As protests escalate in countries in the middle east resulting in various degrees of repression by their authoritarian governments, a lot of nonsense is being spouted by commentators here. Juan Cole tries to set things straight by listing top the top five myths about the protests.
Meanwhile in Libya, Gadhafi seems to have gone completely berserk in his attempts to forcibly quell the protests in his country and Cole provides some insights into that situation.
Meanwhile Yemen’s leader seems to be also digging in his heels and it looks likely that he will increase his use of violence to repress protests.
In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the Iraqi defector known as ‘Curveball’ was the source of much of the false information that was used to argue that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. There were doubts from the beginning about Curveball’s veracity and plenty of reasons to doubt him but these were brushed aside in the drive to gin up support for the invasion. Curveball himself says that his German interrogators knew he was lying as early as 2000.
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Poor Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. The sudden popular uprisings against governments all over the Middle East must be causing them headaches.
When protests started against a brutal dictator they had supported for decades, like Mubarak in Egypt, they tried to appease both sides by appealing for calm and hoping that things would blow over either with minor concessions to the protestors or with a transfer of power to another authoritarian leader (like Suleiman or the military) that would continue to be a US client. The awkwardness of this attempt was clearly visible during the days of protest.
It must have been a great relief to them when protests erupted in a country like Iran where they dislike the leaders, because then they could try and restore their credibility by offering full-throated support for the democratic demands of the protestors and condemning the efforts of the Iranian government to suppress and intimidate them.
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In 2003, when he was a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum made some disgusting anti-gay remarks, suggesting that homosexuality was on a par with pedophilia or bestiality. In response, Dan Savage launched one of the first political google bombs that defines the word Santorum as, let me just say delicately, something pretty unsavory. As a result of this google bomb, this definition is what turns up first (even ahead of his own campaign website) when you google Santorum’s name. How much this contributed to Santorum’s crushing 18-point defeat in his 2006 senatorial re-election campaign is unclear
Now that Santorum seems to running for president, people who have never heard of him but are curious are (naturally) going to google him and get this result. Santorum was asked recently what he could and would do to combat the problem. It turns out that he has few viable options.
Although Santorum exemplifies the worst kind of sanctimonious religious bigotry, this episode shows that politics in the age of the internet can be brutal and that even the most powerless of groups can no longer be attacked with the kind of impunity that politicians have long been used to.
The US, like the governments of many nations, has long practiced torture and the killing of people. But at least in the past it had enough sense of shame and awareness that it was wrong that they would take pains to make sure that there was plausible deniability. With the advent of the Bush-Cheney regime and the ‘war on terror’, torture practices became acceptable and not only did they not deny that they authorized things like waterboarding, they even took pride in it as a sign of their toughness.
Barack Obama seems be going along with the practice of torturing prisoners in its own bases abroad or by the practice of ‘rendition‘, sending prisoners to other countries to have their forces torture people. The US practices a form of ‘torture shopping’, selecting countries depending on the kinds of brutalization of prisoners they want.
Foreign nationals suspected of terrorism have been transported to detention and interrogation facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere. In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
While moralizing about human rights, the US has become quite accepting of torture as long as we are the ones who do it or it is done by other countries for our benefit.
But now other countries seem to be not quite so forgiving of these crimes. George W. Bush has had to cancel a trip to Switzerland because of fears that he might be arrested for war crimes, although the official reason given is that the hosts were concerned about disruptive demonstrations.
Scott Horton reports on what transpired.
Two victims of torture in U.S. detention have prepared a criminal complaint against Bush (PDF), backed by a coalition of international human rights groups, two former United Nations rapporteurs, and two Nobel Peace Prize laureates. The indictment appears to have been furnished to Geneva’s cantonal prosecutors with a request that they act on it by arresting the former president. There’s no indication that the Geneva criminal justice authorities would have taken such a step—which would have been certain to provoke a diplomatic incident between Switzerland and the United States. On the other hand, an attorney involved in the complaint stated that she had no doubt that Bush’s change in travel plans had to do with the criminal case against him. “Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, who works with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights. “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide—this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next.”
Even the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson warned Bush that if he comes there to promote his book, he may be arrested for authorizing torture.
Donald Rumsfeld reportedly had to flee France because of the threat of arrest for war crimes. Other people such as Dick Cheney also face the threat of arrest if they venture abroad. Henry Kissinger is another person who deserves to be arrested and tried on war crimes.
How has it come to pass that American leaders are now effectively fugitives?
Scott Horton says that this is because the US government has created a culture of impunity within the CIA and its security forces. He says that the CIA operatives who tortured people, including the ones who committed the horrendous injustice to Khaled el-Masri, not only did not suffer any consequences, they were shielded from prosecutions by other countries and even received promotions. But there is a price to be paid for this condoning of war crimes and the creation of a culture of impunity where lower-level people are given carte blanche to violate the law in the war on terror. As Horton writes:
Such a culture has certain legal consequences. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, when an organization involved in warfare fails to punish or discipline those who engage in criminal conduct, criminal liability passes to the senior officers of that organization.
So because they refused to take action against torturers, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld could all be arrested for war crimes if they go to other countries.
This is what happens when a country abandons the rule of law and respect for human rights. Its leaders can end up becoming fugitives from justice. Obama could well face the same threat when he leaves office since he has done little to dismantle the arbitrary detention and torture system set up by Bush-Cheney and has even expanded its scope.
The abdication by Hosni Mubarak is wonderful news and the Egyptian people deserve our congratulations and admiration for their determination and unity in the face of the forces arrayed against them.
But the battle is not yet over. The country is still being run by the military and that odious torturer Omar Suleiman, favored by the US and named as vice-president by Mubarak, is still playing a key role in the government.
I would dearly love to see Mubarak, Suleiman, and all the other torturers in that country tried for their crimes.
The next phase is critical. The Egyptian people united around the goal of getting rid of Mubarak and were successful. Will they be able to remain united around new goals of democratization? Will the army actually give up its power in favor of a totally civilian government elected by the people? Or will it claim that is has gone far enough and repress any further attempts at relinquishing control?
The overthrow of Mubarak is undoubtedly inspirational for freedom-loving people the world over. It shows what ordinary people can do when they unite around a common goal. People in that region are taking note of what is possible and their rumblings are sending shivers down the spines of other autocratic rulers.
There are lessons here for the US and transglobal oligarchy too. You can push people just so far before they turn on you.
More evidence that Democrats are the ones who can really stick it to the poor.
Frank Wisner was the emissary sent by president Obama to Hosni Mubarak to, we were told, encourage him to leave office quickly. He was supposedly chosen because he had a personal relationship with him developed while earlier serving in Egypt as US ambassador. But Wisner seems to have gone rogue, saying publicly that Mubarak should not leave immediately. The administration has tried to distance themselves from those remarks but suspicions exist that (surprise!) the US government is not being honest in what it tells us and is trying to have it both ways in Egypt, trying to appease its long-standing ally Mubarak and the pro-democracy protesters.
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Some tea party Republicans shocked their party leadership by joining with many Democrats to deny the 2/3 vote necessary to pass an extension of some parts of the odious USA PATRIOT Act that violates many of our privacy rights.
The Patriot Act measure would have extended through the end of the year three provisions that are set to expire Feb. 28. One authorizes the FBI to use roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; the second allows the government to access “any tangible items,” such as library records, in the course of surveillance; and the third allows for the surveillance of targets who are not connected to an identified terrorist group.
These measures will undoubtedly pass later under different rules that require only a simple majority, but this is the kind of issue-focused coalition that I was urging that we need to work towards.