U.S. Torture Policies Inspire Renewed International Outrage

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As the New York Times reveals that Abu Ghraib torture continued after the initial revelations, a Russian federation has demanded that the United Nations order the closure of the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo.

In a paper called "In Defense of Humanity", the 46 deputies representing of the Russian Federation Communist Party have denounced what they've termed "Guantanomo's shame" and have demanded that the U.S. detention center in Cuba be closed. 400 intellectuals from 30 countries signed a formal document calling for the closure.

The signatories include Guennadi Ziuganov, president of the Russian Federation Communist Party, Nobel Prizewinner Zhores Alfiorov, Deputy President of the Law Camera Valentin Kupsov, President of the parliamentary group of friendship with Cuba Vitali Sebastianov, Cosmonaut Svietlana Savitskaya and General Director of the Russian paper "Sovietskaya" Rossia Valentin Chiquin. They have unanimously accused the Bush administration and U.S. Euroopean allies of working to prevent the Human Rights Commission in Geneva from formally condemning violations of human rights by the United States at Guantanamo.

The paper has charged the governments of the European Union with refusing to admit evidence of torture and other human rights violations by the United States.

According to the Latin American news agency, Presna Latina, the 62nd Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights is set to convene in Geneva on March 20th. By that time, it is expected that world media will have broadcast new video footage of the U.S. military torturing Iraqi prisoners.

Following closely on the heels of the Russian action, the New York Times reports that torture continued both before and after the closure of Abu Ghraib.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

Signatories to "In Defense of Humanity" have meanwhile called on "world intellectuals, social organizations and anyone of good will" to demand that the United Nations order the closure of the U.S. base in Cuba.

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Original 'Toon by Dante Lee. Use with permission only

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As Bush Descends Into Hell, Will the Democratic Party Find its Soul?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush's reign of terror is falling apart as fast as Iraq slides into utter chaos and civil war. And still —the Democrats can't make the quantum leap from Bush's utter failure in Iraq to the emerging, undeniable fact that there is no "war on terror." The "one" terrorist suspect that Bushco has been able to link in any way with Al Qaeda may walk because, according to Judge Leonie Brinkema, Bushco's case is "irredeemably contaminated". [See: Washington Post, Federal Witnesses Banned in 9/11 Trial]

In all other instances, Bushco has merely defined all opposition as "terrorist". That's neat but fallacious! Worse —it's utterly useless if a real war is to be fought. It never was. In fact, opposition by an indigenous population to an aggressive invader is recognized as "legal" by any standard of international law. People have a right under international law to defend their homeland. Given those facts, one is hard pressed to find a single real terrorist in Iraq.

Is there no Democrat who will state the truth about Iraq? When will the Democrats begin with the most obvious truth: the war was begun upon a pack of lies? When will the Democratic party find the courage to state the fact that the war against Iraq was and remains illegal by every international standard insisted upon by the United States itself. When will the Democrats at last discover that the attack and invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with "terrorism" or with 911? Everything said by Bush about Iraq has been a lie. And the lies continue. Let's make this simple for the party of the "loyal opposition": the war was and remains a crime; it's morally wrong; it's a blunder from which the U.S. may never recover.

Let's be blunt: the Democrats have failed to gain a single point from Bush's numerous and assorted calamities because they've offered no real alternative. Americans are ahead of all politicians on this point.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joseph Biden's message is of the form "...but we could have fought the war better!" What war? The war on terror or the war against the people of Iraq? What Biden doesn't understand is that the one war was never fought —and the other should never have been fought! I am still awaiting the Democrat who will state flat out that the war was a crime!

The sins of omission, in the one case, and the sins of commission in the other, will forever link the word "evil" with the Bush administration. Certain themes recur whenever "evil" is talked about. The Nuremberg psychologist, Dr. Gustav Gilbert, thought "evil" to be an "...utter lack of empathy" and Hanah Arendt wrote of the Banality of Evil. Both concepts are consistent with a practice of the American right wing: blaming their victims. Many of the most infamous Nazis (Adolph Eichmann, for example) were just numbed bureaucrats doing a job. Others were "just following orders". The commandant of Auschwitz asked: "Is it wrong for a rat catcher to catch rats?"

Evil is often associated with the "Faustian Bargain". In literature, one literally sells one's soul to Ol' Scratch. But in real life, the Faustian Bargain is not so easy to spot. One sells one's soul in many ways. One sells one's soul by trading one's free will and conscience for material or other "gain" —bribes, high paying jobs, a home in suburbia, graft, campaign contributions.

Most corporate employees are bought and paid for. They have little choice but to support the evil corporation, the cancer merchants of big tobacco, the despoilers of the only environment we will ever have. Mere employment has no moral dimensions if the employer is in all cases benign —but what is to be said of the legion of company types who toil daily for Halliburton and, by proxy, Dick Cheney, Darth Vadar to Bush's evil Emperor?

In yet another example, I give you the Democratic Party. By refusing to oppose Bush with any effectiveness and, in fact, enabling some of his most repugnant and tyrannical measures, the Democrats have literally sold the soul of the party and worse —they done so at a discount. As Rick told Ugarte in Casablanca: "I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one."

I would think normal people would find the idea that laws can be broken in order to carry out state sponsored atrocities, such as torture and wars of aggression, to be unthinkable. And, in normal times, I suppose, they are and most certainly should be. But the idea of "normal times" is seductive. There is every reason to believe that those lower echelon bureaucrats who carried out Hitler's crimes of aggression and genocide thought the times to be normal. It is sign of abnormal times that lawyers and bureaucrats worked assiduously to make Nazi atrocities legal ex post facto. In the Bush administration, that job has fallen to Alberto Gonzales.

Since the crashing of the Twin Towers, America has appeared to be in a state of mass hypnosis from which it is lately awakening. Americans have now learned that while they slept, Bush has imposed a police state upon the nation, complete with a secret police force, unbridled and unchecked widespread domestic surveillance of citizens, and a lost war waged perpetually nevertheless. One writer referred to it as an "... an ideological state of siege"

We are under seige by a radical right wing —a cancer on the body politic. It has grown since the Nixon resgination about which it is conveniently forgotten that it was Nixon's own party that did him in.

Under the aegis righteous retribution, the anger and frustration the neo-conservatives cultivated during the Vietnam War, and the degenerate Clinton Administration, was unleashed in a torrent of unabashed war mongering.

—When The Phoenix Comes Home To Roost, Douglas Valentine

But about the war —"we" are and were right; the rabid right and the GOP was dead wrong! Worse —the GOP was wrong and knew it but supported Bush anyway. Bush was lying and KNEW IT ...but went ahead anyway. It doesn't get any more evil than that.

It's time to listen to the anti-war movement

By COLIN EAGER

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, an unprecedented movement developed to stop the rush to war, a movement so large and diverse that the New York Times wrote of "two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."

Tragically, the Bush administration ignored the majority of humankind and launched the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. The third anniversary of the Iraq War will be marked with demonstrations in hundreds of cities across America, including a rally in Lafayette Square at 4 p.m. Saturday.

An anniversary is an appropriate time for reflection, and looking back on the last three years, two points stand out.

First, the anti-war movement has been proven correct in its prewar assessment and warnings. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Invading Iraq destabilized the Middle East, damaged U.S.-Arab relations and created a new breeding ground for terrorists and violent Islamic fundamentalists. ...

PEW: Bush Approval Falls to 33%

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush's approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy.

Most Americans (58%) believe Congress acted appropriately in strenuously opposing the deal, while just 24% say lawmakers made too much of the situation.

While there is broad support for the way Congress handled the dispute, more Americans think Democratic leaders showed good judgment on the ports issue than say the same about GOP leaders (by 30%-20%).

From our man on the prairie: Garrison Keillor:

Day of reckoning for the Current Occupant

Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services

Published March 15, 2006

Spring arrived in New York last week for previews, a sunny day with chill in the air, but you could smell mud, and with a little imagination you could sort of smell grass. I put on a gray jacket, instead of black, and went to the opera and saw Verdi's "Luisa Miller," a Republican opera in which love is crushed by the perfidiousness of government. A helpful lesson for these times. I am referring to the Current Occupant.

The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call "conservatism." ...

Jessica Simpson has just risen a notch in my estimation:

Jessica Simpson snubs Bush

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Concerned about politicizing her favorite charity, singer-actress Jessica Simpson on Wednesday turned down a invitation to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush, a snub that left Republicans dismayed.

The apparent final word that Simpson would be a no-show at a major Republican fund-raiser with Bush and congressional leaders on Thursday night came after a day of conflicting reports from her camp and organizers of the event. ...

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Original 'Toon by Dante Lee. Use with permission only

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U.S. court rules our government can break international laws to carry out torture

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

An ominous new decision from Federal judge David Trager has said the United States can violate international laws, presumably international conventions to which the U.S. is bound by treaty. The case involves a lawsuit filed by Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. He had been kidnapped by CIA agents during a stopover at Kennedy Airport. In his decision, Federal District Judge David Trager dismissed a lawsuit brought by Arar challenging his arrest, detention, and torture.
According to Nat Hentoff's column, Liberty Beat, Arar was flown to Syria where he was held in solitary confinement and tortured:

... in a three-by-six-foot cell ("like a grave," he said). He became, internationally, one of the best-known victims of the CIA's extraordinary renditions—the sending of suspected terrorists to countries known for torturing their prisoners.

—The Torture Judge

Arar, subsequently released, has not been charged with a crime —by Syria or the United States, which refuses to cooperate with any investigation. The Canadian Parliament, however, has begun an investigation to include a public inquiry.

The implications of this case are enormous. If Judge Trager's ruling is allowed to stand, American officials will have a "....green light to do to others what they did to Arar." Any crime could then be committed in the name of national security.

Judge Trager's decision is a transparent circular argument, most often found in the decisions of Antonin Scalia. Trager maintains that any other ruling would have the "...the most serious consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both." In other words, Trager has not ruled upon law, but upon expediency. His primary consideration is not what is legal or what is not but rather, what is "convenient" to those agencies otherwise bound to operate within the U.S. Constitution. He has said, in effect, that even a judge must acquiesce in the commission of state crimes —for convenience! They must acquiesce not by or for law —but for convenience!

The concept of "Separation of Powers" is given a NeoCon treatment by an activist conservative judge:

...the coordinate branches of our government [executive and legislative] are those in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate.

Hentoff appropriately asks whether or not it is the duty of the judiciary itself to determine whether judicial oversight is or is not appropriate. Here's my opinion for what it's worth: the Federal Judiciary since Marbury v Madison has always determined when judicial oversight is appropriate.

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Original 'Toon by Dante Lee. Use with permission only

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A plague on ALL your houses!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I know how to put 99% percent of the world's religious charlatans and political demagogue war mongers out of business for good. Simply hold them to this standard: behave in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so. How many could be held to that standard? Maybe none!

Chuck Dupree, of Bad Attitudes, wrote recently:

...the right has come to dominate the discussion through clever, and not always honest, use of language and control of the definitions of terms.

This seems to be the crux of the problem, a pandemic malaise that has poisoned our political discourse.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in both Being and Nothingness and Existentialism and Human Emotions wrote of mauvaise foi i.e. "bad faith". He attributed that characteristic to people who literally lie to themselves. It's a good description of the GOP. GOPPERS find various reasons for willingly believing lies and nefarious motivations for speading them —knowingly and willingly. In general, howver, GOPPERS choose to believe Republican propaganda —meaningless slogans and platitudes —because it is focus group designed to make them feel good about themselves. Republicans have forgotten, however, that one is responsible for what one believes. Bertolt Brecht put it this way:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!

—Bertolt Brecht

Nothing good comes of believing a falsehood. Even worse outcomes are to be expected when falsehoods are espoused and touted by those who know them to be false. Bush's very administration was begun and continues upon various frauds deliberately perpetrated upon the American public.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian from Texas, denounced the NeoCon agenda on the floor of the House of Representatives. His speech has been summarized in bullit points and quoted in John Dean's book Worse than Watergate. Rep. Paul pointed out that the NeoCons are really latter day Machiavellians. They believe that the state is all powerful; lying is essential for the survival of the state; certain facts should be kept secret from the people; and, finally, NeoCons dismiss any argument based upon the U.S. Constitution. Put another way, NeoCons share Bush's attitude with regard to the Constitution.

The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!

—George W. Bush

The NeoCon belief that truth is whatever they can either force or trick you into believing may prove to be America's undoing. I am a realistic person. No one in government will ever live up to the standard mentioned earlier. Having grown cynical of popular religion and politics, I am inclined to trade all the world's ideologies for a single, verifiable truth.

Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet at a time when Catholics and Protestants were at war with one another. William, himself, was most certainly an "underground" Catholic. I will leave to a bona fide Shakespeare scholar the task of debunking my belief that Shakespeare had grown cynical about the faith of his father, the faith that he, himself, had grown up with. On the other hand, Shakespeare may very well have witnessed the gruesome executions of blood relatives for the perceived threat they posed to Elizabeth I. It was in Romeo and Juliet that we find a most memorable line by Shakespeare: A plague o' both your houses!

To Muslim and Christian alike, to Democrat and GOPPER alike, I say: A plague o' both your houses!

As bad as things are, I remain optimistic and many reasons for optimism can be found in much of Shakepeare who returned time and again to the theme that evil is self-defeating. We need only wait —and survive. It was Sir Thomas More, an early casualty of England's religious wars, who said that our natural business is that of "escape".

Why was I surprised when Enron came crashing down? After all, just a few years prior, I had written of Houston's glitzy, pretentious downtown: "...green towers of Oz, smoke and mirrors"! That's what it turned out to be.

Corporate crap, propaganda, and faux cowboy bullshit passes for culture in Houston. But it doesn't stop there. Recently, Houston became home to the largest "mega" church in the world. The Lakewood Church took over what had been the Summit, where the Houston Rockets played basketball. [See Forbes: Christian Capitalism Megachurches, Megabusinesses ] Three pointers are now given up for glitzy media versions of Jesus.

Zealots in Houston?

Members of the Lakewood Church — all 16,000 of them — worship at the grand opening of their new building in a Houston arena that was formerly home of the city’s NBA team.

An excerpt from the Forbes article:

Welcome to the megabusiness of megachurches, where pastors often act as chief executives and use business tactics to grow their congregations. This entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of megachurches--defined as non-Catholic churches with at least 2,000 members--in the U.S. Indeed, Lakewood, New Birth, The Potter's House and World Changers, four of the biggest, have all experienced membership gains of late. Of course, growth for them has a higher purpose: to spread their faith to as many people as they can. "In our society growth equals success," says Scott Thumma, faculty associate at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "And religious growth not only equals success but also God's blessing on the ministry."

In a nation now ruled by corporations, the corporatization of religion is an unholy and theocratic merger of church and state. It's the very picture of fascism. Is that a Nazi salute that I see in that picture?

Also in Houston, the kooky Rev. Sun Myung Moon is wooing black ministers and rewriting history. One of his "representatives" in Houston is proselytizing the idea that the Jews invented the Holocaust. There are places in Europe where "Holocaust Denial" is a prosecutable crime. However you feel about that, I hasten to add that the Holocaust happened. It's a fact! Live with it!

Our sister paper SF Weekly recently did a story on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's extravagant attempts to make inroads among black churches by offering preachers such things as free vacations to faraway countries. Dozens of ministers have heeded Moon's call to throw out their crosses and replace them with crowns, the symbol of Moon's church.

The Reverend Bennit Hayes of the Gloryland Missionary Baptist Church in Sunnyside was cited as a minister who had a drawer full of discarded crosses from his parishioners (although the article didn't directly accuse him of taking free trips).

A Moonie in Houston?

Q. Has Reverend Moon paid for your travel expenses?

A. Naw, naw, naw, naw. See, that's one of the most misconceived things that most folks think. That just 'cause you're black you got to have folks pay for your travels.

Q. That's not what I meant.

A. Naw, naw, naw. I want you to just get what I'm saying. I came in paying my own way, up until the time I became a member of the executive committee. And once I got on the executive committee, my travels [are] paid for by the committee...I'm a giver. A lot of the black pastors do come on board for the free ride. That's a fact. But most of us come in here giving.

Q. Reverend Moon has said that the Holocaust is a consequence for the Jews' killing of Jesus. Do you believe that?

A. I was at the Holocaust museum in Israel. And let me say that the Jews themselves, the ones I met, repented for that.

Q. For the Holocaust?

A. No, no. That they actually did set up the murder of Jesus. They repented for that. Because they're the ones that led to the death of Jesus.

Q. But do you believe the Holocaust is a consequence of that?

A. I have my own views on that. But see, Reverend Moon doesn't control your mind. He gives you the liberty, you know, to think for yourself...Reverend Moon has done much more today than what Jesus did in his day. Jesus didn't travel all over the world. Reverend Moon has traveled all over the world. The Reverend Moon's been in prison. Jesus was never in prison. You see what I'm saying?

Q. Reverend Moon has called gays "dung-eating dogs." What do you think of that?

A. That's a little extreme for me. I wouldn't call them that. They're all children of God.

Q. But that kind of statement doesn't turn you off Reverend Moon?

A. Naw, naw. That's the human in him. That's what makes him not totally divine.

"Not totally divine" sounds like something Carson Kressley on Queer Eye would say, but we're sure Hayes wasn't implying anything.

--One Houston preacher gave up the cross for the cult

Moon is not divine. Not even a little bit. He's an idiot —and so are 99% of the Protestant ministers I've ever met. I have met more than my share.

Idiocy is not limited to preachers. It contaminates those in government who may be influenced by them. Voltaire said that if God did not exist, it would necessary to invent him. Is that what happened? Americans are fond of invoking "God" —most often: "God Bless America". I worry that someone, somewhere, some time, said "God Damn America" and God took them up on it.

Elsewhere, people are having to deal with what is, rather than what they would like to think it is:

IN 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia and, after success at the battle of Borodino, marched on and occupied Moscow. Napoleon and his generals took over the palaces of the court princes and great houses of the mighty boyars.

Sadly for Napoleon, the Russians had different plans for their nation. Within days after abandoning their city to the French army, they torched their own palaces, homes, enterprises, and cathedrals. They burned Moscow down around Napoleon. Denied his last great triumph, the disappointed emperor abandoned Moscow and started home. Along the way, he lost the world's most powerful army.

Recently one of Islamic Shi'ites' most revered sites, the golden mosque in Baghdad, was destroyed by sectarian enemies. By this act and the reprisals that followed, Iraq moved a substantial step closer to civil war. Though a remote, but real, possibility, an Iraqi civil war could cost the United States its army. ...

--US Army in jeopardy in Iraq, Gary Hart | March 11, 2006

False prophets are celebrated daily on FOX and similar ilk; Cindy Sheehan, who speaks for millions who have declared the megalomaniacal emperor to be naked, are gagged and threatened.

If "dissent is Democracy. [Then] Democracy is in Trouble. Never before, Lewis Lapham argues, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream conversation, so marginalized and muted by a government that recklessly disregards civil liberties, and by an ever more concentrated and profit-driven media in which the safe and the salable sweep all uncomfortable truths from view.

"In the midst of the 'war on terror' - which makes the hunt for Communists in the 1950s look, in its clarity of aim and purpose, like the Normandy landings on D-Day - we face a crisis of democracy as serious as any in our history. The Bush administration makes no secret of its contempt for a cowed and largely silenced electorate, and without bothering to conceal its purpose the government coordinates 'not the defense of the American citizenry against a foreign enemy but the protection of the American plutocracy from the American democracy.'

"Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard."

—Lewis Lapham, Cindy Sheehan Brutalized... more than 'Gag Ruled!'

And from the Washington Post, a harbinger of things to come:

Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht's stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.

Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, has been released on his own recognizance and is awaiting trial on two charges, felony theft scheme and theft over $500, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman. Each charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. ...

--Bush says he's shocked and saddened by the arrest of his ex-aide.

As Buzzflash says: he had best get used to it.

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