marccooper

Torture 'R Us

Continuing on the topic of torture (scroll down one posting). The New York Times is out today with a story, based on a new International Red Cross report, which documents the use of torture by American officials at Guantanamo.

Here's how the pinko Voice of America reports it:

Neither the Red Cross in Geneva nor the U.S. government has publicly released the text of what the New York Times said was a confidential report on the treatment of Guantanamo detainees.

But they are also not contesting the newspaper account, which says the Red Cross document alleges that the U.S. military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion on prisoners that is, in its words, "tantamount to torture...

...The report, as quoted by the New York Times, said the team found a system designed to break the will of prisoners, through such tactics as humiliation, solitary confinement and exposure to loud music and extreme temperatures.

Red Cross inspectors had reported abuses in previous visits. But those alleged in the new report are said to have been more refined and repressive than what was observed in the past.

Condemnation of these practices must be absolute. Condoning torture is not acceptable under any circumstances nor does it remotely constitute a test of one's patriotism nor of one's willingness to confront terrorism.

Will we one day have a President who-- like the Chilean President yesterday-- will admit to a national TV audience that the abuses committed at Guantanamo were systematic and institutional?

If you are inclined to wink at torture then -- quoting the old Phil Ochs song-- please find another country to be part of.

Paying For Torture

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos went on national TV last night to officially make public the findings of his national commission on torture conducted during the 17 years of the Pinochet military dictatorship.

Lagos set a new international precedent by saying he will seek congressional approval to pay the 28,000 surviving witness/victims a monthly lifetime pension of about $200 as compensation.

The commission, which was headed by a Chilean Archbishop, published its findings in a 1200 page report based on the testimonies of 35,000 victims. This is thought to be but a small percentage of those actually submitted to torture in the years spanning 1973-1990. Many of the victims are now dead or were too embarrassed or frightened to come forward.

To put this barbarity in context: the U.S. population is roughly 22 times larger than that of Chile. On a per capita basis, 28,000 Chilean victims would be the equivalent of about 600,00 Americans The 3200 political murders carried out by the Chilean regime would mean 65,000 in the U.S.).

Think about that for a moment every time you are tempted to excuse Pinochet and his supporters (in Chile and the U.S.) as someone who accomplished some good things but just went a little overboard.

Is this what we would say about an American leader? "Oh, President Smith lowered inflation, created jobs, stabilized the economy, saved democracy and only killed 65,000 people and tortured a tad over a half-million." Or are we willing to countenance torture only when it is inflicted on other nations?

Here's the lead from the English-language Santiago Times:

President Ricardo Lagos spoke last night of “the magnitude of the suffering, the insanity of the intense cruelty, the immensity of the pain” described in the Valech torture report and acknowledged that torture had been a policy of the military government.

Lagos made public for the first time the findings of The National Commission on Political Detention and Torture, led by the archbishop emeritus of Santiago, Mons. Sergio Valech, which heard testimony from 35,000 victims of torture during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship of 1973 to 1990.

In a televised address, Lagos revealed that 94 percent of those detained had been subjected to torture and that, of the 3,400 women who gave evidence, almost all had been victims of sexual violence.

He called the report “an experience without precedent in the world” and said it presented Chileans with “an inescapable reality: political detention and torture constituted an institutional practice of the state.” He acknowledged that the armed forces had been complicit in a policy of state-sponsored terror.

Holiday Grab-Bag

It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you fly with turkeys, isn’t it? So what’s left to do other than eat a few? Or drink some?

Not sure I’ll be doing much posting over the Thanksgiving holiday break (though I may do some fishing). So, for your edification and enjoyment I have compiled this short list of readings from other blogs and publications that have caught my attention:

My good pal Andrew Gumbel, the L.A.-based correspondent for London’s daily Independent, has written his inaugural monthly column for the City Beat weekly.  Read his lament (much like mine) that so many Democrats still want to delude themselves into believing the election was stolen. Andrew has a special take on this as he’s writing a book on the flaws and failures of the U.S. election system. Read it here.

Another buddy, Micah Sifry over at Personal Democracy Forum has a great post on the public post mortems of  the 2004 campaign. His post links us to others that offer some smart inside critiques of the Kerry organization, MoveOn and other Democratic 527’s. Read it here.

Hmmm. Looks like this is, after all, some serious apple polishing, as I recommend the posting of yet a third friend. Doug Ireland over at the wonderfully named Direland site has got the real inside story about the crisis at Le Monde—which used to be considered among the top two or three dailies in the world. Dougie has spent beaucoup time working with the Froggies so he knows of what he speaks. Read all about it.

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly offers up a no-holds-barred review of the new book by George Lakoff. Lakoff is currently very much in vogue as a sort of Dr. Phil of the liberal left. Drum, himself a liberal, is not very impressed with Lakoff. Nor am I. Read Drum here.

Oops, we’re back to recommending friends. Michael Massing has been doing great work critiquing American press coverage during the run-up to the war in Iraq, exploding the hoary myth of the Liberal Media. Now he has a piece coming out in December 16 issue of the New York Review Books looking at Iraq, the press and the just-passed election. His basic thesis is that Americans have not been given a full view of just how poorly things are going in Iraq. Via Tomdispatch.com read the piece here. 

Then there's the latest twist in the Binion saga out of Las Vegas. I've written at some length about the cursed Binion family in my book about Sin City. Back in 1998 Ted Binion, who had inherited the Horseshoe casino in downtown Vegas, was found dead in his home. Maybe he overdosed. Maybe he was killed. His girl-friend and ex-stripper from Cheetah's was arrested for murder along with one of his friends (and the gal's other lover!) as he was digging up $8 million in silver that Binion had hidden in the desert. First they were convicted. Then given a new trial by the State Supreme Court. Then retried and found innocent (at least of murder) this week. Read the Las Vegas Review-Journal story.

Last, but not least – a nice pot-shot at Dan Rather. Slate magazine is reprising Bryan Curtis’ piece two months ago arguing that Rather – more than a liberal—is just plain bonkers. Have a good laugh reading about it here.

Gobble, gobble. See you after dinner.

Illustration: my favorite turkey.

Rather Blather: Good Night, Dan

I was locked up in the car most of the day listening to the radio and the big buzz is, of course, Dan Rather’s rather expected resignation. I, along with another couple hundred rocket scientists, predicted he’d be cast aside more or less now – a decent interval since the brouhaha over the Texas Air National Guard Story and before the CBS-named investigatory commission turns over its post-mortem on the foul-up.

The right-wing, naturally, is singing victory-- happier than puppy dogs with two tails, as Rather himself might put it. I just heard a certifiable hysteric, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition, proclaim on MSNBC that Rather was an “old hack, liberal elitist” who “doesn’t like Americans.”

This sort of analysis is about as detached as the world view of the jillionaires who run CBS.  It betrays a staggering and willful ignorance about the capitalist system that the Right so unflinchingly defends. I want to think that not a lot of people agree with this twisted vision. My suspicion is that too many do.

So those with an IQ above 95 will excuse me for a moment while I repeat the obvious: CBS is but a division of an even larger multi-billion dollar corporation whose only reason for existence is to make a profit. Its major investors are mostly wealthy Republicans who don’t know liberal from shmirabel and they are not to about to turn over their network news operations to America-hating leftists.

Back to reality… Dan Rather is an elitist of a much different sort than that imagined by the feverish Right. Rather is a corporate elitist – in the end having infinitely more in common with George W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld and the RNC than with truly courageous, radical journalists ranging from I.F. Stone to Seymour Hersh. His undoing came not as a result of a covert campaign to unseat Bush. But rather in a brazen struggle fueled by ratings, ego, money, and celebrity.

Once again we turn to NYU’s Jay Rosen for the most incisive deconstruction of all the blather over Rather. Make sure you read Rosen’s entire post: 

…Rather's sins were the sins of a celebrity journalist, a star, also known as a bigfoot, to whom no one in CBS could tell the truth until it was too late, and the network had been put on the wrong side of the story by Bigfoot's recklessness (plus his ignorance of the Web.) We must remember that Dan Rather--the hustling hard news reporter at heart--is a man who himself has a spokesperson, Kim Akhtar. She speaks on his behalf to the press. That's how ordinary he is as a figure in the ranks. He's Park Avenue Ordinary. But as a figure to himself, he is still that humble guy making the extra phone call. Most people who know of this contradiction seem to admire it. I don't.

Neither do I. Nor do I think CBS is about to extract any of the valuable lessons from this fiasco.  Rather’s demise and the growing crisis of confidence in the Establishment Media is an historic opportunity to retool network news and bring it kicking and screaming into the present century. Why not a newscast with an edgy, opinionated anchor-with-attitude?  Why not, indeed? If your fat and wealthy corporate-friendly middle-of-the-road Old School seat-warmers like Rather are slathered with accusations of commie bias, what is there to lose anyway?

This is dreaming, of course. My experience is that there’s only one species of managers more cowardly and pathetic than school administrators – and that’s TV network executives. You can bet that the salamanders over at CBS will wind up drawing the same conclusions as the Nutty Lady from the Traditional Values Coalition: i.e. being so out of touch with the American people they will conclude they are out of touch with the American people and will remedy their newfound dilemma by picking a new anchor so milquetoast, so insipid, and so cautious that we will soon be longing for the good old days of Dan Rather and his painful Texas aphorisms.

The $5100, Fifteen-Mile Road to Iraqi Democracy

I can’t help but mull over some of the ironies twisted into a pair of contrasting elections.

On November 2^nd,  here at home, we saw the Republican Party in Ohio announce that it was going to send “observers” to each and every polling station to insure that the voting process was pristine; that each voter was actually a citizen, that he or she had properly filled out all the bureaucratic forms, that there would be no trace of fraud.

That’s one standard.

Then we have a completely different standard “over there” – in Iraq.

The  Iraqi government now says it (and its Republican U.S. administration-backer ) will definitely go ahead with national elections on January 30 --- a mere ten weeks from now. The news comes as U.S. military commanders are finally saying what everybody has known all along i.e. they want more troops  to maintain whatever order [sic] currently prevails; as Fallujah lay in a smoking ruin; as 20% of the population says it will boycott the voting; as fighting flares through the heart of the nation.

And then there’s this little gem of a report which perhaps gives the clearest picture of what sort of conditions will prevail for Iraq’s first “democratic, open and free” election – it comes from the BBC   (via Eric Umansky).

While there are perhaps few strips on earth with as many troops – U.S. troops—deployed along it, the short trip between the Baghdad airport and the so-called Green Zone is more or less a free-fire zone for the insurgents. The result is the World’s Most Expensive Taxi Ride --about five grand for the 15 mile trip.  Says the BBC:

A 15-mile stretch between Baghdad airport and the city centre is said to be the world's most expensive taxi ride.

Small convoys of armoured cars and Western gunmen charge about £2,750 ($5,108) for the perilous journey.

The route, known as the Qadisiyah Expressway, has become the scene of regular attacks and kidnappings by insurgents.

Security costs have soared in Iraq reflecting the escalating risks for foreign workers.

The high-speed drive costs four times more than the £670 Royal Jordanian charges for a one-way flight from London to Baghdad via Amman.

It equates to about £183 a mile compared to 25p a mile for the 2,540-mile flight on the only commercial airline flying to Baghdad.

'Gun car'

"You could jump in an Iraqi taxi with a gun and get there for $20," said one security contractor, quoted by the UK's Times newspaper.

But with kidnappings a daily occurrence and Westerners being sold to Islamist militant groups for about £150,000, he advised against it.

A few thousand pounds will afford you two cars and four Western ex-military bodyguards, usually American, South African or British, packing MP5 submachine guns, M16 rifles and/or AK47 assault rifles.

The client rides in one vehicle at speeds averaging 100 mph, while the other, called the "gun car", travels close-by, looking out for potential assailants.

Since the beginning of the resistance, this vital route has come under attack from car bombs, suicide attacks, snipers and rocket-propelled grenades.

But as Bush would say in his pigeon-Spanish “no problema, pal.” First we gave them sovereignty. Now, we’re giving them elections.  And Democracy can be glimpsed just over the horizon. And with the line-of-sight horizon a mere 12 miles, it’ll only cost $4500 bucks to go visit it.

Not Ignoring You, But....

Heavy work and family schedules have crimped blogging a bit the past handful of days.

I hope to be back running off at the mouth at full speed by Monday nite or Tuesday.

All You Need Is Cash: Laundering Pinochet

Next time you’re in a sluggish teller’s line at your local bank, try telling them you’re a blood-soaked dictator and watch your lowly status immediately begin to soar. New details are out today about the incestuous relationship between the august Riggs Bank and a certain General Augusto Pinochet.

An internal investigation by former Secret Service officers shows that Riggs conspired with Pinochet to hide and most likely launder millions of dollars, going back to 1985. That’s a full decade earlier than previously believed. 

Back in May,  Riggs began reconstructing its lovey-dovey relationship with Pinochet in response to an investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Now we learn that the conspiracy to shield and service Pinochet was much deeper, longer, and richer. At one point, we now learn,  Pinochet controlled more than $12 million in various Riggs accounts.

And a conspiracy it was. The new reports say Riggs officials went to extraordinary lengths to help the dictator (and most members of his family) conceal his ill-gotten takings, assigning him various hokey code names such as “Red Fox.” 

A trio of top Riggs officials --  including Joe L. Allbritton, Riggs's largest stockholder and its chief executive until 2001--   made several trips to Santiago, meeting directly with Pinochet and other military officials to work out the details of his illegal money transfers..

That Pinochet was a major war criminal and human rights violator seemed to mean absolutely nothing to these fine pin-striped scumbags bankers. Blood money, I suppose, is just another way of saying plain old money.  All you need to do is launder it.

The new revelations also include efforts in 2003 by Riggs Bank officials to help Argentine naval officers launder $3.8 million. Other revelations reported by the Washington Post:

• Riggs paid $5,000 into a Pinochet family foundation in 1997, shortly after senior bank executives visited Pinochet in Chile to solicit his business.

• Some Riggs internal bank documents relating to Pinochet are missing from the bank's files.

• Pinochet and his family had more accounts than previously disclosed, including 10 accounts at Riggs's Miami bank and several opened by Chilean military officers described by bank executives as "fronts" for the dictator.

Riggs closed out its remaining Pinochet accounts in 2002 under pressure from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), but the bank was never cited for laundering any money for the general. Earlier this year, the bank was fined $25 million for failing to report suspicious transactions in Washington accounts held by the government of Equatorial Guinea and by Saudi Arabian diplomats.

The Post further reports that regulators have also asked other banks that held Pinochet-related accounts, including Bank of America and Citibank, for more information about their dealings with the dictator.

If anyone goes to jail for these escapades let them be thankful they will most likely do time in a nice, bright, clean  Club Fed where the greatest threat is sleeping in the same bunk now occupied by Martha Stewart.  At least they won’t be languishing in one of the barbaric prison dungeons run by their former pet Chilean client. Just ten days ago, a Chilean government commission handed President Ricardo Lagos its report on torture  under Pinochet with testimony gathered from more than 30,000 of his victims. The lengthy report will make nice cell-time reading for the nice people over at Riggs.

Powell's Problem. And Ours.

Here’s the now-familiar scenario: An exile source from one of the Axis of Evil countries comes to U.S. officials and tells them that the government he opposes is developing weapons of mass destruction of the nuclear variety. Next the top leadership of our own government claims that our immediate security depends on taking out the regime in question.

You, of course, remember Ahmed Chalabi.  Just as you remember Colin Powell’s slide show before the United Nations which paved the way for the invasion of Iraq. Powell’s embellished presentation turned out to be as bogus as Ahmed.

Now it’s déjà vu all over again. The lame duck Secretary of State was back at it again this week warning us that it is now Iran that is developing missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. And once again, his principal source is an activist from the exiled Iranian opposition. More perplexing, Powell’s warning came only two days after the Iranian government concluded a deal with the EU, vowing it would not develop nuclear weapons.

Colin Powell – at least compared to the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush himself—is a paragon of reliablity. But only by comparison.  If only he had not gone in the tank for the administration when it staged the UN snow job. If only his word could be taken at face value. If only.

For all those who have underestimated the significance of the White House misleading the public during the run-up to the Iraq war (arguing in essence that the truth was stretched in favor of a noble cause) you can now palpably feel the fix we are in.

Put simply: who are we to believe now about Iran? What credibility does Powell and his exile source have? Friday’s Washington Post – for example—has got a front pager  quoting other U.S. officials with a warning that Powell’s info is based only on an “unvetted single source” and that his info has yet to be verified.  Here’s an excerpt:

U.S. intelligence officials have been combing the information carefully and with a wary eye, mindful of the mistakes made in trusting intelligence information alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction...

If the information on Iran were confirmed, it would mean the Islamic republic is further along than previously known in developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.

Translation: we would have the pretext for one more war – a war that would make Iraq look like a mere bar-room brawl.

Then there's this little doozy of a report in the Friday Los Angeles Times:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s statements that Iran is actively studying how to outfit a missile with a nuclear bomb caused surprise and confusion in Washington on Thursday, and members of Congress demanded he provide more details.

Powell’s remarks Wednesday — apparently unscripted and based on classified information — appeared to catch the Bush administration and its European allies off guard. The CIA refused to comment, and the White House and the State Department declined to offer details. Some sources raised questions about the credibility of the intelligence.

So who are we going to trust on this? Who can we rely upon? Is Powell being straight with us even though he was instrumental in the orchestrated lying about Iraq? Is this single Iranian source who has a vested political interest any more reliable than was Chalabi? Do the knock-down quotes in the Washington Post from anonymous officials merely reflect a factional dispute within the administration?  Given the human and financial costs of the Iraqi war, what quality of information do we require as a citizenry to support expanded conflict?

If the Iranian mullahs are lying about their nuclear development program, we are, indeed, in peril. How comforting it would be to have an administration in place that could be trusted on such matters. How distressing and dangerous it is that we don’t.

We Jail Journalists, Don't We?

If you don’t believe in freedom of the press – if you prefer the press systems of places like Cuba or Burma, then please skip this posting.

Otherwise, get concerned  -- real concerned-- about the jailing of American reporters.  Take the case of  Rhode Island TV reporter Jim Taricani. 

A veteran investigative journo with three decades of experience and the survivor of a heart transplant, Taricani was out there doing what he’s paid to do: afflict the comfortable.

Back in 2001, he aired an undercover surveillance videotape that showed an aide to the former mobbed-up mayor of  Providence taking a cash bribe from an FBI informant. Be advised he broke no law by airing the tape.

The guy should get a medal, shouldn’t he?

Instead, after a 45 minute trial today he got convicted in Federal Court of criminal contempt. When he’s sentenced next month he faces a possible six months in jail. Quite a reward for his dilligence.

Though Taricani violated no laws whatsoever in broadcasting the tape, a special prosecutor was appointed to find out who leaked the video because the court had ordered no one to release any recordings connected to the case. Taricani merely upheld his privilege as a reporter to not reveal his confidential sources – and now his payback is jail time.

This is no isolated case but rather only the latest in a string of incidents in which reporters are being threatened with jail for merely doing their job – protecting the public interest.

The Reporters Committee  for Freedom of the Press has a detailed breakdown of these cases that currently  involve nine reporters facing federal subpoenas, convictions and/or jail time.

The Committee also has a public statement that you are invited to sign to stand up for reporters’ rights. Do it.

There’s a lot of mystification and distortion out there at the present about what the role of a free press is in our society.  Some of you wiseacres might think it rather exotic that reporters should possess the privilege of shielding their sources.

But that’s a right that protects you, the citizen. When we journalists are compelled to divulge confidential sources then whistleblowers will no longer seek us out, they will no longer expose corruption and malfeasance because we will simply no longer be able to guarantee anonymity. 

You don’t like that? OK. Then sit right down on  your $600 Pentagon toilet seat, hopefully somewhere near the Love Canal, take a deep breath or two, and whip out your copy of the Peking Review for some unfettered reading from some very compromised reporters -- all of whom obediently name (and revere) their sources.

Alberto "Speedy" Gonzales

Will we miss the good old days when John Aschroft was Attorney General? My latest L.A. Weekly column swatting Alberto "Speedy" Gonzales -- the guy who can't wait to roll back our rights.