SCIENCE / Next Generation Lighting on the Horizon

Posted on May 16, 2009 by RagBlog

OLED light sources. The devices are flat – another reason they are desirable as light sources.

Flat-screen light bulbs switch on
By Jason Palmer / May 15, 2009

Researchers have demonstrated white, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) sources with the same efficiency as fluorescent light bulbs.

The result brings closer the prospect that OLEDs will be the flat-screen light sources of choice in the future.

The limited lifetime of the blue-emitting part of the devices means they survive for just hours, but new blue-emitting materials are on the horizon.

The results are published in the journal Nature.

There has been significant work in OLEDs in recent years, so that small displays and even televisions based on the technology are beginning to come to market.

Though much of the technology would be the same for lighting, the key word for light bulbs is efficiency – and OLEDs had not, until now, passed the efficiency benchmark set by fluorescent bulbs.

Two different types of organic polymers can be used in the devices: phosphorescent and fluorescent.

While fluorescent materials – the kind used in OLED displays and televisions – are significantly longer-lived, they are only one-fourth as efficient.

Recent research has therefore focused on optimising the efficiency and lifetime of devices based on phosphorescent materials.

“I think if you went back five or 10 years and said this is where we’re going to end up, there would’ve been all-round scepticism.” John de Mello, Imperial College London

Profit and loss

Now, Karl Leo of the Institute for Applied Photophysics in Dresden and his colleagues have made the first devices to outperform fluorescent bulbs in the efficiency stakes.

To do that they had to reduce the sources of loss – stages in which electrical energy goes in but does not exit in the form of usable light.

They did this first by optimising the design in the emitter layer, where losses happen because charge carriers recombine rather than dumping their energy into the polymers that give rise to coloured light.

Another significant source of loss happens at the edge of the diode structure where the light is actually produced; if it is not extracted efficiently, photons can bounce around inside it or be re-absorbed.

The team solved that problem by designing a particularly efficient, nano-structured interface to suck out more light than previous efforts.

“The combined result is that we achieve an efficiency which is for the first time higher than a fluorescent tube,” Professor Leo told BBC News.

Also, unlike previous white OLEDs, that efficiency does not decrease as the devices are turned up to produce higher-intensity light.

Very much like prior white OLEDs, however, the significant problem is that the devices degrade within an hour or two, because the polymers that produce the blue part of the light are unstable.

However, Professor Leo said that promising first results on stable, phosphorescent blue polymers are starting to emerge.

“I’m personally convinced that it may take a few years, but chemists will solve this problem and find materials which are stable enough,” he said.

Energy saving bulbs (AP). Fluorescent bulbs have long held the title of most efficient lighting.

Roll call

John de Mello, an optoelectronics expert at Imperial College London, described the work as “impressive”.

“I think if you went back five or 10 years and said this is where we’re going to end up, there would’ve been all-round scepticism,” he said.

“But they’ve shown that by taking existing materials and known methods, tweaking them a little bit, and addressing several issues in parallel you really can bring efficiencies up to parity with fluorescent tube lighting.”

Professor Leo suggested that by further improving the design of the part of the OLEDs that whisks the light out, efficiencies up to twice that of fluorescent bulbs could be reached.

For the moment, the devices are comparatively expensive because of the manufacturing methods the group employs.

But OLEDs, when the materials and designs are right, can be produced in so-called “roll-to-roll” manufacturing in which vast sheets are made, making them economical on a commercial scale.

“Commercially this is really an opportunity,” said Professor Leo.

“I’m pretty convinced that in a few years OLEDs will be a standard in buildings.”

Source / BBC News

Thanks to Deva Wood / The Rag Blog

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The Right Wing Vision of the Future

Posted on May 16, 2009 by RagBlog

I received this unsolicited from someone identified as Linda Hunnicutt. I thought it suitable to share because it is such a fear-filled (and racist) image that the right insists on painting. Some of the statements are truly remarkable.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


Buddy’s Brother

Forget about Conservatism vs Liberalism and look at some historically verifiable facts.

If the Conservative states seceded, there would be about 20 Liberal states and 30 Conservative states.

The Liberal states would comprise a half million square miles, and Conservative states would comprise two and a half million.

Their murder rate per 100,000 would be 13.2, and ours would be 2.1.

To pay taxes, their workers would have to work five months per year, and ours would have to work two.

Their industries would be over-taxed and over-regulated and ours would thrive.

Their public schools would indoctrinate, and ours would educate.

Their disruptive students would get counseled, and ours would get spanked.

Their murderers would get free room and board, and ours would get executed.

They’d welcome illegal aliens, and we’d deport them.

Their military would grow weak, and ours would grow strong.

They’d be energy-DEpendent, and we’d be energy INdependent.

History has shown us that the above would almost surely happen.

The following would PROBABLY happen. Most of their married mothers would have to work, and ours could stay home and raise children.

Their towns would have lots of pawn shops and porn shops, and ours would have lots of thriving businesses and churches.

They’d have mosques full of subversives, and we’d have churches full of patriots.

Their citizens would not have guns, and ours would. (Yamamoto, after Pearl Harbor, said, “You cannot invade America. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass.”)

SECESSION SOUNDS GOOD TO ME AT THIS POINT

Let the Liberals have their states and people that want a nanny state completely controlled can move to those states. Give us our Freedom and let us regain our self respect and live by the rules set forth in the Constitution.

Source / Freedom Is Not Dead

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Afghanistan: Needless Civilian Death Continues

Posted on May 16, 2009 by RagBlog

It is time to start acknowledging the lies of the Obama administration. They will close Guantanamo, but the military tribunals will resume shortly (they will be more “humane and effective”). They will stop the Iraq war, but the civilian murders in Iraq and Afghanistan especially, with concomitant lies about responsibility, will continue. They will reform health care, but only with the blessings of the insurance industry and big pharma. They will bring us change.

I have been blinded by Barack Obama’s “change.”

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

A 12-year-old recovered at a hospital in Herat, Afghanistan, from burns suffered during an American airstrike on her village. Photo: Joao Silva for The New York Times.

Afghan Villagers Describe Chaos of U.S. Strikes
By Carlotta Gall and Taimoor Shah / May 14, 2009

FARAH, Afghanistan — The number of civilians killed by the American airstrikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.

“We were very nervous and afraid and my mother said, ‘Come quickly, we will go somewhere and we will be safe,’ ” said Tillah, 12, recounting from a hospital bed how women and children fled the bombing by taking refuge in a large compound, which was then hit.

The bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. Several villagers said that they could not distinguish all of the dead and that they never found some of their relatives.

Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count.

The calamity in the village of Granai, some 18 miles from here, illustrates in the grimmest terms the test for the Obama administration as it deploys more than 20,000 additional troops here and appoints a new commander, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, in search of a fresh approach to combat the tenacious Taliban insurgency.

It is bombings like this one that have turned many Afghans against the American-backed government and the foreign military presence. The events in Granai have raised sharp questions once again about the appropriateness and effectiveness of aerial bombardment in a guerrilla war in which the insurgents deliberately blend into the civilian population to fight and flee.

Taliban insurgents are well aware of the weakness and are making the most of it, American and Afghan officials say. Farah, a vast province in the west, contains only a smattering of foreign special forces and trainers who work among Afghan police and army units. Exploiting the thin spread of forces, the insurgents sought to seize control of Granai and provoke a fierce battle over the heads of the civilian population, Afghan and American officials say.

After hours of fighting and taking a number of casualties, the American forces called in their heaviest weapon, airstrikes, on at least three targets in the village.

The rapid mass burial of the victims and the continuing presence of insurgents in the area have hampered investigations. Journalists were advised against visiting Granai. Villagers were interviewed here in Farah, the provincial capital, where they came to collect compensation payments, and in the neighboring province of Herat, where some were taken for treatment.

Much of the villagers’ descriptions matched accounts given by the United States military spokesman, Col. Greg Julian, and the provincial police chief, Col. Abdul Ghafar Watandar. But they differed on one important point: whether the Taliban had already left Granai before the bombing began.

There was particular anger among the villagers that the bombing came after, they say, the Taliban had already left at dusk, and the fighting had subsided, so much so that men had gone to evening prayers at 7 p.m. and returned and were sitting down with their families for dinner.

The police chief said that sporadic fighting continued into the night and that the Taliban were probably in the village until 1 a.m.

Whatever the case, American planes bombed after 8 p.m. in several waves when most of the villagers thought the fighting was over; and whatever the actual number of casualties, it is clear from the villagers’ accounts that dozens of women and children were killed after taking cover.

One group went to a spacious compound owned by a man named Said Naeem, on the north side of the village, where the two girls were wounded. Only one woman and six children in the compound survived, one of their fathers said.

Another group gathered in the house of the village imam, or religious leader, Mullah Manan. That, too, was bombed, causing an equally large number of casualties, villagers said. Colonel Julian, the American military spokesman, said that the airstrikes hit houses from which the Taliban were firing. The enormous explosions left such devastation that villagers struggled to describe it. “There was someone’s legs, someone’s shoulders, someone’s hands,” said Said Jamal, an old white-bearded man with rheumy eyes, who lost two sons and a daughter. “The dead were so many.”

A joint government and United States military delegation visited Granai last week but came back sharply divided in their conclusions. The Afghan government said that 140 civilians were killed and 25 wounded, and that 12 houses were destroyed.
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The United States military said the Afghan numbers were far too high. This week, a senior military investigator, Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III of the United States Army, arrived to conduct an in-depth inquiry for the region’s overall military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

An independent Afghan organization, Afghanistan Rights Monitor, said Wednesday that at least 117 civilians were killed — including 26 women and 61 children — drawing on interviews with 21 villagers and relatives of the dead. The group criticized both the Taliban for fighting among civilians, and the United States military for using excessive force.

The police chief, Colonel Watandar, confirmed much of the villagers’ accounts of the fighting. A large group of Taliban fighters, numbering about 400, they estimated, entered the village and took up positions at dawn on May 4. By midmorning, the Taliban began attacks on police posts on the main road, just yards from the village, they said.

The fighting raged all day. The police called in more police officers, Afghan Army units and an American quick reaction force from the town of Farah as reinforcements.

By midafternoon, the exchanges escalated sharply and moved deeper into the village. Taliban fighters were firing from the houses, and at one point a Marine unit called in airstrikes to allow Marines to go forward and rescue a wounded Afghan soldier, said Colonel Julian, the United States military spokesman. After that, Taliban fire dropped significantly, he said.

A villager named Multan said that one house along the southern edge of the village was hit by a bomb and that one Taliban fighter was killed there. But villagers did not report any civilian casualties until the American planes bombed that night.

Tillah, the 12-year-old girl, whose face bears the scars of a scorching blast, still twisted in pain from the burning in her leg at the provincial hospital in Herat, where she and other survivors were taken to a special burn unit. Her two sisters, Freshta, 5, and Nuria, 7, were barely visible under the bandages swathing their heads and limbs.

The three girls were visiting their aunt’s house with their mother when a plane bombed the nearby mosque, around 8 p.m., Tillah said. That is when they fled to Said Naeem’s seven-room home.

“When we reached there we felt safe and I fell asleep,” Tillah said. She said she heard the buzzing noise of a plane, but then only remembers coming to when someone pulled her from the rubble the next morning.

A second girl, Nazo, 9, beside her in another hospital bed, said she saw two red flashes in the courtyard that kicked up dust seconds before the explosion.

“I heard a loud explosion and the compound was burning and the roof fell in,” she said. Seven members of the family with her died, and four were wounded, her father, Said Malham, said.

“Why do they target the Taliban inside the village?” he asked wearily. “Why don’t they bomb them when they are outside the village?”

“The foreigners are guilty,” he continued. “Why don’t they bomb their targets, but instead they come and bomb our houses?”

[Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.]

Source / New York Times

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Life During Wartime : Ode to a Changed Mind

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog

Thanks to Dr. S.R. Keister /The Rag Blog

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Who’s Minding the Store? $9 Trillion in Mystery Money!

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

This single class of mystery money isn’t a lot less than the entire US yearly GNP, commonly cited as being about $14 trillion.

By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / May 15, 2009

In this video, we have the top Federal Reserve Inspector General, the federal watchdog responsible for big bank oversight. She is admitting under oath before Congress that she has no idea of just what to think about a mysterious $9 trillion worth of off-balance-sheet bank transactions. This is a figure cited by a Bloomberg article, and information that one would imagine a person in her position would soon know about. This single class of mystery money isn’t a lot less than the entire US yearly GNP, commonly cited as being about $14 trillion.

That being the case, her testimony describes federal oversight over some of the most important issues that any official could ever deal with, since it could put every US citizen on the hook for something close to $30,000 per person. But we have no idea of what these federally sanctioned taxpayer guarantees are actually propping up.
Given the current bottomless pit credit situation, the biggest investment banks probably don’t want anyone examining their total debt risk too closely. Meaning they are never going to permit the Federal inspectors they hire to operate very independently, without prior orders to audit or inspect.

Are the investment banks better termed ‘robber banks’, gorging themselves on public bailout guarantees because they’re too big to fail? If so, what happens when Obama finds out?

The Rag Blog

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Sy Hersh : Children Sodomized at Abu Ghraib as Mothers Watched

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Updated May 18, 2009

Journalist Seymour Hersh says there were ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.’

Hersh gave a speech. . . to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.

By Geraldine Seale

[This story was posted by Alex Koppleman. It was originally published on Thursday, July 15, 2004.]

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far. “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

“It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there’s enough out there, they can’t (Applause). …. So it’s going to be an interesting election year.”

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong’s blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: “[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, ‘You haven’t begun to see evil…’ then trailed off. He said, ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.’ He looked frightened.”

So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn’t he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists — will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? — and what is being done about it?

(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described “a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys.” The Guardian reported “formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.”)

Source / War Room / salon.com

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Singin’ on Thursday: Leonard Cohen, Poetic Master

Posted on May 15, 2009 by RagBlog

Thank You Leonard Cohen
By Joel Hirschhorn / May 14, 2009

The other night I went to a Leonard Cohen concert. I have never seen a huge audience over a very broad age spectrum so completely enraptured, impassioned and wild over an entertainer, especially one that has never in a very long career been embraced by the mainstream music industry. At age 75 Cohen is absolutely remarkable in his stubborn individualism, his refusal to do anything but his own poetry and visions about love, hate, humankind and society. He still has unbounded charisma and sings with total commitment to his music and lyrics.

In the 1960s and 1970s I satisfied myself with every poem, novel and song by Cohen. He was for me, and I think millions of others, a profound influence on my intellectual development, personality and commitment to stay true to my own values and visions. He was pure genius. He remains so.

He always seemed a tortured soul working hard to find love and beauty in a very disappointing world. Maybe that is why so many of us have related to his music and words for over half a century. When you listen to his songs you want to savor every word. You often may want to cry because he is saying something that cuts to the very heart and soul of human existence.

If you have an opportunity you definitely should see him in concert, or at least get his DVD Leonard Cohen: Live in which pretty much is what I expect every one of his concerts is like these days. To see and hear this 75-year old legend work hard for several hours should give all of us the courage and will to stay enthusiastically alive for a long time. Among his many, many albums you can choose do not overlook Leonard Cohen: Ten New Songs, a number of which he performs in current concert tour. What is so impressive is that he has the talent to write great new songs.

What also struck me about Cohen in his older years is his humility and his gracious appreciation for his fans and supporters, as well as his repeated praise for the musicians and singers that accompany him. Like him, they are remarkable. He seems a little amazed that so many of us have stayed with him over so many decades and even that younger people have come to appreciate his individualistic genius. One thing is for sure, Leonard Cohen will live on forever through his songs, as he should. Everybody knows.

As Cohen sings, there ain’t no cure for love, and certainly not for the enduring love of his fans that still find his unique style both joyous and meaningful. He has always shared his personal emotions, thoughts and agony with us in ways few entertainers are able to do. For that we must all be eternally grateful.

Source / Search Warp

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Guatemala : A General Sense of Insecurity

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Guatemalan police work at crime scene where bus driver was killed in ongoing domestic violence. Photo by Reuters / All Voices.

Insecurity in Guatemala

There are several processes taking place on the governmental level that are intended to reduce this insecurity, but so far, they have not convinced people that the government or the police are able to provide basic security for citizens, much less foreigners who are likely to be considered rich pickings for street crimes.

By Val Liveoak / The Rag Blog / May 14, 2009

Last week, I was in Guatemala City. It has always felt less safe than in some other parts of the country, and on this visit I continued to feel a pervasive sense of insecurity among the group with whom we partner, CEDEPCA [an ecumenical training center for community action]. One example of this is the reaction to my plan to go by city bus to buy my international bus ticket. My colleague Betty seemed ok with my plan but others in the office were rather surprised that I would go unaccompanied by bus, and expressed concern for my safety.

“Make sure the bus goes where you want to go, but don’t sit near the driver,” said the woman who shares Betty’s office. (There have been assassinations of drivers of public buses while they were driving lately.) “Be sure not to carry your passport, just take a copy,” Betty warned. I think their warnings reflect the general concern for the comfort and safety of a woman alone and a foreigner at that.

I think the staff at CEDEPCA share a general sense of growing insecurity that is common among middle-class people in Guatemala. There are several processes taking place on the governmental level that are intended to reduce this insecurity, but so far, they have not convinced people that the government or the police are able to provide basic security for citizens, much less foreigners who are likely to be considered rich pickings for street crimes.

I have experienced more concern about using public transportation here than in other cities where I work, and I try to take the advice I am offered. At any rate, my bus trips to and from the bus office were uneventful, and I travelled to El Salvador the next day.

Lately in Guatemala, there has been a rash of killings of drivers of public buses, and more widespread extortion of money from both drivers and other businesses. Organized crime here is considered to be in control of drug trafficking, human trafficking (including fraudulent adoptions) and to some extent, of gang activity. Few people consider the police forces, local, national or specialized groups such as tourist police, to be adequate protection — in some places they are known to be active in crime, and in others considered impotent at best.

I have read of two efforts to respond to this concern. One is the process called CICIG, an international initiative to reduce impunity in the judicial system by developing more effective investigative and prosecutorial efforts by the police, and reducing corruption among judges. They are investigating a number of high profile cases, presumed to involve some high authorities, as yet unnamed and uncharged. One case is that of three Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament, who with their driver, were killed in February 2007. Five Guatemalan police were arrested in this case, and, assassinated a few hours after being transferred to another prison. One of the suspect/victims was the head of the Organized Crime Unit. They are also investigating the murders of a group of Nicaraguans and one citizen of The Netherlands, whose bus was intercepted and burned.

On May 1, the government put into effect a law regulating licensing of guns and sale of bullets, intended to control rampant arms sales here. While as a licensing measure it may be ineffective, what is hoped is that it will cause criminals who have illegal arms to remain detained in jail after arrests — frequently they are released for lack of proof (or because judges are either paid or afraid to arraign them) after too hasty arrests. Some citizens are skeptical about any measures initiated by the current government, widely accused of having ties to drug cartels, but otherd are hopeful about results.

One effect of the widespread cynicism is growing vigilante or mob violence against accused criminals. The day I arrived the newspaper had stories of three men who were thrown off bridges by people who accused them of being extortionists. These events are common in the capital and in the provincial cities as well. In previous visits I have heard of organized vigilante groups, although not this time. Still, armed security guards are omnipresent.

I also heard of kidnappings of children, one of whom was killed, in a small town near a large provincial city. When I asked a Guatemalan about these kidnappings, he told another horrific story — the victims are not merely murdered but often cut into pieces, beheaded or show signs of torture — the intention is to terrorize their families into complying with kidnappers’ demands. These events all lead to a sense that Guatemala is unsafe for both visitors and residents.

[Texan Val Liveoak is a nonviolent activist who works with the Friends Peace Teams, a Quaker-sponsored network of groups and organizations that work for peace in communities around the world. Currently living in El Salvador and San Antonio, she coordinates Peacebuilding en las Americas, the Latin American Intitiative of Friends Peace Teams which also has programs in the African Great Lakes region and in Indonesia.]

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Obama Administration Will Continue Massive Secret Budgetary Outlays

Posted on May 15, 2009 by RagBlog

“The Black Hole” NSA headquarters, Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Big Increases for Intelligence and Pentagon “Black” Programs in 2010
By Tom Burghardt / May 13, 2009

Continuing along the dark path marked out by his predecessors in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama’s Defense and Intelligence budget for Fiscal Year 2010 will greatly expand the reach of unaccountable agencies–and the corporate grifters whom they serve.

According to Aviation Week, “the Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and 10 per cent of the total.”

Yes, you read that correctly. The “black” or secret portions of the budget are almost as large as the entire defense outlays of America’s allies, hardly slouches when it comes to feeding their own militarist beasts. The U.S. Air Force alone intends to spend approximately $12 billion on “black” programs in 2010 or 36 percent of its entire research and development budget. Aviation Week reveals:

Black-world procurement remains dominated by the single line item that used to be called “Selected Activities,” resident in the USAF’s “other procurement” section. This year’s number stands just above $16 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that’s 240 per cent more than it was ten years ago.

On the operations side, secret spending has risen 8 percent over last year, to just over $15 billion–equivalent to more than a third of Air Force operating costs.

What does it all go for? In simple terms, we don’t know. It is apparent that much if not all of the intelligence community is funded through the black budget: for example, an $850 million USAF line item is clearly linked to reconnaissance satellites. But even so, the numbers are startling–and get more so year by year. (Bill Sweetman, “Black budget blows by $50 billion mark,” Aviation Week, May 7, 2009)

How’s that for change! The Register gives a break down of the numbers for added emphasis:

1) Mainstream US armed forces $490bn-odd

2) UK armed forces $60bn

3) Chinese armed forces $58bn

4) French armed forces $54bn

5) “Black” US forces $50bn+

6) Japanese Self-Defence forces $44bn

While the American government refuses to disclose the CIA or NSA’s budget, “both the Agency and other non-military spooks do get money of their own. Some of this is spent on military or quasi-military activities,” The Register reports.

Toss in the world-wide deployment of CIA and U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) paramilitary operatives hidden among a welter of Special Access Programs (SAPs) classified above top secret and pretty soon we’re talking real money!

One such program may have been Dick Cheney’s “executive assassination ring” disclosed by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh during a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota in March.

And should pesky investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have the temerity to probe said “executive assassination ring,” or other DoD “black” programs well, their Inspector General’s had better think again!

According to the whistleblowing security and intelligence website Cryptome, a May 8, 2009 letter from Susan Ragland, GAO Director of Financial Management and Assurance to Diane Watson (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement, lays down the law in no uncertain terms to Congress.

Ms. Ragland wrote: “the IG Act authorizes the heads of six agencies to prohibit their respective IGs from carrying out or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing any subpoena if the head determines that such prohibition is necessary to prevent either the disclosure of certain sensitive information or significant harm to certain national interests.”

Neat, isn’t it! Under statutory authority granted the Executive Branch by congressional grifters, Congress amended the IG Act “to establish the Department of Defense (DOD) IG and placed the IG under the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense with respect to audits or investigations or the issuance of subpoenas that require access to certain information.”

What information may be withheld from public scrutiny? Ms. Ragland informs us: “Specifically, the Secretary of Defense may prohibit the DOD IG from initiating, carrying out, or completing such audits or investigations or from issuing a subpoena if the Secretary determines that the prohibition is necessary to preserve the national security interests of the United States.” (emphasis added)

The same restrictions to the IG Act that apply to the Defense Department are similarly operative for the Departments of the Treasury, Homeland Security, Justice, the U.S. Postal Service (!), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Talk about veritable mountains of dirty laundry–and “black” programs–that can be hidden here!

Space-Based Spies

Among the items nestled within the dark arms of Pentagon war planners is a program called “Imagery Satellite Way Ahead,” a joint effort between “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense designed to revamp the nation’s constellation of spy satellites,” Congressional Quarterly reports.

As Antifascist Calling revealed in several investigative pieces in June, October and November 2008, America’s fleet of military spy satellites are flown by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

According to the agency’s own description, “The NRO is a joint organization engaged in the research and development, acquisition, launch and operation of overhead reconnaissance systems necessary to meet the needs of the Intelligence Community and of the Department of Defense. The NRO conducts other activities as directed by the Secretary of Defense and/or the Director of National Intelligence.”

As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book, Spies for Hire, some ninety-five percent of NRO employees are contractors working for defense and security firms. Indeed, as Shorrock disclosed, “with an estimated $8 billion annual budget, the largest in the IC, contractors control about $7 billion worth of business at the NRO, giving the spy satellite industry the distinction of being the most privatized part of the Intelligence Community.”

While the Office’s website is short on information, some of the “other activities” alluded to by NRO spooks include the Department of Homeland Security’s National Applications Office (NAO).

As I wrote in October, the NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and “disaster relief” agencies such as FEMA use satellite imagery (IMINT) generated by spy satellites. But based on the available evidence, hard to come by since these programs are classified above top secret, the technological power of these military assets are truly terrifying–and toxic for a democracy.

DHS describes the National Applications Office as “the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes.” As Congressional Quarterly reveals, the “classified plan would include new, redesigned ‘electro-optical’ satellites, which collect data from across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the expanded use of commercial satellite imagery. Although the cost is secret, most estimates place it in the multibillion-dollar range.”

How these redesigned assets will be deployed hasn’t been announced. The more pertinent issue is whether or not DHS, reputedly a civilian agency but one which answers to the militarized Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), will position these assets to illegally spy on Americans. The available evidence is they will.

DHS avers that “homeland security and law enforcement will also benefit from access to Intelligence Community capabilities.” With Pentagon “black” programs already costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars the question remains, with NAO as the “principal interface” between American spooks, DHS bureaucrats and law enforcement, who will oversee NAO’s “more robust access to needed remote sensing information to appropriate customers”?

Certainly not Congress. Investigative journalist Siobhan Gorman writing in The Wall Street Journal documented last year, that despite a highly-critical June 2008 study by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress partially-funded the program “in a little debated $634 billion spending measure.”

Indeed, a fully-operational NAO now provides federal, state and local officials “with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery–but no eavesdropping–to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.” But as CRS investigators wrote:

Members of Congress and outside groups have raised concerns that using satellites for law enforcement purposes may infringe on the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. persons. Other commentators have questioned whether the proposed surveillance will violate the Posse Comitatus Act or other restrictions on military involvement in civilian law enforcement, or would otherwise exceed the statutory mandates of the agencies involved. (Richard A. Best Jr. and Jennifer K. Elsea, “Satellite Surveillance: Domestic Issues,” Congressional Research Service, June 27, 2008)

While these serious civil liberties’ issues have apparently been swept under the carpet, huge funding outlays by Congress for Pentagon’s “black” budget operations indicate that President Obama’s promises of “change” in how “government does business” is so much hot-air meant to placate the rubes.

Driven by a Corporatist Agenda

Wholesale spying by the American government on its citizens as numerous investigators have uncovered, is aided and abetted by a host of well-heeled corporate grifters in the defense, intelligence and security industries. These powerful, and influential, private players in the Military-Industrial-Security Complex are largely unaccountable; it can be said that America’s intelligence and security needs are driven by firms that benefit directly from the Pentagon’s penchant for secrecy.

Federal Computer Week reported in April that the program to revamp America’s spy satellites “has the backing of the Obama administration, and the program is expected to win congressional approval, according to a senior intelligence official.”

The same anonymous “senior official” told the publication, “given the backing of the Defense Department, ODNI and the Obama administration, lawmakers are expected to approve the plan.” And as with other “black” programs, the cost is classified but is expected to run into the billions; a veritable windfall for enterprising defense corporations.

The electro-optical satellite modernization program involves building new satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) would operate and expanding the use of imagery from commercial providers, according to a statement the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released April 7. Under the plan, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency would continue to integrate imagery products for government customers. (Ben Bain, “Spy satellite tally could increase,” Federal Computer Week, April 8, 2009)

While no decision has been reached on the “acquisition approach for the program,” ODNI and NRO “would oversee the acquisition strategy for the new government-built satellites and a contract would likely be awarded within months.”

In a toss-off statement to justify the enormous outlay of taxpayer dollars for the new initiative, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said last month, “When it comes to supporting our military forces and the safety of Americans, we cannot afford any gaps in collection.” Or perhaps “any gaps in collection” on Americans. As Tim Shorrock revealed,

The plans to increase domestic spying are estimated to be worth billions of dollars in new business for the intelligence contractors. The market potential was on display in October at GEOINT 2007, the annual conference sponsored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a non-profit organization funded by the largest contractors for the NGA. During the conference, which took place in October at the spacious Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in downtown San Antonio, many companies were displaying spying and surveillance tools that had been used in Afghanistan and Iraq and were now being re-branded for potential domestic use. (”Domestic Spying, Inc.,” CorpWatch, November 27, 2007)

Indeed, according to Shorrock when the NAO program was conceived in 2005, former ODNI director Michael McConnell “turned to Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Virginia–one of the largest contractors in the spy business. The company was tasked with studying how intelligence from spy satellites and photoreconnaissance planes could be better used domestically to track potential threats to security within the U.S.”

Tellingly, McConnell was a senior vice president with the spooky firm for a decade. Booz Allen Hamilton was acquired by the private equity firm The Carlyle Group in a 2008 deal worth $2.54 billion. In addition to Booz Allen Hamilton, other giant defense and security corporations involved in running Homeland Security’s National Applications Office include the scandal-tainted British firm BAE Systems, ManTech, Boeing and L-3 Communications.

Among the firms in the running to land ODNI/NRO new spy satellite contracts are: BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. All of these corporations according to the Project on Government Oversight’s (POGO) Federal Contractor Mismanagement Database (FCMD) have “histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations.”

Unsurprisingly, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE and Northrop Grumman lead the pack in “total instances of misconduct” as well as fines levied by the federal government for abusive practices and outright fraud.

Conclusion

Unaccountable federal agencies and corporations will continue the capitalist “security” grift, particularly when it comes to “black” programs run by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Despite a documented history of serious ethical and constitutional breeches, these programs will persist and expand well into the future. While the Obama administration has said it favors government transparency, it has continued to employ the opaque methods of its predecessors.

From the use of the state secrets privilege to conceal driftnet surveillance of Americans, to its refusal to launch an investigation–and prosecution–of Bush regime torture enablers and war criminals, the “change” administration instead, has delivered “more of the same.”

[Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press.]

Source / Dissident Voice

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Health Care Profiteers : This Won’t Hurt a Bit

Posted on May 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic from ISIPS.

The fight for real health care reform

We are being outspent by billions of dollars by the amalgam of well heeled interest groups that will benefit financially from maintaining the status quo.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / May 14, 2009

In Webster’s Universal College dictionary there are four definitions, but one applies. Prostitute: “A person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base or unworthy way, usu, for money.”

I have studied several photographs of President Obama taken this past Monday with the representatives of the health insurance industry and their shills. Try as I may I cannot get a similar photograph out of my mind, of negotiations which took place in September 1938. Here is Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich amid a group of glowing contemporaries happily announcing “we have achieved peace in our time.”

Concurrently, Sen. Max Baucus continues to create a chimera in his Senate committee, inviting those to testify who have created the present health care crises and having those who honestly and sincerely desire decent health care escorted out of the chamber in handcuffs. It is really mind-boggling that the needs for health care for all Americans would descend into such a farcical morass.

Each day I come across reports of more unions that have endorsed HR 676. Each time I want to cry out in frustration. I have not reached the depths of cynicism felt by Alan L. Maki as expressed in his excellent comment appended to my Rag Blog article of May 8; however, I can share his frustration. I further appreciate his listing of the financial contributions by the insurance and related industries to the members of the Senate.

It is my understanding that Congress will not finally vote on a health care bill until September, so we have some time to work for HR 676, S 703, or the compromise suggestion of an alternative, i.e. a public, subsidized, public health care plan for all similar to that presently available for those over the age of 65 as Medicare. According to a survey published by The Commonwealth Fund, only 8% of the folks covered by Medicare rated their coverage as “fair or poor,” while 18% of individuals with employer based insurance were dissatisfied.

M.S. Bellows, Jr. has an excellent piece that was distributed by Common Dreams: “Is Obama Naive about the For-Profit Industry’s Commitment to Real Reform?” What was promised? A coalition of health insurance, hospital, pharmaceutical company and physician trade groups, plus a major union, are promising the President that they will reduce the rate of future growth in the cost of health care by 1.5% per year for the next decade! The reason sited by the group — including Big Pharma, the health insurance lobby, the American Medical Association (which represents the pharmaceutical industry and has done so for years), and hospital industry groups — is that they are “Americans.” To anyone with any insight at all this is patently absurd and has absolutely nothing to do with the establishment of a universal health care system in the United States. How stupid do these folks think we are?

Yet, I fear that they have something very strong in their favor, and that is the cultural detachment in the United States. I am taken back to an episode during the 2004 presidential campaign when on a rare occasion I was watching TV – CNN as I recall. The correspondent was interviewing an underprivileged lady somewhere in the Midwest. Her husband was unemployed, they had lost their health insurance, two children were ill, their house was in foreclosure. The interviewer asked the lady who she was voting for, and without hesitation she answered: “For President Bush, of course, he is against gay-marriage.”

In recent weeks numerous new organizations have entered the fight for decent health care, including Single Payer Action and Doctors for America. These join the Physicians for a National Health Care Program, Center for American Progress, Campaign for America’s Future, Health Care for America Now, and others. Yet, in spite of the positive work done by all of these dedicated folk, we are being outspent by billions of dollars by the amalgam of well heeled interest groups that will benefit financially from maintaining the status quo. Their lies and misrepresentations are everywhere: that European or Canadian health care is inferior to ours, that folks die of cancer in the UK because of neglect, that it takes weeks to get seen by a doctor in the Netherlands, that the government in Germany chooses one’s physician. Happily, a bit of light is being brought by The Ed Show on MSNBC, and a few well done TV appeals to support the cause of decent health care.

At near age 88 I hate to surrender; however, I feel that the only answer to achieve anything constructive — and I will, with hesitation, settle for “Medicare for all” — is to mobilize an action akin to the civil rights movement, taking to the streets, the public squares, and our elected representatives’ local offices. This must remain nonviolent, for the forces behind denying health care will only be too glad to take advantage of what they see as civil disobedience. They control the “authorities” and the seats of power. There may be three months to overcome the pandering of the lobbyists to our elected officials. Remember the Jacobins did not initiate the events of 1889, the movement originated with The Third Estate, the middle class.

Don’t miss “The Secret Right-Wing Strategy on Health Care is Exposed,” an article by Bernie Horn published by Campaign For America’s Future. To effectively counter the manipulation of our representatives and the mainstream media, we must stay informed.

Further, do not be distracted by the calls for computerized records as the sine qua non of health care. The right wing seems to feel that this, along with “wellness programs,” and further tax breaks for the well-to-do, will suffice. Granted computerized records would once again open up communications, hopefully, among our various attending physicians, but they would also have the unhappy result of opening up our health care records to the insurance industry and give them further opportunity to fish for reasons to disqualify our rightful claims.

We must educate any and all of our friends. Medicare, for instance, is an example of government run insurance, as is the Veterans Administration (which the Bush administration grossly underfunded). For instance, with a national health program the “bureaucrats” will not select your doctor or hospital for you. You will have free choice of physicians as is the case in Europe. The lies and fabrications of long waits for care in the EU or Canada are essentially just that: lies and fabrications. Yes, in Canada, just as in the United States, you might have to wait for an especially popular physician at a major clinic, but that is the exception, not the rule.

The opponents of universal care will, however, cite it as the rule. You might have to wait for a new and expensive cancer drug in the UK; however, you probably won’t get it at all in this country — without the best insurance. Here’s a statistic to remember: single payer, universal care as proposed in HR 676 will cost the citizen approximately 40% of present costs.

Health Insurance Company Profits in 2007 (thanks to the Wonkroom at Think Progress):

  1. UnitedHealth Group — $4.654 billion (Oxford, PacifiCare, IBA,AmerChoice, Evercare, Ovations, MAMSI and Ingenix)
  2. Well Point — $3.345 billion (Various BLUES across the U.S.)
  3. Aetna Inc. — $1.831 billion
  4. CIGNA Corp. — $1.115 billion
  5. Humana Inc. — $834 million
  6. Coventry Health Care — $626 million
  7. Health Net — $194 million

Much work lies ahead. We must unite and give it a good try, for if we do not succeed we will encounter an even worse health care situation than has been foisted upon us by the health insurance industry for the past 30 or more years.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His previous articles on The Rag Blog can be found here.]

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Dick Cheney: The Dangerous Legacies Live On

Posted on May 14, 2009 by RagBlog


The hidden hand of Dick Cheney
By Juan Cole / May 13, 2009

Out of office, he continues to push his tortured version of reality — and his vision of an imperial presidency — and there are signs he is succeeding.

Dick Cheney is out there. He is defending torture, dissing Colin Powell, and genuflecting before radio personality Rush Limbaugh as the high priest of what’s left of conservatism. His refusal to go quietly, unlike his much-reviled boss, is risky. He was a laugh line more than once at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

But the media’s focus on the sheer spectacle of the ex-veep’s antics, and on the Republican vs. Democrat feud he’s stoking, underestimates the way Cheney’s principles still inform many of the country’s most crucial policies. Like the creatures in the “Alien” films, Cheney has planted some vicious spores in the bellies of his successors, which threaten to tear them apart as they mature. Can the new administration truly reverse Cheney’s transformation of the United States into a 21st century empire, with the president an imperial figure above the law?

The former vice-president is now a more reliable laugh-getter than vote-getter. At the correspondents’ dinner, President Obama quipped, “Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he’s very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.'” Guest comedian Wanda Sykes went further, saying she found Cheney positively terrifying. “He scares me to death. I tell my kids, I say, ‘Look, if two cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney, you get in the car with the stranger.'”

This week’s news is about the grand old pit bull’s struggle to continue to define his own party. Cheney emerged last Friday to warn on a North Dakota radio program that it would be a mistake for the Republican Party to moderate its message. (Does that mean it is now radical?) Then on Sunday Cheney told Bob Schieffer of “Face the Nation” that it was a mistake to stop using waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation, and that they did not constitute torture. He also poked fun at Colin Powell, questioning his credentials as a Republican and expressing a preference for the waspish Limbaugh as the party’s leader.

But don’t dismiss Dick Cheney as a fading punch line, or as tragedy reprised as comedy. While the Obama administration has adopted large numbers of policies that directly contradict Cheney’s positions, it would be a mistake to overlook Cheney’s continued influence on the executive branch through the precedents set by the Bush administration. Among the former vice-president’s most important legacies is increased government secrecy. Obama’s Department of Justice continues to rely on an alleged “state secrets” privilege. It has thus tried to block lawsuits by victims who alleged they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. intelligence even though they were innocent of wrongdoing, on the grounds that such trials would reveal state secrets. The same state secrets doctrine was used by Obama’s DOJ in an attempt to block investigations of Bush-Cheney warrantless wiretaps. Likewise, the DOJ has attempted to block lawsuits seeking the release of Bush-era e-mails and to prevent prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from appearing before a judge to challenge their imprisonment.

Although the Obama administration is pledged to withdraw from Iraq militarily in a way that Cheney would never have contemplated, it is just as committed as Bush-Cheney to spreading good cheer about the new government in Baghdad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the bombings by Iraqi guerrillas this spring the “last gasp” of “rejectionists,” seeming to channel Cheney’s allegation in 2005 that we were seeing the “last throes” of the insurgency. Red Washington and blue Washington both want to tell us stories about how Iraq will be OK and is just bedeviled by a few unreasoning malcontents who are on their last legs.
Quantcast

On a trip to Afghanistan in 2004, Cheney told U.S. troops, “Your children and my grandchildren will live in freedom tomorrow because of what you’re doing today.” He warned them of continuing threats there, however, saying, “Our coalition still has important work to do.” He added, “Freedom still has enemies here in Afghanistan. And you are here to make those enemies miserable.” Obama has, likewise, tied the establishment of a stable government in Afghanistan to U.S. national security, and pledged to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida (even though there does not appear to be any significant al-Qaida in Afghanistan anymore). Both Cheney and Obama tend to amalgamate al-Qaida (a small, mainly Arab, international terrorist organization) to the Taliban (a form of Pushtun fundamentalist nationalism with local concerns). Cheney’s war in Afghanistan envisaged no end, and neither, apparently, does Obama’s.

Many of Cheney’s harshest policies were rooted in a conviction that small terrorist groups might well get hold of nuclear weapons or other very dangerous armaments, and that all necessary steps must be taken to forestall that eventuality, even if it has only slight probability of occurring. (Journalist Ron Suskind called this notion the “one percent” doctrine.) The Obama administration just forced the Pakistani military to invade the Malakand region and to displace hundreds of thousands of civilians in the course of shelling and bombing a few thousand Taliban tribesmen. Among its rationales for this massive application of force was that the Taliban had advanced too close to Islamabad, and, apparently too close to that country’s nuclear warheads. (In fact, the idea that a small force of rural Taliban could take over the Pakistani government or get access to its closely guarded arsenal is fantastic.)

In the government’s commitment to a doctrine of “state secrets” that protect the executive from the scrutiny of other branches of government, in the continued attempt to block lawsuits and release of important documents, and in the shielding of secret programs of torture, unlawful kidnapping and warrantless wiretapping, Obama is preserving policies to which Cheney is deeply committed. In configuring Pushtun fundamentalists in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as a mortal threat to the U.S. and potentially even a nuclear power, the Obama administration is picking up themes from Cheney’s old speeches and running with them. Cheney may or may not win his struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. If we are not careful, he will win the struggle for the soul of the country as a whole.

Source / Salon

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William Blum: On Enhanced Interrogation, Enhanced Explosive Devices, and Other Matters

Posted on May 14, 2009 by RagBlog

An “enhanced explosive device” in action, aka the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The picture was taken from one of the B-29 Superfortresses used in the attack.

The Anti-Empire Report: Some thoughts about torture. And Mr. Obama.
By William Blum / May 4, 2009

Okay, at least some things are settled. When George W. Bush said “The United States does not torture”, everyone now knows it was crapaganda. And when Barack Obama, a month into his presidency, said “The United States does not torture”1, it likewise had all the credibility of a 19th century treaty between the US government and the American Indians.

When Obama and his followers say, as they do repeatedly, that he has “banned torture”, this is a statement they have no right to make. The executive orders concerning torture leave loopholes, such as being applicable only “in any armed conflict”2 What about in a “counter-terrorism” environment? And the new administration has not categorically banned the outsourcing of torture, such as renditions, the sole purpose of which is to kidnap people and send them to a country to be tortured. Moreover, what do we know of all the CIA secret prisons, the gulag extending from Poland to the island of Diego Garcia? How many of them are still open and abusing and torturing prisoners, keeping them in total isolation and in indefinite detention? Total isolation by itself is torture; not knowing when, if ever, you will be released is torture. And the non-secret prisons? Has Guantanamo ended all its forms of torture? There’s reason to doubt that.3 And what do we know of what’s happening now in Abu Ghraib and Bagram?

And when Obama says “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law”, and then acts in precisely the opposite fashion, despite overwhelming evidence of criminal torture — such as the recently leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Bush Justice Department “torture memos” — it’s enough to break the heart of any of his fans who possess more than a minimum of intellect and conscience. It should be noted that a Gallup Poll of April 24/25 showed that 66% of Democrats favored an “investigation into harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects”. If the word “torture” had been used in the question, the figure would undoubtedly have been higher.

Following the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, President Bush went on TV to warn the people of Iraq: “War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, I was just following orders.”4

“Objectively, the American public is much more responsible for the crimes committed in its name than were the people of Germany for the horrors of the Third Reich. We have far more knowledge, and far greater freedom and opportunity to stop our government’s criminal behavior,” observed James Brooks in the Online Journal in 2007.

On February 10, the Obama Justice Department used the Bush administration’s much-reviled “state secrets” tactic in a move to have a lawsuit dismissed — filed by five detainees against a subsidiary of Boeing aircraft company for arranging rendition flights which led to their torture. “It was as if last month’s inauguration had never occurred”, observed the New York Times.5

And when Obama says, as he does repeatedly, “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”, why is it that no one in the media asks him what he thinks of the Nuremberg Tribunal looking backwards in 1946? Or the Church Committee of the US Senate doing the same in 1975 and producing numerous revelations about the criminality of the CIA, FBI, and other government agencies that shocked and opened the eyes of the American people and the world?

We’re now told that Obama and his advisers had recently been fiercely debating the question of what to do about the Bush war criminals, with Obama going one way and then another and then back again, both in private and in his public stands. One might say that he was “tortured”. But civilized societies do not debate torture. Why didn’t the president just do the obvious? The simplest? The right thing? Or at least do what he really believes.

The problem, I’m increasingly afraid, is that the man doesn’t really believe strongly in anything, certainly not in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without clearly and firmly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying anything, how to leave his listeners’ heads filled with stirring clichés, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked! What could happen now, as President of the United States, to induce him to change his style?

The president and the Director of the CIA both insist that no one at the CIA who was relying on the Justice Department’s written legal justification of methods of “enhanced interrogation” should be punished. But the first such approval was dated August 1, 2002, while many young men were arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the previous nine months and subjected to “enhanced interrogation”. Many were sent to Guantanamo as early as January 2002. And many others were kidnaped and sent to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and other secret prisons to be tortured beginning in late 2001. So, at least for some months, the torturers were not acting under any formal approval of their methods. But they still will not be punished.

I love that expression “enhanced interrogation”. How did our glorious leaders overlook calling the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “enhanced explosive devices”?

Lord High Dungeon Master Richard Cheney is upset about the recent release of torture memos. He keeps saying that the Obama administration is suppressing documents that show a more positive picture of the effectiveness of interrogation techniques, which he claims produced very valuable information, prevented certain acts of terrorism, and saved American lives. Hmmm, why am I skeptical of this? Oh, I know, because if this is what actually happened and there are documents which genuinely and unambiguously showed such results, the beleaguered Bush administration would have leaked them years ago with great fanfare, and the CIA would not have destroyed numerous videos of the torture sessions.

But in any event, that still wouldn’t justify torture. Humankind has aspired for centuries to tame its worst behaviors; ridding itself of the affliction of torture has been high on that list. There is more than one United States law now prohibiting torture, including a 1994 law making it a crime for US citizens to commit torture overseas. This was recently invoked to convict the son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. There is also the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, ratified in 1949, which states in Article 17:

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

Thus it was that the United States has not called the prisoners of its War on Terror “prisoners of war”. But in 1984, another historic step was taken, by the United Nations, with the drafting of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who supposedly has the vital “ticking-bomb” information needed to save lives, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture him to learn the identities of his alleged co-conspirators. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some “national emergency” or some other “higher purpose”?

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

“I would personally rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life.” – Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who lost his job after he publicly condemned the Uzbek regime in 2003 for its systematic use of torture.6

With all the reports concerning torture under the recent Bush administration, some people may be inclined to think that prior to Bush the United States had very little connection to this awful practice. However, in the period of the 1950s through the 1980s, while the CIA did not usually push the button, turn the switch, or pour the water, the Agency …

* encouraged its clients in the Third World to use torture;
* provided the host country the names of the people who wound up as torture victims, in places as bad as Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram;
* supplied torture equipment;
* conducted classes in torture;
* distributed torture manuals — how-to books;
* was present when torture was taking place, to observe and evaluate how well its students were doing.7

I could really feel sorry for Barack Obama — for his administration is plagued and handicapped by a major recession not of his making — if he had a vision that was thus being thwarted. But he has no vision — not any kind of systemic remaking of the economy, producing a more equitable and more honest society; nor a world at peace, beginning with ending America’s perennial wars; no vision of the fantastic things that could be done with the trillions of dollars that would be saved by putting an end to war without end; nor a vision of a world totally rid of torture; nor an America with national health insurance; nor an environment free of capitalist subversion; nor a campaign to control world population … he just looks for what will offend the fewest people. He’s a “whatever works” kind of guy. And he wants to be president. But what we need and crave is a leader of vision.

Another jewel in the crown, Miss Hillary

During the presidential campaign much was made of Obama’s stated promises to engage in direct talks with Iran, as opposed to the Bush administration’s refusal to speak to the Iranians and threatening to attack them and bomb their nuclear facilities. This was one more example of the much-vaunted “change” that Obama was going to bring. But, in actuality, it wouldn’t be much of a change. Mid-level American officials did in fact occasionally meet with Iranian officials, most notably after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and in mid-2003 after the US invasion of Iraq. These meeting were always in secret.8 There were also at least three publicly-announced meetings between the US and Iran in 2007, primarily dealing with the fighting in Iraq. And now that Obama is in power, what do we find? We find his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, testifying April 22 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and stating:

“We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on [speaking to Iran], we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be.”

Would it be unfair to say that she’s implying that a reason for talks with Iran is that the US could get more international support when it decides to cripple that country? Is crippling a country the United States is at peace with supposed to be part of the “change” in US foreign policy? Is Iran expected to be enthusiastic about such talks? If the talks collapse, will the United States use that as an excuse for bombing Iran? Or will Israel be given the honor?

Later in the hearing, Clinton declared: “We are deploying new approaches to the threat posed by Iran.”

I would love to have been a member of the House committee so I could have had the following exchange with the Secretary of State:

Cong. Blum: Do we plan to impose sanctions on France?

Sec. Clinton: I don’t understand, Congressman. Why would we impose sanctions on France?

Cong. Blum: Well, if we impose sanctions on Iran on the mere suspicion of them planning to build nuclear weapons, it seems to me we’d want to impose even stricter sanctions on a country which already possesses such weapons.

Sec. Clinton: But France is an ally.

Cong. Blum: So let’s make Iran an ally. We can start with ending our many sanctions against them and calling off our Israeli attack dogs.

Sec. Clinton: But Congressman, Iran is a threat. Surely you don’t see France as a threat? What reason would France have to use nuclear weapons against the United States?

Cong. Blum: What reason would Iran have to use nuclear weapons against the United States? Other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide.

If Congressman Blum had pursued this line of questioning, it might well have culminated in some Orwellian remark by dear Hillary, such as the one she treated us to a few days later when speaking to reporters in Iraq. As the Washington Post reported it: “Clinton played down the latest burst of violence, telling reporters she saw ‘no sign’ it would reignite the sectarian warfare that ravaged the country in recent years. She said that the Iraqi government had ‘come a long, long way’ and that the bombings were ‘a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction’.”9

So … the eruption of violence is a sign of success. In October 2003, President George W. Bush, speaking after many resistance attacks in Iraq had occurred, said: “The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react.”10

And here is Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking in April 2004 about a rise in insurrection and fighting in Iraq over nearly a two-week period: “‘I would characterize what we’re seeing right now as a — as more a symptom of the success that we’re having here in Iraq,’ he said … explaining that the violence indicated there was something to fight against — American progress in building up Iraq.”11

War is Peace … Freedom is Slavery … Ignorance is Strength. I distinctly remember when I first read “1984” thinking that it was very well done but of course a great exaggeration, sort of like science fiction.

Clinton was equally profound on May 1, speaking to an assemblage of State Department employees. Discussing Venezuela and Bolivia, she said that the Bush administration “tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs. It didn’t work. We are going to see what other approaches might work.” Oh … uh … how about NOT trying to isolate them, NOT supporting their opposition, NOT trying to turn them into international pariahs? How about the National Endowment for Democracy, the Agency for International Development, and the US Embassy NOT trying to subvert their revolutions? And when she says “It didn’t work”, one must ask: Work to what end? To return the two countries to their previous condition of client-states? Perhaps like with Nicaragua, about whom the Secretary of State said improving relations was important to counter Iran’s growing influence. She noted that “the Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua. You can only imagine what it’s for.”12 I can only imagine what Ms. Clinton imagines it’s for. What is the new American Embassy in Iraq — the biggest embassy in the entire history of the world, in the entire universe — What is that for? Another example of Obamachange that means no change. What is it with American officials? Why are they so insufferably arrogant and hypocritical?

Notes

1. Washington Post, February 24, 2009 ↩
2. See, for example, “Executive Order – Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, January 22, 2009 ↩
3. See The Observer (London), February 8, 2009 for an account of how conditions were still very awful at Guantanamo as of that date. ↩
4. Video of Bush ↩
5. New York Times, February 10, 2009, plus their editorial of the next day. In April, a federal appeals court ruled that the detainees’ lawsuit could proceed. ↩
6. Testimony before the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, session of January 21, 2006, New York City ↩
7. See William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”, chapter 5. ↩
8. The Independent (London), May 27, 2007 ↩
9. Washington Post, April 26, 2009 ↩
10. Washington Post, October 28, 2003 ↩
11. New York Times, April 16, 2003 ↩
12. Associated Press, May 1, 2009 ↩

Source / Anti-Empire Report

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