LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
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US Support For White Phosphorous In Gaza
Eileen Fleming in Op-Ed News:
“The Ileana Ros-Lehtinen/AIPAC driven House Resolution 867 boiled down to a call for censorship of the Goldstone Report without “any endorsement or further consideration” from the Obama Administration, rife with inaccuracies and undermines support for the universality of human rights.
“It is no surprise that Congress is trying to cover their culpable asses for during the 23 days of Israeli assault on Gaza, “Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault were decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation!) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza. [1]
One of the few who have been to Gaza, Congressman Baird D-WA, wrote, “H.Res. 867 is very serious business. If, as Goldstone asserts and the evidence I have seen supports, there were in fact gross violations of international law and human rights on all sides, we cannot in good conscience support H.Res. 867.
“This is about much more than just another imposed political litmus test that we are all too often asked to perform. This is about whether we as individuals and this Congress as an institution find it acceptable to drop white phosphorous on civilian targets, to rocket civilian communities, to destroy hospitals and schools, to use civilians as human shields, and to deliberately destroy nonmilitary factories, industries and basic water, electrical and sanitation infrastructure. This is about whether it is acceptable to restrict the movement, opportunities and hopes of more than a million people every single day.
“At the end of the day, this is also about our own domestic security. If we are seen internationally as condoning violations of human rights and international law, if our money and our weaponry play a leading role in those violations, and if we reflexively obstruct the findings of someone with the credentials, history and integrity of Justice Goldstone, it can only diminish our international standing and our own security.“-Rep. Brian Baird (D) represents Washington’s 3rd district.” [2]
American Pot Described By Chinese Kettle
Veteran investigative journalist David Lindorff in 2005 on the Chinese turning the tables on the US on human rights:
” The New York Times was almost apoplectic Sunday over a human rights “report card” issued by China’s Foreign Affairs Department on the United States. That report, a response to the annual report on China’s human rights situation issued by the U.S. State Department, called attention to a number of areas where the U.S. is in violation of universally accepted norms of behavior.
Having lived for two years in China–a fascist-style military dictatorship where the law is simply another tool of repression for those in authority, and where people are routinely locked up, tortured, deprived of their livelihood and even their lives for such transgressions as posting comments on a website, protesting a corrupt boss or conducting prayer services in a private home, and a place where perceptions of America can be pretty bizarre–I was expecting something comic after reading in the Times that the report on the U.S. “approaches caricature.”
In fact, putting aside whom it was doing the talking, the report was pretty damned accurate, and devastating.
American society is characterized by rampant violent crimes, severe infringement of people’s rights by law enforcement departments and lack of guarantee of the right to life, liberty and security, the Chinese report said, noting that in addition to the threats from uniformed law enforcement, some 31,000 Americans were killed by firearms last year. The report also noted America’s record two million prison inmates, and the fact that three times that many are on parole or probation.
Caricature? Hardly. The number of people being jailed in the U.S. is a national scandal, particularly considering the percentage who are black and Latino, and the fact that most are there for non-violent offenses. And no surprise there: Nearly every time I am on the road and see a car pulled over by a trooper, I discover that the driver is black. Unless blacks are uniquely prone to speeding, there is an epidemic of racial profiling, and it’s not limited to highways.
American democracy is manipulated by the rich and malpractice is common, the report continues, noting that elections in the U.S. are “in fact a contest of money.” Really. Can anyone honestly call this a caricature? I remember when I was teaching a group of journalism graduate students in Shanghai, I received my mail ballot from home, which at the time was a small town in upstate New York. I was happy to receive it because I wanted to show it to my class, where the students were anxious to see first-hand how American democracy works. Imagine my chagrin when I opened the envelope and saw that the ballot was composed entirely of single candidates for each post. Republicans so dominated the upstate region that no one bothered to run against them for any town or county post! “These look just like our ballots!” the students said in amazement. Nor in our current red state/blue state polity, are things much different across most of the country, where campaign funding laws, or the lack thereof, make incumbency virtually a guarantee of re-election.
In the area of economic rights, the Chinese report said poverty, hunger and homelessness “haunt the world’s richest country.” Here I’d have to disagree. While the figure they used (from the U.S. Census Bureau—36 million living in poverty—is correct, it is hardly a condition that “haunts” the majority living above the poverty line, since our derelict corporate media don’t cover the poverty beat, and our economically segregated communities make it easy for people to ignore the suffering in the midst of plenty. Still, noting that a sixth of the nation lives in poverty is no caricature. It’s a fact.
Racial discrimination? The report says it permeates every aspect of society, while the new post 9-11 homeland security regulations especially target ethnic minorities, foreigners and immigrants. Does anyone want to challenge the accuracy of that depiction?
As for the rights of women and children, the report called attention to the deplorable rate of rapes and sexual abuse, with some 400,000 children forced into prostitution and sexual abuse. This ugly reality, while also true for China, cannot be brushed aside here.
Finally the Chinese report addressed the abuse of foreigners by U.S. authorities, noting the scandalous violations of the rights of prisoners of war, the history of invasions and unprovoked military assaults on other nations, and the estimated 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq.
For my part, I was surprised the Chinese report didn’t go further, to mention the failure of the U.S. to abide by international law in allowing foreigners arrested on serious criminal charges in the U.S., including murder, to contact their embassies, the shameful inadequacy of funding for schools in poor communities, the dumping of toxic waste and the siting of pollution-causing power plants in low-income communities, and the theft of private property through improper use of imminent [sic] domain and draconian drug laws, the unconscionably high percentage of minorities on American death rows, as well as other abuses.
China is one of the world’s prime human rights offenders, but that ugly reality should not prevent us from looking honestly into the mirror that it has held up to our own society and government.
If anything is a caricature, it is the article on the Chinese report, in which The Times appears as a caricature of real independent journalism.”The New York Times Complains About Chinese Torture
And no - I don’t mean that someone dripped water into the eyes of the editorial staff until they squealed. I mean they referred to torture - committed by the Chinese - and they did it without using quotes, their standard practice when referring to American torture. The reference was in an obituary for Colonel Harold E. Fisher, an American pilot who died at the age of 83. Here’s what Fisher underwent:
“kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.”
Contributing to the general tone of hypocrisy, Barack Obama has recently ruled out holding the CIA responsible for torture, even though many experts have argued that at least the lawyers who wrote the authorizing memos, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, should be prosecuted.
Just for comparison, here’s what Human Rights had to say about the lack of accountability so far at every level:
“Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on terror.”
Despite these numbers, four years since the first known death in U.S. custody, only 12 detainee deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official. Of the 34 homicide cases so far identified by the military, investigators recommended criminal charges in fewer than two thirds, and charges were actually brought (based on decisions made by command) in less than half. While the CIA has been implicated in several deaths, not one CIA agent has faced a criminal charge. Crucially, among the worst cases in this list – those of detainees tortured to death – only half have resulted in punishment; the steepest sentence for anyone involved in a torture-related death: five months in jail.”
The HR report also specified just how brutal the torture could get:
“Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death. “
Here’s the whole HR report.
Scott Horton has proved that the documentary evidence of wrong-doing goes straight up the chain of command to the President (I made that argument as early as 2005 based only the record available at the time). So the NYT’s selective treatment of the subject has simply no justification.
Fortunately Glenn Greenwald was at hand to give the paper a thrashing:
“The NYT’s incoherence and double standards, equally, are self-evident. But I would like to know if Bill Keller will remove the t-word from this obit and replace it with “harsh interrogations” as he does when referring to the US government’s use of identical techniques. If not, why not? Remember: these people won’t even use the word torture to describe a technique displayed in the Cambodian museum of torture to commemorate the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge - as long as Americans do the torturing.
I mean: the NYT isn’t just a vehicle for US propaganda, is it? It’s a newspaper, right? It has standards that it maintains across its copy. Right?”
My Comment:
We’re still waiting for the answer on that one. But, meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald and Salon prove that they’re the real press.
And talking about double standards, Al Jazeera poses this question: Torture still continues in Iraq (this time, at the hands of Iraqis), but why is there no global outcry over it?
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