"The Cheney"

Buhdydharma, one of the intrepid proprietors at the blog Docudharma, has written a poem I've taken quite a fancy to. It's not easy to write political poetry, or really any poetry at all. I'm not sure he meant to write such a good piece, and I hope he doesn't mind my reproducing it here, with the original line spacing.

So, without further ado... "The Cheney"

The Cheney was born with the stars

The Cheney has always existed

It is the Cheney that rustles the grass behind you

As you walk through the dark woods

It is the Cheney's eyes that you glimpse

Behind the hung clothes in the dark closet

The Cheney is it, that goes bump in the night and that hides under the bed

It's passage bring goosebumps

The Cheney has always been here

They say

The Cheney is in the eye

Of the shot and dying once caged quail

The Cheney is in the eyes

Of the thin Iraqi child

As she she cannot sleep from hunger

The Cheney , so they say

Spies on lovers, but for a pleasure obscene

To catch them breaking rules

The Cheney bursts forth

In the explosion of sorrows in a drunken barfight when it has all become too much

In the lovers fist and the regret that follows the change

When it cannot be taken back

The Cheney lies in the dark, waiting, plotting, watching, stalking

Feeding on despair and brimming anger

Feasts on hurt and death and pain

And gnaws at the bones of our weaknesses

It sleeps in your fears

In all our fears

Where the sunlight never goes

The Cheney has always been here, so they say

That before one passes from this place

A new one must be born

It will always haunt our dreams

To show us what true meanness is

And now.... it wears a dress???

Fox News & Oliver North Involved with U.S. Afghanistan Massacre Cover-up

The UK TimesOnline has posted a video of the aftermath of the killings of dozens of villagers in the Afghan village of Nawabad (called Azizabad in other stories). The U.S. has maintained that seven civilians and three dozen Taliban militants were killed in the combined U.S. Special Forces/Afghan Army/U.S. air operation last August 21. The United Nations and local villagers insist that 92 civilians were killed, over half of them children. According to the article:

In the video scores of bodies are seen laid out in a building that villagers say is used as a mosque; the people were killed apparently during a combined operation by US special forces and Afghan army commandos in western Afghanistan. The film was shot on a mobile phone by an Afghan doctor who arrived the next morning.

Local people say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.

Besides the UN, the villagers' account is backed up by investigations from an Afghanistan government delegation and what the Times calls Afghanistan's "leading human rights organisation."

Now, NATO command is backing off the official story, noting that there is a "discrepancy" in death toll figures, and expressing the usual "heartfelt sorrow." But , as the Times reports, a new report by Human Rights Watch says that under reporting of civilian deaths in Afghanistan is out of control. (The report criticizes both U.S./NATO and Taliban forces.)

Taking what it says are the most conservative figures available, Human Rights Watch has calculated that civilian deaths as a result of Western airstrikes tripled between 2006 and 2007 to 321. In the first seven months of this year the figure was 119. In the same period, 367 civilian deaths were attributed to Taleban attacks. It accuses US officials of routinely denying reports of civilian deaths.

Perhaps the most amazing political news surrounding the Nawabad massacre is that the Pentagon says it relied for its account, in part, on corroborative evidence by the embedded journalist on the scene: Fox News "reporter" Oliver North! The Times portrays North as coming "to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair."

Actually, North was convicted for three felonies in regards to his activities during the Iran-Contra scandal. He only escaped a suspended prison sentence and $150,000 in fines because, as his Wikipedia bio describes it, an "appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony." North had been deputy director for political-military affairs for the National Security Council under Reagan, until the scandal brought his career to a halt.

North came into the public spotlight due to his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair, in which he was the chief coordinator of the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was responsible for the establishment of a covert network used for the purposes of aiding the Contras. U.S. funding of the Contras by appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies had been prohibited by the Boland Amendment.

North's testimony in front of a congressional committee during the Iran-Contra hearings marked him as an unabashed apologist for covert operations and the projection of American power abroad, irregardless of the will of those in the countries subjected to U.S. intervention. Lying to Congress was justified, in his opinion, because he supported the anti-Sandinista "Contras", whom he labeled "freedom fighters." Since then, and after an unsuccessful foray into politics, he has made his living as a right-wing ideologue, writing books, and establishing himself as a right-wing television commentator.

It looks like North's service to his military masters has never ended. Looking at the video from the Times, which shows rows of dead bodies, including many children, we can only conclude that North has once again lied for the government. It's his specialty, and one shouldn't be surprised. However, North's participation in this U.S. military cover-up vividly calls into question the role of embedded "reporters" among the armed services.

The cover story on Nawabad/Azizabad included U.S. asssurances that the villagers were lying about the casualties. This from Chris Floyd's coverage:

What's more, the Pentagon then claimed that the reports of a wider slaughter were being faked by the villagers, at the behest of the Taliban. The American brass even accused the survivors of the attack of creating fake graves to fool the good-hearted U.S. military inspectors who, it was claimed, quickly visited the scene to ascertain the truth.

But Carlotta Gall is reporting at the New York Times:

Cellphone images seen by this reporter show at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries, among some 30 to 40 bodies laid out in the village mosque. Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old. Their shock and grief is still palpable....

A visitor to the village and to three graveyards within its limits on Aug. 31 counted 42 freshly dug graves. Thirteen of the graves were so small they could hold only children; another 13 were marked with stones in the way that Afghans identify women’s graves.

If it takes this concerted of an international outcry to get the truth out of the U.S. government (and they're not admitting to anything on Nawabad yet), how many other instances of U.S. military action can even be believed? Is there anything this government even says or does that has credibility? I know that sounds severe, but that's the price power pays for mendacity and cover-up.

Hat-tip to Grand Moff Texan at Daily Kos for the TimesOnline article

How You Can Help: A Letter to the Convening Authority, Guantanamo

The following letter has been faxed to the defense counsel of Mohammed Jawad, currently due to stand trial as part of the military tribunal process at Guantanamo. A juvenile when arrested in Afghanistan, Jawad's likely innocence, and his abuse at the hands of both Afghan and U.S. captors has been well documented. His attorney, Major David Frakt, is asking interested individuals and organizations to write similar letters on his client's behalf.

There is also a petition covering the primary details of the case, and asking for withdrawal and dismissal of charges against the former teenage combatant. I urgently ask my readers to at least consider signing the petition. A great wrong can be undone, if you help and take action.

The text of my letter:

September 7, 2008

The Honorable Susan J. Crawford
Convening Authority
Office of Military Commissions
1600 Defense Pentagon
Washington DC 20301-1600

Dear Madam Convening Authority,

I am writing in regards to the case of Mohammad Jawad. It is my understanding that you are currently considering a defense request for withdrawal and dismissal of charges on Mr. Jawad. I strongly support the defense motion.

This case has particular interest for me, as in my professional role as a licensed psychologist, I have worked with victims of torture from multiple countries around the world, both as a psychotherapist, and in a forensic role. I have been certified as an expert witness in the immigration court of the Department of Homeland Security.

According to multiple sources I have perused, Mr. Jawad has suffered from coercive interrogation and abusive conditions of incarceration, including during such time as he was a minor. I am not accusing the authorities of deliberately abusing Mr. Jawad at this time, but I am concerned about his mental condition. I believe he is held in solitary confinement in a windowless cell, subjected to 24-hour lighting and constant observation.

The following is my understanding of the treatment Mr. Jawad endured since his capture as a child soldier in Afghanistan in December 2002:

According to a recently released report by Amnesty International, USA: From ill-treatment to unfair trial. The case of Mohammed Jawad, child ‘enemy combatant', Afghan police coerced a confession out of the 16 or 17-year-old prisoner. He was transferred to U.S. custody at Baghram Airbase, where he put his thumbprint to a confession written in a language (Pashto) he could neither speak nor write. Jawad then, as a teenager, was "subjected to isolation, sleep deprivation, cruel use of restraints, hooding, forced standing, stress positions, and physical assaults as part of the interrogation process." Transferred to Guantanamo Naval Air Base, he was placed in isolation and repeatedly interrogated, all without recourse to legal counsel.

As a psychologist myself, I was horrified to read that young Jawad endured multiple episodes of 30-day isolation upon the "recommendation of a psychologist with Guantánamo’s Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) who suggested that he was feigning homesickness and depression as a technique to resist interrogations." Even after Mr. Jawad reportedly made a suicide attempt in December 2003, he was subjected to Guantanamo's "frequent flyer" program, which, according to a Washington Post article I read last month, consisted of moving Jawad and other prisoners "repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation."

While I am not an attorney, Madam Convening Authority, there are elements of the law under which Mr. Jawad is held that seem to advocate for a withdrawal of charges against him. I have heard that the Acting Chief Prosecutor responsible for swearing and forwarding the charges against Mohammad Jawad has testified he was unaware of any abuse of Mr. Jawad at the time charges were initially sworn, and has said since that, as a matter of personal ethics, he would not swear charges against someone he believed to have been tortured.

Then, there is the matter of Mr. Jawad's status as a child at the time the alleged crimes took place. (I say "alleged," since recent events call into question whether Mohammad's very culpability. Additionally, the charges were only filed against him five years after his incarceration.) Under international law, child soldiers are considered primarily to be victims of war, not war criminals (even unto age 18). The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasized that the right to be promptly charged and brought to trial within a reasonable time is something that should be especially emphasized in the case of a child. Mr. Jawad's rights have been violated as function of U.S. detention policy.

Nor is there any reason to believe Mr. Jawad is a "war criminal" (the primary purpose of the Military Tribunals being to prosecute "war crimes"). As the Amnesty report cited above makes clear, throwing a grenade is like any other attempt to kill a soldier in an armed conflict. It is not a crime of war unless the attempt to murder is "hors de combat," that is, against someone "not engaged in military action as a result of illness, injury, capture or surrender, or unless the method used to carry out the attempted killing violates the law of war." While I am no soldier, I believe use of a grenade, by whatever side of an armed conflict, against an armed opponent, is not a war crime.

Finally, I respectfully ask that you consider the following points:

· Mohammad Jawad is the only person charged under the Military Commissions Act (MCA) who has not been charged with terrorism, nor material support for terrorism, or even with conspiracy.

· Unique among those charged under the MCA, Mohammad Jawad is the only person is not even alleged to have any affiliation with al Qaida or the Taliban

· No one died in the attack allegedly perpetrated by Mohammad Jawad.

It is difficult for me to understand what purpose the prosecution of this young man currently serves. I believe the defense motion to withdraw and dismiss charges against Mohammad Jawad has legal merit, and certainly makes sense from a humanitarian point of view. I further hope that the Convening Authority will respond fairly and reasonably in the matter of any new evidence that comes to light which casts doubt on earlier decisions.

I thank you for your attention in this matter, and am confident that when you review all of the matters in extenuation and mitigation of Mr. Jawad's case, you will rule in favor of withdrawal and dismissal of charges.

Sincerely yours,

J---- K-----, Ph.D.
San Francisco, CA
September 7, 2008

Please, don't wait. GO SIGN THE PETITION NOW. And please note, if you are moved to write your own letter, please do not send it directly to Susan Crawford at the address I've noted in the letter. Instead, letters are to be sent to:

Major David Frakt
Office of Military Commissions - Defense
1099 14th St. NW. Ste 2000D
Washington DC 20005

Major Frakt will be delivering all materials, including letters and petition signatures directly to the Convening Authority after Friday, September 12 (the deadline). Letters can be faxed to (202)761-0510 (Attn: Major Frakt).

Greatest Antiwar Song of All Time

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly....

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

Full lyrics for Masters of War, click here.

Sobriety & the U.S. Presidential Race

No, this is not a post about alcoholism, and the only drunkenness to which it might refer is the manic inebriation that comes with the exercise of great power.

As the U.S. presidential race settles into its pattern of opposing camps supposedly at great odds, especially every four years -- of conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, progressive versus reactionary -- it is good to be reminded that underneath all of the hullaballoo (and I agree it's hard not to be caught up in it, as detestable as Bush's GOP has been these last seven years), that nothing about this race will really change how the U.S. is run, or rather who runs it.

Along those lines, I'd like to refer to a succinct statement of this issue from Chris Floyd, who himself quotes the insightful Gore Vidal. Reading the following, inspired by Floyd's coverage of the U.S. intervention into Somalia and the subsequent human rights disaster that has followed, is like a splash of cold water, of stone cold sobriety regarding both the festivities and inanities of the past two convention weeks.

It's clear that no nation on earth will be allowed to organize its own society as it wishes, or work out its own internal conflicts, if the American elite decides they have some financial or strategic interest in the matter. The only nations immune to this power-mad interventionist philosophy are those who can strike back hard enough to upset the elite's apple cart. And thus we have Bush's "war on terror" -- which is, as we've often noted, simply an escalation of the long-running, bipartisan foreign policy of the "National Security State" that has ruled America for 60 years.

This year marks the anniversary of this coup d'etat: the 1947 "National Security Act." Writing on the 50th anniversary of this supplanting of the Republic, Gore Vidal wrote:

Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders.

Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media.

Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues... we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."

Here's another link for the Vidal quote. And for those who forgot what it's all about, here's another link to a time and place we forgot, but never left.

For more on Somalia, see my piece from earlier this year, Worse than Darfur: U.S. Proxy War in Somalia

Fred Thompson's Big Lie to RNC on McCain POW Story

Nothing is more wrenching, more emotionally volatile than the story of prisoners of war, no matter what the country or the cause: the torture they endure (or endured), and the mind-numbing horror of contemplating the inhumanity of those who do the torturing. McCain is playing on his torture history as POW in his run for the presidency. On Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, also-ran former Senator Fred Thompson gave a speech lauding McCain, and describing the suffering of the GOP presidential nominee when he was held as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese from 1967-73.

There is much that could be made of the lies, exaggerations, and ordinary political mischief in Thompson's speech. But one big lie stood out. In his narration of McCain's torture story, he changed one important fact. And since it bears on the larger question as to whether torture "works," it's worth mentioning here.

In his speech, Thompson said the following:

On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile slammed into John's A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky. When John ejected, part of the plane hit him, breaking his right leg, his right knee, his left arm and right arm in three places.

An angry mob got to him when he fell to the ground. A rifle butt broke his shoulder. A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin. They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.

John McCain said, "No".

After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John's right arm without success and without anesthesia. His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever and dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds. Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.

But with their help, John McCain fought on. He persevered. [Emphasis added]

Too bad for Fred Thompson that McCain's own narrative of his torture and incarceration is online and available for anyone to read. "It originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008."

Truth and Lies

Thompson maintains McCain refused to give up military information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment, despite a broken shoulder, arms, right knee and leg, and also despite being pierced by a bayonet in his ankle and his groin. That's quite a hero, John McCain, to withstand such pain and terror. Except he didn't, and in his own words:

For the next three or four days, I lapsed from conscious to unconsciousness. During this time, I was taken out to interrogation—which we called a "quiz"—several times. That's when I was hit with all sorts of war-criminal charges. This started on the first day. I refused to give them anything except my name, rank, serial number and date of birth. They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They kept saying, "You will not receive any medical treatment until you talk"....

They wanted military rather than political information at this time. Every time they asked me something, I'd just give my name, rank and serial number and date of birth.

I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us -- a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.

When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." [Emphasis added]

A doctor came, but, in this interview, McCain said his physician was "completely incompetent," and that he was only taken to a hospital in the last analysis because it was discovered his father was an admiral. As we shall see, McCain changed the story somewhat in his 1999 autobiography.

An article by Ted Rall earlier this year said this about McCain's shoot-down over Hanoi:

McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.

Rall also notes that an Arizona Republic article from 2007 covered the issue of McCain's collaboration (I unfortunately could find no original link to the AR article):

After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital." [Emphasis added]

Giving Up Information

There's also this article from Newsmax, dated November 29, 2005, titled "John McCain: Torture Worked for Me":

In his 1999 autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes how he was severely injured when his plane was shot down over Hanoi - and how his North Vietnamese interrogators used his injuries to extract information.

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number." [Emphasis added]

McCain is also on the record having broken under torture in other circumstances, even to the point of giving what he felt was false recantation of his actions as a U.S. pilot.

But this is not really an article meant to document the totality of Senator McCain's torture history. It is an article about historical falsification and the control of narrative by politicians today. It is also an article that I think highlights the mendacity of the McCain of 2008, a man who will let lies like Thompson's be told about him, who will change his position against torture to one that backs Bush's gleeful endorsement of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA, not excluding waterboarding.

There is even more harm done than the twisting of historical narrative in the service of political opportunism. That happens all the time. But the larger societal debate about torture is often discussed in terms of whether it "works" or not. Does torture produce reliable information? Can torture be reliably used to "break" individuals?

CIA on Whether Torture Works

McCain used to be an honest man. He was on record as saying torture can break a man down. He admits that, even though he tried to minimize the revelations, some information can be obtained via torture. Often enough that information is unreliable, or only partly true. And the CIA is certainly aware that torture is not the best way to get information from a captive. They say as much in their infamous Kubark torture manual:

Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist. This pragmatic objection has somewhat the same validity for a counterintelligence interrogation as for any other. But there is one significant difference. Confession is a necessary prelude to the CI interrogation of a hitherto unresponsive or concealing source. And the use of coercive techniques will rarely or never confuse an interrogatee so completely that he does not know whether his own confession is true or false. He does not need full mastery of all his powers of resistance and discrimination to know whether he is a spy or not. Only subjects who have reached a point where they are under delusions are likely to make false confessions that they believe. Once a true confession is obtained, the classic cautions apply. The pressures are lifted, at least enough so that the subject can provide counterintelligence information as accurately as possible. In fact, the relief granted the subject at this time fits neatly into the interrogation plan. He is told that the changed treatment is a reward for truthfulness and an evidence that friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates.

The profound moral objection to applying duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage has been stated. Judging the validity of other ethical arguments about coercion exceeds the scope of this paper. What is fully clear, however, is that controlled coercive manipulation of an interrogatee may impair his ability to make fine distinctions but will not alter his ability to answer correctly such gross questions as "Are you a Soviet agent? What is your assignment now? Who is your present case officer?" [Emphasis added]

In any case, as recent events from Baghram and Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib indicate, the U.S. government certainly doesn't want to release torture from its arsenal. This is what the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which received strong backing from John McCain, was largely about. As to the empirical "success" of torture, we really don't know (unless the secret police agencies of the world open up their archives). But it's important to remember that fear of torture is a better elicitor of information than torture itself, and an interrogator wants something to present to the prisoner that makes that fear seem legitimate, that communicates total control and a dependent status to the captive. (Other interrogators rely on building rapport, a technique the CIA also embraces, while maintaining coercive techniques as part of the interrogator's arsensal.) For better or worse, this is one way to make a person talk, if they do talk or not. And not everyone does.

But most do. John McCain did. He is not to be criticized for this. It is only human, and the guilt he feels over it is far worse than any punishment he would merit for such "talking."

2008 Election and the Falsification of History

This leaves us with one glaring question: why did Fred Thompson lie so brazenly about John McCain's experience? The answer seems clear. They cannot handle the truth about torture. They are trying to present a hero-like image of their candidate that resonates with what their supporters know from human nature as gleaned from comic-book movies, video-games, and TV shows like 24, where the hero is beaten and shot repeatedly, but is always able to get back up and take on the bad guy.

Such pandering to the adolescent omnipotent fantasies of the electorate is dangerous. It threatens to cheapen what is a profound human experience -- being tortured -- and just at a time when the government is pushing to legitimate this brazen practice of inhumane criminality. It also sets up a dynamic in the electorate that emphasizes the irrational and the ignorant. It is an attack upon a reasoned discussion of the issues. It is a big lie, and it should be exposed and denounced.

Robert Jay Lifton on APA, Torture, & "Socialization to Evil"

Google Video has a fascinating new posting, a work of an independent Boston documentary film maker Hermine Muskat. From the site description:

Robert Jay Lifton, psychiatrist and social activist, applies psychology and psychoanalysis to an understanding of psychologists' involvement in atrocity-producing situations and the interrogation of detainees at places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. In this interview, he answers questions about the American Psychological Association and psychologist interrogators' complicity in torture.

In the video interview, Dr. Lifton discusses the profound failure of the American Psychological Association to deal with the serious ethical issues raised by its collaboration with national security operations, such as the abusive interrogations at U.S. detainee prisons. He describes the issue as one of "socialization to destructive behavior, to evil" that takes place among those who work at such sites.

For military psychologists, the conflict comes down to whether they orient towards service for human needs, the healing of the mind, or whether their priority is distorted by the needs of the command structure, "which can be destructive, and leads to torture."

Lifton describes the failure of APA to understand the issues involved represents a double failure, of professional understanding, and of ethics. Psychologists and psychiatrists must "not be in service of the breakdown of mind." He calls the APA's position that psychologists can mitigate the destructive aspects of interrogation "absurd," and notes that psychologists have been uniquely involved in the construction of abusive interrogations.

(Lifton makes it seem that this is a recent phenomenon, i.e., since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, "borrowing" torture techniques from the Chinese communists. I think he underplays the decades-long U.S. role in researching, spreading, and conducting psychological torture. I've covered this before, but this issue is a matter I will take up in even more detail at a later time.)

Dr. Lifton's interview occurs in the context of a referendum against psychologist participation directly in or auxiliary to the interrogations of detainees in Bush/Cheney's "war on terror." He supports this referendum's purpose, and I strongly recommend those interested in psychology, torture, the politics of the APA, or the politics of the current referendum (now being voted on via mail ballot) watch this fascinating video.

(A tip of the hat for this story to my colleagues, Ghislaine Boulanger and Dan Aalbers.)

Protest Arrests of Democracy Now! Journalists Covering Republican Convention

Following the arrests yesterday of noted journalist Amy Goodman and two of her producers from Democracy Now! while they were covering the arrests of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention, DN has released an action call for letters and emails to prosecutors in charge. (H/T to MS at Daily Kos)

I strongly urge my readers to write or contact the individuals named in the press release and call for an immediate dropping of all charges against those arrested.

Today it is critical that you make your voice heard in the Ramsey County Attorney and St. Paul City Attorney offices. Demand that they drop all pending and current charges against journalists arrested while reporting on protests outside the Republican National Conventions.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s office is in the process of deciding whether or not to press felony P.C. (probable cause) riot charges against Democracy Now! Producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Please contact Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner by all means possible to demand that her office not press charges against Kouddous and Salazar.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner
RCA at co.ramsey.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
651-266-3222

Susan Gaertner for Governor
info at susangaertner.com (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
(612) 978-8625
(612)804-6156

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office has already charged Amy Goodman with misdemeanor obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer. Contact St. Paul City Attorney John Choi by all means possible to demand that the charges against Goodman be dropped immediately.

St. Paul City Attorney John Choi
john.choi at ci.stpaul.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org) (651) 266-8710

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

IMPORTANT

Be sure to cc: dropthecharges@democracynow.org on all emails so that our team can deliver print outs of your messages to the St. Paul City Attorney and Ramsey County Attorney offices.

The arrest of Nicole Salazar
(Thanks YouTube, and H/T to Dave1942 at Daily Kos)

For those wishing to protest the preemptive arrests made via police invasions of homes in St. Paul, as reported yesterday, the following contacts are via Michael Gass at Docudharma:

Ramsey County contact info:

email: ContactRamseyCounty@co.ramsey.mn.us
tel #: 651-266-8500

Here is who needs to be contacted:

Ramsey County Manager: David J. Twa
Email: david.twa@co.ramsey.mn.us
Phone: 651-266-8000
Fax: 651-266-8039

U.S. Unfolds Gestapo-like Raids at GOP Convention

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies....

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the "federal agencies" acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Amy Goodman's article continues:

The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the Republican National Convention, as well as journalists and videographers documenting police actions at protests. Groups directly affected by the raids include Food Not Bombs, the RNC Welcoming Committee, I-Witness Video and Communities United Against Police Brutality.

By late afternoon, Goodman herself was under arrest in St. Paul, and reports were coming in that rubber bullets and tear gas were being used on a crowd at the SEIU Take Back Labor Day concert. The victims are said to include women and children. Meanwhile, a number of those arrested preemptively remain in jail. Bruce Nestor Nestor from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild explains how the preventative detentions were organized:

The raids were carried out by [Ramsey County] Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had been arguing for months that there needed to be a stronger law enforcement response, and he was being told that wasn’t necessary. And so, he sent his officers in, after doing intelligence gathering and infiltrating these groups.

And then, really what he did is he took common household items that you would find in any home in Minnesota—a hatchet, rope, glass bottles and rags—attached the label “anarchist” to the people who are living in the homes, and then raise this public fear that the anarchists were threatening violence, public disorder. But really, it’s taking a common household item, something you’d find anywhere, calling it an edged weapon and then attacking people for their political beliefs, that then is used to generate this public fear and keep activists detained...

Both the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed a motion with Judge Mark Wernick asking for "injunctive relief to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.”

Domestic Spying is a Danger to Democracy

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has detailed the role of domestic spying and the use of informants in the run up to the police assaults on demonstrators' homes:

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing....

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone.

The police actions in the Twin Cities follow the penning of protesters in Denver at the Democratic Party convention, and the resulting mass arrests and pepper spraying of demonstrators there. From Indymedia:

As the Democratic Party listened to speeches inside the Pepsi Center on the opening day of the convention, a few hundred protesters had gathered to march. The police arrived in riot gear, surrounded the protesters, blocking them in and firing pepper spray into the crowd. Some protesters tried to flee across the park, but they were met by dozens of police officers who boxed them in there, and nearly a hundred people were arrested.

The Denver police actions targeted not only leftists and other anti-capitalist protesters, but included ABC producer Asa Eslocker, seized for, as the Glenn Garvin at the Miami-Herald put it, "the crime of taking pictures of big-ticket Democratic Party donors."

Eslocker's camera crew was on a sidewalk outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, shooting video for a series of reports on the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention to air on ABC World News. The hotel told Eslocker to beat it; when he didn't, the cops handcuffed and hauled him off to the slam where he was charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order -- taking pictures of rich plutocrats evidently being against the law in Denver.

From Infomercial to Police State

The preemptive attacks against organizers of protests is a new tactic by the FBI and its police lackeys, upping what was already a serious escalation of repressive measures against lawful protest and demonstration. To put it plainly, they are, as Glenn Greenwald noted, "redolent of the worst tactics of a police state."

I would put it even more finely, they are the actions of a police state in ovo, or in its embryonic, beginning stages. This implies that such actions are not an aberration, but the initiation of sharper era of government repression. The St. Paul raids, as the arrests at the Democratic Convention in Denver, were meant to spike any large scale demonstrations against the two political parties that brought the world a war in Iraq that has killed over 600,000 Iraqis, over 4,000 U.S. dead, and over two million refugees.

One wonders if the raids aren't only meant to quell political protest, but also hide the fact that these giant, expensive party conventions are nothing more now than ersatz infomercials for the two political parties. The mini-drama over the roll call vote for the Democratic presidential nomination -- whether it would include the votes for Hillary Clinton, or not -- played out on the canvas of profound national historical ignorance.

Before 1980, most national conventions featured some kind of battle over a party's nomination, including a roll call of votes. Today, a banal totalitarianism of schmaltzy theme music and branded nominee roll out has replaced the rough-and-tumble of an earlier day of U.S. national party politics. But this is a banality backed by the policeman's truncheon and the informer's sinister ratting out. It is not banality, but the image of blandness in service of a deadly reality.

The reality behind the conventions is revealed in the white phosphorus-torched bodies of Fallujah, the tortured ghost prisoners of Baghram and Abu Ghraib, the now walled-off neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the decaying superstructure of America proper.

It is also revealed by the choice for GOP Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. With nothing to recommend her but her far-right wing credentials -- she opposes abortion for the raped or the victim of incest, she advocates teaching creationism, and, of course, she is for oil drilling in the disputed ANWAR territory in Alaska (while opposing federal protections for polar bears). The Palin nomination clearly shows it doesn't matter who is president, as the ruling powers in Langley, at the Pentagon, and at the board tables of America's energy, finance, and war-making industries, call the shots in the former land of the free.

A small crew of would-be protesters planning not insurrection, but to march with signs and chants against war, globalization, or whatever issue they felt important, were too threatening to the potentates running the United States, so they would have to be tear gassed, pepper gassed, penned in, rounded up and arrested, and finally, their homes invaded to prevent any protest from even taking place.

The simulacrum of democracy in America is now as fragile as the make-up on an aging dowager's face. Even a smile of irony could break the mask of placid self-assurance and smugness that has settled upon U.S. politics. Hundreds arrested at the conventions, and no protest from Barack Obama, or from supposed left-wing Democrats like Kucinich. To hope a Republican politician would speak up would be to invoke a science fiction world.

Hope Talk, War Talk

The war talk about Georgia and Russia, with its manifold lies and posturing, almost guarantees that aggressive U.S. foreign policy will continue, as Obama talks about escalating the Afghan war, and meanwhile, Cheney readies another trip to new NATO would-be vassal states, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine. The "war on terror" means a war on political dissent at home.

A lot of people are putting hope in the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. It is clear that he is not simply a man to be manipulated, as was George W. Bush, or his purported successor, John McCain (and his new running mate, Palin). But everything so far points to a Obama presidency that would try and effect some reforms at home, while engaging U.S. allies abroad to support the American imperial impulse abroad. The more aggressive the latter campaign, the more important quelling protest at home will become. Of course, the ruling powers would prefer a compliant puppet from the GOP ticket, but some within those same ruling circles would prefer someone smart, who has his or her pulse on the population, who wouldn't let the hubris of the rich and powerful go unchecked, and hurdle the U.S. down a reckless road. That's a good way to lose power, as French historians well know.

Those famous clips showing the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 -- in a city and state run by Democrats, during the presidential administration of yet another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson -- demonstrate that state repression is not the monopoly of one party alone.

All must demand the freeing of those arrested in Denver and St. Paul, and an immediate investigation into who ordered the police abuse.

UPDATE, 9:45pm:

The Washington Post is reporting that after three hours in policy custody Amy Goodman was charged with a misdemeanor and released. Her two Democracy Now! producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are still being held. Both are said to have been injured. Goodman is quoted:

"I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested," said Goodman. "I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in"....

"They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."

Democracy Now has published the following appeal, evidently prior to Goodman's release:

Ramsey County Sherrif Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

H/T to Jessical and feline at Docudharma.