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A Few Words on the Greek Insurrection

Friday, December 12th, 2008

The social rebellion in Greece contains all the explosive potential for a revolution. But an insurrection alone is not a revolution. Now more than ever discipline is needed to keep the struggle going and intensifying — not the discipline of waiting but the discipline of acting, the discipline it takes to step up the struggle faster than the authorities are able to control.

By Kevin S

There is no denying the tragedy of the violence in Greece, especially the murders by the State’s police forces and their “citizen” allies, but also of all violence which is never pretty except in some illusions. But all the same, this is probably the best and most important news for us since May 1968. It is especially good news after our public discredit in the U.S. during the convention protests. This insurrection makes anarchism an internationally important social and political movement again. Not to say that in itself it will lead to anarchism becoming a popular movement elsewhere, but at least it does not end in public humiliation whereas it does demonstrate the power of a popular anarchist movement to resist the bourgeois State. Still, it is worth making a few more critical notes.

The social rebellion in Greece contains all the explosive potential for a revolution. But an insurrection alone is not a revolution. Now more than ever discipline is needed to keep the struggle going and intensifying — not the discipline of waiting but the discipline of acting, the discipline it takes to step up the struggle faster than the authorities are able to control. More than that, it requires a more definite social content than fighting police and ransacking banks. Insurrections that fail to deepen and intensify inevitably become defensive, then either are defeated by the State or simply fade out. Without discipline and direction, this rebellion will fail to deepen and intensify. By deepening, I mean moving from only immediately fighting the police and State forces to seizing capitalist and State property, as well the need for social self-organizing of the people, more specifically of the rebellious workers and anti-authoritarian students. That is how this uprising can become a revolutionary struggle.

The anarchists and the rebellious people of Greece have shown they know how to fight, that they know how to agitate and organize well enough to effectively resist the State. It is unlikely that even their best efforts will lead to a complete revolution, but with disciplined, concerted effort they could make some real revolutionary conquests. Furthermore, the uprisings in Greece point the way to wider anarchist agitation and involvement in popular social struggles to resist the oppressive apparatus of the State. Anarchist groups and organizations should openly support the rebellion in Greece and make every effort to equal the achievements of our Greek comrades. At the same time, all must be wary of the old mistake of substituting riot for revolution, the past failure of our movement of letting confusion and disorganization prevent us from being at the front of social struggles and turning rebellion into social revolution.

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Extraordinary scenes end Jean Charles de Menezes inquest

Friday, December 12th, 2008

By Sandra Laville | The moment the family of Jean Charles de Menezes attempted to force their way past a group of private security guards into the inquest courtroom marked the lowest point in a multi-million pound hearing into the fatal shooting of an innocent man by the Metropolitan police.

Any semblance of trust between the relatives and the establishment, in the person of the coroner and the court, dissolved into a volley of recriminations and accusations after Sir Michael Wright made a series of decisions that made the family question the openness and impartiality of proceedings.

The dramatic scenes, which can only now be reported after the lifting of a media gagging order imposed by Wright, came on December 5, one hour before jurors were sent out to begin their deliberations on a verdict.

After two IPCC investigations into the shooting of the innocent Brazilian man and a crown court trial, the hopes of the family were high that the inquest, held in the surroundings of the Oval cricket ground amid much publicity, would establish the facts of the fatal shooting and come to a verdict that accurately represented the events of the day.

What they wanted, the relatives said, was some sort of accountability. What they believe they were given was a slanted inquiry, held back by the restrictions on the verdict imposed by the coroner. They believe he forced the jury into a corner, withdrawing any freedom to return a critical narrative on the shooting or to find unlawful killing - either on the grounds that an individual or individuals had committed murder or manslaughter.

These decisions began a week of escalating tension that exploded into open hostility between the family and the court and resulted in the relatives withdrawing their legal team and their cooperation.

“It is increasingly clear in the last week that the coroner’s impartiality has simply disappeared,” said Jasmin Khan of the Justice4Jean campaign. “That is one of the reasons why the family felt they had no choice but to withdraw their cooperation.”

The relatives had hoped the jury would be told of their decision to withdraw before they retired to consider their verdicts, but the barristers for the police and the coroner agreed that only the blandest of statements about the absence of the family’s legal team could be given to the jury.

“The less said the better,” said Richard Horwell QC, representing the commissioner of the Met.

The coroner had earlier ordered the public and the media to leave the courtroom while he completed his summing up to the jury last week, giving no reason except to say he had reached a “sensitive” point in the hearing.

When the public refused amid repeated requests for clarification of his ruling, there was a standoff for an hour and 40 minutes. The public refused to leave and the coroner refused to return to court.

At one point the team of bouncers with walkie-talkie microphones on their shirt cuffs who had been hired to provide security at the inquest were seen huddling in a corner. “We can’t use violence, that’s clear,” one was overheard saying.

Eventually the coroner’s orders were upheld and the public, including supporters of the family, left the court.

The relatives were held back by security guards and kept out of the courtroom while barristers, police and the coroner filed in. Having lost all faith that those inside would honour the principle that “justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done”, they attempted to storm into the courtroom.

Today, although the hearing is over and the verdict delivered, the accusations, bitterness and recriminations continue from those who believe that the inquest was never an open, impartial examination of the facts.

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Rumsfeld blamed in detainee abuse scandals

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Have Your Say: Rumsfeld blamed in detainee abuse scandals
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Excess Debt and Deflation Equals Depression

Friday, December 12th, 2008

By Stephen Lendman |

Irving Fisher (1867 - 1947) was perhaps the most noted economist of his day. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics calls him “one of America’s greatest mathematical economists and one of” its clearest writers. He earned special acclaim for his work on monetary and statistical theory, policy, index numbers, econometrics, and the distinction between real and nominal interest rates.

He’s also remembered for having made one of the worst and most ill-timed ever stock market calls that cost him his reputation and millions in the subsequent crash - on October 17, 1929 (a week before Black Thursday) when he said “stock prices had reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

He made the call in a climate much like mid-2007 - one of economic growth and easy credit producing speculative excess, bubbles, and the belief that good times would continue unabated. They didn’t then and never do but only in hindsight are those lessons learned.

Investors forget what Keynes once taught when he said: “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise become the bubble on a whirlwind of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” So it was in the 1920s, in the 1990s, and post-2000, but even Keynes was wrong in 1927 when he said: “We will not have any more crashes in our time.”

After the 1929 crash and deepening downturn, Fisher analyzed what happened and in 1933 wrote his “Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions.” It raised disturbing questions about the roles of the Fed, Wall Street and Washington, and, as a result, was largely ignored. Given the book’s relevance today, this article reviews the most significant of his “49 tentative conclusions.”

He believed two major factors cause depression - excess debt (based on easy credit and loose lending practices) and deflation, especially in combination. Others also affect business cycles, but they’re secondary to the main ones.

Financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss recalls what his father, Irving, taught. He lived through the 1920s, the 1929 crash, and Great Depression and tracked data as it was released “to figure out what might happen next. (He) was an analyst and that was (his) job.”

“Years later economists like Milton Friedman and (his) young friend Alan Greenspan (tried) to decipher what went wrong. They concluded that it was mostly the government’s fault, especially the Federal Reserve. They developed the theory that the next time we’re on the brink of depression, the government has got to step in and nip it in the bud. Bah! Those guys weren’t back there back then (like Irving was).”

He “saw exactly what the Fed was doing in the 1930s: They did everything in their power to stop the panic. They coddled the banks. They pumped in billions of dollars. But it was no use. They eventually figured out they were just throwing good money after bad. The real roots of the 1930s bust were in the 1920s boom. That’s when the Fed gave (loads of) cheap money to the banks.” They loaned it to brokers who loaned it to speculators, and a bubble was created and imploded.

“In 1929, our economy was a house of cards. It didn’t matter which cards we propped up or which ones we let fail. We obviously couldn’t save them all. So no matter what we did,” and the longer we denied reality, “the worse it was for everyone. The sooner we accepted it, the sooner” a real recovery was possible. Fisher understood it also and wrote about it in his book.

Besides the early years of the Great Depression (before its full impact or length could be known), he used the Panic of 1837 as an example. It was caused by heavy demand for loans to buy land, build businesses, and invest in the country’s development. Prices began rising, economic strains built up, and a speculative bubble developed that burst in New York on May 10 when every bank stopped payment in specie (gold or silver coinage). A five year depression followed. Many banks failed, and unemployment soared to record levels.

Andrew Jackson was blamed for requiring that gold and silver currency (not fiat paper) be used to pay for government land. Also for not renewing the Second Bank of the United States charter and withdrawing government funds from the bank. Most historians believe it but more recent scholarship cites other causes instead. What’s not disputed was the speculative excess that came to a painful end.

The Panic of 1857 ended the boom years following the 1846 - 1848 Mexican War. It gave America undisputed control of Texas, established the US - Mexican border at the Rio Grande River, seized the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and opened this vast new area to speculation and development. Much of it was to expand railroads. It proved unsustainable and led to crisis.

The failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. was the proximate cause. It ignited panic as a result of massive embezzlement and heavy losses on depreciated railroad investments. Eroded public confidence took over, setting off a chain of events as follows:

– investment money dried up;

– British investors pulled out of American banks because of fears of their unsoundness;

– grain prices fell and heavily impacted rural areas;

– inventories piled up in warehouses;

– massive layoffs followed;

– railroads failed because of over-building;

– 5000 businesses failed within a year; and

– land prices collapsed ruining thousands of investors.

A further blow was losing 30,000 pounds of San Francisco Mint gold at sea intended for eastern banks. Confidence eroded further in the government’s ability to back paper currency with specie. In October, a bank holiday in New England and New York failed to avert runs in the states. Panic spread to Europe, South America and Asia and, while brief, didn’t fully abate until the 1861 War Between the States (the American Civil War).

The Panic of 1873 (near the onset of the Gilded Age) was called “the real Great Depression” by some. It began eight years after war ended and started a six-year depression until 1879. It was triggered by the Vienna Stock Exchange crash in May (the so-called Grunderkrach or “founders’ crash”), then spread to America in the fall.

The key event was the failure of Jay Cooke and Company, the nation’s preeminent investment bank, the principal backer of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and holder of most government wartime loans. It triggered a series of events that followed.

The New York Stock Exchange closed for 10 days. Credit dried up. Banks demanded payment of their loans. Investors rushed to sell stocks. Foreclosures increased, many banks failed and most major railroads. Factories then closed, unemployment soared, and many reasons were cited as the cause - post-war frenetic growth, unregulated speculative abuse, and the extreme overbuilding of the railroads causing panic and depression.

Another factor was also involved. Like today’s Wall Street banks, the railroads crafted complex financial instruments promising a fixed return. Few investors understood them or that in case of default they’d get nothing. Initially the bonds sold well, but fell after 1871 when investors doubted their value. As prices weakened, railroads assumed short-term bank loans to keep expanding. When rates skyrocketed in 1873, they were in trouble, and when Jay Cooke (in September) defaulted on his debt the stock market crashed. Hundreds of banks failed, the panic continued for five years and even longer in Europe.

What harmed the public, banks, and railroads created opportunity for well capitalized industrialists like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Cyrus McCormick. It let them buy assets at fire-sale prices, began the so-called Gilded Age, and triggered the onset of powerful business concentration.

Small factories and businesses were out of luck. Many shut down. Tens of thousands of workers lost jobs. Unemployment in New York alone reached 25%. Workers demonstrated in Boston, New York, Chicago and elsewhere demanding work, and some of the most violent strikes in American history followed. One was a nationwide railroad action in 1877 in which mobs destroyed hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland, MD. Times were even harder in Central and Eastern Europe and lasted longer.

The panic of 1893 caused another depression until 1897 that according to some was as severe or worse than the 1873 crisis. Various factors were blamed - railroad overbuilding, shaky financing, the usual kinds of speculation, and a run on the gold supply among others.

In early May, the New York stock market fell sharply and crashed by late June. A severe credit crisis followed. About 15,000 businesses, 600 banks and 74 railroads failed, and unemployment tripled from one to three million by mid-1894.

Workers responded in the first ever march on Washington. Businessman populist Jason Coxey led his “Coxey’s Army” (numbering about 500) from Massilon, Ohio (beginning March 25, Easter Sunday) to the nation’s capital to demand jobs and present Congress with “a petition with boots on.” Local police intervened. The marchers were disbanded. Coxey was arrested, spent 20 days in jail for disturbing the peace and violating a local ordinance prohibiting walking on the grass, was never charged, and then released.

Other panics followed in 1903, 1907, and then the big one in 1929 - the Great Crash on three days - Black Thursday (October 24), Black Monday (October 28) and Black Tuesday (October 29) - triggering bank failures and the Great Depression throughout the 1930s until WW II ended it.

Fisher discussed its cause and attributed it to debt and deflation. He also explained “cycle theory” - the instability around equilibrium and the influence of “forced” (like seasons) and “free” (self-generating like waves) cycles. He stated:

“Exact equilibrium….is seldom reached and never long maintained. New disturbances are….sure to occur, so that….any variable is almost always above or below ideal equilibrium.”

“….at most times there must be over or under-production, over or under-consumption, over or under spending, over or under-saving, over or under investment, and over or under everything else.” Believing in perfect equilibrium is like assuming the Atlantic Ocean is without waves.

“In the great booms and depressions, each of the above-named factors has played a subordinate role as compared with two dominant factors, namely over-indebtedness to start with and deflation following soon after; also that where any of the other factors do become conspicuous, they are often merely effects or symptoms of these two.” This is key.

Fisher then discussed nine interacting factors under debt and deflation conditions that can lead to a Great Depression. Over-indebtedness leads to liquidation “through the alarm either of debtors or creditors or both.” The following “chain of consequences” follows:

(1) “Debt liquidation leads to distress selling and to

(2) Contraction of deposit currency, as bank loans are paid off, and to a slowing down of velocity of circulation.” Deposit and velocity contraction (from distress sales) cause

(3) “a fall in the level of prices, in other words, a swelling of the dollar.” If price declines aren’t “interfered with by reflation or otherwise, there must be

(4) A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies and

(5) a like fall in profits.” That, in turn, causes

(6) “A reduction in output, in trade and in employment of labor. These losses, bankruptcies and unemployment, lead to

(7) Hoarding and slowing down still more the velocity of circulation.” Velocity refers to the rate at which money circulates, changes hands, or turns over. Greater velocity means greater demand and faster growth. It’s computed by dividing the output of goods and services (GDP) by the total money supply.

The above eight changes cause:

(9) “Complicated disturbances in the rates of interest, in particular, a fall in the nominal, or money, rates and a rise in the real, or commodity, rates of interest.

….debt and deflation go far toward explaining a great mass of phenomena in a very simple logical way.”

Fisher explained that loose monetary policy causes over-indebtedness fueling speculation and asset bubbles that aren’t sustainable. “Easy money is the great cause of over-borrowing. When an investor thinks he can make over 100 per cent per annum by borrowing at 6 per cent, he will be tempted to borrow, and to invest or speculate with the borrowed money. This was the prime cause leading to the over-indebtedness of 1929. Inventions and technological improvements (at the time) created wonderful investment opportunities, and so caused big debts.”

Fisher then described “distinct phases” driving public sentiment:

(a) the prospect of “big dividends or gains in income in the remote future;”

(b) selling at a profit for a capital gain “in the immediate future;”

(c) “the vogue of reckless promotions, taking advantage of the habituation of the public to great expectations” or the notion that good times are self-sustaining, and

(d) “the development of downright fraud, imposing on a public which had grown credulous and gullible.”

Fisher’s debt, deflation and instability theory is summarized as follows:

(1) “economic changes include steady trends and unsteady occasional disturbances (that result in various type) cyclical oscillations;”

(2) among the “disturbances” are new investment opportunities;

(3) these among others create over-indebtedness;

(4) this “leads to attempts to liquidate;”

(5) “unless counteracted by reflation,” these cause price declines “or a swelling dollar;”

(6) “the dollar may swell faster than the number of dollars owed shrinks;”

(7) as a result, liquidation doesn’t liquidate; it aggravates debts, “and the depression grows worse instead of better;”

(8) extricating from this is either by bankruptcy or reflation through monetary and/or fiscal policies.

Like Keynes, Fisher believed that reflation should be limited and temporary, not long, sustained or extreme like under Greenspan and Bernanke. Otherwise short-term solutions cause much greater problems, now playing out and may become more severe ahead. As a per cent of GDP, total credit market debt is now double its 1929 level at about 350%. It’s rising fast with continuing new new liquidity injections that show no signs of diminishing. Reportedly the Fed may now issue its own debt - an astonishing move if it happens as it will create unlimited debt amounts and leave the Fed unaccountable to no one for doing it.

As in 1873, 1929, and other financial panics, speculation has been rampant, much more extreme than earlier, and debt levels are unprecedented and growing. As a result, large banks are effectively insolvent, hoard cash, and won’t lend. Credit is scarce. Households are too over-indebted to borrow. Lenders won’t extend it anyway. Unemployment is skyrocketing, and the potentially greatest ever economic crisis is worsening - so much so that London-based GFC Economics predicts successive 2009 months of one million layoffs in the US.

And unprecedented-sized bailouts assure greater trouble ahead. Using inflation-adjusted numbers, Jim Bianco of Bianco Research said that bailout-related debt cost more than the following combined:

– the Marshall Plan - cost: $12.7 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $115.3 billion;

– the Louisiana Purchase - cost: $15 million; inflation-adjusted cost: $217 million;

– NASA’s Apollo human spaceflight program - cost: $36.4 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $237 billion;

– the S & L crisis - cost: $153 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $256 billion;

– the Korean War - cost: $54 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $454 billion;

– the New Deal - cost: an estimated $32 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: an estimated $500 billion;

– the invasion and early months of the Iraq War (not the total war cost to date that’s far higher) - cost: $551 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $597 billion;

– the Vietnam War - cost: $111 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $698 billion; and

– NASA since inception - cost: $416.7 billion; inflation-adjusted cost: $851.2 billion.

Total: $3.92 trillion compared to around $8.5 trillion in bailout funds allocated or pledged thus far with these numbers certain to go higher.

Will deflation and depression follow? Who can know, but Nouriel Roubini understands the seriousness of over-extended debt and explains the consequences of falling prices. It affects “the real value of nominal liabilities,” and makes them rise “as do real interest rates once the nominal interest rate hits” zero. Hoarding cash and saving “instead of investing is thus self-reinforcing as (a) deflationary spiral takes hold.”

He sees the threat of “stag-deflation (recession/ stagnation and deflation) and “debt deflation” that’s “already forced the Fed into a liquidity trap (with investors preferring to hold cash) as the Fed funds rate is effectively close to 0% and an informal policy of ‘quantitative easing’ has already….flooded financial markets with over $2 trillion of liquidity” - now even more than when he wrote this in late November and, for the first time (on December 9), the Treasury sold $30 billion of four-week bills at zero interest. On July 31, 2001, they were auctioned for the first time, to be continued weekly along with regular 13 and 26-week bills. Back then, they yielded around 3.5%.

Roubini sees lots of negatives from current policies, even depression, but he doesn’t predict it. He states: “Desperate times and desperate economic news require desperate policy actions.” However “partially necessary” they may be, they’ll “eventually lead to much higher real interest rates on the public debt and weaken the US dollar once this tsunami of implicit and explicit public liabilities and monetary debt (the result of rising twin fiscal and current account deficits) hits a world where the global supply of savings is shrinking. As most countries move to fiscal deficits (and reduce global savings), foreign investors (may) start to ponder the long-term sustainability of the US domestic and external liabilities.”

With the economy “in free fall,” debt obligations at unprecedented levels, and “stag-deflation” deepening, the worst of possibilities may unfold and spread contagion everywhere.

The Bank for International Settlements (the so-called central bank for central bankers) showed concern in its December Quarterly Review. It questions the soundness of near-zero interest rates that may disrupt money markets and “discourage banks from lending to other banks.” It’s also worried about the “scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages (because) significant risks (from toxic debt have) been transferred onto government balance sheets” in amounts great enough to risk future default.

Only in time will we know, but the worst of possibilities are real, especially in America where debt levels are hugely unmanageable, yet they continue to be added to recklessly.

What will unfold and how it will end can’t be known. The human fallout already is huge. It may end up overwhelming but not as fast as in the 1930s. According to Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis figures, GDP fell 26.6% between 1929 and 1933, personal income declined 25.7%, and consumption expenditures dropped 18.2%.

Given a three-decade US standard of living decline to the present, exacerbated by the intensifying current crisis (very likely to be protracted and deep), it’s very possible those 1930s numbers may be matched or exceeded going forward. If so, it may just take longer before their full effects show up and are felt.

But look how big businesses are advantaged. Smaller ones will fail, and the giants will get even bigger through asset acquisitions at fire-sale prices. As they say, what goes around, comes around but much to the public’s detriment as it always is.

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U.S. Keeps Silent as Afghan Ally Removes War Crime Evidence

Friday, December 12th, 2008

McClatchy Newspapers | DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan - Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who’d surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum’s headquarters, they were filled with corpses.. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum’s militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Dostum’s men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.

Earlier this year, bulldozers and backhoes returned to the scene, reportedly exhumed the bones of many of the dead men and removed evidence of the atrocity to sites unknown. In the area where the mass graves once were, there now are gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e-Leili desert.

A U.N.-sponsored team of experts first spotted two large excavations on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9 feet deep in places. A McClatchy reporter visited the site last month and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been dug since June.

Faqir Mohammed Jowzjani, a former Dostum ally and the deputy governor of Jowzjan province, where the graves were located, told McClatchy that it’s common knowledge that Dostum sent in the bulldozers.

He speculated that Dostum wanted to destroy the evidence because of local political trouble that could have made him more prone to prosecution for the killings.

Last year, Dostum and the then-Jowzjan governor became embroiled in a feud that killed seven people and wounded more than 40. This year, Dostum and his men kidnapped and reportedly beat a rival Afghan leader.

“Maybe General Dostum did it because of a fear of prosecution in the future,” Jowzjani said.

Another local Afghan official said that Dostum had begun to worry that the 2001 killings could come back to haunt him. “Everyone in the city (Sheberghan) knows that the evidence has been removed,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of worries about being killed for talking about the subject.

“When the crime happened, (Dostum and his commanders) didn’t think they would ever be prosecuted,” the official said. “But later they began to worry . . . they have taken all the bones and thrown them into the river” that’s about half a mile from the graves.

NATO — which has command authority over a team of troops less than three miles from the grave site — the United Nations and the United States have been silent about the destruction of evidence of Dostum’s alleged war crimes.

“The truth is that General Dostum went out with bulldozers and dug up those graves,” Jowzjani charged. “I don’t know why UNAMA” — the U.N. mission in Afghanistan — “hasn’t said anything in this regard . . . maybe because of fears about his power, or maybe they made a deal.”

Gen. Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, the commander of Afghanistan’s national police in the north, said that he knew that the graves had been emptied. He noted that “the digging was done very professionally” and said that U.N. and NATO-led teams in the area were also aware. (While provincial reconstruction teams are led by individual nations, their military components are under NATO command.)

“I don’t understand why they didn’t secure the area,” Patang said in an interview. Perhaps, he said, Western officials “are nervous” about the power that Dostum has locally and don’t want to upset local security by pushing him on the matter.

Dostum was unavailable for comment, and one of his senior aides, Gen. Ghani Karim Zada, declined several interview requests.

The Bush administration, too, has remained silent. U.S. officials claimed that they had no knowledge of the deaths of the prisoners in the convoy until the news media revealed them in 2002, and now the administration has remained silent about Dostum’s reported effort to destroy the evidence of them, which also would be a major violation of international law.

American officials say that Dostum’s alleged war crimes are a matter for the Afghan authorities. But the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai is weak and depends on American and NATO troops to fight a growing Taliban insurgency that now operates in most of Afghanistan and all but surrounds Kabul, the capital.

However, the fact that U.S. special forces and CIA operatives were working closely with Dostum in late 2001, when the killings took place, has fueled suspicions that the warlord got a free pass.

The U.S. Defense Department has said that it found no evidence of American involvement or presence during the 2001 incident. If there was an investigation, however, its findings have never been made public.

“At the time, we had a handful of special forces and CIA, and there was no way we could have exercised any oversight” of the thousands of detainees under Afghan control, said Joseph Collins, who was then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations.

When he was asked about the detainees suffocating in metal shipping containers, Collins, who’s now a professor at the National War College, said that “I think most people just took for granted what he (Dostum) said: that it was a horrible accident.”

McClatchy interviewed eight Pakistani men last year who said that Dostum’s gunmen had stuffed them in the containers. The men, mostly low-level Taliban volunteers, said they’d had to climb over dozens of dead bodies to get out of the containers.

“We were all sitting on the dead bodies which were lying on the floor; they were lifeless,” said Abdul Haleem, who said that many of the approximately 200 men in his container died. “An arm was sticking up in the air here, a leg was sticking up in the air there.”

Another man who said he’d made the trip to Sheberghan in a container full of dead and dying men was Tariq Khan. He said that when Dostum’s men shot into the metal box, “some people were shot in the eye; some were shot in the neck.”

Dostum offered to take Pierre-Richard Prosper, who was then the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, on a tour of the grave site in late 2002, but Prosper declined. He was pressing a reluctant Afghan government and the U.N. to take the lead in investigating the killings.

“We felt the Afghans needed to play a role,” Prosper said in a telephone interview. “If you’re a new government, and you want to move forward, you have to deal with the past.”

However, no investigation was likely without strong U.S. backing, and Prosper said that he couldn’t recall whether Washington ever gave funding for a probe.

Farid Mutaqi, a senior investigator for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said that it was almost impossible to visit the site because of Dostum’s power in northern Afghanistan.

Mutaqi said there’d been threats on his life and those of his staff members from Dostum. There are rumors that the site was mined and that Dostum’s men would torture or kill people if they were caught researching in the area. At least three Afghans who witnessed the original digging of the mass grave or who investigated it later reportedly were killed, and a handful of others were beaten.

Mutaqi said that he told officials at the United Nations and the local provincial reconstruction team that Dostum’s men had disturbed the mass graves this year. They did nothing, he said.

Now, Mutaqi said, “You can see only a hole. In the area around it you can find a few bones or some clothes. The site is gone . . . as for evidence, there is nothing.”

A spokesman for the United Nations in Afghanistan, Adrian Edwards, acknowledged in an e-mail statement that the U.N. had known that the graves had been dug up but had kept quiet.

“You’re right that we don’t always make public statements, but that’s because we’re in a conflict environment and have to weigh up whether doing so will stall chances of progress against impunity in other areas or put lives at risk,” the statement said. “It’s a judgment call we constantly strive to get right, and this is not the only instance where the choices we have to make can be extraordinarily tough ones.” Edwards noted that the U.N. is awaiting a report about the site by a forensic specialist.

The spokesman for the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said that while he didn’t know the details of the digging at the site, “there cannot be impunity for war crimes of this nature and scale . . . it’s a real shame.”

Spokesmen for NATO and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul denied knowing that the remains of hundreds of men had been removed from the site, and had no further comment.

“We have no information about bulldozers or digging at the site,” said Lt. Cmdr. James Gater, a spokesman for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The U.S. general who heads NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, wouldn’t do an interview, Gater said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Mark Stroh said that he’d checked with several officials at the embassy and “nobody seemed to have any visibility on this.” Stroh added that “We don’t necessarily monitor all of Dostum’s behavior.”

A McClatchy reporter, traveling without official escort, took GPS readings of the open pits last month, and a forensic investigator with Physicians for Human Rights, a group contracted by the U.N. to examine the site, confirmed that they were in the same area where the grave site was found in early 2002.

In May 2002, the U.N. announced that a Physicians for Human Rights team had dug a test trench in the area and found 15 bodies, three of which had been exhumed and found to have died recently of asphyxiation

In November 2002, amid the Physicians for Human Rights findings and news reports, a top-secret cable from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research said that the number of people killed during transport to Sheberghan “may approach 2,000.”

The cable also said that while there was no security at Dasht-e Leili, U.N. personnel from Mazar-e-Sharif were monitoring the grave ” ‘every few days’ for signs of tampering.” There’d been plans for a detailed forensic investigation of the site in spring 2003.

“The hope had been to do a full exhumation in 2003,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a senior investigator at Physicians for Human Rights. “It didn’t happen.”

The U.N. monitoring of the site stopped. Edwards, the U.N. spokesman, said that he was still trying to reach officials who’d been present to get an explanation. The U.N., NATO, U.S. forces and the Afghan government never took any formal responsibility for patrolling the grave site.

Physicians for Human Rights made several requests to top U.S. officials to secure the mass graves, including an August 2002 letter to then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld asking that he “reconsider the position of the Defense Department and assure security at the grave site.” Four months later, the organization sent a letter to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz saying that it was crucial to provide a small security detachment.

“From the time we discovered the site in January 2002, we had been advocating privately and publicly to the United Nations, the U.S. and the Afghan government to ensure consistent site protection and protection of forensic evidence,” Frank Donaghue, the chief executive officer of Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement to McClatchy. “And clearly that did not happen.”

Dostum has long experience with mass graves being used in the Afghan political arena. In 1997, he revealed the discovery of mass graves of Taliban members killed by a former ally turned rival, Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan, in the Dasht-e Leili desert. The grave sites, which Dostum’s men brought in international journalists to document, helped cement Pahlawan’s exile from the area at the time.

Afghanistan’s attorney general, its top law enforcement official, said that given the bad security conditions in the country it was hard to think about investigating possible war crimes.

“So for the time being, we have put these issues off for the future,” Mohammed Ishaq Aloko said in an interview at his Kabul office.

Aloko, who’s seen as being very close to President Karzai, didn’t respond directly to repeated questions about Dostum.

“I believe that those who committed crimes against humanity will be prosecuted one day,” Aloko said. Just not anytime soon, he said.

Have Your Say: U.S. Keeps Silent as Afghan Ally Removes War Crime Evidence
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Public support for ID cards dips to 55 per cent

Friday, December 12th, 2008

By Lewis Page | The latest Home Office poll on public attitudes to the planned National ID card indicates that support for the scheme has eroded slightly, with the proportion of those in favour down from 60 to 55 per cent.

The survey, carried out among 2,098 randomly selected Brits from 31 October to 4 November, showed opposition to the Card remaining steady. Seventeen per cent of respondents disagreed strongly with the plans and 9 per cent slightly, up from August by a single percentage point each.

The top reason given for disagreeing with the card stayed the same - that it would interfere with personal freedom. Other common objections were that the scheme was unnecessary, wouldn’t work, and would be a waste of money.

Twenty-three per cent of those disagreeing also said that the government could not be trusted to keep personal data secure, up from 19 per cent in August. Before August’s survey this concern wasn’t cited often enough to figure in the results, reflecting the rash of data-loss scandals suffered this year.

According to the survey report, “there is still confusion and uncertainty, particularly regarding the belief that individuals will be required to carry their identity cards with them at all times”. Some 69 per cent of respondents believed this to be true, but according to the Home Office pollsters “it is in fact false”.

Another interesting remark was made in the report: “There were also a number of people who believed public and private sector organisations will be able to access their information (56%), but again this is a false statement.”

One would have thought that some public-sector organisations - for instance the Immigration and Passport Service itself - would be able to access the information, but apparently not.

The Tories and the NO2ID anti-card group said the survey results showed the government was losing the argument.

“We are seeing the beginning of the end of ID cards,” NO2ID’s Phil Booth told the Telegraph.

The survey results can be read in full here (pdf). ®

Have Your Say: Public support for ID cards dips to 55 per cent
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Britons think UK is turning into police state

Friday, December 12th, 2008

The results come as concerns raised by the arrest of Damian Green refuse to die down.

Sixty-five per cent of users said they believed Britain was turning into a police state, echoing accusations of ‘Mugabe-style’ tactics levelled against the government by the Conservatives.

Only 24 per cent of users disagreed with the statement.

There was strong support for Mr Green, with 83 per cent of users saying he did not deserve to be arrested.

The government came in for criticism over the affair, indicating Labour’s response to the controversy has failed to satisfy the public.

The committee set up to assess the causes and impact of the arrest was lambasted by opposition parties for having a limited remit and only being able to convene after the police investigation is over.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are both boycotting the committee.

Seventy-eight per cent of politics.co.uk users said they believed government figures were aware of the police action before it occurred.

Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, home secretary, have explicitly said they were unaware of the arrest. Yesterday Sir Gus O’Donnel, head of the civil service, assured MPs on the public administration committee he was taken by surprise by the arrest.

He also confirmed the home secretary was not made aware of the arrest before it occurred.

But asked what should happen next, 51 per cent said the government had to prove it did not know of the arrest.

Twenty-three per cent of users said the system whereby police enter parliament had to be reformed. Nine per cent of users said heads should roll in the Metropolitan police.

Some users did disagree with the shadow immigration minister’s actions though. Eleven per cent called for a clampdown on people leaking government information, while nine per cent wanted Mr Green to apologise for leaking information.

There are several investigations into the arrest currently ongoing.

The police are investigating themselves through an internal inquiry set for publication next week.

Two committees of MPs – the home affairs committee and the public administration committee – are looking in to the arrest.

It is not yet clear how the committee set up by speaker Michael Martin will conduct its affairs now it is being boycotted by everyone but Labour.

Have Your Say: Britons think UK is turning into police state
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