cross posted at The Dream Antilles

Waterboarding (read: torture) is nothing new.  It’s been around since the 15th century, and has a long, well documented history.  That history was briefly summed up by Ted Kennedy for Democracy Now:

It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, it was used by interrogators in the Spanish Inquisition. In the nineteenth century, it was used against slaves in this country. In World War II, it was used against us by Japan. In the 1970s, it was used against political opponents by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina. Today, it’s being used against pro-democracy activists by the rulers of Burma. When we fail to reject waterboarding, this is the company that we keep. /snip

   Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation’s top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted- prosecuted- Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?

This essay isn’t about rehashing the many legal arguments about how waterboarding is torture and in violation of US and international law.  Instead, this essay recalls two recent, prominent instances in which the US itself prosecuted the use of waterboarding as a crime, as torture.  It raises this simple question: how can anyone who acknowledges this relatively recent history argue that waterboarding isn’t a crime and isn’t torture.  And how is it that our learned congresspersons haven’t forcefully confronted Bushco’s minions with this history?

Please join me below.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Nebraska’s Electric Chair

I’m cheering and applauding.  Nebraska’s Supreme Court has dragged the state kicking and screaming into the 21st Century by forbidding the state, as a matter of State Constitutional Law, from using the electric chair to kill prisoners sentenced to death.  Because electrocution was the only means of execution in the Nebraska statute, the state has reluctantly now joined the nationwide de facto stay on state executions.

Join me in stir.

Old School Waterboarding

On Tuesday, Bushco acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding was used by the U.S. government on three “terror suspects.” Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed the three were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.  But, he said, nobody else had been waterboarded since.  To be frank, I don’t believe that for a second, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

Join me in Gitmo.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles



Sayed Pervez Kambaksh

A young man has been sentenced to death in Afghanistan for downloading a report from the Internet and distributing it.

The Independent reports:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

So much for debate and freedom of speech.

The UN, human rights groups, journalists’ organizations and Western diplomats have urged the Karzai government to intervene and free Kambaksh. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion on January 30 confirming the death sentence.  Welcome to the US puppet government and its barbarianism.  

Want to respond to this?

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s imminent execution is an affront to civilised values. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion. If enough international pressure is brought to bear on President Karzai’s government, his sentence may yet be overturned. Add your weight to the campaign by urging the Foreign Office to demand that his life be spared. Sign the Independent’s e-petition here

More across the border.

A few days ago, I posted an essay about Columbia County, New York.  What I didn’t mention was that for seven years, Columbia County was the scene of a huge, grassroots battle against St. Lawrence Cement and plans to construct an enormous cement plant in Columbia County on the Hudson River. The citizens group, Friends of Hudson, believe it or not won the battle.  There is no new cement plant today.

Today the founder of Friends of Hudson, Sam Pratt, posted the following diary at dKos about the Friends of Hudson and Hillary Clinton.  This is an important story, which I am posting here with Sam’s permission without further comment:

The Megamarch Yesterday In Mexico City

Chanting “Sin maiz, No hay pais” (Without Corn, the country doesn’t exist), Mexican farmers by the tens of thousands demonstrated in Mexico City against NAFTA.

Join me across the Rio Grande.

Today the New England Journal of Medicine has an editorial entitled, “Physicians And Execution.” The editorial makes it clear that medical doctors should never be involved in state killing.

This is extremely important and another significant step toward the abolition of state killing. How so?  “Lethal injection” was introduced to “medicalize” and lend moral authority to executions when hanging, gassing, and electrocution were finally recognized to be inhumane.  That is why those to be executed are required to lie on hospital like gurney (see above).  And that is why the gurney has sheets on it.  That is why in many cases hospital like curtains are used to surround the dead person after the execution.  The “medical” appearance of killing is intended to make it more palatable.    

More after the jump.

IWW Demonstraters at NYC Starbucks (NY TimesPhoto)

The NY Times has the story:

The dramatic battles of the American labor movement were often fought in hazardous settings like the coal fields of Kentucky or the textile mills of Massachusetts.

/snip

And so it was that a crowd of about 50 people wrapped in scarves and bandannas against the cold gathered Monday morning outside a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 33rd Street.

As their breath steamed the air, they chanted and sang. They carried long banners bearing the logo of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union founded in 1905 that has been trying to organize Starbucks workers since 2004.

Red and black anarchist flags waved in the wind, and one woman held aloft a placard depicting a pouncing black cat toppling what appeared to be a venti latte cup emblazoned with a dollar sign.

Typical New York Times.  The labor struggle is supposed to be stuck in the 19th century and resemble Matewan or Hazard or Lawrence.  Give me a break.   This is 2008 and it’s time to organize and unionize the global latte retailer.  And don’t remind me, please, that the Wobblies have been trying to organize Starbucks in NYC since 2004 and haven’t succeeded yet.  Please.  Enough is enough.  It’s time.

Folks, can we help the Wobblies organize Starbucks?  Of course we can.  You’re smart.  You drink coffee.  You probably use their bathrooms and their hot spots.  And you know it’s the right thing to do to help a union organize this industry.  Let’s put our heads together and find ways to help.  Put your ideas in the comments.

Of course, one of the things we might do immediately is stop swilling Starbucks in solidarity until they recognize this union.  There are still plenty of non-globalized caffeine emporiums (emporia?) in Gotham and elsewhere in the world where we can download caffeine.  These coffee purveyors have resisted the uniformity and standardized high priced Starbucks invasion.  Instead of Starbucks we can go instead coffee places that are fair trade, organic, locally owned, non Global.  Wouldn’t that be better?  Wouldn’t we feel better about that?  Wouldn’t we be able to snear at Starbucks consumers for being tools of oppression? Scabs? And so not hip?

I’m sure there are other things we can do.  And folks like me, who are on a de facto Starbucks boycott already and have been for some time, probably need to do something to make our feelings felt.  That’s what the comments are for: ideas to support this strike.

Organize Starbucks Already!  Basta Ya!

Updated (5:24 pm ET): I put this up at orange.  Some of the comments are astonishingly anti union.  This is a surprise and a disappointment to me.  To me, it’s an article of faith and reason that organized workers are in a much better position than unorganized workers.  I thought that was beyond debate, but apparently, it’s not.  Even on allegedly progressive/democratic blogs.  For shame.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King recognized the importance and validity of direct action as a tactic in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail:

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

In honor of Dr. King and in light of the past 7 years and the horrendous list of illegal, unconstitutional acts by the Government, a list that I will not bother to recount here, I think it’s time for us to reconsider the role that direct action can now play in restoring America to its most Democratic, humane, and decent principles.

Creating of constructive, nonviolent tension even in the face of threats of extremist violence is Dr. King’s true legacy.  My hope is that in honor of his birth we will find the courage to do as he would have.