell told us. ‘And he saw this as one way of using this event [9/11] as a way to deal with the Iraq problem’” (p. 335). (See also, reportage by Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service.)

In short, 9/11 provided an opportune platform for justifying the neo-conservatives’ policy toward Iraq. A convincing enough case simply needed to be made.

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," explained White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller in a September 7, 2002 article, “Traces of Terror: The Strategy; Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq.”

In her piece, Bumiller details the White House’s choice of Ellis Island in New York as the site for President Bush’s speech on the first anniversary of 9/11. “A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.”

Of course, that action officially started on March 20, 2003, after what Bush termed the “final days of decision” in his ultimatum to Iraq. Yet recent evidence in the Times of London—“RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war,” by Michael Smith, May 29, 2005—reports that the “RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.”

The article goes on to state, “The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.” (See also, “The Other Bomb Drops,” by Jeremey Scahill in The Nation, June 1, 2005.)

The unofficial war was well underway before the marketing campaign barely got rolling, and long before the official war was launched.

While the ‘marketing campaign’ worked to gain approval from the US Congress and gain consent from a large portion of the American population, the campaign for legal justification failed on all accounts. As Kofi Annan stated explicitly upon being pressed in a September 2004 interview, the war was illegal; and current debates in the UK keep running up against this fact.

Bush administration expostulations that it did everything it could to avoid war against Iraq are disingenuous at best and outright lies at worst. In either case, it is time for the American public to wake up from the bad nightmare it has experienced over the past several years. Perhaps the recent publicity over the Downing Street minutes will be a needed splash of cold water to wake mainstream America from its slumber.

Yesterday, Representative John Connors held hearings to examine the legal implications of the minutes for potential impeachment proceedings against President Bush and other administration officials responsible for misleading America into war.

While it is true that nothing new has been revealed in the memo insofar as much of the world saw through the Bush administration’s bogus rationale for war from the beginning, the memo provides prima facie evidence in the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of senior ministers and advisors in the Blair government that "Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided."

The minutes state that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The thrust of the meeting focused on how best to legally justify the already determined war. It noted, "We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

War should be a last resort effort justified by truly genuine rationale based on self-defense. A government that decides on war and then attempts to justify its acts of aggression to satisfy public opinion can hardly be called democratic. It is up to the people in that country to maintain democracy and hold those government officials accountable for their actions.

The recent publicity over the Downing Street minutes provides new hope in attempts to bring these issues to light in mainstream America. The efforts, if they gain enough steam, may eventually lead to that sine qua non of democracy: accountability.

Links:

The 'gulag of our times'

2005-06-03T20:05:00.000-06:00

Killing the Messenger and Ignoring the Message
By Adam Hodges

This week, two aid workers from Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), an international humanitarian organization that provides emergency medical assistance around the globe, were arrested in Sudan.

Paul Foreman, the head of MSF Holland, was arrested on Monday in response to a report his agency released in March that said 500 rapes had occurred in Darfur over a 4 ½ month period. MSF Holland, whose doctors are working in the Darfur region of Sudan, collected medical evidence that detailed the rapes, which are associated with the crisis that has forced more than 2 million people from their homes and killed tens of thousands in the region.

On Tuesday, a second MSF worker was arrested—Vince Hoedt, the Darfur coordinator for MSF Holland. The two have been accused of spying, publishing false reports and undermining Sudanese society.

The arrest of humanitarian workers responsible for documenting atrocities is a proverbial case of ‘killing the messenger’ when the message makes the powers-that-be look bad.

Politically motivated attacks on international humanitarian organizations are not confined to non-Western governments that lack the moniker of ‘democracy’, though.

An interesting parallel this week arose when the Bush administration ganged up to verbally lambaste Amnesty International’s 2005 report that condemned the lackluster human rights record by the United States in current years at its detention facilities, such as Guantanamo Bay.

In releasing the report last week, the director of Amnesty International (AI), Irene Khan, said, “Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.

“If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, ‘ghost detainees’ – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring back the practice of ‘disappearances’ so popular with Latin American dictators in the past.

“According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US. In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.

“AI is calling on the US Administration to ‘close Guantanamo and disclose the rest.’ What we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge and prosecute them with due process.”

Bush fired back this Tuesday during a press conference where he was asked about the AI report.

“I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is — promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation,” said Bush.

Bush’s remarks were followed up by further attacks on AI by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

It’s a poetic coincidence that the Bush administration’s attack on AI occurred the same week as the Sudanese government’s actions against MSF. In a democratic nation like the US, rhetorical attacks are the equivalent of outright arrests. The soft power of Orwellian rhetoric replaces the hard power of brute police action. The aim in both cases is to beat down the messenger in an effort to remove the message from public view.

Non-governmental organizations like AI and MSF are crucial checks to governmental abuse of power. Such abuses, unfortunately, are not simply confined to ‘non-democratic’ governments. It is time for the Bush administration to stop hiding behind its rhetoric and reverse the erosion of human rights it has perpetuated in its putative ‘war on terror.’ The Bush administration is blinded by its ends-justifies-the-means mentality and would do more for ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ around the world if it recognized the concepts as more than words and actually held them up as standards to live by.

As AI said in response to Bush’s attack, "If President Bush and his administration are serious about freedom and human dignity they should recommit to the rule of law and human rights."

Amnesty International continues to call on the US administration to:

end all secret and incommunicado detentions;
grant the International Committee of the Red Cross full access to all detainees including those held in secret locations;
ensure recourse to the law for all detainees;
establish a full independent commission of inquiry into all allegations of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detentions and ‘disappearances’;
bring to justice anyone responsible for authorizing or committing human rights violations

Until this is done, Bush’s claim to ‘transparency’ is but an empty hortatory device that lacks substance and credibility.

Documented: Guantánamo Torture

2005-05-26T23:56:00.000-06:00

Guantánamo Prisoners Told FBI of Qur'an Desecration in 2002, New Documents Reveal
ACLU - 25 May 2005

NEW YORK -- New documents released by the FBI include previously undisclosed interviews in which prisoners at Guantánamo complain that guards have mistreated the Qur'an, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. In one 2002 summary, an FBI interrogator notes a prisoner’s allegation that guards flushed a Qur'an down the toilet.

The disclosure comes on the heels of controversy over a Newsweek report saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical incident. Newsweek ultimately retracted its story because a confidential government source could not be confirmed.

"The United States government continues to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "If we are to truly repair America's standing in the world, the Bush Administration must hold accountable high-ranking officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees."

According to the FBI documents, a detainee interviewed in August 2002 said that guards had flushed the Qur'an in the toilet. Others reported the Qur'an being kicked, withheld as punishment, and thrown on the floor, and said they were mocked during prayers.

The release of the FBI interviews follows the disclosure last week of Defense Department documents regarding other cases in which military personnel mistreated the Qur'an and used a religious symbol to taunt detainees.

In addition to complaints about treatment of the Qur'an, the latest documents include reports of:

Beatings. On August 23, 2002, a detainee told an interviewer of being "kicked in the stomach and back by several individuals" after being turned over to U.S. authorities. On one occasion during prayer time, a soldier placed his foot on [his] head and sat on his head." Another interviewer was told on August 28, 2002 of a detainee being "kicked violently in the jaw" after he tripped and fell while handcuffed.

Planned Suicides. Several detainees spoke of suicidal thoughts while in custody. In December 2002, one reported that "40-50 detainees intended to commit suicide after Ramadan ended because they were tired of being detained with no prospect of being released and they were tired of being mistreated by guards."

Hunger Strikes. An interviewer noted that the "mental condition of the detainees is to the point where the detainees are participating in a hunger strike. [They] are upset with the way they are treated by the guards." One man had not eaten in six days or changed his clothes and "insisted on being charged with a crime or released."

Sexual Assaults. In April 2003, a detainee told interviewers that a female guard fondled his genitals while male guards held him down. She told him that she was having her menstrual period and "she wiped blood from her body on his face and head." (A similar incident is described in a recently released book by former Guantánamo interrogator Erik Saar.)

Government Documents on Torture Obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU
FBI Files Show Guantanamo Detainees Reported Desecration of Koran Beginning in 2002 (Democracy Now, 26 May 2005)
Lies That Cost Lives: As Newsweek is Pressured Over Koran Report, Who Should Be Held Accountable For The Media's Mistakes Ahead of the Iraq Invasion? (Democracy Now, 26 May 2005)

Amnesty International Report 2005

2005-05-25T23:05:00.000-06:00

Report 2005: A dangerous new agenda
Amnesty International - 25 May 2005

LONDON -- Governments are betraying their promise of a world order based on human rights and are pursuing a dangerous new agenda, said Amnesty International today as it launched its annual assessment of global human rights.

Speaking at the launch of the Amnesty International Report 2005, the organization's Secretary General Irene Khan said that governments had failed to show principled leadership and must be held to account.

"Governments are betraying their promises on human rights. A new agenda is in the making with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture," said Irene Khan.

This new agenda, combined with the indifference and paralysis of the international community, failed countless thousands of people in humanitarian crises and forgotten conflicts throughout 2004.

In Darfur, the Sudanese government generated a human rights catastrophe and the international community did too little too late to address the crisis, betraying hundreds of thousands of people.

In Haiti, individuals responsible for serious human rights violations were allowed to regain positions of power. In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo there was no effective response to the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women, children and even babies. Despite the holding of elections, Afghanistan slipped into a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability. Violence was endemic in Iraq.

At a national level governments betrayed human rights at terrible cost to ordinary people. Russian soldiers reportedly tortured, raped and sexually abused Chechen women with impunity. Zimbabwe’s government manipulated food shortages for political reasons.

The betrayal of human rights by governments was accompanied by increasingly horrific acts of terrorism as armed groups stooped to new levels of brutality.

"The televised beheading of captives in Iraq, the taking of over a thousand people hostage including hundreds of children in a school in Beslan and the massacre of hundreds of commuters in Madrid shocked the world. Yet governments are failing to confront their lack of success in addressing terrorism, persisting with failed but politically-convenient strategies. Four years after 9/11, the promise to make the world a safer place remains hollow," said Ms Khan.

The US administration’s attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak such as "environmental manipulation", "stress positions" and "sensory manipulation", was one of the most damaging assaults on global values.

Despite the US administration’s repeated use of the language of justice and freedom there was a huge gap between rhetoric and reality. This was starkly illustrated by the failure to conduct a full and independent investigation into the appalling torture and ill-treatment of detainees by US soldiers in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and the failure to hold senior individuals to account.

"The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity," said Irene Khan.

Many governments showed a shocking contempt for the rule of law. Nigeria granted Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, refugee status despite his indictment for killings, mutilations and rape. Israel’s construction of a barrier inside the occupied West Bank ignored the International Court of Justice opinion that this violated international human rights and humanitarian law. Arbitrary detentions and unfair trials took place under security legislation in a number of countries.

There were also signs of hope in 2004 said Ms Khan.

Legal challenges to the new agenda included US Supreme Court judgements on Guantánamo detainees and the ruling by the UK Law Lords on indefinite detention without charge or trial of "terrorist suspects". Public pressure included the spontaneous turnout of millions of people in Spain protesting against the Madrid bombings, popular uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine and the growing debate on political change in the Middle East.

"Increasingly, the duplicity of governments and the brutality of armed groups are being challenged - by judicial decisions, popular resistance, public pressure and UN reform initiatives. The challenge for the human rights movement is to harness the power of civil society and push governments to deliver on their human rights promises," said Irene Khan.

Amnesty International Report 2005

What does 'liberal media' mean?

2005-05-16T13:54:00.000-06:00

Media and Democracy
By Adam Hodges

Liberal bias. Liberal media. Catch phrases such as these have been bantered about, most recently by supporters of the Bush administration and its appointed chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Ken Tomlison. Tomlison has started a battle for more control over news content on public television and radio stations in an attempt to correct what he feels is ‘liberal bias’ in programming.

With all this talk about ‘liberal bias’, I have yet to hear a thoughtful discussion of what detractors of public broadcasting actually mean by liberal; which appears to be more of a code word for ‘reportage that rubs power the wrong way’—namely, those currently in power, i.e. the Bush administration.

If the issue were bias towards a particular political party—Democratic bias or Republican bias—then there would be a real problem. Yet this is exactly the problem Tomlison would effectively create by providing for more direct control of news content on public broadcasting by a given administration.

So what does liberal really mean in liberal media?

The concept of liberal media can be defined as free, broad minded reporting that investigates those in power. The fourth estate is supposed to be a watchdog and critical check on government, industry and the interests of the rich and powerful. In this light, media would best be described as liberal if they challenge the official word and provide critical coverage of issues that doesn’t simply rely on government spokespeople or press releases.

With this definition of liberal media, the antithesis would presumably be ‘conservative’—media that adhere to orthodox and authoritarian attitudes and provide traditional views that cautiously rely on official sources without providing investigative reporting. Liberal democracy relies on liberal media. Free and critical media that investigate those in power do not represent a problem in a democratic society—except for those who hold power and wish to consolidate that power and avoid democratic scrutiny.

On the face of it, the goal of detractors of so-called liberal media has little to do with providing ‘balanced’ views and more to do with replacing free, independent and critical media with controlled and docile media that depend upon official government and industry sources for the ‘news’ they report.

A main target of Tomlinson’s attack on PBS is the now retired investigative journalist Bill Moyers. Robert McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois, recently commented on the attack against Bill Moyers, whose show Tomlison pointed to as an example of liberal bias on PBS.

McChesney said (Democracy Now, 12 May 2005), “The Moyers show was not a liberal or left-wing version of the right-wing talk show. It was an investigative journalism show. Bill actually broke stories. He investigated people in power. And frankly, if they put on a conservative-oriented investigative show, I think that would have been terrific. But you don't balance an investigative journalism show with pontificators that just sort of shout out sound bites but don't actually do any journalism, don’t get dirt under their fingernails, and that’s why I don’t think that’s a legitimate comparison.”

Bill Moyers, speaking at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis on May 15, made these remarks (Democracy Now, 16 May 2005):

“I decided long ago that this [when the press simply recounts what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny] wasn’t healthy for democracy. I came to see that news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity. In my documentaries, whether on the Watergate scandal thirty years ago, or the Iran-Contra conspiracy twenty years ago, or Bill Clinton’s fundraising scandals ten years ago, or five years ago the chemical industry’s long and despicable cover up of its cynical and unspeakable withholding of critical data about its toxic products, I realized that investigative journalism could not be a collaboration between the journalist and the subject. Objectivity was not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference. I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies, as well as the big lie of people in power.”

What is really at issue in the attacks against PBS, NPR and so-called liberal media?

There certainly is a problem from the perspective of those who hold power: free, independent, and investigative media pose a check to that power. Free, independent and investigative media attempt to reign in authoritarian impulses and check the abuse of power that results in lies and distorted truth.

Tomlison’s purge in public broadcasting has little to do with providing ‘balance’ and more to do with an attempt to influence editorial content in favor of a particular administration. If that’s not bias, then what is? If that’s not antithetical to public broadcasting in a democratic society, then what is? Public media need to remain free from the controls of any given administration in order to avoid simply becoming a propaganda office.

As Bill Moyers notes, “I know firsthand that the Public Broadcasting Act was meant to provide an alternative to commercial television and to reflect the diversity of the American people.”

Links:

"A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio," by Stephen Labaton (New York Times, 16 May 2005)
"Speech at Conference Assails Right Wing," by Michael Sorkin (Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 May 2005)

Can Public Media Remain Independent?

2005-05-12T13:48:00.000-06:00

Probe of Scrutiny on PBS Is Urged
By Matea Gold (Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2005)

NEW YORK — Two Democratic congressmen called Wednesday for an investigation into recent activities by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, suggesting that efforts by the Republican chairman of the private nonprofit to put more conservative programs on PBS might violate federal law.

In a letter released Wednesday evening, Reps. David Obey of Wisconsin and John D. Dingell of Michigan asked CPB Inspector General Kenneth A. Konz to investigate the contracting, hiring and policies of the corporation, which distributes federal funds to public television stations. Both are ranking Democrats on committees that have oversight of public television.

They called recent actions taken by CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson disturbing and "extremely troubling."

A CPB spokesman could not be reached for comment. But in a recent interview with The Times, Tomlinson defended his efforts to expand conservative perspectives on PBS, saying he wanted to increase the network's audience.

The request for an investigation into CPB came as public television officials were growing increasingly anxious that Republicans were trying to remake PBS in their image.

In their letter, the congressmen said Tomlinson had hired an outside consultant last year to monitor the political leanings of the guests that appeared on "Now with Bill Moyers" in order to bolster his case that the program had a liberal bias.

Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, and Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, expressed concern that Tomlinson had tapped a former White House official to help draft the guidelines for two new ombudsmen for public broadcasting.

"If CPB is moving in the direction of censorship of public affairs content based on partisanship and political views," they wrote, "this will severely erode the public trust that public broadcasting heretofore has enjoyed."

A ‘Right-Wing Coup’ at PBS & the CPB? A Roundtable Discussion on the Future of Public Broadcasting (Democracy Now, 12 May 2005)
Rep. Bernie Sanders on the Importance of Media Reform As A Political Issue (Democracy Now, 12 May 2005)
Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation? A conference sponsored by the Illinois Initiative for Media Policy Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 10-11, 2005
FreePress.net

The Politics of Evolution

2005-05-11T15:30:00.000-06:00

Religion and Science Education: The Politics of Evolution
By Adam Hodges

Religion has always been an important aspect of American society, and anyone who lives in the United Stated today cannot avoid the impact of religion on public life, from presidential politics to public service programs to educational standards. Taking center stage in many school districts across the country is a renewed controversy over the teaching of evolution in public schools. While this controversy has erupted in a way that has pitted religion versus science, it provides a false choice in ways of knowing. Resolution of the supposed tension between science and religion does not lie in battling for a replacement of one over the other, but in recognizing the ways both operate in their own domains to give us useful understandings of the modern world. A solid understanding of the scientific method and evolutionary theory are important aspects of a strong science education, and religious fundamentalists opposed to the teaching of evolution might just consider that a strong science education is an important complement to a solid foundation in the theological teachings of their religion.

Parallel Systems of Knowing on a Collision Course?

The history of the West and modernity has been marked by a parallel existence of two ways of knowing: science and religion. Each involves different ways of approaching the world that are not necessarily in conflict.

Science, on the one hand, uses the ‘scientific method’, a systematic procedure for formulating principles and rules devised to analyze, predict, and explain phenomena in the natural world. The results of the scientific method lead to theories: organized systems of knowledge that guide understanding and further inquiry. Theories are beliefs that are open to empirical verification and reformulation. Theories provide a framework of rules and proven principles to analyze, predict and explain. The scientific method is an ongoing process of testing that leads to verification, modification and refutation.

Religion, on the other hand, is a system of knowing that rests on faith. Some matters are simply not open to empirical verification, or testing via a ‘scientific method.’ This is the domain of faith, where we may ‘know’ something without being able to ‘prove’ it. Questions of faith are not open to proof through systematic experiments like scientific questions are, yet faith provides important guidance in the way we interact in the world.

Neither way of knowing is inherently better than the other; we rely on both in our everyday lives. Scientific theories are foundational to many aspects of our technological society. From building skyscrapers to flying airplanes to breeding crops, theories provide tested principles that guide our actions. Yet some aspects of life are simply untestable in scientific terms. Spiritual knowledge and a connection felt with a higher being is the domain of faith. We can be certain we know such things, but cannot prove them scientifically. Religion helps us organize these beliefs and provides guidance for actions in our everyday lives.

Science and religion need not be seen as mutually exclusive. In fact, many thinkers of the Enlightenment and scientists of modernity have invoked faith in God as a motivation for engaging in science. A religious Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity, and Albert Einstein invoked the sentiment of many such thinkers in seeing science as a means for understanding God's handiwork in the universe. Einstein’s theory of relativity has opened up the possibility for space travel and led to more detailed observations of the stars. Electromagnetic theory has provided us with electricity and all it entails, including lights, television, computers and email. And the theory of evolution has provided the foundation for modern biological sciences.

Evolution and Science Education

The theory of evolution is most notably associated with Charles Darwin, who first articulated his ideas on natural selection in the mid 19th century after observing the biological diversity of the Galapagos Islands. The 21st century theory of evolution has evolved in its own right, and provides a much deeper understanding of biological change. The theory of evolution continues to pave the way for advances in micro-biology, ecology, and medical research. The theory of evolution is to the biologist what electromagnetic theory is to the electrician. Yet the chasm between the scientific theory of evolution and popular understandings is growing wider even as the theory becomes more central to professional research, even more reason why a strong science curriculum should include coverage of the ideas.

Yet many school districts are shying away from the treatment of evolution in response to opposition from religious fundamentalists. A school district in Georgia, for example, placed warning stickers on their high school biology books stating, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.” A court case ensued and a judge later had the stickers removed, but similar battles are under way in a growing number of states.

In a single sentence, the stickers on the Georgia textbooks confound an understanding of the scientific method and theories—not to mention the complexity of evolution. Evolution, contrary to what is implied on the stickers, is not merely an opinion, but a theory based on evidence, i.e. ‘facts’, open to ongoing investigation that can lead to modification or refutation. Scientific theories, like the theory of evolution, become accepted (and placed in textbooks) because they have explanatory power for describing and understanding the world. Theories are accepted because of their ability to predict and explain. This does not mean the theory of evolution represents a definitive explanation of life—but nor is it opinion. Science, rather than making final claims of absolute knowledge, is always open to testing—it requires it. As new empirical evidence is found, theories are modified. If a theory no longer adequately explains something and a better theory does, then the old theory becomes supplanted. This is part of the ‘way of knowing’ marked by the scientific method.

Science education is about understanding and being able to use the scientific method. It is also about gaining a grounding in the major theories in the natural sciences, from physics to chemistry to biology, in order to engage with them in further scientific inquiry. The theory of evolution provides an important basis for modern biological research. It informs research and applications being carried out in agriculture, medicine, molecular biology and ecology. Scientific theories in all areas of inquiry need rigorous minds working to improve their explanatory power. But before one can test, modify or refute a theory, one must first understand it. Understanding need not entail belief, but rather an ability to engage with a theory on its own terms. It involves ‘doing science’ via the scientific method.

‘Doing Science’ in the Courts?

Scientists use the scientific method as they conduct research in the laboratory and field. Results are presented at conferences and published in peer reviewed journals. Inaccurate results are weeded out, and repeatable, verifiable results inform understanding. As a whole, the process of ‘doing science’ contains checks and balances that provide tried and tested results. The results of scientific inquiry lead to accepted theories because they have been tried and tested. An accepted theory, such as evolution, provides the best current explanation of the natural world, not the definitive explanation. Newer theories must enter into the scientific process on these terms—they must eventually prove their merit via the way of knowing marked by the scientific method rather than terms of faith.

Yet the controversy over evolution fueled by religious fundamentalists in the US has shifted science and religion from parallel ways of knowing to a collision course. The distinction between science and religion has become blurred and fundamentalists have pitted the two as an either-or choice at best and a false analogy between atheism and God at worst.

A consequence of this putative collision between science and religion is now moving science from the lab into the political arena. The Kansas State Board of Education, for example, held three days of hearings in early May to decide on a new set of science standards. Kansas is known for its 1999 decision to teach the Genesis creation story as an alternative to evolution, which was eventually overturned in 2001. Now in 2005, hearings have brought in ‘experts’ to testify to the merits of ‘intelligent design.’

According to the website of the Intelligent Design Network, an organization in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, “The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection."

Many scientists and critics of ID contend that it is ‘pseudo-science.’ The fundamental basis of ID—that life was ‘designed’ by an intelligent being, such as God—is not an empirical question open to scientific verification. In other words, it is a matter of faith, not science.

Advocates of ID and religious fundamentalists opposed to evolution point to ‘controversy’ in modern biology over aspects of the theory as a reason why evolution should be given less weight in the curriculum and ideas such as ID should be introduced. The ‘controversy’ they point to, of course, is simply scientists ‘doing science.’ Science requires ongoing questioning and testing, i.e. ‘controversy’; yet this does not preclude one theory from being widely accepted as the best current explanation. Evolution, like electromagnetic theory, the theory of relativity and other ‘controversial’ theories in the natural sciences, are widely accepted because they have withstood testing and they consequently form important underpinnings of modern science. If an alternative theory were to hold up to scientific scrutiny and arrive at a point where it provides better explanatory power than evolution, then it might supplant evolution as an accepted theory favored by scientists—a process that could only occur by ‘doing science’ in the lab and field rather than with lawyers, testimonials and hearings.

Questions Facing American Society

At issue in the so-called culture wars that falsely pit science against one brand of religion are questions at the heart of our educational standards. In order to thrive in a technological age, we need to provide students with a solid science education.

Shouldn’t that education be informed by scientists engaged in scientific research and taught by science teachers trained in their fields?

True scientific theories cannot be mandated by hearings. Theories can only be worked out through the sometimes mundane and sometimes exciting work of scientific inquiry, a process based on questions of empirical study. It is important that everyone understands the way science works along with the major theories in the different fields, just as it is important to understand that not all questions and issues can be addressed by science. Faith, as a way of knowing, is equally valid and useful for those issues that fall beyond the pale of science. It is not an either-or option, but one of recognizing where the different domains lie. Blurring the two is not only detrimental for science and public education, but forces religion into a quandary of trying to legitimize matters of faith via scientific evidence. Yet, faith needs no proof, just as scientific explanations demand it.

Links:

"Science and Faith Can Explain Creation," by Clarence Page (Newsday, 11 May 2005)
"What Matters in Kansas: The evolution of creationism," by William Saletan (Slate, 11 May 2005)
"Scientists Boycott Kansas Evolution Hearings," by John Hanna (AP, 9 May 2005)
"Fundamental Questions: America Debates the Place of Darwin and God in Schools," by Andrew Gumbel (The Independent, 7 May 2005)
Evolution Debate (Washington Post, 6 May 2005)
"Frying Bacon in Kansas," by John Atcheson (CommonDreams.org, 5 May 2005)
"A Political Tornado in Kansas," by Stephanie Simon (LA Times, 11 April 2005)
"Religious Right Fights Science for the Heart of America," by Suzanne Goldenberg (The Guardian, 7 Feb 2005)
"Bible vs. Science War Rages On In Classrooms," by Tim Harper (Toronto Star, 17 Jan 2005)
"Creeping Creationism," by Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation, 20 Nov 2004)
Kansas State Board of Education

War Decided before Reasons

2005-05-06T18:41:00.000-06:00

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
On Sunday, The Times of Britain published leaked minutes from a July 2002 meeting of senior ministers and advisors in the Blair government. The secret document reveals that "Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided." Moreover, it concluded that the Blair government "should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."

The thrust of the meeting focused on how best to legally justify the already determined war. It noted, "We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

"Blair hit by new leak of secret war plan," by Michael Smith (The Sunday Times, 1 May 2005)
"Blair planned Iraq war from start," by Michael Smith (The Sunday Times, 1 May 2005)
"Papers reveal commitment to war," by Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour (The Guardian, 2 May 2005)
"Proof Bush Fixed the Facts," by Ray McGovern (TomPaine.com, 4 May 2005)
"British Memo Indicates Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy," by Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott (Knight Ridder, 6 May 2005)

HRW: Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture

2005-04-25T20:25:00.000-06:00

Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture
Human Rights Watch

(New York, April 24, 2005)—The United States should name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.

The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees, is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“The soldiers at the bottom of the chain are taking the heat for Abu Ghraib and torture around the world, while the guys at the top who made the policies are going scot free,” said Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch. “That’s simply not right.”

Human Rights Watch said that there was now overwhelming evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took place not merely at Abu Ghraib but at facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at “secret locations” around the world, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws against torture.

“This pattern of abuse across several countries did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules,” said Brody. “It resulted from decisions made by senior U.S. officials to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside.”
Among Human Rights Watch’s findings:

Secretary Rumsfeld should be investigated for potential liability in war crimes and torture by US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo under the doctrine of “command responsibility”—the legal principle that holds a superior responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates when he knew or should have known that they were being committed but fails to take reasonable measures to stop them. Secretary Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques which violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture, such as the use of guard dogs to frighten prisoners and painful “stress” positions. There is no evidence that, over a three-year period of mounting reports of abuse, Rumsfeld exerted his authority and warned those under his command that the mistreatment of prisoners must stop. Had he done so, many of the crimes committed by U.S. forces certainly could have been avoided.
Under George Tenet’s direction, and reportedly with his specific authorization, the CIA has “rendered” detainees to countries where they were tortured, making Tenet potentially liable as an accomplice to torture. The CIA has also “disappeared” detainees in secret locations and it is said to have used “waterboarding,” in which the detainee’s head is pushed under water until he believes he will drown, also reportedly with Tenet’s authorization.
Gen. Sanchez approved illegal interrogation methods—again, including the use of guard dogs to frighten prisoners—which were then applied by soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Gen. Sanchez does not appear to have intervened to stop the commission of war crimes and torture by soldiers under his direct command.
Gen. Miller, as commander at the tightly-controlled prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, may bear responsibility for war crimes and acts of torture there. He may also bear responsibility for bringing illegal abusive interrogation tactics to Iraq.

Despite this evidence, Human Rights Watch said, the United States has deliberately shielded the architects of illegal detention policies through the refusal to allow an independent inquiry of prisoner abuse and the failure to undertake criminal investigations against those leaders who allowed the widespread criminal abuse of detainees to develop and persist. Rather, the Department of Defense has established a plethora of investigations, all but one in-house, looking down the chain of command. Prosecutions have commenced only against low-level soldiers and contractors.

“A year after Abu Ghraib, the United States continues to do what dictatorships and banana republics do the world over when their abuses are discovered—cover up the scandal and shift blame downwards,” said Brody. “A wall of immunity surrounds the architects of the policy that led to all these crimes.”

Human Rights Watch requested the appointment of a special prosecutor, saying that because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was himself deeply involved in the policies leading to these alleged crimes, he had a conflict of interest preventing a proper investigation of detainee abuse. U.S. Department of Justice regulations call for the appointment of an outside counsel when such a conflict exists and the public interest warrants a prosecutor without links to the government.

Human Rights Watch also repeated its call to Congress and the president to establish a special commission, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the issue of prisoner abuse. Such a commission would hold hearings, have full subpoena power, and be empowered to recommend the creation of a special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal offenses, if the attorney general had not yet named one.

Although Human Rights Watch said that existing evidence already necessitated criminal investigations, it emphasized that an independent commission could compel evidence that the government has continued to conceal, including the directives reportedly signed by President Bush authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities and facilitating the “rendition” of suspects to brutal regimes.

John Bolton as UN ambassador?

2005-04-10T13:39:00.000-06:00

On Monday, April 11, the Foreign Relations Committee, led by Senator Richard Lugar, begins hearings into the nomination of John Bolton for UN ambassador. Bolton's controversial nomination has been opposed by 67 former U.S. diplomats, State Department officials or officials of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency who recently signed a letter urging senators to reject the nomination.

Bolton, virulently opposed to international treaties and organizations such as the UN, has said that "If the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference" (1994 Global Structures Convocation, NY).

As the diplomats against the Bolton nomination write in their letter, "John Bolton's insistence that the UN is valuable only when it directly serves the United States, and that the most effective Security Council would be one where the U.S. is the only permanent member, will not help him to negotiate with representatives of the remaining 96% of humanity at a time when the UN is actively considering enlargement of the Security Council and steps to deal more effectively with failed states and to enhance the UN's peacekeeping capability."

The nomination could be blocked by the Foreign Relations Committee if Senator Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island, joins the eight Democrats on the committee to vote against Bolton.

"At a time when the UN is struggling to get an adequate grip on the genocidal killing in Darfur, Sudan, Mr. Bolton's skepticism about UN peacekeeping, about paying the UN dues that fund peacekeeping, and his leadership of the opposition to the International Criminal Court, originally proposed by the U.S. itself in order to prosecute human rights offenders, will all make it difficult for the U.S. to play an effective leadership role at a time when the UN itself and many member states are moving to improve UN capacity to deal with international problems," stated the diplomats against Bolton.

Links:

www.DiplomatsAgainstBolton.com
www.StopBolton.org
"Bush's Choice for UN Faces Bullying Claims," by David Usborne (The Independent, 9 April 2005)
"The Worst of the Bad Nominees" (New York Times, 8 April 2005)
"Ten Questions the Senate Should Ask John Bolton at his Confirmation Hearing, But Probably Won't," by Phyllis Bennis (Institute for Policy Studies, 9 March 2005)
"Bush Slaps International Community With Bolton Nomination" (Americans for Democratic Action, 9 March 2005)

Annan Releases Plan for UN Reform

2005-03-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

Kofin Annan Outlines Ambitious Plan for United Nations Reform
United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, 21 March 2005 -- Introducing his report, "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all," to the General Assembly this morning, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Member States to adopt this year a package of specific, concrete proposals to tackle global problems and enable the Organization to better respond to current challenges.

He said the comprehensive strategy he was proposing “gives equal weight and attention to the three great purposes of this Organization: development, security and human rights, all of which must be underpinned by the rule of law.” The report was called “In Larger Freedom” because he believed those words from the Charter conveyed the idea that development, security and human rights went hand in hand. The cause of larger freedom could only be advanced if nations worked together; and the United Nations could only help if it was remoulded as an effective instrument of their common purpose.

Describing the report, divided into four main sections, he said the first part, entitled “Freedom from Want”, proposed specific decisions for implementing the bargain struck three years ago, in Monterrey, between developed and developing countries. He asked every developing country to adopt a comprehensive national strategy bold enough to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and to mobilize all its resources behind that strategy, as well as improve its governance, uphold the rule of law and combat corruption.

And he asked every developed country to support those strategies by increasing the amount it spent on development and debt relief, and doing whatever it could to level the playing field for world trade. Specifically, he asked developed countries to complete the Doha round of trade negotiations no later than 2006; give immediate duty-free and quota-free market access to all exports from the least developed countries; and reach, by 2015, the target of spending 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product on official development assistance.

He stressed that development must be sustainable, saying that all efforts would be in vain if their results were reversed by continued degradation of the environment and depletion of natural resources. While pleased that the Kyoto Protocol had now entered into force, he noted that it was extended only until 2012, and that some major emitters of carbon remained outside it. He asked all States to agree that scientific advances and technological innovation must be mobilized now to develop tools for mitigating climate change, and that a more inclusive international framework must be developed for stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012, with broader participation by all major emitters and both developed and developing countries.

He also recommended that Member States consider building on one of the Organization’s clear strengths, by setting up a $1 billion voluntary fund to allow it to bring rapid and effective relief to the victims of sudden disasters, whether natural or man-made. The Organization had been able to do that after the recent tsunami thanks to the rapid response from donors, but it should be ready to do it whenever and wherever an emergency occurred.

In the second part of the report, entitled “Freedom from Fear”, he asked all States to agree on a new security consensus, by which they committed themselves to treat any threat to one of them as a threat to all, and to work together to prevent catastrophic terrorism, stop the proliferation of deadly weapons, end civil wars, and build lasting peace in war-torn countries. Among his specific proposals, he asked States to complete, sign and implement the comprehensive convention on terrorism, the convention on nuclear terrorism, and the fissile material cut-off treaty.

In the third part of the report, entitled “Freedom to Live in Dignity”, he urged all States to agree to strengthen the rule of law, human rights and democracy in concrete ways. In particular, he asked them to embrace the principle of the “Responsibility to Protect” as a basis for collective action against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity -- recognizing that that responsibility lay first and foremost with each individual State, but also that, if national authorities were unable or unwilling to protect their citizens, the responsibility then shifted to the international community; and that, in the last resort, the United Nations Security Council might take enforcement action according to the Charter.

In the final part of the report, on “Strengthening the United Nations”, he set out proposals for making the Organization the instrument through which all its Member States could agree on the strategies outlined in the first three parts, and help each other to implement them. First, he was asking heads of State and government to adopt a comprehensive package of reforms to revitalize the General Assembly, which had in recent times suffered from declining prestige and had not made the contribution that it should.

He also urged Member States to make the Security Council more broadly representative of the international community as a whole, as well as of the geopolitical realities of today. Member States should agree to take a decision on it -- preferably by consensus, but in any case before the September summit -- making use of one or other of the options presented in the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Also, the renewed Security Council should make clear, in a resolution, the principles by which it intended to be guided when deciding whether to authorize or mandate the use of force.

He also made proposals for enabling the Economic and Social Council to play the leading role that should be expected of it, in making and implementing coherent United Nations policies for development. In addition, he asked Member States to create a new Council to replace the present Commission on Human Rights, whose capacity to perform its tasks had been undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism. The Human Rights Council, he suggested, should be smaller than the Commission, and elected directly by two-thirds majority of the Assembly.

The report also contains far-reaching proposals for the reform of the Secretariat, which must be more flexible, transparent and accountable in serving the priorities of Member States, and the interests of the world’s peoples; and for introducing greater coherence into the work of the United Nations system as a whole, especially its response to humanitarian emergencies and its handling of environmental issues.

The main message of the five-year progress report on the implementation of the Millennium Declaration, he said, was that the aims of the Declaration could be achieved, but only if Member States were willing to adopt a package of specific, concrete decisions this year. He hoped world leaders, when they arrived at the United Nations for a summit meeting in September, would be ready to take the decisions that were needed, and adopted them as a package.

General Assembly President Jean Ping (Gabon) added that it was incumbent on the Assembly to examine the report and to take the urgent decisions required for a decisive advance towards the realization of a world free of hunger and fear, that was more sure, free and just and that was based on the rule of law. Pointing out that the time remaining before September was very limited, he said now was the time for joint action.

The Assembly, he said, would define the terms of reference for the decisions that would have to be taken in September and would launch general and thematic consultations from 6 April. The thematic consultations would be lead by 10 facilitators corresponding to the different sets of questions raised by the Secretary-General and a detailed plan for the consultations would be presented to Member States in the coming days.

Propaganda in a free society: Government produced ‘news’

2005-03-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
By David Barstow and Robin Stein
New York Times, 13 March 2005

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

full story

US pulls out of Vienna protocol

2005-03-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

U.S. Strips Detainees of Key Protections
Diplomatic Convention Undermined
Human Rights Watch

New York, March 11, 2005 — The U.S. government’s decision to withdraw from a protocol governing diplomatic disputes has immediate consequences for the rights of foreigners detained in the United States and could endanger U.S. citizens who are detained abroad, Human Rights Watch said today.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) can hear disputes between countries who are parties to the Optional Protocol of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, including cases brought by states on behalf of people detained in foreign countries who have been denied access to their country’s consular officials.

According to a decision by the Bush administration this week, the ICJ, or World Court, will henceforth have no power to hear cases brought by countries on behalf of detained non-citizens in the United States. Americans in the custody of foreign countries who have been denied access to their country’s embassies will also not have access to the ICJ.

“This decision not only violates the rights of foreigners living in the United States, it could also endanger Americans abroad,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch. “It’s a huge mistake for the United States, for practical reasons as well as legal and moral ones.”

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty which the United States ratified in 1969, requires governments to allow detained foreigners to meet with representatives of their embassies. The Optional Protocol to that treaty, also ratified by the United States, gives the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes under the treaty. Indeed it was the United States that proposed giving the ICJ such a role, during negotiations in 1963 to finalize the terms of the Optional Protocol.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed the United Nations this week that the United States is withdrawing from the Optional Protocol just days after President George W. Bush indicated to courts in Texas that they must abide by the ICJ’s Avena decision, which was made while the United States was still a party to the Optional Protocol. In that ruling, the ICJ told U.S. courts to hear the cases of 51 Mexican nationals on death row who were denied the right to talk to their consular officials.

“We were pleased that the Bush administration said it would abide by the ICJ’s earlier ruling,” said Fellner. “But the decision to withdraw from the Protocol creates new fears that foreigners facing the death penalty in the United States will have their rights violated and states acting on their behalf will have no place to turn to look for a remedy. It’s a matter of life and death.”

In the past, the United States has used the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention to protect its citizens abroad. After 52 American hostages were taken in Iran in 1979, the United States sued Iran in the World Court using the protocol, and the court ruled in favor of the United States. Now, if an American overseas is arrested and not allowed access to U.S. consular officials in that country, the United States will not be able to hold that country accountable in the World Court.

The safeguards provided to foreigners in the United States are especially important in death penalty cases, where the stakes are particularly high. Foreign detainees are often ill-equipped to understand everything, from the laws and procedures used in the United States to the language spoken in the courtroom. Without consular advice, such detainees are likely to make decisions that undermine their defense; in the worst case scenario, the outcome may be a sentence of death.

The decision to abandon the Optional Protocol runs counter to recent U.S. pronouncements about increasing cooperation with other countries.

“The timing is almost incomprehensible,” said Fellner. “With one arm the United States chips away at international institutions while it reaches out for better global cooperation with the other.”

Related Material:

U.S. Violated Rights of Mexicans on Death Row (HR Watch Press Release, 31 March 2004)
The Death Penalty in the U.S.
Brief of Amici Curiae in Medellin v. Dretke (PDF - Amicus Briefs, 25 Feb 2005)
Foreign Nationals on Death Row in the U.S. (Death Penalty Information Center)

Annan: Uphold Human Rights

2005-03-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

Annan lays out detailed five-point UN strategy to combat terrorism
UN News Service

10 March 2005 – Secretary-General Kofi Annan today presented a five-point strategy for the United Nations to fight terrorism: dissuading the disaffected from choosing the tactic, denying terrorists the means to carry out attacks, deterring state support, developing state preventive capacity and defending human rights in the struggle against the scourge.

Outlining what he called the “five D’s” in a keynote address to the closing plenary of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security in Madrid, he announced the creation of an implementation task force under his office to ensure that all parts of the UN system play their roles in handling terrorism and related issues.

[...]

Finally, on the last “D” – defending human rights – Mr. Annan emphasized that the UN must continue to insist that in the fight against terrorism it cannot compromise on its core values: the rule of law, protection of civilians, mutual respect between people of different faiths and cultures, and peaceful resolution of conflict.

He endorsed a recent proposal to create the position of a Special Rapporteur who would report to the UN Commission on Human Rights on the compatibility of counter-terrorism measures with international human rights laws.

“I regret to say that international human rights experts, including those of the UN system, are unanimous in finding that many measures which states are currently adopting to counter terrorism infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms,” he declared.

“Compromising human rights cannot serve the struggle against terrorism. On the contrary, it facilitates achievement of the terrorist’s objective – by ceding him the moral high ground and provoking tension, hatred and mistrust of government among precisely those parts of the population where he is most likely to find recruits,” he added.

HR Watch to UN: Condemn torture by US

2005-03-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

U.N. Rights Body Must Fight to Restore Credibility
Human Rights Watch

Geneva, March 9, 2005—With a membership that includes governments responsible for crimes against humanity, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights meeting in Geneva next week must take dramatic steps to restore its sinking credibility, Human Rights Watch said today.

Sudan, which was re-elected to the Commission last year, was recently found responsible by the Security Council-created Commission of Inquiry on Darfur for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law that likely “constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

To remain relevant, the United Nations’ top rights body must aggressively expose and respond to human rights abuses worldwide, Human Rights Watch said. The Commission on Human Rights itself has come under attack by the U.N.’s High-level Panel on Threats, which noted its “eroding credibility and professionalism.”

“The Commission must focus on protecting human rights, instead of blocking criticism of members that commit serious rights abuses,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The Commission has become a refuge for governments like Sudan, which should be in the dock rather than on the top U.N. rights body.”

Only by reclaiming its role of exposing governments that systematically abuse human rights, and establishing measures to redress those situations, can the Commission re-establish its relevance, Human Rights Watch said.

While the list of countries that should be subject to the Commission’s scrutiny is long, Human Rights Watch has highlighted several urgent situations where the Commission has a particularly urgent responsibility to act. These recommendations should be viewed as test cases of the Commission’s ability to continue to perform its most fundamental responsibilities.

Nepal: In light of the sharply deteriorating human rights conditions in Nepal, where the government’s abuses include numerous “disappearances,” the Commission should establish a special rapporteur on that country to monitor and report on the situation.

Iran: The Commission must restore the recently discontinued mandate of a human rights monitor for Iran. In the past year, human rights conditions have significantly deteriorated in the country, where abuses include torture and ill-treatment in detention, including indefinite solitary confinement used routinely to punish dissidents.

Sudan: The Commission must re-establish the mandate of the special rapporteur on human rights for Sudan and condemn gross abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Sudanese government, its allied Janjaweed and other militia, and rebel groups in Darfur.

Great Lakes region of Africa: With the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda, the Commission should create a post of special rapporteur on the African Great Lakes region to report on cross-border human rights concerns, including the growth of ethnic tensions and the human rights consequences of cross-border military activity.

The former Soviet Union: The Commission should adopt critical resolutions about the situations in Belarus, Russia’s Chechnya region, and Turkmenistan, as well as the ongoing human rights crisis in Uzbekistan.

The United States: Human Rights Watch called on the Commission to condemn “disappearances,” torture, and other mistreatment of detainees by the United States in the “global war on terrorism” and to ask that the United States grant access to terrorism suspects held by the United States around the world to the Commission’s different monitoring mechanisms that have requested such access several months ago.

The adoption of critical resolutions on several of the world’s most severe human rights crises would signal the return to the Commission’s most fundamental focus: the protection of human rights around the world. Another step toward restoring the Commission’s credibility would be ridding its membership of the worst violators of human rights. Human Rights Watch called on member states of the United Nations to deny a seat on the Commission to countries with the worst human rights records and to insist that states seeking Commission membership make positive commitments to human rights.

“The Commission has only one option to regain its stature and credibility,” Roth said. “It must do its job by exposing abusive governments and working resolutely for the protection of human rights.”

Ward Churchill Interview

2005-02-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

The man in the maelstrom
Ward Churchill speaks out on his controversial essay, the media frenzy and what the U.S. can do if it really wants to halt terrorism
Interview by Pamela White (Boulder Weekly, 10 Feb 2005)

Excerpts from the interview...
Boulder Weekly: What were you doing on Sept. 11 when you first heard about the terrorist attacks?
Ward Churchill: I was on the word processor working on an extended essay on American Indians in films, which I had been working on for some time... The phone rang. It was Kathleen Cleaver. She said, "Is your TV on?" I said, "No." She said, "Well, turn it on, because a plane just hit the World Trade Center." So probably within five minutes from the time the first plane hit I watched it in real time.
I suppose like everybody else, I was stunned... I knew it was real, but still there was this disbelief thing. And to be fair about it, that was probably affecting everyone, including the people who had set up the cameras and were filming the thing as it occurred—probably more so for them because they were watching it for real.
But it struck me even before the first building came down that this was already being framed. It was proclaimed to be "senseless" before the first building came down, and senseless means "without purpose," and that seemed absolutely absurd to me on its face. How could they possibly know? There are planes being hijacked all over the country. Two of them have hit the World Trade Center. One of them has hit the Pentagon. There's another one loose. But whoever's doing this has no purpose.
And then there's the outrage: How can this happen? Well, there's various ways you could take it, like, "How did they penetrate the air defense?" But I don't think that's the nature of the question. That was not my sense. It was more like, "What could possibly provoke somebody to do this?" OK, that question and, "Why do they hate us?"
All of that [struck me]—both the framing of it as being senseless and the amazingly stupid questions as to what would provoke somebody to do this.
BW: My first thought when I saw what had happened was, "Somebody is going to get their ass kicked."
WC: Well, it occurred to me at the time that somebody was finally kicking U.S. ass for the way the U.S. had been comporting itself. Rather than, "Why do they hate us?" my initial response was, "How could they not?" And as to who was doing it, the problem is how many contenders there are out there.
Well, it was about that time—it was the early afternoon—I got a call from the woman who was the editor of Dark Night Field Notes... She said, "We need a from-the-gut response on this, and we need it in time to post it tomorrow."
BW: So the essay started as a "from-the-gut" response. What were your thoughts going into it?
WC: This was absurd what was being said. No one's calling [the reporters] on it for describing it as senseless. You've got a little contradiction in packaging here going on between the official news sources who are proclaiming it senseless and then the more official officials—the official officials—who are proclaiming it things like, "They did it because they hate our freedom," and other really profound and insightful things of that sort. It can't both be senseless and for a reason at the same time.
I don't think I was the only one with a different response from the mainstream. It just happens to be the way I framed it. Where that begins is borrowing from Malcolm X's thing about the chickens coming home to roost.
[...]
Churchill then discussed the concept of collective responsibility and the notion that some of those who worked in the World Trade Center were not only aware of, but participants in actions that caused harm and suffering abroad. Such events could not occur without broad support from the American public, he said.
WC: I don't say they had detailed information. They were not concerned enough to gather it. They simply embraced it. They applauded it. They voted for it. But they're not innocent of it at the same time.
How do you end up participating in this process and being proud and triumphalist about this process and making your vocation the participation in and proper functioning of that system and be innocent at the same time? And that takes me to the Eichmann comment.
BW: Your Eichmann comparison seems to be the thing that has upset people the most.
WC: Oh, yes... I said specifically the comparison to Eichmann devolved upon the technicians of empire. Is there some definition you can give me where a food-service worker or a child or a janitor pushing a broom is a technician of empire? I wasn't talking about that, clearly. That's the only point that's been raised. "How can you say that an 18-month-old baby girl on a plane was comparable to Eichmann?"
Well, the fact of the matter is, I never said that. To use Pentagon-speak, that would be the collateral damage... I don't know that they had any specific intent to kill everyone that was there. In order to get at the target, the dead bystanders were "worth the price," to quote directly from Madeline Albright. [The terrorists] used the exact same logic used by Pentagon planners and U.S. diplomats—"This is an unavoidable consequence of getting at the target."
[...]
BW: So you're not saying the people who died on 9/11 deserved to die?
WC: I'm not a judge. I want the whole goddamned process to stop, you know? That extends to these collateral damages... I certainly don't embrace that. I didn't judge Eichmann. I didn't impose the death penalty. You can adduce that if Eichmann is worthy of death, because of what he had done in arranging train schedules and such, then these other Eichmanns are worthy of death. But I didn't pronounce the sentence. I merely made the comparison.
[...]
And the American public has long since convinced itself that it can act however it wants in the world for personal benefit, for profit, for whatever, or have it done in their name, and claim innocence and impunity from any consequences at the same time. Excuse me. I challenge that. You're not innocent if you're a participant, if you support it, if you embrace it, if you vote for it, if you revel in it, if you celebrate it. You're complicit, just like the Germans.
[...]
BW: Does this raise concerns that we might be looking at open season on dissident academics?
WC: That's exactly what it is. It's been as much as stated by Newt Gingrinch and David Horowitz and others, that this is the "kick-off." I'm the kick-off. I didn't select this position. I got selected for whatever set of reasons they had. If you want to know why they selected me as opposed to 30 other targets they might have selected, you'd have to ask them. I think they thought I'd be a vulnerable target. Sorry, guys. Miscalculation there. It's the opening round of a general purge of the academy of people who say things they find to be politically unacceptable.
[...]
BW: You've gotten a fair amount of support from CU students and faculty.
WC: I've gotten support from the AAUP, which has entered an unequivocal and elegant statement of support. That does not mean they agree with my position. That's not the issue here. Not everyone who supports me agrees with me... The society of American law teachers, all 900 law professors have signed on to it. The ACLU here [supports me], the ACLU in the New York Times today and so on. So, no, I'm not without support on that issue. And I'm actually not without support in terms of the analysis [in the essays].
BW: Isn't the real story in all of this the response to your essays?
WC: The larger framing was articulated by one of the regents, Tom Lucero, at the regents meeting the other night: I want a justification for the existence of whole departments. I want to review the tenure system altogether. I want every course justified to my satisfaction.
BW: That's not academic freedom. That's a dictatorial response—
WC: —from someone who could not possibly have the competence to assess the validity of these things. How could Tom Lucero possibly have assimilated the knowledge to pass scholarly judgment on the individual courses and their content and the scholarship that attends them in all these different areas?
This is transparently clear: Anything that he doesn't like, whether he knows anything about it or not, is to be gone. He has announced—telegraphed—the fact that he doesn't like anything having to do with cultural studies, ethnic studies, dissident political studies, gay rights. None of that has anything to do with proper scholarship in his mind, not that he knows a goddamned thing about any of it. And it's not that he's a particularly malevolent individual. He's representative of the whole. That's the mentality that goes into this. This is a book-burning exercise. It's a stifling of political discourse.
full interview

Links:

Governor Bill Owens' letter on Ward Churchill (1 Feb 2005) - PDF
Political Intrusions into the Academy (American Association of University Professors, Feb 2005)

Dissent and Debate

2005-02-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

Churchill's foreign policy ideas are largely ignored
By Todd Neff (Boulder Daily Camera, 6 Feb 2005)

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's comparison of World Trade Center victims with Nazi technocrat Adolf Eichmann has been quoted in editorial pages across the country.
Yet Churchill's use of the term "little Eichmanns" was a sidelight in a long essay written shortly after the terrorist attacks.
The underlying message he hoped to spread — that America's foreign policy has been damaging abroad and is now dangerous at home — isn't new. But it appears that the public uproar surrounding his more inflammatory statements has obscured Churchill's intended message despite his exposure to millions, courtesy of national media attention.
In a press release posted on the University of Colorado's department of ethnic studies Web site last week, Churchill said his point was that "we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences."
Churchill's 2003 book, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," expanded on the controversial essay written two years earlier. Churchill described the book as a chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II.
Observers critical of U.S. foreign policy, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky and former University of California professor and author Chalmers Johnson, have spoken out on similar issues for years.
Chomsky speaks tirelessly in criticism of American leadership and discusses in encyclopedic detail the human consequences of U.S. actions in Iraq, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, the Balkans and elsewhere.
Johnson predicted domestic retribution for U.S. actions abroad in a book titled "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire," published 18 months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His recently published "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic" warns of dire consequences from what he sees as unchecked U.S. military imperialism.
In a telephone interview, Johnson said so-called "radical" comments by the likes of Churchill or Chomsky pale when compared to those of Bush Administration neoconservatives.
"They're the ones who started it. They're the ones who broke nearly every precedent of foreign policy in the post-Cold-War world. They're the ones who chose preventative war over international law," Johnson said. "That's what I view as destructive, not Noam Chomsky pointing it out."
Johnson said he doesn't know what it will take to get American citizens to hold their government accountable, as envisioned by the Constitution's authors, but "as long as they don't, we will continue to make disastrous mistakes."
Inflammatory arguments may or may not help, he said, although "I don't think we would have ever gotten rid of slavery if it hadn't been for John Brown," the radical abolitionist.
Others prefer a more subtle approach.
"I want people to think that maybe there is some truth about our foreign policy that makes people angry at the United States," said Carolyn Bninski, who focuses on international relations at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder. "I don't want them to hook into a couple of words — like linking people in the Trade Center to Eichmann — and lose the basic message."
Robert Schulzinger, a CU history professor and director of the university's international affairs program, said arguments with Churchill's basic message have been made "by hundreds of people," and often more effectively than Churchill did in this case.
"A bad argument's a bad argument," Schulzinger said. "But people can make bad arguments — that's the whole point of freedom of expression."
Schulzinger noted that U.S. foreign policy also has had its share of supporters.
"Remember, for 12 years after the Cold War there was widespread belief that U.S. foreign policy had been remarkably successful for 40 years and had made the world much more prosperous and free," he said.
Still, criticism of American behavior has come from voices far less radical than Chomsky or Churchill.
In his 2004 book "The Fourth Power," former Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Hart wrote: "America's energy policy is to rely on foreign oil supplies and to go to war for them if threatened. We are using our military — that is to say, young Americans, as the guarantor for our wasteful lifestyle. The American people need to be reminded of this: this is our energy policy, and it is immoral."
In the case of Churchill, his core ideas on U.S. foreign policy appear to have garnered little attention since the discovery of his controversial essay. Uproar and denunciation of his likening World Trade Center victims to the Nazi technocrat has been the primary public reaction. Not far behind has been debate regarding freedom of speech and academic freedom as it applies to a representative of a state university.
Boulder resident Christina Kiffney said she agreed with Churchill's assessment that "there are a lot of people in the world who think America is an evil force." But she said apparent attempts to silence Churchill were her main concern.
"I would think universities are the kinds of environment where we would want to promote this kind of discourse and critique," she said.

Related stories:

"CU tenure attacked after spat: Professor's essay sparks calls to end protective system," by Elizabeth Mattern Clark (Boulder Daily Camera, 6 Feb 2005)

On Silencing Dissent

2005-02-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

On Silencing Dissent
Adam Hodges (5 Feb 2005)

Academic freedom, freedom of speech, and political expression are key issues brought up by the recent controversy surrounding Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado.

Undergirding each of these freedoms is the very principle that makes democratic processes possible—the ability for citizens to discuss, debate and think about issues in the public realm. In ancient Greece, the agora was the public meeting place, a place for citizens to come together to engage in speech and action. This public space formed the core of the polis—“the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together” (Hannah Arendt, 1958, The Human Condition, p. 198).

How different the modern agora is from that of ancient Greece. In place of the polis and the public space for citizens to meet, today our agora acts primarily as a meeting place for consumers. We come together in public at shopping malls and markets to exchange products, rather than ideas. We are a non-political community in the original sense of the term politics, a dangerous state for any society aspiring to democracy.

The reactionary voices involved in the so-called Churchill affair, from Governor Bill Owens to lawmakers and university regents, have demonstrated an important lesson in politics: It is easier to simply reject an idea—and dismiss (quite literally, by firing, executing, etc.) a person behind an idea—than to deal with the idea itself.

Dealing with the idea itself requires entertaining the perspective entailed in the idea in order to evaluate it on its own merits. Such a path to discovery is frightening for those who fear the consequences that understanding might bring—the possibility of upending their own world view through potentially valid arguments. It is easier, indeed, to simply reject an idea outright without consideration, rather than to attempt to formulate logical arguments in response.

‘Fire Ward Churchill!’ it is implored, a charge led by Colorado Governor Bill Owens.

“—But is that an argument?” as Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote (On Certainty, 1969, p. 20). “Is it not simply the rejection of an idea?”

Indeed, it is merely the rejection of an idea; and rejection of the person who dared utter the idea in the first place.

I am much more interested in arguments that critically explore the merits or shortcomings of the idea. If Churchill’s detractors were to engage in such public discussion and critique, then they would be truly practicing politics. As it is, they merely show contempt for the foundation of political democracy—true public debate and discussion about issues concerning society.

The ability for citizens to exchange challenging (and yes, even pointed and unpopular) ideas in the public realm is the crux of practicing democracy. If we are to gain broader understandings of the world and work toward recognizing and improving society, then we must spend more time practicing democratic politics.

Homework for Governor Owens, Colorado lawmakers, CU Regents, and concerned citizens:

First, read Churchill’s essay ("Some People Push Back") and book (On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, 2003). You may just learn something or at the least, develop some sound counter-arguments to address his ideas rather than simply dismissing them without thought.
Read Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the ‘banality of evil’ for a broader context of Churchill’s use of the term ‘little Eichmanns’ (Hannah Arendt, 1964, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality and Evil).
Contribute to the public discussion surrounding US policy towards international law, past actions in world affairs, and an examination of the broader issues surrounding the events of 11 September 2001 (rather than shutting down discussion.)

See also:

Ward Churchill Statement (1 Feb 2005)
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Statement on Professor Ward Churchill Controversy (3 Feb 2005)

Gonzales: Torture convention doesn't apply overseas

2005-01-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar 'Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales Says
By Frank Davies (26 Jan 2005, Knight Ridder)

WASHINGTON -- Alberto Gonzales has asserted to the Senate committee weighing his nomination to be attorney general that there's a legal rationale for harsh treatment of foreign prisoners by U.S. forces.

In more than 200 pages of written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who plan to vote Wednesday on his nomination, Gonzales told senators that laws and treaties prohibit torture by any U.S. agent without exception.

But he said the Convention Against Torture treaty, as ratified by the Senate, doesn't prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" tactics on non-U.S. citizens who are captured abroad, in Iraq or elsewhere.

[...]

But he drew a distinction between U.S. anti-torture statutes and the international Convention Against Torture, which calls on nations to prevent acts of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" that may fall short of torture.

When the Senate ratified the treaty, it defined such treatment as violations of the Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendments. Because of that provision, Gonzales said, the Justice Department decided that the convention applies only to actions under U.S. jurisdiction, not "treatment with respect to aliens overseas."

full article

"Senate Panel Approves Gonzales on a Party-Line Vote," by Eric Lichtblau (26 Jan 2005, NYT)
US Senate
Center for Constitutional Rights

Neo-cons Trump Fiscal Conservatives

2005-01-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

White House Predicts $427 Billion Deficit, Including New War Costs
By Edmund Andres and John O'Neil (25 Jan 2005, NYT)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - White House officials predicted this afternoon that the budget deficit would hit a record $427 billion this year, including an additional $80 billion that President Bush will ask for mostly to cover the costs of the war in Iraq.
White House officials said today that they were still on track to fulfill Mr. Bush's campaign promise of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009.
But the administration is already well behind on its goal. The White House predicted last summer that the budget deficit would decline in 2005 and continue to sink after that.
The officials said Mr. Bush would ask Congress next month for the extra $80 billion when he submits his budget next month for fiscal 2006. The new request would bring total costs of the war to more than $200 billion by the end of this year, with spending likely to continue at near current levels through at least 2006.
The new estimate calls for the budget to climb slightly, and a new report earlier today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that deficits will remain above $350 billion through 2009 and climb sharply after that.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that continued costs of the war in Iraq and other aspects of the war on terrorism could add $285 billion over the next five years.
The congressional agency also noted deficits would climb much more sharply in the subsequent five years. Extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts would cost $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Preventing an expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax that was designed to prevent wealthy people from taking advantage of loopholes, would cost about $500 billion.
Even without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and despite expectations of strong economic growth over the next two years, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal budget outlook worsened since last year.
Congressional analysts predicted that interest costs on the federal debt will double over the next decade to more than $300 billion a year.
full article

"The US Budget Deficit: On an Unsustainable Path," by William Gale and Peter Orszag (Dec 2004, Brookings Institute)
Paul Krugman (NYT columns)

MLK

2005-01-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war... We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls 'enemy', for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers... I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giants triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

--Martin Luther King, Jr
4 April 1967, New York City

"Equality and the War: Dr. King's Words Strike Relevant Chord Today" (17 Jan 2005, Boulder Daily Camera)
"MLK's Moral Values," by John Nichols (16 Jan 2005, The Nation)
"MLK, In His Own Words," by Ron Forthofer (16 Jan 2005, Denver Post)
"White America and the MLK Holiday," by Andrew M. Manis (14 Jan 2005, CommonDreams.org)
"King's Dream Included Decent Wages," by Holly Skar (14 Jan 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service)
"WWMLKD: What Would Martin Luther King Do?," by Mara Voukydis (14 Jan 2005, CommonDreams.org)

Neo-con Power to the Pentagon

2005-01-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Coming Wars
By Seymour Hersh
17 Jan 2005, The New Yorker

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

[...]

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.

[...]

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.”

[...]

The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”

[...]

The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties.

[...]

“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.”

[...]

The Pentagon has tried to work around the limits on covert activities before. In the early nineteen-eighties, a covert Army unit was set up and authorized to operate overseas with minimal oversight. The results were disastrous. The Special Operations program was initially known as Intelligence Support Activity, or I.S.A., and was administered from a base near Washington (as was, later, Gray Fox). It was established soon after the failed rescue, in April, 1980, of the American hostages in Iran, who were being held by revolutionary students after the Islamic overthrow of the Shah’s regime. At first, the unit was kept secret from many of the senior generals and civilian leaders in the Pentagon, as well as from many members of Congress. It was eventually deployed in the Reagan Administration’s war against the Sandinista government, in Nicaragua. It was heavily committed to supporting theContras. By the mid-eighties, however, the I.S.A.’s operations had been curtailed, and several of its senior officers were courtmartialled following a series of financial scandals, some involving arms deals. The affair was known as “the Yellow Fruit scandal,” after the code name given to one of the I.S.A.’s cover organizations—and in many ways the group’s procedures laid the groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal.

Full article

"Abu Ghraib abuse firms are rewarded," by Peter Beaumont (16 Jan 2005, The Observer)
"The Salvador Option," by Michael Hirsh and John Barry (9 Jan 2005, Newsweek)

Gonzales Nomination

2005-01-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

Much to the dismay of the nation and world, the 'yes-men' in the Senate are poised to confirm Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General...

Center for Constitutional Rights: "Oppose the Gonzales Nomination"

Washington Post editorial (16 Jan 2005):

Despite a poor performance at his confirmation hearing, Alberto R. Gonzales appears almost certain to be confirmed by the Senate as attorney general. Senators of both parties declared themselves dissatisfied with Mr. Gonzales's lack of responsiveness to questions about his judgments as White House counsel on the detention of foreign prisoners. Some expressed dismay at his reluctance to state that it is illegal for American personnel to use torture, or for the president to order it. A number of senators clearly believe, as we do, that Mr. Gonzales bears partial responsibility for decisions that have led to shocking, systematic and ongoing violations of human rights by the United States. Most apparently intend to vote for him anyway. At a time when nominees for the Cabinet can be disqualified because of their failure to pay taxes on a nanny's salary, this reluctance to hold Mr. Gonzales accountable is shameful. He does not deserve to be confirmed as attorney general.
Full piece

US papers discuss the potential attorney general (7 Jan 2005, The Guardian)
Gonzales testimony

Mapping the Global Future

2005-01-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project

Mapping the Global Future is the third unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the past seven years that takes a long-term view of the future. The National Intelligence Council, as a center of strategic thinking and over-the-horizon analysis for the US Government, takes this as one of its key challenges.

As with the earlier NIC efforts—Global Trends 2010 and Global Trends 2015—the project's primary goal is to provide US policymakers with a view of how the world developments could evolve, identifying opportunities and potentially negative developments that might warrant policy action. We also hope this paper stimulates a broader discussion of value to educational and policy institutions at home and abroad.

Full report (HTML - PDF)
"Iraq War May Incite Terror, CIA Study Says," by Bob Drogin (14 Jan 2005, LA Times)

State of the World 2005

2005-01-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

Poverty, Disease, Environmental Decline are True 'Axis of Evil'
State of the World 2005 calls for new approach to global security
(12 Jan 2005, World Watch Institute)

Washington, D.C. -- The global war on terror is diverting the world's attention from the central causes of instability, reports the Worldwatch Institute in its annual State of the World 2005. Acts of terror and the dangerous reactions they provoke are symptomatic of underlying sources of global insecurity, including the perilous interplay among poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, and rising competition over oil and other resources.

Compounded by the spread of deadly armaments, these "problems without passports" create the conditions in which political instability, warfare, and extremism thrive. They could lead the world into a dangerous downward spiral in which the basic fabric of nations is called into question, political fault lines deepen, and radicalization grows. Tackling these challenges demands a strategy that emphasizes prevention-focused programs rather than military might, the report concludes.

"Poverty, disease, and environmental decline are the true axis of evil," says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. "Unless these threats are recognized and responded to, the world runs the risk of being blindsided by the new forces of instability, just as the United States was surprised by the terrorist attacks of September 11."

In the State of the World 2005 foreword, former Soviet Union President and Green Cross International chairman Mikhail Gorbachev calls for a "Global Glasnost, openness, transparency, and public dialogue" and "a policy of 'preventive engagement'" to meet the challenges of poverty, disease, environmental degradation, and conflict in a sustainable and nonviolent way."

Among the many destabilizing pressures examined, State of the World 2005 highlights the following as particularly critical for efforts to build a more peaceful world:

OIL: Continued heavy dependence on oil carries with it enormous costs and risks. It fuels geopolitical rivalries, civil wars, and human rights violations. The economic security of supplier and buyer nations is compromised by severe swings in price and supply. And oil's role in undermining climatic stability poses grave threats to human safety.
WATER: Water agreements have made cooperation rather than conflict the norm among neighboring states. But within countries, water shortages are fueling violent conflict. Worldwide, 434 million people currently face water scarcity. Insufficient access to water is a major cause of lost rural livelihoods, compelling farmers to abandon their fields and fueling conflicts.
FOOD: Worldwide, nearly two billion people suffer from hunger and chronic nutrient deficiencies. Food security is often undermined by factors such as water availability, land distribution, poverty, and environmental degradation. Among the major food security threats on the horizon are climate change, the loss of diversity of plant and animal species, the rise of foodborne illnesses, and food bioterror.
INFECTIOUS DISEASE: Several known diseases have reemerged or spread geographically and many new ones have been identified over the last three decades. HIV/AIDS has become a major killer, and an estimated 34 to 46 million people are infected with the virus. The world's economically least-developed countries are the most affected by the pandemic. In sub-Saharan Africa, the disease is devastating education, weakening militaries, and undermining political stability.
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT: More than 100 developing countries worldwide are currently experiencing a "youth bulge" (a situation where people aged 15 to 29 account for more than 40 percent of all adults). Economic opportunities are particularly scarce in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, where 21-26 percent of young people are unemployed. Worldwide, the more than 200 million young people worldwide who are either jobless or do not earn enough to support a family--especially young men--can be a destabilizing force if their discontent pushes them into crime or into joining insurgencies or extremist groups.

To confront these challenges to global security, State of the World 2005 calls for a strengthening of the civilian institutions and systems that are best equipped to address them. A range of strategic investments in sustainable energy, public health, protection of ecological systems, education, jobs, and poverty alleviation will assist in this transition, write the report's authors.

"The current fixation on fighting terrorism has overshadowed the graver threats that now loom over us, said State of the World 2005 Project Directors Michael Renner and Hilary French. "A more sustainable and equitable world is a more secure world. Rather than continuing to build military muscle, governments need to redouble their efforts to safeguard human and environmental security, enhance disarmament and post-conflict reconstruction, and redesign the United Nations for the security challenges of today and tomorrow."

More...

State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security (World Watch Institute)
"Terror War Diverting Attention from Roots of Insecurity," by Jim Lobe (13 Jan 2005, Inter Press Service)