Author's posts
May 31 2009
Bill Moyers: “Everyone Should See ‘Torturing Democracy'”
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.
During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week – immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives – former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” a full dozen times.
Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism, of course, has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a “wedge issue,” as noted on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.
[snip]
If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That’s just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does.
[snip]
As the editors of The Christian Century magazine wrote this week, “Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the US in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation’s adherence to the rule of law…. Understandably, [the president] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it.
Torturing Democracy originally aired on PBS January 21st, 2009
You can watch “Torturing Democracy” here in three segments, or watch the full one hour program below.
May 29 2009
Who Are You? Really? Or The Fallacy In Causality
Alan Watts – Time and The More It Changes
May 27 2009
Contract Bids Invited For Gitmo Upgrade
From RawStory: “Even with President Obama’s looming deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, and the U.S. Senate’s refusal to supply funding to do so until its prisoners can be transferred anywhere but the United States, somehow money has been approved to upgrade the prison’s access control system and to install new video surveillance cameras.”
According to Government Security News magazine:
When it initially posted its “special notice” of the upcoming security work on May 1, the Gitmo contracting branch indicated it planned to award a sole source, fixed price contract to Norment Security Group, Inc., of Tracy, CA, for its “proprietary electronic access control system,” but a subsequent notice published May 22 appears to open the procurement contract to all qualified security vendors.
Norment performed the original systems integration work on the access control system in Camp Six, under a contract worth about $600,000, when it was built during the Bush administration, Steve Stonehouse, a sales and marketing executive at the company, told GSN on May 26.
“They want to add some cameras, so they can see some areas better,” said Steve Adams, an electronics estimator with Norment.
The Joint Task Force – Guantanamo described the current access control system as including a programmable controller by Omron, of Kyoto, Japan; an Access database from Microsoft; touch screen software from the Wonderware unit of Invensys Group, of London, UK; and other products by Honeywell.
Neither Stonehouse nor Adams could explain why the Guantanamo contracting office would be spending additional money on the access control and video surveillance systems, if the president intends to close the detention facilities during the coming year. They guessed that the upgrades were simply temporary measures that would enhance security on a short-term basis.
May 25 2009
Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, And The Context Of Obama’s AfPak “Solution”
Crossposted from Antemedius
Yesterday we saw investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter talk with Paul Jay of the Real News Network about the war in Afghanistan and Obama’s recent appointment of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to replace General McKiernan as the US commander in Afghanistan.
Porter says the McChrystal appointment won’t fulfill Obama’s supposed intention of investing in a civilian surge that will “win over the population,” through “services and political programs” because during his five year service in the Joint Special Operations Command and recently as the Director of the Joint Staff, McChrystal “has only been involved in targeted killings.”
We also learned that Obama’s surge may be only a prelude to a ground invasion of Pakistan as part of ongoing imperial resource wars.
Today in part two of the interview we learn that Porter has also interviewed Graham Fuller, the CIA Station Chief in Kabul during US support for the Afghan Jihadi movement against the Soviet Union, and says that Fuller “now believes very strongly the United States has to get out. That there is no way the United States is going to be able to win, [because the US] has no understanding of the forces it has unleashed in Afghanistan.”
Real News Network – May 25, 2009
No way to “win” in Afghanistan
Porter: The United States doesn’t understand the forces it unleashed in Afghanistan
I think that Porter is right as far as the majority of people in the US and the world not understanding the forces unleashed in Afghanistan by the US invasion and occupation, but I also feel Porter hasn’t gone far enough in explaining the context of what is happening in Afghanistan and with Obama’s surge, and I want to highly recommend to readers a thorough reading of another recent and very detailed in depth piece from Tom Englehart and from Pepe Escobar that places the AfPak situation in the much wider geopolitical context of a desperate US attempt at world energy and resource domination: Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak.
May 24 2009
General Stanley McChrystal & Obama’s AfPak “Solution”
Crossposted from Antemedius
Investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter talks with Paul Jay about General Stanley McChrystal’s new job as the head of US operations in Afghanistan. Porter says McChrystal’s appointment will hardly change US policy in Afghanistan, but could intensify US commando raids and air strikes in the region.
He also comments on Obama’s plans for a civilian surge saying, “a civilian component to a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is essentially empty talk, in the sense that they don’t really know how to do it.”.
“They don’t have the means to do it. They don’t have people that are trained in Pashtun, the language of southern Afghanistan, where the ethnic group that basically inhabits the area, where most of the Taliban gains have been made, is located.”
Real News Network – May 24, 2009
McChrystal and the Afghan military “solution”
Porter: A civilian component to a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is essentially empty talk
May 24 2009
Demonic Possession
On the Unmasking of Demons: Yes We Must
Dr. Bee Z. Bywydd
Thomas Paine’s Corner
Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable
“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
– Carl SaganWe are a species of superstitious monkeys, in insectoid mutational phase, armed with mass-incineration weaponry, at the edge of a teeming galaxy. All of us are possessed by demons, a lying Legion of deceptions and delusions. Our Earth has maxxed-out on demonic monkeys and now She’s coughing out storms to flush our fires away.
So we’re all in a Panic. Or running for our lives, shivvering in the deep freeze, slogging through toxic flood waters. Deep in the Voodoo, shite out of luck, over the falls in a Titanic barrel of insane monkeys. Because our society is an onion of lies within lies, all ruled over by ominous wargods and mass-incineration weapons. We chatter on about superstitions and pseudo-news, nearly cut off from any natural identity. Our instincts have been hijacked and most of us are living like serfs in Roman-occupied city-ghettos. Being entrained to think we must kill to get our way. This is “God’s will”?
“There are years when nothing happens and years in which centuries happen.”
– Carlos FuentesAmericans of certain dying generations will yet argue the righteousness of the mass-incineration of two cities full of innocent humans as “for the good of the nation,” every Hiroshima Day for half a century. Here we can grab the most dangerous demon by the horns. War has warped us all to the core (Corps), now bred for murder on massive scales.
Or shall we insist on another round of robust patriotic chanting, another atomic bomb test, or let’s see what the Bush family has brought us today? Hooray, a brand new AIRCRAFT CARRIER!; bigger than many American communities, named for the “Man who has everything” (according to W, as he commissioned it)- CIA President 41, from his son, CIA President 43. How mind-bendingly metaphoric. Cost more than your children’s education (or imprisonment), but our demons are very happy! More mass-incineration ahead!
May 23 2009
Obama Reduced To Demonizing His Critics
Crossposted from Antemedius
The other day, after Barack Obama’s speech at the National Archives Building in Washington, the New York Times printed a “news analysis” piece that was one of the most offensive pieces of manipulation I think I’ve ever read, in it’s oh so reasonable sounding efforts (probably successful with the vast majority who read it) to marginalize and equate with neanderthals and the far right wing anyone who is not interested in becoming terrorists to fight invented terrorism, with it’s interpretation of Obama’s statements in his speech:
He must convince the country that it is in safe hands despite warnings to the contrary from the right, and at the same time persuade the skeptical left that it is enough to amend his predecessor’s approach rather than abandon it.
In the reductionist debate in Washington, either any sacrifice must be made to win a pitiless war against radicals, or terrorism does not justify any compromise with cherished American values.
Unfortunately, Barack Obama seems to be in complete agreement with the NYT’s manipulations of public opinion:
“Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people are not absolutist, and they don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty and care and a dose of common sense.”
Today, Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, talks with Real News Network CEO Paul Jay with his own analysis of Obama’s speech and his determination to “legalize” the Military Commissions set up under George Bush with the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA).
May 21 2009
Climate Change Effects Hugely Unequal Globally
Crossposted from Antemedius
“Climate Change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
Last week on May 16, 2009 a collaboration between the British medical journal The Lancet and University College London released the first UCL Lancet Commission report, assessing the impact of global warming on global health, and on populations.
Titled Managing the health effects of climate change (.PDF), the year long study highlights the threat of climate change on patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population migration. The report also highlights the action required by global society to mitigate the health impacts of climate change.
“Climate change,” the report concludes, “is the biggest global health threat of the 21 century.”
But the impact on and cost to human societies globally is hugely unequal, with the populations of developed countries that benefit most from fossil fuels projected to suffer the least, while poorer countries that because of the projected health cost to their peoples have the maximum incentive to prevent climate change have virtually no power to do anything to prevent the changes.
It’s the old story of the comparatively few rich benefiting in comfort at the expense of poverty stricken multitudes.
May 20 2009
Lindsey Graham Debates Himself On Torture
ANP: Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation.
Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At a recent Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the torture memos, Graham mounted a feisty defense of Jay Bybee, John Yoo and the lawyers who provided legal cover for detainee abuse.
This performance sent ANP producer Mike Fritz back to the ANP archives to confirm that this was indeed the same Lindsey Graham we remembered from the summer, and sure enough, it was. As this video reveals, same tie – different message.
ANP/Real News Network – May 20, 2009
Lindsey Graham debates himself on detainee torture
Sen. Graham: “The Geneva Convention did not apply until 2006“
May 20 2009
Jesse Ventura Body Slams Fox & Friends Over Torture
From RawReplay today:
Ventura takes waterboarding ‘school’ to Fox & Friends
A day after talking about waterboarding on ABC’s The View, Jesse Ventura took his case for prosecuting torture to Fox News.
“You are worried about [the terrorists’] welfare,” accused Fox’s Brian Kilmeade.“No. I’m not worried about their welfare. I’m worried about what our country stands for,” Ventura responded.
This video is from Fox’s Fox & Friends, broadcast May 19, 2009.