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Top CIA lawyers to face legal complaints over roles in interrogation program

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

A grassroots coalition will file complaints today with the Washington, D.C. bar against two Central Intelligence Agency lawyers for their involvement in authorizing the use of controversial interrogation techniques against detainees in US custody.

Velvet Revolution, a coalition of over 150 grassroots groups, will register complaints against CIA lawyers Jonathan M. Fredman and John A. Rizzo. Fredmen, who is currently counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, served as the Associate General counsel for the CIA from 2001-2004. Rizzo is the current Acting General Counsel for the CIA but is retiring this month. His nomination to become full General Counsel has been held up for years over his alleged role in enabling the CIA’s controversial interrogation program.

DC lawyer and activist Kevin Zeese, along with a former Reagan administration Associate Attorney General Bruce Fein, held a press conference this morning at the National Press Club in which they discussed the complaints they will be filing later today.

The complaints to be filed against Fredmen and Rizzo describe the role both men played in authorizing the CIA to use techniques generally considered torture against detainees in US custody, captured during the Bush administration.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano, in a statement to RAW STORY Monday, said, “We’ll give this the attention it deserves.”

A call placed to the Director of National Intelligence’s office was not immediately returned.

Detainee Crucified

Among the more startling revelations during the press conference today was an article describing how a detainee in Iraq had been “essentially crucified” during CIA interrogation.

According to a June 22 article in The New Yorker magazine, cited during the press conference today, an Iraqi prisoner in US custody was crucified – dying from asphyxiation while hanging from his arms during a CIA interrogation.

“An Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad,” the New Yorker’s Jane Meyer wrote. “A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.”

No charges have been sought against the interrogators from the CIA who participated in the death of al-Jamadi or CIA officers involved in other cases.

Zeese, the Velvet Revolution, the Bill of Rights Committee, Fein, and others also called on the dismissal of both Fredman and Rizzo from the Obama administration during the press conference today.

Rizzo is already on his way out. But the man nominated by President Obama, former Justice Department lawyer Stephen W. Preston, was loath to criticize his predecessor or the CIA’s activities during his May confirmation hearing.

Questioned whether he felt waterboarding constituted torture, Preston answered, “I have not reached that conclusion.”

Zeese said the “rule of law” must be applied in the case of the two men who led the CIA’s legal efforts.

“We call for dismissal of two torture architects still working in the Obama administration,” said Zeese. “The United States must face the reality of the extent of the torture program under the Bush-Cheney administration. War crimes were committed. The toxic poison of torture will not be removed from the body politic unless the rule of law is applied.”

Rizzo Complaint

John A. Rizzo has been a CIA lawyer for roughly 30 years. The Los Angeles Times has called him the “most influential career lawyer in CIA history, having risen to the top of the agency’s legal ranks while leaving his mark on classified programs from proxy wars in Central America to Predator strikes in Pakistan.”

Rizzo is currently the Acting General Counsel for the CIA and was Deputy General Counsel for the CIA prior to his current role. The complaint, which will be filed with the DC bar today, cites Rizzo’s authority as legal counsel in authorizing torture techniques.

“Specifically,” it reads, “Mr. Rizzo ignored over two centuries of historical and legal precedents, fell short of the bar of the ‘good faith’ imperative, and advanced suspect legal constructs and prescriptions for detainee interrogation well outside of legal norms, thereby providing the false cover of claimed legality for those who then engaged in acts and policies that, in fact, violated the following laws, both in letter and spirit:

1. The United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), Articles 1, 2, 3 and 16 (ratified in October 1994), implemented by Sections 2340-2340A of title 18 of the United States Code.

2. The Geneva Conventions, Article 3, (ratified in August 1955)

3. The Eighth Amendment against “cruel and unusual punishment”

4. The “Separation of Powers” constructs and imperatives of the U.S. Constitution

5. The United States Criminal Code, Title 18, Prohibitions Against Torture (18 USC 2340A) and War Crimes (18 USC 2441)

The complaint against Rizzo further cites examples in which Rizzo allegedly participated in meetings authorizing torture or authored approval of certain techniques.

“On September 25, the most high-level senior Bush administration lawyers met at the Guantanamo Bay facility and included legal counsel from the President’s office (Alberto Gonzales), the Vice-President’s office (David Addington), the Department of Defense (Michael J. Haynes II), and the Department of Justice (Alice Fisher),” it reads. “With Mr. Rizzo representing the CIA which was overseeing the program, this group was there to observe and “green light” a brutal interrogation program, one that had begun months before with Zubadayah but was continued in a carefully prescribed program (minus waterboarding) with detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”

The full complaint can be read here.

Fredman Complaint

Fredman, meanwhile, was senior counsel within the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA during the Bush administration. According to the complaint, “Fredman approved a policy of torture and oversaw the details of its carefully prescribed application of violence, intimidation and humiliation intended to ‘enhance’ interrogations and aggressively coerce detainees at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Abu Ghraib (Iraq), Bagram AFB (Afghanistan), and ‘extraordinary rendition’ or ‘black’ sites in Thailand, Diego Garcia, Poland, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere.”

The complaint against Fredman also cites alleged involvement in authoring legal opinions and participating in meetings where these techniques were decided on.

“According to the first of two May 10, 2005 “Bradbury memos” addressed from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice to Mr. Rizzo at the CIA, the so-called “enhanced techniques” included dietary manipulation, forced nudity, stress positions, abdominal slaps and waterboarding,” the complaint says. “The second May 10th memo addressed the use of combinations of these techniques. Together with the August 2002 memo authored by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, these memos set forth both the claim of legality and detailed guidelines for a brutal and abusive program of detainee treatment. This legal analysis, approved and advanced within the CIA by Mr. Rizzo and Mr. Fredman at CTC, gave the formal ‘in-writing’ green light to a program that led to documented abuses and scores of deaths within the detainee/interrogation system.”

The full Fredman complaint is available here.

Velvet Revolution and other groups filed similar complaints against Bush administration lawyers on May 18 with the state bars of DC, New York, California, Texas and Pennsylvania.

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Wikipedia Censored News of Afghanistan Kidnapping

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

THE New York Times worked with Wikipedia to keep news of the kidnapping of one of its reporters in Afghanistan off the online user-edited encyclopedia.

New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped by the Taliban in November, escaped from his captors along with his translator this month.

A number of news organisations, including Agence France-Presse, at the request of the New York Times, agreed not to report the kidnapping out of concerns for their safety.

Keeping the news off Wikipedia was another matter, the Times said.

It said that on at least a dozen occasions, user-editors posted news of the abduction on a Wikipedia page about Mr Rohde, only to have it erased.

Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing, it said.

“The sanitising was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at the Times,” the newspaper said.

“We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” Mr Wales told the Times.

“I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

The Times said that two days after the November 10 kidnapping, Michael Moss, an investigative reporter at the Times and friend of Mr Rohde, altered Mr Rohde’s Wikipedia entry to emphasise that his work could be seen as sympathetic to Muslims, like his reporting on Guantanamo and his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims.

It said that the next day, an unidentified user, citing an Afghan news agency report, edited the entry on Mr Rohde and mentioned the kidnapping.

Mr Moss deleted the mention, and the user promptly restored it, adding a note protesting the removal, the Times said.

It said the Times eventually reached out to Wales and Wikipedia put an indefinite block and then a temporary freeze on changes to the page.

“We had no idea who it was,” Mr Wales said of the unidentified user making the edits.

He said there was no indication the user had ill-intent.

The Times said Mr Wales himself unfroze the page after the June 19 escape by Mr Rohde and his interpreter, Tahir Ludin.

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Obama Declares Coup “Not Legal” Amid Uncertainty

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Capping a day of mixed signals, U.S. President Barack Obama said late Monday that he considered Sunday’s ouster and exile of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to be “not legal” and that Washington still considered him the legitimate president of the Central American country.

Speaking at a very brief press appearance with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Obama referred to Sunday’s events as a “coup” and warned that, if permitted to stand, it would constitute a “terrible precedent” for the region.

“President Zelaya was democratically elected, he had not yet completed his term,” he said. “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected president there.”

Obama spokes several hours after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had explicitly declined to label Sunday’s developments a “coup” or demand that Zelaya be reported to his position as president. She stressed that State Department lawyers were still reviewing the situation to determine whether Zelaya’s ouster constituted the kind of action that would require a suspension of U.S. assistance.

Under U.S. law, no aid can be disbursed to any country “whose elected head of government has been deposed by military coup or decree”.

“We are withholding any formal legal determination,” Clinton told a press briefing here.

Asked whether Washington is demanding Zelaya’s restoration, Clinton said: “We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on, because we’re working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives.”

Her remarks marked a striking contrast to those of the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, who, at a press conference here at OAS headquarters with Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes, declared that Zelaya’s re-instatement as president was a pre-condition for any successful resolution of the two-day-old crisis.

The OAS, he said, will only be open to dialogue “if it contemplates the return of President Zelaya to his legitimate position.”

Insulza, who will chair a special emergency meeting of OAS foreign ministers on the situation here Tuesday, also invoked Article 19 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter which effectively suspends any member country from taking part in official OAS business if there is an unconstitutional interruption of its democratic order.

He said the situation required that the de facto authorities in Tegucigalpa suffer “international isolation” until the legitimate government is restored.

The contrast between Clinton’s remarks and those of Insulza’s suggested for the first time that at least a temporary gap has opened between the United States and most, if not all, of Latin America as to how they should react to the crisis in Honduras, whose Congress Sunday elected Roberto Micheletti as the new president after the military detained and expelled Zelaya to Costa Rica.

But Obama’s remarks late in the afternoon - particularly those about Zelaya’s official status - appear to have closed that gap.

“I think it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections,” Obama said.

“The region has made enormous progress over the past 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America. We don’t want to go back to a dark past. We always want to stand with democracy,” he said.

Obama’s remarks very much echoed Insulza’s statement earlier in the day. Noting the OAS Permanent Assembly’s condemnation of the moves against Zelaya late Sunday, the former Chilean former minister said the Council had “distance(d) the organisation from dark periods in the history of our continent”.

At the United Nations in New York City, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also issued a statement condemning Sunday’s events and calling for “the re-instatement of the democratically elected representatives of the country,” while the U.N. General Assembly, which is chaired by Nicaragua’s permanent representative Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, held a formal debate on Zelaya’s ouster.

For now, most attention here will be focused on Tuesday’s extraordinary meeting of the OAS General Assembly which Clinton is expected to attend. Despite the doubts raised by her remarks to the press, the secretary of state made clear that it will rely above all on multilateral efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Nonetheless, her statement set off a small firestorm among human rights and democracy activists here Monday who were concerned that they signaled a willingness to accept a solution that fell short of Zelaya’s reinstatement and a retreat from public statements made by the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Lawrence, who had publicly insisted until now that Washington would not recognise anyone as president except Zelaya.

“The political message (Clinton’s remarks) are sending is risky,” said Vicki Gass, a Central America analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). “If the U.S. doesn’t stand strong on this, it will set back its attempts to restore its image in the region.”

“Moreover,” she said, “with all of (President Alvaro) Colom’s problems at the moment, Guatemala is already perilously close to a coup itself,” she added.

Some analysts speculated that Clinton’s remarks may have been designed in part to gain some leverage over Zelaya who is seen by right-wing critics here as aligning Honduras behind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other left-wing populists, including Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa Delgado.

Washington, which has conducted military training, supply and surveillance activities from Honduran air bases for the past 30 years, last year lost access to a key air base in Ecuador as a result of a campaign promise by Correa.

In addition, Washington may want to condition its backing for Zelaya’s re-instatement on his pledge to drop efforts to reform the constitution in a way that that would permit him to serve a second term as president, ret. Amb. John Negroponte, who was the Reagan administration’s envoy to Tegucigalpa during the early years of the “contra war” against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, told the Washington Post Monday.

Zelaya’s attempt to hold a non-binding national referendum on the question clearly galvanised his foes in the other major branches of government, including the armed forces and the Supreme Court.

Indeed, the far-right Americas columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, celebrated Zelaya’s ouster in an op-ed entitled “Honduras Defends Its Democracy.”

“Hugo Chavez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution,” O’Grady wrote.

She called on “Honduran patriots” to “hold their ground” against international pressure by “Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton, and, of course, Hugo (Chavez) himself” to return Zelaya to office.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

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Met go into denial over G20 policing criticism

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Have Your Say: Met go into denial over G20 policing criticism
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The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable.  On CNN they were promoting  “Black In America, ” an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad,  the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled “The Showman and the Slave, ” by Benjamin Reiss.  The early penny press sold a “whiteness” upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self esteem boosting product.  One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth,  who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O. J.  story of the time.  Circus master, P. T. Barnum, charged admission to her autopsy,  which attracted the perverted in droves.  

And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival,  there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business.  According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P. T. Barnum,  but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.

I would classify CNN’s “Black In America” as a stunt.  In preparing for a sequel to the first ‘Black In America,  ”which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!),  CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans.  Unmarried black mothers were exhibited,  without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group.  Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow a statistician for The New York Times recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently,  the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8,   the California proposition that banned gay marriage.  An academic study refuted this claim,  but that didn’t deter  The New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia.  Schwarz is the writer who wrote in The Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last “Black in America, ” Soledad O’Brien,  CNN’s designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters,  scolded a black man for not attending his daughter’s birthday party.  The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers.  Ms. O’Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75% of white children will live at one time or another in a single parent household and that the Gov.  of South Carolina’s not showing up for Father’s Day isn’t just a lone aberration in “White America.”

How would CNN promote a “White in America?” The thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth? The suburban Dallas white teenagers who are overdosing on “cheese” heroin? Why not? Can’t get State Farm,  Ford and MacDonald’s to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring “Black In America , ”the aim of which is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country’s social problems. For ratings.  

During CNN’s carnival act disguised as news, the scene of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minster being urinated upon by a monkey, while sitting in his garden drew snickers in the newsroom.  This is what passes for coverage of the African continent by CNN.

When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed.  The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out.  “ Weird, bizarre, eccentric, ” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie.  Dan Abrams,  who made his reputation by convicting O. J.  Simpson,  before the opening arguments of his criminal trial,  made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness.  Mr.  Abrams,  a higher up at MSNBC,  employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan.  Given Abram’s background,  why isn’t that considered weird?

Former Calfornia poet laureate Al Young called to inform me that CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O. J.  alumni,  and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O. J.  Simpson’s innocence,  had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show”to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance).

Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial.  ( For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see Media Matters. com).  She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was  “devastating. ” So devastating that some legal experts said that  Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr.,  a vindictive District Attorney,  into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney,  who, among other things,  violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights,  and made disparaging remarks about the star,  during a press conference,  and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

In my lengthy examination of the trial printed in my book,  “Mixing It Up, Taking on The Media Bullies, ” I concluded that though millions of Jackson’s fans celebrated his acquittal,  the District Attorney,  who was allowed to squander the California taxpayers’ money so that he might humiliate a rich  black man, whom he felt had sassed him, was the victor.  At the beginning of the trial , Jackson was dancing on top of a van.  During the trial he had to be hospitalized.  At the end, he was a frail emaciated wreck.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s  claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile.  ( When the trial opened,  a USA Today CNN Gallup Poll found that 72% of whites and 51% of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.) Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement,  he can gloat over  the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. He even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.

Of course,  none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media,  out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric,  Joe Jackson,  Jackson’s father was MJ’s  sole abuser. The eyes of yesterday’s media,  black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence.

Guthrie also said that the prosecution “had conducted mini trials within the trial,” which brought up  “ a whole history of prior bad acts of molestation. ”She was referring to  1994 case in which Jackson was accused of pedophilia by a youngster who ,  according to writer Mary Fisher,  a serious journalist,  was used by his father to wrest some cash from Jackson.  In, ”Mixing It Up…, ”I summarized Mary Fisher’s serious and thorough investigation that was originally published in GQ, October, 1994,  under the title “Was Michael Jackson Framed?” Jackson,  settled out of court because Johnnie Cochran didn’t want him to face one of those all white suburban juries that O. J.  faced.  

Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed,  ambition,  misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors,  a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful,  hypnotic drug.  It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented. ”

Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the thirteen-year-old accuser’s stepfather,  Evan Chandler,  who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son.  At one point,  he asked Jackson to build him a house.   Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal,  which is known to induce false memory.  Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show,  where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience.  She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.  

None of the media descriptions of  Jackson’s career,  including a superficial pop driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper,  referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J. C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse.  She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel.  Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story. ” During the 2005 trial,

Jackson’s Attorney,  Tom Mesereau Jr.  got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J. C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1,  2005,  that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson,  Adam Sandler,  Jim Carrey,  Jay Leno and others,  “even though insurance was paying his bills. ” Linda Deutsch,  one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005.  said that Mesereau got the 15 year old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert,  a school official that “nothing happened “ between Jackson and him.

Connie Keenan,  editor of Mid Valley News,  wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper.  She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it.  During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal,  the mother received $965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “ My gut level,  she’s a shark.  She was after money.  My readers were used.  My staff was used.  It’s sickening. ”

While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother,  Janet Arvizo.  At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland,  Jackson’s ranch,  in a hot air balloon.

 On Apr 18,  2005,  Agence France-Presse reported “The mother of Michael Jackson’s young molestation accuser claimed that she feared her children would be spirited away from the star’s Neverland Ranch in a hot air balloon.  In some of the most bizarre testimony of Jackson’s frequently surreal trial,  the woman revealed that she told police she feared her three kids would vanish from Neverland into California’s blue skies.

“Did you tell the sheriff that you thought your children might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland?” Jackson’s lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau asked the woman under cross-examination.

“I made them aware,” she said.

Finally,  in November of 2006, according to TMZ,  Janet Arvizo pled no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles.  She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8, 600 in restitution.  During Jackson’s trial,  Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud.  Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150, 000 settlement from J. C. Penny’s.  Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies,  Nancy Grace,  commenting on the death of Jackson,  said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the  prosecution.”

Yet,  these journalists insist that their news product is superior
to that of bloggers.  (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond,  a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death)

G. Q. s Mary  Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fair didn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings.  She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia.  Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jurie’s decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo,  Courtney Hazlett.  She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland and as there was to Graceland,  because “bad things happened at Never Land. ” We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures.

All of these opinions seem to indicate that Cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please.  This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.

But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey.  For years cable,  which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury,  accused her of murdering her child.  Only after her death was it found that she was innocent.  

If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough,   it didn’t get any better the next day,  June 26.

Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to forty charities,  on the “Today Show,  “it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children,  questions meant to attract the prurient.  Again, Diane Dimod was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star. Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning.  This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble (that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world.  

I would like to have seen more independent African-American journalists comment on the passing of Michael Jackson,  but,  according to Richard Prince,  who runs a media blog for the Maynard journalism Institute, hundreds have lost their jobs over the last two years,  including Pulitzer Prize winners like Les Payne.

With the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P. T. Barnum.

Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, “Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies” was published by De Capo.

 

Lyrics: by Michael Jackson

They wanna get my a**,  dead or alive.
You know he really tried to take me down by surprise.  
I bet he missioned with the CIA.
He don’t do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

He out shock in every single way.
He stop at nothing just to get his political say.
He think he hot cause he’s BSDA.

I bet he never had a social life anyway.
You think he bother with the KKK?
I bet his mother never taught him right anyway.
He want your vote just to remain TA.
He don’t do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Dom S.  Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man 

 

ISHMAEL REED

Have Your Say: The Persecution of Michael Jackson
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The astonishing amount of data gathered on every one of us

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Ever wondered how much personal information is held about you? Well, it looks something like this… Stacked over two feet high and weighing 12kg (nearly two stone), this pile of more than 3,000 sheets of paper contains every private detail of my life in my 35 years on the planet.

In it you’ll discover what I buy at the supermarket, what type of movies I like to watch and what music I’ve downloaded.

You’ll find out what route I take to work, which restaurants I eat in, how often I go to the gym and everything I’ve ever bought or sold on Amazon.

You’ll know how much I earn, how much my house is worth and how much I owe on my mortgage, loans and credit cards.

You’ll even discover that I once complained about the postman, that I was once caught out for plagiarising a university essay and that, aged 11 months, I came down with conjunctivitis.

Yet astonishingly none of this highly sensitive information belongs to me - it is all stored on dozens of databases around the country which can be accessed by thousands of people.

As controversy rages over introduction of ID cards, I decided to find out how much personal data is held about me by sending out requests under the Data Protection Act to 46 organisations asking for copies of all my information. They included Government agencies, schools and universities, hospitals, dentists and GP surgeries and firms I have used.

By law any organisation which holds people’s data must respond to a “subject access request” within 40 days of receiving it. Most charge £10 for providing copies of records held on computers or manual filing systems.

The sheer volume of information I got back - and what it contains - will stun anyone already worried about how private your personal data really is.

The 43 pages I received from Sainsbury’s, for example, shows every purchase I have ever made at the supermarket using my Nectar loyalty card.

Babies The computer printouts also classify my wife Dani and I, based on us buying a bit of rocket and some grape juice, as “young educated workers” in the category “urban affluent”.

There are also spaces for entries such as “number of cats” and even “baby due date” and “number of babies expected”.

Data from Sky shows every phone call I have made and every Box Office movie I have rented. Reebok gym provided the time and date of all my visits.

Information from Transport for London shows every time and place I purchased a Tube ticket on my top-up Oyster card. It also showed I was prosecuted for travelling without a valid ticket last year after I picked up my wife’s Oyster card by mistake.

Banks provided records of every transaction I had made since opening my first student account in 1992.

And reports from credit references agencies Experian and Equifax show every address I have lived at and every time I have applied for credit, including loans, store cards and mobile phone contracts. Experian also shows how much I sold my last house for and how much my current one is worth.

Of the 46 organisations holding data, 12 have on record my signature, 36 my date of birth, 38 my home address and 10 my bank account details.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti yesterday praised our investigation.

They know She said: “Big Brother is supposed to be evening entertainment, not a whole way of life. The Mirror’s exposé of the scale of intrusion into our personal lives should shock even those all my old schools and exam grades

Matt, AGED 11 who used to think “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”.

And while we often believe information we provide to businesses is kept private, the small print reveals this is not always the case.

Information that Hilton Hotels takes, for example, can include your name, address, credit card details and code on the back of the card. And data can be shared with Hiltons, franchises or service providers in other countries with more lax data laws.

Video store Blockbuster keeps a record of every member’s home address and credit or debit card details.

And their policy states personal information may be sent to other Blockbuster firms, suppliers, subcontractors and business partners outside the European Economic Area.

Data from my Apple account shows what I listen to, while Amazon shows items I bought, and my risk score as a seller of 60.7. Whatever that means.

In my UCAS form my school’s deputy head teacher described me as “A capable student. He shows enthusiasm and has impressed staff by his determination.”

And in the 50 pages on me filed away at Sussex University, where I studied music, are comments from professors.

One wrote: “I’m at a loss to explain Matt’s reticence in class as his occasional contributions and his excellent essays give evidence of a sharp mind.”

Destroyed And you’ll have to take my word for it… Another, however, was less impressed, saying one essay verged on plagiarism.

City University, where I studied journalism, also provided copies of my grades but said all physical information such as tutor comments had been destroyed.

Other companies such as BT, O2 and gas and electricity companies Scottish Power and British Gas sent records of every time I called customer services, with an account of what was said.

The Government also holds reams of information on every citizen. HM Revenue and Customs provided 23 pages including unemployment benefit claims, tax contributions and pension forecasts.

Big Brother supposed to entertainment, The DVLA sent information about my driving licence, the Identity and Passport Service details not a way of

Shami Chakrabarti of all passports issued to me and the UK Border Agency recorded that my wife is Brazilian. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance had my exam grades.

is be life

And Greenwich council - the London borough where I live - sent 61 pages, including information on my library card, council tax, electoral registration, rubbish collection and parking fines. And medical records are the most revealing of all. Mine show that, aged just 20 days, I had an infection in my right index finger.

Aged 11 months, I was treated for conjunctivitis in both eyes.

As well as records of every GP visit, information was provided by hospitals, both public and private, and dentists. And insurer Legal and General have on record that my wife tested negative for HIV - the test was to qualify for life assurance cover.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti”It seems a combination of greedy contractors and complacent politicians have devalued personal privacy in Britain.

“The profiling of our supermarket habits is bad enough. Your shopping basket can reveal whether you have sex, kids, medical or dietary issues and what you read and watch. We need to be far more careful and demanding before signing up to loyalty schemes.

“But sometimes there’s no choice. When data is taken by compulsion, that’s even more serious. The ID madness is a loyalty card too far. Instead of offering discounts, it would cost us in privacy and race relations as well as billions in cash.

“Phone records, the DNA database and a whole host of other big computers may have their place but isn’t it time we gave more thought to whose information and how much is stockpiled, to be shared, lost or corrupted in the future? “Let’’s reclaim our privacy and keep Big Brother on the small screen.”

Top tips on how best to get info

You have a right to access information that organisations hold about you. Asking them for information is known as making a “subject access request”. To who can I make a subject access request?

You can make a subject access request to any organisation you believe holds information about you.

Examples include banks and credit card companies, hospitals and doctors, your present or past employer, government agencies, schools and universities and internet or mail-order companies.

How do I make a request?

Write or email the organisation you believe holds the details about you, asking for “all the information you hold about me”.

If you are not sure who to write to, address your letter or email to the data protection officer, or company secretary.

Your letter should include: Your full name and any names you used to be known by, such as a maiden name. Your full address, including postcode and, if relevant, previous addresses. Any other information you think the organisation will need to find your details and check that you are who you say you are. For example, your employer may need your payroll number and a hospital may need your NHS number.

It is also advisable to mention the Data Protection Act.

It is a good idea to send your request by recorded delivery. The organisation may ask for a fee, which is normally no more than £10.

However, they may charge you more for certain types of information, such as health records. How long does it take?

Once you have provided the relevant information and fee, the organisation must reply within 40 days. The reply should include a copy of all the information they hold about you, and details of why they hold your information and the organisations it may be passed to. What information can’t I see?

Some information on your record may be held back, for example if it could identify someone else or if you are the subject of a criminal investigation.

What if I have difficulty getting my information?

If you do not receive a reply to your request within 40 days, you should sent the organisation a reminder by recorded delivery.

If you still don’t receive a reply, you should call the Information Commissioner’s helpline on 08456 306060.

Have Your Say: The astonishing amount of data gathered on every one of us
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Minister demands Government stop ID cards

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Have Your Say: Minister demands Government stop ID cards
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US admits defeat on opium campaign

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Have Your Say: US admits defeat on opium campaign
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Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions

Monday, June 29th, 2009

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.

The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

Behind Obama’s turn toward indefinite detention is the quandary he faces over the prison camp at the US military naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Shortly after entering office in late January, Obama issued an executive order—to great media fanfare—calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison by January 2010. But the debate that has ensued in Washington, while nominally focused on what to do with the remaining Guantánamo inmates, has developed into a discussion of the broader anti-democratic methods of the “war on terror.”

The Obama administration hopes an executive order will resolve the legal fate of the 229 remaining Guantánamo prisoners—as well as future prisoners in the “war on terror”—by allowing the president to incarcerate them indefinitely, likely at military installations in the US.

The establishment of a Guantánamo-style system of indefinite detention without trial, on US soil, run by the military, has the most far-reaching implications for democratic rights in the US. It would also mark an end-run around Congress, which the administration had previously hoped could craft legislation to establish new extra-judicial forms of trial and incarceration—potentially including a special “national security court.”

As the Post puts it, resorting to an executive order would be taken as a signal that Obama “is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did,” a strategy that sometimes failed when courts ruled Bush administration measures “lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.”

According to the Post, the administration believes that Congress will be unable to develop satisfactory legislation, and that the proposal for a national security court would open up rifts within the Democratic congressional caucus. One official told the Post that the administration fears that Congress will assert too much control over any new legal system by subjecting the president’s ability to move detainees to legislative review. Nonetheless, negotiations between administration lawyers and top Congressional leaders are ongoing.

Obama’s efforts to reduce the census at the Guantánamo prison have been blocked at every turn. There remain, officially, 229 prisoners at Guantánamo—only 13 fewer than when Obama took office. Of the 13, 11 have been transferred to other countries, one has been taken to New York City to face trial (Ahmed Ghailani), and one has committed suicide. (Over the years at least five Guantánamo prisoners have killed themselves—the actual number is likely higher—and hundreds more have attempted to do so.)

The Obama administration has concluded that trials in the US court system can be used for only a handful of the prisoners. This is because, in the first place, the great majority of the Guantánamo inmates are innocent of any relationship to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Second, what “evidence” there exists against them has been extracted through torture, or dubious forms of hearsay evidence gathered by secret agents or foreign spies who cannot appear in court. Third, civilian trials could bring into public focus and place before judicial scrutiny the criminal methods Washington has used in the war on terror—including torture and kidnapping—and perhaps place in legal jeopardy CIA agents and former Bush administration officials.

The only name so far broached for a possible civilian trial is Khaled Sheik Mohammed, who is accused of being an organizer of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The administration claims that, among Guantánamo detainees, three other inmates are also linked to the attacks. This is in itself a damning admission. Of the hundreds of inmates who have been held at Guantánamo, many of them tortured, only four are alleged to have any connection to the act of terrorism that has, for eight years, been the catch-all justification for the “war on terror,” and indeed for the Guantánamo prison camp itself.

Military tribunals are apparently an increasingly unattractive alternative to the Obama administration as well. On May 15, Obama announced his intention to restart military commission trials for some Guantánamo inmates that would allow the use of hearsay evidence against the accused, and which would make only cosmetic alterations to the tribunal system used under the Bush administration. Yet out of the nearly 800 inmates who have been held at Guantánamo since 2001, only two have so far been convicted by military tribunals—Australian David Hicks and Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur. Hicks’ conviction resulted from a plea deal and he was soon released to Australia. Hamdan—a hand-picked test case of the tribunal system—was given a light sentence by a vetted military jury, in what was widely considered a major rebuke to the Bush administration.

A third option—releasing a small number of clearly innocent Guantánamo prisoners into the US—has been all but scrapped. Obama and leading Democrats have determined this is politically unviable, after Republicans raised a hysterical campaign over the supposed dangers of bringing “hardened terrorists” to the US.

Finally, Obama’s persistent appeals to foreign governments have, with few exceptions, been rejected. Foreign capitals argue that if the prisoners are too dangerous for release in the US, they will face political backlash for accepting them.

Thus through a process of elimination, the Obama administration now seems inclined toward the most reactionary solution—the establishment of indefinite detention without charge or trial within US borders. Administration officials say that about half of the current Guantánamo inmates “cannot be prosecuted either in federal court or military commissions,” according to the Post. “In many cases, the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services, or has been tainted by the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.”

The Post offers as an example Walid bin Attash, who is accused of participating in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. The evidence against Attash reportedly cannot stand scrutiny before either a domestic court or military tribunal. Crucial evidence in the government’s case against him was extracted through the torture of another prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and two other supposed witnesses cannot appear in court.

On June 22 US federal judge Richard Leon issued an emphatic ruling against the Obama administration in the case of Abdul Rahim al Janko, who has been held at Guantánamo for seven and a half years, highlighting the legal difficulties it faces in prosecuting “terror suspects” in civilian courts. Leon ordered the immediate release of al Janko, now 31, a Syrian national of Kurdish background. Leon ruled that the Obama administration had not proven, even on a lenient “preponderance of the evidence” basis, that al Janko could be lawfully held any longer. While the Obama Justice Department dropped the Bush administration’s use of the term “enemy combatant,” it offered the court the same argument—that the president can indefinitely hold terror suspects through the Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed three days after the September 11 attacks. In his ruling, Leon noted that whether or not the Obama administration cares to use the term “enemy combatant,” in practice its policy is the same.

Tragically, al Janko had been imprisoned and tortured for two years by the Taliban, who accused him of being a US spy, before the US seized him and subjected him to a much longer duration of imprisonment and torture—accusing him of being an Al-Qaeda terrorist.

The Post article is itself part of an attempt by the administration to gauge political support in Congress and the military-intelligence apparatus for such an executive order. “One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order,” the article notes. This is keeping with the modus operandi of the Obama administration. Prior to making several policy moves over the past few months related to Guantánamo, top “anonymous” officials “familiar with the matter” have planted stories either in the Post or the New York Times in an attempt to prepare a Congressional consensus.

Obama’s victory in last year’s election, it must be recalled, was owing in large measure to a shift behind his candidacy among powerful elements in the military and foreign policy elite who felt that the Bush administration’s handling of “the war on terror” had damaged the international standing of US imperialism. At the same time, Obama won millions of votes of those disgusted with the police-state policies of the Bush administration.

Now, only five months into his administration, Obama has cast aside all of his promises to curb the new anti-democratic powers of the state. Obama has promised there will be no investigation, let alone prosecution, of Bush administration officials or CIA agents who ordered or carried out torture, and has moved to block from public view further evidence of prisoner abuse. Invoking the “state secrets” doctrine, the Obama administration has maneuvered to shut down civil court cases of those who were abducted and tortured in the war on terror. And the National Security Agency, it has been revealed, continues to monitor the e-mail communications of millions of US citizens, even as the Obama administration moves to establish a military “Cyber Command” that would have new authority over the nation’s computer networks.

Obama’s increasingly open embrace of all the anti-democratic methods of the Bush administration—with even superficial differences vanishing—demonstrates the impossibility of defending democratic rights through one or another capitalist politician or party. The criminal methods of the “war on terror” arise not from the mistaken policies of individual politicians. Rather they arise inexorably from the deeper criminal act of launching wars of aggression, which in turn arises from the US political elite’s drive to offset the decline of US capitalism by seizing critical natural resources and strategic advantage over its main imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia.

Tom Eley

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Bagram Detainees Treated “Worse Than Animals”

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has revealed that former detainees at the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs.

The BBC’s conclusions are based on interviews with 27 former detainees who were held at Bagram between 2002 and 2006. None of these men were ever charged with a crime. Hundreds of detainees are still being held in U.S. custody at the Afghan prison without charge or trial.

Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, told IPS, “The BBC investigation provides further confirmation of the United States’ mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram.”

“These abuses are the direct consequence of decisions made at the highest levels of the U.S. government to avoid the Geneva Convention and forsake the rule of law. For too long, the unlawful detention and mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram has gone on outside the public eye,” he said. “Hopefully, this investigation will help change that.”

“When prisoners are in American custody and under American control, no matter the location, our values and commitment to the rule of law are at stake,” Hafetz said.

In April, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records pertaining to the detention and treatment of prisoners held at Bagram, including the number of people currently detained, their names, citizenship, place of capture and length of detention.

The ACLU is also seeking records pertaining to the process afforded those prisoners to challenge their detention and designation as “enemy combatants”.

“The U.S. government’s detention of hundreds of prisoners at Bagram has been shrouded in complete secrecy,” said Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney. “The American people have a right to know what’s happening at Bagram and whether prisoners have been tortured there.”

Amnesty International said it was “shocked” by the Bagram claims. It noted that a new detention centre is currently under construction at the camp.

Another prominent human rights organisation, the British-based Reprieve, called on the British government to take action concerning two Pakistanis who it says the U.K. helped render there from Iraq.

“The legal black hole in Bagram underlines the British government’s moral black hole when it comes to rendering two Pakistani prisoners there in 2004,” said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve. “These men were in British custody in Iraq, were turned over to the U.S., and have now been held for five years without any respect for their legal rights.”

In February 2009, British Defence Secretary John Hutton announced to the House of Commons that Britain had handed two anonymous Pakistani men over to the U.S., and they had subsequently been rendered to Afghanistan, where they were still being held.

“We have been assured that are held in a humane, safe and secure environment, meeting international standards consistent with cultural and religious norms,” Hutton said at the time.

“As we have said all along, beating people and holding them incommunicado is not humane, safe and secure,” Stafford Smith told IPS. “Britain has a moral duty to identify these men, so that we can reunite them with their legal rights, yet Mr. Hutton refuses to do this.”

No prisoner in Bagram has been allowed to see a lawyer, or challenge his detention. According to the BBC, the U.S. justice department argues that because Afghanistan is an active combat zone it is not possible to conduct rigorous inquiries into individual cases and that it would divert precious military resources at a crucial time.

“These men were never in Afghanistan until the UK and the U.S. took them there,” said Stafford Smith. “It is the height of hypocrisy to take someone to Bagram and then claim that it is too dangerous to let them see a lawyer. Even Guantánamo Bay is better than this.”

The Pentagon has denied the BBC’s charges of harsh treatment and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.

The Bagram Airbase built by the Soviet military in the 1980s. The approximately 600 people held there are classified as “unlawful enemy combatants”. None was charged with any offence or put on trial - some even received apologies when they were released.

Many allegations of ill-treatment appear repeatedly in the BBC interviews: physical abuse, the use of stress positions, excessive heat or cold, unbearably loud noise, being forced to remove clothes in front of female soldiers.

In four cases detainees were threatened with death at gunpoint.

“They did things that you would not do against animals let alone to humans,” said one inmate.

“They poured cold water on you in winter and hot water in summer. They used dogs against us. They put a pistol or a gun to your head and threatened you with death,” he said.

“They put some kind of medicine in the juice or water to make you sleepless and then they would interrogate you.”

The BBC said its findings were shown to the Pentagon. Lt. Col. Mark Wright, a spokesman for the U.S. secretary of defence, insisted that conditions at Bagram “meet international standards for care and custody”. He said the U.S. Defense Department has a policy of treating detainees humanely.

But he acknowledged that, “There have been well-documented instances where that policy was not followed, and service members have been held accountable for their actions in those cases.”

Since coming to office, U.S. President Barack Obama has banned the use of torture and ordered a review of policy on detainees, which is expected to report next month. But unlike its detainees at the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the prisoners at Bagram have no access to lawyers and they cannot challenge their detention.

William Fisher

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Labour government forces one million disabled workers to find work

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

The Brown Labour government is forcing a million disabled, sick and injured workers off social benefits. The vast majority are being driven into low paid employment or onto poor quality training schemes, at the same time as the number of workers losing their jobs soars.

The current drive began in 2001 when the Blair Labour government introduced new regulations in 50 jobcentres, forcing people claiming incapacity benefit to attend “job-focused” interviews every three years or risk losing payments. Blair defended the scheme, saying that “if people are severely disabled and cannot work, we will give them every protection; indeed, we will increase it”.

The then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Alistair Darling added, “The crucial thing is that I believe that these regulations will mean, for the first time, we can make sure that everyone of working age gets the help and support they are entitled to, because our objective is to make sure we get as many people into work as possible.”

However, guidelines sent out to jobcentre staff made it clear that continued payment of benefits could “be considered only as a last resort when a meeting with a personal adviser is inappropriate and would be of no benefit to the customer. Deferrals should be used infrequently and waivers very rarely.”

In the ensuing period the press was full of lurid stories about “benefit cheats” and “Britain’s sick-note culture”. But claiming invalidity benefit was never an easy option for people unable to find work.

As the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation explained, benefit was not paid automatically when a claimant produced a sick note as the media tried to portray. Claimants had to have paid in sufficient National Insurance contributions during the previous two tax years to qualify. Their cases were regularly reviewed by the Benefits Agency Medical Service and an examination by an Agency doctor was often required. The Agency continued to assess as unfit for work eight out of ten cases referred to it and of the rest, over half successfully appealed. The Association concluded, “This shows that far from being claimed by those who are not really sick or disabled, invalidity benefit is often withdrawn incorrectly.”

Nevertheless, the government pressed ahead, publishing its Green Paper, “A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work” in 2006. It aims to replace Incapacity and other benefits with the Employment Support Allowance and JobSeekers’ Allowance was called “part of the biggest shake-up of the modern welfare state since the Beveridge Report of the 1940s.”

At the end of 2008, then Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said the government’s intention was to force virtually every claimant to take steps to get back into work, work for benefit or face sanctions. He declared that the recession “was not an excuse for anyone to avoid getting a job” and quoted a Labour wartime minister, Herbert Morrison, “We have not hands or brains to waste, and no resources to fritter away on those who don’t contribute to our national effort.”

Purnell stated that all 2.7 million Invalidity Benefit / ESA claimants will be tested by 2010 and anyone who can walk more than 400 metres, stand for 30 minutes or climb 12 steps without the aid of a banister would risk losing it.

Claimants now have to show they are “moving towards work”, undertake compulsory Work Focused Interviews and produce Action Plans or risk losing benefit. Only those people with “the most severe disabilities and health conditions” are exempt from “work-focused activity”.

John works as a job training adviser. He spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the humiliating and degrading treatment handed out to those on incapacity benefits.

At his local job centre the number of unemployed workers has increased six-fold. Group interviews involving up to 15 workers at a time often take place, rather than the one-to-one consultations that used to occur.

Unemployed workers aged 25 or over receive Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) benefits of just over ￡60 a week and those below 25 get an even more miserable ￡48. After six months JSA is stopped and it is means tested so that someone with savings over ￡16,000 will not receive it. Although there is some assistance for housing, the cost of a one-bedroom flat is at least ￡700 a month and the sudden arrival of a ￡140 TV licence or ￡300 water bill makes life impossible. “Some of my clients end up with less than ￡1 a day to spend on food,” Stephenson explained.

Many companies are using the economic crisis to slash wage rates. Semi-skilled jobs such as truck driving that were until recently paid seven, eight or nine pounds an hour are now being advertised at the minimum wage (￡5.80). Increasingly, firms are employing people on promises of higher pay after six months on the minimum wage only to sack them. One of John’s clients came off JSA benefit and took up an offer to be trained as a car mechanic, only to be sacked after working 40 hours a week for ￡60 for six months.

Because of the lack of real jobs, many unemployed and disabled workers are being referred to private companies for advice on “training opportunities.” John explained, “The government says it is spending billions on training but there is no strategy for long-term jobs. In the meantime private companies are making a fortune.”

“The government has made a big fanfare over training. It says the main aim is to get employers to agree to take on someone after training, but I have never seen a letter or contract resulting from this.

“There are a plethora of companies with lucrative contracts to provide training. They are not worth the paper they are written on,” John continued.

“Many courses are mindless and pointless. At the moment there are loads of fork lift truck training courses being advertised, but no jobs for those who complete them. The nearest one I found being advertised was 40 miles away.

John said that, from his experience, the vast majority of workers on incapacity benefits have genuine health issues resulting from industrial injuries, heart attacks, strokes, mental problems and drug addiction. The last thing they need is more pressure on them at such a vulnerable time in their lives. At the end of most interviews he finds himself saying, “How the hell did you get sent to see me? It’s really heart breaking.”

Paul Mitchell

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Obama contemplates Executive Order for detention without charges

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

When Obama first unveiled his “preventive detention” policy, many defenders praised him (and claimed he was different than Bush) because of his vow that — as he put it — “my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime.”  But now, relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity, Peter Finn and Dafner Linza of The Washington Post and ProPublica report that the White House is “crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.”  TPM calls this “the latest installment in the Obama administration’s tendency to mimic the Bushies on war on terror tactics.”  And the article itself points out the obvious:  ”Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.”  Revealingly, the article quotes two Bush national security officials justifying the need for detention without charges.

Anonymous trial balloon articles like this one are difficult to comment on because it’s obviously designed to announce that a certain policy is being considered before it’s actually written, and so none of the key details is known.  Would Obama’s new detention powers apply only to current “War on Terror” prisoners at places like Guantanamo and Bagram, or would they also apply to future, not-yet-abducted detainees as well?  Would these powers apply to detainees picked up anywhere in the world, far away from “war zones”?  Would there be any judicial review or other meaningful oversight provisions so that — even in theory — this was something other than the unilateral, unchecked presidential power to detain indefinitely without charges?  None of these important details is known (though the article notes that, under one White House proposal, “ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review“; the Emperor, sitting alone, will decree once a year whether they must remain in a cage).

This specific article is even worse than the usual one of its type, since it’s particularly uncritical in passing along administration claims without any skepticism (I addressed each of the “justifications” for Obama’s preventive detention proposal — Obama has to do this because of what Bush did; we can’t get convictions because of Bush’s torture; it’s common in War to do things like this, etc. etc. — here).  Worse, the article does not provide any information about the Obama officials whose mission the reporters are dutifully carrying out, so there’s no way to assess their motives. 

Those journalistic practices produce egregious sentences like this:  ”‘Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order’, the official said.”  I’d love to know which so-called “civil liberties groups” are pushing the White House for an Executive Order establishing the power of indefinite detention.  It’s certainly not the ACLU or Center for Constitutional Rights, both of which issued statements vehemently condemning the proposal (ACLU’s Anthony Romero:  ”If President Obama issues an executive order authorizing indefinite detention, he’ll be repeating the same mistakes of George Bush”). 

All of that said, we already know that Obama wants a system of preventive detention without charges — because he said so explicitly in last month’s “civil liberties” speech ironically and cynically delivered in front of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives.  And it’s hard to imagine how he won’t get what he wants:  Republicans are eager to grant the President this detention authority (Sens. Tom Coburn and Lindsey Graham have both gushingly praised Obama’s proposal) and, as the Bush era proved, there are always more than enough Congressional Democrats to join with the GOP caucus to enact any new system of expanded detention and surveillance powers.  Absent serious public opposition (and one recent poll shows overwhelming opposition), it seems highly likely that Barack Obama will wield the power to imprison people indefinitely without charges of any kind.

* * * * *

There is one point in particular I really want to highlight about all of this:

There has now emerged a very clear — and very disturbing — pattern whereby Obama is willing to use legal mechanisms and recognize the authority of other branches only if he’s assured that he’ll get the outcome he wants.  If he can’t get what he wants from those processes, he’ll just assert Bush-like unilateral powers to bypass those processes and do what he wants anyway.  In other words, what distinguishes Obama from the first-term Bush is that Obama is willing to indulge the charade that Congress, the courts and the rule of law have some role to play in political outcomes as long as they give him the power he wants.  But where those processes impede Obama’s will, he’ll just bypass them and assert the unilateral power to do what he wants anyway (by contrast, the first-term Bush was unwilling to go to Congress to get expanded powers even where Congress was eager to give them to him; the second-term Bush, like Obama, was willing to allow Congress to endorse his radical proposals:  hence, the Military Commissions Act, the Protect America Act, the FISA Amendments Act, etc.).

That, for instance, is the precise pattern that’s driving his suppression of torture photos.  Two federal courts ordered the President to release the photos under the 40-year-old Freedom of Information Act.  Not wanting to abide by that decision, the White House (using Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) tried to pressure Congress to enact new legislation vesting the administration with the power to override FOIA.  When House progressives blocked that bill, the White House assured Lieberman and Graham that Obama would simply use an Executive Order to decree the photos ”classified” (when they are plainly nothing of the sort) and thus block their release anyway.  In other words:  

We’ll go to court and work with Congress so we can pretend that we’re not like those bad people in the last administration, but if we don’t get what we want by doing that, we’ll just do it anyway through unilateral Presidential action, using the theories that the last administration so helpfully left behind and which we’ve been aggressively defending in court.

This was also the mentality that shaped Obama’s “civil liberties” speech generally and his “prolonged detention” policy specifically.  In that speech, Obama movingly assured us that some of the Guantanamo detainees will be tried in a real court — i.e., only those the DOJ is certain ahead of time they can convict.  For those about whom there’s uncertainty, he’s going to create new military commissions to make it easier to obtain convictions, and then try some of the detainees there — i.e., only those they are certain ahead of time they can convict there.  For the rest — meaning those about whom Obama can’t be certain he’ll get the outcome he wants in a judicial proceeding or military commission — he’ll just keep them locked up anyway.  In other words, he’ll indulge the charade that people he wants to keep in a cage are entitled to some process (a real court or military commissions) only where he knows in advance he will get what he wants; where he doesn’t know that, he’ll bypass those pretty processes and assert the unilateral right to keep them imprisoned anyway. 

A government that will give you a trial before imprisoning you only where it knows ahead of time it will win — and, where it doesn’t know that, will just imprison you without a trial — isn’t a government that believes in due process.  It’s one that believes in show trials.

And here again, with this Executive Order proposal, we see this same mentality at play.  According to the Post article, one motive behind the Executive Order is that “White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible.”  In other words:  we’ll be happy to work with Congress as long as they give us what we want; if they don’t, we’ll just do it anyway using unilateral presidential powers.   It’s certainly possible — in fact, I’d say it’s likely — that if Congress passes a preventive detention law, it will be even more Draconian than the one Obama wants.  But a President who recognizes Congressional authority only when he likes the outcome — and ignores it when he doesn’t — isn’t a President who actually recognizes Congressional authority at all.

* * * * *

What ultimately matters here is that we not lose sight of the critical point:  no matter the form it takes, and no matter which route is used to implement it (act of Congress or executive order), indefinite detention without charges is a repugnant and tyrannical power.  Democrats and progressives had no trouble understanding that fact during the last eight years, so they should have no trouble understanding it now.  As The New York Times columnist (and Obama supporter) Bob Herbert put it this week:  ”Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.”  Herbert also wrote:

Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention , imprisoning people indefinitely, for years and perhaps for life, without charge and without giving them an opportunity to demonstrate their innocence.

And yet we’ve embraced it, asserting that there are people who are far too dangerous to even think about releasing but who cannot be put on trial because we have no real evidence that they have committed any crime, or because we’ve tortured them and therefore the evidence would not be admissible, or whatever. President Obama is O.K. with this (he calls it “prolonged detention”), but he wants to make sure it is carried out — here comes the oxymoron — fairly and nonabusively.

Proof of guilt? In 21st-century America, there is no longer any need for such annoyances.

Human rights? Ha-ha. That’s a good one.

Just look at the rationale being invoked by Obama officials to justify all of this, from the Post article:

Tawfiq bin Attash, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and who was held at a secret CIA prison, could be among those subject to long-term detention, according to one senior official.

Little information on bin Attash’s case has been made public, but officials who have reviewed his file said the Justice Department has concluded that none of the three witnesses against him can be brought to testify in court. One witness, who was jailed in Yemen, escaped several years ago. A second witness remains incarcerated, but the government of Yemen will not allow him to testify.

Administration officials believe that testimony from the only witness in U.S. custody, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, may be inadmissible because he was subjected to harsh interrogation while in CIA custody.

I thought Democrats (and Obama himself) believe that information obtained via “harsh interrogation” is unreliable.  Isn’t that supposed to be a core Democratic belief?  If so, why would we want to imprison someone as “dangerous” based on unreliable information obtained using those methods?   If the accusations against someone were drowned or beaten out of another person, shouldn’t we consider those coerced accusations too unreliable to justify keeping the accused in a cage for years with no trial?  And if they’re willing to repeat the accusations in court now that they’re not being tortured — and if we have independent, non-coerced evidence to prove the accusations — why would past abuse bar the use of their testimony (as Marcy Wheeler suggests, the real reason why we’d want to prevent witnesses who were tortured from testifying in a court seems to be “because we’re covering up our own torture”)?

More important, look at the mentality being expressed — and about to be implemented — here:  there may be instances where we cannot get convictions because of witness unavailability or other logistical problems, so we’ll just imprison them anyway.  Does it really require any effort to demonstrate how dangerous that mentality is — that the President will have the power to order people imprisoned wherever there are some logistical barriers to obtaining convictions?  If there’s one principle that can be described as fundamental to the American founding, it’s that the state — and certainly the President — do not have the power to order people imprisoned without charges.  Thomas Jefferson said that trials by jury is “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”  Why is this painfully obvious proposition still necessary to defend after the November election?

UPDATE:  I posted this before, but Rachel Maddow’s 7-minute commentary on Obama’s preventive detention proposal was really superb and well worth watching:

 

On a related note:  as I’ve written many times, the area in which Obama is replicating Bush abuses most egregiously is his embrace of Bush’s secrecy obsessions.  Jon Stewart last night had much to say on that topic.   That Obama is adopting approaches similar to Bush’s in these areas is a view that is obviously spreading — even among Obama supporters — and is becoming increasingly difficult to deny.

 

UPDATE II:  Digby, today:

The irony, of course, is that the man who ran on transparency is actually turning out to be less transparent than the president he excoriated on the campaign trail for his secrecy. Bush and Cheney were pretty upfront about the fact that they believed they had the constitutional right to act in any way they saw fit, regardless of the accepted understanding of the constitution or congressional and judicial prerogatives. Bush declared “I’m the decider” and he meant it. This administration obviously believes it has that right as well — it just pretends otherwise.

I suspect they understand that keeping the folks from losing that freedom loving, patriotic illusion of American exceptionalism is an important part of exercising American political power. And they’re probably right. Bush and Cheney’s biggest mistakes were in being honest about something nobody wants to know.

Relatedly, Booman — a very enthusiastic Obama supporter — documents multiple reasons to be suspicious of the claim that the DOJ cannot prosecute Tawfiq bin Attash (the example Obama officials cited in the Post article).  That’s why excessive secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power — it allows government officials to make dubious and misleading claims without any ability to verify them, all while they operate in the dark.

Glenn Greenwald

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Elite Iraqi troops in forefront after US pullback

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

As Iraqi security services prepare to take back their towns from the Americans on Tuesday, the sharpest arrow in their quiver is an elite, American-trained force with a reputation that leads many Iraqis to call it “the dirty brigade.”

Its real name is the Counter Terrorism Bureau, and its commander insists it’s professional, nonsectarian and not dirty at all.

Violence is already rising and will likely continue after the handover as different factions test the government’s ability to manage without American backup. But Kalib Shegati al-Kenani, the Iraqi Army general who heads the bureau, is confident his force can cope and that his country will not slide into renewed sectarian warfare.

The elite units, armed with high-tech U.S.-made equipment, often pair up with American special forces to go after Iraq’s most wanted foes — both al-Qaida extremists and Shiite militants.

They are thought to have been the main force that assisted the Americans during an offensive in Baghdad’s Sadr City quarter last year to rout Shiite militias, and on operations targeting Sunni insurgents.

Formed soon after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the force became known as the “Dirty Brigade” because it was secretive and until recently operated outside the Iraqi chain of command, reporting directly to its U.S. handlers.

It was so little known that it even was rumored to be used against the Shiite-dominated government’s opponents in the political mainstream_ a charge denied by the Iraqis and the Americans.

Originally numbering about 4,500 members, it is reported to have doubled in size and now reports directly to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“We are professional and not sectarian forces, and we bring together people from all sections of the population. Each member of the bureau signs a document vowing not to speak about sectarianism, partisan affairs and nationalities. Their commitment is only to Iraq,” al-Kenani told The Associated Press in an interview this week.

Al-Kenani, a 59-year-old veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War, is a Shiite, his deputy is a Sunni and one of his top generals is a Kurd.

The force has sought to reinforce its nonpartisan makeup by refusing to accept recruits who previously served in sectarian militias. Also, says Maj. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saedi, a senior commander, it “does not allow any minister or government official to enter its headquarters to prevent any interference in investigations and security operations.”

Its ranks are made up of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, al-Saedi said, but it does not publish breakdowns.

A statement in Arabic posted on the U.S. military’s Web site acknowledged the public’s “misconceptions about this very viable and important unit.”

It picks its targets on the basis of rigorous checks, the statement said. “In short,” it added, “the CTB’s mission is targeting terrorists, not the Iraqi public or political foes.”

Al-Kenani said the bureau has a good intelligence-gathering machine and “cooperation with all ministries.”

The Americans are already leaving the towns and cities, and once they are gone full responsibility will fall to the Iraqi police and military, which numbered 654,362 members at last count.

Although some troops will remain as trainers and advisers, the remaining 133,000 U.S. military personnel will be confined to base unless called in by the Iraqis. A full withdrawal is envisioned by the end of 2011.

The Iraqi government has declared Tuesday a public holiday.

“June 30 is considered an Iraqi victory day,” al-Kenani said, “and we will all celebrate the withdrawal of American forces.”

Explosions around the country have claimed more than 160 lives since June 20, when a truck bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk killed 82. A bombing in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City killed at least 61 people on Wednesday.

But al-Kenani said the days of mass violence and near-civil war were over. “Whoever carries out explosions and security breaches after the withdrawal of forces will have no excuse,” he said.

“They were repeatedly bragging about fighting the occupation; now the occupation is out.”

Associated Press Writer Patrick Quinn contributed to this story from Baghdad.

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Pilger: A world of fragility and fear

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

TS Eliot wrote that the point of any journey was to find out where you came from. As I bore my bulging canvas bag to the wharf at Circular Quay, not far from where my Irish great-great-grandparents had landed in leg irons, I hoped the point of my journey would become clearer once my ship had sailed.

The Bretagne was my ship. It was white with blue stripes along the side and had a graceful bow, having been built in Saint-Nazaire as a modest version of the mighty Normandie. Alas, long veins of rust showed, and the crew looked morose. A Greek company now owned it, and the previous day had decanted 600 Greek brides.

The brides had been married “by proxy” in Greece to men in Australia whom they had never met. It worked this way.

Young Greek and Italian men emigrated to Australia in the post-war years to work in the outback or at night in factories.

When the authorities realised an entire gender was missing, they encouraged young women in Greece to write to their bereft male compatriots on the other side of the world. This often resulted in a wedding with the groom present only in a photograph pinned to the wedding cake. When a bride ship docked, anxious men and women would hold up photographs to identify the wife or husband they had never laid eyes on.

Unfortunately, some hearts would change during the month-long voyage, producing a certain anarchy on arrival.

My generation filled these ships on the return voyage to Europe, squeezing into six-berth cabins below the Plimsoll line in order to reach that mystical place called OT - “over there.”

On the wharf that May day, aged 22, I told my mother I would be back in a year or two.

“You won’t be back,” she said.

With departure delayed 12 hours because Captain Nick was missing, we sang our umpteenth Auld Lang Syne, and the beer and tears ran dry. Finally we steamed out into the Pacific. I thought I could see my father’s silhouette on the headland, someone flashed their headlights.

I have read about fellow expatriates who insist that, from a tender age, they longed for cultural betterment elsewhere. Clive James comes to mind.

As the bride ship slid into its first trough of green ocean and salt spray cascaded over those of us still looking back, I was smitten with what I thought was seasickness but was really homesickness - rather like some tropical maladies, it recurs all your life and there is no cure.

Having made it to Singapore, Captain Nick missed, perhaps literally, the next port (Colombo) for reasons unexplained.

As we crossed the Indian Ocean, with fresh water rationed for reasons unexplained, the horizon became a see-sawing line etched in my vision.

The tiny, always empty dance floor remained at an angle and the Italian band were to be found at the rails, lime-green of pallor.

Affordable alcohol ran dry for reasons unexplained, with the exception of sweet vermouth.

Entertainment was provided by a fight between a Greek officer, known as Matinee Idol, and a New Zealander who had thrown him into the ship’s minuscule pool when we crossed the equator.

I interviewed a sheepshearer who was going home to Greece. When the interview was published, the headline asked: “Is this the shortest shearer in Australia?”

Then, one morning, there were red cliffs and, beyond, the Suez Canal.

At Aden, I paid £12 for a Hermes Baby typewriter, which accompanied me to places of upheaval for 30 years, minus only the letter M.

When we landed at Genoa, I fell to the ground. Two years later, the bride ship blew up without loss of life, for reasons unexplained.

The journey taught me how immense the world is, and I remain in awe at the sheer magic of a flight that covers the same 13,000 miles in a day and a night.

That said, when the pilot flying a cargo of rifles, ammunition, stockfish and me into the Biafran war at night bellowed, as we approached the ghostly outline of a dirt road littered with the wreckage of aircraft: “Turn the fucking lights on so I know where to put this thing!” I was also in awe at my own fragility and fear.

Mind you, the art deco piano bar flying across the United States was no less surreal. You can take a shower on the new Airbus A380 after your massage. The magic has become routine, as if the epic scale of things no longer applies.

That is not quite true, and the trigger for these reflections is a poignant story of a journey that was on the front pages recently, but briefly, having now succumbed to Gordon Brown’s perennial crisis and the venality of his associates.

Yet it lingers on.

A backpack and a vaccination card were found and a laptop, and there was a photograph on the web of a container holding the few bodies found floating where Flight AF447 went down on June 1.

I have flown by Air France from Paris to Rio, the fatal route in reverse, and I remember the place where the trade winds collide and the ocean is sucked into the sky and becomes a vortex of a kind. My aircraft then - a Boeing 707 - rose and fell, rose and fell. The fake starlight window in the ceiling provided reassurance.

The news of Flight AF447 is now all but forgotten. I read a dignified statement by Jane and Robin Bjoroy, the parents of Alexander, aged 11, who had visited them during his half-term holiday and was on his way back to school in Bristol on AF447.

They said their son’s death was tragic. It certainly was that, and perhaps a reminder of the epic scale of things.

This article appeared in the New Statesman.

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Michael Jackson Dead

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in LA.

Jackson was reported to be in a coma with family members at his bedside.

Jackson was rushed to a hospital this afternoon by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics.

Capt. Steve Ruda said paramedics responded to a call at Jackson’s home around 12:26 p.m. He was not breathing when they arrived. The parademics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center.

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